38 Reviews liked by Luggo
It feels mean to compare this to its predecessor but Virtue's Last Reward just doesn't have the sheer joy and thrill that Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors had. Its lore simultaneously wants to develop and exacerbate the insanity that 999 spent slowly unspooling, but it doesn't want to approach that level of multifaceted storytelling with nearly the same drama or heightened sense of panic. When I learned of a new element within the story, I didn't feel as strong of a sense of bewilderment or clairvoyance-level realization, but rather a sense of mild satisfaction. That's the thing that gets me about this game, I suppose: It works, but it doesn't tug at my emotions as much as 999 did. The chaos is ramped up but it just doesn't feel as urgent or interesting.
The character drama in particular is maybe my biggest gripe with the game overall. Every conversation is considerably longer and more quippy at the cost of information density, there's this sense of irreverence that feels extremely out of place. Of course, you could blame this on the advent of the Danganronpa franchise and its mockery in the face of certain death, but that series has its moments to refrain from indulging in its hypersexuality and humor in service of a bigger idea that climbs towards a hostile thriller screenplay. Additionally, the irreverence is used to help build onto the dread—were it not for Monokuma's complete and utter disregard for his subjects' lives, there'd be less panic among them.
The characters in VLR, on the other hand, are poised to joke and shove corny banter in nearly every conversation given enough time, such that it stands to kill a lot of the intensity that the holistic story builds. I would much rather a short, important conversation than a long one that stands to remove any given amount goodwill I have for the main characters. This lack of brevity is also not helped by the gargantuan amount of time that it takes between various novel segments, showcasing a very annoying dot moving across the map for every single possible migration of the characters. At a certain point in my playthrough, I started scheduling for these intermissions and texting friends over actually trying to remain immersed with a medium that ejected me from immersion to begin with.
That's not to say it's a bad game, far from it—once again in no small part to the thoughtful escape room design employed with a similar (but not exact same) grace as its predecessor. The increase in difficulty is something I rather appreciate, even if it comes at the cost of breaking immersion sometimes. I especially appreciate the safe system, though it has its drawbacks with certain room-end puzzles. The broader story itself, divorced from being attached to the game and the individual writing choices I dislike, is excellent scaffolding around the original lore that 999 set up. It's just a shame that this story had to shake out this way, because as a game it fails to excite me beyond its lore and individual chambers.
EDIT, 23-MARCH-2024:
My neglect to mention the very casual misogyny present in this game is starting to bug me greatly, so allow me to comment on the reality that Sigma and the rest of the characters either are victims or enablers of horrific womanizing. In a shocking departure from 999's relatively minute jokes about sexuality that are unimportant, minor facets of individual characters only appearing once or twice, Virtue's Last Reward takes the bold move to make Sigma a sexual harasser. In every possible route, he is poised to interact with at least one of the female characters with a variety of dehumanizing and, frankly, horrible sex pestery. He even remarks that Clover (who in VLR is small and skinny but an adult) is seemingly jailbait.
Misogynist characters are not inherently detrimental to a story if it is done with the tact and angling that it deserves. I hold the idea that depiction is not necessarily endorsement of the depicted. However, VLR's main character being an incessantly horny poon-hound who can be led to do just about anything with the promise of someone's panties getting stripped off is so irritating after 20 hours of playing the game that it ceases to be worthwhile as a facet of a character worth exploring. There is no benefit to it in this story.
The character drama in particular is maybe my biggest gripe with the game overall. Every conversation is considerably longer and more quippy at the cost of information density, there's this sense of irreverence that feels extremely out of place. Of course, you could blame this on the advent of the Danganronpa franchise and its mockery in the face of certain death, but that series has its moments to refrain from indulging in its hypersexuality and humor in service of a bigger idea that climbs towards a hostile thriller screenplay. Additionally, the irreverence is used to help build onto the dread—were it not for Monokuma's complete and utter disregard for his subjects' lives, there'd be less panic among them.
The characters in VLR, on the other hand, are poised to joke and shove corny banter in nearly every conversation given enough time, such that it stands to kill a lot of the intensity that the holistic story builds. I would much rather a short, important conversation than a long one that stands to remove any given amount goodwill I have for the main characters. This lack of brevity is also not helped by the gargantuan amount of time that it takes between various novel segments, showcasing a very annoying dot moving across the map for every single possible migration of the characters. At a certain point in my playthrough, I started scheduling for these intermissions and texting friends over actually trying to remain immersed with a medium that ejected me from immersion to begin with.
That's not to say it's a bad game, far from it—once again in no small part to the thoughtful escape room design employed with a similar (but not exact same) grace as its predecessor. The increase in difficulty is something I rather appreciate, even if it comes at the cost of breaking immersion sometimes. I especially appreciate the safe system, though it has its drawbacks with certain room-end puzzles. The broader story itself, divorced from being attached to the game and the individual writing choices I dislike, is excellent scaffolding around the original lore that 999 set up. It's just a shame that this story had to shake out this way, because as a game it fails to excite me beyond its lore and individual chambers.
EDIT, 23-MARCH-2024:
My neglect to mention the very casual misogyny present in this game is starting to bug me greatly, so allow me to comment on the reality that Sigma and the rest of the characters either are victims or enablers of horrific womanizing. In a shocking departure from 999's relatively minute jokes about sexuality that are unimportant, minor facets of individual characters only appearing once or twice, Virtue's Last Reward takes the bold move to make Sigma a sexual harasser. In every possible route, he is poised to interact with at least one of the female characters with a variety of dehumanizing and, frankly, horrible sex pestery. He even remarks that Clover (who in VLR is small and skinny but an adult) is seemingly jailbait.
Misogynist characters are not inherently detrimental to a story if it is done with the tact and angling that it deserves. I hold the idea that depiction is not necessarily endorsement of the depicted. However, VLR's main character being an incessantly horny poon-hound who can be led to do just about anything with the promise of someone's panties getting stripped off is so irritating after 20 hours of playing the game that it ceases to be worthwhile as a facet of a character worth exploring. There is no benefit to it in this story.
Persona 3 FES
2007
for the record i am playing through this at the moment but it starts right here, lets see if it can manage to get any higher (1/10)
edit 1: that fight on floor 25 of tartarus made me feel alive (table battle), 3/10
edit 2: love hotel. 2/10
edit 3: boxing gloves just look positively FANTASTIC on the protag, 4/10
edit 4: he looks so fucking cool when he runs with his hands in his pockets like bro he is SO badass, 5/10
edit 5: this is the most tedious game i have ever played, 3/10
edit 1: that fight on floor 25 of tartarus made me feel alive (table battle), 3/10
edit 2: love hotel. 2/10
edit 3: boxing gloves just look positively FANTASTIC on the protag, 4/10
edit 4: he looks so fucking cool when he runs with his hands in his pockets like bro he is SO badass, 5/10
edit 5: this is the most tedious game i have ever played, 3/10
I’m still very conflicted on how I feel about Yo-Kai Watch 2. It’s the only one in the series that I would call derivative of one of its predecessors.
And while I can see it being an overall improvement over the first Yo-Kai Watch game, I did still not enjoy it as much; as I believe most of its improvements can be summarized by saying that there is a lot of stuff in this game; you will basically not be able to do everything there is in this game.
The version I played “Psychic Specters” is the definitive Version of Yo-Kai Watch 2, combining the contents of both Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls, but unlike the Pokémon equivalents, which may mix and match aspects or even add some, this game gives you the choice of which versions content you want to engage with at certain points in the story, which is as interesting as it is flawed, because if you want to truly experience everything there is in this game you now have to either write down every choice you take, to do the opposite on your second playthrough, or basically just play through the base versions one after another on this fancier cartridge.
When it comes to your gameplay loop, this is basically a rehash of the first one. You might expect QoL changes, but I believe it to actually the other way around, as Mirapo, these games fast-travelling system, and the bike will be locked away from you for way longer, the latter you for some reason only unlock at around 85% through the main game. So most of your (early) game will be spend learning the ins and outs of the Yo-Kai Watch train-network, which takes you station by station (makes sense), it will ask you whether or not you want to exit every station, during the rides you will either be encountering people/Yo-Kai that basically tell you nothing, give you an item or battle you.
Another Mirapo related issue is when you travel to the past, you won’t be able to use them at all, with one exception (which doesn’t count), meaning you will have to walk everywhere, in these maze-like past versions of the city, which at least has some of the greatest music of the already great OST.
Speaking of which, the soundtrack while brief is as good as in any other Yo-Kai game. The only problem with it being that most of it is taken straight from its prequel, with most new tracks being restricted to the past areas. The most egregious example of old music being used is during one moment where the villains of the chapter show up and the Final Boss theme of the first game just starts playing for some reason.
One change I was really waiting to see is how they fixed how you befriend Yo-Kai, as it is my biggest gripe with the first game and it was (somewhat) fixed in the third one and color me shocked when I found out it’s the worst it has ever been. Now don’t get me wrong here, it’s roughly the same as the first in theory, but this game forces you to befriend Yo-Kai way more than that game. There is one point where you enter a cave, where you must use your Yo-Kai to change the water levels to progress. When I got there my playtime was at around 8 hours, the water can be at three different levels, and you need one specific Yo-Kai per level. Luckily you can encounter them in that cave, but remember if you beat them, it will take a seemingly random amount of time for them to respawn, and they might just not do so at all. So, you better pray that the RNG for them befriending you is in your favor, as the item that guarantees befriending does not exist yet, and guess what happened to me.
One of them, this guy right here, just hates me for some reason, and I spend a bit more than two hours in that cave just hoping that they would befriend me. Well at least you can get the Yo-Kai at the same place where you need them.
A bit later in the game you will hunt down some documents the protagonists dad lost on his way to work, which first forces you to ride the train multiple times, after doing that Whisper tells you to get a Yo-Kai called Flushback which will be able to go through the memories of you father and find out where he left the documents. Now guess three times where you might find such a Yo-Kai. The cave of course and if you didn’t get them last time, have fun walking from one side of the map to the other, if you didn’t activate the Mirapo and do all that encountering in the cave once again, just for that to not give you a clear answer as to where he left the documents.
Now to the thing I was the most disappointed with. The combat system is the same from the first game with two small changes. 1: When charging your soultimate attack, there is one new method of doing so and 2: if you click the center of the Yo-Kai Watch you have two new options, being a stronger soultimate (I think) and the option to spam-click the opponent and either deal damage, steal their soul-charge, or giving you a higher chance to befriend them, which does not solve my previous complaint as you have to first inspirit the enemy, it being random as to which effect it will have on them and it still not guaranteeing it.
Back in 2022 I wrote a review for Yo-Kai Watch 3, in which I called this combat system of Yo-Kai Watch 1 more of an annoyance than fun to mess around with, which is a sentiment I still mostly agree with, and guess what, these two minor changes don’t change much. This is magnified by the fact that I didn’t even like the boss fights in this one as much as I did in the others. There are some winners, but most of them are just bland and don’t require much strategy.
Let’s go back to the tidal cave (with the most minor spoiler warning I can give out), which I’ve spend so much time complaining about. At the end of your first excursion through it you will encounter some pirate-Yo-Kai-boss-guy (I think he is from the early-game of 1), whose name I can’t remember. The only thing I did was using all of my front three Yo-Kai’s soultimate-attack and he was basically already defeated, and this happens here more often than I hoped it would.
I will now talk a bit about the final boss, without spoiling who or what their attacks are, but if you feel unsafe you may skip to the next paragraph. I was really looking forward to seeing if they fixed the difficulty curve of the first one, where it is easy for all of the game, only for the final boss to suddenly become impossible to beat at your current level, which you thought to be over leveled, but in a funny twist of events that didn’t happen at all. This game is so derivative of its predecessor that it even copied the two-hour grind for the final boss.
My last point is on the writing of this game. Now don’t get me wrong these games are not known for their groundbreaking storytelling, with the story basically only existing to give you a reason for why you are now suddenly in an all-out Yo-Kai war, with some funny quips thrown in to lighten the mood, but I found this one in particular to be lacking in the latter. The main villains of these games usually don’t have a presence before the game is already basically over and while they are handled better here than in the first one, this is still mostly the case. My problem however isn’t that they did that again, that was expected, but much rather how they handled the new tribe of Yo-Kai, the Wicked-Tribe), which you can see on the box-art. They also only show up during the end of the game and do nothing, outside of being mini bosses that you can dispatch with two attacks, showcasing maybe the biggest wasted potential in this series. At least they give out around 700 experience points.
Now I spend most of this review being critical of the game but remember that is still an overall improvement over the first game, which is also flawed, but a good game in its own right. I’m just disappointed that it didn’t change more. This is also the end of my journey across the Yo-Kai Watch series, at least until this materializes into something, which started all the way back in 2021, or maybe even 2015 if you count my time with the demo-version of the first one and I don’t want to end it on such a downer, as this is such a great series and definitely worth experiencing, especially the third one, which I was so lucky to buy before the 3DS eshop closed down and has since become one of my favorite games of all time. My final ranking is 3 > 4 > 1 > 2.
And while I can see it being an overall improvement over the first Yo-Kai Watch game, I did still not enjoy it as much; as I believe most of its improvements can be summarized by saying that there is a lot of stuff in this game; you will basically not be able to do everything there is in this game.
The version I played “Psychic Specters” is the definitive Version of Yo-Kai Watch 2, combining the contents of both Bony Spirits and Fleshy Souls, but unlike the Pokémon equivalents, which may mix and match aspects or even add some, this game gives you the choice of which versions content you want to engage with at certain points in the story, which is as interesting as it is flawed, because if you want to truly experience everything there is in this game you now have to either write down every choice you take, to do the opposite on your second playthrough, or basically just play through the base versions one after another on this fancier cartridge.
When it comes to your gameplay loop, this is basically a rehash of the first one. You might expect QoL changes, but I believe it to actually the other way around, as Mirapo, these games fast-travelling system, and the bike will be locked away from you for way longer, the latter you for some reason only unlock at around 85% through the main game. So most of your (early) game will be spend learning the ins and outs of the Yo-Kai Watch train-network, which takes you station by station (makes sense), it will ask you whether or not you want to exit every station, during the rides you will either be encountering people/Yo-Kai that basically tell you nothing, give you an item or battle you.
Another Mirapo related issue is when you travel to the past, you won’t be able to use them at all, with one exception (which doesn’t count), meaning you will have to walk everywhere, in these maze-like past versions of the city, which at least has some of the greatest music of the already great OST.
Speaking of which, the soundtrack while brief is as good as in any other Yo-Kai game. The only problem with it being that most of it is taken straight from its prequel, with most new tracks being restricted to the past areas. The most egregious example of old music being used is during one moment where the villains of the chapter show up and the Final Boss theme of the first game just starts playing for some reason.
One change I was really waiting to see is how they fixed how you befriend Yo-Kai, as it is my biggest gripe with the first game and it was (somewhat) fixed in the third one and color me shocked when I found out it’s the worst it has ever been. Now don’t get me wrong here, it’s roughly the same as the first in theory, but this game forces you to befriend Yo-Kai way more than that game. There is one point where you enter a cave, where you must use your Yo-Kai to change the water levels to progress. When I got there my playtime was at around 8 hours, the water can be at three different levels, and you need one specific Yo-Kai per level. Luckily you can encounter them in that cave, but remember if you beat them, it will take a seemingly random amount of time for them to respawn, and they might just not do so at all. So, you better pray that the RNG for them befriending you is in your favor, as the item that guarantees befriending does not exist yet, and guess what happened to me.
One of them, this guy right here, just hates me for some reason, and I spend a bit more than two hours in that cave just hoping that they would befriend me. Well at least you can get the Yo-Kai at the same place where you need them.
A bit later in the game you will hunt down some documents the protagonists dad lost on his way to work, which first forces you to ride the train multiple times, after doing that Whisper tells you to get a Yo-Kai called Flushback which will be able to go through the memories of you father and find out where he left the documents. Now guess three times where you might find such a Yo-Kai. The cave of course and if you didn’t get them last time, have fun walking from one side of the map to the other, if you didn’t activate the Mirapo and do all that encountering in the cave once again, just for that to not give you a clear answer as to where he left the documents.
Now to the thing I was the most disappointed with. The combat system is the same from the first game with two small changes. 1: When charging your soultimate attack, there is one new method of doing so and 2: if you click the center of the Yo-Kai Watch you have two new options, being a stronger soultimate (I think) and the option to spam-click the opponent and either deal damage, steal their soul-charge, or giving you a higher chance to befriend them, which does not solve my previous complaint as you have to first inspirit the enemy, it being random as to which effect it will have on them and it still not guaranteeing it.
Back in 2022 I wrote a review for Yo-Kai Watch 3, in which I called this combat system of Yo-Kai Watch 1 more of an annoyance than fun to mess around with, which is a sentiment I still mostly agree with, and guess what, these two minor changes don’t change much. This is magnified by the fact that I didn’t even like the boss fights in this one as much as I did in the others. There are some winners, but most of them are just bland and don’t require much strategy.
Let’s go back to the tidal cave (with the most minor spoiler warning I can give out), which I’ve spend so much time complaining about. At the end of your first excursion through it you will encounter some pirate-Yo-Kai-boss-guy (I think he is from the early-game of 1), whose name I can’t remember. The only thing I did was using all of my front three Yo-Kai’s soultimate-attack and he was basically already defeated, and this happens here more often than I hoped it would.
I will now talk a bit about the final boss, without spoiling who or what their attacks are, but if you feel unsafe you may skip to the next paragraph. I was really looking forward to seeing if they fixed the difficulty curve of the first one, where it is easy for all of the game, only for the final boss to suddenly become impossible to beat at your current level, which you thought to be over leveled, but in a funny twist of events that didn’t happen at all. This game is so derivative of its predecessor that it even copied the two-hour grind for the final boss.
My last point is on the writing of this game. Now don’t get me wrong these games are not known for their groundbreaking storytelling, with the story basically only existing to give you a reason for why you are now suddenly in an all-out Yo-Kai war, with some funny quips thrown in to lighten the mood, but I found this one in particular to be lacking in the latter. The main villains of these games usually don’t have a presence before the game is already basically over and while they are handled better here than in the first one, this is still mostly the case. My problem however isn’t that they did that again, that was expected, but much rather how they handled the new tribe of Yo-Kai, the Wicked-Tribe), which you can see on the box-art. They also only show up during the end of the game and do nothing, outside of being mini bosses that you can dispatch with two attacks, showcasing maybe the biggest wasted potential in this series. At least they give out around 700 experience points.
Now I spend most of this review being critical of the game but remember that is still an overall improvement over the first game, which is also flawed, but a good game in its own right. I’m just disappointed that it didn’t change more. This is also the end of my journey across the Yo-Kai Watch series, at least until this materializes into something, which started all the way back in 2021, or maybe even 2015 if you count my time with the demo-version of the first one and I don’t want to end it on such a downer, as this is such a great series and definitely worth experiencing, especially the third one, which I was so lucky to buy before the 3DS eshop closed down and has since become one of my favorite games of all time. My final ranking is 3 > 4 > 1 > 2.
I don't think I have a more confusing relationship with another game. This game ticks me off on so many levels it's hard to describe, but I'll go over the things I like first.
I love the art style this game goes for. It has a cool shell shaded look with PS2 looking graphic that blend really nicely together. It also runs great on my 4k monitor with a GTX 1070 which was great. I also love the low frame rate animations that adds nicely to the retro theme, overall a great and memorable visual presentation.
The soundtrack is also great. I know a lot of people say that "Into the mind" by toby fox is the only good song but I actually disagree. The other battle music is good and some environmental songs like omnism 1999 and Wind Town are lovely tracks. However the quality ranges way too much, since this game was apparently composed by like 12 people so the soundtrack isn't that consistent.
The character and world designs are also nice and varied, each location like wind town, flag town, mt town cave are all cool locations, and going into the brain of someone is also cool, even if the dungeons can be tedious.
I also like the concept. Being a group of friends to discover conspiracy and paranormal theories sound like fun especially since I'm into those kinda things.
Everything else? Fucking awful. Seriously this game feels like it's having identity crisis it doesn't know what to fucking do with it's story. First of all most of the characters are unlikable or just boring and uninteresting, Alex himself is such a confusing character I could never tell if the game wanted me to like him or not. They try to give him an "asshole" personality but he's not like that all most of the time and is just inconsistent with his character in general, the other characters are just boring and just follow whatever Alex does, they yell at him from time to time but no growth ever comes from it.
Another thing is the voice acting. Some voice actors do a great job, but it's the presentation that makes the VA laughable at best. The whole story is presented with PNG’s of the characters in generic poses with text boxes. Without the voice acting it actually would be good but the actors try way too hard and it makes any serious moments just come off wrong.
The story is just horrible. Lots of potential but the pacing is so backwards. First it's about finding a missing girl, then it's about getting a job, the it's about finding a robot girl and then your trying to stop a world ending meteor? I really just couldn't care less about what was happening. The ending of the game tried to pull off this 4th wall breaking moment that's supposed to make you “Question reality” when really it just makes me question what the fuck they were thinking? The execution In this part is so horrible I just don't care.
Combat is generic and nothing special, it gets really boring real quick with no variety or fun to be had with it.
Overall this game sucks. I don't recommend it to anyone other than to have a good laugh and to not take it seriously. I dont mean to punch down on the developers they're clearly talented, I just think maybe they bit off a bit more than they could chew, this game was clearly too ambitious for them but I'm genuinely exited for 1.5 update. They seem to take all of the flaws and improve them for free! So I'm gonna be there day 1 to support it. I love the concept here it just needs a lot of improving.
I love the art style this game goes for. It has a cool shell shaded look with PS2 looking graphic that blend really nicely together. It also runs great on my 4k monitor with a GTX 1070 which was great. I also love the low frame rate animations that adds nicely to the retro theme, overall a great and memorable visual presentation.
The soundtrack is also great. I know a lot of people say that "Into the mind" by toby fox is the only good song but I actually disagree. The other battle music is good and some environmental songs like omnism 1999 and Wind Town are lovely tracks. However the quality ranges way too much, since this game was apparently composed by like 12 people so the soundtrack isn't that consistent.
The character and world designs are also nice and varied, each location like wind town, flag town, mt town cave are all cool locations, and going into the brain of someone is also cool, even if the dungeons can be tedious.
I also like the concept. Being a group of friends to discover conspiracy and paranormal theories sound like fun especially since I'm into those kinda things.
Everything else? Fucking awful. Seriously this game feels like it's having identity crisis it doesn't know what to fucking do with it's story. First of all most of the characters are unlikable or just boring and uninteresting, Alex himself is such a confusing character I could never tell if the game wanted me to like him or not. They try to give him an "asshole" personality but he's not like that all most of the time and is just inconsistent with his character in general, the other characters are just boring and just follow whatever Alex does, they yell at him from time to time but no growth ever comes from it.
Another thing is the voice acting. Some voice actors do a great job, but it's the presentation that makes the VA laughable at best. The whole story is presented with PNG’s of the characters in generic poses with text boxes. Without the voice acting it actually would be good but the actors try way too hard and it makes any serious moments just come off wrong.
The story is just horrible. Lots of potential but the pacing is so backwards. First it's about finding a missing girl, then it's about getting a job, the it's about finding a robot girl and then your trying to stop a world ending meteor? I really just couldn't care less about what was happening. The ending of the game tried to pull off this 4th wall breaking moment that's supposed to make you “Question reality” when really it just makes me question what the fuck they were thinking? The execution In this part is so horrible I just don't care.
Combat is generic and nothing special, it gets really boring real quick with no variety or fun to be had with it.
Overall this game sucks. I don't recommend it to anyone other than to have a good laugh and to not take it seriously. I dont mean to punch down on the developers they're clearly talented, I just think maybe they bit off a bit more than they could chew, this game was clearly too ambitious for them but I'm genuinely exited for 1.5 update. They seem to take all of the flaws and improve them for free! So I'm gonna be there day 1 to support it. I love the concept here it just needs a lot of improving.
The "New" was only ever entirely literal: disappointingly, that subseries was essentially a Mario highlight reel rather than anything actually new. Of course, novelty isn't tantamount to quality, but it often feels like Nintendo's only strength as a developer in the modern age is their willingness to experiment. We'll never see another first-party Nintendo game that's not painfully easy and overtutorialized, or one that pushes its mechanics and is at all willing to punish you, or even one that feels mysterious, but buy a Nintendo console and you'll still always end up with a handful of exclusives that are at least fresh conceptually. Just... without "Mario" in any of their titles. Galaxy is far from my favorite Mario game, but it's the most recent one that actually felt like something new, which is concerning considering that it released when most of this site's userbase was still in diapers. We're in the mid 2020s now and traditional, lives-and-continues-based 2D platformers are basically dead and buried, but here comes Super Mario Bros. Wonder with what seems to be a singular, concentrated effort to be new and not just New. You can turn into an elephant in this one!
Unfortunately, though, the elephant powerup is even more emblematic of the entire game than anyone could've anticipated. It looks completely unique to Mario, and, I guess, technically, it is, as he's never had an upgrade that requires him to reload his projectiles before, but does it actually change the gameplay in any meaningful capacity? No. It's just another way to break blocks and attack enemies horizontally. The whole game is preoccupied with appearing new instead of actually being new, and, I mean, it succeeded in this regard, considering I actually bought it after skipping both New Super Mario Bros. U and Bowser's Fury. Wonder flowers feel less like a central gameplay hook and more like short bonus sections that are part of already minuscule levels. The only way they were ever gonna work from a mechanical perspective was if they all happened during high-pressure situations and forced you to adapt to unpredictable twists on the fly (although that would just be a rehash of Wario Land 4) and the only way they were ever gonna work from a spectacle perspective was if they actually went all in. For every wonder section that genuinely took me by surprise- switching the point-of-view to top-down or putting me in outer space or making Mario really, really tall- there'd be five that would just turn the level into an autoscroller, or just make the enemies bigger, or just move the geometry around more than usual. Too often, it's weird in the same way that Mario Land 2 is weird: visually, and that's it. Ultimately, it's far prettier than the New Super Mario Bros. games, but it's no less bland.
And outside of the wonder sections, there really just isn’t all that much to talk about. The badge system makes Mario’s moveset loose and flexible akin to something like Yoshi’s Island, but it’s missing the level variety and mechanical experimentation that made that game work. A few stages have bonus exits, but they lack any of Super Mario World’s pseudo-puzzle solving or sense of mystery. What’s left? The fact that it has a handful of decent stage-specific mechanics? (All of the other New games do, too.) Those one-screen puzzle levels? (Didn’t care for them in Mario Maker, still don’t here.) The weird, Dark Souls-ass asynchronous co-op? (I refuse to pay for Nintendo’s online service, so I can’t comment.) How every individual world feels like its own little adventure? (Alright, I admit it, I liked this one.) If you’re not going to be new, you could at least be cohesive- I’m a big fan of both 3D World and Odyssey, but I’d hesitate to call either of them particularly revolutionary, instead focusing on being a conduit for co-op shenanigans and a modernization of Mario 64’s mechanics, respectively. Besides being bright and colorful, is there a similar underlying summary that you could apply to Wonder? More and more, it feels like Mario is becoming Kirby: not striving for anything beyond a vaguely pleasant experience and producing no bad games, but no great ones either. Maybe my standards are just too high- after all, we don't expect Star Wars or The Simpsons or Halloween to be cutting-edge anymore, even though they were at one point, so why should we Mario? But, in 2024, this franchise is unrecognizable from the one that gave us 3's level map and World's secret exits and 64's moveset. And that just saddens me more than anything else.
Unfortunately, though, the elephant powerup is even more emblematic of the entire game than anyone could've anticipated. It looks completely unique to Mario, and, I guess, technically, it is, as he's never had an upgrade that requires him to reload his projectiles before, but does it actually change the gameplay in any meaningful capacity? No. It's just another way to break blocks and attack enemies horizontally. The whole game is preoccupied with appearing new instead of actually being new, and, I mean, it succeeded in this regard, considering I actually bought it after skipping both New Super Mario Bros. U and Bowser's Fury. Wonder flowers feel less like a central gameplay hook and more like short bonus sections that are part of already minuscule levels. The only way they were ever gonna work from a mechanical perspective was if they all happened during high-pressure situations and forced you to adapt to unpredictable twists on the fly (although that would just be a rehash of Wario Land 4) and the only way they were ever gonna work from a spectacle perspective was if they actually went all in. For every wonder section that genuinely took me by surprise- switching the point-of-view to top-down or putting me in outer space or making Mario really, really tall- there'd be five that would just turn the level into an autoscroller, or just make the enemies bigger, or just move the geometry around more than usual. Too often, it's weird in the same way that Mario Land 2 is weird: visually, and that's it. Ultimately, it's far prettier than the New Super Mario Bros. games, but it's no less bland.
And outside of the wonder sections, there really just isn’t all that much to talk about. The badge system makes Mario’s moveset loose and flexible akin to something like Yoshi’s Island, but it’s missing the level variety and mechanical experimentation that made that game work. A few stages have bonus exits, but they lack any of Super Mario World’s pseudo-puzzle solving or sense of mystery. What’s left? The fact that it has a handful of decent stage-specific mechanics? (All of the other New games do, too.) Those one-screen puzzle levels? (Didn’t care for them in Mario Maker, still don’t here.) The weird, Dark Souls-ass asynchronous co-op? (I refuse to pay for Nintendo’s online service, so I can’t comment.) How every individual world feels like its own little adventure? (Alright, I admit it, I liked this one.) If you’re not going to be new, you could at least be cohesive- I’m a big fan of both 3D World and Odyssey, but I’d hesitate to call either of them particularly revolutionary, instead focusing on being a conduit for co-op shenanigans and a modernization of Mario 64’s mechanics, respectively. Besides being bright and colorful, is there a similar underlying summary that you could apply to Wonder? More and more, it feels like Mario is becoming Kirby: not striving for anything beyond a vaguely pleasant experience and producing no bad games, but no great ones either. Maybe my standards are just too high- after all, we don't expect Star Wars or The Simpsons or Halloween to be cutting-edge anymore, even though they were at one point, so why should we Mario? But, in 2024, this franchise is unrecognizable from the one that gave us 3's level map and World's secret exits and 64's moveset. And that just saddens me more than anything else.
Persona 3
2006
It’s about making the most of your short time in life yet it’s 82 hours long? Hypocrisy much?
Super Mario 64
1996
some of you guys are getting a little too comfortable calling this game bad and i mean this in the most respectful way possible but you're wrong
Pikmin 2
2004
Olimar and the President explaining to Louie's family that they left him to die because I didn't feel like dealing with more of this game's dungeon design
Bravely Default II
2021
yes i know this is an essay and a half and i am sorry
i finally took the time to finish the sequel to 2 of my favorite rpgs ever and i have… thoughts.
bravely default 2 is the definition of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. every single deviation from the formula created by default and second ends up being for the worse.
the first thing i noticed when starting the game is all the accessbility and ui functions from the first 2 games that have been removed. you can no longer turn off random encounters, in favor of overworld encounters that can only be toggled by items. secondarily, auto battle has been completely neutered and UI features like creating favorites of your class compositions are gone entirely. there is also a new weight system where equipment has a weight and if you go a single point over your character’s capacity they lose dozens of stats. it isn’t an AWFUL idea but in practice it means new equipment has to be introduced at a trickle and the micromanagement is unfun and has such minor gains instead of the usually bump in power when reaching a new area. these things in a vacuum could be fine and a way to engage the player more (besides the removal of ui features there’s no excuse for that) but they also made the new overworld encounters as cumbersome as possible.
almost every random encounter from start to finish contains 4-6 enemies which QUICKLY becomes exhausting. most of my time was spent running from enemies because fighting such large groups was just unenjoyable and made grinding both unfun and annoyingly slow when grinding was one of my favorite activities in the first 2 games. they also removed basically all the exp multipliers and consistent battle chaining meaning by the late game bosses grinding levels is slow, arduous, and absolutely no fun. this could also be excused as a balance thing, and for most of the game it is, but the final few fights increase in power exponentially and grinding either exp, new class compositions, or both becomes practically necessary.
alongside the tedium of the gameplay changes, the story was just as tedious. the core cast just is not as compelling as any of the characters from the first games and the side characters do little to add to that. seth, the main character, is a played-straight self insert with barely any personality or plot significance to speak of, gloria is a princess of a forgotten kingdom with all the charisma of a sad clown, and elvis is scottish. the one bright spot in the core cast is adelle, who is the only one of our 4 playable characters with depth, personality and story significance. unfortunately, the side characters do the game no favors either. the villains are rotated through in minutes with little fanfare and the lucky few that get sidequests expanding on them still don’t reach the heights of the bosses in the first 2 games.
on that point, the sidequest system is also just spectacularly awful. there are about 100 sidequests scattered throughout the world that pop up with no warning and mostly amount to busy work fetch quests that really demonstrate the game’s lacking fast travel and methods of map traversal. there’s also no quest log which feels asinine when the quests are numbered and give no indication of when and where they’ll pop up. i did basically all the sidequests i could find for the first few chapters and then ignored all but the most obviously story relevant for the rest of the game, but as someone with that completionist itch, nothing about this game’s quest system felt like they were designed with people actually DOING them in mind.
as should be obvious with the 100 fetch quests, the name of the game here is PADDING. the game is easily the longest bravely game start to finish but i would also easily say it has the LEAST content. the dungeons are all lazy mazes that grow exponentially larger past the halfway point, combat feels sluggish, the environments are mostly flat plains that your party slowly runs across (unlike most rpgs, there are no boats, airships, bikes, or chocobos, it’s just you and your feet the entire journey), and there are actually LESS jobs than bravely second, going from 30 to 24, and yet the balancing of the jobs is also worse than ever.
jobs in this game are all over the place from their usefulness to even just the skills they learn. for some reason, all the magic classes now learn spells individually, meaning the level ups are wasted on individual spells like fire and thunder, making level ups on some classes just not feel all that impactful and making their final spell lists pretty lackluster. worse than that, there are some useless jobs like arcanist and gambler which require super specific set ups for minimal gains, temporarily overpowered jobs like thief that rip the midgame’s difficulty in half, and jobs like beastmaster that have uncapped permanent buffs that can make the entire game’s difficulty crumble.
speaking of difficulty and balance, the changes to the battle system and how the game creates challenge are also the main barrier to why i never played this game past chapter 1 until now. as mentioned, random encounters are all massive groups from the get go which makes them miserable to fight and makes combat feel like a punishment for not dodging rather than dodging being a last ditch effort when necessary. but the main villain here that casts a horrible shadow over the game from the first boss to the last is the counter system. new to bravely default 2 is the ability for bosses to counter and gain an extra action when you trigger some surprise condition. there are no ways in game to see what bosses have what counters beyond trial and error, and the counters can be excruciatingly specific. as an example, the first boss you’re likely to encounter, a wolf from an early sidequest, counter freelancer abilities with an extra attack that will 1 or 2 shot most of your party before you have even been tutorialized on what counters are. freelancer is the first job you get, and one of only THREE you will likely have at that point, and the game IMMEDIATELY punishes you for using it. the gamefeel this creates is just miserable and feels like punishing players for using the tools given to them. this problem is ALL over chapter 1. expect pretty much every boss in chapter 1 to counter the most recent job you’ve obtained, making it useless to try out the new classes you rightfully earned. it makes chapter 1 not only brutally difficult and frustrating, but just plain not fun. this first chapter is where my previous 3 playthroughs all ended, but this time when i powered through, i was gifted with a saving grace that also ruins the game’s difficulty.
in chapter 2, you unlock the ranger class which comes with a new passive ability, counter-savvy. counter-savvy singlehandedly brings the difficulty down from unforgiving to baby easy in seconds. it gives you a ONE HUNDRED percent chance to dodge all physical and status based counters (magic counters still land but they’re very few and far between) making the counter system immediately pointless for the next 75% of the game. the game created a problem and then hands you a one size fits all solution instead of just balancing things better.
at this point, the game became a cakewalk for a while. not a single boss between when you get ranger in chapter 2 and the middle of chapter 5 gave me ANY grief and most were easily felled by the sheer imbalance of some of these classes. unfortunately, around chapter 5+ the game starts to realize that it has made itself too easy and decides to heap on more bullshit. from this point on, every boss will generate bp (essentially bankable extra turns) from you using basically any ability in the game (and for end game bosses, LITERALLY any ability in the game) making cheese strats essentially required to fell the bosses’ massive HP pools before they fire off as many actions as they want all for free. the name of the game in both the beginning and end game is giving you tools and then smacking you for not using specific ones.
despite all this, i do want to include my few positives since i don’t want to pretend there were none. as mentioned, adelle is a real standout for the character writing, and there are some great side characters i didn’t mention like martha and lonsdale. i also actually surprisingly liked the implementation of turn meters instead of all actions occuring at the same time. finally, that stretch from chapters 2-5 where the game was super easy was also the most fun i had with the game. it was satisfying felling bosses, sometimes in a single turn, using the ridiculous tools the games gives you in the midgame, even if it felt a bit unearned and as such wasn’t very fulfilling.
just as a closing note on the negatives, the switch version of the game runs just embarassingly bad. some environments have hideous bloom that makes everything look horrendous, inputs sometimes drop for no reason, battles freeze for so long randomly that i fear a crash (for what it’s worth, i’ve only encountered 1 crash while playing and it was not during this playthrough), and cutscenes lag and load like crazy. i’ve heard good things about the PC port if your PC can run it (mine definitely cannot) so if you’re still interested in playing i would say skip the switch version for that.
overall, bravely default 2 fails both as a sequel and as an rpg. for fans of the series, the balancing is worse, the grind is worse, the story is less compelling, and key features from past games are gone for no reason. for people just getting into the series, the early game is frustrating, the mid game is too easy, and the late game is bullshit. it’s a game only for the biggest of masochists and i recommend it to essentially no one even as someone whose favorite traditional jrpg of all time is bravely second.
i finally took the time to finish the sequel to 2 of my favorite rpgs ever and i have… thoughts.
bravely default 2 is the definition of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. every single deviation from the formula created by default and second ends up being for the worse.
the first thing i noticed when starting the game is all the accessbility and ui functions from the first 2 games that have been removed. you can no longer turn off random encounters, in favor of overworld encounters that can only be toggled by items. secondarily, auto battle has been completely neutered and UI features like creating favorites of your class compositions are gone entirely. there is also a new weight system where equipment has a weight and if you go a single point over your character’s capacity they lose dozens of stats. it isn’t an AWFUL idea but in practice it means new equipment has to be introduced at a trickle and the micromanagement is unfun and has such minor gains instead of the usually bump in power when reaching a new area. these things in a vacuum could be fine and a way to engage the player more (besides the removal of ui features there’s no excuse for that) but they also made the new overworld encounters as cumbersome as possible.
almost every random encounter from start to finish contains 4-6 enemies which QUICKLY becomes exhausting. most of my time was spent running from enemies because fighting such large groups was just unenjoyable and made grinding both unfun and annoyingly slow when grinding was one of my favorite activities in the first 2 games. they also removed basically all the exp multipliers and consistent battle chaining meaning by the late game bosses grinding levels is slow, arduous, and absolutely no fun. this could also be excused as a balance thing, and for most of the game it is, but the final few fights increase in power exponentially and grinding either exp, new class compositions, or both becomes practically necessary.
alongside the tedium of the gameplay changes, the story was just as tedious. the core cast just is not as compelling as any of the characters from the first games and the side characters do little to add to that. seth, the main character, is a played-straight self insert with barely any personality or plot significance to speak of, gloria is a princess of a forgotten kingdom with all the charisma of a sad clown, and elvis is scottish. the one bright spot in the core cast is adelle, who is the only one of our 4 playable characters with depth, personality and story significance. unfortunately, the side characters do the game no favors either. the villains are rotated through in minutes with little fanfare and the lucky few that get sidequests expanding on them still don’t reach the heights of the bosses in the first 2 games.
on that point, the sidequest system is also just spectacularly awful. there are about 100 sidequests scattered throughout the world that pop up with no warning and mostly amount to busy work fetch quests that really demonstrate the game’s lacking fast travel and methods of map traversal. there’s also no quest log which feels asinine when the quests are numbered and give no indication of when and where they’ll pop up. i did basically all the sidequests i could find for the first few chapters and then ignored all but the most obviously story relevant for the rest of the game, but as someone with that completionist itch, nothing about this game’s quest system felt like they were designed with people actually DOING them in mind.
as should be obvious with the 100 fetch quests, the name of the game here is PADDING. the game is easily the longest bravely game start to finish but i would also easily say it has the LEAST content. the dungeons are all lazy mazes that grow exponentially larger past the halfway point, combat feels sluggish, the environments are mostly flat plains that your party slowly runs across (unlike most rpgs, there are no boats, airships, bikes, or chocobos, it’s just you and your feet the entire journey), and there are actually LESS jobs than bravely second, going from 30 to 24, and yet the balancing of the jobs is also worse than ever.
jobs in this game are all over the place from their usefulness to even just the skills they learn. for some reason, all the magic classes now learn spells individually, meaning the level ups are wasted on individual spells like fire and thunder, making level ups on some classes just not feel all that impactful and making their final spell lists pretty lackluster. worse than that, there are some useless jobs like arcanist and gambler which require super specific set ups for minimal gains, temporarily overpowered jobs like thief that rip the midgame’s difficulty in half, and jobs like beastmaster that have uncapped permanent buffs that can make the entire game’s difficulty crumble.
speaking of difficulty and balance, the changes to the battle system and how the game creates challenge are also the main barrier to why i never played this game past chapter 1 until now. as mentioned, random encounters are all massive groups from the get go which makes them miserable to fight and makes combat feel like a punishment for not dodging rather than dodging being a last ditch effort when necessary. but the main villain here that casts a horrible shadow over the game from the first boss to the last is the counter system. new to bravely default 2 is the ability for bosses to counter and gain an extra action when you trigger some surprise condition. there are no ways in game to see what bosses have what counters beyond trial and error, and the counters can be excruciatingly specific. as an example, the first boss you’re likely to encounter, a wolf from an early sidequest, counter freelancer abilities with an extra attack that will 1 or 2 shot most of your party before you have even been tutorialized on what counters are. freelancer is the first job you get, and one of only THREE you will likely have at that point, and the game IMMEDIATELY punishes you for using it. the gamefeel this creates is just miserable and feels like punishing players for using the tools given to them. this problem is ALL over chapter 1. expect pretty much every boss in chapter 1 to counter the most recent job you’ve obtained, making it useless to try out the new classes you rightfully earned. it makes chapter 1 not only brutally difficult and frustrating, but just plain not fun. this first chapter is where my previous 3 playthroughs all ended, but this time when i powered through, i was gifted with a saving grace that also ruins the game’s difficulty.
in chapter 2, you unlock the ranger class which comes with a new passive ability, counter-savvy. counter-savvy singlehandedly brings the difficulty down from unforgiving to baby easy in seconds. it gives you a ONE HUNDRED percent chance to dodge all physical and status based counters (magic counters still land but they’re very few and far between) making the counter system immediately pointless for the next 75% of the game. the game created a problem and then hands you a one size fits all solution instead of just balancing things better.
at this point, the game became a cakewalk for a while. not a single boss between when you get ranger in chapter 2 and the middle of chapter 5 gave me ANY grief and most were easily felled by the sheer imbalance of some of these classes. unfortunately, around chapter 5+ the game starts to realize that it has made itself too easy and decides to heap on more bullshit. from this point on, every boss will generate bp (essentially bankable extra turns) from you using basically any ability in the game (and for end game bosses, LITERALLY any ability in the game) making cheese strats essentially required to fell the bosses’ massive HP pools before they fire off as many actions as they want all for free. the name of the game in both the beginning and end game is giving you tools and then smacking you for not using specific ones.
despite all this, i do want to include my few positives since i don’t want to pretend there were none. as mentioned, adelle is a real standout for the character writing, and there are some great side characters i didn’t mention like martha and lonsdale. i also actually surprisingly liked the implementation of turn meters instead of all actions occuring at the same time. finally, that stretch from chapters 2-5 where the game was super easy was also the most fun i had with the game. it was satisfying felling bosses, sometimes in a single turn, using the ridiculous tools the games gives you in the midgame, even if it felt a bit unearned and as such wasn’t very fulfilling.
just as a closing note on the negatives, the switch version of the game runs just embarassingly bad. some environments have hideous bloom that makes everything look horrendous, inputs sometimes drop for no reason, battles freeze for so long randomly that i fear a crash (for what it’s worth, i’ve only encountered 1 crash while playing and it was not during this playthrough), and cutscenes lag and load like crazy. i’ve heard good things about the PC port if your PC can run it (mine definitely cannot) so if you’re still interested in playing i would say skip the switch version for that.
overall, bravely default 2 fails both as a sequel and as an rpg. for fans of the series, the balancing is worse, the grind is worse, the story is less compelling, and key features from past games are gone for no reason. for people just getting into the series, the early game is frustrating, the mid game is too easy, and the late game is bullshit. it’s a game only for the biggest of masochists and i recommend it to essentially no one even as someone whose favorite traditional jrpg of all time is bravely second.
The ending is a litmus test for media comprehension.
The Evil Within 2
2017
Hugely disappointing follow-up to the original game. Of course, maybe it shouldn't have been knowing Mikami was replaced as director, and the lead concept artist, Ikumi Nakamura, was completely absent from this project as well.
From the cornball story, to the horrible voice-acting, to the complete lack of a grimy atmosphere, to those canned animation dialogues that look ripped out of a Tony Hawk game, to the horrid enemy designs, depression hit me like a bucket of water fairly early into the game . . . and that bucket kept refilling.
The gameplay is overall fine, but the structure and design of the open world (if you want to call it that) is awful. I can tell they're trying to go for a really actiony Silent Hill 1 vibe, but it doesn't work for me at all. Exploring the town is very uninteresting, and the nonlinearity only harmed the pace.
Overall, I think the biggest misstep was trying to emphasize on the characterizations, which a lot of sequels fall into. The world never felt like a daunting mystery, but harassment from the villains that feel more appropriate for Goosebumps fodder.
From the cornball story, to the horrible voice-acting, to the complete lack of a grimy atmosphere, to those canned animation dialogues that look ripped out of a Tony Hawk game, to the horrid enemy designs, depression hit me like a bucket of water fairly early into the game . . . and that bucket kept refilling.
The gameplay is overall fine, but the structure and design of the open world (if you want to call it that) is awful. I can tell they're trying to go for a really actiony Silent Hill 1 vibe, but it doesn't work for me at all. Exploring the town is very uninteresting, and the nonlinearity only harmed the pace.
Overall, I think the biggest misstep was trying to emphasize on the characterizations, which a lot of sequels fall into. The world never felt like a daunting mystery, but harassment from the villains that feel more appropriate for Goosebumps fodder.
Elite Beat Agents
2006
You ever go back and watch, like, Shrek or some shit and then you're like "wait a second, since when was 'Bad Reputation' in this? And how does it work so well?" That's every single stage in Elite Beat Agents. A dozen and a half action-packed vignettes concerning characters trying to do anything from babysitting to drilling for oil to surviving on a remote island, accompanied by a licensed music track that, more often than not, feels lyrically contradictory to what's actually going on in the story. And as you're walkin'-and-a-talkin'-and-a-movin'-and-a-groovin'-and-a-hippin'-and-a-hoppin'-and-a-pickin'-and-a-poppin', you might ask yourself... How? How is it that these specific soundwaves, produced by these low-quality DS speakers, originally devised by pop stars who were already outdated by the time this game released, are able to compel my stylus to fly across the bottom screen so quickly? And with such precision? Because, even if you ignore how genuinely witty this game is, parodying at once both American movie montages and the concept of rhythm gaming itself, it's so utterly mechanically satisfying at a base level. There are few, if any, video games that bring me more joy than what I feel whenever I manage to drag myself out of the red with a perfect string of beats as the EBAs pick their heads up and start chanting in tandem to my actions during the most frantic section of "Sk8er Boy" or "Material Girl." And, yeah, the two scoring systems are at odds with each other, on higher difficulties you can die just because there's too large of a gap in between notes, and spin beats don't serve much of a purpose. But, having just now finally completed the game with the Divas after leaving them sitting on "Without a Fight" for the last who-knows-how-many years, I think I can safely admit to myself that I simply do not care. Most of the time, whenever I'm playing a different rhythm game, I just think about how I could be playing Elite Beat Agents instead. And whenever I think about Elite Beat Agents, I usually think about how they managed to cram three minutes of blatant sexual innuendo into a Nintendo game, and how it happens to air while you're playing as an anthropomorphic representation of a teenager's bloodstream. Or I think about how it presents the most painfully melodramatic Christmas story of all time, focused on an anonymous family that you have absolutely no connection to... and how it still works on an emotional level just because Chicago happens to be playing in the background. But, mostly, I just think about how, whenever I hear any of these songs in isolation, I can still visualize the pattern of in-game beats that appear during each section of the track. Music lives.
Persona 5 but good.
This review contains spoilers
Danganronpa is a trashy series. It’s loud, abrasive, crass, bleak, gory, and oftentimes just downright dumb in its sensibilities. It’s also got a killer aesthetic, a killer soundtrack, and some of the sharpest, funniest writing in modern games, features which—to me at least—are strangely enhanced by the trashiness on display. It’s not a series I’d recommend to everyone, but its bold visual style and unique gameplay are worth experiencing if you’re intrigued by the premise.
When I do recommend the series—caveats aside—I recommend it largely with the strength of its ending in mind. Danganronpa V3 is my favorite video game, and while it is definitely the best of the three mainline Danganronpa games, it cannot be engaged with meaningfully on its own. As with all great sequels and series capstones, it builds on what came before it. Series creator Kazutaka Kodaka is a master of playing with consumer expectations. From the very first chapter of Danganronpa, where the shy, soft-spoken childhood friend mercilessly frames the milquetoast main character for murder, I knew I was dealing with something different, something that operated on a more self-aware level than I had initially expected. Each game plays with your expectations in this way, building on what you know about the mystery genre and the series’ own tropes and tendencies to surprise you at every turn.
With Danganronpa V3, Kodaka upped the ante. Instead of merely turning the detective genre on its head like the fist two games did, it used its trashy appeal to comment on the state of popular media as a whole. Danganronpa V3 is structured much as the other mainline DR games are: there are six chapters with six different murders, and six trials wherein characters present evidence and debate who the murderer is. Stakes are high, since the rules stipulate that getting the culprit wrong will result in the execution of everyone but the real killer. Lurking in the shadows is the game’s mastermind, the main villain pulling the cast’s strings for their own nefarious ends. And once again in V3, as in the second game and the first, it’s Junko behind the helm! But not in the way you might expect.
It’s revealed late in the final trial that Shuichi et al. are not actually characters in a video game, per se, but rather normal people who have been brainwashed into believing that the fictional world of Danganronpa is real. In the fiction of the game, Danganronpa is a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, and Danganronpa V3 (actually Danganronpa 53, with the Roman numeral “V” representing the number “5”) is the 53rd(!) season of the property, which began as a game series, then branched into anime, and finally became a reality show where real people (assumed to be largely fans) audition to be part of the production. It is subsequently revealed that the cast of V3 are the newest batch of hardcore Danganronpa fans to audition and land roles on their beloved show. The mastermind of V3 is Tsumugi Shirogane, a member of Team Danganronpa, the franchise’s production company. Tsumugi herself is a professional cosplayer, and switches between identities at the drop of a hat, quickly taking on the appearance and personalities of different Danganronpa characters and mocking the cast as she does so. She first appears as Junko, and then reveals her true identity as a corporate suit… who just so happens to be a Danganronpa superfan.
There’s a lot going on here. With V3, Kazutaka Kodaka created a world where Danganronpa was a megahit, as culturally homogenous as the MCU—but he envisioned it as a worst-case scenario, a pop culture apocalypse. The most popular media franchise in the world is a creatively bankrupt hellscape, run by a cabal of superfans who let their equally fannish cast members pitch backstory ideas for the characters they will eventually become in the killing game. Kirumi’s identity as the true leader of Japan, Korekiyo’s ridiculous incest subplot, Kokichi’s desire to be the true mastermind–it is important that all of these reveals are believable enough due to Danganronpa’s peculiar brand of trash, but they’re kind of tired despite everything, aren’t they? There’s a feeling we’ve seen all of this before, with Kokichi being a somewhat weaker Nagito, and Shuichi following in the footsteps of the first game’s Kyoko. When the ideas driving Danganronpa V3 are revealed to be the creation of diehard fans who eat, sleep, and drink nothing but the Danganronpa franchise, it all clicks into place. Notably, Team Danganronpa acknowledges no singular creator for the original series. Nor does it care to, most likely. By the time of DRV3, all Danganronpa content is created by an amorphous blob of fans-turned-corporate suits, with no meaningful mark of individuality on any of their output. You see the same thing happening right this very moment with megacorporations like Disney and Marvel as they do their damndest to make you forget that the properties their movies are based on were once the creation of small teams of talented individuals. In this sense V3 is a game about franchise fatigue taken to its extreme—yet logical—conclusion.
Danganronpa V3 generated no small amount of ire when it released, with many fans disappointed in the metatextual nature of the ending, and many more feeling that Kodaka was giving them the proverbial middle finger for caring about the series at all. I have no interest in contesting anyone’s emotional response to the game’s conclusion, but to this last perspective I say: recall the last few scenes of the game. Tsumugi—representing Team Danganronpa, the shadowy overlords who have iterated upon the franchise to the point of meaninglessness—is executed by K1-BO, while Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko are spared by the global fanbase refusing to vote. There’s an interplay between consumer desires and corporate decision-making, to be sure, and DRV3 acknowledges that fan entitlement and market demand play an important part in prolonging the lives of tired franchises. But it couldn’t be more clear who the true bad guys are at the end of the day. The game—and by extension, Kodaka—trusts the fans to know when enough is enough. In the fiction of the game, Shuichi survives and the fans are vindicated, and the corporate overlords are the ones who are punished—unredeemed and unrepentant.
The ending of Danganronpa V3 shocked me. Never before had I seen a video game argue so strongly against its own existence, against even the possibility of its continuing in a franchise capacity. On the face of it, this is certainly Kazutaka Kodaka saying he has reached creative capacity on Danganronpa. V3 paints a fictional picture of the Danganronpa series, but it echoes the progression of the real-world property, which started as a game, then became an anime. For a mercy, Danganronpa has not yet become a murderous reality show in the real world, but V3’s hypothetical future is not simply a literal “what-if.” It is a metaphor for Kodaka’s fears, an examination of the limits of creative ability when forced by capital to produce content beyond all reasonable expectations. There’s a sense, then, that V3 is Kodaka’s swan song, a vital course correction for a project he may have felt was slipping away from him, and a definitive effort to end it all on his own terms. At the same time, it’s impossible not to see the game more generally as commentary on the current state of bloated franchises and tired reboots and remakes. In this sense, V3 is much more a reflection than it is a warning. The Danganronpa “universe” as imagined in V3 is an ouroboros of recycled ideas and haphazardly workshopped plotting that could fall apart at any second, with no clear sense of where wistful fannish spitballing ends and organic creative intent begins. I think it’s one of the most searing critiques of modern franchise culture to date, as well as a piercing look at the synthesis between fan expectations and cynical corporate cash-grabs. I expected Kodaka to wow with this third and hopefully final entry in the main Danganronpa series, but I never expected him to knock it out of the park like this. In the end, I am delighted that one of my favorite creators could conclude his trademark series exactly as he wanted, all while convincing me that letting it go is in and of itself a good thing. This is a mic drop I will be thinking about for years to come.
When I do recommend the series—caveats aside—I recommend it largely with the strength of its ending in mind. Danganronpa V3 is my favorite video game, and while it is definitely the best of the three mainline Danganronpa games, it cannot be engaged with meaningfully on its own. As with all great sequels and series capstones, it builds on what came before it. Series creator Kazutaka Kodaka is a master of playing with consumer expectations. From the very first chapter of Danganronpa, where the shy, soft-spoken childhood friend mercilessly frames the milquetoast main character for murder, I knew I was dealing with something different, something that operated on a more self-aware level than I had initially expected. Each game plays with your expectations in this way, building on what you know about the mystery genre and the series’ own tropes and tendencies to surprise you at every turn.
With Danganronpa V3, Kodaka upped the ante. Instead of merely turning the detective genre on its head like the fist two games did, it used its trashy appeal to comment on the state of popular media as a whole. Danganronpa V3 is structured much as the other mainline DR games are: there are six chapters with six different murders, and six trials wherein characters present evidence and debate who the murderer is. Stakes are high, since the rules stipulate that getting the culprit wrong will result in the execution of everyone but the real killer. Lurking in the shadows is the game’s mastermind, the main villain pulling the cast’s strings for their own nefarious ends. And once again in V3, as in the second game and the first, it’s Junko behind the helm! But not in the way you might expect.
It’s revealed late in the final trial that Shuichi et al. are not actually characters in a video game, per se, but rather normal people who have been brainwashed into believing that the fictional world of Danganronpa is real. In the fiction of the game, Danganronpa is a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, and Danganronpa V3 (actually Danganronpa 53, with the Roman numeral “V” representing the number “5”) is the 53rd(!) season of the property, which began as a game series, then branched into anime, and finally became a reality show where real people (assumed to be largely fans) audition to be part of the production. It is subsequently revealed that the cast of V3 are the newest batch of hardcore Danganronpa fans to audition and land roles on their beloved show. The mastermind of V3 is Tsumugi Shirogane, a member of Team Danganronpa, the franchise’s production company. Tsumugi herself is a professional cosplayer, and switches between identities at the drop of a hat, quickly taking on the appearance and personalities of different Danganronpa characters and mocking the cast as she does so. She first appears as Junko, and then reveals her true identity as a corporate suit… who just so happens to be a Danganronpa superfan.
There’s a lot going on here. With V3, Kazutaka Kodaka created a world where Danganronpa was a megahit, as culturally homogenous as the MCU—but he envisioned it as a worst-case scenario, a pop culture apocalypse. The most popular media franchise in the world is a creatively bankrupt hellscape, run by a cabal of superfans who let their equally fannish cast members pitch backstory ideas for the characters they will eventually become in the killing game. Kirumi’s identity as the true leader of Japan, Korekiyo’s ridiculous incest subplot, Kokichi’s desire to be the true mastermind–it is important that all of these reveals are believable enough due to Danganronpa’s peculiar brand of trash, but they’re kind of tired despite everything, aren’t they? There’s a feeling we’ve seen all of this before, with Kokichi being a somewhat weaker Nagito, and Shuichi following in the footsteps of the first game’s Kyoko. When the ideas driving Danganronpa V3 are revealed to be the creation of diehard fans who eat, sleep, and drink nothing but the Danganronpa franchise, it all clicks into place. Notably, Team Danganronpa acknowledges no singular creator for the original series. Nor does it care to, most likely. By the time of DRV3, all Danganronpa content is created by an amorphous blob of fans-turned-corporate suits, with no meaningful mark of individuality on any of their output. You see the same thing happening right this very moment with megacorporations like Disney and Marvel as they do their damndest to make you forget that the properties their movies are based on were once the creation of small teams of talented individuals. In this sense V3 is a game about franchise fatigue taken to its extreme—yet logical—conclusion.
Danganronpa V3 generated no small amount of ire when it released, with many fans disappointed in the metatextual nature of the ending, and many more feeling that Kodaka was giving them the proverbial middle finger for caring about the series at all. I have no interest in contesting anyone’s emotional response to the game’s conclusion, but to this last perspective I say: recall the last few scenes of the game. Tsumugi—representing Team Danganronpa, the shadowy overlords who have iterated upon the franchise to the point of meaninglessness—is executed by K1-BO, while Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko are spared by the global fanbase refusing to vote. There’s an interplay between consumer desires and corporate decision-making, to be sure, and DRV3 acknowledges that fan entitlement and market demand play an important part in prolonging the lives of tired franchises. But it couldn’t be more clear who the true bad guys are at the end of the day. The game—and by extension, Kodaka—trusts the fans to know when enough is enough. In the fiction of the game, Shuichi survives and the fans are vindicated, and the corporate overlords are the ones who are punished—unredeemed and unrepentant.
The ending of Danganronpa V3 shocked me. Never before had I seen a video game argue so strongly against its own existence, against even the possibility of its continuing in a franchise capacity. On the face of it, this is certainly Kazutaka Kodaka saying he has reached creative capacity on Danganronpa. V3 paints a fictional picture of the Danganronpa series, but it echoes the progression of the real-world property, which started as a game, then became an anime. For a mercy, Danganronpa has not yet become a murderous reality show in the real world, but V3’s hypothetical future is not simply a literal “what-if.” It is a metaphor for Kodaka’s fears, an examination of the limits of creative ability when forced by capital to produce content beyond all reasonable expectations. There’s a sense, then, that V3 is Kodaka’s swan song, a vital course correction for a project he may have felt was slipping away from him, and a definitive effort to end it all on his own terms. At the same time, it’s impossible not to see the game more generally as commentary on the current state of bloated franchises and tired reboots and remakes. In this sense, V3 is much more a reflection than it is a warning. The Danganronpa “universe” as imagined in V3 is an ouroboros of recycled ideas and haphazardly workshopped plotting that could fall apart at any second, with no clear sense of where wistful fannish spitballing ends and organic creative intent begins. I think it’s one of the most searing critiques of modern franchise culture to date, as well as a piercing look at the synthesis between fan expectations and cynical corporate cash-grabs. I expected Kodaka to wow with this third and hopefully final entry in the main Danganronpa series, but I never expected him to knock it out of the park like this. In the end, I am delighted that one of my favorite creators could conclude his trademark series exactly as he wanted, all while convincing me that letting it go is in and of itself a good thing. This is a mic drop I will be thinking about for years to come.
IT'S OVER! And it's so incredibly sad...
Nintendo was incapable of ensuring the game would last for more than a single week, no Brewster at launch, no Swimming at launch, no Gyroids at launch. All things that New Leaf on the 3DS had at day one. The only reason this game is marginally popular is because you all were playing it in 2020 during the quarantine
And thats because you don't care for quality...
You never have, and believe me.... you never will....
And that's because you were too busy going UHUHUHUHUHUHUAHU
Nintendo was incapable of ensuring the game would last for more than a single week, no Brewster at launch, no Swimming at launch, no Gyroids at launch. All things that New Leaf on the 3DS had at day one. The only reason this game is marginally popular is because you all were playing it in 2020 during the quarantine
And thats because you don't care for quality...
You never have, and believe me.... you never will....
And that's because you were too busy going UHUHUHUHUHUHUAHU