Two Sides of the Same Coin

Following my little marathon through the No More Heroes series, we have the second numbered title: Desperate Struggle. Serves as the direct continuation of the events of the first game, while not really having some of the elements that made the first entry so famous in the first place. Personally I immediatily noted the difference from the beginning, having a more eerie and mysterious presntation, at first. This game talks about consequences and the perpetual-neverending cycle of violence, which are themes that already were touched in No More Heroes. It's all view from a different perspective this time.

No More Heroes 2 starts off with a bomb...not a literal bomb but the death of Bishop, which if you don't remember was the guy that sold you wrestling tapes in the first game. Travis is heavily affected and looks up to Sylvia for answers, she tells Travis to join the rankings again, this time they're official. Travis once again is locked with a promise that may or not be fullfiled at the end, getting to the top is the only way of getting that answer. It pretty much is the first game plot, all over again. Just more of the same, right?

Desperate Struggle and No More Heroes are two sides of the same coin. At their core they're the same, a 3D hack and slash game but the two differ from each other in tone, themes, presentation, variety and overall direction. It made me appreciate aspects of the original that I totally overlook, and made me appreciate some of it's changes to the main formula as well. I talked a bit about expectations in the first game, how they easily suberted most of what you could expect from the title, making it somewhat unique even at the time of it's release. Desperate Struggle however, is much more in your face narratively speaking. No More Heroes had underling themes that for the most part went unnoticed at first, but once digging on a deep analysis you'll start to know why things are the way they are. The sequel aims, for something that appears to be a continuation of it, without any of it's merits. You see, the first game story was hidden within each boss personalities and how this affected Travis through it's adventure maturing in the meaningless business of killing and death. This time they tried something different, it's all about the show and spectacle through the superficial and the instantly gratifying moments, when it comes to the bosses at least. Because there are several flaws within No More Heroes 2 narrative structure that goes in all kinds of different ways just to end up in the same road, overcomplicating the unnecessary and making what could've been a good story fail because of it.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Desperate Struggle came with a ton of changes for the possitive as well, one instant example I can think of is the gameplay. This time around it looks more presentable and it's much more enjoyable, well, at least for me. It is a huge improvement from a presentation standpoint while still retaining what made the original mechanics so addicting in the first place. It's also expanded by giving you the opportunity to have up to different 4 sword in your personal blade arsenal. Another remarkable aspect is the music, at least compared to the first it blows out the water. It's not that the original compositions were bad really, this time is a matter of showing up their talent. Several well known composers were hired to make this game music score, it's a night and day difference from variety, instrument and even lyrics are present such as the case of: "It's Kill or be Killed" or "Phillistine". It truly is a solid score that I wasn't expecting to enjoy this much. They also did a great job expanding the already established universe with returning characters of the past game, serving as an indication of Travis progression. We start to know more about certain characters that for better or for worse were shrouded in mystery in the first game. Most of these aspect I just mentioned I thought were objetively good changes, not just for Desperate Struggle alone but for the No More Heroes franchise as a whole.

Different for the worst, too. It lost some of the charm of the original. in my review of the first game I mentioned how tedious most of the work to gain money was, never realising that well, even being a tedious slog it's a good distraction from the base game that also served as one of the main incentives for the story as well, outside of killing the main bosses. This time in Desperate Struggle we have a case of oversimplification without wanting to really fix the issue in hand, take for example the Open World. Santa Destroy's city while not the best, had it's charm and that could've been fixed with an honest approach but they take it all out in favor of player feedback. You know, players sometimes don't really know what they want and that was the easy way out of the problem, just get rid of it. As much as I disliked No More Heroes Open World, it was a good base for things to come but they ditched it. For better or for worse, you get the ranked battles instantly. The Minigames are not gone though, but they were replace by 8-Bit representations of set job. Think about the Coconout Collector minigame in the original but in 8-Bits, that's pretty much it. They're a lot of fun honestly and I prefer it over the original to some extent. Now that money isn't a issue to enter the rankings, it's not that important now outside leveling Travis stats up. Again, this sequel is much more in your face so it somewhat makes sense to make most aspects that people at first found annoying or unnecesary in the first game streamlined to get to these best parts instantly. The Bosses also suffer a case of slight case of simplification across the board. Aside from increasing the numbers of it, their significance quality decreased immensely. As I said before in No More Heroes most bosses had their own personal motives ways of seeing life, death in battle. This was a constant and for the better part of it, in Desperate Struggle I didn't really found a partciular reason that instantly spoke me. Sure, their personality was set by just the looks of the presentation alone, but outside of it their motives were hard to read in the little screentime each of the assasins, most of them shine again from presentation alone. Which again, can be a good thing or not compared to the original title.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle leaves me with a sense of just being confused of what really wants to be. Strive to be better than it's older brother? Or just be something different and first the apparent flaws the original have? The original game wasn't planned to have a sequel to begin with, it was a round work that surprisingly worked in favor of Grasshopper Manufacture from a business perspective and a sequel was inevitable to keep the series momentum afloat. Suda51 was credited in No More Heroes 2 as an Executive Director while busy in a lot of other projects at the same time. While this doesn't leave a clear indication of what he specifically did in this project in particular, we can just guess his involvement wasn't as prevalent as in the first No More Heroes 2 and others decided to took the role. No More Heroes while being a flawed game in my eyes, it was a brilliant take on the meaningless and the mundane that is life and death. Desperate Struggle wants to be different, but how different can you from something that is too unique and centered to begin with? Fix what the original did wrong, just on the superficial aspects of it and change it enough to make it feel different. Just not really understanding what made the original click in the first place. It's like going from Resident Evil 4 to Resident Evil 6, from Dark Souls to Dark Souls II, from Max Payne to Max Payne 3.

Not a bad game by any means, but it is a dissapointing evolution that tried to be like it's older brother. Older brother isn't perfect nor correct, but was authentic.

Chulip quickly became one of my favourite games after I finished it. I live for these chill, small town Japan vibes. It’s a very slow, sometimes sadistic game that offers little guidance to the player. I can kinda see why it was so poorly received. But if you can get on its wavelength, you’re treated to one of the most relaxing and charming experiences you could have with a game. It features some surprisingly pointed social commentary too. It never gets too dark but it hits pretty hard as an adult.

I’m a big fan of the Japanese approach to open world design where the maps tend to be much smaller and far more dense than western open world games, and are focused on creating an experience that is closer to a simulation. Chulip achieves this perfectly and is its greatest strength. Its greatest weakness is that it does occasionally get a tad too obtuse, however, for the most part I don’t think it’s anywhere near as perplexing as people say it is. I 100%’d it and I’d say roughly 80% I did without a guide, maybe a little less. Anyway, game rules.

Most importantly, to any newcomers, my opinion is that this is a way better version of the original Near Side, and I wish I had waited years before experiencing this, because the routes would have been more impactful if I hadn't had the SparkNotes outline of them in my head from having read the original years earlier. This isn't an Evangelion Rebuild or FF7R "hidden sequel disguised as remake" moment, it's an honest to goodness remake. Other than "soul" (and this remake is quite soulful anyway), I see no reason for anyone's first experience with Tsukihime to be anything but this, especially after Red Garden comes out.

With that out of the way, here are my thoughts on TsukiRe's version of Near Side.

I have been all over the place with my thoughts on this. After finishing, I had it somewhere between an 8.5 and a 10, but over time, and especially after rereading the original Tsukihime, I dropped this to somewhere between a 6 and 7 out of 10. You might claim that I have a Nasu hate boner, and it may be true to the extent of having my tastes change to enjoying Type-Moon less, but I think someone who has been on both sides of the fence does have a valuable perspective to offer. Some of my initial fascination with this came from the fact that prior to my reread, I was not a big fan of the OG Tsukihime, so I was impressed by how much more I was enjoying the remake. After cooling off a couple weeks or months later, I realised that in terms of actual substance, after getting past the hype action scenes and visuals and the "wtf i like tsukihime now???" effect, there wasn't much in it for me. This review is a bit more messy than my usual ones, but that's because my thoughts on this and Type-Moon in general are that way too.

In retrospect, though better than F/SN with this, it often feels like shit just happens and there are lengthy segments which don't really add anything to the VN. I felt some of the emotional aspect was diminished due to emotional scenes being surrounded by action set pieces. For some reason, the structure of "emotional scene -> sudden attack -> emotional scene continues, the VN expects you to care" bothers me here specifically. The Ciel route is a LOT better now, I'd put it above most of the routes of the original, but it especially has this problem where the plot takes a break to have a very long fight, often for hours, with one-dimensional villains, and then goes back to emotional times and expects the reader to care. Ciel True especially ends up thinking it's Dies irae or something (which does what this does but better I think, especially since it isn't a random escalation in DI) and tries too hard. It's not even "Fate-ified Tsukihime", because Fate never went full chuuni overdose mode like this. Ciel Normal is probably Nasu's best mainline work since Hollow Ataraxia, though. Additionally, I am sad to say that the character art is by Takeuchi instead of Koyama (Koyama did the Mahoyo art), so there are massive sameface issues. Ciel looks like Mash, yes I know I am the millionth person to say this. This is balanced slightly by the great direction, but still. The small town atmosphere of the original's Misaki town is replaced by a generic modern city, now set in Tokyo, sadly. Also, 30% of the OST feels like it was AI-generated based on Fukasawa's Mahoyo (which to this day is TM's best OST, it's amazing) and UBW anime scores. 20% of it (which are remixes of the OG tracks) is good, but as someone else (probably in this very review section, I don't remember) pointed out, a lot of them sound like those "this is what Tsukihime will sound like in 2021" epic orchestral YouTube remixes. The rest of the OST is cool, I guess. It wastes a lot of time, too, all for a very simple point in both routes, unfortunately. Props for removing the godawful Near Side good endings from the original, though.

I also watched as the average VNDB hours for this increase from 40-something to 60-something as more people read it, and I think it should not be this long at all. Hardly layered or compelling characters like Noel and Vlov, as well as scenes that add nothing but lore (which admittedly are fairly consistent with everything else, as opposed to Fate in which the magic system pretends it's hard but has exceptions happen 2 minutes after the explanation, and Shiki makes more sense as a glass cannon) scenes are padded with other stuff like Red Garden teases that include content should not even be available until Far Side so that newcomers are interested and older fans have something to discuss, as well as cool, albeit dragged out action scenes. I ended up reading this for dozens of hours for a very simplistic message. I am aware that you can apply this to a lot of VNs, but it felt like an issue here specifically.

But yeah, best TM VN overall; the maid routes in the OG are better IMO though. I will also add that, speaking from personal experience, this is a very good first VN, as it dispels the "all VNs are dating sim powerpoint" perception and has a good start and decent pacing. It's also genuinely scarier and more graphic with its violence than the original. So if you have VN newcomer friends, you could try making them start with this, especially if they like the Fate and KnK anime already.

No More Heroes 2 is a strange beast.

It doesn't understand the first one. The power fantasy that the original makes a joke with becomes the fantasy the sequel sells for the player. Henry who was a Vergil parody for a hack and slash parody now becomes Vergil but the version of DmC, Shinobu becomes a fetishized character and Sylvia who was the way of the game literally says to the player that the game is a joke now becomes a kinda of femme fatale and a fetishized character too. And Travis even if the game start with him being a anime hero for the sake of the power fantasy, by the end becomes a character more aline with the way of Suda's writing. I could go on and on about this because it's all you see for the first half of the game, the minigames were turned into a way of grinding instead of a nice way to make the game flow better, the way the game deals with sexual content is way worse and so on. But at the same time, No More Heroes 2 does a lot of cool stuff.

The combat is amazing, as good as the first one. Melee being a full playstyle makes all Fire Pro Wrestling references cooler, the scenery being a big part of the fights makes everything so more dynamic and cool, the juggle combos. Is just very good, even more so with the multiple swords. Is just not as smart as Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes 3 with the enemies and bosses. But the boss battles in No More Heroes 2 are usually in between mid and very good, for some reason when you got the Ryuji fight the game decides to make every boss just as good as the first one and is in the final half that the game becomes great.

The power fantasy left, Travis becomes more like Travis, the text and cutscenes becomes good. Is like the devs suddenly remembered what makes No More Heroes 1 great and they decided to try that but with a vengeance story while dealing with the way those characters interacts with violence. And even the final boss is interesting, he is like Iwami from Yakuza 6, a shit guy trying to play the cool guy with a shit fight because he couldn't do anything.

Nobutaka Ichiki did a cool work, sure I would love to see Suda51 version (even more after discovering that the game was supposed to be inspired by Battles Without Honor and Humanity 2) but I liked his take and I hope someday he get a chance to make a big project of his own.

The phrase “x story helped me out during a rough time” is used commonly to elaborate on how much a piece of media has helped someone out, but I can’t say that about Persona 3, primarily because it’s a story that has taken root inside me deeply and stayed with me throughout the years ever since 2021 when I first played it. It’s not like it helped me during a single rough time, it was more like an affirmative embrace and an acknowledgement of my struggles throughout all of these years collectively instead of just one period of time. Persona 3, much like Good Will Hunting, Evangelion, and Pandora Hearts, is a game that I like to revisit and reflect upon every time I feel like I’m in a rut and can’t figure out who I am and what am I supposed to do in this world. It’s something I’ve closely attached to who I am because of how much it shaped my mindsets towards life, “The meaning of our lives is something that we make but don’t see”, and, “You don’t need to save the world to find meaning in life” are quotes I internalised, reminded myself of anytime I felt myself falling down an existential crisis, and the long term effects it had on me throughout the years is not something I take for granted. In a way, Persona 3 is a symbol of my struggles during my adolescence, and so, it is that revisiting it through Reload that I felt like I was looking back on parts of myself from back then and getting in-touch with them again. It felt like a reflection of my past, of all the struggles I pushed through to make it this far to where I am today, and by the end of it, I realised that much of my own growth throughout the years was because of stories like Persona 3, growth due to me burning my dread and venturing in life while living in the moment.


When you’re faced with a crisis that you have no idea how will it end, or how you will resolve it, you have two choices, whether to believe that you’ll fail and fall into a hole of cynicism or to believe in your happiness and work towards that ideal in the moment by focusing on yourself and doing what you can until eventually, everything falls into place. This sentiment seemed too unreal to me because of how clouded my vision was with all of the negativity that I surrounded myself with back in 2020 because whenever I tried to resolve my issues, I half assed it and it backfired, whether it be my existential crisis due to the societal pressure I experienced that made me feel like I had to have a larger than life success story to be worth anything, my ever growing disdain towards the fleeting nature of bonds, struggles with navigating interpersonal issues due to my self pity and cynicism as a byproduct of my fear of abandonment, and fear of death due to religious doubts I had. All of this was too much for my 17 year old self to bear, but as I said, Persona 3 and its characters all reflected different intimate parts of who I am for a reason.


For a dumb teenager like me who couldn’t believe in himself, drowned in self pity and inferiority towards others, and had trouble seeing what was so special about myself, Junpei Iori represented my struggles with the indifference of the universe crucially. He’s someone who believes his own hype to subconsciously convince himself that he’s a hero destined to save everyone, when in reality that’s merely his coping mechanism with his deep-seated insecurity about his incompetence, and that shows in the dichotomy of his goofiness and feelings of envy and jealousy. It’s only later through meeting Chidori, someone who felt like her life held meaning due to her persona, much like he did, that he realized that he doesn’t need to be this impossible image of a hero that he created within himself and that if he kept on being true to his innermost self, the one who wanted to become a baseball player, he’ll have already become a hero to someone, like he did with Chidori. I said that Junpei’s insecurities and tendency to compare himself to others reflects a part of me in the past, but truth be told, I still have those tendencies lingering in from within me, yet in the same vein, over time I’ve learned to trust in myself, that whatever I do, it’ll result in something special. I learned that it doesn’t matter if there’s someone who’s better, smarter, more insightful than me, because no matter what, they can never be me, and so long as I pursue that self and see to it that its potential is met, everything will fall into place. It’s for that reason that I can look back on Junpei’s arc in P3 fondly and think to myself about how much it helped me internalise that self trust, because there’s nothing more real than pulling a mentally ill goth bad bitch by being funny and quirky.



When I said that P3 reflects different parts of myself from the past, I meant that because it’s not just my teenage years that it reflected but my childhood as well with characters like Ken. I could go into how characters like Mitsuru, Akihiko, Shinjiro, & Fuuka connected with me but I want to go with Ken not just because he’s my favorite among the aforementioned characters (I’m quirky, I know) but because of how he crucially reflected a part of me that no other character has, and it’s how Ken chooses to adapt to his situation to fit in in self deriding ways that I feel seen by. From the start, Ken is pushed into this dog-eat-dog world where only the strong survive, even in SEES, and that sudden change in his environment not only made him lose himself but a person’s most precious value, that being his inner child. Ken was forced to let go of his childish nature, gaslight himself into thinking that such notions would only hold him back, and proceeded to move solely through objective means because of how he was stuck in an adult world where if he doesn’t man up and throw away his childish needs and struggles, he’d be left behind, much like how his mother left him behind and so did everyone else, with their looks that were devoid of nothing but pity, yet even then, in his linked episodes, he couldn’t let go of his inner child and it shows sprinkles of his inner child peeking out due to his enthusiasm. It’s a heartbreaking accurate depiction of how much Ken struggles to connect with others and most importantly himself, because nothing has been the same for him since his Mom died. Many people, when looking at Ken’s character, view Ken’s arc as a revenge arc, and while that’s a valid reading of his character, to me, it felt like it was more so Ken reconnecting with his inner child, realising that he doesn’t need to put up this facade to “survive” and “fit in” with this cruel world, and that he doesn’t need to hold himself back emotionally so much because of others anymore, because while he may have lost his family, he gained another through SEES, and that’s what “living” means. Losing people, meeting new people, bonding with them, and doing simple things like practicing your hobbies, that’s what living really means, and that meant so much to me because back when I was a kid, I never had any friends of my own, could never really connect with them, and that’s because I always hung out with my older brother’s friends, which subsequently made me mature too fast for my good and didn’t allow me to live my childhood to its fullest. I could never connect with people my age, because I was so used to forcibly maturing myself to keep up with my older friends, I always felt like bottling up my emotions and needs in favor of a facade that could get me the closeness and sense of belonging I wanted out of their company since I was too awkward to make any friends of my own, yet on the inside I was too young and emotional to get along with my older friends, creating this unstable interpersonal problem I had that plagued my childhood. It’s funny, how I’m a grown person now, yet seeing Ken be plagued with this same issue I had and recovering from it through mundane means, almost had me tearing up because it reminded me of how much I hardened myself and designed a strong man to protect the hurting child inside me.




Earlier, I described Persona 3 as a meditative experience that gives me space for my feelings whenever I need a haven to express myself within, or feel seen within, and so, there are parts of it that are timeless to me, parts of it that help me see myself in a better light and enable me to look at myself more positively, one such part is Yukari’s character and how much of an embrace it feels to me. Truthfully speaking, my aim with my media experiences is to either escape the real world, or for edutainment purposes, but it is so rare for me to engage myself with a story that can help me discover positive, strong traits within my character that makes me love myself. It’s hard for a story to do that, since what I look for in fictional characters are parts of me that I and others around me struggle to accept, more often than not are negative parts, but that’s why Yukari means the world to me, since not only does her character give me a safe space to feel seen and accepted for my contradictory feelings of love and hate towards intimacy, but she also embodies a trait of mine that helps me accept it, that being kindness and empathy. Yukari’s premise is that she struggles with the internal conflict known as the hedgehog dilemma, where she craves intimacy but disdains contact with others, because she wants to be loved, but doesn't think she's worth loving because of the self pity, sense of weakness/inferiority, & self hatred she internalised as a byproduct of being "abandoned" by both of her parents, at least emotionally. I say emotionally because her dad died so he didn’t abandon her technically, and her mother simply clung to other men for emotional support, so she didn’t consciously abandon Yukari, but at least on an emotional level, Yukari felt like she had the deepest craving she had was taken away from her, forever a wish beyond her reach, and that affected how she perceived herself and others and based her moral compass around her disdain for her Mother who abandoned her and what she represents. Following that, Yukari would disassociate with anything that resembled the escapist coping mechanisms her Mother did through either self-denial or self-isolation from others. It’s why she despises being helped out, because not only does she blame and hate herself for what happened to her parents but because it resembles her Mother’s helpless state of feeling like she needs to be saved, it’s why she was mad when Makoto helped her out during her s. Link, it’s why she tries to present herself as this being who towers above the concept of weakness to feel a sense of leverage and derive self-worth from that, but at the same time, she’s a highly emotional person who wears their heart on their sleeve, and so bits and pieces of that need for emotional support and insecurities about her self image come out. An example of this would be her jealousy and fixation over Mitsuru, she’s so fixated on Mitsuru because deep down, she wants to be like her, someone who’s unfazed, looks powerful and is the exact opposite of her Mother. A toxic sense of admiration, you could call it, since she never recognizes this jealousy, how wrong it is since even Mitsuru’s flawless demeanor was fake and a byproduct of societal expectations, and how much it contradicts Yukari’s conscious desire to present herself powerfully, and whenever she recognizes that, it’s in self-loathing, like how she did in Yakushima, because of how much she gaslights herself into thinking that she’s strong and doesn’t need help, even if it means ignoring herself and wrongly seeing others. Despite those insecurities getting in the way of how she interacts with others, she's a very kind person who has all the love to give to others, yet when it comes to loving herself, that ''love'' she has for others is devoid of any love for herself. Time and time again, in various instances Yukari shows how much empathy and kindness she has for others, even from the start of the game, like how she was the first SEES member who bothered to reach out to Makoto and connect with him instead of spying on him, how she was the first to defend Makoto when Junpei lashed out at him, how she made insensitive jokes about Junpei but then apologized to him and considered his feelings, or with how she helped other SEES members navigate their problems like Fuuka who struggled with people pleasing habits during her final s. link and Mitsuru who struggled with self-acceptance and existential dread. Additionally, if you spend enough time with her during the night events, there's a moment where she talks about how inspiring the main female character is, how she wants to be just like her, someone who's there for everyone around her and is capable, and that puts into perspective how kind Yukari is and how much she empathizes with others. Yet, she has moments where she’s a tease and makes fun of others, sometimes in a tone-deaf way, and why is that? The majority would chalk it up to her being a quirky mean white girl, and while I get it and understand how appealing that is since I’d love for a pretty white girl like her to call me racial slurs and deride me my right to live, I think that Yukari’s need to prove her toxic self image right to justify her self hate and rejection of help to disassociate from her Mom is what causes her to be such a tease and to be so slanderous, because while she's quirky and mean in her own right, it's also valid to infer that about her character. It doesn't help that being bullied due to her father's failure influenced her perception of social interaction more aggressively and might've added to that if anything. In a sense, she has the most amount of kindness out of anyone, but the dichotomy she has where she pushes everyone away while craving their love and attention, is what clouds that trait of hers and makes it harder for her to express that, and it's why whenever she gets praised for her kindness, she denies it. She's a perfect example of how someone's personality can be so dynamic, where she's a mean teaser on the outside, but would be the quickest to be there for someone else, and that part of her helps me embrace the idea that I'm a kind person, or at least, try to be because I'm similar to that aspect of her and it feels very validating. It's especially relatable because there are moments where I went out of line and lost friendships due to that, due to unhealthy tendencies and mindsets I had, and that made me reject my kindness in favor of self-loathing, yet through Yukari, I was able to see that part of me, admit to it, and love myself more authentically because of it.


By now you understand how much Persona 3 means to me, how much of a solace inducing experience it is for me, and how much it helps me to love, to feel loved, to express my earnest desires, and to be there for everyone around me, but in contrast, oddly enough, when I was playing through Reload, a certain part of it re-stimulated my fear of abandonment, my disdain for the fleeting nature of relationships due to past experiences, and my desire for everything to stay the same way, thinking about how worthless something is if it’s destined to never last, that certain part being the front and center of the game, Aegis. A few years ago, during the pandemic, I’d say I was at my worst mentally, and it’s not because of the experiences I went through by that point, but it was more so because of how I dealt with those experiences by willingly surrounding myself with negativity, choosing to be miserable instead of fighting, and preferring victimhood over the pursuit of happiness. It led to loads of perceptual issues I had, and that only piled up more on the issues I already struggled with at the time. You see, I grew up in an environment that shunned sensitivity and emotions and saw them as a sign of weakness, and so, a feminine guy like me who was highly emotional and sensitive, was essentially born and raised in the wrong environment because of how much that aspect of it contradicted how I was at my innermost core. In an attempt to fit in, I discarded myself, drowned myself in an endless hell of facades, and over time, forgot who I even was, becoming something of a colorless broken puppet unable to discern my emotions and convey them, forever emotionally stunted and ignorant of how it feels to “live” because all I did was exist. For that reason I’ve had my complications with loneliness and love, feeling like I couldn’t feel it or even deserved it. So, it is that through Aegis I was able to see a picture of my past self, a grotesque portrait of how I was 4 years ago. It was as eerie as it was comfortable, seeing a character frustratingly and confusingly try to navigate their place in the world and getting shredded by it. It felt validating, because Aegis had the same misconception that I did, and it was that I thought I had to do something larger than life itself to justify my existence when that wasn’t the case. It was very comforting for me to see a character that represents how I was a few years ago, that’s how it was at first anyway. It later dawned on me that after Aegis decided to live, she started struggling with something that I struggle with nowadays, and it’s maintaining relationships, or rather, thinking that they’re worth maintaining anyway since they all end. I’ve always had this thought that yeah, sure, all bonds end, that this is an absolute, but it always pained me whenever I met someone, because I knew deep down, that at some point they’re going to leave me behind and we’ll part ways. Even if we reconnect, it might not even be the same as before and that made me oftentimes crave a reality where time could be halted. But upon revisiting Aegis’ social link, there’s a piece of dialogue that reminded me why I cherish the people I cherish and why I’ll never stop loving the people I’m with.

“Life is both short and finite. That’s what makes it so invaluable, and why one feels that it must be cherished… When you think about it, it’s a miracle that two given people are able to ever meet in this chaotic flow of time and space.”


It’s a simple line, something that’s hard to miss, but that's the case with most ideas in life and is what makes it connect with me because of how Makoto’s dynamic with Aegis resonates with that sentiment and embodies it with the stark contrast of how they live. Their differences made them feel complete because, on the two opposite spectrums, they struggled to understand life and the worth of the process that goes within it that inevitably leads to death, yet through something simple, like knowing and understanding each others' emptiness, they felt the elusive taste of connection and yearned for more from it. Makoto is a human who tries to be a machine, while Aegis is a machine who tries to be human, yet despite their differences, they connected because they both yearn for the same thing, to stand with one another atop Gekoukan’s rooftop and gaze at the city that gave them a taste of that elusive connection. The shortage of something is what makes you fear losing it. Yet, in the same vein, it makes you want to appreciate it and make use of it to the fullest so that when it ends, you can look back on it with no regrets and cherish your memories of it because it’s the memories that make our experiences with one another flow through all eternity. And so, even if I fear losing the ones I love, even if I lived a life of an emotionally stunted puppet, even if I lived in existential dread, even if I thought at times that I didn’t deserve to be liked, or that I was of less worth than others, none of that matters, because regardless of what happens, I’m human, I have feelings worth conveying, I will always have people I love, and I have something to live for, it may not be monumental, but the small ripples caused by the day to day things I do will surely produce a result worth living for in the long run because no two days are the same. It’s funny, I talked about my time during the pandemic as the worst time in my life, yet when I look back on it, I can’t look at those days as an unhappy time. To me, they’re a sign that I’m alive, a backdrop for me to push forward from, a pat on the back telling me how much I’ve changed, and a signal to dash forward and follow my heart, because I now know that rejecting it is the most painful of all. Maybe that’s how I feel about them because over time, I’ve slowly subconsciously implemented the feelings and lessons that Persona 3 made me feel and taught me into my day-to-day life, and now looking back on it, after everything has been said and done, I feel nothing but pride and love towards who I became and who I was. Through remembering my mortality, I remembered to live, and so I did.

Peak Video Game Entertainment for me as of now and I don't say something lightly.

If you look at my bio my requirements for a good game, I said: "if it does have a engaging gameplay with variety and depth, fun characters that I can fell in love and admire, really good at pacing with throwing my face a new content at least in every 20 minute." etc. This game have every one of them.

Before starting this game, I really didn't know what should I expect. I knew it was on the list that shows what games Shu Takumi created and I also saw the cover art of it. I love Shu Takumi's works even at his worst of times but seeing the cover... it looked boring. There is a goofy looking man, his head at the ground... sleeping/thinking/resting? And an aura surrounds him. Only thing I felt from the cover is this game is gonna be about shitty cartoon comedy with how goofy the cover looks. But I am glad I was wrong, very very very wrong.

I still think the cover looks atrocious and think that an aura that connects to multiple characters like a spiderweb in the cover would explain this game better. Also I couldn't find any adverts for this game, did Capcom market this game or not? I don't know but if they didn't they made the greatest disservice for this game.

Story

You wake up, you found yourself as a lamp for some reason. You see your body. Dead at the ground. But for some reason your soul isn't on the other side? Your soul somehow stuck in this lamp. Then you see a suspicious person... WITH A GUN. He runs to a lady with his weapon at his hand, he will shoot her!? And then you use a trick to shield her. The next time you look, the killer is dead with your trick and lady is safe. But you started to wonder, why am I dead? And why there is suspicious people that tries to murder this poor lady?

And you go into an adventure while trying to follow the lady to remember your memories, your loved ones, your experiences while you are alive and solve the mystery about who killed you and why?

And damn... what a mystery that is with lots of lovable characters and emotional moments in it. I can't say no more. Go and play it. Even if you don't like it I guarantee you that at least it's gonna be a unique one and that's something rare in this age.

Gameplay

It a puzzle game that you need to solve part by part to advance and uncover the mystery. You are a ghost that can't explore far away, because you have to stay inside of something to not disappear. But you can impersonate an object to do a "trick" to make a way for you. With doing a "trick" you can create a way to an another object that connects to your way and with that you can carry your "ghost" to that object.

For example you are inside a ball, with using the "trick" button for ball to roll, you can arrive to an umbrella. If they are next to each other, you can carry your "ghost" to that umbrella. After that you become the umbrella and now you can use umbrella's "trick" to advance to the next object. Now it's sounds doesn't interesting that much probably?

Until I say, the "Death" comes in. Killers are everywhere and they are here to KILL EVERY ONE OF YOUR LOVED ONES! And you, being a ghost doesn't mean you can't help them. You HAVE TO help them and that's where things get complicated to what trick to use what objects to impersonate and there is looooots of objects to impersonate so don't worry about the variety I would say.

There is lots of planning to do and strategies to create! I would say, this gameplay is probably the best Shu Takumi did to this date. You are not passively trying to find lies here. You are actively trying to save lives and that's why it does make things more exciting.

My favourite game of all time that I recommend to everyone that still have the childish exploration soul in it to experience unique things

Much like Team Fortress 2, I don't rate this game as what it is now, more so what it meant to me when it was at it's peak and the memories I've formed with it. I have always been a fan of fighting games yet I never had the time or patience to get good competitively until this one showed up.

Being a fan of Dragon Ball since I was 6 watching it on youtube back when copyright law wasn't as strict and people had to stitch the video in 3 parts because of the 10 minute limit on the site, I've always had a soft spot for this series and even the worst Dragon Ball Games have a ton of fan service worth checking out. And Fighterz isn't fan service, it's straight up fan fellatio.

From every moveset, every reference, every interaction, it's all packed and filled to the brim with charm that completely encapsulates the highlights of the show and what made it special, which is exactly what made me try to pick up my first fighting game as a competitive player. I didn't get very far (only up to Living Legend) but it was so much fun! Learning combo strings, going on tourneys, meeting people from the FGC, watching famous players and copying their BnBs, it was so much new terminology and training that legitimately made me feel like I was training and improving my fighting skills much like Goku and his pals.

Should you play it right now? Maybe not. The balancing got Mickey ever since they added UI Goku and Gogeta 4 plus the added patches after it were the nail in the coffin for this game's already waning skill ceiling, but I don't think it would ever diminish the fun I've had with it for 3 years straight.

This game blows Xenoverse 2 and Kakarot out of the water and it's a shame Bandai/Arcsys never felt interested in continuing the game, it could have easily been a mainstay series with tons of DLC still being released today, but for a 6 year old game, you could do much worse.

YAMCHA MAINS RISE UP AROOOO BABY I'M PREYING ON YOU TONIGHT!!!