During rough periods in my life I always find myself coming back to play through the opening hours of this game; there's just something cathartic about the first few hours of Dark Souls 1 in how it reminds me that facing adversity is not hopeless. So despite the notoriously unfinished back "half" of the game, I find it difficult to not love the game. FromSoft's action RPGs are at their best when they allow you to form meaningful personal narratives within their worlds, not through dialogue trees or arbitrary event flags, but through the unconscious tapestry of synapses forming from both the strife and triumph you experience within their titles -- and the first Dark Souls, in my mind, is undoubtedly the best at providing a canvas for those memorable experiences to be made (at least during its strongest moments).

I don't say that last bit to devalue anybody who does find meaning during their time within Lost Izalith or the Tomb of Giants, I guess I just feel like I'm playing some weird ass experimental PS2 game during those points. Which don't get me wrong, that's cool as hell in its own way, it just feels wholly disconnected from the grandiose adventure I experienced for the first 50% of the game. And really, I can't blame FromSoft for really taking those big ass swings post-Demon's Souls. That game already hit like 15 homeruns within its more confined scope, so I can see the situation they were in and how confident they must have felt to attempt to actualize a version of that game with a fully connected 3D map and even cooler setpieces.

Likewise, it's easy to see why they kinda hard pivoted away from that when moving into Dark Souls II, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls III, with each of those game having their own set of priorities separate from the unachievable ambitions of the first Dark Souls. It really wasn't until Elden Ring that they were able to attempt a more actualized take on a similar large scope 3D map concept thanks to what appears to be an increased budget and elongated dev cycle, though that obviously came with its own set of pretty severe sacrifices that I'll talk about in its own review.

Either way, regardless of its technical and structural hiccups and its failing to perhaps really achieve what it set out to do, it's undeniably a special game that I think about a lot and will probably keep returning to -- even if my playthroughs do seem to mysteriously taper off shortly after completing Anor Londo. Also I just gotta say, Blighttown is a really cool fucking level and anybody who tells a new player to pick the Master Key as their starting gift is depriving them of an extremely important and formative experience.

Kinda way too disillusioned by the superfluous pageantry of P-Studio's Persona titles to keep up with this and it's making me hate playing video games, so shelving this and P3P for my own sanity. Maybe I'll get around to it in a few months once I'm in the mood to push through a fluffy monster RPG with concerning portrayals of women again. Which like, even though I say that, Persona 3 feels a lot better in that department than P4 or P5, especially from what I've also been playing of Persona 3 Portable, where Yukari in particular almost feels like a real teenage girl with actual interiority! Really wanted to see more of Mitsuru, she seems pretty cool. Same with the autistic trans-coded robot girl and the dog, those guys are like 50% of the reason I wanted to play this game.

Tartarus was also way fucking cooler than I expected! Well, not in Reload, but in Portable it was pretty comfy and had enough going on with its moment to moment gameplay to make me not fall asleep. Though early on your power scales up way faster than the difficulty of the floors themselves do, and the bosses felt more like brute forcing them instead of instigating a strategy. Reload feels like it makes that whole dealie even worse, like you get all the fun midgame toys from Persona 5 like right away, and I feel like it just trivializes the whole thing (I am not playing on hard mode ever again though, it literally just makes the game twice as long, made the mistake once in Persona 5)! They also had an opportunity to give Tartarus sections more of their own mechanical identity to mix it up from the more pure dungeon crawling of the original, and at least what I've played it just feels worse somehow, even more lifeless and toothless. Maybe I'll change my mind once I get to the later portions, but I was not very impressed.

I don't wanna carry on with the negatives too much, there's clearly a lot to love here, and I'm sure this will end up being a lot of people's go-to way to experience P3, but man, Reload is so much. Seriously considering just playing FES first instead next time, and then working my way up through each iteration, because even as somebody who has only had minimal contact with the original Persona 3, something really feels off about this game. I don't trust it. Maybe I'm just annoying and old though.

Anyways, Persona 6 should be about a 40 year old lesbian detective and her talking tanuki tulpa that nobody else can see who says kinda borderline problematic shit. Also probably put a different kind of music in these games next time; maybe it's just the remixes that were giving me a migraine though.

Hm....
Personally, I think games should be more obtuse.
I mean this genuinely.

I didn't press F1 until hour 10 and realize that I can use skills on things. This was awesome.
That item on the ground? Personally I don't want it to be distinguishable from the background to any degree.
A timer marking my imminent loss causing anxiety anytime I waste time? This is awesome. Your daughter is kidnapped? Sorry bro - I got shit to do.
Peak obtuseness was me realizing that reading a book and failing a repair passed like 12 hours of time. At this point the radx I took started to wear off (the radiation system is also obtuse and awesome), and my character casually remarks that their hair is falling out and their body is hemorrhaging.

I go back to a certain area after a certain amount of time passes... OOPS! Gorsh, golly!
>I beat the game but I took a little bit too long
A GA A HORSH
You specced 1 intelligence and 1 agility ? ? That's real.

Half the settlements don't know a single thing about each other, aside from traders. This weird separation combines with how desolate the wasteland actually is, is super good.
My favorite example of this is every settlement acting like you're an insane child for believing in Deathclaws. Meanwhile, in a certain settlement, the citizens are like "Deathclaws? points they're over there. We can't go over there any more because of thems. We hired guards to stop them from MAIMING us"

Ok final thought - the Mutant threat? Awesome. Mutants one hit killing me? Awesome. A mutant escorting me to an end game location, only to either have me instant game over or beat me within an inch of my life, lock me up, and take all my items? These things are awesome. Didn't save recently? you're an imbecile.

teleports into Todd Howards home
Can I get more of this?
The gunplay in fallout 4 was awesome ........ BUT STOP!!! KNOCK IT OFF. no more speaking protgagnoinst.. Givem e .. world record for dialogue in gaming! spits at mr Howie NO MORE 4 CHOICES THAT ARE THE SAME?!? HAD TO MOD THAT OUT BRO!!!! Borderlandas looting ???? BLEEDING EFFECT ON MY GUN ; RNG DEATHCLAW ALPHA NUMERICAL DEAATHCLAW MOTHER +6,000XP holding bleeding sledgehammer and raider left arm? NO! Starfield ELDERS SCORL??? QUIT IT NO gets strappedi nto the sl;op feeding machine



NO * * NO