Decided to finally replay this game again after a handful of years

Even if there should've been more variety in the dungeon design and enemy encounters, if you ask me I still think the gameplay here is a notch more engaging than most other turn-based games. You do have to try and conserve PP, numerous items are genuinely useful, and most enemies can kill you quick so you have to be a bit careful (and a bit is a lot more than most turn-based games). I do think the bosses should be much harder though. I destroyed them this time around; I really don't remember them having this few HP/defenses. Some of the outlaws from sidequests tend to be more tricky to take down than the main story bosses.

This is also another game where I'd glad the main story isn't too long. I think the pacing is near perfect. There weren't as much sidequest days you need to go through as I remember. For both sidequests and main story you can get away with not exploring most rooms of most dungeons. Which may mean exploration in this game isn't that encouraged but I'll take it if it means a less tedious, boring experience of going through the shallow dungeons I find in most turn based games. Something about the fast paced dungeon crawling of the Mystery Dungeon franchise is honestly appealing to me.

I just wanted to throw some of my thoughts on the gameplay out there. I still of course love the story and presentation as much as ever (blush + smile with closed eyes emoji)

For context this is the oldest Fire emblem I have played so far (the others being 7,8,13-17) so forgive me if I am just talking about classic FE and not this game specifically.

It's a hard game to rate, but I think It was fun in a challenging masochistic way, because every time I got frustrated with the game I always made it through the challenge being to figure out the strategy to win, which is probably just the appeal for the series.

what makes this one unique is the size of the maps and its time skip being split between gen 1 and gen 2. The large maps are also to make up for this game having less chapters but I liked how it made each chapter feel like little story in that continent and capturing bases and having the enemy armies respond while this is cool it does mean most of the game is moving units around and if they aren't on horse it will take extra long.

This series has always been good at tying narrative and gameplay but this game is on another level especially with the twist of gen 1.

The time skip works for both narrative and gameplay, pairing gen 1 units together for insanely overpowered units in gen 2 as well as the games theme of fixing the problems caused by the previous generation, and for a SNES game it's very impressive for what it does with its story, world, and in game politics.

My only major issue is I felt like it was hard to grasp the mechanics of the game, they don't explain it very well

But overall I enjoyed my time with it and can see its influence in the rest of the series and can see why its a fan favorite.

Certainly the anti-visual novel it claims to be. The 2000s aesthetic is great, stereotypes are cranked up to 100 in a good way, love the voice acting. Altogether it makes some uniquely absurd and satirical characterisation. Generally quite funny and occasionally hilarious, but the humour won't be for everyone.

Yeah it's edgy, and can appear to be talking about certain topics in ways that it really shouldn't. But I don't think it's a big issue. Everything is described in such an "in your face" and absurd way that it's obviously poking fun at such things and I don't sense any ill will from it. I respect the creator for taking such a bold approach, that could very well be misunderstood.

I was a little discomforted at the constant pedophile jokes. I get what they're going for but like, why did the (can't believe I'm writing this) "racism route", which I found to be the funniest, only get like 2 endings whereas there's like, 6 paths involving fiascos with pedophiles? It just felt a tad obsessive. Still these routes usually had something interesting to offer.

I really want to know more about the development process for Class of '09. Who made it, how and why was it conceptualised, but there doesn't seem to be much information easily available on the internet. I'm not sure if there is some sort of running moral trying to be conveyed throughout despite all the (enjoyable) garbage that this game is. Pretty girls have it hard too, or something.

I don't know. Don't be like Nicole, Nicole is a sociopath. But at the same time, be like Nicole, Nicole is a bad bitch.

Edit: Shoutout to this review by Femmy which I think put some things into perspective for me and answered some thoughts I had.

Ever been interested in the Persona series? Start with this one!

As a big fan of Persona 3, Reload was the game I was looking forward to the most in 2024 alongside Infinite Wealth, so I did the same as with IW and held off on watching trailers past the announcement one entirely to experience the changes for myself. When the release date came closer, I began to see more and more doomposting for Reload and even considered holding off on buying it because of how negatively this game was treated by others. I'm glad that didn't get to me in the end and I could form my own opinion of the remake of one of my favorite games.

First off, the presentation in Reload is amazing right off the bat, ranging from the upgraded artstyle to the dynamic menus and improved character models, it's just so very pleasant to look at. This also includes animations - the Ultimate moves of the characters look super cool. As someone who only ever really played Portable before, the upgrade in presentation was a huge point for me. Sure, the updated environmental design of the overworld is great, but the cherry on top are the revamped Tartarus blocks. The floors are no longer mere reskins with the same layout, now every block has a detailed new look and a different pattern. Tartarus changes don't stop here though, like the previous top-down camera has been turned into a proper third-person one, which I believe adds to the immersion a lot, despite being so seemingly insignificant at first. Furthermore, exploration is incentivized with mini-bosses being accessible in ordinary floors now alongside the addition of lucrative floor-specific events like locked or special chests. Can't forget the revamped Golden Hands in Reload either, as they provide a large amount of XP now (like in Persona 4) instead of dropping items. A great change for everyone who hated grinding and the new Great Clock random event can boost two of your teammates' levels on a whim, so no one has to fall behind! I believe the new Tartarus has something in store for everyone, so even if you were turned off by the gameplay in the original, giving it a second look might be worth it...

Voice acting in Reload is top notch. I don't share the somewhat popular sentiment of Yukari and Aigis sounding worse than their original counterparts at all, they're probably even my favorite new castings. That being said, personally I wouldn't say there's a single bad casting within the new voice actors, I enjoyed all of their performances. Emotional scenes got me tearing up several times, I got shivers during others. Not to disregard some of the original actors, but Reload really elevated some characters for me, just with their new performances (Yuko, Chidori and Fuuka are great examples). Also love how every social link is completely voiced now, it's a huge boost in immersion. As for social links in general, I'm glad the new Link Episodes exist, they're basically mini social links for the male party members and give you some insight into their life. A great way to add some interaction with them to the game without replacing the already existing social links! The SEES hangouts during nighttime also fulfill a similar role in giving your teammates more screentime without taking up meaningful time (considering the abundance of free time at night in P3), this also includes new events like several study sessions with the team. Those activities aren't just for fun though, you gain new passive abilities for the other members or gain extra knowledge points while studying with the others, the integration is seamless.

The new soundtrack is... good! Not much to say here, I like the remixes of the original songs and the new songs are bangers. Color Your Night is one of the very best vocal tracks in the series and It's Going Down Now still stays hype after listening to it over and over. Shoutout to the new remix of Changing Seasons.

There's a whole lot more to unpack about this game, but for the time being I have said everything that was on my mind. My thoughts are still pretty hazy, despite completing Reload hours ago, but I hope you could get something useful out of my review either way. As always, thanks for reading!

I really loved Catherine Classic, which is why I decided to grab Full Body on an eShop sale that was just about to end, so I could compare the two releases back-to-back (and since I was eager to see how Rin fits into the story). After beating the game's new route, I'm glad Full Body lived up to my expectations. But now the real question: Is this version the definitive release of Catherine? Probably.

I'll try to not repeat myself on the things I already established in my Catherine Classic review and will be going over the additions in Full Body instead, starting with the rerelease's poster girl - Rin. Since she's advertised as a third possible love interest, I expected her to be a lot more involved into the original storyline than she actually is, but I ended up liking the role they gave her there. Rin never actually interferes with the story events of Classic, the major beats still play out all the same. She's a pretty passive character if you don't actively pursue her route and serves more of a supporting character if you're heading down the Classic Routes. Even as such a supporting character, I believe Rin plays a pretty big role in shifting the tone of the game compared to Catherine Classic. The original game was quite gloomy and Full Body contrasts this by adding her to balance it out, resulting in the game feeling more laid-back overall. This is accomplished with the lighting changes in the bar and a new jazzy rendition of the bar soundtrack. Speaking of the bar soundtrack, many of the Shin Megami Tensei songs on the jukebox were replaced with modern Persona tracks, including some really great ones like Beneath the Mask from Persona 5 or Snowflakes from Persona 4.

As far as gameplay changes go, Full Body doubles the amount of puzzles and adds a mode to skip those entirely (if you're only in for the story). The new Remix mode is a great change of pace (especially if you're coming from Classic), since it adds various kinds of Tetris blocks to the puzzles, changing their solutions from the original game. Some of the smaller gameplay tweaks like the backwards camera or outlines for ledges just make the game more enjoyable to play overall. The undo and retry system has been completely overhauled, the collectable pillows no longer give you a set amount of retries, instead you'll get a singular undo action added to the "undo queue". Like in normal mode you start with 3 undos at the beginning, but if you collect a pillow during a level you can actually undo your actions 4 times in a row until you reach the pedestal. I think it's a pretty good incentive to collect pillows now, since I basically had 99 lives all the time by the end of Classic and there was no real reason to go out of my way to get them anymore. However, the lives system has been removed entirely in Full Body and you can no longer die unless you run out of undos. While this sounds like it entirely trivializes the game, it really doesn't and just lessens your frustration of having to restart a level for a single misinput. I had multiple cases where I had to retry from the start of a level, since I tried some strategy that didn't work out in the end and I had no undos left to return the blocks to their initial state. It's also worth mentioning that the undos can no longer be abused to reset the combo timer, so you'll actually have to watch out for that if you're going for a Golden rating. Overall, I believe those balance changes alone make Full Body better in the gameplay department than Classic (despite Classic feeling so great already) and I could actually enjoy the final boss in this version, since I didn't have keep worrying about some random homing attack, just to die with the pedestal in sight already (yeah that actually happened to me in Classic). Although I must admit that the tension is definitely not on the same heights as the original here, the dread of having to restart the entire level if you took a wrong turn was really something special...

Full Body's narrative is pretty much the same as in Classic (unless you go for Rin's Route), but with new cutscenes and pictures to help the characterization of the original girls. Personally I think it helped Katherine's characterization especially and I found myself looking forward to the flashbacks involving her and Vincent each time. Sure, that's pretty neat, but Rin's Route is the part that actually impacts how the story plays out. Contrary to popular belief I found the handling of the themes in this route fairly good executed and had a great time with it! There are some really good messages in here. A common complaint is that this route goes a little off the rails in the end and I can see how that's offputting for some, but I found her finale to be some pretty cool stuff, especially in regards to the scenery and stakes there. Not everyone's cup of coffee, but a nice bonus after doing the 'ordinary' routes with Katherine and Catherine.

My main complaint about Classic were the transphobic remarks at times, so I'm glad to see Atlus addressed this in Full Body. Most of the transphobic dialogue has been replaced entirely, except that one exchange in Katherine's True Ending for some reason. But considering Full Body feels more modern and progressive in terms of writing, I'd say Atlus is on the right track with those changes, maybe they just forgot to remove that very specific conversation in that ending. You know the meme that goes "He's a little confused, but he got the spirit"? That's Atlus with this game.

Unfortunately my time with Catherine in general has come to an end (unless I decide to tackle the Babel levels sometime). I wish people were less negative about it online and embraced the positive aspects more - there's so much to love here. Personally I can only recommend Catherine to fans of puzzle games or Atlus games in general, especially the Full Body version (but you can't go wrong with Classic either if you want the vibes™). This review was particularly fun to write, so thanks for reading!

By far can say Reload is the best way to play P3 now for myself. I don't think the OST replaces the original, but aside from that my few biggest gripes were them not bringing some QOL's in from other entries. Didn't bother changing up fortunes earlier in the game, making it pretty hard to max slink still compared to 4G/5R, did during the night.. but that didn't come until November 11th. There's one block in Tartarus Reload that is absolutely awful to traverse, I did not think they could make Tartarus worse in Reload, but they pulled that off.

Voice acting was incredible, scenes/animations fantastic, gameplay overhaul was very needed and made it an absolute blast to play again, though a bit on the easy side even on merciless. I hope theurgies(think limit breaks) makes it way into new mainline titles going forward, those were fun, same with characteristics(character specific passives).

The new events with the male chars and Strega were handled pretty great too, changed my mind on a few characters in general lol. I can definitely say my cons with FES weren't here in Reload, except for Tartarus still being a slog.