Poonthers
2020
Persona 4 Golden was a game I was very excited to jump into. I would describe myself as a new comer to the series only having played Persona 5 Royal prior to this. Having played the latest iteration of the mainline game, it would be impossible to not draw some comparisons between P4G and P5R but I cannot and will not fault P4G for not being P5R. In a lot of ways it was fun to look mechanically at P4G and see so many of the things I really enjoyed in P5R in their earlier forms. This being said, I will never be able to have the experience of playing Persona 4 Golden at the time of its release, so all analyses will be coming from a play through that is far separated from its original debut.
Compared to the latest entry in the mainline series, Persona 4 Golden is a bright and colorful adventure. I love the vibe the game is going for. Inaba feels like a faithful recreation of a sleepy small town that’s always dappled in fading sunlight on non-rainy days. The attitudes of the locals carries that country laid back attitude mixed with concern of impending financial ruin that is always present in places filled with locally run businesses. "Heartbeat, Heartbreak" and "Signs Of Love" from the soundtrack really sell this vibe as you run around the small town pursuing relationships with the people around you and working part time jobs. This is the perfect setup for the juxtaposition this game imposes upon the player: there is something sinister lurking within the town of Inaba. People keep turning up dead, strung up in odd fashions with no clear cause of death. Even more mysterious is the ghostly Midnight Channel, an unlisted TV channel that plays on your old CRTV at midnight when its raining. It is genuinely unsettling to hear the song "Who's there?" come on when you watch the inscrutable Midnight Channel and realize that it is predicting the next murder victim. Because of this uncomfortable juxtaposition, the main quest and puzzle at the heart of this game are extremely compelling early on. While the pay-off of the entire story didn't quite live up to my expectations (I felt as though some of the characterization of the villain was not as strong as it could and should have been), I still had a lot of fun from beginning to end. During your pursuit of the serial killer within this small town you will encounter a surprisingly large cast of characters to engage with. The quality of some of these social links can vary heavily, however, the game has some really high peaks it achieves.
A large part of the Persona formula post Persona 3 is the life simulator elements. In Persona 4 Golden you are roleplaying as an exchange student from the city coming into this small town to live with your uncle and niece for the school year. During your limited time in Inaba you are able to and encouraged to build up your relationships with those around you. As a whole, the main supporting cast (specifically all the members of the investigation team and the Dojimas) is mostly well written and compelling. Save for Teddy, this games otherworldly companion (the Morgana archetype for those who have played P5R) who is difficult to watch when it comes to how he interacts with women, I enjoyed my time with all of the main cast S Links. Mechanically it is a shame that there are drastically less benefits of pursuing relationships outside the main cast, but I’ve already seen how they innovate on this mechanic later in P5R. Regardless, all S Link storylines reflect the main themes of this game, self-acknowledgement and acceptance, in ways that were sort of unexpected. Where the Persona 5 Royale confidants had story lines about self-determination and fighting against societal structures meant to keep them down, Persona 4 Golden goes quite the opposite root. Rather than have these characters have story arcs of self-determination, most of the characters instead decide to embrace their public perception and societal roles while accepting their difficulty to come to terms with it. It becomes interesting to look at because these characters are dynamic not in how they chose to conduct their life, but rather how they feel about their lot and life and choices. I'd like to call special attention here to Kanji's S Link as I believe his is the best done and most nuanced. Admittedly, the game does have some off-putting moments of mild homophobia between two of the characters and the game seems to want to include themes related to homosexuality without actually fully committing to the conversation. Ultimately this is something I was able to come to terms with and move around as it is a product of 2008 and I am approaching the game from a western perspective and background in the year 2023. All of that aside, there are two other issues with these life sims elements that I would like to touch on however.
A large problem I had within the life sim elements of P4G is related to the main character that you are roleplaying as. While I was playing, it was impossible for me to ignore that he has such a weak lead in and setup within the story that it makes it difficult for the player to actually roleplay and identify with him. Atlus seemingly wanted to give the player a blank slate to work with as they adventure, but the best protagonists of RPGs do typically have some sort of identifying characteristic lead-in that allows you to get into the character better. In Persona 5 Royale, Joker may be a blank slate for the player to toy around with in dialogue options, but he has a very well defined lead-in and compelling character arc. You start Persona 5 Royale as someone punished for doing the right thing. You are constantly put down and watched closely because you are labeled a trouble maker after you had used your judgement to try to save a woman being harassed by a high profile politician. Because of this lead-in to the P5R, while I may have been provided dialogue options I could freely choose between, it made my characterization much easier to grasp and role play into. The protagonist of P4G has none of this sort of lead-in other than loosely saying "he's a good guy". While mechanically I still get to make dialogue choices just like P5R, I have a lot less commitment to a character and do not identify easily with the protagonist. There is one S Link however that Atlus tries to nudge you towards that helps with this identity issue: Atlus seemingly wants you to establish a strong S Link with the niece, Nanako. Nanako's character arc revolves around her being emotionally neglected by her workaholic and emotionally distant father Dojima. She is a character you will spend a lot of time with within the course of the game, and Atlus is always eager to provide you extra opportunity to spend time with Nanako. If you pursue Nanako's S Link, you get the firm feeling that the protagonist wants to be, and is, a good big brother to a little girl who desperately needs someone in their life to pay attention to them. This is the only real strong identifying characteristic the playable character is given, and even then it is somewhat optional. I think if Atlus had put more emphasis on this as either a mandatory characteristic established at the beginning of the game, or provided one other identifying characteristic for me to latch on to during the introduction, I would have enjoyed playing as my character significantly more. The other problem with the life sim elements of P4G is that the game feels mechanically opposite of the vibe it’s trying to sell you.
Just like the latest iteration, P5R, Persona 4 Golden offers a lot of things for the player to do. This however feels juxtaposed to mood the game is trying to sell you. Inaba is purposefully designed to be a sleepy boring town, but for me there was always a wealth of things to do other than when it was raining. There is a strong story emphasis to the player that the other characters in the investigation team are barely staving off boredom in a small town. Yosuke explicitly says that this is a feeling that he thinks you should be able to relate to as someone from the city. But other than a few rainy days, I was never bored in Inaba. There was always something to do until the very end of the game. Due to what I assume were development limitations that would have been around at the time of its release relating to complex systems of choices and consequences, the game instead opts to offer you a million side tracks to follow with no deviation narratively. What this mechanically provides is lots of choices for things do while in the town of Inaba with no little to no flexibility in how those activities and relationships end up. This feels directly opposed to the game trying to sell you on the idea that you are living in a sleepy, past its prime town. I cannot stress enough that you have so many activities that you can choose to engage with. This system works in P5R because your living it up in the bright and busy streets of Tokyo, but in P4G it feels as though it thematically clashes. As I said earlier, I understand why they might have opted for this approach, but there still could have been more effort in other places to remedy it. For example: why are all the activities you can chose to participate in above board? One of the most consistent storytelling pairings with boredom is mischief, yet there is none to be had in the life sim activities. You are an upstanding citizen in a place that has limited activities, thematically you should be bored constantly, but you are not. Even if they had your characters hanging out someplace they shouldn't be in, or had them do one kind of mischievous activity once in a while, this would help alleviate this mismatch significantly. All of that aside, mechanically this game is sound but borders on tedious outside its life-sim elements.
Persona 4 Golden's combat is exactly what I was expecting it to be having played P5R, and despite it lacking some of the flair that would come later in the series it is still rock solid. Every combat encounter feels like a puzzle you're meant to solve by exploiting your enemy’s weaknesses in the most efficient way possible. It's a lot of fun on its own, but with the dungeon design it does tend to feel a bit tedious and grindy at times. Atlus made the choice to have dungeons that are not intentionally designed but rather a set of randomly generated hallways. This tends to make a lot of the floors feel very same-y and the repetition of many combat encounters and similar scenery can really be fatiguing by the time you reach the last floor of the dungeon. Because of this fatigue, I was always excited to go back to the game when I was in the life-sim portions, and I was apprehensive when I was in the dungeons. As I said earlier, the core combat is solid, so I never disliked the game mechanically, but my mindset was always that the dungeon was something I just had to slog my way through. Lastly before wrapping up this review, i would like to touch upon the "Golden" aspect of Persona 4 Golden.
Persona 4 Golden is essentially the extended directors cut of Persona 4 just like Persona 5 Royale is to Persona 5. The edition of the game introduces a new S Link and a unique dungeon. I don't feel as though any of the additional content is particularly compelling as I felt with the additional content in P5R, but it’s not bad either. With the additional content of P4G however, the game does overstay its welcome by a few hours by the time you reach the end. I swear the game was going to end about 5 times before credits actually rolled. I definitely enjoyed my time with the game, but I was ready for it to end.
Overall, I really did enjoy my time with Persona 4 Golden despite its age and flaws. If I was to recommend a game from the series, I think that I would still recommend P5R way before P4G. As a newcomer to the series and a fan of its mix of combat and life-sim elements, I'm glad I visited this title, and I’m excited to explore Persona 3 Reload when that is released.
Compared to the latest entry in the mainline series, Persona 4 Golden is a bright and colorful adventure. I love the vibe the game is going for. Inaba feels like a faithful recreation of a sleepy small town that’s always dappled in fading sunlight on non-rainy days. The attitudes of the locals carries that country laid back attitude mixed with concern of impending financial ruin that is always present in places filled with locally run businesses. "Heartbeat, Heartbreak" and "Signs Of Love" from the soundtrack really sell this vibe as you run around the small town pursuing relationships with the people around you and working part time jobs. This is the perfect setup for the juxtaposition this game imposes upon the player: there is something sinister lurking within the town of Inaba. People keep turning up dead, strung up in odd fashions with no clear cause of death. Even more mysterious is the ghostly Midnight Channel, an unlisted TV channel that plays on your old CRTV at midnight when its raining. It is genuinely unsettling to hear the song "Who's there?" come on when you watch the inscrutable Midnight Channel and realize that it is predicting the next murder victim. Because of this uncomfortable juxtaposition, the main quest and puzzle at the heart of this game are extremely compelling early on. While the pay-off of the entire story didn't quite live up to my expectations (I felt as though some of the characterization of the villain was not as strong as it could and should have been), I still had a lot of fun from beginning to end. During your pursuit of the serial killer within this small town you will encounter a surprisingly large cast of characters to engage with. The quality of some of these social links can vary heavily, however, the game has some really high peaks it achieves.
A large part of the Persona formula post Persona 3 is the life simulator elements. In Persona 4 Golden you are roleplaying as an exchange student from the city coming into this small town to live with your uncle and niece for the school year. During your limited time in Inaba you are able to and encouraged to build up your relationships with those around you. As a whole, the main supporting cast (specifically all the members of the investigation team and the Dojimas) is mostly well written and compelling. Save for Teddy, this games otherworldly companion (the Morgana archetype for those who have played P5R) who is difficult to watch when it comes to how he interacts with women, I enjoyed my time with all of the main cast S Links. Mechanically it is a shame that there are drastically less benefits of pursuing relationships outside the main cast, but I’ve already seen how they innovate on this mechanic later in P5R. Regardless, all S Link storylines reflect the main themes of this game, self-acknowledgement and acceptance, in ways that were sort of unexpected. Where the Persona 5 Royale confidants had story lines about self-determination and fighting against societal structures meant to keep them down, Persona 4 Golden goes quite the opposite root. Rather than have these characters have story arcs of self-determination, most of the characters instead decide to embrace their public perception and societal roles while accepting their difficulty to come to terms with it. It becomes interesting to look at because these characters are dynamic not in how they chose to conduct their life, but rather how they feel about their lot and life and choices. I'd like to call special attention here to Kanji's S Link as I believe his is the best done and most nuanced. Admittedly, the game does have some off-putting moments of mild homophobia between two of the characters and the game seems to want to include themes related to homosexuality without actually fully committing to the conversation. Ultimately this is something I was able to come to terms with and move around as it is a product of 2008 and I am approaching the game from a western perspective and background in the year 2023. All of that aside, there are two other issues with these life sims elements that I would like to touch on however.
A large problem I had within the life sim elements of P4G is related to the main character that you are roleplaying as. While I was playing, it was impossible for me to ignore that he has such a weak lead in and setup within the story that it makes it difficult for the player to actually roleplay and identify with him. Atlus seemingly wanted to give the player a blank slate to work with as they adventure, but the best protagonists of RPGs do typically have some sort of identifying characteristic lead-in that allows you to get into the character better. In Persona 5 Royale, Joker may be a blank slate for the player to toy around with in dialogue options, but he has a very well defined lead-in and compelling character arc. You start Persona 5 Royale as someone punished for doing the right thing. You are constantly put down and watched closely because you are labeled a trouble maker after you had used your judgement to try to save a woman being harassed by a high profile politician. Because of this lead-in to the P5R, while I may have been provided dialogue options I could freely choose between, it made my characterization much easier to grasp and role play into. The protagonist of P4G has none of this sort of lead-in other than loosely saying "he's a good guy". While mechanically I still get to make dialogue choices just like P5R, I have a lot less commitment to a character and do not identify easily with the protagonist. There is one S Link however that Atlus tries to nudge you towards that helps with this identity issue: Atlus seemingly wants you to establish a strong S Link with the niece, Nanako. Nanako's character arc revolves around her being emotionally neglected by her workaholic and emotionally distant father Dojima. She is a character you will spend a lot of time with within the course of the game, and Atlus is always eager to provide you extra opportunity to spend time with Nanako. If you pursue Nanako's S Link, you get the firm feeling that the protagonist wants to be, and is, a good big brother to a little girl who desperately needs someone in their life to pay attention to them. This is the only real strong identifying characteristic the playable character is given, and even then it is somewhat optional. I think if Atlus had put more emphasis on this as either a mandatory characteristic established at the beginning of the game, or provided one other identifying characteristic for me to latch on to during the introduction, I would have enjoyed playing as my character significantly more. The other problem with the life sim elements of P4G is that the game feels mechanically opposite of the vibe it’s trying to sell you.
Just like the latest iteration, P5R, Persona 4 Golden offers a lot of things for the player to do. This however feels juxtaposed to mood the game is trying to sell you. Inaba is purposefully designed to be a sleepy boring town, but for me there was always a wealth of things to do other than when it was raining. There is a strong story emphasis to the player that the other characters in the investigation team are barely staving off boredom in a small town. Yosuke explicitly says that this is a feeling that he thinks you should be able to relate to as someone from the city. But other than a few rainy days, I was never bored in Inaba. There was always something to do until the very end of the game. Due to what I assume were development limitations that would have been around at the time of its release relating to complex systems of choices and consequences, the game instead opts to offer you a million side tracks to follow with no deviation narratively. What this mechanically provides is lots of choices for things do while in the town of Inaba with no little to no flexibility in how those activities and relationships end up. This feels directly opposed to the game trying to sell you on the idea that you are living in a sleepy, past its prime town. I cannot stress enough that you have so many activities that you can choose to engage with. This system works in P5R because your living it up in the bright and busy streets of Tokyo, but in P4G it feels as though it thematically clashes. As I said earlier, I understand why they might have opted for this approach, but there still could have been more effort in other places to remedy it. For example: why are all the activities you can chose to participate in above board? One of the most consistent storytelling pairings with boredom is mischief, yet there is none to be had in the life sim activities. You are an upstanding citizen in a place that has limited activities, thematically you should be bored constantly, but you are not. Even if they had your characters hanging out someplace they shouldn't be in, or had them do one kind of mischievous activity once in a while, this would help alleviate this mismatch significantly. All of that aside, mechanically this game is sound but borders on tedious outside its life-sim elements.
Persona 4 Golden's combat is exactly what I was expecting it to be having played P5R, and despite it lacking some of the flair that would come later in the series it is still rock solid. Every combat encounter feels like a puzzle you're meant to solve by exploiting your enemy’s weaknesses in the most efficient way possible. It's a lot of fun on its own, but with the dungeon design it does tend to feel a bit tedious and grindy at times. Atlus made the choice to have dungeons that are not intentionally designed but rather a set of randomly generated hallways. This tends to make a lot of the floors feel very same-y and the repetition of many combat encounters and similar scenery can really be fatiguing by the time you reach the last floor of the dungeon. Because of this fatigue, I was always excited to go back to the game when I was in the life-sim portions, and I was apprehensive when I was in the dungeons. As I said earlier, the core combat is solid, so I never disliked the game mechanically, but my mindset was always that the dungeon was something I just had to slog my way through. Lastly before wrapping up this review, i would like to touch upon the "Golden" aspect of Persona 4 Golden.
Persona 4 Golden is essentially the extended directors cut of Persona 4 just like Persona 5 Royale is to Persona 5. The edition of the game introduces a new S Link and a unique dungeon. I don't feel as though any of the additional content is particularly compelling as I felt with the additional content in P5R, but it’s not bad either. With the additional content of P4G however, the game does overstay its welcome by a few hours by the time you reach the end. I swear the game was going to end about 5 times before credits actually rolled. I definitely enjoyed my time with the game, but I was ready for it to end.
Overall, I really did enjoy my time with Persona 4 Golden despite its age and flaws. If I was to recommend a game from the series, I think that I would still recommend P5R way before P4G. As a newcomer to the series and a fan of its mix of combat and life-sim elements, I'm glad I visited this title, and I’m excited to explore Persona 3 Reload when that is released.
2020
- This review is edited and now takes into account the epilogue added Patch 5. For a quick summary of the changes I am making, this patch addresses all of my issues with the games ending, so I have revised that paragraph. I decided to add extra notes as well about the performance patches for Act three, but as this is a review of MY experience with the game, I kept the majority of that part of the review the same.
Baldur's Gate 3 absolutely blew me away and ate up so much of my time this year. On the first week of the PS5 release, I sank an ungodly amount of time into this game, exploring every corner of Act I and trying to pick up on all of the diverse mechanics present. As someone who has never played DND before or any of the previous Larian Studios games, there was a bit of a learning curve, but that didn't matter; I was immediately immersed in everything Baldur's Gate 3 had to offer. For me, Baldur's Gate 3 offered an experience I so rarely have in games today. When I played Baldur's Gate 3, it felt magical.
Maybe it's odd to use the phrase magical to describe a video game, but I mean it sincerely. As someone who plays a lot of games and has had his fair share of experience with all sorts of RPGs, Baldur's Gate 3 feels special in the way that it is distinctly different from most of the other games in the genre. My largest gripe with most RPGs is the lack of consequences to the arbitrary choices they present to you. In games like Skyrim, you can be the Dragonborn, an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood, the Jarl of Whiterun, and the most powerful mage in the land. None of this means anything in the terms of the main narrative of the game. They are all side stories, disconnected in any meaningful way to the main storyline and your character's development/role within that story. Obviously I have played other RPGs since the release of Skyrim and this is a problem that permeates most RPGs at some level. There is simply no way to account for every single action you have taken as a player and have it meaningfully contribute to the narrative of the story. When I say Baldur's Gate 3 is magical, I say this because for a lot longer than I expected, I couldn't see this problem within the game. The game was a black box. Every thread I pulled on, even the most absurd ones, had some sort of worldly consequence, or was at least referenced back to in some meaningful way. It felt like this game was something that should have been impossible to make, and I absolutely loved it. The façade I'm describing does eventually show itself to be just that, a façade, the further into the game you get and the more choices and decisions you stack upon each other. As I progressed far into Act 2 and Act 3 it became a lot easier to make out the cogs in the system just as I had seen in all the other RPGs I had played. But at that point I was so sold on this game, so invested in the characters including my own avatar, that it didn't bother me. I was still determined to do everything and save as many people as possible on the Sword Coast, and after 140 something hours on my first playthrough I did just that. Unfortunately, the game does suffer a bit in Act 3, and really that is my only complaint with this game.
I had heard Act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3 did not stack up as well as the first 2 acts of the game. It was a long time until I reached the point where I could see it, but by the end of the game I had some noticeable experiences where I felt like the game could have handled its story threads better. The patch I was playing on at the time also had significant performance issues with Act 3 as well. It never ruined my experience, but at times it did take me out of the game. As I understand, these performance issues have been largely addressed post patch 5, but for the purposes of my review I was still impacted prior to this with Act 3.
Post patch 5, I absolutely love the ending of this game. The recently added epilogue was a much needed piece to the narrative. It brought each party members storyline to a much more satisfying end point, and it felt extremely personalized to me. It was exactly the ending I was hoping for and felt so fitting to my in-game experience and narrative I had been building in my head. I wish it had been there from the launch of the game, but I'm extremely grateful its here now.
I would also like to specifically compliment each of the writers and voice actors for the party members. Every single one of their storylines is compelling, and every single performance given is amazing. It's rare for an entire cast to knock their characters out of the park, but they all wildly succeeded. I loved them all.
To wrap this long review up: Baldur's Gate 3 was the most jaw dropping RPG i have played in a long time. My time with the game was some of my favorite in recent memory and I already feel that bittersweet sadness you experience when something you love has come to an end. It seems Larian Studios keeps adding things in updates to the game, so it'll be a game I continue to keep my eye on for a long time still.
Baldur's Gate 3 absolutely blew me away and ate up so much of my time this year. On the first week of the PS5 release, I sank an ungodly amount of time into this game, exploring every corner of Act I and trying to pick up on all of the diverse mechanics present. As someone who has never played DND before or any of the previous Larian Studios games, there was a bit of a learning curve, but that didn't matter; I was immediately immersed in everything Baldur's Gate 3 had to offer. For me, Baldur's Gate 3 offered an experience I so rarely have in games today. When I played Baldur's Gate 3, it felt magical.
Maybe it's odd to use the phrase magical to describe a video game, but I mean it sincerely. As someone who plays a lot of games and has had his fair share of experience with all sorts of RPGs, Baldur's Gate 3 feels special in the way that it is distinctly different from most of the other games in the genre. My largest gripe with most RPGs is the lack of consequences to the arbitrary choices they present to you. In games like Skyrim, you can be the Dragonborn, an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood, the Jarl of Whiterun, and the most powerful mage in the land. None of this means anything in the terms of the main narrative of the game. They are all side stories, disconnected in any meaningful way to the main storyline and your character's development/role within that story. Obviously I have played other RPGs since the release of Skyrim and this is a problem that permeates most RPGs at some level. There is simply no way to account for every single action you have taken as a player and have it meaningfully contribute to the narrative of the story. When I say Baldur's Gate 3 is magical, I say this because for a lot longer than I expected, I couldn't see this problem within the game. The game was a black box. Every thread I pulled on, even the most absurd ones, had some sort of worldly consequence, or was at least referenced back to in some meaningful way. It felt like this game was something that should have been impossible to make, and I absolutely loved it. The façade I'm describing does eventually show itself to be just that, a façade, the further into the game you get and the more choices and decisions you stack upon each other. As I progressed far into Act 2 and Act 3 it became a lot easier to make out the cogs in the system just as I had seen in all the other RPGs I had played. But at that point I was so sold on this game, so invested in the characters including my own avatar, that it didn't bother me. I was still determined to do everything and save as many people as possible on the Sword Coast, and after 140 something hours on my first playthrough I did just that. Unfortunately, the game does suffer a bit in Act 3, and really that is my only complaint with this game.
I had heard Act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3 did not stack up as well as the first 2 acts of the game. It was a long time until I reached the point where I could see it, but by the end of the game I had some noticeable experiences where I felt like the game could have handled its story threads better. The patch I was playing on at the time also had significant performance issues with Act 3 as well. It never ruined my experience, but at times it did take me out of the game. As I understand, these performance issues have been largely addressed post patch 5, but for the purposes of my review I was still impacted prior to this with Act 3.
Post patch 5, I absolutely love the ending of this game. The recently added epilogue was a much needed piece to the narrative. It brought each party members storyline to a much more satisfying end point, and it felt extremely personalized to me. It was exactly the ending I was hoping for and felt so fitting to my in-game experience and narrative I had been building in my head. I wish it had been there from the launch of the game, but I'm extremely grateful its here now.
I would also like to specifically compliment each of the writers and voice actors for the party members. Every single one of their storylines is compelling, and every single performance given is amazing. It's rare for an entire cast to knock their characters out of the park, but they all wildly succeeded. I loved them all.
To wrap this long review up: Baldur's Gate 3 was the most jaw dropping RPG i have played in a long time. My time with the game was some of my favorite in recent memory and I already feel that bittersweet sadness you experience when something you love has come to an end. It seems Larian Studios keeps adding things in updates to the game, so it'll be a game I continue to keep my eye on for a long time still.
The Delicious Last Course is a great DLC that got me back into Cuphead yet again. Almost all of the bosses here are some of the best this team has put out yet in terms of charm and quality of animation, and most are incredibly difficult. My biggest criticism of this DLC is how they implement this difficulty. I love a good bullethell bossfight, but with some of these bosses the levels aren't as readable as I would like them to be. The complaint I'm voicing is NOT that its hard to dodge these bullets, the complaint is that its hard to see the bullets themselves. The last boss of this DLC is a particularly poignant example of what I am describing as your eyes struggle to read both the background and foreground at the same time. None of the fights in this DLC are ruined by this design, but when you inevitably lose to some of these bosses it leaves a more frustrating feeling than most of the base game fights. All in all I had a great time with the DLC, and if your a fan of Cuphead you should play this DLC.
2001
It's a particular scourge on the video game industry that old games are not easily accessible without emulation. Since I don't have a PC build, I had to resort to paying more money than I should have to get just the PS2 disc with no case included. The Silent Hill 2 experience however was shockingly worth the hassle.
Silent Hill 2 is old and while it is one of the most prominent examples of its genre, psychological horror, you rarely ever see a game that looks quite like it. In game, the developers worked wonders with their use of shadow. Its impossible to completely hide that signature polygonal roughness that comes with the PS2 era games, but the first time I wandered the halls of the Silent Hill's apartment buildings I was completely blown away by how good the game looked. The fully rendered FMVs also work extremely well for this game. Graphically, they're leagues above what we see in engine, yet they have a surreal uncanny quality that feel intentional rather than a failing to capture realism. Silent Hill 2 is also rife with visual symbolism and absurdity that perfectly aligns with its visual style. Apartment doors leading directly into brick walls, basements below basements below basements, inky black pits that you must delve into over and over again, and water everywhere you don't want water to be. In this way, Silent Hill 2 creates a nightmarish vision that works because of the limitations on the hardware it runs on, not despite it. The visuals are also helped out a lot by the amazing audio work done for this game.
Out of all the things I was expecting out of Silent Hill 2, I was most surprised and floored by the quality of its audio design. I had previously watched a lets play of this game some 10 years prior to me actually picking up the game for myself, and while I remembered some of the visuals from that experience 10 years ago, I completely had missed out on the audio design. Despite not having headphones, this game still sounds amazing. I'm not just talking about the soundtrack produced by Akira Yamaoka, which may just be an all time favorite of mine now. While playing Silent Hill 2, you will experience a large range of sounds that get under your skin. At times you will hear a disorienting cacophony when faced with some of the monsters in this game, other times you'll be alone in the dark with the sound of dripping water that always sounds like its coming from the back of your real life room. Several times I actually paused the game just to make sure my house hadn't sprung a leak. It delighted me, it terrified me, it disoriented me, it made me paranoid. By even modern day standards, the audio design team deserves the highest of praises.
I don't want to conclude this review without at least touching on the story of Silent Hill 2, yet I don't want to delve to deep into either. It is easily the most interesting part of the entire game, but if I even dip my toes into it I know I'll lose the rest of the plot of this review by gushing over it. If you haven't yet played the game and would like to, just do it whatever way you can. The story covers extremely heavy topics so beware. I will say this: even knowing the big twist at the end of the game, I was still heavily invested in everything the game was presenting to me narratively. The effectiveness of the narrative is not placed in where it ends up, but rather the maliciously winding path it takes you on.
22 years late to the party, I don't have much to say about Silent Hill 2 that hasn't already been said 1000 times over. Everything that has aged poorly with the game has been outmatched by the wild success it finds with what it was trying to accomplish. Even by modern day standards this game stands above most psychological horror games. It's rare to see a game sync up audio, visual, and story telling themes so effectively to deliver one cohesive product, but Silent Hill 2 does it all.
Silent Hill 2 is old and while it is one of the most prominent examples of its genre, psychological horror, you rarely ever see a game that looks quite like it. In game, the developers worked wonders with their use of shadow. Its impossible to completely hide that signature polygonal roughness that comes with the PS2 era games, but the first time I wandered the halls of the Silent Hill's apartment buildings I was completely blown away by how good the game looked. The fully rendered FMVs also work extremely well for this game. Graphically, they're leagues above what we see in engine, yet they have a surreal uncanny quality that feel intentional rather than a failing to capture realism. Silent Hill 2 is also rife with visual symbolism and absurdity that perfectly aligns with its visual style. Apartment doors leading directly into brick walls, basements below basements below basements, inky black pits that you must delve into over and over again, and water everywhere you don't want water to be. In this way, Silent Hill 2 creates a nightmarish vision that works because of the limitations on the hardware it runs on, not despite it. The visuals are also helped out a lot by the amazing audio work done for this game.
Out of all the things I was expecting out of Silent Hill 2, I was most surprised and floored by the quality of its audio design. I had previously watched a lets play of this game some 10 years prior to me actually picking up the game for myself, and while I remembered some of the visuals from that experience 10 years ago, I completely had missed out on the audio design. Despite not having headphones, this game still sounds amazing. I'm not just talking about the soundtrack produced by Akira Yamaoka, which may just be an all time favorite of mine now. While playing Silent Hill 2, you will experience a large range of sounds that get under your skin. At times you will hear a disorienting cacophony when faced with some of the monsters in this game, other times you'll be alone in the dark with the sound of dripping water that always sounds like its coming from the back of your real life room. Several times I actually paused the game just to make sure my house hadn't sprung a leak. It delighted me, it terrified me, it disoriented me, it made me paranoid. By even modern day standards, the audio design team deserves the highest of praises.
I don't want to conclude this review without at least touching on the story of Silent Hill 2, yet I don't want to delve to deep into either. It is easily the most interesting part of the entire game, but if I even dip my toes into it I know I'll lose the rest of the plot of this review by gushing over it. If you haven't yet played the game and would like to, just do it whatever way you can. The story covers extremely heavy topics so beware. I will say this: even knowing the big twist at the end of the game, I was still heavily invested in everything the game was presenting to me narratively. The effectiveness of the narrative is not placed in where it ends up, but rather the maliciously winding path it takes you on.
22 years late to the party, I don't have much to say about Silent Hill 2 that hasn't already been said 1000 times over. Everything that has aged poorly with the game has been outmatched by the wild success it finds with what it was trying to accomplish. Even by modern day standards this game stands above most psychological horror games. It's rare to see a game sync up audio, visual, and story telling themes so effectively to deliver one cohesive product, but Silent Hill 2 does it all.