Radshyguy
1991
Unlikely I'll finish this, strange since I finish pretty much every game I play. I got really frustrated near the end with a lack of directions and having to fight three damagesponge behemoths in a row, who knows maybe I'll return and update the review.
This game sucks I don't get the following it has. I can't speak for other FFs being better because this is the only one I've played far into, but it's just so bland. The party members are super bland and usually die five minutes after you get them (and then unceremoniessly come back another five minutes later) aside from the main character who has a little bit of an arc I guess and I don't know I guess Kain was a little cool. The story is kind of a basic rebellion thing that didn't invest me, and the combat is kinda whatever. Time-based battles was a new idea I'm glad this game influenced the growth of those, but man spellcasters are just so awful in this game that it feels like most battles are just me mashing attack, especially when at some points you have two or more spell casters. Their attacks miss most of the time so you can't do chip damage, spells that aren't weaknesses barely do anything or heal the enemy, most status spells flat-out do not work 90% of the time, and trying to scan the enemy for their weakness... Usually misses! This game just really does not have much going for it, how a lot of people consider this one of the best in the series is beyond me.
This game sucks I don't get the following it has. I can't speak for other FFs being better because this is the only one I've played far into, but it's just so bland. The party members are super bland and usually die five minutes after you get them (and then unceremoniessly come back another five minutes later) aside from the main character who has a little bit of an arc I guess and I don't know I guess Kain was a little cool. The story is kind of a basic rebellion thing that didn't invest me, and the combat is kinda whatever. Time-based battles was a new idea I'm glad this game influenced the growth of those, but man spellcasters are just so awful in this game that it feels like most battles are just me mashing attack, especially when at some points you have two or more spell casters. Their attacks miss most of the time so you can't do chip damage, spells that aren't weaknesses barely do anything or heal the enemy, most status spells flat-out do not work 90% of the time, and trying to scan the enemy for their weakness... Usually misses! This game just really does not have much going for it, how a lot of people consider this one of the best in the series is beyond me.
2019
They brought back National Dex. They really did it.
Pokemon Shield I thought was one of the worst games ever made. It really was just very boring and not as good as the other Pokemons, which are really good. But this one had no National Dex, and bad tree, and just bad game. But now, I play it again, and it is very good with National Dex. I love Pokemon, gameplay is very good and filled with subtlety. When you fire the water, the water is resistant. When you water the fire, the fire is hurt because water is put out by fire. It's this sublte design that makes the Pokemon series so great. This would have been a one star, maybe even half a star, if there was no national dex, which made this way weaker than other Pokemon games like the ones released between 2008-2012 when I was young and played them, but now it is really really good. The gameplay is wonderful, wonderfully developed characters like Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Maractus line the walls of this game, and it's overall just a delightful experience. 10/10, time to not play another game until the next Pokemon releases.
Pokemon Shield I thought was one of the worst games ever made. It really was just very boring and not as good as the other Pokemons, which are really good. But this one had no National Dex, and bad tree, and just bad game. But now, I play it again, and it is very good with National Dex. I love Pokemon, gameplay is very good and filled with subtlety. When you fire the water, the water is resistant. When you water the fire, the fire is hurt because water is put out by fire. It's this sublte design that makes the Pokemon series so great. This would have been a one star, maybe even half a star, if there was no national dex, which made this way weaker than other Pokemon games like the ones released between 2008-2012 when I was young and played them, but now it is really really good. The gameplay is wonderful, wonderfully developed characters like Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Maractus line the walls of this game, and it's overall just a delightful experience. 10/10, time to not play another game until the next Pokemon releases.
It may not be nearly as iconic as the original but I'd say this is easily the better game. The weapons are amazing and there's still some annoying enemies, but what hands down puts this over the original for me is that the chapters not only drag on way less, but also that there's not really a bad chapter in this game. Sure not all are amazing, this isn't Half-Life 2, but there's no real point where I just wished the game would end. Great time even if it was created by a pedophile.
1998
Kind of overhyped in my opinion. The core gameplay is solid and I love the atmosphere enough but the level design isn't really that great. The beginning is pretty good but there's a ton of chapters that just aren't very fun. On a Rail, Interlopers, Surface Tensions, and there's a lot of annoying enemies throughout the game. Some chapters tend to reeaaally drag on as well, especially with the ones I mentioned. The weapon selection is pretty cool, though.
2010
I think I could've hit auto on every battle and won but this game was surely a good experience. Short and focused too so I didn't get bored.
2021
I think it's impossible for Nintendo to make a 3D Mario on a home console that isn't a banger at this point.
2007
This is hands down my favorite Persona game by a mile, and also my first unsurprisingly. (Just a note I'll only be discussing the base game, as I haven't gotten around to The Answer. Been busy with other stuff.)
The RPG gameplay is great, sure Tartarus' layout is bland but it's pretty much the same as it is in Persona 4, and really a hub for me to get battles and find money is all I need even if I adore the complex, grand dungeons of Persona 5. The combat is addictive and fun as always, sure you can't directly control party members which is easily the biggest issue with the game, but tactics work just fine for me, especially when modern Persona gameplay is really just so great at its core. Also really liked some of the stuff exclusive to this game like splitting up party members on Tartarus floors and multiple attack types. Aside from controling party members, my only real big issue here is that some of the bosses are very annoying in the mid-to-late game. Not a ton of them, but some really got on my nerves (Sleeping Table).
As for the life simulator stuff, it's great here as well! It hasn't quite hit its peak with stuff to do, but it's fun to raise stats in the evening and to spend days talking with the homies. This is made wayy better because unlike P5 or especially P4, you go to Tartarus at night so you have way more time at day open that is rarely ever taken away by short, unecessary cutscenes. The social links themselves are kind of hit and miss, a few are bad, some are really solid, and a ton of them are just fantastic. Sun and Hermit are probably my favorite social links in the franchise, and they aren't the only great ones either.
The music is fantastic too, this is probably my least favorite modern Persona OST, partially because I hate having to listen to Mass Destruction the entire game, but it's just so good dude. Want To Be Close, the Tartarus themes, Battle Hymn of the Soul, and my favorite video game opening of all time, Burn My Dread.
I saved story and characters for last because my lord they did not need to go so HARD for this game. This story is one of my favorite in video games, period. Great twists, wonderful story arcs, amazing character development, high stakes, rich atmosphere, fantastic writing, heavy themes, and one of the best endings I've ever seen in my life. It's just amazing from beginning-to-end. And these characters? I get why people prefer the Persona 4 cast, but I think these guys just slightly edge out for me, mainly due to their great development. And "the gang" dude, Junpei, Yukari, Akihiko. They're all amazing, they all have such good interactions and development, especially Junpei who is one of my favorite characters ever. I'd like a little more goof off time with them but really what we have was already fantastic so I don't care. Not all the party members get as developed as others, but they're still solid enough so I don't mind.
What really hits me about Persona 3 is how immersive it is though. I don't know if it's the music or the fact I played it first, but while Persona 4 did definitely recapture a good chunk of this for me, I just could not put the game down. When I first sat down and played this game, blind as a bat thinking you fought demons, I sat and played it for six hours straight. Then after that aside from when my PS2 and game were screwing up for a bit, I had multiple days where all I did was play Persona 3. We're talking multiple days where I would just wake up and then play Persona 3 for 70-80% of the day, completely ignoring doing Driver's Ed. I especially remember when I got to the last month of the game, I woke up at like 10 or 11 A.M. and decided i was gonna beat the game that day. I went to bed at like I think 2 or 3 A.M. and I was just laying in bed thinking about how powerful this game was, how much fun I had in Tartarus, how moving the story was, how much I genuinely loved and cared about the characters and where they were going, and that absolutely perfect ending. What a special game this is. Persona 3 isn't just a game, it's an experience.
The RPG gameplay is great, sure Tartarus' layout is bland but it's pretty much the same as it is in Persona 4, and really a hub for me to get battles and find money is all I need even if I adore the complex, grand dungeons of Persona 5. The combat is addictive and fun as always, sure you can't directly control party members which is easily the biggest issue with the game, but tactics work just fine for me, especially when modern Persona gameplay is really just so great at its core. Also really liked some of the stuff exclusive to this game like splitting up party members on Tartarus floors and multiple attack types. Aside from controling party members, my only real big issue here is that some of the bosses are very annoying in the mid-to-late game. Not a ton of them, but some really got on my nerves (Sleeping Table).
As for the life simulator stuff, it's great here as well! It hasn't quite hit its peak with stuff to do, but it's fun to raise stats in the evening and to spend days talking with the homies. This is made wayy better because unlike P5 or especially P4, you go to Tartarus at night so you have way more time at day open that is rarely ever taken away by short, unecessary cutscenes. The social links themselves are kind of hit and miss, a few are bad, some are really solid, and a ton of them are just fantastic. Sun and Hermit are probably my favorite social links in the franchise, and they aren't the only great ones either.
The music is fantastic too, this is probably my least favorite modern Persona OST, partially because I hate having to listen to Mass Destruction the entire game, but it's just so good dude. Want To Be Close, the Tartarus themes, Battle Hymn of the Soul, and my favorite video game opening of all time, Burn My Dread.
I saved story and characters for last because my lord they did not need to go so HARD for this game. This story is one of my favorite in video games, period. Great twists, wonderful story arcs, amazing character development, high stakes, rich atmosphere, fantastic writing, heavy themes, and one of the best endings I've ever seen in my life. It's just amazing from beginning-to-end. And these characters? I get why people prefer the Persona 4 cast, but I think these guys just slightly edge out for me, mainly due to their great development. And "the gang" dude, Junpei, Yukari, Akihiko. They're all amazing, they all have such good interactions and development, especially Junpei who is one of my favorite characters ever. I'd like a little more goof off time with them but really what we have was already fantastic so I don't care. Not all the party members get as developed as others, but they're still solid enough so I don't mind.
What really hits me about Persona 3 is how immersive it is though. I don't know if it's the music or the fact I played it first, but while Persona 4 did definitely recapture a good chunk of this for me, I just could not put the game down. When I first sat down and played this game, blind as a bat thinking you fought demons, I sat and played it for six hours straight. Then after that aside from when my PS2 and game were screwing up for a bit, I had multiple days where all I did was play Persona 3. We're talking multiple days where I would just wake up and then play Persona 3 for 70-80% of the day, completely ignoring doing Driver's Ed. I especially remember when I got to the last month of the game, I woke up at like 10 or 11 A.M. and decided i was gonna beat the game that day. I went to bed at like I think 2 or 3 A.M. and I was just laying in bed thinking about how powerful this game was, how much fun I had in Tartarus, how moving the story was, how much I genuinely loved and cared about the characters and where they were going, and that absolutely perfect ending. What a special game this is. Persona 3 isn't just a game, it's an experience.
1994
There's no game series on Earth, possibly any media, that I think will ever match up to the Mother series for me. I don't know which game is my favorite, but all three games are just these beautiful works of art that resonate with me so well, and 2 is easily the one that represents the series the best. These games helped shape me as a person, and I can't thank them enough for that. I don't think everyone will love these games as much as I do, but I think this is a game you absolutely, 100% need to play.
2007
So it turned out that Tales of the Tempest was such a colossal trainwreck of a game that Namco gave the next DS game to Alfa System for development, a company that made some of the Tales spin-offs. This actually made me pretty giddy to give Innocence a chance. And after booting it up, I was still engaged! The game seemed really ambitious for a DS game, the main duo had kind of a funny dynamic going on, the combat seemed to build off Abyss well with sick air combos, and the story had kind of a unique concept for a Tales game. Playing through the first few hours, I honestly thought I was going to love this game, but overtime it just started to get worse and worse.
As for the story, it's solid but not really anything fantastic. I love the lore and how you get to see it pieced together throughout the game, but a lot of stuff in the present wasn't really anything special. Unlike Abyss or Xillia they dont really get you invested in the warring nations at all, the beginning has a bit too much exposition, and a large chunk of the game is going to different towns hoping to dig up important memories of the past, and I don't know I just thought that was kinda lame. Overall story I think could've been better, it's pretty close to greatness but I think it needed a bit more fine tuning, or who knows maybe I just couldn't get a feel for it because of my other feelings on the game. It kept my attention though, so that's nice.
As for the characters, they're pretty solid this time around. I wouldn't wanna die for any of them, but they have funny interactions and have a lot of strong memorable scenes. I think for Ruca himself I would have liked to see a bit more apparent development, but that's really my only big complaint. Pretty nice cast.
Anyway, this is where things get dirty, the gameplay. I'll start by saying the combat its self, in isolation, is pretty awesome, it might even be better than Abyss and Symphonia which this game was clearly basing its self after. That's pretty impressive for a DS game. The characters are fun to play as, you get good on ground and aerial options, it's fast-paced, there's some alright defensive options, every character has spells which I thought was a nice touch, it's solid stuff all around. The game translates the combat from the console games nearly flawlessly and even does it better in some ways. The highlight for me is the awakening meter, at first I thought this was a really lame overlimit that I would never activate in normal battles, but instead it charges up more than you think it would and you can turn the game into a mini combo contest where you can change characters at will trying to keep your pace up, it's really fun. I think if you took the core combat in isolation, it would easily be the best part of the game.
Okay now for the things that I don't like about the gameplay. As for combat, oh my god these enemies are annoying! First off, a large majority of them as the game goes on get waaaayyy too much super armor. I'd have times where I'd bust out a full three or four attack two arte combo and they would just sit there and then counter me. Enemey health can get comically large too which makes this even better, and they'll make sure to block all your attacks when they can too. Blocking attacks instead of dodging them for some reason also builds up your awakening meter, and with multihit attacks it fills up really quickly, which means that now for some reason tanking enemy attacks while blocking is more effective than just dodging them. You can always run from battles at least, but oh wait one or two hits will reset your escape time completely. Since the game is fair too, enemies get spells as well and for some god forsaken reason spells like lightning can't just be free runned out of most of the time, you'll need a perfect forward step to dodge spells like that so I hope you'll enjoy not escaping. Finally got a good combo going? Well for some reason the enemies have a rage mechanic so that when you finish your combo they'll just never ever lose their super armor and the stupid AI won't stop trying to attack them anyway. You won't have a wide variety of artes either, since they come in three levels instead of two and you can only equip four artes. This makes combos very repetitive a lot of the time, kind of downplays the feature of all your characters having both normal artes and spells, and makes more complex characters like Ange take a lot more menu time to play. Now I know some of these issues make it sound like I was underleveled, and you know what, you're probably right.
This game has a guild mechanic where you can go into these randomized dungeons and do the same two or three missions over and over again to very very slowly level up your guild level to get harder missions and better loot. You can also only do one mission at a time for some reason. This may sound kinda boring, and it is, but thankfully it's "optional". I say "optional" because I'm pretty sure the game just expects you to do it. I think that's the reason enemies were owning me so hard and also why a lot of the time I was way too short on money to buy equipment. Problem is, I didn't use it for a while due to it being silly optional content, so when enemies caught up to me, I had to go grind on mindless enemies in the guild and get two experience and two gald each battle for at least one or two hours. Even after that initial grind though, it was still taking forever to get any progress in the guild to make grinding not take forever. Later on I just gave up on trying to do guild quests and it really bit me in the butt in later dungeons especially. It sucks to stomach something so lame, but if you play this game please make sure to keep up with the guild so encounters are way less annoying. It's kind of like a pick your poison unfortunately, do boring guild quests or get annoyed by enemies, your choice.
Once you finally get out of the guild, enemies are less frustrating sure, but the dungeons are the real threat. The dungeons in this game are the worst in the series by a country mile, very few past the beginning are even okay. They're just giant mazes with the worst field encounters ever. I know random encounters get a lot of crap, but with the constant enemy spawns which half the time are on top of you and the linear hallways basically making it impossible to dodge battles, I think that this somehow proved an idea I never thought possible, that field encounters could be done poorly too. There's also this game's styles mechanic, where you can modify your characters' stats to be a certain type and learn skills for that type of fighter along the way. Defensive warrior in my experience is by far the best since it makes enemies way less likely to kill you due to your high health and defense and pretty good other stats, but this is a good concept at least if you ignore how effective that one is. It is however, hurt by the fact that most skills you learn on styles are kind of useless. You also have to change your stats just to get these skills you might want, so it's pretty annoying to have to turn characters into weak spellcasters for a handful of battles just so you can get a TP boost skill. It's not awful but this is easily one of the weakest skill systems I've seen in a Tales game.
Overall I think this game's just "alright", around the same tier as Phantasia and Destiny for me. While it's way less boring than those games and has a much better story and characters, the frustrating dungeons and enemy encounters really bring this game down for me, even if it has a solid story and great cast. Really though, I only recommend it to Tales fans, this game has been outdone multiple times by its own series. Probably by its remake too, when are we getting that overseas Namco?
As for the story, it's solid but not really anything fantastic. I love the lore and how you get to see it pieced together throughout the game, but a lot of stuff in the present wasn't really anything special. Unlike Abyss or Xillia they dont really get you invested in the warring nations at all, the beginning has a bit too much exposition, and a large chunk of the game is going to different towns hoping to dig up important memories of the past, and I don't know I just thought that was kinda lame. Overall story I think could've been better, it's pretty close to greatness but I think it needed a bit more fine tuning, or who knows maybe I just couldn't get a feel for it because of my other feelings on the game. It kept my attention though, so that's nice.
As for the characters, they're pretty solid this time around. I wouldn't wanna die for any of them, but they have funny interactions and have a lot of strong memorable scenes. I think for Ruca himself I would have liked to see a bit more apparent development, but that's really my only big complaint. Pretty nice cast.
Anyway, this is where things get dirty, the gameplay. I'll start by saying the combat its self, in isolation, is pretty awesome, it might even be better than Abyss and Symphonia which this game was clearly basing its self after. That's pretty impressive for a DS game. The characters are fun to play as, you get good on ground and aerial options, it's fast-paced, there's some alright defensive options, every character has spells which I thought was a nice touch, it's solid stuff all around. The game translates the combat from the console games nearly flawlessly and even does it better in some ways. The highlight for me is the awakening meter, at first I thought this was a really lame overlimit that I would never activate in normal battles, but instead it charges up more than you think it would and you can turn the game into a mini combo contest where you can change characters at will trying to keep your pace up, it's really fun. I think if you took the core combat in isolation, it would easily be the best part of the game.
Okay now for the things that I don't like about the gameplay. As for combat, oh my god these enemies are annoying! First off, a large majority of them as the game goes on get waaaayyy too much super armor. I'd have times where I'd bust out a full three or four attack two arte combo and they would just sit there and then counter me. Enemey health can get comically large too which makes this even better, and they'll make sure to block all your attacks when they can too. Blocking attacks instead of dodging them for some reason also builds up your awakening meter, and with multihit attacks it fills up really quickly, which means that now for some reason tanking enemy attacks while blocking is more effective than just dodging them. You can always run from battles at least, but oh wait one or two hits will reset your escape time completely. Since the game is fair too, enemies get spells as well and for some god forsaken reason spells like lightning can't just be free runned out of most of the time, you'll need a perfect forward step to dodge spells like that so I hope you'll enjoy not escaping. Finally got a good combo going? Well for some reason the enemies have a rage mechanic so that when you finish your combo they'll just never ever lose their super armor and the stupid AI won't stop trying to attack them anyway. You won't have a wide variety of artes either, since they come in three levels instead of two and you can only equip four artes. This makes combos very repetitive a lot of the time, kind of downplays the feature of all your characters having both normal artes and spells, and makes more complex characters like Ange take a lot more menu time to play. Now I know some of these issues make it sound like I was underleveled, and you know what, you're probably right.
This game has a guild mechanic where you can go into these randomized dungeons and do the same two or three missions over and over again to very very slowly level up your guild level to get harder missions and better loot. You can also only do one mission at a time for some reason. This may sound kinda boring, and it is, but thankfully it's "optional". I say "optional" because I'm pretty sure the game just expects you to do it. I think that's the reason enemies were owning me so hard and also why a lot of the time I was way too short on money to buy equipment. Problem is, I didn't use it for a while due to it being silly optional content, so when enemies caught up to me, I had to go grind on mindless enemies in the guild and get two experience and two gald each battle for at least one or two hours. Even after that initial grind though, it was still taking forever to get any progress in the guild to make grinding not take forever. Later on I just gave up on trying to do guild quests and it really bit me in the butt in later dungeons especially. It sucks to stomach something so lame, but if you play this game please make sure to keep up with the guild so encounters are way less annoying. It's kind of like a pick your poison unfortunately, do boring guild quests or get annoyed by enemies, your choice.
Once you finally get out of the guild, enemies are less frustrating sure, but the dungeons are the real threat. The dungeons in this game are the worst in the series by a country mile, very few past the beginning are even okay. They're just giant mazes with the worst field encounters ever. I know random encounters get a lot of crap, but with the constant enemy spawns which half the time are on top of you and the linear hallways basically making it impossible to dodge battles, I think that this somehow proved an idea I never thought possible, that field encounters could be done poorly too. There's also this game's styles mechanic, where you can modify your characters' stats to be a certain type and learn skills for that type of fighter along the way. Defensive warrior in my experience is by far the best since it makes enemies way less likely to kill you due to your high health and defense and pretty good other stats, but this is a good concept at least if you ignore how effective that one is. It is however, hurt by the fact that most skills you learn on styles are kind of useless. You also have to change your stats just to get these skills you might want, so it's pretty annoying to have to turn characters into weak spellcasters for a handful of battles just so you can get a TP boost skill. It's not awful but this is easily one of the weakest skill systems I've seen in a Tales game.
Overall I think this game's just "alright", around the same tier as Phantasia and Destiny for me. While it's way less boring than those games and has a much better story and characters, the frustrating dungeons and enemy encounters really bring this game down for me, even if it has a solid story and great cast. Really though, I only recommend it to Tales fans, this game has been outdone multiple times by its own series. Probably by its remake too, when are we getting that overseas Namco?
Love letter to everything Nintendo and a little more. The fighting mechanics were outdone by future games but this is counteracted by having a spectacular singleplayer experience. There's so much to collect here, to unlock, and just to do, I have over 500 hours on this game, and sure I wasn't trying to 100% it as a kid, but the fact there's still so much I haven't done despite that is amazing to me.
Game's got so much lasting appeal, heck I even still sometimes boot it up to play with friends, sure maybe a little nostalgia is in play there but even if later games are better there it's still pretty dang fun. Covered in charm too, the weird dated Twilight Princess/Half-Life 2-esque graphics aren't really great but I don't know I really love all the detail on stuff here and it just has some weird special appeal to me. Ultimate brought it back a little bit but I don't think Smash felt nearly as special to just... Experience after Melee and this game and felt more like just a fun party game. Those games are great, don't get me wrong, but Brawl is more than great party game to me, it's an experience.
Also Lucas up-smash hits the top platform in battlefield and this one and I find that really funny.
Game's got so much lasting appeal, heck I even still sometimes boot it up to play with friends, sure maybe a little nostalgia is in play there but even if later games are better there it's still pretty dang fun. Covered in charm too, the weird dated Twilight Princess/Half-Life 2-esque graphics aren't really great but I don't know I really love all the detail on stuff here and it just has some weird special appeal to me. Ultimate brought it back a little bit but I don't think Smash felt nearly as special to just... Experience after Melee and this game and felt more like just a fun party game. Those games are great, don't get me wrong, but Brawl is more than great party game to me, it's an experience.
Also Lucas up-smash hits the top platform in battlefield and this one and I find that really funny.
2008
Nostalgia bait that removes mechanics people liked and thinks placing spikes everywhere or having stages that are enetirely disappearing blocks is what made NES games fun. It isn't. This game isn't "Nintendo hard", it's "bad NES design."
I have over 500 hours in this game from when I was a kid yet I get bored with it in 20 minutes. Pokemon's just so boring man, I really want to love it like I did as a kid but I just can't do it.
2013
There is a below average length level in this game, it's like 8 minutes long or so, where you the majority of it is Sonic in the asteroid form jumping on non-moving, vertical platforms in a circle with no hazards or anything. The fact that people think this can even be compared to the WIi U version is a joke.
Gameplay is okay I guess. $16.50 for six songs is not okay, Square Enix.
The king of games where you start off having no clue what you're doing and then given enough time you become a god at it. I have a few issues with this one, I don't like the radar being nerfed from the first game, I think the levels are inconsistent in quality, I think mechs should have started with the hover, and some of the 100% missions suck, but overall this game is just really fun. Direct upgrade from SA1 not gonna lie.