No More Expectations

Alright, third game I've played from the twisted mind of Suda51. You know, I'm starting to know why people are obsessed over him and his games. It's just "him", he's like Kojima's younger and unhinged brother (in a good way though). Just replace cinema references with geek culture references and there you have the big Suda51 energy, at least in No More Heroes. I couldn't really start this review without talking about it's mastermind, it's plastered everywhere and the "Punk" energy of professionally not giving much of a fuck and surpass any realistic expectations are without a doubt present in this game. Very authentic, to say the least.

No More Heroes is in it's very soul a hack and slash game. We take the control of an "Otaku", which is the term equivalent to nerd in Japan. Travis Touchdown is our protagonist, and our mission is to scale up in the rankings. The Assasins Association is our ticket to get to the top of the world of killers. But what does Travis search for really? What is our objective? Money, fame ...women? All of them? Won't answer that, it's a secret. But what do you really expect at the end, something deep? Or plain stupid fun? Both? You can interpret this game layers and layers of complexity the way you see fit.

There are two types of gameplay. The main one, which is the action focused hack and slash formula and the other one, taking a secondary role in the grand scheme of things is the open world in the same vein of any GTA game. The open world is needed to earn money to enter the next big fight and scale the aforementioned ranking. We get money by making odd jobs through the city of Santa Destroy (yeah, that's the city's name and is specially weird knowing I'm playing this game in particular after christmas). Law mowing, collect coconuts, scorpions among others activities. Alongside it there are plenty of shops to spend our money in, mostly in things that will help us on battles. These part-time jobs are in fact minigames in disguise that made an extensive use of the Wiimote, but as you may know I played this on PC and the novelty wears off a little. Fun Fact: The PC port was so lazily done Switch prompts can still be seen. A tutorial screen that is meant to teach how to play a minigame, has still a joy-con graphic attached to it. And you can't play this game with a keyboard either, which sucks.

In a way, No More Heroes makes me appreciate it's structure around what can you expect climbing up the ladders to the top. It's a constant reminder of your position or how close you're to the objective itself. I started to feel fatigue by the 7th boss or so, it gets repetitive doing the same odd jobs and earning money to then kill the next ranked assasin. Won't lie it was compelling at first, but it's really just superficail level stuff at the end of the day. Serves as a good rest after every bossfight, which can be lengthy and quite intense.

Combat is simple and mashy, but visually stimulating. There are no combo mechanics of any kind and the it's easily exploitable depending how much you love pressing buttons. Enemies explode in red, they bleed like their life depends on it while screaming like damn Looney Tunes characters. It's raw fun, totally in your face and is not afraid to show it's true colors. But as much as something raw is natural, nature doesn't forgive and is selective. What do I mean with this? If you can't swallow the jank that plagues this game's combat, you'll ended up like me hating some aspects of it.

What else is aunthentic? Travis Touchdown, main character. He's a loser, it's cool on it's own way and it is not afraid to show it. He knows is the protagonist of the story, and wants to give a good show to it's consumers. Has most of the attributes that defines a main character in an action game, it is a really good damn protagonist. Characters in general have no shame of being themselves in this game, they can be the most outrageous and wacky people alive as professional assasins and follows Suda51's tradition of making characters that are considered misfits by society shine the best they can, in a sadly short runtime before they get eliminated. The Bosses are very charming.

Just don't take it seriously, or you will lose. I'm not joking, No More Heroes is like going to the bathroom and take it all out. Won't be pretty, but it's authentic and natural at the of the day. I really didn't vibe with how it aimless it was, between being self-aware parodies of the media, or a wanting to tell an story in itself. Sometimes it even breaks most of those rules stablished before in seemingly "important" moments, just for comedic effects and laughs. Look, I don't know if the bitter one here or not but it didn't do much for me honestly it all felt pointless by the end. Was that really the meaning of it? You either love it, don't understand it or hate it. Thing is, I love shit like this. Dumb ass games that don't take themselves seriously are up my alley, as long as they've a good balance of course.

Love for what it stands for: "Punk". Don't play by the rules and do whatever you want. Even though I don't think Suda51 objectively makes "good" games that really appeal to the largest demographic group (doesn't need to either), I do feel he pour his heart out on each of his projects and wants to set a precedent on the industry as a whole. I just don't think is a good game in a otherwise very stylized and unique adventure. Or probably didn't fell into as much as the rest did.

Death with Legacy

Persona 3 Reload, as you may quite expect is a remake of Persona 3. Atlus hasn´t been particulary good with remaster or remakes, most of the time dressing them under re-releases with added content in top that can either add or take back part of the original experience. This was pretty common back then as they needed to have an excuse for you to buy that set game again, on a new console or the same with more content as sort of a "Revision". Persona 3 Reload is already the 4th official re-release of Persona 3 in general not counting mangas or the anime just the games themselves. Reload had a task of making itself stand out of the likes of Portable and FES re-releases, specially Portable which released last year with a lukewarm reception.

Reload instead of changing what made the original made special, it fixes key areas that made Persona 3 quite a chore to play in consequential playthroughs. Reload gives Persona 3 even more purpose to everything that the original stands for, while making it more enjoyable at a long run. It doesn't change any principals or adds a convincing new untold chapter or character, it is Persona 3 all over again but vastly improved. And believe it or not, Reload made me appreciate Persona 3 even more than I did originally. If anything I'd say Reload is a testament of how well Persona 3 story's aged throughout the years. It's one of those timeless stories that tackle a subject as human as it is natural and inevitable: Death.

Persona 3 was a game that I personally never connected with, over the years I had just bad experiences with everything Persona 3 related. I'd even say I never quite liked Persona as much other people do. It felt like old-fashioned, anitquated any synonyms you want to give it and for me at least wasn't up to what I expected from a modern JRPG and yes, I'm talking about Tartarus. It was the only reason that kept me from playing the original Persona 3 FES for so long. I did complete Portable last year when it came out. Now that I think about it, Persona 3 was the reason why I joined this page in the first place, check out my first review game is right there. I didn't connected with Portable either as it just was a slim-down version of the original Persona 3 that didn't quite live up to what a full console release could've been. This is what I been looking up for so long.

Everything here is new and lovely reworked. It takes inspiration from concepts that were present in Persona 5 to make this easier for newer audiences and refreshing for people that already experienced Persona 3 such as myself. One detail that made love Reload was the extra interactions or events that you can have with some of your teammates. They're not Social Links as it is not part of the same system, it is rather something extra but they quite work the same way. This opens up the possibility of having personal conversations with Junpei or Akihiko, even Shinji and Ken. I'd love to see that system implemented in future releases.

The original Persona 3 still has it's place on being the first game in a trilogy that sparked the popularity of Persona here in the west, and for being the game that modernize the series and gave it the distinctive charm that sets it apart from other SMT games. Reload will never replace Persona 3 at all, but it will stand tall alongside it's older brother as a celebration and the ultimate embodiment of the original release.

"As a longtime fan of the Armored Core soundtracks I am tremendously underwhelmed by AC6." "seriously what happened to the driving anthems from the last four games?! Stargazer isn't enough, I need m o r e."
- One Eternity Later -
THE DARKEST STARLESS SKY
BEGGING FOR THE LIGHT TO SHINE
(unintelligible)
Go! We just have to move on, go!
WELL, WE JUST HAVE TO GO
ALL WE WANTED
ALL WE NEEDED
ALL WE WAITED
ALL WE'VE GONE THROUGH
takes me anywhere, I go~

Now see? That's what I'm talking about. PATHOS! Too bad it's not actually in the game though. AC6: 7/10.