Unpopular opinion: Mass Effect 1 and 2 should have been visual novels instead of proper games. The gameplay feels like such a chore in both ME1 and ME2. It's just corridors and shooting very limited enemy types. The only thing that carries those games is the choices and the world -- both of which you can have in a visual novel. Also, ME2 doesn't really have a story??? It's just one long recruiting mission where you're prepped for ME3.

Mass Effect 3 is the only game in the trilogy that feels like a game. It's where it all comes together. The gameplay is solid and tight, and the story is moving fast.

I think this trilogy is overrated af because we didn't really have games where your choices actually mattered across the entire trilogy.

The lore and the world is pretty good though! And this is a pretty great remaster, not gonna lie.

(marked completed, but I only finished 2 of the 16-stage loops. I'm not masochistic enough to get to 256 stages)

On the recommendation of a friend, this is one of the first games I'm playing that's older than me if only by a smidge. Despite its age, the unorthodox movement and attack methods make the gameplay feel surprisingly fresh. The game is great at communicating its rules to the player, and the end result is a game that's easy to pick up and learn, difficult to master, and varied enough that it doesn't feel as limiting as other classic games (Pac-Man for example). Also the theme song slaps.

Megaten's best repackaged for a new generation

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne is one of my favorite JRPGs of all time. It's a game I always think about and something I always bring up in conversation when I talk about what games people should play in my personal experiences. What the game lacks in story manages to excel in everything else: The world, the soundtrack, the gameplay, a game you really can't lose focus on unless you want to be punished on (at least on Hard mode). I completely understand that the initial price and what it adds and the disappointment from the longtime fans when they realized this remaster was looking more like a "port" compared to other JRPGs remasters like FFX and FFXII to the complete remakes like Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition which costs just as much or less than this version of the game at the moment. Nonetheless despite all that and the little it adds in the grand scope of things, it's Nocturne with voice acting and skill inheritance with the only caveat being Dante is replaced unless you got a DLC.

Gonna start by saying the voice acting here in the remaster is actually solid, there are some really "off" moments with I think one of the main characters not sounding appropriate for the character itself. It shines the most with the most imposing demons and bosses where you can actually feel the "power" of the demon speaking especially in the final boss and the "extra" boss after. Skill inheritance makes things a lot more convenient in terms of fusion and being able to make the demons the way you want them to the point I probably won't return to the PS2 version of Nocturne for this reason alone.

Sadly though this remaster isn't perfect or doesn't do enough to have "remaster" in the title, the game gets an upscale and widescreen support but sometimes the game uses some dynamic resolution during attacks in battles and makes things blurry albeit keeps the game smooth which is important. The game doesn't really add anything here thus being the same game content-wise to the Chronicles version at default which has Raidou and TDE which I'm alright with but it's also disappointing Dante has been relegated to DLC considering it's especially in the version the west was introduced to. The compressed music from the PS2 is still here despite the original reason the PS2 version was compressed to begin with was because of memory issues which shouldn't be a problem with modern consoles. The small nitpicks here are that sometimes when you interact with an item/person, you get a black screen for like less than second and it only got a bit annoying at most and the game only had a few slowdowns during scenes and a certain part of a dungeon but the impact is small since it only lasted a couple of seconds at most.

After 55 hours of playing the Switch version completely in portable mode, I can say the game has never crashed on me once and I was sorta expecting one at some point but it never came. For what the remaster flounders for me which isn't that much, the additions of voice acting and skill inheritance made it worth it in the end. I can say it's the better version of Nocturne but get it when it lowers in price or get it via other means if you want. Despite it all, it's still Nocturne in the end of the day and it's still one of the best JRPGs in the medium of video games.

When you riff off of something in design philosophies according to gameplay and themes it's really important that one actually hold true to that foundation and/or offer something actually unique. Salt & Sanctuary understood 2d spacing and level design when it came to a slow methodical action platformer. Blasphemous seems intent on knowing nothing at all.

What's the point of having a disgustingly powerful parry and dodge when the enemies have ridiculously slow attacks and are placed in such easy not very interesting locations? What even is enemy placement here? What's the point of making platforming punishing for failure when the platforming isn't interesting? Why copy the structure of ringing the bells at all?

I had to ask myself these questions while I played a lot as I searched for an answer on why I was playing this game at all other than the indie buzz that barely caught my ear. (4.5/10)