this is a review for specifically the port, i switched my save to this pc port briefly from the psp version just to try it out and this is like bafflingly bad port. not only is it all (bad) ai upscales, and they still use the low quality psp compressed audio, but also this is a game controlled with a cursor. and instead of making that cursor the mouse cursor, you know, the most obvious thing ever, they make it so you have to click and drag the cursor around with your actual mouse cursor. how on earth do you mess that up. genuinely what kind of level does the brain have to be operating at to not connect that. i mean obviously this was made with some dental floss and a piece of chewed gum but like having the mouse cursor being the cursor is like the bare minimum. come on. maybe im insane for writing all this out over such a small thing but like come on. come on. it's a cursor. its a cursor come on why did they make it like that come on, com

kinda surprised how much i wasnt completely sick of this by the end of it (to the extent that i even went back to play the alternate route, which was a big mistake!)
gains a lot of points for how this game involves practically zero grinding (with the exception of the ultimate personas, which are optional but still annoying to grind for) which is pretty uncharacteristic in my admittedly limited experience in the genre. the story was obviously nothing special but it too gains points in my eyes for how hilarious the dialogue is before every boss fight. it basically goes like this almost everytime
"this is my tragic backstory! don't you feel bad?!"
to which the main characters answer almost every time
"no. pussy. we're gonna fucking kill you bro. you're pathetic"
it never gets old it's so goddamn funny, it levels out to typical apologies and understanding, and stuff after the boss, but the pre-boss dialogue is still funny. maybe unintentionally so, but either way. and oh yeah obviously thats highly exaggerated do not worry prudes there are no uses of "the f word" in shin megami tensei persona, and they do not in fact directly tell people they are going to kill them they only do it indirectly and also imply they should've killed themselves

anyways this is all only for the main route, the snow queen route has none of this. lots of grinding, annoying save points, i mean i'm not opposed to limited save points but having easily the 4 largest dungeons in the entire game by a WIDE margin have zero save points in the middle is just annoying. especially for thanatos tower, which is just the worst. on the bright side, it doubles down on the dialogue before bosses. anyways, skip the snow queen route, play the main route if you want. :)

decided that i was going to sit down and beat this game today, with almost no guide (i ended up using one near end to get the 3 hearts i had missing before i went into dungeon 9) but other than that i did! i have a whole handmade map made with a pen and paper. check it out, here's mine. share yours in the comments. i wanna see your zelda map. if you don't have one, and you allegedly beat this game, you are a CHEATER and a FRAUD!
anyways this game sucks, i've noticed a pattern in third generation game structures. start is okay, middle is the peak of the game, which is usually also at best just fine, and then after that it rapidly goes downhill. i actually do not believe anybody at nintendo was actually sitting down and playing their games the whole way through after they were done. there's nothing as bad as like the metroid final boss, but they need to learn the human eye isn't supposed to fully focus on and track like 13 different things at once. there is an inordinate amount of cheap shots, especially by the goddamn wizrobes which can fuck off. especially when one hit gets rid of your most powerful weapon. i have no clue who decided that but its such a backfire that it's actually insane. getting more hearts makes you WEAKER because it makes it harder to get back to max, thus making it harder to get the sword beam back. what the hell were they thinking? imagine if you could only run in mario when you had a mushroom. anyways i could complain all day but this game stinks dont play it, unless you wanna play then play it.
anyways i'll leave you off on this tidbit, or a call for help or whatever. can someone PLEASE tell me what these hints mean. i have no clue.
"eastmost penninsula is the secret."
"there's a secret in the tip of the nose."
"10th enemy has the bomb."
"spectacle rock is an entrance to death"
"eyes of skull has a secret."
i have no idea what any of these were supposed to mean. so if someone could tell me it would be much appreciated just so i dont wonder for the rest of my life.

very very very much carried by the extremely tight controls and design that came from botw. all the new stuff falls completely flat for me, save ultrahand. the depths are so so boring. i could show you three screenshots of 3 corners of the depths. and tell you they were all the same spot from different angles, and you would believe me. reusing the map from botw is perhaps the biggest fumble in any game this high profile that i've played. maybe that's just me speaking as someone who 100%'ed that game twice, but for a sequel to a game based upon the wonder of exploring its open world, this game cannot even come close because i've seen it. sure, having caves around is cool, but i can't see a cave from miles away and be like "let's go there!" of course, it's still fun to explore anyway because again, the core controls are so strong that the act of going in a straight line is a fulfilling activity. the dungeons are the worst in the entire 3d series. literally you go around to 5 spots, and press the a button on each of them. i am not kidding, theres maybe like one actual puzzle in each dungeon. the new sage abilities (equivalent to the champion abilities from the last game) are more useful than botw's but implemented so obtusely that i never used any of them except for the wind power. imagine everytime you wanted to use one of the champion abilties, they would start trying to run away from you, and all of them were bound to the exact same button. that's what this game does, it's really crazy to me this game allegedly got a whole extra year of devtime for polish, and this was never seemingly brought up or changed.
the story is really harmed by the nonlinear presentation. theres many cutscenes which are basically rendered pointless because they only serve to recap information you already got just in case someone saw this one first. i don't really understand why this game even went with the nonlinear structure in the first place when you practically need to follow the exact order they want you to anyways. there was a point where i reached a dungeon early by complete accident, and got really excited. it was maybe the only moment in the entire game where i got the same feeling as finding a secret in botw's world. it was short-lived, as i soon found out that i couldn't actually do anything because i had to follow their pre determined story path first. why even let me go in the first place? just to fuck with me? i hate you! leave me alone!
the gameplay is more of the same, as of i've said before. ultrahand enables so many possibilities it's overwhelming to start. it's really fun trying a bunch of batshit solutions to any problem and the game just letting you do it. so many times i went into a shrine, got frusturated trying the "intended" solution, and went "screw this" and just used ultrahand to create some elaborate solution that was 100% way more hard, and complex to do, but also 100% more fulfilling. that's the main reason why half the shrines in this game are great. the other half stink. because they aren't shrines. why is there so many shrines where you go in, get a blessing, leave. what's the point. gone are the limited, but elaborate shrine quests from the original, and in comes the crystal walk. where you get a crystal, by defeating a boss at best, but most of the time just by walking over. then you bring it back. ta-da. i don't think a single one of these was entertaining, and there is WAY too many. others are just a blessing shrine for seemingly no reason? like you go in a cave, congrats here's your light thingy! why even have these at all? the thirty hearts in breath of the wild was already enough to practically never die, does this one really need 40? maybe it's just me, but personally i would be alright with them cutting out some of these disposable shrines even if meant a little more bare map. i do appreciate them cutting some of the time required to find these shrines since they use the same map, even if it means you have to spend more time exploring the depths to do it. by the way did i mention the depths are boring. the depths are boring!
the other side content is whatever. do you like collecting 10 apples to give to the "give me 10 apples!" man? that's good! heres 20 rupees and a warm meal for giving the 10 apples man 10 apples :) there's a few bigger ones that are fun, which i won't spoil, but nothing even close to the level of something like tarrey town from the first game. this game does have an equivalent of sorts, but it basically just amounts to putting a log through a hole 6 times. it's all pretty underwhelming stuff even if there are some standouts. theres a reoccuring side thingy where you have to help the worlds biggest moron figure out how to make a sign stand up straight, and i really enjoyed trying to find the most insane ways possible to get it to stand. i hate the koroks with a passion, and the new transport thing STINKS because i always feel the need to help them, even if i have to go in the complete opposite direction of my destination to do so. build your own damn mech you lazy bums!
in the end, i do still like this game, but i just wish it was more. i understand the circumstances of this games development, no doubt developing something of this complex, and of this scale would be incredibly hard, even if there wasn't a worldwide pandemic that no doubt disrupted the development. it's a miracle how polished this game is. outside of some framerate issues that can get pretty bad at times (can't wait for the next time i play this to be all on an emulator at 60fps just like botw!) and a reoccurring "issue" (if you can call it that) where the game froze briefly when transitioning from the surface to the depths, i encountered zero bugs. that is INSANE for the type of stuff i was doing in this game. up until this point, part of every physics based game was breaking those physics. i could not break this games physics, and i tried. that's pretty impressive! but i would have traded it all in a heartbeat for a brand new map, even if it entirely consisted of reused assets from breath of the wild. i mean hell, one of the best games in the series is all reused assets! could you imagine if instead of making majora's mask, they only released the master quest for ocarina of time? that's how i feel about this game. it's fun, it's really fun, it's really polished, but it's a really fun, really polished game where i feel like i've already seen all it has to offer before i even started it.

i'm not a person who thinks metal gear could only ever work with kojima at the helm but like a metal gear solid 3 remake is literally the safest route they could have gone to make another metal gear. old enough that they can go "wow arent these graphics pretty, sure are better than that old ps2 right!" but new enough that they dont actually have to come up with anything creative or new at all. 100% the konami board was like "we sure havent used this Intellectual Property in awhile! let's make a Remake because it is Trendy, just like everyone else!" and then probably pulled up some graph showing the Profit of the resident evil 2 remake or some shit.
it will be fine, but it will be completely sterile

using this as a stand-in for the "secrets of the revolution pack" since that's where this mission comes from. pretty bogstandard missions. 100% this was just cut content they shoved into a pre-order bonus. the american prisoner is completely unremarkable. the chemical revolution is one of the better paris stories, but nothing excellent. it is notable in one way, which is that it contains the first good tailing objective since assassin's creed 2. killed by science is one of the game's weaker murder mysteries.
i really struggle to recommend this even at the price of $1.75 on sale that i got it for. none of this is remarkable in the slightest, the game is packed with missions exactly like these. i guess get it if you want "the full experience" or whatever.

still pretty good, but very apparent that outside of unity, this game was by far the most impacted by the yearly release schedule. the side content is basically all collectables, and text based missions, the main story is basically unfinished, major points in the plot basically just end up being skipped over and going like "don't worry, it all worked out. moving on" including one particularly egregious example where you have to read the fuckin' database to figure out what the hell happened. the story has a lot of potential, but it misses the mark so often that it's just on the verge of being great. the voice cast on the other hand, is by far the best the series has ever had, and probably will ever have. the dialogue is natural, even when the story is blundering, every single actor and actress gives a great performance.
the parkour is still a downgrade from the original system, and although the levels are better designed around it in comparison to 3, this is brought down immensely by the fact that this games parkour is just downright busted. edward will NEVER go in the way you want go. EVER. couple this with the enemy sightlines having insane amounts of verticality, and the overabundance of tailing missions, and you have a recipe for some awfully frustrating moments.
luckily, outside of that, stealth is much improved, allowing for marking enemies, stalking zones placed at useful locations, alarm bells instead of a hivemind that instantly knows you were detected, etc. this is the first assassin's creed where trying to play stealthy is in any way bearable. combat is also improved, particularly the pistols are so much more satisfying than they were in ac3. the audio issues from 3 are still present though, resulting in hit audio being delayed, or at times just completely absent. you also get the rope dart way, way too late.
ship combat has been simplified for the better, and i still think that it's absolutely brilliant. the gameplay loop of upgrading your ship is addicting, and the ship combat itself is great. it's a puzzle of finding how to perfectly maneuver yourself to deal as much damage to as many ships as possible, and it is so much fun. i always thought ac3 messed up by letting ship combat basically be a side content only thing, and this game gives it the spotlight it deserved. my only issue is that, by the end, you get a little too powerful, and it's just not as fun when you can one shot all but the most powerful ships. i also think the de-emphasis on wind during battles makes it a little easier compared to ac3, but it's completely understandable given the open world nature of the game, compared to ac3's individual levels for ship combat.
assassin's creed 4 is still great, despite it's flaws. it could've used a bit more time in the oven, but that's true for basically every game in the series since revelations. the gameplay loop is addicting, the game looks great, (though the pc port is a bit broken) but the story has a lot of missed potential due to what i assume was time constraints. i feel like there must have been more to it, but it's also entirely possible the writers just don't know how to bring a story to a natural conclusion. is it an improvement on ac3? i'm not sure, but it's a great game in it's own right, which is all it really has to be.

better than anything in aveline's actual game. i can't really shit talk anything about it, and theres no reason not to play it if you own the game since its free. (that is, unless you're on xbox haha #ripbozo) just a fun bite sized assassin's creed level pack. though you can really feel how the parkour has gone downhill since revelations, in this (and a lot of the main game too) it's practically just uncharted tier hold the stick in the right direction to win. they need to bring back side ejects!

as quick disclaimer, this isn't my thoughts on the main game, just my thoughts on the remaster itself. i may write a full review of the main game but i don't have one at the moment. that being said, this is a fine way to play the game, honestly i don't see myself using the original version anytime soon over this, but plagued with a bunch of issues. namely a multitude of bugs still leftover for the original, lighting issues (there were multiple times i had to turn up my brightness because a cave was pitch black, despite the outside being lit just fine.) faces, which were already pretty bad in the original are even worse with the new lighting, looking incredibly inhuman, especially in bright lighting. eyes look like they're lit distinctly from the rest of the face, resulting in a distracting glow in dark scenes, and an overly bright bulging look in bright ones. it's very distracting in almost every cutscene. otherwise, the game looks very good. the frontier in particular benefits greatly from the new lighting, however it could stand to have a foliage increase. textures are sometimes still extremely low res xbox 360 textures. one particular scene has a close up shot on a piece of paper containing a list of names. the texture is so ridiculously low quality that the names were almost illegible. i remember being baffled they didn't update that list given there a prolonged shot focusing on it.
i hear the console version has frame rate issues, which is baffling to hear about a 7th gen game. the ps4 and xbox one are incredibly underpowered, 7th gen remasters have always been a staple of that, often they can't afford more than just a resolution bump to 1080p without crumbling, with a game like this that actually updates lighting, and textures, it's disappointing but no surprise they struggle, even though they really shouldn't, when games like spider-man, the last of us part 2, and god of war run flawlessly at 30, and some like metal gear solid V even run at 60. but i played on PC, so i won't speak anymore about that. my pc could easily handle the game at max settings. my fps counter said that there was some occasional 1-2 fps drops, but i didn't notice them. it actually ran better than brotherhood, and revelations from 2010, and 2011, both of which had occasional stutter. how much of that is down to this simply being more optimized for modern hardware, i don't know, but i do know i didn't have much issue with framerate on pc.
quality of life improvements are nice, namely this version's slightly improved HUD, and much improved weapon select, which no longer requires a full pause every time you want to change your weapon is nice, but what would've been nicer would be a revamp to the homestead convoy menu. it's still incredibly cumbersome to scroll through every individual item looking for the exact one you want every time. a simple search, or and actual list instead individual display would be much appreciated.
overall, nothing special about this remaster, a bit disappointing in many ways, but on the whole, i would say it's better than the original, though the fact the original still has the leg up in some departments is embarrassing for ubisoft.