Did not finish but THOROUGHLY enjoyed every minute of this game. Just goddamn fun as hell and bright and odd. I must protect my kirbs.

I have never more wanted a refund of my time than with this game.

I've never played a game that dove so heroically to save mediocrity from the jaws of greatness.
I would add a whole other star if Ryuji was deleted from this game. I've never hated a Persona character more, not even Yosuke when he went full Joker Mode.
If the Royal bonus campaign was the real ending of the game, replacing [SPOILER] this would be a four star. The Royal bonus campaign is leaps and bounds better than the base game, but you need to play eighty FUCKING hours to reach it, so I can't even truly rec it.

I have such mixed emotions on this game. It's a huge undertaking, a long story with a lot of peaks and valleys. I think it both is as homophobic as people say and also not nearly as bad as its reputation claims.
The game frankly feels every episodic and some episodes are great and some are so bad you want to obliterate them from your memory.
I was very cold on the Actual Ending because I think the "mastermind" of the plot sucked compared to the actual killer (GOD WHAT A GREAT VILLAIN, LOVE THEM). This game could be 15 hours shorter honestly.
And the MC of this game fucking sucks, full stop. Going from P3P to P4G is a horrible whiplash, mostly around how bad the protagonist is. If you're going to have a boring-ass protagonist with no personality, why not at least lemme play a girl, I mean.
But at the end of the day, it has Kanji Tatsumi, the best character in any Persona game, so.

For the love of god please ignore all these people crying about lack of anime cutscenes. The presentation of P3P is stripped down, sure, but the actual writing is so much better.
I'm begging people: PLAY THE GIRL. PLAY THE GIRL. It is absolutely BATSHIT to me that if you play the boy in P3 you miss out on such a tremendous amount of content. The reason to play Persona over other JRPGs is the characters and writing, and Girl Route feels like the final draft to the Boy Route's rough draft. I cannot get over the fact that you miss out on every male party members' S-Link in boy route.
Also there's been multiple moments where this game has made me sit back and actually admire its writing. Junpei's S-Link eventually comes to (spoiler) him going "Hey, I jumped into this situation to take control because I want people to take me more seriously and not just think of me as a goofball, but in doing so I cut you out and that wasn't respectful to you, and I'm sorry." Which is a fairly complicated emotional moment you literally will not get if you don't PLAY THE GIRL.
I'd rather have better writing and characters than anime cutscenes, sorry.

The best game that GameFreak has ever made. Not even kind of kidding.

This really is more of the same but glitzed up and prettier, and that's great! But playing it made me realize what I actually liked about SL1 is the slow exploration of strange places. Maybe later they will add something like the ancient ruins and the huge slime door and the Glass Desert, but at the moment it's just not the thing I want from it.

Very positive experience. The fact the game gave me an item to do the classic Link's Awakening screen warp glitch was catered to people like me, and I do not mind.
Also I was kind of impressed at the tone? From the intro I feared we were gonna be in the thick of edgelord dark humor, but honestly it's really well balanced.

5 starts for the complete game with the expansion packs. To be clear: I am so sick of this company releasing half-baked games that you have to wait multiple years to be actually complete. Never ever ever pay full price for a Firaxis game and never buy it in the first three years.

If you think FF8 is the best FF, I'm reaching across time and space to high five you.

What if Moonlighter was better and more anime

The first ending I got was the one where you eat the candy girl. Fantastic.

Shelving for a terrible shallow reason but the UI is just really really really rough. I love the designs and the combat seems fine. I think this team's next game will be very good.... if they get a UI person.

2022

I would have given it 5 stars if they just cut all the creepy stealth sections. I had no interest in the more gamey elements of the game, and was far more interested in picking apart lore and meeting nice robots. Also I weirdly was put off when the game veered into straight up body horror? Eh. Play for the hub areas and the lovely robots, rush through the connecting parts.

I feel like this is a necessary play for anyone who is a creator or a fan. It's only an hour, maybe an hour and a half long, and it's the most affecting story I know.