Will forever be known to me as a game i played ONLY during every single one of my Jewish Studies lectures. Im not even Jewish so i cant begin to tell you how i ended up in that class but this was the only thing i looked forward doing at 10:55 - 11:30am tuesdays and thursdays every week. Today was my last day of class so it was either I beat the game today or i take another class about the Jewish religion. There was no better option.

Fun game though if not a little confusing at times which is why it took me so long to beat it, though the game does have hints which i used religiously because between learning about pangrea or whatever my professor was talking about and me not knowing the geography of Japan i couldnt hope to keep up... Then i would have had to take a second Jewish culture class. The zones are pretty open at times and normally i would find this to be boring but the music was very good so i didnt really care much... either that or i was just so bored that anything was entertaining. The tight corridor areas were extremely fucking annoying due to the god awful camera

This game also does that Final Fantasy V shit with the humor where they do an attempt at comedy and nobody laughs but instead of playing this it just plays a laugh track (<-- thats a laugh track in case any of you didnt know) and unfortunately im a sucker for shitty jokes so this appealed to me. I think beating this game was more of an accomplishment to me than completing the course

I’ve known about this game for a minute and just avoided it because of the cover art. It didn't really look like my kind of game. What reminded me of this game's existence was seeing a tweet around a week ago that Wild Woody was added to an NSFW kart racing game. I had to do a double take, but it was actually real. I shouldn’t be surprised considering the name of the game, but, like, wow. I consider myself to be a fan of the Sega CD, so I did want to give this game a try.

The controls are some of the worst I’ve seen in the medium. When jumping, Woody stutters when rising and falling, so it ends up feeling like you’re rubber banding in an online game. Woody’s main form of attacking is jumping on enemies, which will play out an animation where he sinks into the enemy while erasing them from the level. There’s been times where I would try jumping on enemies upwards of 5 times in a row and it would still not register! He’s also got this sketch ability where you’ll have to press the pause button, flip through the sketch book to find the ability you want to use, and activate it, which plays out an animation. Admittedly, a cool idea, but badly integrated since you can only use 2 of these before having to get a powerup later in the level. For the most part, these are useless in the sense that they obstruct the flow of the game and are never good enough to where you’d even think of using them instead of just damage boosting through whatever enemy is in front of you. Abilities are mostly some awkward projectile or something that transforms you into something for more jump height and movement speed, all controlling as bad if not worse than your standard form. For example, there’s ones that turn you into a kangaroo and hobby horse.

This game is not good in the level design department either. Wild Woody has the design philosophies of Sonic CD with these large, incoherent mazes I’ve gotten lost in for some embarrassingly long times. Also cluttered with enemy placements that, at times, make taking damage feel unavoidable. It’s so bad you’re better off just damage boosting through everything since you’ll probably take more damage trying to avoid them. The enemies also really like throwing unfair projectiles, which you can’t even avoid at times. It’s evident this game was a rush job, and the stage design really makes that show. I get the vibe that they made the levels and didn’t even try playing through the game because a ton of stages have platforming segments that are way too awkward to perform consistently. In the Mount Olympus stage, there is a part where you literally have to take a leap of faith and hope you land on a small platform instead of falling below the area and having to climb back up again. I haven’t mentioned yet that Woody has an ability where he can erase areas of the map to find secrets and progress through the stage. That’s fine; at the start of the game, they highlight these areas to let you know you can erase them, but past level 1, they never mark them again. So, there are areas I’ve gotten trapped in where you just have to waste time guessing where the erasable floor or wall is. Funnily enough, they also increase the time to do so in later stages if it wasn’t already cryptic enough, because then you’ll have to wait longer to erase things with no prior indication.

First impressions of the music from stage 1 sound bad initially, but make more sense since Ron Thal who did the music, said that he made the soundtrack start off silly and progressively get more intense throughout. So even though the first song sounds like a prog rock cover of a nursery rhyme, it does start to pick up the pace with the later stages. My favorite songs are the space stage theme and this song that went unused due to a presumed programming bug. It's a bit goofy, but the high-tempo drums and the piano make for a pretty kickass boss theme, so it’s sad this song didn’t make it in.

How was this released?! Ristar literally came out earlier in the year, and this was supposed to be the swan-song for the Sega CD? How unfortunate… It’s a shame because I think this game had the potential to be pretty cool. I also think it's hilarious that the platforming mascot shit got so out of hand that they made one for a fucking pencil… At least the soundtrack is good.

I want to preface this by saying that I play my games without using Google or any emulator cheats (fast forward / save states / actual cheats) because I feel that by using them, I’m disregarding the game’s design. From my understanding, people use them either because they have limited time to play games or they’re simply impatient and don’t want to deal with archaic design. To both ends, if you truly care about a game and are enjoying your time with it, why rush through it and ignore the pacing of the game? That’s not to say you can’t enjoy a game while fast forwarding and the like, for some it might help them enjoy it more… for me however, it ruins my enjoyment of the product.

I emphasize the above because the contacting system is abhorrent and easily the worst part of this game. I think it worked fine enough in the first game even if it was easily abusable and barebones, but this is just needlessly grindy for absolutely no reason. How it works is each character has 4 unique contact options that you can use to talk to a demon, given that you have 5 characters throughout the game, it easily becomes overwhelming. Depending on the personality of the demon and contact you chose, you will elicit an angry, happy, eager, or scared reaction. The goal is to make them eager so that you can get their arcana’s spell cards, though if you make them happy before doing so, you will get free cards that can be converted into any arcana card type in the velvet room. You can only have 3 happy demons at any given time as the would-be “buff” stays constant throughout the game, unless you make them angry, which is very easy to do. On random occasions, including at the very start of a battle, a demon will start talking to you, except during these sequences you pretty much have to guess what the correct answer is because they ask you questions like “if you were an animal what would you be human dog demon” and on my life I picked every single possible option for multiple demons, and they were all fucking wrong so i think it’s bugged or something. While that’s annoying, I found the fusing system to be fun, assuming I had enough cards to make what I wanted to make. I like the emphasis on spell cards, but I would be lying if I said I preferred this over the modern fusion systems, even though the game is hardly balanced around them.

On the topic of balancing, it’s all over the place. I played the PS1 version which is harder than the PSP remaster according to everyone, and for a good portion of the game all I was doing was getting into random encounters, even boss fights, and just auto battling. To extend on that, the combat system is centered around auto battling. You set your characters moves and press start battle. You can stop the auto battle whenever you want and check the turn order of your party members so you can plan your attacks accordingly, but outside of the final boss I pretty much turned my brain off the entire time, save for a select few instances. I don’t like this system because more than any RPG I’ve ever played, I get little to no reward or satisfaction mainly because I’m not pressing buttons as often. While some might see that fact as a good thing, I see it as mundane and boring. I make it sound bad, but in reality it barely affected me and it’s not like the difficulty is completely nonexistent, it’s there I just found it incredibly easy and manipulable is all. That final boss is some bullshit though. Game goes from being easy for about 15 hours to being extremely tedious and hard for no reason? Boring as hell

THE RUMORS SUCK. The system is there to remind you that the story involves rumors, and it fucking sucks. I don’t like talking to rumor mongerors with the clunky ass text boxes that plague the entire game and just don’t skip properly just to hear that Bimble Fuck Joe is selling his Sweaty Ass Shirt for 3 yen cheaper. Same people who defend this shit are the people who say Drakengard is a masterpiece because the gameplay sucks on purpose or whatever. I’m heavily overblowing it and this was hardly an issue because i did it twice throughout the entire game but it just made me realize how much i hated the textboxes in this game. Going back to that demon happiness shit for a second, if you have 3 contracts (3 happy demons) then the demon you’re currently trying to contact will ask you to replace one of the contracts so that they can be added, and for some god awful reason the developers thought it would be funny to have the dialogue option to appear at the least opportune time so that almost every single time I press the A button to progress the dialogue, the options appear and I annul the wrong contract. Every. Fucking. Time. Even when i'm careful I still somehow fuck it up. Yes, I know, skill issues and many such cases. Shit was made to make me fall asleep im not even going to lie spread a rumor to make my bed more comfortable. Booking the luxury suite at the Innocent Inn™ if it doesn't become a reality (joke donated by @Zotol)

Now that I aired my grievances, I liked the characters! I think they’re easily some of the best and most realistic ones in the series. I loathe how the modern persona games have these uninteresting and almost repetitive characters that for the life of me I just can’t give a single fuck about half the time, and for the first time I actually found myself caring about the issues and problems these characters are facing. They may not be as realized or fleshed out in this game as I would have liked them to be, but they were nonetheless impactful, more so than half of the slop the modern games shoved down my throat and I’m sure they will be even more amazing in the sequel. There's more I could go into and I made the game sound a lot worse than it actually is but the reality is that I'm mincing my words in fear of spoiling people, so it might sound like I'm not complimenting the game enough. The reality is that it does have good qualities but I also don't feel like I'm at a position where I can collect my thoughts and judge the game's story based without having played the sequel, so I won't. It's pretty good though, if not paced strangely at times. It's also incredibly hard to take this game seriously when iykyk is the villain. I'm serious if you don't know shit about this game go play it right now and prepare to have the craziest whiplash ever

I'm not going to lie though that PSP version is probably better because the god awful fan translation for this game gave characters different during different points in the story and I could never tell who was who.. Aside from that, the music was alright. Just alright. Few stand out tracks but I’m not foaming out of the mouth for anything. The PSP soundtrack sounded better from what I heard, and I’m probably going to play the PSP version of Eternal Punishment after my exams.

If you played the PSP versions of Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment, WITHOUT SPOILING, what does the save transfer do? Is it important or can I just play EP on PSP without it

Final Fantasy VII? Yeah, it's got clout for days as the RPG that changed the game. But let's spill the tea: when you really get down to it, it's not all that and a bag of chips.

First off, the gameplay mechanics are kind of a vibe check. The materia system? Innovative, sure, but also kinda sus, making things more complicated than your last relationship. And don't get me started on the random encounters – talk about a major oof! They're like that one person who keeps interrupting your story, totally killing the vibe.

Now, about that pacing... Yikes! It's all over the place, like trying to binge-watch a show that just can't stick to its plot. And those graphics that were once everything? Sorry, but they've aged like milk. For real, it can be a struggle to get into the story when it feels like you're watching a vintage pixel dance-off.

But here's the real tea: the soundtrack. I know, I know, it's got its stans, but hear me out. That overuse of string sections? It's not giving what it was supposed to have given. Instead of serving epic fantasy realness, it kinda ends up feeling like the same track on repeat – major yawn.

So, let's keep it 100: Final Fantasy VII is iconic, but it's also kind of a hot mess. The gameplay's got more twists than a soap opera, the pacing is trying to find itself, and the soundtrack? Babe, it's just not it.

In the end, while FFVII will always have its name in the lights, it's not the undefeated champ of RPGs it's hyped up to be. It's more like that throwback track you bop to for the nostalgia but skip for something with more vibes. So, is it worth the hype? IMO, it's a no from me, dawg. #SorryNotSorry

We’ve been starving for a new 2D Mario game for a minute now. I’ll save you all from me bitching about NSMB, as I’m pretty sure everyone is aware of those games at this point. I was ecstatic to see this revealed at the Nintendo Direct it was presented in with its profound new artstyle, but I started to get weary of the footage from the trailers as to if it was going to suffer the same design problems as the NSMB games did with its spacious stages to account for multiplayer.

Levels are very spacious, and Mario Wonder is definitely best played with others because of this. They’re not as broad as something like NSMB Wii, but a lot of sections don’t have much going on in them. It’s a good medium, though, as I get that it’s hard to make levels that work well for 4 players and 1 player at the same time. There’s no player collision in this game either, which makes multiplayer pretty hassle-free. I played through the game by myself and tried multiplayer for a bit, and even though multiplayer is more fun, it was still great to focus on getting 100% as a single player experience. You honestly miss out on a lot if you don’t 100% this game; there’s secret exits, flower coins (which are this game's star coins), and stuff like reaching the top of the flagpole even counts for 100%, and a lot of stages will use their gimmick at the end accustomed around reaching it, kind of as a level design progression to see if you’ve mastered the stage. Stuff like this is why I really appreciate Mario Wonder’s game design, and it’s clear there was a lot of work put in to make these stages all feel unique. 

The double-edged sword of why I really like and don’t like Mario Wonder, though, is its badges. Kind of being a bit of a reference to Paper Mario, this game has a bunch of badges that will grant your character a unique ability, some much better than others. The first one you get is a Parachute Cap, which lets you hover and can also be used to float back onto walls as an infinite wall climb, making a later badge basically useless. A lot of these badges, most notably the boosting spin jump badge, can be used to cheese a lot of the game's secrets and ignore a lot of the game's level design. There’s also stages designed around the badges, and a few are honestly some of my favorites in the game. Stages designed around these new mechanics usually have two per badge, the first of which is a tutorial of sorts and the second to see if you’ve mastered it. One of my favorites was the second wall climb jump stage, which is basically Getting Over It if it were a Mario stage. These stages had me thinking, “Why hadn’t they integrated some of these new mechanics into the movesets?”. A perfect one to have added to the moveset would have been the Dolphin Kick, which would have actually made the water levels fun for once, offering a new, faster-paced movement style. 

Other additions to Mario Wonder are its three new power-ups and the Wonder Flowers. The new power-ups are all really fun, my favorite being the elephant, since I kind of like having a strong melee attack in platformers. It kind of goes against Mario’s whole gimmick of stomping on enemies heads, but it is a power-up, and you can lose it, so I was trying to keep it as best as I could. Then there’s the Wonder Flowers, which I can only imagine are a direct response to complaints about NSMB being really boring. Every main stage has one, which will either enable some new visuals or change the way the game plays. These are honestly really hit-or-miss, as a lot of them are really boring. Some of the more fun ones are when they’ll change your character into an enemy, sometimes as a sort of debuff that you’ll have to work around, changing the way you approach the stage. From the top of my head, I think my favorite one was where you have to walk on the wall in the background. Outside of these Wonder Flowers, a lot of the stages already have their own unique gimmick, so it wasn’t like these were entirely necessary, but I enjoyed their addition. 

Mario Wonder was very refreshing nonetheless, and I’m glad I gave it a shot. I loved getting all the secrets and using the new badge abilities. I can only hope we get new 2D Mario games in the near future, as this was a huge step in the right direction. It’s cool to see Nintendo actually listen to fans on this one, and we got one of the more creative Mario experiences out of it. 

Revelations: Persona was the first Shin Megami Tensei game released in the West. No, Jack Bros. does not count. Sorry guys. I had thought this was the only game with the weird “Revelations” surname, but I recently found out a GBC port of the first Last Bible game was released in the west as “Revelations: The Demon Slayer." It's kind of weird to think that there’s an alternate timeline where SMT3 would’ve been called “Revelations: Nocturne” or something like that.

This game has a notoriously bad localization job, and I’m sure most have at least seen some things about it. The game's script was altered to take place in America instead of Japan, and Atlus tried to make it seem that way, but it's pretty easy to see through since the characters are clearly wearing Japanese school uniforms and the song playing in the pharmacy has Japanese lyrics. Character names were also changed to sound more standard. Nanjo’s name was changed to Nate, and Maki’s name was changed to Mary, to name a few. Character designs were also changed, most notably Mark being changed into a racist stereotype. It also seems that anyone who had black hair had their hair color altered to blonde or something. Why is this? No idea. And I thought Working Designs was shit at localizing.

Well, firstly, about the gameplay, Persona 1 struggles with its balancing. Most enemies will barely do any damage to you, let alone even hit you. Paired with how slow this game is, it tends to get pretty dull at times. Most of the boss fights are also complete pushovers that never challenge your wits. The only time I was really strategizing and switching personas was the final boss, which can be RNG-reliant, is held at the end of the final dungeon, and can take 2-4 hours to get through with no save in between! Nonetheless, it still serves to make you use everything you can at the end.

About the personas, though, unlike later entries in the series, this game actually lets you equip 3 personas for each character. It requires a lot more planning than just fusing for the main character, as you’ll need to have personas that are better suited to the whole party’s traits. Mark should get personas with high strength, Mary/Maki should get dexterity/agility, stuff like that. You’ll also have to level up the personas by using their moves in battles in order to unlock their full moveset. So, I was switching them around and getting all their moves, which at times can prove very useful. At the start of the game, I had gotten a persona with a Heal All move that only cost 7 MP, and that carried my ass through the entire game and helped tremendously on the final boss. It’s super fun fusing in this game and getting oddball broken shit when it feels like you’re not even supposed to a lot of the time. It never really breaks the game, though, since traditionally with Megaten games, a lot of enemies are going to repel certain attacks, so you’ll not be able to really use the same move the whole time.

There’s also this kind of cool SRPG formation mechanic in the game too. You’ll have to move your party of 5 around on this formation grid to best suit their strengths. If they’re in areas in the back, they’ll take less physical damage but will also not be able to reach enemies with their physical attacks. One of my characters, Brad/Brown, had good reach with his spear, so he was able to be placed in the middle and still attack most of the enemies with his physical attacks. You also don’t want them all to be placed too close to each other, since there’s area magic in this game that extends to other party members when hitting someone. Truthfully, it’s not super important, and you can kind of use one formation the whole game and it’ll work fine. I only found myself really using this mechanic on the final boss for the most part.

My favorite aspect of Persona 1 is how it absolutely nails its atmosphere, mostly due to how outstanding this game's soundtrack is. There are these really creepy songs that fit super well when dungeon crawling, and then some of my favorites in this game are these ethereal and relaxing tracks that play during cutscenes or downtime. There’s barely any misses, and it definitely became one of my new favorite OSTs.

Also adding to this game's atmosphere is its first-person dungeon crawling. Many would call it dated; I would call it a different perspective. Honestly, design-wise, it's kind of boring. Most RPGs would have treasure at the end of dead ends, but Persona 1 doesn’t. Instead, you’ll rarely find these rooms with a few treasure chests in them, which, for the most part, have nothing useful in them. I would have really liked to see more of these rooms, as they really would have given me more of a reason to fill out the map. Thankfully, this game has a map that fills out as you progress in dungeons, so you’ll not need graph paper or anything like that! Accompanying this map is a mini map at the top right of the screen that will show you pieces of the map that you haven’t been to yet from the radius of your character. I didn’t realize until my friend pointed it out, but I was literally just staring at the mini map because it just shows you the dead ends so you can completely avoid getting lost. It’s a huge quality of life thing, but a little bit too much in my opinion, and it made the dungeons effortless since combat is also very easy.

Besides the gameplay aspect, I think the dungeons are really cool. They all have their own designs and music, and strangely enough, they have different walking sound effects to accompany the different terrain. I really like when you’re walking around the school and it plays these recorded sounds of someone walking on the tile. It's kind of a weird thing to point out, but it really just added a level of immersion for me. There’s also surprisingly great sound design in this game, too. In combat, there’s so much reverb and punch to attacks, and that makes them feel effective.

When going into different areas in the overworld, the characters in your party will all be present, and you will be able to speak to all of them. When different story events are taking place, they will all have unique dialogue for all the areas in the game, that being stuff like the clinic or shops. This was a level of care that I was surprised to see, and it helped me get attached to the cast of characters. I really wish more games would do stuff like this.

Lastly, I love the UI in this game. In the menu, there’s this blue and orange grid, and on top of that, your options are all allocated to an orb on what looks like a solar system. Then, in combat, your options are these metallic-looking boxes that, when highlighted, glow orange. It looks a lot cooler than I made it sound though, I promise. I didn’t really know where to throw this in either, but in battle, there’s multiple of these psychedelic moving backgrounds that look like they're straight out of Earthbound and look really sick.

Persona 1 does a great job at using all the PS1’s new bells and whistles. It excels in so many departments and looks great in both its 2D and 3D sections. There’s so much effort in areas that didn’t even need them, and it works great as a horror RPG of sorts. It’s tough to recommend this game though, since it’s honestly pretty inaccessible. But, if you can look past how dated and slow the game is, it is one that will not be forgotten.

I would hate to be one of the people who refuse to play the game because it doesn't have social links, flashy UI and non first person gameplay just to miss out on what I consider to be a well told story that isn't as drawn out and boring as other persona games. I’m serious too, the first person gameplay really isn't bad and I can't understand what drew me away from this game when I first played it.

I figured I would have hated this game a lot more than I did, and it really isn't even bad at all. I had no trouble with the combat and fusing in this game and found it fun especially near the end of the game when things started opening up, I would even go as far to say that it's my favorite fusion system in the series since every character is able to equip three personas of your choosing. It’s never too overpowered because most of them usually have 4-5 moves max, though the game is really easy so I guess this doesn't really matter much Lol

Should be noted that in the psp version of this game, it's hard to pay attention to anything but the mini map when exploring mazes because the gameplay is too fast, even when you’re not running and toggling skip animations during battle. I'm not exaggerating either you're actually running at mach 5 and getting into constant encounters because for some reason they decided the encounter rate needed to be raised. To that end I wish I listened to my friend @Zotol and played the ps1 version when he told me to, but instead because he hates using the emulator I sent him what’s apparently a “half broken psp” even though it was perfectly fine aside from being smashed with a Warwood Tool 3 lb. Double-Faced Small Sledge Hammer - Tools for Home Improvement - Tools & Home Improvement - Made in the USA and being dropped in the toilet twice (he didn't notice though)

I loathe being called a persona fan so let's just leave it at "persona 1 fan"

“to survive, you devour others. a demon epitomizes karma in its simplest form.”

digital devil saga 1 is a lot better on a replay, in the most thematically fitting way possible. knowing the narrative conclusion and being able to fill in the blanks the story doesn’t give you paints a story of a group of people just looking to make the best out of an incredibly grim situation.

when you’re biologically hardwired to kill, eat, destroy, devour, how do you promote cooperation? the DDS cast’s personal challenges serve as a representation of humanity in general: how can we grow past our violent tendencies when they’ve become second nature to us?

in an era of risk taking and throwing shit at the wall for atlus, digital devil saga exists as an unfortunate failure, being overshadowed by atlus’ other big plot-focused PS2 games that would come out the following years. despite this, DDS seems to have a narrative quality that isn’t easily matched by most of the studio’s output. character arcs are simple but coherent and focused, all revolving around the embryon becoming salient of the world around them and becoming more than just a walking weapon.

i don’t know why i didn’t click with this story the first time, but understanding how the whole thing plays out added a surprising level of depth to my experience.

i guess next i have to play the sequel again

are you ready for the real world?

confident and self-assured, nocturne takes a risk and diverges from the style established in the classic, genre-defining SNES games and gives up the cyberpunk flair for unsettling, contemporary atmosphere laced in a rich hard rock sound. instead of demon summoning programs and makeshift blade runner-esque technology, demi-fiend finds himself injected and violated by lucifer himself, given nothing but a vague motive to direct the vortex world as an ubermensch-type figure. the protagonist has biological ties to this new world now, and he can't just look away from it -- the marks of a demon are all over his body.

nocturne's difficulty and unforgiving nature redefined the perception of shin megami tensei as a whole: since nocturne, this is a series with high risk-reward combat that paints desolate scenarios the player will find themselves barely scraping by through. the original SMT presented this well through plot, but nocturne was the first to utilize gameplay mechanics to reinforce the series' brutality.

nocturne isn't a joyless, humorless edgelord game either. throughout my entire replay, the main thing that stood out were all of the unique NPCs and optional bits of dialogue that helped flesh out the world. whether it's just hearing random lost souls talk about tangentially related subjects or demons with genuinely clever quips and jokes, nocturne's world is by no means devoid of personality and charm.

i stand by the game being a bit too unforgiving to first-time players that don't know what they're doing. there's no way to know which way is "correct" for a good demi-fiend build, and which magatamas you should be grinding out until it's too late. you can end up making the game as a whole significantly harder for yourself if you put too many stats into ag or lu. demon fusion discourages experimentation because of how damn pricy it is early/mid game, forcing a player to stick with potentially very suboptimal demons or grind their ass off for money.

but with a little nudge in the right direction, nocturne is a perfectly manageable and rewarding experience that respects the player's intelligence and feels great to progress in. every boss, every dungeon, every tough random encounter makes you feel fucking incredible, and that's a feeling that nothing quite nails but this series.