If there’s anything in this world worth keeping alive, it’s love.

In the void that is Revachol, we see the light of love and hope slowly fade away. It is up to us to cultivate and nurture that light so it does not die. Love is not dead! As you read this, you are alive and breathing, and it's up to you to seize what remains and fight for it. We can no longer wait for some great revolution that will fix all of our problems. If you truly desire a revolution, you must create the conditions necessary to birth it!

Disco Elysium isn’t just a game about what political faction you align with or finding out who lynched the man behind Whirling-in-Rags; it’s a story about love and why we must hold onto it, even in the darkest of times. I understand that nowadays, with the current state of affairs, it's hard to believe in love and hope. It's difficult to place our hope in a future that seems to have been stolen away from us, yet that's precisely when we need it the most.

I choose to believe in love. I choose to hold on to the hope that a better future is possible, no matter what, because I believe it is. The people we know, the community we live in, and the world we inhabit are worth fighting for. Disco Elysium taught me that fixing the world and making it a better place isn’t just about picking up a gun and waging some violent revolution; it’s about cultivating community and caring for those in it. That’s where the true beauty of Disco Elysium lies.

I believe the way this game conveys that message is quite powerful. Disco doesn't make some grand showy gesture beating you over the head with its message; instead, it laboriously takes the time to show you that the world you live in is beautiful and worth fighting for. It spends the time showing you the inner lives of those around you and has you helping them, one person at a time.

There is one specific character that I feel best embodies this: Cuno. Cuno, at first, is seen to be an irrational, difficult, vulgar, and poorly-behaved child, which leads you to inevitably hate him. As you learn more about Cuno and his home life, however, you realise there’s something greater at play. He doesn’t act out for the hell of it; he is the way he is because his father is a drunk who’s fallen down on his luck due to becoming a victim of the system giving up on him and his son. He’s left with no choice. The system has abandoned Uuno and his son, leaving them both to fend for themselves and pick up the pieces. Which sadly isn’t uncommon in Revachol and the real world as well. It’s perhaps one of the most striking and poignant stories in the game. I eventually went from despising Cuno to feeling empathy for him, as I did for many others in Revachol when I learned their stories.

I believe this approach to storytelling and character writing is incredibly effective, and the best part about Disco Elysium is that these kinds of stories are all over the game. This goes to show how much love and care was put into humanising the inhabitants of Revachol, which helps make the world feel alive. Because of how well the game fleshed out its world and characters Disco Elysium was successful at conveying the message that this world is worth fighting for. Not only was I captivated by this world, but as the game drew to a close, I found myself deeply invested in the wellbeing of these characters and the city.

As I learned about these stories, Revachol’s history, and the many political factions vying for power, I realised that this game was never about solving a murder or finding which faction is "correct." It was about learning to love those around us and working together to create a better world, one step at a time. Creating a better world was never an unattainable goal conjured up in the minds of idealistic and "ignorant" kids. It is a possible reality, but it demands the working toiling masses of the world unite and work hand in hand in creating this future. It is on us to seize the future and lift eachother up when we need it most.

Never give up on fighting for this future. It is only dead when you allow yourself to be convinced that it is.

v weird and jarring seeing this game actively fight against itself every minute of its playtime. it’s trying to appeal to fans of action games of the early 2010s while also trying to make sure classic sh (silent hill AND survival horror) fans still fuck w it. third person standard fare controllable camera that occasionally switched to fixed camera angles + classic sh item pick up noise that sounds strange coming from this game. and that works well enough for me tbh. can’t lie I did play the majority of this w v low audio on bc what I did gleam from the story was insanely boring not to mention its depictions of black/hispanic/native american peoples is like uhhh iffy and stereotypical. so I didn’t bother w the side quests bc why are there side quests in a survivalhorror game + if that’s the writing they’re leading w and isn’t optional I can’t imagine the writing for the optional side quests is at all good. rlly rlly cool and beautiful and very creative set pieces and how the game fucks w ur perspective idk I rlly do like this game visually.

idk good silent hill is like a rlly good horror movie and downpour is like a fun but shoddily/hurriedly made haunted house. it’s a vague impression and idea of sh and that’s good enough w me lol idk though ill prob rlly like the sh2 remake so yknow w/e

why did I spend sixty dollars on a kind of mid ancient game that sat below my tv for like six months

Darkwood nos convida para mergulhar profundamente nos recantos mais obscuros da mente humana.

Começo dizendo que uma boa parte dos jogos de terror que já vi/joguei são em primeira pessoa, com jumpscares nada surpreendentes, intrometidos e que sempre chegam em um ponto em que as coisas se tornam banalizadas, tentando ao máximo garantir que o jogo seja emocionante.

Muitas pessoas gostam disso, e tá tudo bem, no entanto, Darkwood é uma experiência muito distante da norma.
Darkwood depende de sua escrita, história, criaturas e recursos visuais para perturbar você. E o visual... Ah, o visual.
O visual de Darkwood é um dos mais impressionantes e inspiradores que já vi. Não há nada que Darkwood mostre que você não deva ver, nada que não conte uma história ou deixe claro o horror da floresta, da peste e das forças que a influenciam aquele lugar.

Darkwood é a experiência DEFINITIVA de Survival horror com elementos de suspense fortíssimos.
Sua abordagem meticulosa em criar uma atmosfera sombria, opressiva, desconhecida, aliada à profundidade de seus personagens, eventos e símbolos é realmente de borrar a calcinha.

Dito isso, As Wood são de fato bem Darks.

I don't know how well this game sold, but back when I was young, this game was featured on EVERY SINGLE ps3 advertisement poster in my country. There's always been something about this game that just made me want to play it since I was a kid. Of course there's the half-naked warrior woman on the cover artwork🤣 but also the game's incredible art direction that somehow just got better to look at as I grew up. And now that I've played it, it's...... good. kinda.

Considering how low this game is rated on this site, I didn't go in with the highest expectations, but was quite impressed with the combat mechanics initially. But it didn't take long for me to realise how messy the controls actually are. There are three different stances in this game that are quite distinct, but the blocking mechanics in this game just suck. Your character automatically blocks when you're not attacking, and with a quick press of the attack button right after blocking you can cause massive damage to the enemy, which is my biggest problem here. You can either be on the offensive and deal little to no damage while getting interrupted and beaten by your enemies, OR you can wait for your enemies to attack you, so that you can counterattack them, which made the combat very monotonous for me. It's fun initially but gets boring over time. It's not annoying, but kinda dull

The combat is serviceable for the most part, but the game has other problems. It keeps throwing massive waves of enemies that don't bring anything new to the table, adding even more to the monotony of the game. And finally there are the absolutely cringe-inducing voice acting and live capture performances. Holy shit they're terrible. The story is cliche as well and fails to leave an impact on you.

Now that we're done with the negatives, here's what I liked about this game.... the art direction. This is always what kept this game on my mind for years. This is a 2007 game, and the just scale of this game, the attention to details, the interactability with the environment is mindblowing. There are some sections in this game where you're supposed to shoot arrows or fire cannons(oh and the aiming mechanics surprisingly don't suck) and just the number of things on the screen just blows my mind every time. Istg, if it wasn't for the incredibe art direction of this game I would've dropped it in no time. I'm not familliar with ninja Theory's other works, but I've heard that they're great at making their games cinematic, and if this is their worst, I'm REALLY excited to try out their other stuff.

Last but not the least, I just wanna say that despite the massive amount of flaws, you can tell that a lot of heart was put into this game. It's one of those times when you know that all the hardwork behind this game went completely in the wrong direction, but you can't help but still have some amount of praise for the team that worked on it. The amazing art direction aside, everything here is average to below-average, with the voice acting being an exception(it's straight up garbage), but the game never really annoyed me so just for that this is the rating I'll be going with. Would I recommend this, I'm not sure, but I'm kinda biased towards this game so yeah, that's my rating.

Before anything, I am mad and I refuse to suffer alone. I saw someone say the Star arcana looks like Todd Howard. Enjoy!

As much as I would like to say "I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS!" the more I heard more about the game before I got around to it as late as I have, the more worried I got. Thanks Sega for releasing 2 jrpgs I wanted to play so close to each other with Yakuza coming out first. Only getting one day off a week isn't gonna stop me from JRPGing! I will wake up MANY hours early to make progress before heading in for the day. Persona 3 FES is my favorite jrpg, one of my top games of all time and should we evoke a "one per franchise" rule so mgs1,2,3,4,and revengence aren't hogging the top 5, it would be my number 2. Some things that follow might come off harsh, nitpicky or complaining for complaining's sake. Its also easier to complain than compliment, especially when a lot of what I like about this game is story related. The only game that would be under even harsher scrutiny would be a remake of MGS1. Regardless of any complaints that follow, thank god people who are unable to handle ai party members and don't want to emulate and mod no longer need to settle for a worse presenting version of Persona 3 called Persona 3 Portable now that this exists.

So lets start with the story, and despite this game approaching 20 years old I'm gonna be as spoiler free as possible. Gameplay I'll spoil mechanics but story is the most important part of jprgs so I'm gonna let that remain obfuscated. In a post FF7R world, every "remake" now has the potential to be a different game while wearing the skin of the old to get people to buy it so just seeing something getting a remake isn't a cause for celebration for me anymore. The plot is by and large the same, including the early months often sited as being "too plow paced" and I couldn't be happier about that. Persona 3's story and themes were something that changed me as a person, and I still hold strong to a lot of those beliefs to this day. Make no mistake, there were changes. Some new scenes and dialogues were added, some of which were there to explain changes to things such as the outfits or the new Theurgy system. The other new story scenes and dialogues don't really take away anything and attempted to do a little bit of fleshing out for some of the more underbaked characters to lackluster results unless it was a link episode. The main villain had a line in one of these that could have been taken from a redditor or your average twitter user. You can also see the post arena aspect of Akihiko and Mitsuru effect them as well. As far as social links go the changes to their contents are minute at best, so the good ones are still good (SUN) and the bad ones are still bad (MOON). You also don't get automatically put into a romance with female characters which to me was a mandatory change. Certain options will raise the romance flag but if you did it accidentally or didn't realize some lead that way, in my experience, you can walk it back before committing towards the end of the link. You can also rewind up to the last 5 "passage of time" events should you think you messed up somewhere. You should still be rotating your saves though, don't be an idiot in that regard. Social links are also fully voiced now, but interactions outside of those such as some weekend hangouts aren't. The male party members didn't have social links in the original and in portable they replaced other social link characters but here they have link episodes I mentioned prior which are more streamlined social link replacements. You don't need to worry about choosing the right options, they are linear and while giving you the expected reward for maxing out a social link (a unique fusion) you get other goodies too, but even without those I think seeing the characters get more added to them is worth it alone. I always appreciate more Koromaru. I've seen this ending several times in my life now, be it by playing or watching other people and it never fails to hit me. That piano has the same effect on me as Secret Base from Anohana. I think I cried harder now that back when I beat the game the first time.

Graphically and animation wise, the game is beautiful. Atlus has really stepped up their 3d game, I didn't play Royal so maybe this has been the standard for awhile, and just more proof at how much of an inarguable downgrade portable was in terms of presentation to the original. All these pivotal moments aren't reduced to shaking jpgs and sound effects. There was also a good amount of anime cutscenes still in the game, which makes me wonder why ones such as the first persona awakening and Aigis' introduction were in 3d among others. Those 3d recreations had for lack of a better word lost some "soul". However I do think the new art direction is at odds with Persona 3's themes and general mood quite often. Outside of blues, the original game as more muted and here is more saturated and bright. Also it has the persona 5 strikers thing where everyone looks like they've been dipped in olive oil. They look damp and shiny at all times. But the "hit the weakness" and critical persona attack busting through the character face cut in didn't get old, and I honestly used it to figure out weaknesses before they even hit. The new Theurgy mechanic's animations were so fluid and fun to watch which is good cuz you can't skip them, just like all out attacks. I'll go into more detail about them in the gameplay section. Having the camera be closer to the MC (who I will refer to as Makoto going forward) as opposed to the birds eye view allows a lot more detail to be seen, especially in tartarus where they went mental in visual design. It doesn't fix the inherent issues with tartarus as a whole but at least its more visually stimulating. Every character has their own all out attack end screen and you bet I was using the screenshot feature for all of them. The battle end animation was also dynamic, with the characters walking away in different orders. I don't know exactly what effects the order other than whoever landed the killing blow has the center focus. That pause menu though, my god that pause menu! It was so smooth I damn near slipped out of my chair when I first saw it in person. The fall into the water transition, the character's faces in the shard in Makoto's hand while looks through the party, the persona flavor text, oozing style. Does that match Persona 3 tone wise? No not at all but I'd be a liar if I said it isn't appealing. That's some more of your unignorable P5 influence in action. The new outfits are also really slick. I like them all but I think Yukari, Mitsuru and Fuuka got the best ones. However should you want to go back to the classic outfit with classic armband, you can since its a costume and wont effect stats. I'm glad that is the case but I didn't take advantage of that cuz again, I REALLY like the new outfits. Also the battle panties and "Sexy armor" (thats what its called) are still in the game and that shocked me as I didn't think those would come back. Maybe I'm just too used to games not having shit like that anymore.

In terms of voice acting, I do think its all good to great. However I still don't see why most of the VAs needed to be replaced (we know why Junpei's old one was gonna be replaced no matter what), especially since some are still in the game as different characters or in Elizabeth's case is still her OG, Tara Platt who was Mitsuru's OG va as well. Like if they can still do the voice and were clearly available since you still have them in the game as smaller roles, it feels to me as you didn't wanna pay their "now a more known name" rates. The treatment of voice actors is a discussion for another time and place, not in a review of a video game like some game journalist would force in. At least I got to hear Liam O'Brien again in some form. Junpei and Mitsuru's VAs, Zeno Robinson and Allegra Clark respectively, sound like they're going for imitation and they do a bang up job. If I didn't know beforehand I probably would have taken a good while to notice the change. Fuuka is a straight up improvement to me, and I find it funny that she shares her VA with FF7R Yuffie, Suzie Yeung. Game crushes from my youth both have the same VA in remakes is quite the coincidence. The main one I took issue with was Akihiko's new VA, Alejandro Saab. He's not bad, I actually think he did a great job but Liam O'Brien is one of my favorite VAs so no one was gonna fill that void and he did not grow on me despite being a main part of my battle party. Koromaru is also actually voiced by a human now doing dog sounds and I never got used to it. Yes it was stock wolf noises in the original but you can't beat a wolf howl. It was just off and he's always in my party since he's the single best character in the series. Everyone else of SEES (Yukari, Aigis, Shinji, Ken) were fine, minor things like I miss the bite Michelle Ruff gave Yukari's delivery and the initial more stilted speech Aigis had that went away as she spend more time with the crew are gone but they weren't dealbreakers.

Now for gameplay. As I said above, you have full control over party members. REJOICE all of you who didn't see the big fuckin TACTICS option and fell victim to the "Mitsuru used Marin Karin" memes. Unlike in portable, the game feels balanced for it. Some character's kits have been reworked such as Akihiko not having as many debuffs but that aint gonna stop me from using him just like how Ken being really good now won't make him a permanent member. You have the "Shift" mechanic with is not quite baton pass but allows you to free swap after knocking an enemy down so you can continue to do so. You're gonna want to do that cuz shuffle time has been reworked with new rewards and buffs along with the original money, sword, healing and exp choices that you're gonna want it after every battle. Grab those major arcana cards for buffs such as more exp, persona stat increases and being able to choose multiple cards during shuffle time and when you grab enough you get an ARCANA BURST which increases the level of all reward cards. The Theurgy mechanic is also brand new and is basically super attacks that ignore resistances or buff/heal your party. Every character's meter fills up by just fighting but doing specific things will make it fill up faster but not all requirements are made equal. For example, Aigis hitting with her physical skills gives her more meter than just regular attacking while Yukari get more for healing, which is what she is doing most of the time. Characters also get specific traits as you bond with them in non social link related hangouts at the dorm such as Yukari having healing spells only use 1/2 their required sp. Another change that I expected to be mandatory was the ability to manually choose persona skills for inheritance, not just for yours but your party members as well. Not only that, but the skill card copying is much better too. You go up to the inari, pray, choose the card you want and you get the copy immediately and best of all IT TAKES NO TIME. There is literally no reason to not copy cards every day that you can and it makes the sword cards of shuffle time no longer being weapons but instead skill cards an easier pill to swallow.

If you didn't like Tartarus in the older games then I don't know if they did enough here to make you like it, unless you're a style first person then you might be shallow enough to be pleased. The floors are a lot more visually stimulating as I said earlier but you're still running through randomly generated floors despite the new mechanics. The sizes of the floors vary greatly. Sometimes its not much more than an L shape even at the higher floors and other times its like 3 large treasure areas with 16 hallways connecting them all. Until you leave tartatrus though, floors are persistent once explored. Going back to a floor will leave any chests as they were when you moved on but enemies will still respawn. Characters would also not shut the fuck up in tartarus. When you see an enemy, a chest, a teleporter, the stairs, after battle, just walking around, dead air is not allowed until you have cleared that floor out. I heard the same lines over and over and even changing character doesn't really change much outside of the non generics. Outside of gold hands, treasure chests, strong enemies and floor centric gimmicks like "enemies have aliments" or "its fucking dark" you now have breakables for items to sell or consumables, locked chests, monad doors and greed shadows. Those locked chests replace the gold chests of the original and require Twilight Fragments to open. Twilight Fragments are one of the most important things you will have in this remake. As I said you need them for locked chests which is where you'll find weapons and gear but now you need to use them to heal at the clock. Yes the clock costs something now and early on you will be struggling to have any amount of those shards. There are a handful of them as one time pickups in the overworld but you mainly get them as rewards for leveling social links as well as rewards from Elizabeth's requests but rarely you can find them as breakables on floors. There is also no bench EXP in this game so you have two options when it comes to catching up characters. 1, the old fashioned way of grinding reapers or two, the great clock. I try to fight the reaper before beating the game each time and outside of the flu exploit in vanilla p5, this one wasn't too difficult even with unoptimized personas thanks to Theurgy. Outside of battle it made me damn near shit myself though. The great clock appears on floors after using a certain amount of twilight shards. How many? No idea but it was definitely more than 10. That allows you two pick 2 party members and the next battle you fight with them, will catch them up to within a level of Makoto. I would have very much rather a bench exp system that at worst started out at like 25% and increased with the fool social link or something. The Monad Doors come in two types, those on random floors and those on boss floors. The ones on random floors are a single hallway with a boss in the middle, and you get two chests as a reward which in my experience was something random and then materials for weapon crafting. The boss doors are several hallways with several bosses and chests that tend to end with you getting a new arcana card for shuffle time so you can access more effects. They're good for exp but I was definitely bored of them after the first couple times. I still did them all, no reason not to. Greed shadows will basically do all your collecting work for you as they open all the chests but in order to catch them you are forced to make choices as you chase. I never missed one but also once Fuuka learns tartarus search it removes that aspect and you can just fight them after a dialogue box.

Music is where most of my complaints lie since I do love me the Persona 3 OST. The new music like "Its Going Down Now" and "Color Your Night" are fantastic, especially the latter. Go listen to it RIGHT THE FUCK NOW! Full Moon Full Life is the new into and its good, but I prefer Burn My Dread. I appreciated the respect to Burn My Dread and Want to be Close in the beginning but I don't appreciate the teasing. Majority of the remixes I don't really care for though, they're at best inoffensive. I can actually understand the dorm music now outside of "HEY HEY HEY" and that was a trip. I think the only one I liked more outright was Changing Seasons and it really felt like they added a lot more lyrics as opposed to the barely audible french in the original that happened like twice. Two of my favorite songs in Persona 3 are "Mass Destruction" and "Want to be Close" to the point where the former is my favorite battle theme in the genre. I could not dislike those remixes any more than I do. I'm gonna start with "Want to be Close" first cuz I have less I can articulate well about it. As begins it sounds great, then when the lyrics start it just feels flat to me. I was able to put up with it and the game replaces it partway through anyway with Changing Seasons. As for Mass Destruction, I was no longer upset that there was a different song that played when I got advantage after listening to it, which is the aforementioned "Its Going Down Now". Just like "Want to be Close" it starts out great, some strong "BABY BABY BABY" as it begins and lotus juice sounds great but after that first "OH YEAH" it sounds like the new singer gave up. The battle theme is no longer the bop it used to be and instead like it had the life sucked out of it. Yes I am aware that "its supposed to be the enemy advantage theme so its purposefully not as exciting" but fuck that, the song isn't worth being the most played song in the game now. At least "Its Going Down Now" gave me my baby baby fix and again is a great song. The new Mass Destruction never grew on me and I gave it until late September in game, then during any non story sequence tartarus runs I was playing the original at full blast. Now I gotta deal with the chance that should Mass Destruction come to other games in the future is has a very high likelihood to be this version. If Atlus releases a classic music pack that AT LEAST includes the original Mass Destruction though it also having the original Want to Be Close is ideal, I'll bump this game up to 5 stars despite my other issues.

Another thing I was not a fan of was certain removals of social link choices. When it comes to clubs, you had an assortment of options before. When going for athletics you could choose between Kendo, Swimming and Track. For culture you could choose between art, photo and music. Here your only options are art and track. Yes I know other than the focal point of the club the actual links were barely different, but Kendo is cooler than Track. I've seen some speculation that its a causality of having all the s links being fully voiced. Thats a shame if true, y'all should learn to read. I also know the game is based off of vanilla P3 which explains other removals (some they allowed to squeeze in like Aigis' social link) but man, if it isn't lame that the Makoto is once again locked to a singular weapon type. I WANNA USE BIG SWORDS! I don't wanna use Junpei to get my big sword fix. There was also a change to a specific boss fight, it removed the player element to it. Anyone who remembers "the roulette" knows what I'm talking about. That was pretty lame. I was expecting a change in the way to "get your desired result" but making it making it full on luck, while can be seen as thematically appropriate, they still went and made it sometimes scripted. Its last spin might have more thematic meaning now that I think about it, given the cutscene that follows.

I write these reviews as I play the game and had my thoughts on the lack of answer and FEMC not being in the game initially in the above section, but two days ago The Answer dlc was announced, cheeky bastards choosing that day, to release in September in an expansion pass alongside P4EX and P5EX music and velvet room attendant costumes. I sure as hell won't be paying extra for these. How about you give me the good versions of Mass Destruction and Want to Be Close back instead? I never liked The Answer both story and gameplay wise and I can't imagine they'd change much with it given how they handled the base game though it would probably be a HELL of a lot easier with access to Theurgy. No details on FEMC, not that I ever thought she'd happen, but I can't say say I would buy the her dlc either especially with the potential of "Time" and "Way of Life" to get treated as poorly as "Want to be Close" and "Mass Destruction".

TLDR if you skipped this far (bars). Reload is the same great story with the themes and characters that made those of us love it way back when with some minor changes to them such as some extra scenes. It has beautiful models and cutscenes, slick aesthetic that in my opinion clashes with the tone and themes of the game, great voice acting, some great new tracks at the cost of butchering remixes of the more played tracks in the game (which were my favorites), but ideally more in line with what I think a remake should be and want from one. It updated gameplay to the current standards of the series without forcing a genre change but left the story 98% intact. A lot of this came off as nitpicky, but when I love a source as much as this its just whats gonna happen. At the end of the day I enjoyed my time playing the game, and thats what I want to happen when I play games first and foremost especially when its a remake of a personal favorite. If you REALLY cannot handle ai party members or don't want to emulate to use the mod for FES, which for the latter I respect and a supporter of original hardware, then this one is a more than fine version to play. You get the most important parts of what made Persona 3 so loved: its story, characters and themes without being an inferior VN and cursor experience like portable. Reload aint the definitive version as it lacks aspects like MC weapon usage, club choice variations and FEMC, though its closer with the recently announced answer dlc. Regardless, its better than having portable as the only official release of Persona 3 on current platforms. Whens the classic music pack though Atlus?

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take a break from the genre for a while. I continue to suffer from the fact most of the games I want to play are jrpgs.