Unmatched stylish presentation and aesthetics combined with one of the most absurd yet gripping narratives in any game I've played. An incredibly intricate story exploring a tangled web of information and lies in a society entirely ruled by technology, where any answers to questions you may receive only open up more questions. Matchmaker and Correctness are both great additions with fantastic new characters, and I loved being able to see the conclusion to Tokio's story in Placebo.
The 25th Ward is supposed to be a functioning utopia, but pulling back the curtain reveals a world controlled through private information and violent force, leading to questions that will only send you infinitely spiraling deeper into darkness. There's so much to say about this game but there's still so much I'm unsure of, and I know I'll keep thinking about this game for months to come.

KILL THE LIFE.

The best persona game, period. Its themes of struggling to integrate with society as an adult speak much more clearly to me then the stories of later entries in the series.
on top of that, there's some of the most challenging and rewarding gameplay in the franchise. everyone in persona 2 can use every persona, so having the right set up of personas is critical to success in boss fights, which will more than likely fuck your shit up if unprepared. The translation is wonky at points, as most of the spell names are very literally translated, but compared to revelations: persona its night and day, as there's no censorship or Americanization here. all in all this is one of my favourite JRPGs of all time and a contender for one of my favourite games period.

Elf: The Movie for the Game Boy Advance is a fascinating title. We don't usually see video games made out of movies like this... Just for that, I think it deserves its praises to be sung.

However, this game has a fatal flaw. I haven't seen Elf. Throughout my playtime, I was very confused about the overall plot of this particular entry in the Elf franchise. It's quite disgusting how reliant this game is on you having seen the game's namesake, Elf: The Movie.

Hopefully, we see a proper remaster in the coming years with added dialogue options, better graphics, multiple endings, and the same tight platformer controls.

Do yourself a favor and check out this little hidden gem of a game of a movie. Thank you, Buddy.

this could be the worst Fire Emblem game. the story is bland, none of the characters are very memorable and I have a hard time picking out the ones in my head that i really enjoyed using and investing in. Roy is really bad, the maps aren't great, and a ton of the characters are bad or straight up unusable. Zephiel is a great villain but the story truly is really really boring. not sure why they thought multiple endings for a Fire Emblem game was a great idea but it is way too easy to miss out on the true ending.

Binding Blade is very clearly inspired by Thracia 776, with a lot of the maps and design decisions being heavily (HEAVILY) reminiscent of what was done there. but, this game throws all the weird bullshit that Thracia expected you to deal with and doesn't give you someone like a Finn or Asbel or Mareeta to level the playing field with, and that's what made Thracia so fun to begin with. a lot of the mechanics that allowed you to sort of cheat Thracia's system are not present or heavily modified to be way less fun here. honestly this one just plain sucks and is really grating to play. way too many huge maps with giant hallways or movement reduction that take way too many turns with shit recruits.

if i will say anything good about this game its that it has Perceval Melady and Igrene who are all awesome. but outside of that this one is just blah.

Earthbound: "Hey wasn't that a funny joke?"
-"Haha yeah, Earthbound"
Earthbound: "Haha, I'll say it 20 more times."

Earthbound is a game I went into with high hopes and ended up pretty disappointed. The game has some heartfelt moments that mostly fall flat. For me, both Earthbound and Mother 3 would be more emotionally impactful games with a more fleshed-out cast. It constantly feels like the game is flopping between having an entire old-school self-insert party and an actual group of characters. This wouldn't be a complaint at all really if any of the story beats were interesting but instead, you're given what feels like filler quests all throughout the game (THE MONKEY TUNNELS! - a pretty funny concept that tried to mix up the gameplay with a really lame execution). On the flip side, I thought Poo was pretty well done and I thought the way he joined you was probably the funniest thing in the game.

As I said before, the game is light on story and is definitely a unique twist on the classic (S)NES fantasy adventure. You are in normal cities for the majority of the game, but end up fighting wacky creatures, cars, and vomit. I don't really have much to say about it as the game didn't really focus on the plot either. The humor didn't really land for me most of the time, but I can see the appeal and this style of comedy definitely laid a great foundation for a more clever execution (UNDERTALE).

Probably my biggest gripe, to my surprise, is the gameplay. I was expecting a pretty laid-back/chill experience when it came to the combat -- it's anything but that! The battles SHOULD be easy -- in fact, they ARE easy. After you have a decent amount of PP every boss is a joke. The problem for me was the encounters. At a glance, the encounters in Earthbound seem ahead of their time with the onscreen enemies - that would honestly be really cool if you could avoid them at all. Putting virtually unavoidable enemies in random areas around the main cities is bordering insanity to me. Why the fuck should I have to fight encounters AFTER GETTING BACK FROM FIGHTING ENCOUNTERS?

"Dude, just run from the battle!"
IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK!!!!!!!!! 95% OF THE TIME!!!!!

A lot of people will bring up the fact that you can insta-kill enemies when you reach a high enough level which is a cool idea if it had been executed well (or at all really- i swear this shit only happened 2 times in the entire game). This only really applies if you're backtracking to towns you've already visited... Had this been any other game there wouldn't be enemies there in the first place... Anyways, you have no real way to avoid encounters against enemies that do nothing but waste your PP and that pisses me off—very poor execution of on-screen enemies imo.

I'm also a bit confused about why the combat is so praised compared to other turn-based titles that came out around this time or even earlier. The core combat is nothing new or different at all aside from the rolling health which doesn't really get to shine like it does in Mother 3 which is where my confusion lies. I've seen a lot of comparisons of the combat to Dragon Quest as the influence is apparent down to the placement of the menus and battle screen layout. However, I feel DQ offers a lot more gameplay variety, especially considering this came out 2 years after DQ5 WHICH GOT RID OF LIMITED INVENTORY SPACE!!!!!

Some other random gripes/annoyances-
Status effects: It feels like every enemy has them and they are fucking impossible to cure outside of a hospital for what feels like way too much of the game. Fucking stupid and annoying.
Final boss: Hot take here!! Giygas sucks. Sure it's a big scary red face! I get it! Let's pretend the game had themes: growing up is a big scary red face! -- Maybe make the boss fun?? LOL?? This was the least engaging final boss ever. Fuck off, Itoi.
Spells: There are like 4 spells you will ever end up using in this game. Is that a bad thing on paper? Technically no, but to compensate I think Poo should have been another unique character in battle like Jeff instead of just being an all-rounder type who ends up being a more-useful Boney. (this is minor because I don't mind spamming)

Suitable as a first JRPG if you are interested in an easy turn-based game that's very light on plot. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend EarthBound.