madeinheathen
2022
this should have been a tech demo alongside a remaster for the first island, it started off great but fell extremely flat in the end. the final segment was bad bad.
fun fun fun
2022
fun
100%
This review contains spoilers
An amazing story expansion for XC3 bringing every single Xeno game to an ‘endgame’ style game. That post credits with what i presume is Kosmos or a Xenoblade X ship is INSANE!!
congrats nintendo on creating an open world game.
a good 60% of this game was pretty average in my opinion but the other 40% was genuinely fire. the combat was phenomenal i loved the new stance system but i’m not a fan of the level design for the most part but the new abilities can make traversing very fun.
2018
i love you rgg studios. that ending was fucking amazing. only things i didn’t like about the game was how easy it was and that the mission goals could be shit occasionally. I LOVE YAKUZA/LAD/JUDGEMENT!!
1996
Was fun. Played it within Lost Judgement.
2021
After having come off the exceptional Judgement (2018) I was super pumped to get into it’s sequel, Lost Judgement, I honestly did not think I would prefer this game to the original due to hearing about this game focusing on a school and crimes surrounding it, but gosh.
Just for some context before I begin, Judgement is a detective series set in the world of the Yakuza games (under the umbrella title of Ryu Go Gotaku / Like A Dragon series). It stars the protagonist Yagami, lawyer turned detective, investigating cases in various japanese cities. The series stays mostly detached from Yakuza only with common clan names and places shared, aside a few cameos, though these are minor.
Almost everything in Lost Judgement’s main story intertwines at some point, all the way from the prologue, the writing here is exceptional. Sub stories are exceptional as usual with Ryu Go Gotaku games, I did around 30 of them and all were exciting and very rewarding, the mission structure here is so much better than the main game.
My complaints with the first game boiled down to frustrating mission design at times - notably in the tailing missions. Tailing missions are very minimal here and only appear in the main story once, at the beginning, even then they aren’t bad due to a new feature called ‘act casual’ which makes the subject not suspect you when searching. I must say though I do prefer the chase missions of the first game to these chase missions, It doesn’t really make sense why the enemy has a health bar depleting while chasing them? Eh whatever, they’re still fun.
A small complaint I must say is the minigames in Lost Judgement. They are still great don’t get me wrong but many are exactly the same as the predecessor and they do not feel as rewarding as the first game.
Ijincho (the new town, also present in Yakuza: Like A Dragon) could feel barren at times but this isn’t so bad due to the revised taxi system, allowing it to be accessed from the pause menu. Ijincho is a huge area so thanks RGG for the skateboard, such a fun mechanic! I hope it returns in future RGG entries. Using the skateboard in Kamurucho wasn’t very practical though, but Kamurucho is small enough to run around so that is passable.
The soundtrack to Lost Judgement is exceptional as with the first game, many tracks are re used which is completely fine and these re used tracks only appear in side cases it seems. The soundtrack will always complement the cutscenes, especially in the court scenes, the final act was exceptional. Potentially my favourite final act in any game. Having vocal themes to the game was nice as well I must say!
I’m not sure how I haven’t wrote this already but WOW! The combat and general gameplay in Lost Judgement are absolutely phenomenal, it upgrades the already slick and fluid Judgement combat to the next level introducing a new style known as ‘Snake’ (and a dlc style which I didn’t get.), I would recommend checking out YouTube videos on the combat as it can’t really be put into words. Definitely my favourite combat in a game, especially when you upgrade the skill trees.
There are many areas I have not covered here but I will be looking into doing a fuller / revised review in the future, when this happens i’ll say on my Instagram (@ccrackedactor). Overall Lost Judgement has blew me away, definitely on the high end of a 9/10! Please play Judgement and Lost Judgement if you can, even if the core Yakuza series does not interest you.
Just for some context before I begin, Judgement is a detective series set in the world of the Yakuza games (under the umbrella title of Ryu Go Gotaku / Like A Dragon series). It stars the protagonist Yagami, lawyer turned detective, investigating cases in various japanese cities. The series stays mostly detached from Yakuza only with common clan names and places shared, aside a few cameos, though these are minor.
Almost everything in Lost Judgement’s main story intertwines at some point, all the way from the prologue, the writing here is exceptional. Sub stories are exceptional as usual with Ryu Go Gotaku games, I did around 30 of them and all were exciting and very rewarding, the mission structure here is so much better than the main game.
My complaints with the first game boiled down to frustrating mission design at times - notably in the tailing missions. Tailing missions are very minimal here and only appear in the main story once, at the beginning, even then they aren’t bad due to a new feature called ‘act casual’ which makes the subject not suspect you when searching. I must say though I do prefer the chase missions of the first game to these chase missions, It doesn’t really make sense why the enemy has a health bar depleting while chasing them? Eh whatever, they’re still fun.
A small complaint I must say is the minigames in Lost Judgement. They are still great don’t get me wrong but many are exactly the same as the predecessor and they do not feel as rewarding as the first game.
Ijincho (the new town, also present in Yakuza: Like A Dragon) could feel barren at times but this isn’t so bad due to the revised taxi system, allowing it to be accessed from the pause menu. Ijincho is a huge area so thanks RGG for the skateboard, such a fun mechanic! I hope it returns in future RGG entries. Using the skateboard in Kamurucho wasn’t very practical though, but Kamurucho is small enough to run around so that is passable.
The soundtrack to Lost Judgement is exceptional as with the first game, many tracks are re used which is completely fine and these re used tracks only appear in side cases it seems. The soundtrack will always complement the cutscenes, especially in the court scenes, the final act was exceptional. Potentially my favourite final act in any game. Having vocal themes to the game was nice as well I must say!
I’m not sure how I haven’t wrote this already but WOW! The combat and general gameplay in Lost Judgement are absolutely phenomenal, it upgrades the already slick and fluid Judgement combat to the next level introducing a new style known as ‘Snake’ (and a dlc style which I didn’t get.), I would recommend checking out YouTube videos on the combat as it can’t really be put into words. Definitely my favourite combat in a game, especially when you upgrade the skill trees.
There are many areas I have not covered here but I will be looking into doing a fuller / revised review in the future, when this happens i’ll say on my Instagram (@ccrackedactor). Overall Lost Judgement has blew me away, definitely on the high end of a 9/10! Please play Judgement and Lost Judgement if you can, even if the core Yakuza series does not interest you.
The Kaito Files is a story expansion to the fabulous Lost Judgement game. This story expansion was not needed in the slightest but the fact that it is a thing is amazing! Following the story of Masaharu Kaito, ex-yakuza turned detective & sidekick of Takayuki Yagami, he finds himself alone in Kamurucho whilst Yagami runs errands elsewhere and gets wrapped up in a huge case regarding his ex partner, morals and abuse. Saying any more story would be saying ‘too’ much… But believe me, it’s amazing and absolutely essential you have played both Judgement games prior.
The gameplay here is outstanding, playing as Kaito he has 2 fighting styles which act in a similar way to Yagami’s Tiger and Crane styles, they are built to tackle different hoards of enemies and are both extremely fun to use, especially when the skill trees have been upgraded. When you reach max completion on all the skills it becomes a whole other game, I must say this definitely has my favourite action combat in any game ever, the next Judgement game (if there is one) will top it even further if it includes Yagami’s 4 styles and Kaito’s 2 styles.
Side content wise, there is no side cases, but it makes sense, this is a story expansion focused on a singular large case, though there are other forms of side content. Namely in Kaito’s forms of discovery with his Primal senses, these are Sight, Smell and Hearing and have challenges scattered round Kamurucho to interact with and hence building skills and bonds further. I really enjoyed going for the 100% here.
The final act of The Kaito Files is phenomenal, the last dungeon and fight was really an execution of how well everything culminated across this short-ish adventure with a runtime of just 5 hours for the average player just going for the story. The final few cutscenes in Ijincho really gave me goosebumps, it was extremely intense… OH and that secret fight for completing the skill tree is perhaps the best fight i’ve done in any game!
This was a relatively short review but believe me I could go on much much further, I thoroughly enjoyed this and in my opinion it’s flawless, peak Ryu Go Gotaku right here. I hope Judgement goes on to the level of the main Yakuza series.
The gameplay here is outstanding, playing as Kaito he has 2 fighting styles which act in a similar way to Yagami’s Tiger and Crane styles, they are built to tackle different hoards of enemies and are both extremely fun to use, especially when the skill trees have been upgraded. When you reach max completion on all the skills it becomes a whole other game, I must say this definitely has my favourite action combat in any game ever, the next Judgement game (if there is one) will top it even further if it includes Yagami’s 4 styles and Kaito’s 2 styles.
Side content wise, there is no side cases, but it makes sense, this is a story expansion focused on a singular large case, though there are other forms of side content. Namely in Kaito’s forms of discovery with his Primal senses, these are Sight, Smell and Hearing and have challenges scattered round Kamurucho to interact with and hence building skills and bonds further. I really enjoyed going for the 100% here.
The final act of The Kaito Files is phenomenal, the last dungeon and fight was really an execution of how well everything culminated across this short-ish adventure with a runtime of just 5 hours for the average player just going for the story. The final few cutscenes in Ijincho really gave me goosebumps, it was extremely intense… OH and that secret fight for completing the skill tree is perhaps the best fight i’ve done in any game!
This was a relatively short review but believe me I could go on much much further, I thoroughly enjoyed this and in my opinion it’s flawless, peak Ryu Go Gotaku right here. I hope Judgement goes on to the level of the main Yakuza series.
2022
I initially played Neon White when it came out on Nintendo Switch, I did plan to revisit it as it is a very fun game though the stuff that isn’t gameplay held me off. Now that I got the PS5 physical I figured I should replay it.
For some reference I initially gave Neon White a 9/10, now that has dropped to a 6/10, recency bias definitely played a part in my initial scoring.
Starting with positives, the gameplay of Neon White is (mostly) outstanding, it’s a speedrunning first person shooter focused on card powers which act as guns such as RPGs, SMGs etc. which hold a secondary ability whether that be a grappling hook, bomb or something else, they are all very fun abilities minus the last card, the Book of Life, it really hinders the last 2 chapters of the game in my opinion and makes what was a tactical game into a mindless one. Nonetheless, gameplay is fantastic and compliments the level design really well.
Another positive I can give to Neon White is it’s visuals, it opts for something that feels like it was on the Dreamcast with it’s polygons, style and colour pallet, though it does feel very modern at the same time. The game holds 4 distinct environments all of which are great.
Before I get onto the big negative I shall say the soundtrack to the game is great, it was composed by Machine Girl who is a relatively known name in the techno music scape. Though no tracks are really memorable, they just accompany the game really well.
The big negative this game holds which unfortunately will (understandably so) hold people off from playing this otherwise gem is the story and writing, it can be truly dreadful at times, it feels like some ‘weeb’ in the west wrote an anime game full of repetitive and cringeworthy troupes, and that is exactly what happened it seems. The premise of the story is cool do not get me wrong but it’s just executed poorly and is not memorable at all. I could go on more but I shall not.
Overall, Neon White is fundamentally a great game but it is let down by poor writing and poor design in the last portion of the game. This is very hard to recommend honestly, but I would if you just skip the story stuff.
For some reference I initially gave Neon White a 9/10, now that has dropped to a 6/10, recency bias definitely played a part in my initial scoring.
Starting with positives, the gameplay of Neon White is (mostly) outstanding, it’s a speedrunning first person shooter focused on card powers which act as guns such as RPGs, SMGs etc. which hold a secondary ability whether that be a grappling hook, bomb or something else, they are all very fun abilities minus the last card, the Book of Life, it really hinders the last 2 chapters of the game in my opinion and makes what was a tactical game into a mindless one. Nonetheless, gameplay is fantastic and compliments the level design really well.
Another positive I can give to Neon White is it’s visuals, it opts for something that feels like it was on the Dreamcast with it’s polygons, style and colour pallet, though it does feel very modern at the same time. The game holds 4 distinct environments all of which are great.
Before I get onto the big negative I shall say the soundtrack to the game is great, it was composed by Machine Girl who is a relatively known name in the techno music scape. Though no tracks are really memorable, they just accompany the game really well.
The big negative this game holds which unfortunately will (understandably so) hold people off from playing this otherwise gem is the story and writing, it can be truly dreadful at times, it feels like some ‘weeb’ in the west wrote an anime game full of repetitive and cringeworthy troupes, and that is exactly what happened it seems. The premise of the story is cool do not get me wrong but it’s just executed poorly and is not memorable at all. I could go on more but I shall not.
Overall, Neon White is fundamentally a great game but it is let down by poor writing and poor design in the last portion of the game. This is very hard to recommend honestly, but I would if you just skip the story stuff.
2009
Persona 3 has been on my radar for a while and I have attempted to commit to numerous playthroughs of the game over the past 4 years. I never thought I would beat it but here we are, what brought me to commit to this playthrough was the announcement of Persona 3 Reload so I decided to play arguably the worst version of the game according to the general consensus. I played the 2023 ‘Remaster’ FYI.
I played Makoto Yuki’s route here as it is the canonical route to any other stories Persona 3 holds such as The Answer or Dancing, both of which indeed are on my game radar now.
I won’t be reviewing this as a remaster besides this next paragraph, anyway i’ll proceed.
As a ‘remaster’ P3P is hideous in the regard of cutscenes. The original P3P had no cutscenes due to memory restrictions which is fine. Though this new version of the game still has no cutscenes which honestly I just find inexcusable, there is no reason not for Atlus to have added the PS2 cutscenes here, modders have added them for a long time, even before this ‘remaster’ exists. Rant over.
Any slice of life gameplay here is absolute bog standard, it makes sense as it was a PSP game held back by limitations but still, it’s very bare bones. It isn’t totally bad but just eliminates a very nice aspect from the Persona games, the city exploration. Fortunately though the dungeon gameplay is similar to the PS2, just with lower quality models and some changes to battle gameplay with the addition of party control which was a new feature added to Persona 4 in 2008 and made its way to Persona 3 Portable. Battle gameplay is very good I must say, I don’t explore it in depth personally but playing on Hard difficulty this was very enjoyable for the most part.
Persona 3’s story is great, it starts off very vague but builds its way to the top, just like a metaphor of reaching the top of Tartarus (the main dungeon). Premise is hard to explain without spoiling but essentially a group of friends are fighting against shadows in order to stop the dark hour, the 25th hour in a day only visible to some which in effect will cause the world to end. All the characters involved with the story serve their purpose well, just the emittance of some characters having social links is unfortunate, though it seems to be Reload will be fixing that next year! My favourite social links of all I did was certainly the Dying Man SL with Akinari, it told such a sad story and was executed perfectly.
Next section is just some rapid fire as I don’t feel I can extend them…
- Music is excellent, no surprises there, my favourite area track was Changing Seasons, favourite battle theme was Master of Tartarus and story theme was Memories of You!
- Visuals and aesthetic are very nice, though in this ‘remaster’ it is clear tampering has been done unfortunately.
- Didn’t do much side content, it didn’t really interest me personally.
Overall i’ve enjoyed Persona 3 Portable quite a bit and it is really going to help when I play Reload next year! (I pre ordered the Aigis edition!!). Thanks for reading as always.
i’m aware my playtime is relatively short compared to most but i did blaze through tartarus and any repetitive slice of life aspects :) just my way to play though but i will be spending more time on future visits to Persona 3!
*also finished the game on my birthday which is nice :)
I played Makoto Yuki’s route here as it is the canonical route to any other stories Persona 3 holds such as The Answer or Dancing, both of which indeed are on my game radar now.
I won’t be reviewing this as a remaster besides this next paragraph, anyway i’ll proceed.
As a ‘remaster’ P3P is hideous in the regard of cutscenes. The original P3P had no cutscenes due to memory restrictions which is fine. Though this new version of the game still has no cutscenes which honestly I just find inexcusable, there is no reason not for Atlus to have added the PS2 cutscenes here, modders have added them for a long time, even before this ‘remaster’ exists. Rant over.
Any slice of life gameplay here is absolute bog standard, it makes sense as it was a PSP game held back by limitations but still, it’s very bare bones. It isn’t totally bad but just eliminates a very nice aspect from the Persona games, the city exploration. Fortunately though the dungeon gameplay is similar to the PS2, just with lower quality models and some changes to battle gameplay with the addition of party control which was a new feature added to Persona 4 in 2008 and made its way to Persona 3 Portable. Battle gameplay is very good I must say, I don’t explore it in depth personally but playing on Hard difficulty this was very enjoyable for the most part.
Persona 3’s story is great, it starts off very vague but builds its way to the top, just like a metaphor of reaching the top of Tartarus (the main dungeon). Premise is hard to explain without spoiling but essentially a group of friends are fighting against shadows in order to stop the dark hour, the 25th hour in a day only visible to some which in effect will cause the world to end. All the characters involved with the story serve their purpose well, just the emittance of some characters having social links is unfortunate, though it seems to be Reload will be fixing that next year! My favourite social links of all I did was certainly the Dying Man SL with Akinari, it told such a sad story and was executed perfectly.
Next section is just some rapid fire as I don’t feel I can extend them…
- Music is excellent, no surprises there, my favourite area track was Changing Seasons, favourite battle theme was Master of Tartarus and story theme was Memories of You!
- Visuals and aesthetic are very nice, though in this ‘remaster’ it is clear tampering has been done unfortunately.
- Didn’t do much side content, it didn’t really interest me personally.
Overall i’ve enjoyed Persona 3 Portable quite a bit and it is really going to help when I play Reload next year! (I pre ordered the Aigis edition!!). Thanks for reading as always.
i’m aware my playtime is relatively short compared to most but i did blaze through tartarus and any repetitive slice of life aspects :) just my way to play though but i will be spending more time on future visits to Persona 3!
*also finished the game on my birthday which is nice :)
This is literally just a joke videogame how does this exist
Fundamentally the ideas of Sonic Frontiers and it’s free expansion ‘The Final Horizon’ are what make the game excel, but those are just ideas and are hardly ever executed well within the game.
This stands very true in this expansion, design choices in this are actually baffling at points and none of the platforming segments are fun, they’re just painstakingly annoying and poorly designed, maybe for another platformer they could be good, but definitely not for Sonic.
The format of the game consists of playing as (mainly) Sonic, Amy, Knuckles and Tails and retrieving Chaos Emeralds (for like the 6th time in the game?) in order for Sonic to take down the true final boss ‘The End’ (very original name). Trials also need to be completed for some reason and they consist around platforming up a tall tower and battling an enemy at the end. None of this is fun which is unfortunate as I actually feel all the characters in the game besides Amy play really well and I enjoyed my brief time with them. I didn’t do any of the new cyberspace levels as frankly I don’t care and the game doesn’t even HINT at you that they exist which is strange?
The final segment of the expansion is what truly baffles me, who thought it was remotely ok to do a boss rush of bosses from the main game with level restrictions and no extra rings which quickly drain? Final boss was not good either, though the music slaps all around in the expansion though none of it is memorable which is a big issue compared to the likes of Open Your Heart, Live And Learn, Sonic Heroes, His World etc etc, hell even Sonic Forces had memorable songs.
Only positives I can really give this are the characters being fun though nothing compliments that.
(wow that was a bad expansion.)
This stands very true in this expansion, design choices in this are actually baffling at points and none of the platforming segments are fun, they’re just painstakingly annoying and poorly designed, maybe for another platformer they could be good, but definitely not for Sonic.
The format of the game consists of playing as (mainly) Sonic, Amy, Knuckles and Tails and retrieving Chaos Emeralds (for like the 6th time in the game?) in order for Sonic to take down the true final boss ‘The End’ (very original name). Trials also need to be completed for some reason and they consist around platforming up a tall tower and battling an enemy at the end. None of this is fun which is unfortunate as I actually feel all the characters in the game besides Amy play really well and I enjoyed my brief time with them. I didn’t do any of the new cyberspace levels as frankly I don’t care and the game doesn’t even HINT at you that they exist which is strange?
The final segment of the expansion is what truly baffles me, who thought it was remotely ok to do a boss rush of bosses from the main game with level restrictions and no extra rings which quickly drain? Final boss was not good either, though the music slaps all around in the expansion though none of it is memorable which is a big issue compared to the likes of Open Your Heart, Live And Learn, Sonic Heroes, His World etc etc, hell even Sonic Forces had memorable songs.
Only positives I can really give this are the characters being fun though nothing compliments that.
(wow that was a bad expansion.)