Takahashi didn't learn from Gears at all huh.

Xenosaga Episode I is an odd one to talk about as its own game, in a narrative sense at least. Takahashi wanted to make sure his six part epic got completed this time so he started right at episode 1 rather than 5. Ironically, episode 5 would turn out to be a far more digestible single narrative, probably because Takahashi knew it'd likely be the only one he could put out.

Much of Episode I is big exposition dumps and setting up the general setting for whats to come later, so much so that they even have to throw it into the credits because the game has so much to get through. I honestly don't mind this too much, to a point. I love the dedication to making this world feel truly real and messy, with a wide variety of different factions and characters each with unique goals interacting together. You get a real sense of history here, like the best moments of Gears.

Where I think it begins to harm this individual chapter is that I don't think as a singular narrative what happens here is very satisfying. You save the day and blow up the big superweapon but in terms of any character work even by the end of the game you still feels like you are waiting for their arcs to really get moving. MOMO and Jr. get some forward momentum, and the Shion/KOS-MOS bit at the end is good but it doesn't feel like enough. In a world where this is the only Xenosaga game I think it would stand as a massive failing of the game. Thankfully there will be more, less than the 6 that Takahashi intended so I really can't wait to see how compromised those get, and how things could have been prevented by a more economic first part.

In terms of presentation however, I think it's a pretty massive win. For a 2002 JRPG with 7 hours of fully voiced 3-D animated cutscenes it says a lot that they still look and sound good. Crispin Freeman as Albedo is obviously the stand-out role but it's a very strong job from everyone involved. Making this even better is the Mitsuda score, which has a true sense of scale in its sound that utterly dwarfs his contemporaries.

One aspect of the score which I find to be a mixed bag is the lack of it in exploration. I actually find it for the most part to fit the tone of the game, but I think it needed a few more moments of contrast to truly sell that. The single battle theme (until the literal final boss) on the other hand, as good as that song is, I could do without hearing it for the next long while.

Gameplay wise I actually think it's a pretty solid system! Allows for lots of strategy, each of the six characters feels distinct and actually could be of use, allowing replays to be distinct. I'm usually rather impatient but I think my only critique of the speed of this combat is that I wish I could skip over some of the longer tech attack animations, as cool as they are.

There's two aspects of this system that I think hold it back from being truly strong. The first is the boost system. I think it mostly works quite well for your characters doing it, but the ways in which enemies boost feel like they are playing an entirely different game. They are able to boost at will, overriding your boosts while you cannot override theirs. You also can't see the enemies gauge so it feels particually cheap if they chain them together.

The second one is one part of the leveing system. While I actually really enjoy that the points are split into 3 distinct parts so you can give each aspect of the characters you level up a higher level of strategy, it is absurd that you cannot see the full path of abilities each character can level into. With how expensive the ether abilities are to unlock, you can spend a long time leveling up E-points to just end up with a skill less good than one you could have had earlier for cheaper in the tree. Being able to see the full tree and full range of tech attacks would allow for better planning. As it was I ended up saving all my point boosting items till the end just because I didn't want to waste them on stuff that wouldn't be useful to me in the end.

These are both very fixable problems however, and I would say I am excited to see how future games fix these but everything I have heard about Episode II puts the fear of god in me.

tl:dr takahashi you gotta hide your influences a bit harder you cannot just name the guy who invented androids "tyrrell" you hack

"I just moved here, but Aoba sure is a great place."

Before starting this review, I need to say this kind of works as my combined thoughts on Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. My score is indicative of just this game, but I never felt like I wanted to make a review for both since the gameplay is practically identical and I'd just be repeating myself a lot.

Eternal Punishment has some seriously missed potential. There are some great ideas here that are tough to appreciate from the gameplay that is present.

Being that Eternal Punishment is a direct sequel to Innocent Sin, it reuses a ton of assets from the original game, with the major culprits being the dungeons and music. Logically, the reused dungeons make sense as they pertain to the story's happenings, but I think there comes a point where, in development, the creators should have asked themselves if that was truly an ideal way to entertain the player. I would have liked to see how the settings have changed atmospherically in the sequel, but all we got were map layout updates. I was also disappointed by the game's soundtrack this time around. Most songs are either remixed or just reused entirely. There's some new songs though, one of which is the Aoba Park theme which is a beautiful track, and this remix of the Mountain Trail theme, but I enjoyed Innocent Sin’s OST more since all the music was brand new.

It's clear the developers drew some inspiration from Phantasy Star when making this combat system. Combat revolving around auto-battling, a 5-character party, and most notably, fusion spells. Differing from PSIV, you're able to switch around turn orders mid-battle, which is a great addition for fusion spells considering PSIV had you making your characters defend to link the turns for people with varying speed stats. I honestly never really ended up using these in Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment, as a lot just seemed worse than their non-chainable counterparts. An instance being when you use spells that target groups of enemies that share the same element, you can be prompted to turn it into a fusion spell that only attacks one enemy instead, which was inconvenient in standard battles with enemy groups. You can opt out of using the fusion spell before it happens in battle, which is another great addition, so it's not really an issue. The only time I ended up really using them was when combining two elements to do a bit more damage in boss fights. A major oversight, or intended mechanic, depending on who you ask, is the defend trick, where you cancel auto-battle and make everyone defend after their action. It's tedious to use in standard battles but proves extremely effective in boss battles due to you taking close to no damage. It really does make me believe it's an oversight, unless the developers thought it would be too useless to waste an extra turn defending. A cool aspect of the combat was the ability to have characters be able to switch their personae without wasting a turn, which led me to use it quite frequently. Turning anyone into a healer out of the blue was very helpful.

EP is known to be one of the harder entries in the SMT franchise, and I was well aware of this from friends. I know it sounds condescending, but I thought it was going to be a case of Persona 5 fans playing an older RPG, but Eternal Punishment is one of the harder RPG titles in the PS1 library, in my opinion. The difficulty was kind of mixed in its tedious structure along with its slow combat and frustrating encounter rate. By tedious structure, I am referring to demon fusion, which is done by gathering spell cards through demon negotiation. When fusing demons, there are different arcanas of cards they will give you pertaining to their arcana. Later on, demons will give you more and more per negotiation as the card requirements for fusions rise for higher-leveled personae. It's pretty easy to find a way to entertain them for cards, as there's multiple character combinations that work, but the strategy you want to go for is to form a contract with them, which usually has a very small amount or 1 specific character combo that raises their joy stat. The reason you want to do this is because after contract formation, when you entertain them for cards, they'll give you wild cards, which you can give to someone in the velvet room to change into any arcana you want. Considering there's over 20 card types in the game, this is the most convenient method of fusing personae. There’s different personae to fuse in each arcana of cards, which explains why you’d want the wild cards for complete freedom of your team's builds. It’s frustrating to find the joy-raising action to initiate these contracts, part of it being that they’re integral to the gameplay. There’s an art to demon negotiation; you’ll be able to tell what works sometimes from your characters' personalities meshing well with the demons, but it is by no means consistent. It’s something that’s fun at first but quickly becomes tedious when you're tasked with doing it more than a few times. It felt like I was just aimlessly trying anything that might work, which most times resulted in the demon getting mad and you having to enter a new encounter to try again. The salt on the wound is that making them mad will have them break your contract… Persona 2 is best played with a notebook nearby to write down the correct prompts for these demons. Even though the end result is a team with some killer personae, it's a goal that’s hard to work towards with all the tedium associated with it. 

Now, the slow combat. Not only is the game some of the slowest combat on the system, but it is also grindy as all hell. Throughout the game, you’ll need to fuse new personae a lot to stay on top of the game's difficulty. To unlock the moves on each persona, you’ll have to use any of their moves to get them to slowly rank up to their max level of 8 and get each move associated with them. Why would you want to rank them up all the way? Because sometimes the personae will have an integral move like healing everyone, or attack moves which you'll need for them to be useful. This was by far the most annoying part of the game's combat. When I’d get to a skill-check boss fight, I’d have to back out and grind up new personas, which got really irritating. I honestly wouldn’t mind the idea of it if they’d rank up quicker, because later on it started to tread on multiple hours of grinding. You can get them to skip 2 ranks from finishing battles with fusion attacks from a lucky mutation, but I could never get this to happen, so take that as you will. Even though I have a lot of complaints about this game's systems, it’s still fun to make builds for your characters with persona fusion. You can add a stat boost card and a card to add a certain move during the fusion, which adds a good layer of customizability. There’s also a level-up bonus for each persona to add a point to a particular stat, which is something you need to think about so you can boost your character's strengths. It’s as fun as the rest of the series in that regard; there’s still a bunch of pondering time spent in the velvet room, but it’s hard to look past the requirements of doing so.

I will say, though, that Eternal Punishment has great boss fights; almost every boss in the game will make you switch up your strategy and punish you if you don't. For instance, there's one fight later on where the boss heals a set amount of HP passively every turn, so you'll need to utilize fusion spells to maximize damage while balancing out support for your party. They were always a challenge to look forward to, and I was always preemptively aware that there would be a challenge that I'd have to face when outside boss doors in dungeons, no matter how high level or good my personae were.

By far the most endearing aspect of Eternal Punishment is its cast of characters. It's really nice to see a game tackle aspects of adulthood in such a blunt way in a real-life setting. These characters are people that most can truly relate to. By the time they started revealing a lot about them near the end through flashbacks, I got a bit emotional. These characters have realistic internal conflicts, not some shit out of Persona 5. I do wish there was more of it throughout the game. It may be the absurd amount of time spent in dungeons, but it really feels like there were barely any cutscenes for these characters to develop. Of course, the ones we have are great, but I wanted more.

I'm being told I should have played the PSP releases of these games, but I always like playing original releases because I like to admire what games did at the time of their original release. Part of the reason P1 is so interesting to me is that it is an early 5th generation title, and it was up in the air what to make next since there wasn’t really a blueprint yet. I feel more in tune with the innovations associated with games when I play their original releases, since a lot feels lost to me when I look at HD re-releases. Just looking at the UI in these titles and how they tried to make P1 overly accessible with the fast movement and out-of-place soundtrack, which completely alters the heavy atmosphere the Revelations version has, it was evident enough that these were not the definitive ways for me to play these titles. For the P2 games, though, the redone soundtracks actually sound really nice, but the battle UI looks and plays awful. So, that's just in case anyone was wondering why I played these versions instead.

What can I take away from these games? I will never complain about lengthy combat animations again. Kidding, but not really... These games definitely got me more interested in trying out the classic SMT games, and newer SMT games, for that matter, and I liked P2’s structure as opposed to the later entries in the Persona series. If you like this game and feel like I’m missing something, feel free to let me know in the comments. I’m curious to know aspects of why people enjoy this game.

Side Note: Whenever I play SMT games, something befalls me every single time. When I was playing Nocturne, I was incapable of sleeping for a week for some reason? During Revelations, I got hacked on every single account I own from what I think to be my cookies getting logged, and yes, even my Backloggd was hacked. Can you believe the nerve of someone to hack a Backloggd account? Someone must really hate me. During this game, I got sick for the first time in like 2 years and feel like shit. I fear for my life next time I go back to this series. I'll end off this review by reminding everyone to use 2 Factor sign in for your accounts. Stay safe out there, fellas...

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'll say outright that planet laika is a game i love in spite of itself. it's a game that's pretty regularly occupied my thoughts since i played it a few months ago in a single sick-day off work, both for the extremely profound moments of originality, thematic depth, and oddball enthusiasm, and also lamenting some of its clearly underbaked attributes that keep it pretty safely outside of 'masterpiece' territory. planet laika is a game i love more than my score may reflect; on a note of personal favoritism, it probably lands somewhere in my top 30 or so video games, but it's an obtuse mess that speeds down the tracks so passionately and so hard that by the time you're booted off the ride you're left wondering if this was a full game or a 10-hour proof of concept for an unmitigated masterpiece.

on paper, this game is tailored to my tastes in art pretty perfectly. you've got quintet's fingerprints pretty noticably all over sections of this game, you've got jung and freud pollock-ed all across the manuscript, the likes of andrei tarkovsky nearly shot-for-shot layed over the imagery and plot on such an undeniable level i couldn't help but return to 'solaris' and 'mirror' (my personal favorite of his) shortly after my playthrough, and of COURSE you've got all the judaic lorebuilding i could ask for this side of xenogears, with hints of majora's mask, mother 64, and moon all over the work at large. so WHY is this thing not a damn masterpiece? that's what i wanted to know too!

laika's issues boil down to two pretty major faults: it's far too short to stick the landings its passionate plot and themes demand, and the gameplay and plot progression is far, far too obtuse for its own good. granted, i played this with a fan translation - though if i'd really wanted to, i suppose my novice japanese would've resulted in at least equal amounts of confusion - and actually spoke to the translator about some of my problems with the game. from what i can tell from both japanese and english form-goers that arhcived their playthroughs of the japanese title over the years, this isn't the translation's fault. the game emphasizes communication with all of its colorful cast, but sometimes the strings between one plot point or character beat to the next boil down to lucky guesses. i'd mark this up as a similar situation to moon; a game that demands supplementary reading material, though in laika's place this doesn't yet exist, that might help prod lost players in the right direction.

as far as the rushed elements of the story, i'd like to keep things relatively spoiler-free, so i'll keep this brief. many uses of religious or philosophical imagery or concepts are SUPER creative and clearly there out of a passion for the topics, but many of these ideas don't feel supplemented or necessary or really even earned in some cases. i think if this game had another 5 to 10 hours, maybe around the length of a first chrono trigger playthrough, to iron this out, we'd have the masterpiece i so wanted this game to be. as it stands, i think terranigma remains the quintet game that delivers on the things it wants to say with these similar ideas the strongest.

as it stands, planet laika is a game i'd recommend any arthouse enthusiast, any curious party with a love for this era of gaming; i think it's a hair short of a masterpiece, but it remains a deeply unnerving, wildly creative, and harrowing experience you're not likely to wipe the psychedelic trail of slime it leaves on your brain away any time soon.