rookdorf
2020
This review contains spoilers
As a big fan of Sly and a fan of Infamous, I had high hopes for this game, and it mostly met them. Something surprising to me was how similar this actually felt to Infamous Second Son in general structure (clearing objectives in subzones of the map that you unlock as the story progresses, each with increasing tiers of goons), though it has been years since I played.
First, let's get it out of the way: the game looks incredible. I got a new TV recently and I knew this would be the perfect game to break it in, and it nailed it. The environments are all beautiful, and for the most part the polish is off the charts. (Extremely minor note that really bothered me though: duels have a sweet intro scene, really going for that cinematic feel, but then after Jin pops the sword out of the sheath, it instantly cuts to gameplay where you're both in fighting stances with weapons drawn. A transition scene here to smooth this out, like what FF7R does each time a scene goes back into player control, would have gone a really long way.)
The open world activities are mostly fun, but they get pretty dry pretty quickly. By mid-2nd act I was already skipping a lot of the lower reward or higher commitment ones (fox dens and shrines with charm rewards that didn't fit my playstyle), instead just picking them up for fast travel points when I saw them. Exploring was usually pretty chill, it never felt empty and enemies didn't bother you too much if you weren't looking for a fight. But verticality was a bit of an issue. Having to find the climb point for a mountain or ledge in front of you was not always quite as obvious as it felt like it should be, especially going down. Every time I was someplace high up and wanted to go off in some direction, I found myself really wishing I had a BotW-style paraglider.
The story was overall solid, but it wasn't my favorite ever. (Spoiler Section) Jin is a pretty good character but not one that will stick with me super hard. Most of the ally characters were very low impact for me, even after overstaying their welcome in side tales. I liked Kenji though, even if (or because?) he felt slightly out of place for the atmosphere of the game. Ryuzo was also maybe on the better side, but didn't feel like he got enough establishment in act 1 as an ally and Jin's best friend since childhood, which would have helped his impact later on. Shimura I found was too obviously dislikeable, and Jin's faith in him was just kind of grating until the extremely obvious split between them happened. I think this lessened the impact of the ending a fair bit for me. The Khan was also not much of a villain, despite their attempts in the first act to build him up. I think the story clearly peaked around the middle-end of act 2 as everything comes to a head (starting with Yarikawa), plus the unique section at the start of 3 (losing my horse Kage was legitimately the most emotional experience of the game for me). After that it lost me a little though. Act 3 felt almost rushed, which I didn't mind since I really was not a fan of exploring the snow biome of Kamiagata, and the story closed out with not much fanfare. The duel with the Khan was solid but the big finale taking 20 minutes felt a little limp after the end of act 2. And the same was true of the final duel, not helped by Shimura's character. The overreliance on the poison plot point also felt strange to me.
Combat in general was solid. Usually satisfying and didn't drag out too much, though a couple of the Brutes were fairly annoying. You get plenty of tools to mess with, though you may have too many resources honestly. It was fun when I ran out and would have to improvise with the tools I used more infrequently. I surprisingly liked how swingy combat felt, like it could go in the enemy's favor pretty quickly, but you could also recover to full health and some resolve with a few good parries (though I was on Normal and would have definitely disliked this on the highest difficulty). Being able to get back to a "perfect" state easily was nice in general, that being full health, some resolve, and full resources (as opposed to an RPG with a healing fountain or something).
And finally, Iki island (DLC discussion ahead). I think I enjoyed this more than the main game overall. The story was nice for DLC and fleshed out something that in hindsight seems like a pretty big deal to Jin's story, but got brushed over in the main game. I liked Tenzo more than most of the base game characters as well, I think only having 1 main ally in the spotlight helped a lot. The new open world activities helped spice it up a little after seeing the same ones so many times on Tsushima, and there was a lot more variety than expected (both since it could sprinkle in main game activities here and there, but also in the new things to do, which also felt blended into the world more naturally than those on Tsushima). Due the the smaller zone, they never overstayed their welcome, even after I 100%ed all of Iki, which I just do not want to do for Tsushima. I think the big win of Iki is its smaller scope. It makes everything in the game feel more approachable, and nothing was ever that far from anything else while still not feeling claustrophobic or theme parky. There was plenty of open room just to ride around as needed, but no objective or undiscovered location was ever more than a few hundred yards away. Iki also has really nice environments consistently throughout, which I personally enjoyed more than Tsushima, mostly due to Kamiagata and some smaller areas like spooky forests or swamps. Nearly 1/3 of my total playtime was post-main game just full completing Iki, which I think says a lot since I was ready to just blast it and be done after finishing the main game.
Overall, a very nice modern open world game with great visuals. While ambitious in some ways, it almost felt like it played it safe in overall structure and activities vs being more experimental. Which is not a bad thing, since what was here was so polished. It's sort of how I felt about Super Mario Odyssey vs Breath of the Wild: Odyssey is a very fun, polished version of "3D Mario" with a ton of stuff to do, while BotW tries a lot more new ground for the series and does falter here and there, but overall is wildly successful: the risk paid off. Both are games I gave 5 stars to, though. Ghost of Tsushima is the Odyssey in this comparison, while BotW would be something like, I don't know, Fire Emblem Three Houses. They're both a slight step down from Odyssey and BotW to me (4 stars), with one being a polished safe game and the other being a mostly successful shift with a couple flubs.
First, let's get it out of the way: the game looks incredible. I got a new TV recently and I knew this would be the perfect game to break it in, and it nailed it. The environments are all beautiful, and for the most part the polish is off the charts. (Extremely minor note that really bothered me though: duels have a sweet intro scene, really going for that cinematic feel, but then after Jin pops the sword out of the sheath, it instantly cuts to gameplay where you're both in fighting stances with weapons drawn. A transition scene here to smooth this out, like what FF7R does each time a scene goes back into player control, would have gone a really long way.)
The open world activities are mostly fun, but they get pretty dry pretty quickly. By mid-2nd act I was already skipping a lot of the lower reward or higher commitment ones (fox dens and shrines with charm rewards that didn't fit my playstyle), instead just picking them up for fast travel points when I saw them. Exploring was usually pretty chill, it never felt empty and enemies didn't bother you too much if you weren't looking for a fight. But verticality was a bit of an issue. Having to find the climb point for a mountain or ledge in front of you was not always quite as obvious as it felt like it should be, especially going down. Every time I was someplace high up and wanted to go off in some direction, I found myself really wishing I had a BotW-style paraglider.
The story was overall solid, but it wasn't my favorite ever. (Spoiler Section) Jin is a pretty good character but not one that will stick with me super hard. Most of the ally characters were very low impact for me, even after overstaying their welcome in side tales. I liked Kenji though, even if (or because?) he felt slightly out of place for the atmosphere of the game. Ryuzo was also maybe on the better side, but didn't feel like he got enough establishment in act 1 as an ally and Jin's best friend since childhood, which would have helped his impact later on. Shimura I found was too obviously dislikeable, and Jin's faith in him was just kind of grating until the extremely obvious split between them happened. I think this lessened the impact of the ending a fair bit for me. The Khan was also not much of a villain, despite their attempts in the first act to build him up. I think the story clearly peaked around the middle-end of act 2 as everything comes to a head (starting with Yarikawa), plus the unique section at the start of 3 (losing my horse Kage was legitimately the most emotional experience of the game for me). After that it lost me a little though. Act 3 felt almost rushed, which I didn't mind since I really was not a fan of exploring the snow biome of Kamiagata, and the story closed out with not much fanfare. The duel with the Khan was solid but the big finale taking 20 minutes felt a little limp after the end of act 2. And the same was true of the final duel, not helped by Shimura's character. The overreliance on the poison plot point also felt strange to me.
Combat in general was solid. Usually satisfying and didn't drag out too much, though a couple of the Brutes were fairly annoying. You get plenty of tools to mess with, though you may have too many resources honestly. It was fun when I ran out and would have to improvise with the tools I used more infrequently. I surprisingly liked how swingy combat felt, like it could go in the enemy's favor pretty quickly, but you could also recover to full health and some resolve with a few good parries (though I was on Normal and would have definitely disliked this on the highest difficulty). Being able to get back to a "perfect" state easily was nice in general, that being full health, some resolve, and full resources (as opposed to an RPG with a healing fountain or something).
And finally, Iki island (DLC discussion ahead). I think I enjoyed this more than the main game overall. The story was nice for DLC and fleshed out something that in hindsight seems like a pretty big deal to Jin's story, but got brushed over in the main game. I liked Tenzo more than most of the base game characters as well, I think only having 1 main ally in the spotlight helped a lot. The new open world activities helped spice it up a little after seeing the same ones so many times on Tsushima, and there was a lot more variety than expected (both since it could sprinkle in main game activities here and there, but also in the new things to do, which also felt blended into the world more naturally than those on Tsushima). Due the the smaller zone, they never overstayed their welcome, even after I 100%ed all of Iki, which I just do not want to do for Tsushima. I think the big win of Iki is its smaller scope. It makes everything in the game feel more approachable, and nothing was ever that far from anything else while still not feeling claustrophobic or theme parky. There was plenty of open room just to ride around as needed, but no objective or undiscovered location was ever more than a few hundred yards away. Iki also has really nice environments consistently throughout, which I personally enjoyed more than Tsushima, mostly due to Kamiagata and some smaller areas like spooky forests or swamps. Nearly 1/3 of my total playtime was post-main game just full completing Iki, which I think says a lot since I was ready to just blast it and be done after finishing the main game.
Overall, a very nice modern open world game with great visuals. While ambitious in some ways, it almost felt like it played it safe in overall structure and activities vs being more experimental. Which is not a bad thing, since what was here was so polished. It's sort of how I felt about Super Mario Odyssey vs Breath of the Wild: Odyssey is a very fun, polished version of "3D Mario" with a ton of stuff to do, while BotW tries a lot more new ground for the series and does falter here and there, but overall is wildly successful: the risk paid off. Both are games I gave 5 stars to, though. Ghost of Tsushima is the Odyssey in this comparison, while BotW would be something like, I don't know, Fire Emblem Three Houses. They're both a slight step down from Odyssey and BotW to me (4 stars), with one being a polished safe game and the other being a mostly successful shift with a couple flubs.
2020
A fun, very polished little tech demo for the DualSense and a love letter to PlayStation history. I wasn't a big fan of most of the gimmick parts of each level (monkey swinging, rocket, spring), but it was still a nice world to explore that clearly had a lot of care go into it and is worth checking out for all new PS5 owners.
2006
A pretty fun start to the series, if a bit inconsistent. Some of these are surprisingly robust for the first entry in the series and a handful had songs that might stick with me (both Ondos, Tap Trial, Karate Man as always, maybe Clappy Trio, etc), but overall there were a number of misses or duller games in here. Still a charming entry for what it is, and lets you see the roots of what is to come (Spaceball >= Exhibition Match from Fever).
2020
This review contains spoilers
A fun, short, surprisingly difficult and well put-together experience with a goofy theme that might throw off some. The genre shift for the last sections was a little surprising, but still worked pretty well. The Examtaker anniversary content was also good and might as well be a sequel, and the final encounter of that was probably the highlight of the whole game for me. Wasn't a huge fan of the laser timing puzzles in this section though. Also, great music throughout.
2020
This review contains spoilers
This is a super long review/breakdown I wrote for some friends shortly after release when I had 100%ed the game. There's a final verdict at the bottom as a TLDR.
Gameplay/Combat: Overall I think the action combat worked really nicely in this game. The biggest point in its favor is actually getting to see demons, and also the P5 cast, move around and attack and stuff with the sick visual style of P5. Like even when I was farming Raja Naga for 5 hours, it was cool how it actually coiled up before attacks like a snake, or Berith charged you, or Seth flew around, etc. All the human party members are really cool to look at too, and it almost adds to their characters to play as them if that makes sense. Like feeling like Ryuji charging up and swinging, or Haru with the axe, or actually getting to use Johanna as a bike/the Monabus (honestly this one kind of sucked). I think there was a pretty good mix between basic combos/finishers, using skills, swapping to other members, showtimes, AOAs, using environmental prompts, One More, and using items. No one part of those was super deep, but they were all solid enough to hold their own weight and you were generally never stuck doing only 1 of those for too long before mixing it up. Maybe basic combos/finishers got a bit stale, but not overly so (plus that was probably during Plat hunting for me and not main game, and also when I figured out that C4 seems to kind of be the best all the time). Most trash fights were a good length/difficulty (err on easy side which worked well), some minibosses felt probably a bit damage spongey, especially from Akira onwards, but it wasn't a big issue. Hacking was just OK but didn't show up too much so whatever, and was at least a mix up to the formula. Also, Master Arts were a pretty OK way to get you to at least play everyone a little, unsure how well that really works though, the trophy site says 36% of people got it so I assume it's lower on console. Also, Merciless is a pretty cool way to do NG+, but I almost wish it wasn't strictly tied to difficulty and was more of a choice of "do you want to be able to ignore combat in NG+ or actually have to play the game", like Merciless-Easy, Merciless-Normal, Merciless-Hard).
Bosses: Akira >>>>> Demi > Alice > Natsume > Hyodo > Cognitive Joker(?)
Overall bosses were decent but not amazing. Even Akira is largely that far up because of the theming of it, story/cutscenes/music, and having 2 distinct phases. Of the 3 "normal" bosses, I put Alice at the top because I thought it had just enough use of environment and liked how it had 2 phases to mix it up. Natsume was too easy because of too many environmental weapons and happening to be tailored to my party, but was a pretty OK boss aside from that. Hyodo I actively kind of disliked, chandeliers being near-mandatory at the right time sucked when combined with party members using them, the boss refusing to move around without being baited on the ground, and lack of respawns for them. The cold/lantern mechanic was also not great, I think if they want to do a punishing phase like that, then solving it should have a more explicit reward, like stunning her briefly or chunking her shield. Without that, compared to other bosses it just feels like an annoyance. Cognitive Joker was almost sick, but then also kind of sucked, so I don't really know where to put it. Should've leaned harder into QTEs if they were gonna do 1 (only 1 in the game besides prompts, like what), and the non-QTE half was just annoying, he hit super hard so you had to be careful but could only really chip away at him during safe times. Also I couldn't refight this so my judgment is based on 1 fight only vs like 3-4 of the others. Make this a fast paced Yakuza-like QTE heavy boss and a gauntlet for each member, or since that's too long: YOUR ACTIVE PARTY (with failsafe for solo joker cheese) and it'd maybe top Akira.
Demi, finally, is a weird one. (First of all, story wise: dumb, but more on that later). Phase 1 was pretty solid, a little plain but that's because it's phase 1. Spheres are a cool idea that I'm not sure how I feel about in the end. Good: Concept of splitting up your party, feeling like everyone's contributing, and I like groups of minibosses as a concept, they were mostly fun to take down and pick an order. I also like a unique mechanic for final boss as a concept. Bad: It comes out of nowhere, so if you're been sticking with exclusively 3 members, you're probably kind of screwed. Lots of menus and figuring out the gimmick takes a lot of time and acts as an awkward pacing break in the middle of the final boss. While a unique mechanic is cool, maybe it would've been worth introducing (in an altered form) earlier, but I'm not sure if I would have seen it as weirdly specific reuse then. Also, the way it tries to frame the 3 groups as happening at the same time (flashing back to P2 start for each one, sphere callouts during Joker group) is super awkward and also feels like weird pacing on final boss. The Joker phase 2 was also solid overall, though the extra platforms were a little awkward, and the boss took an eternity to move back to yours if you swapped platforms (surprise, more weird breaks on this boss). The final hit, like I said earlier, had the cool AOA scene with everyone, but Joker's final blow was pretty limp.
Jails: (Osaka > Shibuya >= Sendai = Sapporo) > (Kyoto > Abyss/Tree = Okinawa)
I don't really know how to rank these honestly, there's 4 that are real and 4 that are much much shorter. It feels weird to compare either of those categories with the other. Overall I like the "real" ones more for sure, even if they are aggressively formulaic. It's a little too in your face about the structure, but 3 mini goals (usually with a miniboss, hack, or other big encounter at the end), a big-miniboss (Warden/Lock Keeper), and then real boss was a pretty solid way to build these. The mini-jails are honestly pretty whatever. If you squished all 4 into 1 bigger jail, or maybe 2 slightly small jails, I think I'd like them more. They felt like 1 section of what usually would be a larger jail/dungeon/palace, just cut out and given its own theming like it was a big kid. To me this definitely seems like they wanted to touch on more cities/visual themes in general, but realized they would be pushing time/budget/pacing of the game if they did that, so we ended up with """"8"""" dungeons even if it's more like maybe 6 or so worth of content/dungeon crawling (Osaka is like 1.5-2). And for the last 2, copying the same format as Mementos Depths/Qliphoth: dumb. More on that later. Puzzles/nonlinearity were pretty OK here, nothing insane but good overall and basically in line with P5.
Story/Characters:
Arc Ranking: Osaka = Kyoto > Okinawa > Final Arc(?) > Alice = Hyodo > Natsume
Overall the story was nothing super standout, but pretty solid. Probably about on par with base P5 in that regard, maybe slightly better since P5 was more ambitious and stumbled more for it, though Royal's new arc is definitely better than both. This is where the praise for the first 3 jails falls. Being formulaic hurts more here than in gameplay, and I didn't feel like any of the first 3 were very memorable ("step on me" reasons don't count). If I were to compare them to P5 villains, they'd probably be generally around Madarame level, where they serve their purpose and are used for good character stuff on PT side (Yusuke twice, for some reason), but by themselves are very whatever. Even with them trying to develop them more and show their trauma and being more morally grey (decent people put in bad situations and taken advantage of), I just didn't really like any of them that much by the end. They definitely won't stick with me very much.
Alice was a pretty standard intro arc which wouldn't be a negative really, but P5's intro arc was debatably its best arc, so I guess that's a minus here. Granted, this game had 8 characters to half-introduce to P5 YouTube Playthrough fans, 1 more to fully introduce and integrate from 10 minutes in, and another to start to build up, so there was a lot of juggling to do. Honestly, I almost didn't realize this was supposed to be the Ann arc until towards the end, I thought they would just use characters for scenes when convenient. Like Ryuji was the one for the Alice intro scene, then Ann for meeting her in the studio, and I thought it'd keep going but it stayed on Ann (not like there were many more scenes in this arc). Shibuya also felt almost a little too familiar, but there wasn't much to be done about that (this is when I made a comment like "this feels like a P5 romhack").
Natsume was a... not very interesting character and way too similar to Madarame, but it was a good way to show how Yusuke has grown since then, and he had some really good moments during this arc. Even though I think this is the weakest arc overall, I think Yusuke probably got the best deal of the individual character arcs. If you aren't very familiar with the genre that this whole dungeon arc was also sort of parodying/playing with, that definitely won't help your opinion, too. Sendai was not super notable to me either, but it's also the 1 city I don't have much familiarity from this game.
Hyodo was... OK. I don't really have too much to say about her honestly, though I think her shadow form was weird (why is she gluttony???). Haru was decent here, but I think she benefitted more from just being around for group scenes and speaking up now and then, and her development in this arc was also just "fine". It was nice that she got to have an adult in her life who wasn't awful post-confession though. Sapporo was decent and the jail being winter themed was a solid way to use that even during a summer trip setting. Also, hee-ho.
Okinawa was also OK. It was super short which I didn't really like, and the villagers rushing the RV scene was weirdly terrifying, but as a "beach scene" and fun slice-of-life stuff, I think it served its purpose pretty well. The dungeon, story wise, was pretty much exactly as expected, with hints and leads towards a bigger picture after getting some formula arcs out of the way. This arc, I think. would have been way cooler in a longer game with more time to explore Madicce stuff (think Kirijo group, especially in Arena, also P1/2 stuff). The EMMA talking to Sophia stuff here was also OK but it took a while for anything else to happen in that plot.
Onto Kyoto, which makes me realize I skipped the first Kyoto day with meeting Akane, which was great. Good slice-of-life, good character intro, good starting development on Zenkichi. Now back to 2nd Kyoto with the dungeon. This is definitely another arc where brevity hurt. It felt like Kyoto1 was the short intro, and Kyoto2 should be an Alice-length full stay, but it was basically the same length as the first visit with a very short dungeon thrown in. The PT being hunted/captured here was a similarly weird fit to the brainwashed villagers, it just felt off for some reason (probably fast pacing). This arc is also home to by far the worst scene in the game: seriously Atlus/Koei-Tecmo, please never even mention hot springs again. Zenkichi stepping up to finally really be on the PT's side, deal with Akane, and get his awakening was very satisfying. Honestly basically as expected, but still good. Plus Valjean in his awakening was cool. Also, kind of lame that Kyoto wasn't actually an explorable area.
Osaka: Honestly this wasn't like the super obvious top of the list, it was just the winner by default. Akira could have used like 1-2 more scenes like the Sendai one to build him up, but still was easily the most interesting of the 4 regular Monarchs. Not being tied to a PT's development arc probably helped him get more focus here, plus Zenkichi being fully on the team. This was a better Shido arc, what more can I say. Akira calling out the PT for only helping random people who are convenient to help was very amusing, it's like he was criticizing P5's plot. Dotonbori was also cool to see in another game series.
Copying basically bullet for bullet the Mementos Depths + Qliphoth arc from P5 was a really weird choice. I honestly don't know why they did this, like a dev interview would be helpful here. EMMA being the final "villain" and Ichinose's involvement was pretty solid though, and shocker, those are the more original points here. Sophia stuff was also pretty solid and her 2nd awakening was a really cool scene. Without the buildup from regular Mementos, I really didn't think Abyss had any reason to exist and the "payoff" was nonexistent here. Then for "Metaverse merged with real world!!!" part, basically the same case. Also EMMA's goal was just a scuffed, AI generated version of Maruki, which without the background of him and his position, felt less agreeable.
More Character Stuff (PT and minor):
I think the biggest boon here was getting some PT group development and hangout time which P5 was pretty light on, especially as a full group. I definitely like them more as a group now than I did from just P5. For individual characters:
Joker: Grunts. But actually, fine, but not much to say here. Being a silent protagonist in this game was maybe slightly worse than in P5 because you had way less time just as Joker, so you didn't even get a sense of the kinds of things he would do or how he would act throughout daily life, if that makes sense. His dialogue options were still fun though which was nice.
Ryuji: Didn't get an arc of his own but didn't really need it. He was good throughout, not much actual development, but still a very likeable character. I liked how he got to be the intro guy again too, and got a few scenes dealing with Sophia which kind of reminded me of how people talk about Yosuke/Labrys (which I never felt had anything special going on).
Ann: Got her arc, though she probably got the least out of it. Mostly just solid all around, didn't have too much to do here but wasn't absent or anything.
Morgana: Didn't do a ton which was a blessing. honestly maybe slightly out of character for him to never whine/want spotlight or special attention, but I can attribute that to growth after Okumura arc, so good job I guess. Still a dumb cat.
Yusuke: I was never on the side of thinking he didn't get enough spotlight in p5, but I'll gladly take more. Like I mentioned, he was the best part of Natsume arc, and his regular lines through the rest of the game were pretty much as good as in P5. Still great.
Makoto: Kind of got nothing but the little she did (being the mom friend, speaking more equally with Zenkichi, driving) were all she needed and were good. Probably good for her to take the backburner after how prevalent she was in P5.
Futaba: I was going to joke "glad she didn't have an arc," but maybe she should've had one early on and then been less annoying after. Nothing too offensive here but still just as annoying as a navi and in random lines, which she probably had a few too many of.
Haru: I said it a few times but I think she benefitted a lot from just being present in all group scenes, and I liked her throughout. Her arc was fine as touched on above but didn't really change my opinion on her at all. She couldn't really carry it like Yusuke could with his arc, though she did get a better character to deal with at least.
Akechi and Sumi: Who? (I thought I would miss them more, but honestly it felt totally fine without them ever mentioned and there were already a ton of main characters. Not sure if it was better to literally never speak their names or getting some excuse/mention would've been good)
Sophia: Pretty good but not my favorite character or anything. I liked her personality and journey, but the scenes where she directly asks what emotions are and stuff felt pretty heavyhanded. Aigis was probably handled better, but also had 100 hours to do so instead of 40, so can't blame too much. Also I never loved her design that much besides the hood and the LED eye oval, her heart "hair" is very weird and her PT outfit could've been a bit more interesting. Better companion than Morgana for sure though, and her being here let that role spread out which was nice. Her 2nd awakening really tied together the rest of her story, like made everything before it make more sense. Liked that a lot.
Zenkichi: Very good - not amazing. not sure what he could've done to elevate to the level of my favorites, again might just be a "smaller game" thing. Also I'm being maybe a bit unfair because his Royal equivalent is Maruki and the comparison is easy as the new male adult who the PT trusts in a post-P5 new game. Even if his situation was a clone of Dojima's, he was a pretty different character, and his personality was just right as an adult to mesh with the PT. Having an adult in the main crew was great, though he could've done with a little less "You damn kids!!! xD" but that only came up a few times so whatever. Not getting to see a resolution/epilogue of him/Akane post-Kyoto arc was a big letdown though, there definitely could've been a great post-credits Kyoto scene or something (even just them 2 and not the PT).
Other Characters: Akane was good, could have used more time with her (see above). Still a fun character though. Kaburagi was actually pretty decent for a minor character in a short form spinoff, she would also be cooler in a longer version of the game. Owada barely needed to exist and maybe the plot would've been better off without him (just need to rewrite the Zenkichi's wife backstory thing). Lavenza was Lavenza, nothing to say there (cut that 1 scene though, ugh). Igor missing was stupid for no good reason since they already recast his voice anyway. And finally, Ichinose. Not sure how I feel about her, it was obvious she'd be more involved all game, and she was just "that wacky scientist!!" for a bit, but after the end I guess I thought she was OK but nothing super special. Her relationship with Sophia at the end was a nice resolution, though it felt like a breakneck turn when she goes from trying to murder us to being cool with us again.
Other notes:
-Music: Very good as expected, some sick new Lyn tracks. Reused the P5 OST a bit too much for sure though. My opinion will continue to be shaped as I relisten through the whole OST, but most of the new songs were great.
-Fusion/VR: Had some nice QoL changes while also bizarrely missing some basic features (let me fuse 2 demons I have more easily pls). Still nice that this was pretty much intact in a spinoff though. The roster was disappointingly small but understandable.
-Requests and Completion: Most of the requests were nothing too special, but I liked them overall. Asking me to use certain characters was good but minimally used for some reason; stealth missions were a neat twist, I liked the fusion unlock ones a lot, and I think that's about all there is to say on requests. Dire Shadows were also kind of cool but a bit of a weird feature, felt like they should have tied into another system too (like requests), they were just kind of there for no reason. Completion was pretty good as a goal, except of course bond level. Dumb for that to be how it is, but the grind for it wasn't as unfun as I expected, so I don't fault it too bad here. Also the Reaper was a cool reward for doing all missions, though locking NG+ behind it was weird (maybe just Merciless or the ""Merciless"" mode I described above would make more sense)
-Roaming around cities: Pretty minimal honestly, felt like they could have used the environments more since they took the time to make each city. I guess they didn't want stuff between dungeons to be too long, but it could have used a little more without feeling like too much of a break.
-Shopping/Cooking: Weird that certain items from old cities seemed to never get added to shop. Cooking was pretty comfy.
-Circle and X being swapped from P5 in overworld was weird
Final Verdict:
Very good game. Easily the best Persona spinoff and a worthy sequel. Action RPG combat fit really well and they meshed it very nicely with existing Persona structure, and P5's style specifically. The story was decent but not standout, as expected for a P5 sequel, but it was nice to get more time with the cast, and the major new characters were, on the whole, very good and generally at least involved with the high points of the plot. If you liked P5, you should be pretty much just as excited to play this game, and its lack of some core mechanics did not feel missed in this smaller package of a game.
Gameplay/Combat: Overall I think the action combat worked really nicely in this game. The biggest point in its favor is actually getting to see demons, and also the P5 cast, move around and attack and stuff with the sick visual style of P5. Like even when I was farming Raja Naga for 5 hours, it was cool how it actually coiled up before attacks like a snake, or Berith charged you, or Seth flew around, etc. All the human party members are really cool to look at too, and it almost adds to their characters to play as them if that makes sense. Like feeling like Ryuji charging up and swinging, or Haru with the axe, or actually getting to use Johanna as a bike/the Monabus (honestly this one kind of sucked). I think there was a pretty good mix between basic combos/finishers, using skills, swapping to other members, showtimes, AOAs, using environmental prompts, One More, and using items. No one part of those was super deep, but they were all solid enough to hold their own weight and you were generally never stuck doing only 1 of those for too long before mixing it up. Maybe basic combos/finishers got a bit stale, but not overly so (plus that was probably during Plat hunting for me and not main game, and also when I figured out that C4 seems to kind of be the best all the time). Most trash fights were a good length/difficulty (err on easy side which worked well), some minibosses felt probably a bit damage spongey, especially from Akira onwards, but it wasn't a big issue. Hacking was just OK but didn't show up too much so whatever, and was at least a mix up to the formula. Also, Master Arts were a pretty OK way to get you to at least play everyone a little, unsure how well that really works though, the trophy site says 36% of people got it so I assume it's lower on console. Also, Merciless is a pretty cool way to do NG+, but I almost wish it wasn't strictly tied to difficulty and was more of a choice of "do you want to be able to ignore combat in NG+ or actually have to play the game", like Merciless-Easy, Merciless-Normal, Merciless-Hard).
Bosses: Akira >>>>> Demi > Alice > Natsume > Hyodo > Cognitive Joker(?)
Overall bosses were decent but not amazing. Even Akira is largely that far up because of the theming of it, story/cutscenes/music, and having 2 distinct phases. Of the 3 "normal" bosses, I put Alice at the top because I thought it had just enough use of environment and liked how it had 2 phases to mix it up. Natsume was too easy because of too many environmental weapons and happening to be tailored to my party, but was a pretty OK boss aside from that. Hyodo I actively kind of disliked, chandeliers being near-mandatory at the right time sucked when combined with party members using them, the boss refusing to move around without being baited on the ground, and lack of respawns for them. The cold/lantern mechanic was also not great, I think if they want to do a punishing phase like that, then solving it should have a more explicit reward, like stunning her briefly or chunking her shield. Without that, compared to other bosses it just feels like an annoyance. Cognitive Joker was almost sick, but then also kind of sucked, so I don't really know where to put it. Should've leaned harder into QTEs if they were gonna do 1 (only 1 in the game besides prompts, like what), and the non-QTE half was just annoying, he hit super hard so you had to be careful but could only really chip away at him during safe times. Also I couldn't refight this so my judgment is based on 1 fight only vs like 3-4 of the others. Make this a fast paced Yakuza-like QTE heavy boss and a gauntlet for each member, or since that's too long: YOUR ACTIVE PARTY (with failsafe for solo joker cheese) and it'd maybe top Akira.
Demi, finally, is a weird one. (First of all, story wise: dumb, but more on that later). Phase 1 was pretty solid, a little plain but that's because it's phase 1. Spheres are a cool idea that I'm not sure how I feel about in the end. Good: Concept of splitting up your party, feeling like everyone's contributing, and I like groups of minibosses as a concept, they were mostly fun to take down and pick an order. I also like a unique mechanic for final boss as a concept. Bad: It comes out of nowhere, so if you're been sticking with exclusively 3 members, you're probably kind of screwed. Lots of menus and figuring out the gimmick takes a lot of time and acts as an awkward pacing break in the middle of the final boss. While a unique mechanic is cool, maybe it would've been worth introducing (in an altered form) earlier, but I'm not sure if I would have seen it as weirdly specific reuse then. Also, the way it tries to frame the 3 groups as happening at the same time (flashing back to P2 start for each one, sphere callouts during Joker group) is super awkward and also feels like weird pacing on final boss. The Joker phase 2 was also solid overall, though the extra platforms were a little awkward, and the boss took an eternity to move back to yours if you swapped platforms (surprise, more weird breaks on this boss). The final hit, like I said earlier, had the cool AOA scene with everyone, but Joker's final blow was pretty limp.
Jails: (Osaka > Shibuya >= Sendai = Sapporo) > (Kyoto > Abyss/Tree = Okinawa)
I don't really know how to rank these honestly, there's 4 that are real and 4 that are much much shorter. It feels weird to compare either of those categories with the other. Overall I like the "real" ones more for sure, even if they are aggressively formulaic. It's a little too in your face about the structure, but 3 mini goals (usually with a miniboss, hack, or other big encounter at the end), a big-miniboss (Warden/Lock Keeper), and then real boss was a pretty solid way to build these. The mini-jails are honestly pretty whatever. If you squished all 4 into 1 bigger jail, or maybe 2 slightly small jails, I think I'd like them more. They felt like 1 section of what usually would be a larger jail/dungeon/palace, just cut out and given its own theming like it was a big kid. To me this definitely seems like they wanted to touch on more cities/visual themes in general, but realized they would be pushing time/budget/pacing of the game if they did that, so we ended up with """"8"""" dungeons even if it's more like maybe 6 or so worth of content/dungeon crawling (Osaka is like 1.5-2). And for the last 2, copying the same format as Mementos Depths/Qliphoth: dumb. More on that later. Puzzles/nonlinearity were pretty OK here, nothing insane but good overall and basically in line with P5.
Story/Characters:
Arc Ranking: Osaka = Kyoto > Okinawa > Final Arc(?) > Alice = Hyodo > Natsume
Overall the story was nothing super standout, but pretty solid. Probably about on par with base P5 in that regard, maybe slightly better since P5 was more ambitious and stumbled more for it, though Royal's new arc is definitely better than both. This is where the praise for the first 3 jails falls. Being formulaic hurts more here than in gameplay, and I didn't feel like any of the first 3 were very memorable ("step on me" reasons don't count). If I were to compare them to P5 villains, they'd probably be generally around Madarame level, where they serve their purpose and are used for good character stuff on PT side (Yusuke twice, for some reason), but by themselves are very whatever. Even with them trying to develop them more and show their trauma and being more morally grey (decent people put in bad situations and taken advantage of), I just didn't really like any of them that much by the end. They definitely won't stick with me very much.
Alice was a pretty standard intro arc which wouldn't be a negative really, but P5's intro arc was debatably its best arc, so I guess that's a minus here. Granted, this game had 8 characters to half-introduce to P5 YouTube Playthrough fans, 1 more to fully introduce and integrate from 10 minutes in, and another to start to build up, so there was a lot of juggling to do. Honestly, I almost didn't realize this was supposed to be the Ann arc until towards the end, I thought they would just use characters for scenes when convenient. Like Ryuji was the one for the Alice intro scene, then Ann for meeting her in the studio, and I thought it'd keep going but it stayed on Ann (not like there were many more scenes in this arc). Shibuya also felt almost a little too familiar, but there wasn't much to be done about that (this is when I made a comment like "this feels like a P5 romhack").
Natsume was a... not very interesting character and way too similar to Madarame, but it was a good way to show how Yusuke has grown since then, and he had some really good moments during this arc. Even though I think this is the weakest arc overall, I think Yusuke probably got the best deal of the individual character arcs. If you aren't very familiar with the genre that this whole dungeon arc was also sort of parodying/playing with, that definitely won't help your opinion, too. Sendai was not super notable to me either, but it's also the 1 city I don't have much familiarity from this game.
Hyodo was... OK. I don't really have too much to say about her honestly, though I think her shadow form was weird (why is she gluttony???). Haru was decent here, but I think she benefitted more from just being around for group scenes and speaking up now and then, and her development in this arc was also just "fine". It was nice that she got to have an adult in her life who wasn't awful post-confession though. Sapporo was decent and the jail being winter themed was a solid way to use that even during a summer trip setting. Also, hee-ho.
Okinawa was also OK. It was super short which I didn't really like, and the villagers rushing the RV scene was weirdly terrifying, but as a "beach scene" and fun slice-of-life stuff, I think it served its purpose pretty well. The dungeon, story wise, was pretty much exactly as expected, with hints and leads towards a bigger picture after getting some formula arcs out of the way. This arc, I think. would have been way cooler in a longer game with more time to explore Madicce stuff (think Kirijo group, especially in Arena, also P1/2 stuff). The EMMA talking to Sophia stuff here was also OK but it took a while for anything else to happen in that plot.
Onto Kyoto, which makes me realize I skipped the first Kyoto day with meeting Akane, which was great. Good slice-of-life, good character intro, good starting development on Zenkichi. Now back to 2nd Kyoto with the dungeon. This is definitely another arc where brevity hurt. It felt like Kyoto1 was the short intro, and Kyoto2 should be an Alice-length full stay, but it was basically the same length as the first visit with a very short dungeon thrown in. The PT being hunted/captured here was a similarly weird fit to the brainwashed villagers, it just felt off for some reason (probably fast pacing). This arc is also home to by far the worst scene in the game: seriously Atlus/Koei-Tecmo, please never even mention hot springs again. Zenkichi stepping up to finally really be on the PT's side, deal with Akane, and get his awakening was very satisfying. Honestly basically as expected, but still good. Plus Valjean in his awakening was cool. Also, kind of lame that Kyoto wasn't actually an explorable area.
Osaka: Honestly this wasn't like the super obvious top of the list, it was just the winner by default. Akira could have used like 1-2 more scenes like the Sendai one to build him up, but still was easily the most interesting of the 4 regular Monarchs. Not being tied to a PT's development arc probably helped him get more focus here, plus Zenkichi being fully on the team. This was a better Shido arc, what more can I say. Akira calling out the PT for only helping random people who are convenient to help was very amusing, it's like he was criticizing P5's plot. Dotonbori was also cool to see in another game series.
Copying basically bullet for bullet the Mementos Depths + Qliphoth arc from P5 was a really weird choice. I honestly don't know why they did this, like a dev interview would be helpful here. EMMA being the final "villain" and Ichinose's involvement was pretty solid though, and shocker, those are the more original points here. Sophia stuff was also pretty solid and her 2nd awakening was a really cool scene. Without the buildup from regular Mementos, I really didn't think Abyss had any reason to exist and the "payoff" was nonexistent here. Then for "Metaverse merged with real world!!!" part, basically the same case. Also EMMA's goal was just a scuffed, AI generated version of Maruki, which without the background of him and his position, felt less agreeable.
More Character Stuff (PT and minor):
I think the biggest boon here was getting some PT group development and hangout time which P5 was pretty light on, especially as a full group. I definitely like them more as a group now than I did from just P5. For individual characters:
Joker: Grunts. But actually, fine, but not much to say here. Being a silent protagonist in this game was maybe slightly worse than in P5 because you had way less time just as Joker, so you didn't even get a sense of the kinds of things he would do or how he would act throughout daily life, if that makes sense. His dialogue options were still fun though which was nice.
Ryuji: Didn't get an arc of his own but didn't really need it. He was good throughout, not much actual development, but still a very likeable character. I liked how he got to be the intro guy again too, and got a few scenes dealing with Sophia which kind of reminded me of how people talk about Yosuke/Labrys (which I never felt had anything special going on).
Ann: Got her arc, though she probably got the least out of it. Mostly just solid all around, didn't have too much to do here but wasn't absent or anything.
Morgana: Didn't do a ton which was a blessing. honestly maybe slightly out of character for him to never whine/want spotlight or special attention, but I can attribute that to growth after Okumura arc, so good job I guess. Still a dumb cat.
Yusuke: I was never on the side of thinking he didn't get enough spotlight in p5, but I'll gladly take more. Like I mentioned, he was the best part of Natsume arc, and his regular lines through the rest of the game were pretty much as good as in P5. Still great.
Makoto: Kind of got nothing but the little she did (being the mom friend, speaking more equally with Zenkichi, driving) were all she needed and were good. Probably good for her to take the backburner after how prevalent she was in P5.
Futaba: I was going to joke "glad she didn't have an arc," but maybe she should've had one early on and then been less annoying after. Nothing too offensive here but still just as annoying as a navi and in random lines, which she probably had a few too many of.
Haru: I said it a few times but I think she benefitted a lot from just being present in all group scenes, and I liked her throughout. Her arc was fine as touched on above but didn't really change my opinion on her at all. She couldn't really carry it like Yusuke could with his arc, though she did get a better character to deal with at least.
Akechi and Sumi: Who? (I thought I would miss them more, but honestly it felt totally fine without them ever mentioned and there were already a ton of main characters. Not sure if it was better to literally never speak their names or getting some excuse/mention would've been good)
Sophia: Pretty good but not my favorite character or anything. I liked her personality and journey, but the scenes where she directly asks what emotions are and stuff felt pretty heavyhanded. Aigis was probably handled better, but also had 100 hours to do so instead of 40, so can't blame too much. Also I never loved her design that much besides the hood and the LED eye oval, her heart "hair" is very weird and her PT outfit could've been a bit more interesting. Better companion than Morgana for sure though, and her being here let that role spread out which was nice. Her 2nd awakening really tied together the rest of her story, like made everything before it make more sense. Liked that a lot.
Zenkichi: Very good - not amazing. not sure what he could've done to elevate to the level of my favorites, again might just be a "smaller game" thing. Also I'm being maybe a bit unfair because his Royal equivalent is Maruki and the comparison is easy as the new male adult who the PT trusts in a post-P5 new game. Even if his situation was a clone of Dojima's, he was a pretty different character, and his personality was just right as an adult to mesh with the PT. Having an adult in the main crew was great, though he could've done with a little less "You damn kids!!! xD" but that only came up a few times so whatever. Not getting to see a resolution/epilogue of him/Akane post-Kyoto arc was a big letdown though, there definitely could've been a great post-credits Kyoto scene or something (even just them 2 and not the PT).
Other Characters: Akane was good, could have used more time with her (see above). Still a fun character though. Kaburagi was actually pretty decent for a minor character in a short form spinoff, she would also be cooler in a longer version of the game. Owada barely needed to exist and maybe the plot would've been better off without him (just need to rewrite the Zenkichi's wife backstory thing). Lavenza was Lavenza, nothing to say there (cut that 1 scene though, ugh). Igor missing was stupid for no good reason since they already recast his voice anyway. And finally, Ichinose. Not sure how I feel about her, it was obvious she'd be more involved all game, and she was just "that wacky scientist!!" for a bit, but after the end I guess I thought she was OK but nothing super special. Her relationship with Sophia at the end was a nice resolution, though it felt like a breakneck turn when she goes from trying to murder us to being cool with us again.
Other notes:
-Music: Very good as expected, some sick new Lyn tracks. Reused the P5 OST a bit too much for sure though. My opinion will continue to be shaped as I relisten through the whole OST, but most of the new songs were great.
-Fusion/VR: Had some nice QoL changes while also bizarrely missing some basic features (let me fuse 2 demons I have more easily pls). Still nice that this was pretty much intact in a spinoff though. The roster was disappointingly small but understandable.
-Requests and Completion: Most of the requests were nothing too special, but I liked them overall. Asking me to use certain characters was good but minimally used for some reason; stealth missions were a neat twist, I liked the fusion unlock ones a lot, and I think that's about all there is to say on requests. Dire Shadows were also kind of cool but a bit of a weird feature, felt like they should have tied into another system too (like requests), they were just kind of there for no reason. Completion was pretty good as a goal, except of course bond level. Dumb for that to be how it is, but the grind for it wasn't as unfun as I expected, so I don't fault it too bad here. Also the Reaper was a cool reward for doing all missions, though locking NG+ behind it was weird (maybe just Merciless or the ""Merciless"" mode I described above would make more sense)
-Roaming around cities: Pretty minimal honestly, felt like they could have used the environments more since they took the time to make each city. I guess they didn't want stuff between dungeons to be too long, but it could have used a little more without feeling like too much of a break.
-Shopping/Cooking: Weird that certain items from old cities seemed to never get added to shop. Cooking was pretty comfy.
-Circle and X being swapped from P5 in overworld was weird
Final Verdict:
Very good game. Easily the best Persona spinoff and a worthy sequel. Action RPG combat fit really well and they meshed it very nicely with existing Persona structure, and P5's style specifically. The story was decent but not standout, as expected for a P5 sequel, but it was nice to get more time with the cast, and the major new characters were, on the whole, very good and generally at least involved with the high points of the plot. If you liked P5, you should be pretty much just as excited to play this game, and its lack of some core mechanics did not feel missed in this smaller package of a game.
2020
-1 Star for Gacha
2007
This is one of my favorite games ever, and I like to revisit it every few years. It still holds up magnificently. It's just a joy to play through, the atmosphere and writing are fun, the gameplay is light and enjoyable, the music is great, etc. It's always fun to come back to it with a new perspective.
As far as nitpicks go, I think a couple of them deal with Pixls. I enjoy their designs and dialog a lot, but they only talk during their intro scenes and never again. It would've given them a lot more character if they actually chimed in now and again like your current character does (also, let Mario talk. It just feels a little silly when he's the only silent one). I also think there's just a little bit of bloat in the number of Pixls, not even counting optional ones. A lot of the fun of the gameplay is "OK, holding forward stopped working, what tools do I have that might apply here?" and figuring it out. This starts out pretty simple, then grows to a nice tight loop, then eventually you have a few too many options and it becomes pretty rare to whip out some of the early game or niche Pixls to solve anything. There's already a wealth of options with the character swapping, flipping to 3D, and Tippi, so I think it might have helped keep things more creative if there were only 4 or 5 Pixls. Fleep, for example, really doesn't need to exist, and then the others get spread so thin, especially Slim (hehe). But again, this is nitpicking. It's fine to have some less notable Pixls just for the fun of collecting them or recognizing a rare scenario when they apply anyway. I do feel like >80% of the 2nd half of my game was either Bowser + Carrie or Mario + Dashell though (and my old favorite, Cudge). Something else that would've been nice is being able to bind more than one Pixl to certain buttons, like you can with items in A Link Between Worlds or something, since you swap around a lot and this would cut down on menuing.
Another very minor nitpick I noticed this time around was that for 3 of the 7 pure hearts you collect, it turns out it was the character you were escorting/rescuing the whole time. Kind of funny that it happens so often, doesn't really impact the story, I just thought it was silly. The story is Kingdom Hearts if it was good. Or Romeo and Juliet if it was good, idk.
A pretty perfect video game.
As far as nitpicks go, I think a couple of them deal with Pixls. I enjoy their designs and dialog a lot, but they only talk during their intro scenes and never again. It would've given them a lot more character if they actually chimed in now and again like your current character does (also, let Mario talk. It just feels a little silly when he's the only silent one). I also think there's just a little bit of bloat in the number of Pixls, not even counting optional ones. A lot of the fun of the gameplay is "OK, holding forward stopped working, what tools do I have that might apply here?" and figuring it out. This starts out pretty simple, then grows to a nice tight loop, then eventually you have a few too many options and it becomes pretty rare to whip out some of the early game or niche Pixls to solve anything. There's already a wealth of options with the character swapping, flipping to 3D, and Tippi, so I think it might have helped keep things more creative if there were only 4 or 5 Pixls. Fleep, for example, really doesn't need to exist, and then the others get spread so thin, especially Slim (hehe). But again, this is nitpicking. It's fine to have some less notable Pixls just for the fun of collecting them or recognizing a rare scenario when they apply anyway. I do feel like >80% of the 2nd half of my game was either Bowser + Carrie or Mario + Dashell though (and my old favorite, Cudge). Something else that would've been nice is being able to bind more than one Pixl to certain buttons, like you can with items in A Link Between Worlds or something, since you swap around a lot and this would cut down on menuing.
Another very minor nitpick I noticed this time around was that for 3 of the 7 pure hearts you collect, it turns out it was the character you were escorting/rescuing the whole time. Kind of funny that it happens so often, doesn't really impact the story, I just thought it was silly. The story is Kingdom Hearts if it was good. Or Romeo and Juliet if it was good, idk.
A pretty perfect video game.
2022
Got into beta and finished the new player missions and battle pass. I'm not a huge Marvel guy, I checked this out because of Ben Brode and my experience with Hearthstone. I think the core gameplay itself is definitely fun, the card effects and locations are overall pretty neat, and the quick pace of games fits the platform nicely. Maybe I just need to push even further past the FTUE, but it felt like my rate of getting cards was already slowing down pretty hard and most matches were playing out pretty similarly. The "mobile game" aspects here are not the worst ever, but they're also not super simple or non-egregious (but maybe I'm too used to Arclight Rumble, which is very lenient). There's probably double the amount of currencies and systems that really need to exist, and once I saw the "real" battle pass past the new player one, I sort of gave up. I will still open it here and there for a few matches, but I was only keeping up on daily activities to reach the longer term goals of the early BP. The long term goals of the real BP just seem way too far off and it lost me for daily upkeep already. But the core game is fun and a quick match or two will be easy to pick up whenever the mood strikes (until I get too far behind in card acquisition).
Enjoying this WAY more than I expected to. I don't have any particularly fond memories of Cata, and before replays, considered "Classic" to clearly end with Wrath due to the old world revamp. But in hindsight, a lot of the changes happened at interesting paces, with a lot of the "non-Classic" feeling stuff coming in Wrath, and the general feel of classes staying more old school than I remember in Cata to the point where they feel like a great midpoint between Classic and Retail (I enjoy both, for context). Worth noting I did not level through the revamped old world (started at 80) and avoided Uldum since I knew it was the peak of Cata humor being awful to me. So in this specific experience of starting with a level 80 Enhancement Shaman, going through Hyjal/Deepholm/Twilight Highlands, then gearing up through dungeons and raiding with some friends and clearing the whole first tier, I'm shockingly having a blast. I didn't really do much past leveling in the rest of Classic (though I really enjoyed those sections), so this is a pleasant surprise. Also, compared to MoP Remix which I played right before this, it was really nice to have a more grounded world where nothing scaled.
I put off playing the DLC forever, and came back to knock them out real quick before the release of Scarlet/Violet. I was pleasantly surprised by the Isle of Armor, which was the one I was looking forward to less. The island was a nice little expansion of the Wild Zone concept, with a nice smattering of new old mons to collect. There was a bunch of features that, playing on an emulator 2 years late, I didn't fully engage with but I know I would've really liked right after I had finished up the original game. Things like the Max Soup for G-Maxing any mon, and other QoL vendors. And the main story was surprisingly fun: I actually enjoyed the characters and had a good time going through it. I didn't care much for Kubfu/Urshifu before playing this, but it made me really warm up to them and I liked the tower a lot. Also, again not something I felt the need to do on an emulator this late, but giving some extra bonus goals like the Digletts (while a bit crude/grindy) is a nice optional objective for people who want to spend more time here. Overall, a better experience than I expected, and if this came out 2 weeks after the original game I would have loved it.
2021
This review contains spoilers
Probably the best actual "game" in the Yakuza/Judgment universe, gameplay wise. However, I had a few critical notes I wrote after beating it that I never posted:
The main story was a little weaker than the original, I didn't feel it tied all the characters and events together in as satisfying a way as the original (for example, every time you present evidence, it's always the same gap in the station cameras, it never feels like that changes, you just wait for characters to do something about it). Side characters from the first game felt pretty irrelevant here a lot of the time, since their backstories were very tied to the first game. Hoshino in particular was a character who really could have shined in this game since he wasn't as vital in the first, but his character felt sort of ruined and shafted, which was a let down. Yagami also did not have much to argue with other than mentioning Sawa-sensei in the latter half of the game, which while valid felt like it got old.
For side content, I felt the side cases were very thin this time around, with a smaller total than usual and a lot of padding even within that number. This was, of course, because School Stories were the new big side activity, but I was lukewarm on those overall. Only 4 or 5 of them were really fleshed out, and of those, the big new ones got pretty repetitive and dragged out, like Death Races, Robotics, and Boxing. Dance Club, on the other hand, was great and its only downside was only having 4 songs.
The other big disappointment to me is the handling of DLC. The DLC girlfriends all feel like content scraped from the game just to make extra money putting them as DLC, especially how the base game has so few side cases and only 1 girlfriend. Boxing style is a cool addition, but again being DLC makes it feel sort of cheap. I only bought the DLC because this ended up releasing early by mistake, so I was still playing the game at the time. Otherwise, I would have waited for the Kaito DLC to release. The rest of the DLC feels pretty worthless, and the "Super Amon" fight was an absolute joke. It was the exact same fight from the base game, I was in disbelief when I realized it wasn't just a phase one. Really felt ripped off with that one.
The main story was a little weaker than the original, I didn't feel it tied all the characters and events together in as satisfying a way as the original (for example, every time you present evidence, it's always the same gap in the station cameras, it never feels like that changes, you just wait for characters to do something about it). Side characters from the first game felt pretty irrelevant here a lot of the time, since their backstories were very tied to the first game. Hoshino in particular was a character who really could have shined in this game since he wasn't as vital in the first, but his character felt sort of ruined and shafted, which was a let down. Yagami also did not have much to argue with other than mentioning Sawa-sensei in the latter half of the game, which while valid felt like it got old.
For side content, I felt the side cases were very thin this time around, with a smaller total than usual and a lot of padding even within that number. This was, of course, because School Stories were the new big side activity, but I was lukewarm on those overall. Only 4 or 5 of them were really fleshed out, and of those, the big new ones got pretty repetitive and dragged out, like Death Races, Robotics, and Boxing. Dance Club, on the other hand, was great and its only downside was only having 4 songs.
The other big disappointment to me is the handling of DLC. The DLC girlfriends all feel like content scraped from the game just to make extra money putting them as DLC, especially how the base game has so few side cases and only 1 girlfriend. Boxing style is a cool addition, but again being DLC makes it feel sort of cheap. I only bought the DLC because this ended up releasing early by mistake, so I was still playing the game at the time. Otherwise, I would have waited for the Kaito DLC to release. The rest of the DLC feels pretty worthless, and the "Super Amon" fight was an absolute joke. It was the exact same fight from the base game, I was in disbelief when I realized it wasn't just a phase one. Really felt ripped off with that one.
Crisis Core Reunion is a PSP game with multiple fresh coats of paint that greatly help modernize it to fit in with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, though relics of its 2007 origin peek through the cracks every 30 seconds. Every time a character pauses awkwardly between lines, or there's a strange brief load screen between two adjacent areas, or Zack takes a full minute to stop and whip out his phone and put it to his ear, or Zack does the very Kingdoms Hearts-esque anime "jump back with hands up" animation, you can see straight through to what this game is at its core. I'll give them the combat animations though, those are nicely touched up. It's very jarring when it cuts to an upscaled PSP cutscene with noticeably different lightning and a just-off-enough artstyle that looks several steps down from the actual in game visuals at this point. The game tries hard to keep you in a modern continuity with its FF7R style UI, it just betrays itself very often. Despite this, I still think this is a generally very nice looking game, and especially getting to see areas like Junon and Nibelheim in near-Remake fidelity really is a treat and an awesome sneak peak of what may be to come in the rest of that trilogy.
Combat feels arcadey and fun in general but it's not something that I felt super compelled to get deep into. DMW bonuses are insanely powerful from minute 1, so nothing ever really felt like a threat. The easy difficulty kind of fit the casual, cheesy, fast pace of the game though, so it's not necessarily a complaint. It just felt odd that I could clear anything I was put up against with no challenge at all even when I clearly hadn't messed with loadouts as much as I probably should have by the end of the game.
The main story being a short experience (I clocked almost exactly 10 hours, just doing main story and ~15 missions for summons, Yuffie, and some key items) actually worked nicely. Some parts felt rushed, like skipping the entire trip up to Mt. Nibel, but when I got to the final dungeon and had to do "normal JRPG dungeon things," I realized I hadn't missed them almost at all earlier in the game.
The story and characters took like 10 minutes for me to adjust from "serious FF7R project game" to "OK, I just have to accept this as cheesy and goofy and have a good time with it" so that I could enjoy it. The main new plot involving Genesis and co truly is not good. On the flip side, when we get to see the events depicted or alluded to in the original game from Zack's perspective, I can take it more seriously and it's very enjoyable (as long as they're not ruined by awkward PSP presentation). But when during a pivotal FF7 flashback scene, Genesis shows up to spout more lines from Loveless, it really gets in the way and makes me wish none of that was a thing. However, learning to take it for what it was did let me enjoy scenes like Zack yelling "shut up" at Genesis as he continued reciting, which was very funny. The voice performances (English) were hard to judge due to this tone and the awkward line cadences that were clearly a holdover from the original and not touched up, but I generally was fine with the whole cast and thought they fit well enough. Small shoutout to the slightly younger Cloud performance compared to Remake, which I thought fit perfectly. Also, fully voicing the whole game was a nice touch.
Mail is actually a pretty cool way to add worldbuilding and little extra story notes. Seeing Shinra propaganda from that side of things is a nice perspective, and small touches like Yuffie's messages sorting into Spam are pretty funny.
Minor complaint, but the game kind of overdoes the tutorials, both from mail and clearly new ones with the FF7R style half-screen popups.
Overall, pretty much every improvement is great, and even though I complain about mismatching artstyles in cutscenes or noticeably aged animations, that's just me wishing they went even further in remaking it. What we got is still a really nice remake with much improved and modernized presentation and smoother gameplay. I still think the game itself is just pretty good, and it remains shackled by the PSP a bit, but this was a nice quick game to keep me in the modern FF7 world. I enjoyed my time with it.
Combat feels arcadey and fun in general but it's not something that I felt super compelled to get deep into. DMW bonuses are insanely powerful from minute 1, so nothing ever really felt like a threat. The easy difficulty kind of fit the casual, cheesy, fast pace of the game though, so it's not necessarily a complaint. It just felt odd that I could clear anything I was put up against with no challenge at all even when I clearly hadn't messed with loadouts as much as I probably should have by the end of the game.
The main story being a short experience (I clocked almost exactly 10 hours, just doing main story and ~15 missions for summons, Yuffie, and some key items) actually worked nicely. Some parts felt rushed, like skipping the entire trip up to Mt. Nibel, but when I got to the final dungeon and had to do "normal JRPG dungeon things," I realized I hadn't missed them almost at all earlier in the game.
The story and characters took like 10 minutes for me to adjust from "serious FF7R project game" to "OK, I just have to accept this as cheesy and goofy and have a good time with it" so that I could enjoy it. The main new plot involving Genesis and co truly is not good. On the flip side, when we get to see the events depicted or alluded to in the original game from Zack's perspective, I can take it more seriously and it's very enjoyable (as long as they're not ruined by awkward PSP presentation). But when during a pivotal FF7 flashback scene, Genesis shows up to spout more lines from Loveless, it really gets in the way and makes me wish none of that was a thing. However, learning to take it for what it was did let me enjoy scenes like Zack yelling "shut up" at Genesis as he continued reciting, which was very funny. The voice performances (English) were hard to judge due to this tone and the awkward line cadences that were clearly a holdover from the original and not touched up, but I generally was fine with the whole cast and thought they fit well enough. Small shoutout to the slightly younger Cloud performance compared to Remake, which I thought fit perfectly. Also, fully voicing the whole game was a nice touch.
Mail is actually a pretty cool way to add worldbuilding and little extra story notes. Seeing Shinra propaganda from that side of things is a nice perspective, and small touches like Yuffie's messages sorting into Spam are pretty funny.
Minor complaint, but the game kind of overdoes the tutorials, both from mail and clearly new ones with the FF7R style half-screen popups.
Overall, pretty much every improvement is great, and even though I complain about mismatching artstyles in cutscenes or noticeably aged animations, that's just me wishing they went even further in remaking it. What we got is still a really nice remake with much improved and modernized presentation and smoother gameplay. I still think the game itself is just pretty good, and it remains shackled by the PSP a bit, but this was a nice quick game to keep me in the modern FF7 world. I enjoyed my time with it.
I put off playing the DLC forever, and came back to knock them out real quick before the release of Scarlet/Violet. I was kind of disappointed by the Crown Tundra, which I know was the one I was more looking forward to when the DLC was first shown off. I always liked the postgame legendary hunting in games like B2W2, and I was hungry to collect more at the end of the base game, but I expected that to be on top of a solid DLC like Isle of Armor. Instead, nearly the whole focus was just on the legendary collection, which tries to justify itself with the 2 new Regis and the new forms for the birds. But I found these quests pretty barebones for what they were, and the rest of the legendaries being stuck in Max Raid hell didn't help. Those raids were already very slow and tiring in the base game, so stringing 4 of them in a row does not help there (especially when you can only keep 1 per run). The "main story" here (Calyrex quest) was also far less engaging and endearing than Isle of Armor's, and I just didn't care much for it or the characters like I did for IoA. The actual new areas mostly being ice areas didn't help, as that's just not really my favorite. Again, the new old mons were nice though, including some favorites for me this time. Overall, definitely the weaker DLC and a bit of a letdown.
This review contains spoilers
A huge, densely packed, amazingly presented game. There's so much in here that even if not everything is quite someone's taste, they're sure to have a blast with the rest.
The world takes the forefront here. Taking 20 minute pitstops from the original game and turning them into huge, fleshed out, beautiful zones is a wonder and doesn't feel like padding or filler in any way. Tasteful changes with the context of the rest of the Compilation's existence, like Cissnei showing up in Gongaga, or the addition of Roche to really drive home degradation, are really cool to see as well. On the side activities: there was a moment where I found something that looked cool, but had nothing happening there yet. I was initially a little disappointed, since it felt like it wasn't possible to really explore and make cool discoveries on your own. But when I said that made the game world feel not super open, a friend made the comment that it's more like a checklist that you can optionally go through as you take in the zone, and that actually shifted my view a bit. I did enjoy all of the individual activities at least enough to full clear every zone as soon as it was allowed, and only by the very end was I getting a little tired of them (climbing feels pretty bad though). I think these open world sections could have been spread out a little better too, but it wasn't a huge deal. One other note is that the party interactions are some of the best parts of the game, and while you get plenty during the main story, exploration is pretty silent in comparison. I wish the party had more to say as you wandered around on came across certain locations.
Other side content, like minigames, is of course an enormous part of the game too. This is one of the biggest impressions I have from the original game, and I thought Remake was already following up well here, so this was really cool to see maintained as a huge part of exploring this world. Not all of them quite hit (Aerith Cactuars was a bit painful), or maybe they had slightly too high goals for just how many minigames there are (especially with Round 2 of many of them dumped all at once in chapter 12), but I enjoyed clearing all of them. Cactuar racing was probably my favorite, that's a whole Mario Kart with a bunch of course variety and music as a little side mode in this already massive game. Queen's Blood was also a pretty fun game that earned its "premiere sidegame" status for the most part, those the visuals could have had a little more flair. Quests are also a significant step up, none felt super plain or phoned in and it's cool to see each sort of spotlight a party member as a companion.
The combat is just great overall. Remake was already great here, and synergy abilities are a fun way to encourage controlling different characters even more. Every character is fun to play to the point where I like getting forced into certain parties for sections with characters I was underusing. There's a lot of systems, but nothing (pre-postgame sims) is so demanding that it requires mastering every system simultaneously; you can sort of pick and choose what to ignore. There's a ton of room for player expression too. I watched a friend play briefly and it was super cool to see that he chose basically none of the same actions as me and played with a completely different style that also totally worked.
The follow up to Remake's ending was sort of what I was most looking forward to all game. Most of the time though, the game seems content to let it lie under the surface and just straightforwardly play out the plot of the original game. This recreation was executed beautifully and was a joy to play, but it did leave me wanting more than the handful of 3 minute long Zack crumbs we got sprinkled throughout + hints at deeper happenings like the Tifa Weapon scene. Of course, this all comes to a head in the contentious final 2 hours of the game. I'm not as sour on this as others seem to be, but I also don't really feel like it left me satisfied as a big fan of Remake's changes (and I'm sure it wouldn't leave Remake haters satisfied either). I guess we'll see in 2028 or whenever, but since Rebirth didn't quite follow up Remake-specific points in the best way, I don't totally trust part 3 to do more than have us go to Northern Crater, collect Huge Materia, have some very odd modified Mideel/Lifestream sequence where Cloud re-figures out who Zack is despite fighting alongside him briefly already, and then have the entire party fight Sephiroth at the edge of creation again. Regardless of all this, I like that there's still open endings and things to speculate, but I wish it had been spread out better throughout the game and told more clearly. Being lukewarm on this section doesn't really spoil the other 98 hours I spent on my main playthrough.
On characters, I just want to say that Cait Sith had the biggest glow up by far (though they're cowards for pronouncing it that way), and Yuffie was a little too one note for how prominent she was, which was a bit of a let down after how great she was in Intermission. Also, what was the point of Reno being gone for almost the whole game?
And finally, the music has to be commented on. There's some amazing stuff here, with plenty of variety. The straightforward recreations of originals (Cosmo Canyon) are beautiful. FF7-themed mixes of classics (Battle on the Big Bridge) are great. Totally original compositions (Tseng & Elena fight, which continues the cool idea of each Turk having a musical "character") are amazing. Is every single song a 10/10? Probably not, but there's very little to complain about (slightly too many chocobo remixes), and this is one I'm sure to pore over and enjoy even more after the game. The one negative comment I have here is about how frequent musical changes happen as you go around the world in a normal exploring cadence. Maybe you get on a chocobo, maybe you walk by the moogle hut or Chadley, maybe you enter or exit a town or fast travel or get in the buggy, but all of these can disrupt what you're hearing, and it makes it a little difficult to fully immerse in the world. In Gongaga I would sometimes slowly walk around just to keep the atmosphere going, which was great when I gave it room to breathe. Cosmo Canyon (the town) was large enough that this was also maintained (aside from near Chadley), and this worked super well.
Overall, while not the most perfect game in existence, this is an amazing game that I was glad to have 110+ hours melt away in. I went for full completion in almost everything (have not finished postgame Chadley sims or Hard mode on most chapters, but pretty much everything else) and am excited to see where this trilogy takes us for its conclusion.
The world takes the forefront here. Taking 20 minute pitstops from the original game and turning them into huge, fleshed out, beautiful zones is a wonder and doesn't feel like padding or filler in any way. Tasteful changes with the context of the rest of the Compilation's existence, like Cissnei showing up in Gongaga, or the addition of Roche to really drive home degradation, are really cool to see as well. On the side activities: there was a moment where I found something that looked cool, but had nothing happening there yet. I was initially a little disappointed, since it felt like it wasn't possible to really explore and make cool discoveries on your own. But when I said that made the game world feel not super open, a friend made the comment that it's more like a checklist that you can optionally go through as you take in the zone, and that actually shifted my view a bit. I did enjoy all of the individual activities at least enough to full clear every zone as soon as it was allowed, and only by the very end was I getting a little tired of them (climbing feels pretty bad though). I think these open world sections could have been spread out a little better too, but it wasn't a huge deal. One other note is that the party interactions are some of the best parts of the game, and while you get plenty during the main story, exploration is pretty silent in comparison. I wish the party had more to say as you wandered around on came across certain locations.
Other side content, like minigames, is of course an enormous part of the game too. This is one of the biggest impressions I have from the original game, and I thought Remake was already following up well here, so this was really cool to see maintained as a huge part of exploring this world. Not all of them quite hit (Aerith Cactuars was a bit painful), or maybe they had slightly too high goals for just how many minigames there are (especially with Round 2 of many of them dumped all at once in chapter 12), but I enjoyed clearing all of them. Cactuar racing was probably my favorite, that's a whole Mario Kart with a bunch of course variety and music as a little side mode in this already massive game. Queen's Blood was also a pretty fun game that earned its "premiere sidegame" status for the most part, those the visuals could have had a little more flair. Quests are also a significant step up, none felt super plain or phoned in and it's cool to see each sort of spotlight a party member as a companion.
The combat is just great overall. Remake was already great here, and synergy abilities are a fun way to encourage controlling different characters even more. Every character is fun to play to the point where I like getting forced into certain parties for sections with characters I was underusing. There's a lot of systems, but nothing (pre-postgame sims) is so demanding that it requires mastering every system simultaneously; you can sort of pick and choose what to ignore. There's a ton of room for player expression too. I watched a friend play briefly and it was super cool to see that he chose basically none of the same actions as me and played with a completely different style that also totally worked.
The follow up to Remake's ending was sort of what I was most looking forward to all game. Most of the time though, the game seems content to let it lie under the surface and just straightforwardly play out the plot of the original game. This recreation was executed beautifully and was a joy to play, but it did leave me wanting more than the handful of 3 minute long Zack crumbs we got sprinkled throughout + hints at deeper happenings like the Tifa Weapon scene. Of course, this all comes to a head in the contentious final 2 hours of the game. I'm not as sour on this as others seem to be, but I also don't really feel like it left me satisfied as a big fan of Remake's changes (and I'm sure it wouldn't leave Remake haters satisfied either). I guess we'll see in 2028 or whenever, but since Rebirth didn't quite follow up Remake-specific points in the best way, I don't totally trust part 3 to do more than have us go to Northern Crater, collect Huge Materia, have some very odd modified Mideel/Lifestream sequence where Cloud re-figures out who Zack is despite fighting alongside him briefly already, and then have the entire party fight Sephiroth at the edge of creation again. Regardless of all this, I like that there's still open endings and things to speculate, but I wish it had been spread out better throughout the game and told more clearly. Being lukewarm on this section doesn't really spoil the other 98 hours I spent on my main playthrough.
On characters, I just want to say that Cait Sith had the biggest glow up by far (though they're cowards for pronouncing it that way), and Yuffie was a little too one note for how prominent she was, which was a bit of a let down after how great she was in Intermission. Also, what was the point of Reno being gone for almost the whole game?
And finally, the music has to be commented on. There's some amazing stuff here, with plenty of variety. The straightforward recreations of originals (Cosmo Canyon) are beautiful. FF7-themed mixes of classics (Battle on the Big Bridge) are great. Totally original compositions (Tseng & Elena fight, which continues the cool idea of each Turk having a musical "character") are amazing. Is every single song a 10/10? Probably not, but there's very little to complain about (slightly too many chocobo remixes), and this is one I'm sure to pore over and enjoy even more after the game. The one negative comment I have here is about how frequent musical changes happen as you go around the world in a normal exploring cadence. Maybe you get on a chocobo, maybe you walk by the moogle hut or Chadley, maybe you enter or exit a town or fast travel or get in the buggy, but all of these can disrupt what you're hearing, and it makes it a little difficult to fully immerse in the world. In Gongaga I would sometimes slowly walk around just to keep the atmosphere going, which was great when I gave it room to breathe. Cosmo Canyon (the town) was large enough that this was also maintained (aside from near Chadley), and this worked super well.
Overall, while not the most perfect game in existence, this is an amazing game that I was glad to have 110+ hours melt away in. I went for full completion in almost everything (have not finished postgame Chadley sims or Hard mode on most chapters, but pretty much everything else) and am excited to see where this trilogy takes us for its conclusion.
2008
Definitely a step up from the first, approaching Fever levels but held back just a bit by a handful of more forgettable games + DS controls (though I played Touchless, they're still a bit much). There's plenty of songs that will stick with me (Fan Club 2, Love Lab, Karate Man as always, maybe The Dazzles, surprisingly Built to Scale, etc). I had a good time with this one.