rookdorf
2020
-1 Star for Gacha
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.
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.
2021
Let's get this out of the way: the story and characters are near the worst in the series (but for very different reasons than in Apocalpyse). Yes, I'm not playing SMT for the story or characters primarily, but even though they were kept relatively minimal (hello, one of many Nocturne influences), they still mostly just left me unfulfilled or annoyed. While we're talking negatives, the two and a half "dungeons" are also a big low point for the series. They've been on the decline in terms of focus for a while now, but they felt like a shell of themselves this time around. The all-revealing map, lack of anything to find aside from items, and monotonous aesthetics really made these feel as barebones and uninviting as ever (and I enjoy the more in depth dungeons in the series when they get proper focus like in SJ, so this is not a knock against dungeons of any kind). They felt like a stripped down version of Da'at.
Speaking of Da'at, let's get to the positives. The open world style of exploration is V's biggest new contribution to the series, and they did a pretty good job here. Plenty of collectibles and nooks to explore, and huge swaths of totally optional areas that you just want to check out to see what demons, items, side quests, and Mimans you'll find. The areas did get a little samey after a while, and I got a bit sick of the environments and themes during my second "full exploring" playthrough, but at the very least on a first time through it's pretty great to scour the map for anything and everything. The music throughout the game is also strong, though I wouldn't call it my favorite of the series' offerings (this might be due to overexposure; I imagine it'll grow on me shortly after a small break). And coming from IV, V fixes one of my biggest "small" complaints: a cohesive artstyle. Seeing every demon roaming the world in 3D is a joy, and having a uniform style of models with great renders for party icons is such a relief. Presentation overall is solid, with the aforementioned probably being the highlight, and the mostly-reuse of TMS's UI was a pretty quick adjustment, if nothing to really write home about. Gameplay is kept mostly the same as Apocalypse, which is probably the peak of the series in that aspect, but with a couple hit or miss changes. Magatsuhi as the sort of replacement for Smirk/Partner Skills is... alright. It reminds me of Smirk in IV: a solid foundation, but could use some refinement. I like the idea behind the race talismans, and many of them had interesting effects, but I found that most were simply inferior to Critical in general, which was a little disappointing. Essences as the new way for the MC (and demons) to learn skills is in a similar spot. It's an interesting replacement for Magatama/Whispers, and I especially like the affinity inheritance, but I think it could use some tweaks, mostly in acquisition. If there was a more guaranteed way to get an essence (maybe on learning a final skill, or an itemization option in the World of Shadows), I think it would be more satisfying (also, being able to hold more than 1 per demon). It's a little sad that it also sort of renders long fusion chains of past games much less useful, but the convenience is definitely nice in many cases. Overall I would say combat is about on par with Apocalypse, which is still a compliment. Also, while I was skeptical when it was announced, I have to admit the "Return of the True Demon" DLC was great and a really fun love letter to Nocturne. If that was what we got instead of the usual eventual rerelease (I know, but let me hope), then good job Atlus.
In the leadup to V's release, I was really hoping it would be the "perfect" SMT that combined all of the best aspects of previous games while avoiding their pitfalls, and throwing in some fun new ideas. Did we get that? No, unfortunately not quite. This feels just like the previous handful of games (Apocalypse/IV/SJ/Nocturne) where it has some great strong points, but also some weaknesses that just hold it back enough to keep it from being called a clear favorite to me. That's not such a bad thing though, as more SMT games are always welcome, and I still enjoyed it a lot overall as simply an SMT game in the modern age, though on a really weak console. Performance was honestly pretty rough overall on the Switch, and it really felt like the hardware was holding the game back. Here's hoping the next entry nails it and we finally get that "perfect" game, though V was still a solid entry to the series overall.
Speaking of Da'at, let's get to the positives. The open world style of exploration is V's biggest new contribution to the series, and they did a pretty good job here. Plenty of collectibles and nooks to explore, and huge swaths of totally optional areas that you just want to check out to see what demons, items, side quests, and Mimans you'll find. The areas did get a little samey after a while, and I got a bit sick of the environments and themes during my second "full exploring" playthrough, but at the very least on a first time through it's pretty great to scour the map for anything and everything. The music throughout the game is also strong, though I wouldn't call it my favorite of the series' offerings (this might be due to overexposure; I imagine it'll grow on me shortly after a small break). And coming from IV, V fixes one of my biggest "small" complaints: a cohesive artstyle. Seeing every demon roaming the world in 3D is a joy, and having a uniform style of models with great renders for party icons is such a relief. Presentation overall is solid, with the aforementioned probably being the highlight, and the mostly-reuse of TMS's UI was a pretty quick adjustment, if nothing to really write home about. Gameplay is kept mostly the same as Apocalypse, which is probably the peak of the series in that aspect, but with a couple hit or miss changes. Magatsuhi as the sort of replacement for Smirk/Partner Skills is... alright. It reminds me of Smirk in IV: a solid foundation, but could use some refinement. I like the idea behind the race talismans, and many of them had interesting effects, but I found that most were simply inferior to Critical in general, which was a little disappointing. Essences as the new way for the MC (and demons) to learn skills is in a similar spot. It's an interesting replacement for Magatama/Whispers, and I especially like the affinity inheritance, but I think it could use some tweaks, mostly in acquisition. If there was a more guaranteed way to get an essence (maybe on learning a final skill, or an itemization option in the World of Shadows), I think it would be more satisfying (also, being able to hold more than 1 per demon). It's a little sad that it also sort of renders long fusion chains of past games much less useful, but the convenience is definitely nice in many cases. Overall I would say combat is about on par with Apocalypse, which is still a compliment. Also, while I was skeptical when it was announced, I have to admit the "Return of the True Demon" DLC was great and a really fun love letter to Nocturne. If that was what we got instead of the usual eventual rerelease (I know, but let me hope), then good job Atlus.
In the leadup to V's release, I was really hoping it would be the "perfect" SMT that combined all of the best aspects of previous games while avoiding their pitfalls, and throwing in some fun new ideas. Did we get that? No, unfortunately not quite. This feels just like the previous handful of games (Apocalypse/IV/SJ/Nocturne) where it has some great strong points, but also some weaknesses that just hold it back enough to keep it from being called a clear favorite to me. That's not such a bad thing though, as more SMT games are always welcome, and I still enjoyed it a lot overall as simply an SMT game in the modern age, though on a really weak console. Performance was honestly pretty rough overall on the Switch, and it really felt like the hardware was holding the game back. Here's hoping the next entry nails it and we finally get that "perfect" game, though V was still a solid entry to the series overall.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
2022
I went in to this expecting "God of War 2018 but more" and I didn't know how right I'd end up being. This game has a lot going on, at times too much, both in story and gameplay.
A departure from 2018's very focused narrative, this one was a little bit all over the place at times. It worked well sometimes as an excuse to let us explore the world more and meet characters we otherwise might not, but other times it felt a little lost. This also affected the last section of the story and ending, which I felt was pretty rushed for what it was meant to be. Overall though, it had some nice twists and turns and I liked getting the chance to expand the world a bit with how many places you touch on, and even how this tied into gameplay (with controllable and companion characters).
On the gameplay side, things felt more varied than I remember 2018 being, which was nice and an attempt to address a perceived problem in 2018. People complained about the troll fight showing up a million times in that game, and here there wasn't anything so egregious. I did think a couple unique minibosses should have stayed unique here instead of being repeated 2 or 3 times though. It just takes away from that first encounter feeling like something special when there's another nearly identical fight later on. And this isn't a "there should be more unique minibosses" ask, I think there were plenty, they just could have cut some of the repeat fights instead. A couple times during the main story I felt like the pacing was a little off. There would be several combat or puzzle sections in a row instead of mixing them up more evenly, which led to some fatigue at times. I also thought the puzzles were a little much this time around, in the sense that there were 1 or 2 too many mechanics at play. This isn't a difficulty complaint, but more like "why is there a set of branches I can set on fire with R2, but also another that requires a Rune arrow setup first". Rune arrows in general had some of the slowest and most particularly precise puzzles that didn't feel like they worked as consistently as they should, especially for how long they take to setup your chain reaction solution. It didn't help when I was in the middle of executing the puzzle's solution and my companion would should out hints because I was taking too long.
Companion dialog in general was just a little too frequent, too, when it comes to suggestions or callouts during combat and exploring. One the one hand, I was impressed by how specific some of the hint lines were for every puzzle in the game which could only possibly be used one time, and on the other, you have "You're on fire! ...But you probably already knew that." Ugh. Same with Shield Strikes, the blue circles would appear and I'd already be in the middle of hitting the input, but I'd get a "Use a shield strike!" before it even got out. Some variation there or waiting more than half a second before shouting at me every time I get a status would've gone a long way (and also maybe slightly less quippy dialog for these, mostly for Atreus/Mimir/Odin's intro, though it generally wasn't too offensive).
The RPG mechanics were, like in 2018, just fine. They didn't feel super necessary but didn't get in the way too much. Following the trend, there was probably a little too much going on here too. You've got so many systems in play that you can customize and upgrade that I don't even want to list them all out. Again it feels like cutting one or two of these might have been some nice streamlining, like did we really need the amulet, and did that really need set bonuses? It didn't really feel like it added much that couldn't have been given elsewhere, like on armor or weapon hilts.
I want to commend this game for its accessibility options too, which were a good showcase of how those kinds of settings benefit everyone. I ended up using the auto pickup option for pretty much the entire game, which saved me the fatigue of spamming circle every time I defeated a pack of enemies. I could see it getting in the way during combat though, and I did get punished once or twice for picking up a health or rage stone at a bad time, but that was totally fine as a tradeoff to me. On the theme of customization, I almost recoiled when the Skyrim-style compass appeared for the first time and proclaimed itself a permanent immersion-breaking fixture in the HUD. So I was very glad that I could customize the HUD to not only disable it, but also assign a new motion (touchpad swipe right) that would make me face the direction of my current objective when I needed it instead of having to turn on the compass in case I got stuck. Also, I could turn off the annoying blurred background for subtitles. Props here for sure.
It goes without saying, but this is also a beautiful looking game with tons of polish and great presentation, just like 2018. The more varied locations really shine through here too, which are great to take in visually. Character performances were generally very good too (special shoutout to Ratatoskr), with some more unique takes on ones like Thor and Odin compared to their usual pop culture representations. The game, and 2018 for that matter, definitely fits in that "AAAA" or "AAA+" space that a handful of high budget and very visually impressive games occupy (like FF7R), which are really cool to just behold, even before you talk about actually playing through them.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with this game, and I got what I came for. I think I would put it ahead of 2018 if I had to rank them, though it wasn't entirely consistent in its quality for both story and gameplay. When it was at its best, it was captivating to follow and satisfying to play, but there were definitely some duller or more frustrating parts along the way. And based on my rating, you can tell that despite some of the negative points I've made, I have a very positive impression overall, and the highlights are really what I'll take away. Also, the attack plants in Vanaheim are awful.
Slight vague SPOILER: there is a new weapon in this game (what a shock!), for which the sequence of acquiring was a highlight. After getting it, I thought it was very cool and went to use it as much as possible, but I never felt like it was actually the best choice for almost any situation (compared to the other weapons which had clear spots to stand out). This could just be me not 100% clicking with it or missing some aspect, but I didn't totally get what its niche was meant to be, and I can't recall any fights or enemies (other than the obvious one) where I felt compelled to swap to this, other than maybe for long range.
ACTUAL SPOILER WARNING: I think Atreus's Ironwood sequence + its immediate follow-up was actually where I thought the game got more interesting and picked up a little, so it's interesting to see others saying that a slog or filler (though I'll concede there was one too many chores to do with Angrboda). Up til about that point, it was extremely just "more 2018" in the general structure. Swapping characters completely and getting a lot more story going on for Atreus's side kind of woke me up in a good way (though technically you do play as Atreus earlier, briefly). I also actually really liked Atreus's combat, especially later on with Ingrid, so that helped keep things fresh. The same happened with the main Asgard section (the second, I could take or leave) where it was a cool way to expand the world and pair up with different characters that you just couldn't get with Kratos. I saw someone compare Ironwood with the Cloud & Aerith section of FF7R which was interesting to me too (more like "downtime," new characters and setting that get you away from what you've been used to up til that point, etc). Angrboda was a nice character and it was cool to see Atreus get to be himself outside of his dad's watchful eye.
A departure from 2018's very focused narrative, this one was a little bit all over the place at times. It worked well sometimes as an excuse to let us explore the world more and meet characters we otherwise might not, but other times it felt a little lost. This also affected the last section of the story and ending, which I felt was pretty rushed for what it was meant to be. Overall though, it had some nice twists and turns and I liked getting the chance to expand the world a bit with how many places you touch on, and even how this tied into gameplay (with controllable and companion characters).
On the gameplay side, things felt more varied than I remember 2018 being, which was nice and an attempt to address a perceived problem in 2018. People complained about the troll fight showing up a million times in that game, and here there wasn't anything so egregious. I did think a couple unique minibosses should have stayed unique here instead of being repeated 2 or 3 times though. It just takes away from that first encounter feeling like something special when there's another nearly identical fight later on. And this isn't a "there should be more unique minibosses" ask, I think there were plenty, they just could have cut some of the repeat fights instead. A couple times during the main story I felt like the pacing was a little off. There would be several combat or puzzle sections in a row instead of mixing them up more evenly, which led to some fatigue at times. I also thought the puzzles were a little much this time around, in the sense that there were 1 or 2 too many mechanics at play. This isn't a difficulty complaint, but more like "why is there a set of branches I can set on fire with R2, but also another that requires a Rune arrow setup first". Rune arrows in general had some of the slowest and most particularly precise puzzles that didn't feel like they worked as consistently as they should, especially for how long they take to setup your chain reaction solution. It didn't help when I was in the middle of executing the puzzle's solution and my companion would should out hints because I was taking too long.
Companion dialog in general was just a little too frequent, too, when it comes to suggestions or callouts during combat and exploring. One the one hand, I was impressed by how specific some of the hint lines were for every puzzle in the game which could only possibly be used one time, and on the other, you have "You're on fire! ...But you probably already knew that." Ugh. Same with Shield Strikes, the blue circles would appear and I'd already be in the middle of hitting the input, but I'd get a "Use a shield strike!" before it even got out. Some variation there or waiting more than half a second before shouting at me every time I get a status would've gone a long way (and also maybe slightly less quippy dialog for these, mostly for Atreus/Mimir/Odin's intro, though it generally wasn't too offensive).
The RPG mechanics were, like in 2018, just fine. They didn't feel super necessary but didn't get in the way too much. Following the trend, there was probably a little too much going on here too. You've got so many systems in play that you can customize and upgrade that I don't even want to list them all out. Again it feels like cutting one or two of these might have been some nice streamlining, like did we really need the amulet, and did that really need set bonuses? It didn't really feel like it added much that couldn't have been given elsewhere, like on armor or weapon hilts.
I want to commend this game for its accessibility options too, which were a good showcase of how those kinds of settings benefit everyone. I ended up using the auto pickup option for pretty much the entire game, which saved me the fatigue of spamming circle every time I defeated a pack of enemies. I could see it getting in the way during combat though, and I did get punished once or twice for picking up a health or rage stone at a bad time, but that was totally fine as a tradeoff to me. On the theme of customization, I almost recoiled when the Skyrim-style compass appeared for the first time and proclaimed itself a permanent immersion-breaking fixture in the HUD. So I was very glad that I could customize the HUD to not only disable it, but also assign a new motion (touchpad swipe right) that would make me face the direction of my current objective when I needed it instead of having to turn on the compass in case I got stuck. Also, I could turn off the annoying blurred background for subtitles. Props here for sure.
It goes without saying, but this is also a beautiful looking game with tons of polish and great presentation, just like 2018. The more varied locations really shine through here too, which are great to take in visually. Character performances were generally very good too (special shoutout to Ratatoskr), with some more unique takes on ones like Thor and Odin compared to their usual pop culture representations. The game, and 2018 for that matter, definitely fits in that "AAAA" or "AAA+" space that a handful of high budget and very visually impressive games occupy (like FF7R), which are really cool to just behold, even before you talk about actually playing through them.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with this game, and I got what I came for. I think I would put it ahead of 2018 if I had to rank them, though it wasn't entirely consistent in its quality for both story and gameplay. When it was at its best, it was captivating to follow and satisfying to play, but there were definitely some duller or more frustrating parts along the way. And based on my rating, you can tell that despite some of the negative points I've made, I have a very positive impression overall, and the highlights are really what I'll take away. Also, the attack plants in Vanaheim are awful.
Slight vague SPOILER: there is a new weapon in this game (what a shock!), for which the sequence of acquiring was a highlight. After getting it, I thought it was very cool and went to use it as much as possible, but I never felt like it was actually the best choice for almost any situation (compared to the other weapons which had clear spots to stand out). This could just be me not 100% clicking with it or missing some aspect, but I didn't totally get what its niche was meant to be, and I can't recall any fights or enemies (other than the obvious one) where I felt compelled to swap to this, other than maybe for long range.
ACTUAL SPOILER WARNING: I think Atreus's Ironwood sequence + its immediate follow-up was actually where I thought the game got more interesting and picked up a little, so it's interesting to see others saying that a slog or filler (though I'll concede there was one too many chores to do with Angrboda). Up til about that point, it was extremely just "more 2018" in the general structure. Swapping characters completely and getting a lot more story going on for Atreus's side kind of woke me up in a good way (though technically you do play as Atreus earlier, briefly). I also actually really liked Atreus's combat, especially later on with Ingrid, so that helped keep things fresh. The same happened with the main Asgard section (the second, I could take or leave) where it was a cool way to expand the world and pair up with different characters that you just couldn't get with Kratos. I saw someone compare Ironwood with the Cloud & Aerith section of FF7R which was interesting to me too (more like "downtime," new characters and setting that get you away from what you've been used to up til that point, etc). Angrboda was a nice character and it was cool to see Atreus get to be himself outside of his dad's watchful eye.
2022
Lots of good changes (mostly relating to gameplay) and also some steps back (mostly related to progression and cosmetics). The battle pass is begging me to make this a game I play every day, which is just not going to happen, and I'm going to feel less rewarded by the game overall with how stingy the cosmetic rewards are for the amount I play, which will make me play even less. I'll come back to check out new content as it releases, but there's a low chance I make significant progress on future season battle passes. The shop rotations also mean I usually don't even notice when cool skins get dropped (and 0 chance I'm buying them with real money anyway). On the positive side though, 5v5 is generally nice and I like most of the changes throughout the cast. Orisa in particular went from my least favorite hero in the game to one of my most commonly picked tanks. Unfortunately, they also essentially deleted my main, Doomfist, and replaced him with an unfun shell of his former self in a role I don't enjoy as much. Overall, it's still a game I'll play here and there, both with friends and solo when the mood strikes, though I'll probably not get as much of a tangible in-game reward out of each play session, so maybe that'll wane. Still looking forward to new heroes and PvE down the road, and hoping feedback will be taken to heart on progression and cosmetics. The actual gameplay feels as good or better than ever, for the most part.
2022
Overall, I had a good time with Pokemon Scarlet, despite its many flaws. It had some nice steps forward, some flubs, and of course some crashing and burning as modern Pokemon games always do.
The story was generally more enjoyable than expected, but not some masterpiece like people are saying. It was still, in summary, a Pokemon game story. The Team Star stuff was more fun than expected (especially Clive), but was still basically a simple anime plot. And of course, no voice acting, which I think is fine for this kind of game generally, but it fails to work if the game just ignores that there's no voices and throws in full cutscenes and even songs... again.
Gym challenges are not very fun. Most are just throwaway 30 second minigames before a gym leader which makes gyms feel super bite sized and unimpactful. Sure, they have to coexist with 5 bases and 5 titans, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to have a little more pomp and circumstance. Bases/titans were pretty small and formulaic too, but that's more expected for what they are, I think. I wish at least one of these main activities had a little more meat on it, but I get that they're not the main draw, which is of course the open world.
The open world is generally pretty good. It's a modern open world Pokemon game, and plays out pretty much exactly as you'd expect with no real surprises. It's fun to see Pokemon just exist in the world, and try to get to areas you "shouldn't" be in yet, and all of those familiar trappings. One complaint I do have here is that the common Pokemon are way too common. It's a large world, and there's hundreds of Pokemon in the game. I don't need to see Oinkologne and Deerling everywhere I go, spread out the "cooler" Pokemon a little more to keep each area feeling unique and interesting.
Also, I'm specifically talking about the overworld, outside of the cities. The cities were super dry and also painful to explore due to performance. I checked out one or two past Megasoza, then kind of gave up to save myself the trouble.
New pokemon are overall solid, there's some nice new ones as always and some misses, and I especially liked a few cross gen evolutions like Kingambit. Please stop forcing the starters to have jobs as a theme. I did not warm up to the box legendaries too much either.
Raids are better than they were in Sword/Shield, but they still get old very quickly and while not quite as glacial, are still pretty slow. A good chunk of this friction is from how bad the online services are, though. Speaking of slowness, I saw people calling this game fast, and I mean, if you compare it to Diamond/Pearl, maybe? Otherwise, the general pace of battles is still painfully slow. Waiting for stat changes to resolve, abilities and items to proc, etc, makes battle feel as slow as ever and not something I'd ever want to endure vs using something like Showdown if given the choice.
The idea of multiplayer is cool, but again with these online services, it was not something I dipped into very much.
Performance, polish, and presentation have been talked about to death. They are, overall, a travesty. There's a moment early on where they try to really "wow" the player with a shot of the open world, saying how beautiful it is, and I laughed out loud at the mess I was looking at. I don't consider myself much of a graphics snob or anything, and I still had a lot of fun with the game, but come on. Aside from extremely low fidelity visuals, which I can mostly get used to, I ran into plenty of visual glitches in every play session. There's also the bad experience of using the box, which struggles to load the sprites for each Pokemon when switching boxes and really makes it painful to look around, which honestly probably contributed to me not quite finishing my living dex. This is all on top of more deliberate choices in presentation like the extremely bland Elite Four room and not being able to enter most shops, too. Just lackluster all around, though I'll give a little bit of credit for things like the animations around the borders of the screen when entering a battle.
-1 star for general performance/polish reasons, just unacceptable for what this game is. Would be a 4/5 otherwise.
The story was generally more enjoyable than expected, but not some masterpiece like people are saying. It was still, in summary, a Pokemon game story. The Team Star stuff was more fun than expected (especially Clive), but was still basically a simple anime plot. And of course, no voice acting, which I think is fine for this kind of game generally, but it fails to work if the game just ignores that there's no voices and throws in full cutscenes and even songs... again.
Gym challenges are not very fun. Most are just throwaway 30 second minigames before a gym leader which makes gyms feel super bite sized and unimpactful. Sure, they have to coexist with 5 bases and 5 titans, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to have a little more pomp and circumstance. Bases/titans were pretty small and formulaic too, but that's more expected for what they are, I think. I wish at least one of these main activities had a little more meat on it, but I get that they're not the main draw, which is of course the open world.
The open world is generally pretty good. It's a modern open world Pokemon game, and plays out pretty much exactly as you'd expect with no real surprises. It's fun to see Pokemon just exist in the world, and try to get to areas you "shouldn't" be in yet, and all of those familiar trappings. One complaint I do have here is that the common Pokemon are way too common. It's a large world, and there's hundreds of Pokemon in the game. I don't need to see Oinkologne and Deerling everywhere I go, spread out the "cooler" Pokemon a little more to keep each area feeling unique and interesting.
Also, I'm specifically talking about the overworld, outside of the cities. The cities were super dry and also painful to explore due to performance. I checked out one or two past Megasoza, then kind of gave up to save myself the trouble.
New pokemon are overall solid, there's some nice new ones as always and some misses, and I especially liked a few cross gen evolutions like Kingambit. Please stop forcing the starters to have jobs as a theme. I did not warm up to the box legendaries too much either.
Raids are better than they were in Sword/Shield, but they still get old very quickly and while not quite as glacial, are still pretty slow. A good chunk of this friction is from how bad the online services are, though. Speaking of slowness, I saw people calling this game fast, and I mean, if you compare it to Diamond/Pearl, maybe? Otherwise, the general pace of battles is still painfully slow. Waiting for stat changes to resolve, abilities and items to proc, etc, makes battle feel as slow as ever and not something I'd ever want to endure vs using something like Showdown if given the choice.
The idea of multiplayer is cool, but again with these online services, it was not something I dipped into very much.
Performance, polish, and presentation have been talked about to death. They are, overall, a travesty. There's a moment early on where they try to really "wow" the player with a shot of the open world, saying how beautiful it is, and I laughed out loud at the mess I was looking at. I don't consider myself much of a graphics snob or anything, and I still had a lot of fun with the game, but come on. Aside from extremely low fidelity visuals, which I can mostly get used to, I ran into plenty of visual glitches in every play session. There's also the bad experience of using the box, which struggles to load the sprites for each Pokemon when switching boxes and really makes it painful to look around, which honestly probably contributed to me not quite finishing my living dex. This is all on top of more deliberate choices in presentation like the extremely bland Elite Four room and not being able to enter most shops, too. Just lackluster all around, though I'll give a little bit of credit for things like the animations around the borders of the screen when entering a battle.
-1 star for general performance/polish reasons, just unacceptable for what this game is. Would be a 4/5 otherwise.
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.
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.
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).