I'm just going to write out a bunch of thoughts about this game without caring if it reads as coherent; much like this game itself. It's a game with atmosphere that lifts you out of your body and asks you why you dared to keep going in a strange, alien cyber world that you're only a small part of. End of an era for 00's Y2K. Technology was new. The PS2 was new. Fully realized humans were forming on our magic tv boxes and the computer felt like something Other than human. The lighting of this game does wonders for making the game feel nostalgic for reality versus the harsh bleakness of the CGs and UI. The music always subverts my expectations and feels fully other-worldly. The vignettes are instantly iconic and I wish more was done with them into fully fleshed out stories. Jin Kazama is a very iconic character and the drastic turn they take to make him immediately distinct from his past and his trauma is extremely engaging from both a narrative perspective and a gameplay perspective. In a game, no, a series about familial hatred and betrayal, having a character torture themselves for twenty years and fully unlearn his grandfather's teachings and hate everything in his core down to his blood and him seeking to change every single aspect of himself outside of his own revenge is powerfully personal. Damn dude.... I'm always ecstatic playing games from this era. It always feels like games like this dig at my core. And it's a good ass game through and through (It's not).

A game so good that it's regarded as a complete critical and commercial failure. A game so good with it's slower pace to combat and broader focus on natural environments that people largely ignored it and bought the game before it tenfold. A game so good that at most, people remember it giving them nightmares as a kid and is remembered as "that one weird fighting game" and nothing else. A game so good the director was forced to kill the creative vision for the series narratively moving forward and conform to purely what "normal" fans wanted. A game so good it nearly bankrupted the company.

They will never make something like this again, fuck dude.
Damn dude.

Fuck Bandai. Fuck Harada. Fuck Tekken 5 onwards. Fuck Tekken fans in general tbh. smh smh. I don't care if I sound like a stubborn asshole. Sometimes it feels good to be one. And at least my love for this game exceeds the hate I have for the rest of this franchise.

One of those games that was made with pure soul. I'm gonna go listen to Fetus again and zone out or something.

I waited years for this game to release. It was the number 1 thing I was looking forward to playing. I tracked every pre-release review, clues in mobile games, scraps of info after Final Remix. Anything. TWEWY is my favorite game of all time. I wanted to love this game so, so badly. When it came out, I played it all in a weekend start to finish. Needless to say, I never anticipated something more in my life. I was ready to get absorbed in everything all over again with a new cast and learn new lessons tailored more to the modern era.

...That's why I'm sorry to say this part. If you played the original, do not play this.

Not because this is a "bad" game or because the art quality suffers or music is bad, no no. It still maintains all those qualities of the original and expands on them tenfold. It really is a Gorgeous game all the way through. I commend the team for what they were able to accomplish with respect to the battle systems, Nomura modern fashion tastes, impeccable music, and the incredible 3d background designs. I think the world of this game is one of the most gorgeous I've ever played. Now, with all that out of the way, what could possibly be the problem with it?

The writing. It's very much a Safe game. It doesn't challenge the player in any way that appealed to me so strongly about the unique vision of the original DS TWEWY. The characters straightforwardly perform all their goals and don't face lifestyle challenges or interact the same with mechanically that Neku was able to with his cast. The game is bloated with meaningless dialogue from minute one to 200 hours in. The characters talk but don't have much to say that is challenging or engaging like Neku's examinations into his loneliness and scorn towards others. I do not feel compelled at all to get the secret reports or do the bonus modes the same way I was for the original. Nagi is introduced as a perfect social communicator despite her neet background and then that's it for the rest of the game. She's able to handle every social scenario onwards and faces no serious shortcomings in the plot. She's another one of Rindo's lackeys. She has a crush on Minamimoto. She has a rivalry with Fret. That's... about it. She's subversive because she's not a depressed nerd, but the writers forgot to give her meaningful actions and arcs beyond that. The whole game is like this but I don't have the energy to go into every nitpick. It's just a very shallow game.

When I finished this game, the only thing I thought was "Well... That was fine I guess." which to me is the biggest sin a piece of art can commit. I so desperately do not want to be a hater for this game. I wanted to love it so badly. But between the troubled development of the title leading to three massive rewrites over a decade, Final Remix, and Nomura's ideas for the story getting tossed aside for Ishibashi's... This is not for me. This is for someone who loves shonen and thinks being a cool teen with powers is cool. And that's a perfectly fine thing to be. It just isn't the mechanically rich and narratively rich character analysis I so deeply loved about the original. It's mindnumbingly just a button masher with stylish characters with no substance beyond that. Worst of all, it's a game that makes me go back and think "did I even really love the original?" And if you loved the original in that same way, you won't love this game.