Gaming and fashion isn't a thing people associate with one another. I generally get it. Video games still have a stigma and the gaming community itself doesn't seem to care much about fashion. I get why. People into video games or nerdy stuff in general were bullied growing up and a lot of those people who did it were popular and into fashion and also bullied us for how we dressed. So I can see why gamers would reject the notion of spending money on clothing.
I myself was one of those people and I heard a lot of other gamers on the internet say that they would rather spend money on games than clothes. I'm hear to let you all know that gaming and fashion can coincide. I'm here to break all stereotypes and conventions.
Firstly, I want to address that there are easily accessible video game clothing out there, most of what you get on the market is pretty bad. In the days before the pandemic when people would go out quite often it wasn't hard to find t-shirts with video games on them at places like Wal-Mart, Hot-Topic, and Target. The designs you find there often are really tacky and/or look like kid's clothing. Not to mention the so much wince-inducing shirts that usually have a generic game controller on them with a phrase like "Noobs Get PWND," "Eat, Sleep, Game," "I'm sorry I was late I had to level up". In addition, they are cheaply made with not much thought put into them. Even scouring the pages of the internet it could be hard to find things more creative.
There are a lot of places on the internet to buy gaming apparel, but which ones are the good ones? Well, I'm here to tell you. Firstly, the key to good gaming apparel is subtlety. Less is more in gaming fashion. We don't need a large obtrusive image of Mario's head slapped on a t-shirt. Most geek clothing out there amounts to simple graphic t-shirts, but I can shed some light on where to get more interesting ways to embrace your hobby or passion.
1. Shirtoid
Shirtoid is a conglomerate website for gaming t-shirts. Here you can view graphic t-shirt designs created by people from daily t-shirt design websites.
2. The Yetee
The Yetee was one of the first sites I went to grab gaming gear. They're one of many sites that sell shirts designed by freelance artists. They used to operate under a daily design format with two shirt designs will go out of sell after a 24 hour period, but over the years they added a marketplace where you can buy designs during any time of the year. They offer some cute christmas sweaters every November.
3. Fangamer
Fangamer offers has a light of graphic t-shirt designs like the rest, but they do offer some variety outside of that. You have their Ness design which is basically the shirt Ness wears in his games. Most of their clothes are of good quality with the exception of a few of their jackets. They're also the only gaming apparel site I've seen with Polo shirts, but unfortunately they are very thin and feel cheap. I was hoping something more akin to Ralph Lauren's thick, but comfy shirts.
The Animal Crossing Leaf dress from Black Milk Clothing
4. Black Milk
Black Milk offers a lot of choices for female gamers. They have overalls, jackets, leggings, and dresses. As far as I know this is the only store where you can buy video game dresses. Black Milk's designs are filled with color and have a
5. Insert Coin Clothing
The best site on the net for video game clothing. You won't find anything better. Insert Coin Clothing is based in the UK and features officially licensed apparel from a variety of video games. You can get Japanese-styled jackets with designs based off the tattoos from the Yakuza series, Ellie's shirt from The Last of Us and some designs from the Persona series and Infamous Second son that could double as cosplays. Insert Coin has the highest quality of video game apparel I've seen. Their designs are more subtle and stylish, blending fashion and gaming perfectly.
The clothing is also particularly well made. The material on the items are thick and mostly stitched together well. I say mostly because I bought a reversible PlayStation jacket and felt like the threading started to come out way too quickly. I get the most compliments from people when I wear clothing from their site and most of the time it's not even from people who play video games. Insert Coin and Black Milk are the most expensive of the bunch, but you have to pay for quality.
A Pair of custom The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask converse designed by Bobsmade
6. DIY
The other option out there is to make your own gaming gear. There are a bunch of websites that allow you to make your own custom designed t-shirts like Red Bubble, Society6, Uber Prints, but if you want to make something besides basic shirt or hoodie designs you'll have to look harder as I haven't found any on that end myself. I have found a couple of people who can make custom design sneakers for you, the best of which is bobsmade, but currently she is not doing shipping to customers in the US which pains me as I always dreamed of having her make a pair of moogle sneakers for me. You also have the option to customize clothing you already wear. The DIY or do it yourself has been a popular trend in recent years and you can do it here as well. There are many videos on YouTube showing you how to customize your old jackets, pants, etc.
That's all I have for you right now. If you're interested I made a few videos showing off some of my geek clothing pieces. You can check it my last one below:
2020 was a crazy ass year! One of the very few good things about it that we got a crazy good number of games throughout the year. Actually, gaming did better than all of the other forms of entertainment last year. As reported by Business Insider, the video game industry projected to make $179.7 billion in 2020 which is more than the film and sports industry combined. This is no surprise as with the pandemic more people were stuck indoors and needed more to entertain themselves. Actually according to Nielsen Company's SuperData research more than half of the American population were playing video games last year.
The film and sports industries on the other hand relied on a lot of in-person events for revenue in addition to the production of films requiring lots of people to gather together and all film studios were closed for months. Video game companies simply moved from the office to working from home and for smaller studios like indie creators, they have been used to working for home for years. In talks of revenue, Steam reported it's top selling games of 2020 with Among Us, Counterstrike: GO, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, Destiny 2, Doom Eternal, DOTA 2, Fall Guys, Monster Hunter World, PUBG, and Grand Theft Auto V ranking out the top eleven of the year.
The convention floor in Oxon Hill, MD at Magfest 2020
Pulling back before the pandemic hit we got Dragon Ball Z Kakarot in Janauary which received mix reviews. On the 16th of the month CD Projekt Red announced the first delay for Cyberpunk 2077 moving it to September 17th. Also in January was one of the last gaming conventions to been held, Magfest. Magfest also known as the music and games festival went on from January 2nd, to January 5th. Last year had a Donkey Kong theme and even Donkey Kong Country series composer David Wise performed at the convention. I, myself attended the con and took part in the cosplay festivities along with the arcade gaming floor, video game and computer museum, and the slamming parties by djs Okatkus with Attitude and DJ Taylor Senpai. I wasn't able to enjoy the celebration for long however as I came down with a nasty flu on Saturday night. I was near the dj booth sitting on an air vent to warm me up when a couple EMTs came up to me to ask if I was all right. I said I just had a cold and they asked if I needed any help to which I declined and then they left me on my own. I was about to head home myself when the dj started playing "Knuck if You Buck", but I went home right after. Little did I know that would be the last gaming event I would attend in 2020.
Another gaming convention I planned to attend last year was E3. As you may recall even before the pandemic hit E3 2020 wasn't looking good. Host, Geoff Keighly announced he would not be attending. The first time ever since he started attending back in 1995. Sony for the second year in a row, chose not to attend and then there was the floor director dropping out back in February. Ultimately, the conference was canceled for the first time in it's twenty-five year history when the pandemics and lockdowns went in full effect last March. E3 and gaming companies announced that they will make online announcements of titles. Many people believed this was the end of E3, but there's nothing to suggest that E3 will not come back around once this whole pandemic situation is over.
This was going to be my first year attending so it hit me deeply when the announcement was made. This was also the case with EVO. The famed world fighting game tournament was aimed to go on in July of 2020, but due to the pandemic it shifted an online tournament, much to people's dismay. That didn't even happen however as during the spring a bunch of troublesome news came up. EVO's founder and host Mr. Wizard came up with a number of sexual assault allegations leading to the cancellation of the tournament and Mr. Wizard leaving the company. In addition, over eighty players in the Super Smash Bros. were also met with the same allegations. With these sexual assault and pedophilia allegations the competitive fighting game scene did not look good.
Slideout 3019 a game made in Dreams
To something more positive February gave players a couple of noteworthy titles; Dreams and Street Fighter V: Champion Edition. Dreams is Media Molecule's newest title. Like the Little Big Planet series there's an emphasis on player creation, but in this case it's basically the entire premise. Dreams is better advertised as a game engine than a video game as it has a very short campaign which seems to be just a sample to show creators what Dreams is capable of. I feel like I can only recommend Dreams to the most die hard of video game fans or those who want to get into video game design as it relies heavily on user-created content and incentivizes the player to create content.
Kotaku recently published an article highlighting how the player base in Dreams dropped dramatically and what the issues could be. Given the type of game Dreams is I think it wasn't ever going to make money on a mainstream scale or even semi. It is for the most dedicated of gamers. Myself I've enjoyed my time with it, I also find it frustrating. This likely more of a problem with myself than with the engine, but I find it cumbersome and a chore to make games in. Dreams is still the easiest platform I ever used to make games with like Unreal Engine, Renpy, Game Maker, and RPG Maker, but I still find it difficult and kind of boring unlike Little Big Planet which I used to spend all day and night making creations and even winning second place in a Final Fantasy themed creation contest.
There are lot of good games to play on Dreams. Every time I decide to look into other player's creations I always find something that impresses me.
In February the definitive edition of Street Fighter V, Street Fighter V: Champion Edition released. This included all of the DLC characters and costumes. I was hoping to get back into the competitive scene this year so I picked it up. It's fun and that's really all I have to say about it because I didn't spend a lot of time with the game.
March is when things started to get juicy. We got Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Nioh 2 the next day, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal on the same day, Half-Life: Alyx, and Persona 5 Royal at the end of the month. March was a stacked month. April gave us the mixed Resident Evil 3 remake, the highly acclaimed Final Fantasy VII Remake, and the return of Streets of Rage with Streets of Rage 4.
Biden Island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Arby's promotion for the launch of Persona 5 Royal
To touch back on Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing New Horizons was a major success at launch. I remember the week that it came out it seemed like every nerdy girl on my Instagram feed went out to buy this game. New Horizons went on to sell 13 million copies within March. It was so popular in fact that it became a cultural phenomenon. It gained the attention of businesses and even politicians. There was a time that there was an island dedicated to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It would eventually be removed as Nintendo requested that they didn't want politics in the game. Animal Crossing along with Persona 5 Royal came out at a good time. Both of these games gave people a sense of normalcy amongst the lockdown. Hanging out with friends, keeping a schedule, going to the movie theater, the beach, and much more. There was a time where it seemed like everyone was talking about New Horizons.
Nothing notable would release until the summer when The Last of Us Part II dropped to mixed reception, Fall Guys which would blow up with popularity, and Paper Mario: The Origami King which also received mixed reviews. Cyberpunk 2077 also got delayed to November 19th. and that delay came with the announcement of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series versions. Steve from Minecraft got announced for Smash while in the Tekken players got Fahkumram and Kunimitsu. Mortal Kombat 11 received Rambo and Rain added to the roster. Speaking of MK it got its definitive edition with Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate this year.
The surprising thing here is Among Us gaining popularity around fall last year when it's a game from 2018. This was due to popular Twitch streamers like SR_Kaif, AdmiralBulldog, and xQc giving the game a lot of exposure and as such spread around by word of mouth or more accurately social media sharing since this is the internet. Among Us became so popular that Congressmen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar were streaming it on Twitch.
While I did buy Street Fighter V in 2020 I primarily played Tekken 7 last year. Oh man. Fahkumram was overpowered. Talk about a character that was too strong. Fahkumram had very quick moves and even his slower moves that were meant for starting launches were safe. It seemed like he had no weaknesses. So many people played him when he first dropped. After the months passed and he was nerfed in the next patch people stopped playing him and now I almost never see the character. 2020 marked my first time going back into the fighting game scene heavily. I played in the tournament scene here and there from 2009-2012 and even got third place at my first real Tekken tournament. Playing Tekken 7 this year felt like coming back home although due to the pandemic I was unable to go to any actual tournaments, but it was still great to play Tekken again with other people online. I see that really nothing has changed with online play either. People still rage quit and get made and send you salty messages when they lose. Still, I had fun.
Continuing with the discussion about the fall, the highly praised indie title Hades, would release on September 17th for Nintendo Switch and PC. In October, Cyberpunk would get its third and final delay moving to December 10th, but it's PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series version were to be postponed to 2021. Watch Dogs: Legion also released on the 29th. I was also feeling the Halloween spirit more than ever this year and without being able to celebrate it like I wanted to I turned to play some thematically appropriate video games. I went ahead and bought Resident Evil 3 from PSN since it was at a discount. Resident Evil 3 turned out to be as disappointing as the critics and fans said. It is short and feels short and a lot of content was removed from the original. I would rather play the original actually. I also turned on Kingdom Hearts II and Persona 5 for a little bit to run around Halloween Town and Mementos. I still can't beat the secret boss.
November was approaching. Players were getting ready for the heavy hitters since the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X were releasing. We finally got the price points for these consoles back in the summer and given history we knew the shortages were going to come along with software and hardware issues. These consoles sold, but they sold sold. According to Sony the PlayStation 5 sold even more than the PS4 at launch. Scalpers were back at it again buying up everything in sight with bots. Sony was also quick to shut down companies making custom faceplates. Nintendo also tried to shut down some custom designs as a fan by the name of Alex Blake was making and selling Etikons, custom designed Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons for charity to the JED foundation; an organization dedicated to mental health and the prevention of suicide.
For those that don't know Etika was a popular video game streamer on YouTube and Twitch. He was particularly a Nintendo fan and one of his phrases was Joy-Con Boyz which is printed on the Etikons. Etika commited suicide in the summer of 2019. Nintendo in particular had an issue with the word Joy-Con printed on it and demanded that it be removed. Many fans did not like Nintendo's decision. While they do have the legal rights to do it, many believed that Nintendo was in bad taste to try and stop the production of an item being sold for charity.
Nintendo also released a well received game in November with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. As both a sequel to Hyrule Warriors and a prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild you played as an array of characters during the events leading up to The Breath of the Wild. Nintendo's old competitor Sega also dropped a game in November. Yakuza dropped its seventh game in the series, Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Like a Dragon took a radically different approach with a new protagonist and ditching the action combat for traditional turn-based JRPG combat system much like the Dragon Quest reference in it's name. I have yet to play a Yakuza, but given that it's a RPG now I might finally get around to it and start with Like a Dragon. Other notable titles in November include the Demon's Souls, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the pre-installed PS5 game Astrobot's Playroom, and Sackboy: A Big Adventure.
Into December people were still trying to get a PS5 or one of the Xbox consoles and waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 to launch. December 10th arrived and Cyberpunk 2077 was a mess. This is perhaps the worst launch and PR I've seen with a video game ever, even The New York Times was talking about it. The PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game were nigh unplayable. The models and environment had a weird blur on them that made the game look like a PS3 game. There were a ton of bugs and glitches and the game's performance was terrible. I took a while for character models to load and frame rates would dip to abysmal levels. It was better on PC and the next gen or I guess now current gen consoles, but not a whole lot. PC, along with the PS5 and Xbox Series still were subjected to a myriad of glitches and all platforms dealt with random crashes.
PC players for a while couldn't even play the game as intended because if your save file reached beyond 8MB it could cause your save to corrupt. It is super easy to get your save above 8MB too. CD Projekt Red said that crafting and keeping a lot of items in your inventory increases your file size which is really easy to do given this is an RPG. It was eventually patched out however, but it took a while.
Leading up to the launch reviewers were only given PC codes for the game and no console versions were sent out which raised many red flags. Reviewers talked about the bugs and crashes and believed that all these issues would be fixed when the day 1 patch would drop. They were not. Leading up to the launch a CD Projekt Red staff member said that the game runs "surprisingly well" on consoles. A statement that turned out to be completely false. Soon after it was stated from employees that they were under intense crunch and new about the state of the game, but the highers up demanded it be released on time. Later, we would hear news about CD Projekt Red potentially facing a law suit from investors for lying about the state of the game which would eventually be confirmed.
Despite all of the controversy Cyberpunk 2077 sold a total of 13 million copies within ten days of launch. CD Projekt Red even stated that it made a profit before the game even came out just from pre-orders. It's not for certain how much of that they retained however since the game launched in such a terrible state that refunds were be given out at large numbers. Retailers that usually wouldn't offer refunds for opened games like Best Buy and GameStop were giving out refunds. Even Sony was offering refunds directly from PSN and eventually they took it down from the PlayStation store. CD Projekt Red eventually put a form to get refunds from them personally. It is yet to be seen if anyone has received refunds from them yet. I submitted mine, but haven't heard anything as of yet.
CD Projekt Red also stated that they would release two patches that should take care of most of the technical issues in January and February of 2021. As of this writing, no new patches have been released. This launch was without a doubt a headache. The game itself is very good when it's working properly. The level design and system mechanics are engaging as well as the story and voice acting. There is a lot of good hidden underneath the glitches and performance issues. It's just unfortunate that it will take a few months before Cyberpunk 2077 is in a state that was intended by the developers.
December wasn't all bad. Nintendo showed off their complete Super Nintendo World through a direct and Final Fantasy VII villain Sephiroth got announced for Smash Bros. Ultimate. While I'm ecstatic that another Final Fantasy character made it into Smash. I'm disappointed that it's another character from VII. VII receives the most attention in the series and so much to a point that I was getting sick of it which is why I wasn't as excited for the prospect of a Final Fantasy VII Remake as most people. Still, Final Fantasy is/was my most favorite video game franchise at one point so I'm glad it got two additions when normally that wouldn't be the case for a third party franchise.
The Game Awards was also during this month. Not much to say. Final Fantasy VII Remake took RPG of the year, Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate took Fighting Game of the Year, and The Last of Us Part II took Game of the Year. The winners didn't surprise me at all as The Game Awards has a very specific target audience. None of the game reveals were that interesting to me either except for the announcement of Horizon: Forbidden West and a new Perfect Dark.
The last bit of notable news of 2020 in gaming was the confirmation that the KFConsole that was teased back in June was real. KFC put out an entire presentation video up for the fried chicken warming gaming console along with a web page. This still feels like an out-of-date April Fools joke, but for now I guess the KFConsole is real.
We're only a week into 2021. Who knows what will come.
Due to the COVID-19
pandemic I had the chance to buy more video games than usual last year, but
still the number wasn’t quite enough to do a full analysis of 2020’s new
releases so I will only be covering my top three choices of the year. So without further ado, let's get into it!
3. Streets of Rage 4
At the number three spot I have Streets of Rage 4. Streets of Rage 4 marks the first sequel in the long lived beat-em-up franchise since 1994. The 26 year time gap comes with new hand drawn HD sprites, online play, and a wide selection of characters. My favorite is newcomer Cherry, a black girl with firery red dreadlocks and a literal electric guitar. There aren't that many black playable men in video games let alone black women so that's what drew me to her at first, but she's also quite fun to play as since she's the fastest character in the game which after playing with her for a while makes everyone else feel slow and she just looks cool.
I found Streets of Rage 4's campaign to be pretty good. It offers a lot of enemy variety and you have enough moves in your arsenal, especially with the new characters to keep the battles engaging. The game can get quite tough sometimes even on the normal difficulty, but things can get surprisingly easy for you once you mastered your character's strengths and can pull off nearly endless combos. Those will be the key to conquering the higher difficulty levels. There's a story to go along with the campaign too, but honestly I can't remember it, but no one plays beat-em ups for the story anyway. Streets of Rage 4's campaign is short as usual for the genre, but it offers a lot of replay value with multiple difficulty levels, unlockable concpet art, and the ability to unlock hidden characters. My favorite hidden character is Dr. Zan who comes from Streets of Rage 3. He's faster than most of the characters on the roster with the exception of Cherry and is an old man cyborg and I just have a thing for old fighters.
SOR4 also comes with a few visual enhancers and modes. You can change your screen setting overlays which also includes a CRT mode. I recommend this mode when playing with retro characters as it looks weird with the new hand drawn characters. There's also a battle mode in which you can go off head to head with another player in an arena fighting game style. It's actually more fun than I thought it would be, but still nothing on the level of a Street Fighter or a Smash Bros., but it does make me wonder what a Streets of Rage 4 fighting game would be like. The series does have enough characters for a tight, but well-balanced roster.
Overall, Streets of Rage was a decent game to play last year.
2. Final Fantasy VII Remake
I was skeptical about the Final Fantasy VII Remake for years. When Square Enix announced it was going to be an episodic title and that the first one would only take place in Midgar it made me worry that the game wasn't going to be any good on top of them making the choice of action-based combat instead of turn-based, but my main gripe with them dropping the turn-based combat was because they think people don't like turn-based combat anymore. When the demo for the remake came out however, my opinion changed and I was looking forward to it. I still had some hesitation so I waited a week or two before I bought it, but once I got into it I loved it.
Final Fantasy VII Remake reimagines the the opening segment of the original and organically stretches it out in a full fledged game with one of the best battle systems the series has ever seen. Fans have been looking forward to this remake since 2005 and it delivered in 2020. The visuals are beyond phenomenal and the characters are fleshed-out. There are few changes to the story I did not like, but as a whole it was great and no one will be forgetting the remade Wall Market sequence. My gosh, that was too good!
You can watch my read my full review of Final Fantasy Remake here and the link to my video review is below along with my opinion on how Barret was portrayed.
1. Persona 5 Royal
Yes, my number one game of 2020 is a definitive edition of a 2017 release, but I don't give a fuck. Persona 5 one of the best games I ever played and Persona 5 Royal is one of the best games I ever played, but even better. It is an understatement to just call this game a remaster or a definitive edition. There are so many changes in Royal from the original. The graphics have been updated, load times have been reduced, a number of changes to the combat, two new story characters, three additional confidants, a new explorable area, and a third semester which adds about forty extra hours of gameplay. Those don't even cover all the changes in Royal. It almost feels like a new game.
I played Persona 5 for the first time last year and have been obsessed with it since. Royal just fed it even more with just well it refines everything. Persona 5 still has one of the best narratives in video game history and the third semester's chapter adds a new tone that gives you new perspectives on certain characters and even a segment of the new palace had me questioning things in my own life. Royal was a truly underrepresented game in 2020 and deserved more praise and at least an award for someone's game of the year or RPG of the year. The Phantom Thieves is now my favorite suphero team. I love this game to the bottom of my heart.
Also to note I've been having quite a lot of fun with Cyberpunk 2077. I dismissed it from this list because I haven't finished the title in addition to the game launching with a ton of bugs. Cyberpunk is still a mess on PS4 with the latest patch, but I still have been having a lot of fun.
I played a total of nine new games this year. They are listed below:
Dreams
Street Fighter V: Champion Edition
Streets of Rage 4
Half-Life: Alyx
Doom Eternal
Persona 5 Royal
Final Fantasy VII Remake
Fall Guys
Resident Evil 3
Cyberpunk 2077
I missed out on a lot of games this year. Below is a list of some of the most popular titles of 2020:
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
Dreams
Street Fighter V: Champion Edition
Streets of Rage 4
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Nioh 2
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Doom Eternal
Persona 5 Royal
Final Fantasy VII Remake
Resident Evil 3
Ghosts of Tsushima
The Last of Us Part II
Fall Guys
Hades
Among Us (Well technically no, but seems like people didn't start playing it until 2020)
Damn. I remember when Square Enix showed off that tech demo of Final Fantasy VII running on the PS3 back in 2005 and when the Final Fantasy fandom started calling out for a remake. Here we are fifteen years later and that remake is a real thing and it's out.
For myself I was never a big fan of Final Fantasy VII. In 2005 I haven't played it yet and when I did I was underwhelmed. It's not a bad game. It's just good to me like a solid seven out of ten and yes that was intentional. It is the single most popular game of the franchise and the company because it was the first one for the PlayStation and the first 3D one though it sort of went subconsciously under my radar at the time it released. By the time X came out I remember saying to my brother I didn't even hear of Final Fantasy until VII, but I can't remember well. In fact, I don't even recall PlayStation existing before 1998 though it released in 94 which I still can't believe. I only remember 8-bit and 16-bit consoles back then. It seems crazy to me that 3D gaming was in the mainstream since 1994. Anyway back to VII. I played Final Fantasy VII I think somewhere between 2006 and 2008. Ten years after it released. I found VII entertaining and contained the mix of quirky humor and drama that the series is known for, but I was highly turned off by the main villain Sephiroth. He seemed incredibly cliche to me and I still don't get all that shit with Jenova. Since he was the driving factor of the plot I didn't enjoy it as much compared to the other FFs I played to this point. Still, it's Final Fantasy; my absolute favorite gaming series so I did feel some excitement about the remake once Square Enix officially announced it at E3 2013. That was such a surreal moment. One of the gaming things I will never forget. People have been talking and asking for a Final Fantasy VII remake since 2005 and seven years later they finally revealed it.
Like modern Square Enix, it was announced prematurely and took seven more years before it would actually come out. The fandom was wondering when it would actually come out because since the 2013 announcement information about the game had been sparse and even a couple of years gamers received no information whatsoever. There was some caution in this time as well since Square announced that the game would be released in episodes. I admit, my interest went right down when I heard that and I kind of stopped caring about it especially when they stopped releasing info about it. Even when the release date got announced I was fully expecting it to get delayed.
As released approach my curiosity was piqued a bit. The demo was really good, but I still thought the multipart approach was just milking it because VII is their most popular game so of course people are going to buy them all and I still do, but when quarantine hit I put aside my initial plans of buying it when the second part drops to buying it a week after release. I say I did think it was weird that they were turning Midgar, the part of the original game that was like 5 hours long until a full game and was worried about the pacing of all of that, but my worries were assuaged This is a solid ass game..
Though VII is one of my least favorite Final Fantasys I still got hit with nostalgia while playing this. First thing I got to talk about is how fucking good this game looks! When I booted up that demo man! Final Fantasy has always had a reputation of looking fucking incredible and they kept up that rep with this one. The shine on Cloud's Buster Sword is cleaaan. The character models on the main cast look so good. Now a lot of these NPCs is another story. I also like how you can see the materia equipped on each character's weapon integrating what is usually just a video game mechanic into the world. It seems like every other review out there talks about texture drops or pop-ins, but you won't hear me talking about it here or probably any review ever. Those are things I never notice. Even in those reviews when they showed examples I was looking like "so what am I supposed to see wrong here?" If you came here expecting me to talk about that I won't.
Moving on from the graphics let's dig in to the story. Considering the Midgar section of the original was about five hours long they made so many changes to the story this time around. We're given a lot more character interaction for everyone and backstory for some NPCs. The one that stood out to me most was Jessie of Avalanche. Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge didn't leave a lasting impression on me, but in the remake all of them get more screen time and Jessie is the standout. As mentioned, it's been many years since I've last played Final Fantasy VII, but I don't recall Jessie flirting with Cloud and if it was there it wasn't to this extent.
Her banter during the bombing mission was cute in the demo. I didn't notice this while playing the demo, but Jessie sounds like Futaba. Let me come find out that they have the same voice actress! I like Jessie's personality so much in this game I was like Cloud, forget Tifa, and Aerith go with Jessie!" We even got some backstory for her. In the segment where we go to her house we find out that her father was an employee at Shinra, but got in an accident that resulted in him getting mako poisoning so he's in a catatonic state. Jessie was also an actress before she moved to Midgar. There was some darkness underneath that light. When she died during the plate fall I wanted to cry. I felt nothing when Biggs and Jessie died in the original, but here when I got to know them especially Jessie, that hurt.
Just a couple of changes I didn't like about the story: I didn't like that Square made Shinra cause the explosion at the mako reactor to be bigger than it was supposed to be. It took the responsibility of the civilian casualties away from Avalanche. I think they were going for some corporate move to make it seem like a terrorist attack from Wutai through Avalanche so they could restart a war and get a mako reactor in Wutai, but they didn't really emphasize that in the story. I also didn't like how many extra Cloud headaches there were. They were in the original, but not nearly as often as it was in here. I'm surprised the characters didn't ask if Cloud had a serious problem given how often it happened. The biggest problem I had with the story though was the inclusion of the whispers. Oh my gosh these things are so bad. They come out of nowhere and disrupt the flow of the story without any explanation whatsoever until the very end of the game which results in that overly long final battle and that dumb alternate universe changing the timeline crap. That shit wasn't needed and I haven't seen a fan yet that actually liked it.
Alright, now that I got the negatives out the way back to focusing on the positives. So I really, really loved the Wall Market portion of this remake. Wall Market looks so gorgeous and grunge! This was my most anticipated part of the remake and it held up. I was only disappointed that I couldn't sit in the chair at the Korean BBQ spot and say I've had better dog food. The squat mini game was fun and the quests to get an invitation was cool too. I wonder if on a second playthrough if I'm able to get Chocobo Sam to get me the audition. I lost the coin toss so I had to go to the massage parlor.
Like a lot of others I was curious how the crossdressing scene would turn out in this game. Square did not shy away from a lot of the weird shit in the Wall Market scene and this was one of those times. They did remove the hot tub scene, probably for the bette, but I liked how the crossdressing scene was done. It was so extravagant and over the top and switching perspectives between Cloud and Aerith was cool too. This was actually very different from what I remember in the original. I think Aerith and Tifa were with Cloud and it was at the clothing store and not at the Honey Bee Inn. On my first playthrough I thought the dress you got was fixed, like there was only one, until I saw clips in other people's reviews that had completely different dresses than I did. I wish I hadn't watched those reviews though because that would've been a nice surprise once I replayed it. I'm not sure what triggers what dress you get, but I assume it depends on how well you do during the music rhythm mini game. I definitely am aiming for a better one because the basic black and gray one I got was honestly kind of ugly to me. Cloud would have not been turning heads in that one.
The battle system in VII is top ace. Now I am still disappointed that they went with an action-based system, but it's primarily because of the reason why they did so. Persona 5 sold gangbusters and even their own title Octopath Traveler did good with turn based systems. I'm not seeing where these people went who played turn based RPGs in the 90s and 2000s saying that they refuse to play them now. This action-based battle system is some really good shit though. Attacks definitely have a weight to them and each character feels completely different from the next unlike in the original where everyone feels like Freelancers with different limit breaks. The combat is easy to grasp and takes time to master. Even on Normal Mode you will get checked quick by enemies if you just carelessly press the Square button without thought. You have to strategically attack body parts of enemies to take away problem attacks and then you want to pressure enemies to put them into a stagger state so you can deal maximum damage.
All of the characters feel good to play, but at first I wasn't sure how to use Aerith. I got used to her, but I didn't make full use of her abilities until the end of the game where I used her Ward ability for the first time. That shit is powerful as fuck and I was mad that I just started to use it then. I also didn't use Tifa right until way later too. And the Materia system. The materia system was my least favorite progression system in all the Final Fantasys up until now. In the original I didn't like it because I felt it took so long to level up anything. It still takes a bit here and just as long for some of these materia like the stat boosting ones, but it's better overall and I feel there's more variety. I'm probably completely wrong about that since I haven't played VII in so long, but I definitely played around more with materia in the remake.
I also like how they made any weapon in the game viable unlike in most RPGs your weapon upgrades go in a linear path. The newest one you get is always the best one, but in VII R each weapon comes with their own stat buffs, decreases, and an ability so you have to make a choice in what you want to prioritize. I usually just go with ATK with every character except for Aerith because she basically has no physical attacks, but on my next playthrough I'm definitely going to play around a bit. Oh, and then you also have the upgrade system for each weapon where you can further add buffs to your weapons so the Buster Sword can eventually be as strong as the base version of the final sword by the end of the game.
There's also the expansion of content here. The areas of Midgar are larger and there are sidequests you can do. I have to agree that most of them aren't that entertaining to do. I really said "I know they are not making me look for some damn cats right now" when I got to the cat sidequest. I did a few, but ignored most of them. I do like most of the ones involving fighting though and I did enjy fighting summons like back in the old FF games. I did not see a lot of padding in this game unlike a lot of others, but yeah there were a couple of times where I did. In the tunnel section I did think they did the hand crane part just one too many times. I think just having two segments was fine enough given how long it takes to do each one. The third was where I got tired of it and within the Shinra building which looks freaking gorgeous, I thought that the door segment ran a little long. I was also disappointed that when we got to the president that the Masamune wasn't sticking out of his back. I was reminded this after I beat this, but it was disappointing that they removed the part where the group follows a blood trail and the headless Jenova. That would've been really cool to see with these graphics.
I do find it funny how I've played two RPGs this year that had a darts mini game and a grappling hook mechanic. Also both New Game +'s I have a problem with. With persona 5 Royal it was losing daily activities that made the time management important while with Final Fantasy VII it was losing the option to use items I like in battle such as grenades and Fuzzy Wuzzies without being overpowered on Normal difficulty. If I play on Normal I'm overpowered to the point of the battles being not fun and if I play on Hard I lose the option to use my favorite items. Oh, this review is sort of jumping all over the place now, but I just wanted to say that overall the Final Fantasy VII Remake is incredible with just a few moderate flaws mostly with whispers and the ending. Still, well if you're reading or watching this spoiler review then I assume you've already played this game. I'll definitely be replaying this myself in the future.
Title screens are sometimes things players can forget how important they can be. I mean they're not the essential part of the game; a bad or boring one won't hinder anyone's experience, but a good one sticks with a player. Title screens are the first thing a player sees when booting up a game aside from the slides of the game's publisher, developer, and sometimes the engine, so it can set up the mood for the game. The first piece of music you hear may also let you know what kind of experience you're getting into. So let's dive into this list of my personal top five title screen songs in gaming.
5. Nate's Theme
First up is Nate's Theme from Uncharted 2:
Among Thieves. Nate's Theme sounds like the theme of an epic action
movie franchise like Indiana Jones. It evokes that you're about to
embark on an epic journey. This is also one of the few western game
songs that I like.
4. Main Theme - Super Smash Bros. Brawl
The number four spot goes to the "Main Theme" of Super Smash Bros.
Brawl. I was pretty surprised when I found out that Nobuo Uematsu
composed this piece, but after thinking about it I can see it. His use
of a choir is has precedence in the Final Fantasy games with tracks like
"One Winged Angel" "Hymn of the Fayth" and "Liberi Fetali". It is an
epic piece and personally the Smash Bros. theme song for me. I haven't
played any Smash Bros. since Brawl, but if it's not the title screen
song of Ultimate, this will be playing in my head instead.
3. Dearly Beloved
OMG such a nostalgia trip every
time I hear this track. This is the most calming title screen music I've
ever heard and the title screen itself is artistically composed. The
character contrasting with the white background adds a pop and it exudes
some of the childlike nature of the Kingdom hearts series.
2. Title Screen - Ocarina of Time
Arguably the best
title screen in gaming, but it's just quite not number one for me.
Ocarina of Time's title screen is so great because how serene the song
is accompanied by the visual of Link riding Epona through Hyrule field
during the rising sun. The title screen gives way that there is a whole
world out there for you to explore or just relaxing run through. The
song is so damn chill.
Honorable Mention
In less than a year Persona 5 has become one of my
all-time favorite games and thus I have an attachment to hearing the
menu theme whenever I take a break from the game. This is the menu theme
from the original and not Royal. Both are pretty chill, but "Phantom" I
feel is just slightly better. The Menu screen in Royal looks cooler
with it being a dynamic shot in Shibuya, but the original fits slightly
more with it being set in Mementos. It's still quite a stylish title screen however with the high contrast silhouettes.
1. The Place I'll Return to Someday
At the number one spot is "The Place I'll Return to Someday" from Final Fantasy IX. This one is entirely attached to a specific moment in my life and its impact, but "The Place I'll Return to Someday" is genuinely a good song. The title screen itself is simple, but you also get the character slides with the quotes to accompany it that gives you a bit of insight into each character's personality. Nobuo Uematsu has said on record that Final Fantasy IX's soundtrack is his Magnum Opus and he did a solid job with the first piece of music that the player hears. They'll be for a treat once the actual adventure begings.
So I've finally finished playing Persona 5 Royal. With a completion time of one hundred sixty hours and seven minutes I feel a bit exhausted. However, the journey was well enjoyed. Due to the state of the situation we're in right now I received my copy of Persona 5 Royal a day early on March 30th. To say that I was overjoyed was an understatement. If you've watched one of my two reviews of the base game you would know how much I love Persona 5. I even cosplayed as Ryuji twice earlier this year so I was hype for Royal.
For those who don't know Persona 5 Royal is an expanded version of Persona 5 that released in 2017. It comes with new characters, story segments, and a bunch of other minor and major changes. It is very well worth revisiting if you have played the base game. I won't reveal quite yet what those changes are in case you haven't played it yet because I feel like it is best to experience this without knowing anything at all. Well, I will tell you that the game has received a graphical boost. I'm not a tech nerd on this shit, so I can't describe exactly what was done, but I did notice that the clothes on the main characters look better and the character portraits have a nice sheen to them. What I can tell you right now is that Royal is even better than the original. When I played Persona 5 for the first time last year it pulled me in like no other game has since... shit I don't know maybe Little Big Planet back in 2009 and Persona 5 took its place among my favorite games of all-time. To not give much away for newcomers Persona 5 is a turned-based RPG where you play as a transfer student in a high school where you alternate between school life and fighting monsters in an alternate dimension. Now there's more to it than that, but I want you to be completely surprised by it like I was, but the gist and flow of the game is balancing your life as a high schooler while also dealing with this supernatural element. You can build relationships with people which will make you stronger for the dungeon crawling events.
The combat is turned based and has an emphasis of exploiting weakness of your enemies sort of like Pokemon, but not really at the same time as in Pokemon type weaknesses are way more essential and usually means you can steamroll a single trainer or gym leader with just one pokemon given you have the type they're weak against. In Persona hitting an enemy's weakness doesn't automatically guarantee victory especially in the later portions of the game. Hitting a weakness knocks the enemy down allows you to get another turn and you can do this until all enemies are knocked down. The same applies to you however so you need to be mindful of the weakness of your party.
As for the story. The story of persona 5 is one of the best in gaming. It is surprising and disappointing that there aren't many RPGs that take place in our world. While Persona 5 deals with things that are fantastical it also feels grounded by being rooted in our world. People deal with issues that can be found in our cities, neighborhoods, and schools which makes you feel connected to the story and the characters. That's all I can say in regards to Royal without getting into spoiler territory. Given that this is a hundred sixty hour game it is hard for me to go in-depth with this game without going into spoilers so from here on out this will be spoiler territory, but first I would like to say to those who are not sure about picking this up or the original version I would say start with the original version.
There are enough changes between the two to make it worth playing both. There is so much new stuff in Royal in fact, that I feel like it would be overwhelming to start with Royal first and the two games have different endings as well that I think should be experienced.
Now let's get in to those spoilers. There are so many changes in Persona 5 Royal it's insane. One of the first things I heard about in the marketing for Royal was a new grappling hook and you're introduced to this in the opening sequence with the escape from the casino and just after that you get you're first glimpse of Kasumi. My first impression was neutral. As you know it was just a quick battle sequence and then we moved on. Nothing I could say at this point. Once I got to the school and got into the plot with Kamoshida I started seeing a little bit more of the minor changes. You actually see Haru at the school unlike in the original we don't even get to see a glimpse of her until the fireworks festival. Haru shows up actually a couple more times throughout, but unfortunately it does not fix how bad or awkward her introductory arc in the story was.
Going back to Kamoshida I felt that I shouldn't have replayed the base game last year as the emotional moments in this arc didn't hit like it did when I played this the first time. I know I will never be able to experience Persona 5 again for the first time, but if I had taken a longer break from the game and from watching a few reactions to these events online it probably would have hit me a little different in this playthrough. The first big change we get to combat this time around is bullets replenishing after every battle. In the original you had a set number of bullets for each character that you would have to use for the duration of your time in the dungeon and they would only refill when you exit and come back to the dungeon. In the base game it lead to conserve ammo for enemies weak to gunshots or for bosses. In Royal the change encourages you to use bullets as often as possible and to balance it out some you are given less bullets overall. At the beginning segments of the game this seems overpowered, but as you progress it will become a vital tool for taking down harder enemies.
Also in Royal you immediately get access to Baton Pass for each character which I'm so glad they did. It used to be linked to a confidant's Rank 1 ability so now the rank 1 slot isn't used for something so basic and in the original correct me if I'm wrong when you meet a new party member you can't hang out with them until you finish the palace because they'll say something like I'd rather concentrate on stealing the target's heart right now so basically throughout the whole course of a dungeon you'll always have one person who you cannot pass the baton to. It wasn't a huge deal, but I'm glad that it's no longer an issue now and speaking of baton passes so they got a buff like a lot of things this time around.
Baton Passes can now restore health and SP and if you get to a fourth baton pass the last character will be able to use a skill without consuming HP or SP. Baton Passes can also be powered up by playing darts with a friend in the new Kichijoji area. You can also play pool in this bar and doing so will increase the damage you deal with technical attacks. Speaking of technical attacks this version of the game seems to make status ailments more important. In the original version I didn't bother with using status ailments that much and dealing technical hits, but in Royal I do it whenever I can. There's so many changes in this version that I'm not exactly sure what was new sometimes, but I think technical attacks before never resulted in knocking an enemy down. Only hitting weaknesses and critical attacks did that. In this playthrough I tried to hold on to my party member's status inflicting moves as long as I could while as before I got rid of them ASAP. You can also increase technical damage by playing billiards.
There's also a new glowing enemy type in the game called disaster shadows. Every once in a while there will be an enemy that glows. Attacking it will cause you to be countered, but killing it will cause an explosion damaging all nearby enemies. I'm sort of mixed with this inclusion. It does add for enemy variety, but it also makes fights easier. They're basically the red barrels in a shooter; just there to damage nearby enemies. There's a kinda new Insta-kill mechanic in which you can instantly defeat weaker enemies without entering a battle screen. This was only regulated to Mementos in the original and it was activated by ambushing a shadow. In Royal you activate it by dashing an enemy in Mementos or palaces. I didn't realize this could be done in palaces until the very last portion of the game.
Each palace boss has been changed slightly too. Each one has a new phase to their battles to switch things up. Kamoshida now has Mishima and Shiho throwing his volleyball during the fight.So I played most of the bosses on Merciless difficulty and that made this fight actually a challenge this time around. Once it was time to send Morgana off to steal the crown the fight became a struggle. You have to constantly attack Kamoshida to distract him from realizing that Morgana's gone, but since he's also dealing a lot of damage on this difficulty I have to make sure my party stays alive so I actually got caught trying to steal the treasure for the entirety of the battle and defeated him just from direct attacks. it was long and hard, but fun. I just wish I had took a longer break in between playing this and the og because I felt like I would've gotten a fraction of what I felt the first time I took him down.
In between this event and Madarame's palace we're introduced to Maruki the guidance counselor. His inclusion was one of the few things I knew about this game going in and he flows well into the game and it makes sense. After the deal with Kamoshida the school should offer counseling or therapy for students who want it.I'll go back to Maruki later. So for the changes to the bosses I liked all of them except for Okumura's. It's some ol' bullshit is what I got to say. It works relatively the same as the original, but without the ability to use All-Out Attacks and the final wave of robots running off it becomes annoying. The robots have a massive amount of health that it is extremely hard to get rid of them within the 2 or 3 turn limit. I got lucky in beating it and barely managed to beat it with only two minutes left on the clock. It felt good when I beat it though. On repeat playthroughs I'm switching to Merciless to make things easier. Yo when the solo fight came up with Shido came up I was like awww shit, but I fucked his ass up!
Oh, and I forgot to mention the Thieves Den. So there's a separate mode where you're in a hub area and able to look at artwork, listen to music, watch cutscenes, etc. My two favorite things to do in the den are use the model changer to switch to another character. It's just very disappointing that you can't do anything, but walk around as them and listen to conversations among the decorations in your den. If you attempt to do anything else, anything at all, it will change right back to Joker's winter school uniform. It's actually weird to me that you can't even use Joker's alt outfits to do these things. I've also grew addicted to the card mini game, Tycoon. It reminds me of a real card game that I can't think the name of. I love it so much that I want to play it irl and it's also the first pure gameplay video on my YouTube channel.
There are so many little changes hear that it will take a crazy amount of time for me to cover them and I doubt I even discovered them all as I was looking at someone else's playthrough the other day and found something I never encountered in my playthrough. I will talk about how we get a bit more time for activities in this version. It was annoying how often Morgana would force us to go to sleep after trips to the Metaverse or during story events. They still occur, but less often. You still won't be able to leave Leblanc after a trip to the Metaverse, but now you can still do things in Leblanc like clean, make infiltration tools, train. The extra time is appreciated especially since we have 3 extra confidants to worry about.
For the new characters I say I liked them once Royal concluded. Kasumi just seemed okay, but was cute and Maruki seemed like a bit of a goof, but when he did that salt bae meme during the school trip I wiled. His confidant arc was interesting. We get to see each Phantom Thief talk to him even Yusuke who goes to another school and then once the third semester of the game kicks in shit gets wild. I wish I didn't learn last year that there was going to be a human Morgana and that Wakaba was going to be alive because it killed the twist of third semester. Also when I first heard about it last year it sort of turned me off of the game. Wakaba being dead was an integral part of Futaba's story and I thought it was cheap keeping her alive or so I thought when I heard the news because from what I read it made me believe that they were changing the main story so that Wakaba never died, but once I got to the third semester and saw her I was like WTF but I wasn't too surprised since I heard about it back then, but it was out of context. I immediately thought I was in some kind of dream world until it was revealed that Maruki altered reality.
Seeing Wakaba and human Morgana was still kind of a shocker, but I feel bad that I missed out on an experience I could have had if I never knew they were going to be in the game. I do give Atlus some credit for not completely spoiling it because on the website I heard that from nobody expected it to be a result from a therapist changing reality. So I'm sitting here trying to figure all of this out. We discover that all of our friends got everything they wished for: haru had her dad and he's loving, Makoto gets along well with her sister and I can't remember if their dad was brought back to life too. It took me a while to make this video, but I'd imagine he was brought back too as I know both Makoto and Sae had to miss him, Futaba has her mother back, Morgana's a human like he desired, but he's still not with Ann as he shouldn't be, Yusuke became recognized as an artist, and then Ryuji's running track with the team again. That one is very interesting to me because in his confidant arc he says he's okay with not rejoining the team after it was brought back after the Kamoshida incident. That says to me that deep down he actually did want to, but likely felt guilty for punching Kamoshida and breaking up the team and all his former teammates hating him. I do also remember a question choice asking if he regretted hitting Kamoshida and I think Ryuji's reply was "kinda".
Maruki's palace here is definitely my favorite now. The aesthetics and the level design were superb. I was just annoyed with the second light puzzle at the end. You also get Akechi again as a party member and this time in his black mask outfit. He's not as OP as I thought he was going to be, but if he was that would just make the game too easy. It was also interesting seeing him as the navigator, but his yells were a little bit annoying. This was the time we finally got Kasumi as a permanent party member. Throughout my entire playthrough I was wondering when she was actually going to join, but it was at the very last minute. Her arc was fucking incredible too. So it turns out she's an identical twin and her older twin sister died trying to save her when she was crossing the street and wasn't paying attention. The girl we thought was Kasumi was actually Sumire and after her Kasumi's death she felt so responsible for her sister's death that she wanted to become her. She killed Sumire and became Kasumi.
It's tragic and I can sympathize with her. Because she was reckless when crossing the street she felt Kasumi's death was on her and she knew how talented Kasumi was and that she had dreams and aspirations of her own that she felt she robbed her of the life she could've had so she actually desired to become Kasumi so those dreams could become true. Now that makes things interesting in retrospect like how Kasumi was struggling with her gymnastics. It was said that Kasumi was actually better at it so that explains why Sumire was struggling and the faculty member saying you need to think about who you are. Maruki is interesting as well. he is not necessarily a villain at all unlike most of the people's hearts we had to change throughout the game. He genuinely wants to make everyone happy and bring peace.
Of course similar to that episode of Batman The Animated Series where Bruce Wayne was under a dream from the Mad Hatter, The Phantom Thieves had an issue of living with something they knew was a lie. It's a totally grey area because no one is being harmed by his reality and in actually I wasn't sure if he needed to be stopped myself. I got the early ending for this on my first go around because I genuinely thought that what he was doing wasn't wrong. With his god-like powers he has the ability to rid the world of famine, poverty, crime, and war.
This is entirely different from the well I'm just going to call him the Holy Grail, the Holy Grail's reality where he makes The Phantom Thieves famous again with more crime happening and people solely relying on them. That was more of a selfish wish. Maruki could have literally made a utopia, but the game didn't want you to do that so I had to reload my file and choose the correct answer. But let me rewind to that alternate ending I got. I think it was very interesting. I don't remember much because it's been a little while since then, but it felt bittersweet and you even got an entirely different set of end credit scenes. I recommend seeing both.
With Maruki I found him interesting though I still feel like I never got an explanation on his entire deal with his powers and his palace. Upon entering the palace and seeing Maruki it raises questions. I'm looking dead hard here to see if he's a shadow, but the name doesn't say Shadow Maruki despite him being in those clothes, nor are his eyes glowing yellow, nor does he have that weird voice that shadows have.
His power comes from his persona, but as Morgana told us in the beginning you can't have a palace and a persona at the same time since people with personas have full control over their emotions they can't have a distorted heart to produce a palace. These two things conflict on a logical level and I think Lavenza just gave us a non-answer for that when Morgana brought it up. Not to mention how could he have one when Mementos was erased and I didn't get how that happened either. I'm trying to fill my own blanks in my head that I know is wrong, but in his research he might've found out that the metaverse exists as an energy source and so he somehow used that energy to make a back up copy of Mementos which he released later so he could use it to change the public's cognition. That's not what was explained to me, but I have to fill something in for myself to make sense of this.
I think I missed out on the couple chances I go to find out why Akechi was still alive from the dialogue choices, but I think it was because Maruki used his powers to bring him back to life to grant the only wish Joker had which was not to go to prison so in order to do that somebody else had to and that person had to be Akechi. I also really liked the question portion of this palace. It made you think beyond the game itself and even made me look at my life choices. The finale of this palace was insane. It got me adrenaline pumping when the new steal the treasure song came up and that first boss fight was so fucking hard, but not bullshit like the new Okumura boss fight. I died on that a good number times, but I had fun each time. I was so shocked when there was another phase to the boss fight. I should've seen that coming though because in almost every JRPG, especially in Final Fantasy, there are multiple phases on the final boss battle. I was going to get real mad if I lost and I had to go back to the first stage but unfortunately the game didn't do that.
This fight went on for a little too long and I could have definitely gone without that MGS4 fist fight at the end. That shit was just off-putting. I want to say corny, but that doesn't quite describe the feeling I had when that part came up. All you need to know is that I didn't like it. it was a hell of a finale though and when Maruki's Persona had its second awakening and everyone held the fist up to give you some time hit his weakness that shit was crazy, but I was also thinking shouldn't they only be able to do that with their Personas? I was also expecting Satanael to come back out. I don't see a reason why Joker couldn't summon him again after his 2nd awakening in the last final boss battle, but whatever fun fight anyway.
The epilogue had a few changes too, so instead of just Joker leaving, Ann, Ryuji, Makoto, and Haru are leaving too. Having everybody leave it just felt cliche. It left a bad taste in my mouth. The ending cutscene was changed a bit too so instead of Makoto driving Joker home with everyone else they decide to split up when the police is following them and Joker takes the train home instead oh and he gets into Maruki's car who now has had a change of heart and then you see Kasumi at the train station but the screen goes black before any words are exchanged.
In conclusion, Persona 5 Royal is excellent from beginning to end. It like the original solidifies itself among my favorite games of all time and that is why I am bestowing it with a 10/10 score.
So Castlevania Season 3 dropped last week and it's pretty freaking great!
Season 3 picks u where season 2 left off: with the fallout of Dracula's death with Trevor and Sypha heading out into the unknown, Hector in chains at Carmilla's Mercy, Isaac with a horde of night creatures at his defense, and Alucard as the ruler of Dracula's castle, Castlevania. While season 2 was leading up to the big battle of Dracula throughout most of the season, season 3 is more of a character-driven story. Season 3 starts a month after the conclusion of season 2 and in that time Trevor and Sypha are a couple and traveling while slaying the leftover demons of Dracula's reign. They journey leads them to a town where they meet a group of monks with a leader who has the most creepy blue eyes, that worship Dracula.
Here, the duo meets a magician named Saint Germaine and the three of them investigate the ongoings of these monks. Meanwhile, Alucard appears to be going kind of lonely, sad, and crazy in his castle until he meets to Japanese warriors who seek him out to train them to become monster hunters. The third plotline involves Hector being dragged back to Carmilla's castle and Carmillla with her three sisters planning out their next move now that Dracula is gone. And finally, the fourth plotline which is my favorite involves Isaac on his journey gathering a night creature army to seek revenge on Hector for betraying him and Lord Dracula.
Isaac's story is so intriguing to me because you can see how he's just trying to mind his own damn business but people keep fucking with him. Since he had joined Dracula's army he had longed lost hope in humanity and I can see why given his backstory and how people constantly treat him, but throughout this story you see there are people who are kind towards him and the ship captain explains this to him in the best dialogue scene in the show. First of all, this captain is dope as shit. He sees Isaac rolling up with a squad of demons and doesn't flinch and he has Isaac meet him on his terms. When the captain points out to him that while there are plenty of cruel people out in this world there are plenty that are kind and uses Isaac's own tale of the the old man from the shop that gave him a mirror and himself as examples.
I can also resonate Isaac's tale as a black man. Isaac is always seen as a threat and in the case in the desert a commodity in which to profit from. There's also the pent up rage in his soul from slavery and the injustice he sees on the regular basis. I'm not sure if this is intentional but in this season the two people we see be kind to Isaac are two other black people while every other person that tries to harm him from the desert bandits to the wizard are white. In the battle of the wizard where we see Isaac fighting off the wizard's mind control spell could be an allegory to black people breaking free from the chains of slavery. The wizard literally took a whole town as his slaves.
Not to forget, but that entire battle against the wizard and his slaves was amazing and I think that giant ball of people was a Castlevania boss.
But before I gush on too much about Isaac I would like to go back to the vampire sisters arc. So Carmilla locks Hector in a dungeon and proposes to her vampire sisters that she wants to create what's basically an eight hundred mile long cage / farm for humans giving them and every vampire in the kingdom an easy and endless supply of human blood. The problem with putting this plan out is that Carmilla has lot a lot of her forces due to the battle with Dracula from last season. That's why she took Hector prisoner. As a forge master he has the ability to turn human corpses into night creatures like Isaac thus helping with her manpower problem. Now while Carmilla comes up with the idea she lets the sisters in her council to be the ones to actually plan and put it in motion.
I forgot the couple's names here, but the brown skinned one is the organizer. She organizes the people and supplies needed. The buff vampire is in charge of the military which is self-explanatory, and then there is Lenore who is the diplomat in charge of bringing peace and using persuasion as her weapon and at this point of the story is the most important in putting Carmilla's plan in motion. Being a captive Hector isn't willing to do Carmilla's bidding so it's up to Lenore to find a way to get Hector to become their forge master.
In season 2 I thought Carmilla was the baddest bitch around, but nah after seeing this shit right here Carmilla is bad bitch vampire #1. Her appearance just caught me off guard. She is too kawaii. Like, I never thought vampires could be this cute, but in true anime fashion she lets you know not to take her cuteness for weakness. I love Lenore's personality and design. She goes against traditional vampire traits of being violent and detached from humanity. As a diplomat she's a peacekeeper although what Carmilla has in store is far from piece at least from the perspectives of humans. She's kawaii as fuck and cunning. While I did say she has a sense of humanity I meant in regards to having things like philosophy and peacekeeping, but as we see once she gets hector fully to her side she considers him a pet. A living person as a pet so she clearly still has the common viewpoint of humans being beneath vampires.This arc is great as it shows how downtrodden and vulnerable Hector has become while having a fun character like Lenore and also teasing the grand conflict that will come in season 4.
Trevor, Sypha, and Germaine's adventure leads them to discovering that the monks are trying to open a portal to hell and potentially resurrecting Dracula in a showdown that is both tragic and intense. The marks that were found on buildings across the town were for an inferno spell that sacrificed the people of the town into feeding the night creature so it could be strong enough to open the portal. The battle with the night creatures here was spectacular and it's especially a joy to watch Sypha cast her spells. The three of them manage to close the portal and prevent all Hell from breaking loose on Earth and in the resounding aftermath we discover that The Judge killed children. Still not sure how I feel about that.
In the finale of Alucard's arc the twins that came to train with Alucard seemed trusting but their history of betrayal got the best of them. Now, probably like most people that incest threesome caught me so off guard that I wasn't expecting them to attempt to kill him. I was just like wow, aren't they brother and sister and they're having a threesome with a vampire.It looks like Alucard is now detached from people permanently or at least until Trevor and Sypha come back or maybe not until this shows goes into Symphony of the Night if the show decides to go in that direction.
Overall, how I feel about this season? Best one yet, without question. I am so hyped to see where this goes: Isaac storming Carmilla's castle with a night creature army, Carmilla capturing humans and herding them like cows, and well Trevor and Sypha it's a mystery, but I'm curious where it will lead. Best video game TV show ever!
