I didn’t realize I hadn’t updated this page in almost a year. Geez.
While I apparently didn’t bother to announce on this page specifically, I did update the site a few times in the past year. I uploaded an updated shrine (Final Fantasy VIII) and some new reviews, the latest being Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. In fact, Wo Long is the reason I didn’t update for so long, since this game took me a very long time to finish. Currently, I think it holds the record for longest time I’ve actively spent on a single game at ~534 hours. Unfortunately, as you’ll see if you read my review, I didn’t spend all that time because I was having fun. It’s just a long slog and I’m too stubborn to give up and leave the game unfinished. But, in the end, I did beat the game on its second difficulty, so I can put Wo Long behind me for good. Recently, Persona 3 Reload came out. I still remember when the game was first announced (or, more precisely, leaked) and how my jaw literally dropped in shock. I didn’t think they would ever remake Persona 3. I…don’t think I’ll play Reload, at least not anytime soon, given just how long and involved the game is and the fact I’ve already cleared Portable twice, but just the game’s existence blows my mind. …That said, let me write down something I’ve been wanting to touch on for some time. Spoiler warning for Persona 3 after this paragraph! If you read my shrine to Persona 3 Portable, you’ll see I have major beef with the game’s ending, as it kills the main character with no real justification. Nyx is descending in an event called the Fall, and Nyx is invincible for reasons, so the only way Minato can stop the Fall is by casting a soul-empowered seal on her, which kills him. The game never gives any justification for why Nyx cannot be killed. The writers did that just to have an excuse to kill the main character for maximum shock and edginess. And that’s stupid… …especially because the game itself already sets up a scenario where Minato would need to cast a seal on Nyx to stop the Fall, no invincibility required. The game just abandons it for some reason. So today, let’s look at what the game itself says to construct a justification for the game’s downer ending. I…don’t know why I’m doing this exactly, since I hate downer endings, but I guess I just hate dumb plots more? Who is Nyx? Ryoji at first refers to her as the “mother of Shadows.” This aligns with what Nyx herself says immediately before you fight her: Nyx: “What people fear most…What they try to ignore…That is what I am.” Persona’s lore has its roots in Jungian psychology, where one’s Shadow is a unrecognized aspect of one’s inner personality. Persona 4 shows this the most clearly, as each member of the Investigation Team faces his/her Shadow and accepts it, transforming it into a Persona. Each Shadow represents a part of the cast they’d rather not recognize: a small part of Yosuke thinks the murder mystery and the TV world are exciting, a small part of Chie enjoys the fact that Yukiko relies on her, a small part of Yukiko resents her family’s inn for placing her life on rails, and so on. These Shadows are, indeed, “what [they] fear most…what they try to ignore.” Nyx’s identity as the “mother of Shadows” fits very, very well. But beyond these two lines from Ryoji and Nyx, the game never touches on this idea again. Instead, the game focuses on how Nyx brings Death, except she doesn’t actually bring Death. This is unfortunate as Nyx’s role as the mother of Shadows gives the game ample justification for why Nyx cannot be killed. In this case, it’s not that Nyx cannot be killed; it’s more that Nyx should not be killed. Destroying a person’s Shadow will severely mess that person up, as Persona 5 demonstrates. If Nyx is somehow connected to every human’s Shadow (as she would be if she’s the “mother of Shadows”), killing Nyx would destroy all human life on the planet. At the same time, as the end of Persona 4 shows, allowing Shadows to take over will also destroy all life on the planet. This is Izanami-no-Okami’s plan with the fog – it’ll make everyone blissfully ignorant of everything, thus turning everything into “an unrecognized part of a person’s psyche” – in other words, the fog will turn everyone into Shadows. If “the mother of Shadows” actually descended upon the world, one might imagine a similar situation happening. The alternate plot With the above, here’s how I would’ve written Persona 3’s ending. What actually happens in game: Ryoji states that Nyx cannot be killed. How I would've done it: Ryoji explains that Nyx should not be killed because killing her would wreck everyone’s Shadow, thus killing every human in the world. At the same time, Nyx descending upon the world would transform everyone into Shadows, thus killing every human in the world. What actually happens in game: SEES doesn’t believe Ryoji and decides to fight Nyx anyway. How I would've done it: SEES believes Ryoji, but doesn’t give up hope that there must be some way to stop Nyx. What actually happens in game: The team defeats Nyx, but she just levitates up to the moon and begins radiating Death waves. How I would've done it: The team defeats Nyx, but they cannot kill her, and she begins radiating waves that manifest people’s Shadows, thus beginning the Fall. What actually happens in game: Minato obtains the Universe Arcana. Igor says that with this Arcana, “You may be able to defeat the one who cannot be defeated.” Instead of defeating Nyx, the one who cannot be defeated, Minato casts the Great Seal on her and dies. How I would've done it: Minato obtains the Universe Arcana. Igor says that with this Arcana, “You may be able to defeat the one who cannot be defeated.” But, that was never the issue in the first place, and Minato chooses the only available option – he casts the Great Seal on her and dies. ...and there you go. You get your downer edgy ending without shoehorned unexplained plot armor. Anyway, I wonder what I'll do for my next project. I spent so long trapped in Wo Long's bullshit that I now don't quite know what to do with my freedom. I recently completed my playthroughs of Persona 5 Royal and its shrine. It took me an eternity, partly because of the game’s many long cutscenes. They really overdid those.
Anyway, I did a comparison between Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden, so I’m going to redo that with Persona 5 Royal mixed in. Again, I’m not going to include game mechanics or subjective elements. With that…here’s the spoiler warning and let’s begin with some meta stuff… Plot I gave this category to Persona 4 the last time. Persona 5 Royal does not have a bad plot…until the third trimester, where the game sets up a deep, interesting character (Maruki) with a very valid dilemma and then writes a simplistic plot that shafts him ten ways to Sunday. Is that…is that a saying? I kind of feel like it is, but maybe I just made it up or something? Anyway. I ranted about this in my shrine, so I won’t belabor it here. I also want to reiterate how idiotic the fake Igor plot was, since Yaldabaoth should have gotten Megidolaon’d ten ways to high hell the second he attacked a Velvet Room assistant. There wasn’t really any need for him to hijack the Velvet Room anyway – the plot would’ve flowed just fine without that. Persona 4 still wins this category. NPC protagonists This category went to Persona 4 before; I said SEES felt like a group of coworkers whereas the Investigation Team felt like a group of tight-knit best friends. Persona 5’s cast feels closer compared to SEES, but not as close compared to the IT. For whatever reason, the writers decreased the amount of slice-of-life scenes that illustrated the characters bonding and becoming friends. And then, of course, there’s Sumire, a character who only interacts with the Phantom Thieves once (at Christmas) before she joins the team a whopping ~2 weeks before the game ends. Persona 4 and its new Golden character, Marie, does all of this much better. Persona 4 still wins this category. Villains I said that Adachi and Mitsuo were more effective villains compared to Strega and Chair Man. In Persona 5, the equivalent villains would be Masayoshi Shithole and Akechi, since the “main” villain is Yaldabaoth. I’m…going to ignore Maruki here because I don’t consider him a villain. Shithole has around the same intelligence compared to Adachi (which is not good). He achieves much more, except all of his accomplishments rely completely on Akechi, so in actuality, he didn’t achieve jack. I also can’t shake off my first impression of Shithole, which is a drunk thug pathetically falling on his face. My first impression of Adachi was a rookie horrified at a murder victim, except he was acting, meaning my first impression of Adachi was him being a very talented actor. Akechi, on the other hand, is a very well-written character. Like I said, I sympathize with his backstory while also condemning his actions. And for all my anger toward Royal, Akechi’s characterization in Royal is absolutely top-notch. His voice actor did a phenomenal job. So here, I’ll declare a tie between Persona 4 and Persona 5. Social Links Persona 5’s Confidant system is superior to the Social Link system in its predecessor games because Confidants give you much better perks, such as Ryuji’s Insta-kill or Hifumi’s party member switch. That said, we’re not talking about mechanics in this, so that’s not going to factor into my ranking. Instead, let’s discuss the Confidants themselves. They’re…about on-par with the other two games, though I will say Kawakami’s whole maid thing made me pretty uncomfortable. She’s your teacher that you hire as a maid. It just seems wrong. I don’t think it’s enough to bring the ranking down, though. I’ll declare a three-way tie. Next, let’s look at in-universe things. School I awarded this category to Yasogami High School over Gekkoukan High School because the faculty in the former is actually competent. I put Shujin Academy DEAD LAST. Shujin’s faculty is…honestly quite competent. But, they make up for it by putting students in constant danger. Principal Fisk just wants a good reputation and he’ll cover for a fucking rapist PE teacher just because he once won an Olympic medal in volleyball. To go even further, the school routinely holds rallies in which the teachers play volleyball against the students because this former Olympic medalist wants to stroke his ego by beating high school kids, meaning he literally spikes a ball into a kid’s face and sends him to the nurse’s office. The teachers all high-five him after that. Beyond this, the Social Studies teacher routinely throws chalk at students he believes aren’t paying attention. Hilarious, right? Yeah, what if that chalk flies into someone’s eye? I don’t know what the exact fuck is wrong with these people. Yasogami High still wins this category. Setting I wrote that Tatsumi Port Island is safer compared to Inaba, what with the latter’s roving delinquents, biker gangs, and obscenely inept police. Tokyo in Persona 5 is not much better, given there’s a strong mob presence and the police are largely corrupt and under the control of Masayoshi Shithole. I’d still feel safer in Tatsumi Port Island compared to either of Persona 4’s or Persona 5’s settings. Persona 3 retains its victory in this category. Power Since I declared that SEES would win against the Investigation Team before, here we’re asking the question of who would win in a fight between SEES and the Phantom Thieves. I’m keeping my rules from before and also not including Akechi, even though he is present in the final fight of Royal. So we have: SEES: Mitsuru, Akihiko, Yukari, Junpei, Fuuka, Ken, Koromaru, Aigis Phantom Thieves: Morgana, Ryuji, Ann, Yusuke, Makoto, Futaba, Haru, Sumire This is actually a bit more difficult to answer than it first appears. First off, Persona 5 adds a slew of new mechanics that drastically change the way battles go. Just the presence of Baton Pass makes battles far easier, and there’s no in-universe reason SEES or the IT can’t use Baton Pass. In the same way, in-universe, SEES and the IT should have access to Persona Traits. Saying the PT would win against SEES simply because they got new mechanics in real life doesn’t really seem fair. Secondly, Persona 5 for whatever reason went out of its way to isolate the PT’s abilities. The members of SEES can summon their Personas wherever they want in the real world provided they have their Evokers. Even beyond this, the game establishes that each member has combat ability. Akihiko boxes, Yukari’s on the archery team, Mitsuru knows how to fence, etc. The PT, on the other hand, only has abilities in the Metaverse, a place wholly shaped by cognition. They think of themselves as badass thieves, so they can pull off cool grappling hook stunts or jump to the ground from a few stories up and land unscathed. Their enemies assume they’re going to enter battle with real weaponry and loaded guns, so they can attack with (essentially) toys and inflict damage. This means that outside the Metaverse, the PT are literally just regular kids and SEES would easily destroy them. Within the Metaverse, the PT has all their abilities, but logic says the members of SEES would have enhanced abilities too. How overpowered would Mitsuru Kirijo, a woman everyone with any level of intelligence fears as a terrifying executioner, become in the Metaverse? So if I were to simulate a fight between SEES and the PT, I’d have to come up with various different scenarios, such as in the real world, in the Metaverse, in some sort of hybrid environment where the PT has abilities but SEES doesn’t for some reason, etc. Rather than go through all that, I’m just going to declare a tie. The PT would likely fare better than the IT did given they don’t have a numerical disadvantage, but all the complications muddle the waters. Final score: We’re going to give a game a point for winning a category. For ties, all games within the tie gain one point. From here… Persona 3: Social Links, Setting, Power = 3 points Persona 4: Plot, NPC protagonists, Villains, Social Links, School = 5 points Persona 5: Villains, Confidants, Power = 3 points Persona 4 wins again! Now please don’t release Persona 6. Do you have any idea how exhausting this series is? I’ll begin by saying my Three Hopes prediction was wrong. And that’s fine!
Onto the main topic: I recently finished God Eater 2 Rage Burst and I wanted to make a few comments on the role of protagonists. If you look at my shrine to Horizon Zero Dawn, you’ll see I made fun of the fact that Aloy does bloody everything for everyone single-handedly. It’s something I see a lot in games and it came up again in God Eater. Spoilers ahead for God Eater. In God Eater Resurrection, you play as a guy canonically named Yuu Kannagi. Now while Yuu’s the main character, the game doesn’t really revolve around him. In fact, he becomes Captain of the First Unit precisely because he’s nothing special – Johannes appointed him to the position because Johannes felt he, as a rather unassuming and unimportant person, would be easier to control compared to, say, Sakuya, who one would expect to become Captain since she’s the Vice Captain. The first story arc involves Johannes secretly nurturing Nova in Aegis to initiate the Devouring Apocalypse. Yuu has nothing to do with figuring this out – it’s all Sakuya and Alisa. On the opposing side, we have Soma and his relationship with his father, coupled with his inner turmoil at being part Aragami and possibly causing his mother’s death. He bonds with Shio, ironically finding his humanity through an Aragami. Yuu has nothing to do with this either. In the second story arc, Yuu is instrumental to saving Lindow – through a fluke. Yes, he happened to be the only God Eater in the Den when it’s attacked because he was previously injured. He is therefore the only one in a position to fight the Aragami and he picks up Lindow’s God Arc, an action that should have killed him, but he was lucky in that he happened to be (at least somewhat) compatible with it. Since one must use Lindow’s God Arc to fight Lindow after his Aragami corruption, Yuu ends up being necessary. But as you can see, these are all flukes and coincidences. In the third story arc, Yuu is straight-up just another member of the team. The game drives home the point that the entire Far East unites to take down the Arius Nova. Yuu’s no different from anyone else. And that’s the point of this – I like that approach to protagonists. I want to feel like I’m in the world interacting with my equals. It helps with immersion. Let’s look at the sequel, in which you play a guy canonically named Hiro Kamui. Rage Burst takes the exact opposite route in that Hiro is absolutely essential to the plot. Without Hiro, everyone else would be completely helpless or dead. Hiro’s Evoke power allows him to awaken Blood Arts in other people and Blood Arts are necessary to overcome the new Psion-type Aragami’s plot armor, so without Hiro, a single Psion could just show up and destroy the entire Far East with impunity. Hiro becomes Captain of Blood because he’s just straight-up essential to the team. The game constantly reminds you that you’re special and above everyone else. Hiro can equip a Link Support device and go into battle, something nobody else can do. Hiro can use Blood Rage, which nobody else can do except in the ending, but even then they can only do that because Hiro’s there. And speaking of the ending, Hiro’s the only one who can break out of Rachel’s spike things and he inflicts the killing blow bare-handedly. Contrast that to Resurrection’s ending, where Yuu gives orders to the First Unit and they take down the Arius Nova together. Yuu delivers the finishing blow as you would expect (with his God Arc), which he can do only because Lindow and Soma flank the enemy and Alisa, Kota, and Sakuya provide cover fire. It annoys me and takes me out of a game when it continually tells me that my avatar in-game is just straight-up better than everyone else. I had the same problem with Persona 4, which is arguably even more egregious compared to Rage Burst in this regard. Anyway…I’ll put up my review of Rage Burst soon-ish. The above isn’t unique to Rage Burst, so it didn’t affect my score too much, but I thought it worth talking about, so I wrote it here rather than there. Fire Emblem: Three Hopes
As you may recall, Fire Emblem: Three Houses took over my brain for a few months and after ranting at its poorly executed plot twist and commenting - both positively and negatively - on its ambition, I finally moved on. And now Three Hopes got announced. Three Hopes isn't canon - it's a Warriors spinoff, where Fire Emblem meets Dynasty Warriors-style gameplay. But whereas the previous Warriors game had a standalone story, Three Hopes looks like it has a plot meant to explore how things could have happened differently in the main game. For one, you don't play as Byleth. You play as this mercenary named Shez, whose company gets hired early in the game to do...something. Unfortunately for Shez's group, Jeralt's Mercenaries got hired on the opposing side, so Shez's group comes face-to-face with the Ashen Demon, Byleth herself, and Byleth ROFL-stomps them. Playing as Shez, you receive an ass-beating and then watch Shez receive another ass-beating in a cutscene. Then some entity known as Arval resurrects Shez and gives him a huge powerup, whereupon the game hands control back to the player to fight Byleth. Byleth still destroys you and then casually walks away because Jeralt called a retreat, having finished whatever it was his group was hired to do. The fact that Shez survived this encounter has far-reaching consequences. Months later, the three lords encounter Shez when running from Kostas's bandits and Shez kills them, meaning they never encounter Byleth and Jeralt. This means Byleth never becomes a professor and Jeralt doesn't return to the monastery. Three Hopes only continues to diverge from there. The game's not out until next week, so I don't know how the plot will go, but even though I know whatever plot this game has is non-canon, it's still dredging up memories of a tragic story that I can’t shake off. I guess I'll just wait and see. For now, I posted this on Reddit, but this is how I hypothesize the plot will go: Because Shez is alive, the events of Three Houses change drastically, going into the events of Three Hopes. At some point along the way, Shez defeats Byleth/Sothis and Arval reveals she's some sort of Agarthan anti-Sothis and now that Sothis is gone, she can summon some Agarthan mega-dragon to end the world (you know, in classic Fire Emblem style). The entire roster unites to fight the Agarthan mega-dragon, but they can't defeat it, and Shez concocts a plan in which he goes back in time to the beginning of Three Hopes. The final mission is then the exact same as the prologue mission, except this time you play as Byleth, and instead of defeating Shez and letting him go, you kill Shez as this time Shez continually attacks you rather than gives up. With Shez gone, the original events of Three Houses go as normal. I’m not big on trying to guess future game plots, but the last time I did so I ended up being completely correct (predicting that the main character of Pokémon Legends: Arceus is from the future), so…why not. Blizzard games/shrines I’ve been contemplating doing this for a long time, and now… Recently, Diablo Immortal launched. This is the “do you guys not have phones” and “out-of-season April Fools’ joke” game you might’ve heard about. When the game was first announced, some people noted NetEase was part of the developers and predicted the game would have lots of predatory monetization. Oh boy they were right. I’m not going to go into detail on the monetization schemes in this game – they’re stupidly complicated (likely by design) and other people have broken things down way better elsewhere. But to summarize, someone estimated it would cost $100k to max out a character. That is a disgusting amount of money for a game. Someone at Blizzard programmed this thing. Someone at Blizzard designed this thing. Someone at Blizzard thought that making a character in a mobile game cost as much as a fucking house in some parts of the world were acceptable. Blizzard’s been doing terribly in other games. WoW recently had a giant reset button, invalidating all the plot progression and character development in WarCraft III (not that my opinion of WoW was high to begin with). Overwatch 2 is in the works, except it looks pretty much exactly like Overwatch 1. WarCraft III Reforged managed to garner almost universal hate. And, of course, we have the disgusting sexual harassment and discrimination that came up a few months back. They recently had the gall to report that they're totally innocent because of results from an investigation...that they conducted on themselves. I really can no longer in good faith keep an entire section of my site dedicated to this company. So…I’m taking down every last Blizzard shrine on my site. I’ll cherish the memories I had of playing these games long ago, but they’ll stay there – in my memories. Speaking of memories… Final Fantasy VII Remake …is on Steam now. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off using all my willpower to keep from buying this thing and sinking all my time into it. I’ve finally completed my playthrough and shrine for Persona 3 Portable. Go check it out under “Uncategorized” if it strikes your fancy.
Throughout my playthrough, I couldn’t help but compare P3P to Persona 4 Golden, the first Persona game I’ve ever played. The games are really similar in structure, after all. So here, I’m going to pit the two against each other and see which one wins. I’m going to avoid comparisons regarding game mechanics, since it wouldn’t be fair to compare a game to its successor where the developers had time and experience to improve. I’m also going to try to avoid purely subjective categories, such as music. With that…here’s the spoiler warning and let’s begin with some meta stuff… Plot Persona 3’s plot is a mess. The writers wanted the game’s theme to be dealing with the concept of death – both living life to the fullest to leave a legacy when you inevitably die and coming to terms with the deaths of those close to you. Unfortunately, the only justified death in the game in Shinji’s – you can argue that he was guilt-ridden and taking Persona-suppressing drugs, which weakened him to the point Takaya was able to kill him with a gun. But the others? Mitsuru’s father and Chidori only died with cutscene power plot holes. Minato’s death, the most important death in the game, hinges on Nyx having invincibility that the game never adequately justifies. The entire theme of the game is thus little more than shoehorned edginess via artificial plot armor. There are some issues with Persona 4’s plot – I pointed out that I don’t quite understand what Izanami’s whole deal was, for instance, but at least I could tell you the plot without constantly complaining that crucial events make no sense. Persona 4 wins this category hands down. NPC protagonists Initially I didn’t think this was a fair category, since Persona 4 specifically delves deep into each character – it’s how they each gain their Personas. But there’s more to it. Part of the problem with Persona 3 is that while the characters are probably interesting, the game doesn’t show that to you. Minato cannot form Social Links with any of his teammates in SEES except for the female ones, and if you’re trying not to be a cheating man-whore, this means you get to know exactly one person on the team. On the other hand, Yu can form Social Links with everyone on the Investigation Team. Persona 4 also shows several slice-of-life scenes, such as the school camping trip, where we see the team just…hang out. I thus felt the Investigation Team was a group of tight-knit best friends, whereas I saw SEES as a group of co-workers. This category goes once again to Persona 4. Villains Since we’ve already touched on Nyx and Izanami, I’ll instead focus here on more minor villains. Namely, for Persona 3 we have Chair Man and Strega whereas for Persona 4 we have Mitsuo and Adachi. Chair Man spends most of the game doing nothing, then has a big dramatic reveal that sabotages his own goal, which is itself nonsensical. Strega was irritating as fuck each time they appeared on screen and has little to no relevance to the plot. Mitsuo is kind of random, but he illustrates a theme of Persona 4 (avoiding baseless assumptions in search of truth). Adachi is pretty stupid, but he’s leagues smarter compared to Chair Man. Despite being more minor villains in scope – Mitsuo and Adachi are murderers, whereas Chair Man and Strega want to end the world – the former comes across as more competent, relevant, and threatening. I’m going to have to hand this category to Persona 4 as well. Social Links I think both games have well-written Social Links. These are people Minato and Yu meet in everyday life and form friendships with. They have a wide gamut of issues, which mirrors real life and reinforces the idea that there are everyday people dealing with regular life beyond the supernatural fighting that SEES and the Investigation Team deal with. Here I’m declaring a tie. I think I was more invested in some of the Persona 4 Social Links, but Persona 4 has the goddamned fox Social Link in which you have to catch that fucking fish from hell and I have to give props for Persona 3 since it’s the first time Social Links were a thing in the series, so it balances out. Next, let’s look at in-universe things. School We have Gekkoukan High School versus Yasogami High School. The former has better funding, since it’s built and backed by the Kirijo Group, but that money clearly didn’t go into hiring competent faculty. The principal of Gekkoukan High gets envious of Mitsuru’s Student Council President speech and calls an impromptu school rally so he could give his own competing speech, which turns out to be heavily plagiarized from Mitsuru’s. The math teacher doesn’t seem to know math and spends time commenting on how cute the numbers look. The history teacher is obsessed with samurai and will ignore the entire rest of Japanese history. And worst of all, the school nurse teaches magic. Long, long lectures on magic (though, to be fair, his lectures have some interesting history behind the development of magic). The Yasogami faculty are kind of weird and, in the case of the homeroom teacher, don’t have a grasp on ethics, but they’re at least competent teachers. If I went to school at Gekkoukan High, I’m pretty sure I’d fail every college entrance exam ever. I’m awarding this category to Yasogami High School. Setting Here we have Tatsumi Port Island versus Inaba. Honestly, a lot of this depends on what you want in where you live – I like small towns, but plenty of people find those boring and want a bigger city with things to do and places to go. Since this part comes down to personal preference, I’m going to look at a different consideration – safety. Inaba has biker gangs and at least one roving group of juvenile delinquents (we see these in both Chie’s and Kanji’s Social Links). The Inaba police force is, as I’ve detailed at length, incompetent to an obscene degree. I’d actually feel somewhat unsafe in Inaba, especially at night, which means the fact that some of the Social Links wander the town at night is a bit worrying. Tatsumi Port Island has one specific location the teen gangs gather, behind Port Island Station. We only see one particular policeman in Tatsumi Port Island, Officer Kurosawa, and this guy knows what he’s doing. Mitsuru at one point believes Junpei’s room was ransacked and she calls him to investigate. He takes one look at the room and immediately deduces that, no, it wasn’t vandalized – this is just what a teenage guy’s messy room looks like. I’d feel safer in Tatsumi Port Island, provided I just avoid the gangs’ known meeting area. This category thus goes in Persona 3’s favor. Power We’re asking the question of who would win in a fight between SEES and the Investigation Team. We’ll establish four rules: we’re excluding the main characters (more precisely, we’re excluding Wild Card holders), banning consumable items, not using any RNG instant-kill attacks, and taking the teams as they are at the Nyx/Izanami boss fights. This last one means (1) everyone’s at maximum possible power; (2) we can field Aigis, since she doesn’t get the Wild Card until after Nyx’s defeat; (3) we can’t field Shinji, as he’s dead by then. We’re also going to assume everyone can take part in the battle rather than just four characters from either team. SEES has higher HP and SP since Persona 3 automatically gives a character 999 HP and SP upon hitting max level. SEES also has fusion weapons and heart items, which means SEES’s equipment is more powerful compared to the Investigation Team’s. In particular, the Armors of Light mean no human character in SEES has any elemental weakness. Finally, SEES outnumbers the Investigation Team 8-to-7: SEES: Mitsuru, Akihiko, Yukari, Junpei, Fuuka, Ken, Koromaru, Aigis Investigation Team: Yosuke, Chie, Yukiko, Kanji, Teddie, Rise, Naoto I think SEES would win. This isn’t to say the victory would be easy. The Investigation Team has better special skills, such as Naoto’s Shield of Justice or Chie’s Dragon Hustle, but since we’re disallowing consumable items, they can only use them once or twice before running out of SP. We can also consider duo skills, such as Twin Dragons, which will do a chunk of damage, and all three duo skills are fair game since all six characters are in play. The Investigation Team’s best weapon is Rise, who can pop into battle to impart permanent buffs, heal, and block all damage the first time it would kill someone. Another possible strategy is to knock someone down and pave the way for Galactic Punt. A lot of these activate by random chance, so I think SEES would still win, but they’d struggle and probably lose a few people before they did. This category goes to Persona 3. Final score: Persona 4 wins 5-to-3! And with that, I hope I’m done with this series for awhile. These games are fun, but super long and draining. Yeesh. As of last night, I managed to accomplish something I’d been trying for months – completing the Battle Tree in Pokémon Ultra Moon. This means 50 straight wins in Single, Double, and Multi battles.
For those who don’t know, Pokémon battle facilities are notorious for bullshit. Some call them the challenging end-game for veterans, as opposed to the easy main story for kids, but this isn’t accurate. The battle facilities are hard for one and only one reason – they require streaks of victories. In the Battle Tree, if you lose anywhere before Battle 51, you lose. Period. Start over from 0 and fuck you, LOL. Now even if we assume the battle facilities don’t rig the RNG against the player, the chance of something, somewhere going wrong over the course of 50 straight battles is quite high. And all it takes are a few misses or flinches to cost you hours of progress. To give you some perspective – I am not a competitive Pokémon player. I play the games for exploration and story and characters. When I build teams, I take a very Elite Four Karen approach – I field my favorites and don’t want to think about strength. Each Pokémon in my main story team has an in-universe backstory and a real-world reason I chose it, reasons which have nothing to do with competitive viability. I just don’t have the kind of mindset that you’d find in someone who thinks about Pokémon competitively. Despite this? Over 516 Super Multi battles, I had a win rate of 96.3%. It just so happened that something, somewhere went wrong before Battle 50 in the first 466 of those. What does this mean? It means any given battle in the Battle Tree is not hard. The battle facilities aren’t challenging – all they do is stack the odds against you. And the developers did this on purpose. To illustrate: there is one potential enemy Walrein whose only attacks are OHKO moves. OHKO moves in Pokémon are kind of like OHKO moves in other RPGs – they have a small chance to one-shot the enemy or they miss and do nothing. So this Walrein will only win by being lucky a few times. Again, we’ll assume the Battle Tree doesn’t rig the RNG in this Walrein’s favor. There’s still a legitimate chance it’ll connect with those OHKO moves – and that’s it. You lose. Start over from 0 and fuck you, LOL. This reminds me of when I was in middle school and I declared that to “beat” me in Pokémon, one had to win 3 straight times. There is, of course, no such rule anywhere – I was simply such a little child (and not confident in my skills) that I felt the need to resort to stacking the odds against potential opponents. And even in the depths of my childishness, I only required a 3-streak. The Battle Tree needs 50! And these (I assume) aren’t middle schoolers developing this game; these are grown professionals! As a side note, someone did challenge me to a battle and I won so handily the first time that he went back, GameShark’d himself 2 shinies of every species (one male, one female), gave all of them ridiculous stats (e.g. >900 Attack), and challenged me again. I guess I really didn’t need the childish odds-stacking. Anyway, to wrap up: Pokémon battle facilities are composed of no less than 120% bullshit and clearing the Battle Tree was, by far, the least fun I have ever had in my ~23 years of playing this series. 0/10 would not recommend. BUT I DID IT SO FUCK YOU BATTLE TREE LOL. …and just in time for Legends: Arceus to land this Friday. I’m really hoping this game is great. Well, it took me an ungodly amount of time, but I've put together my shrine for Persona 4 Golden. I watched a YouTuber talk about the game (SuperButterBuns: I highly recommend her videos) and she declared this game never ends. Yeah, she wasn't lying.
At any rate, it's up top under "Uncategorized." Go ahead and check it out! I recently did my fourth (?) playthrough of Lust from Beyond to pick up a few achievements and to check out the latest content update. The story in the game is one of those stories that sickens me with its tragedy yet sticks in my head for days. So today, let’s explore a rather simple question: what was Amanda Moon’s plan?
Spoilers for most of the Lust series below. I’m also not going to explain many of the terms and events – it’d be a lot to explain, so if you’re completely unversed in the backstory and lore of Lust, go play the game(s) damnit. =P We learn in Lust from Beyond that lauv’abrarc, imprisoned within Xu’thrar, continually screams for rescue. These screams are carried on Essence, and Amanda is Ac’mlale’s avatar, meaning she hears these screams more intensely and constantly than anyone else does. In fact, it seems that Amanda is the only one who hears these screams – all other Seeing Ones simply receive intense visions. Amanda’s stated goal is, accordingly, to open Xu’thrar. So far, so good. To fulfill this goal, she requires Victor, Ughro’ecna’s avatar, as only he can open Xu’thrar. Victor is a Seeing, with those visions I mentioned, and he wants them to stop. Amanda lies to Victor that Xu’thrar contains healing technology, and Victor’s Seeing visions arise from lauv’abrarc psychically calling for someone to open Xu’thrar. Logically, if Victor opens Xu’thrar, lauv’abrarc will no longer need to call out for someone to heal his realm, so Victor’s visions will cease. This lie comes back to bite Amanda and it bites her hard. At the end of the game, the Cultists of Ecstasy discover the truth behind Xu’thrar and stage a rebellion against her. Worse for her, Victor discovers the truth and, bitter about being lied to and manipulated, opposes her as well. Victor demands an explanation, to which Amanda admits that if lauv’abrarc is freed from Xu’thrar, he will transform Earth into a new Lusst’ghaa, meaning all of humanity will become mindless sex orgasmatrons forever…which gives Victor even more reason to oppose Amanda. Okay, so here’s my question: why lie about Xu’thrar? Suppose Amanda tells the truth about Xu’thrar: lauv’abrarc is imprisoned within it. Suppose she simply withholds the fact that freeing him would allow him to lust-form Earth. The Cultists wouldn’t oppose her – they worship lauv’abrarc, after all, so the mission of “hey let’s help/free the guy we worship” would elicit no reservations from anyone. Victor would open Xu’thrar without a second thought. He has no reason to oppose Amanda in this scenario, as he doesn’t feel betrayed and doesn’t know any better. Alternatively, she still tells the truth about Xu’thrar, but lies about what happens after. She claims that if they free lauv’abrarc, he’ll heal Lusst’ghaa. Is anyone really going to question the notion that the god of Lusst’ghaa can heal Lusst’ghaa if only he were freed from this prison? Without anyone questioning her, nobody would discover that freeing lauv’abrarc wouldn’t heal Lusst’ghaa but would instead imperil Earth. Again, Victor would open Xu’thrar without a second thought. So again: why does Amanda lie about Xu’thrar? Well, here’re my thoughts that are probably wrong because I’m biased and don’t want to accept the obvious answer that Amanda is probably just insane. Amanda’s relationship with the Cult of Ecstasy In short, her relationship isn’t good. The first time she encounters the Cult is at the beginning of Lust for Darkness, when its leader kidnapped and raped her. She then spent a year as the Cult’s captive sex slave. During this time, they forcefully aborted her baby and impregnated her with a new demon-baby, which they then sacrificed to open a portal into Lusst’ghaa. Around the time of Lust from Beyond: Prologue, Amanda has embraced her new persona as the Queen of Ecstasy and she returns to the Cult to lead it – by sending her third child into their midst to wreak havoc and severely injure everyone. Mabel says that the Cult fell into line under her immediately because they sensed her power. Amanda’s rule is one out of fear and initiated by force. It’s clear that Amanda doesn’t see the Cultists as her allies. This is strange, as a Cult devoted to lauv’abrarc would do everything it possibly could to free him from Xu’thrar. If Amanda’s goal is simply to free lauv’abrarc, the Cultists would be her allies. This implies that Amanda must have some goal that runs against what the Cult believes. Is Amanda concerned that the Cultists would desert if they discovered lauv’abrarc is imprisoned? That may shake their faith, as what the hell kind of god gets imprisoned? This is a strong possibility, but let’s consider: there are 2 people who seem to know the truth about Xu’thrar: Sabinian and Theodore. These two are high-ranking Cult members, so Amanda isn’t concerned with them leaving. Also, the only person Amanda technically needs on her side is Victor, and the first time they meet, Victor doesn’t worship lauv’abrarc. Amanda couldn’t possibly have been concerned about Victor’s faith wavering. She’s specifically concerned the rank-and-file Cultists would leave. But why? Why would she care about them? Keep this in mind for now. Amanda needs the Cult united, but she isn’t behind the Cult’s cause. The Nature of Universes This is a plot-important book written by Doreen Austerlitz, a terrible, terrible woman who was one of the founders of the original Cult. Honestly, she was probably a Nazi on top of things. Anyway, the book somehow has information on specific locations within Lusst’ghaa, including Xu’thrar. Amanda has Victor study the book to figure out how to open Xu’thrar, but she ripped out and hid the pages detailing Xu’thrar itself, as those pages explicitly identify it as a prison. Let’s explore that last sentence. What do those pages actually say? I tried to take a screenshot and zoom in, but I don’t think the pages have actual words (at least not English ones). I think I saw the words TERRA and PENINSULA, except PENINSULA was spelled wrong? Anyway. At the end of the game, Mabel convinces the Shackleys to raid Amanda’s room. They do so and find the ripped-out pages. Its information was enough to drive them to rebellion. Mabel tells Victor to find and read the pages. Upon doing so, Victor’s dialogue is, “Xu’thrar heals nothing. Xu’thrar is a prison!” But later, when he confronts Amanda, he asks her what will happen if Xu’thrar opens. This means that the pages don’t actually say that lauv’abrarc is imprisoned in Xu’thrar – all they say is that Xu’thrar is a prison. If it explained that lauv’abrarc is imprisoned in Xu’thrar and that lauv’abrarc would lust-form Earth upon his freedom, Victor wouldn’t need to ask Amanda that question. Here’s Mabel’s dialogue on Xu’thrar and the missing pages: “Xu’thrar…it’s horrible…we can’t let it be opened!” First, this doesn’t say what exactly is inside Xu’thrar. Second, this implies she doesn’t know it’s lauv’abrarc. She’s a Cultist of Ecstasy. She worships lauv’abrarc. Her fellow Cultists worship lauv’abrarc. None of them would characterize him as “horrible.” The only way they’d fear him getting free is if they knew what lauv’abrarc would do once free, but if that were true, logically they would know it because they read it in the pages, which means Victor would have gleaned the same information from those pages, meaning he wouldn’t have needed to ask Amanda what would happen if lauv’abrarc gets free. This all implies that the Cultists rebel because they realized Amanda was lying to them, not because they realized lauv’abrarc himself was imprisoned in Xu’thrar. Mabel likely concluded that because Xu’thrar is a prison – a rather maximum-security one, at that – something horrible is inside and therefore it can’t be let loose. At this point Amanda’s attacked the Cultists twice, with horrific consequences, so Mabel simply concluding that Amanda wants to release some unknown eldritch horror makes a lot of sense. There’s one final piece of evidence that points to the pages saying nothing about what’s actually inside Xu’thrar. The Cult of Ecstasy at the time of Lust for Darkness had free access to the book. In particular, Willard would very likely have read it, given that Doreen wrote it and Doreen specifically groomed Willard to succeed her as the leader of the Cult. Willard, however, made exactly zero effort to free lauv’abrarc from jail. Read: the leader of the Cult that worships lauv’abrarc and the avatar of lauv’abrarc himself did nothing to free lauv’abrarc from jail. In fact, Amanda says in Lust from Beyond that Willard’s goal was just to reach Lusst’ghaa. He understood nothing else. The only way this makes sense is if The Nature of Universes doesn’t include any information on lauv’abrarc’s imprisonment. Willard didn’t try to free him because he simply didn’t know. Amanda’s attempt to open Xu’thrar At the end of the game, Amanda takes the Mask of Ughro’ecna, the key needed to open Xu’thrar, and goes to Xu’thrar alone. This seems to make exactly no sense. Amanda knows that Victor, being Ughro’ecna’s avatar, is the only one who can open Xu’thrar. This means she must know that she can’t open Xu’thrar. It also means that leaving Victor in the mansion full of rebelling Cultists is nonsensical – if one of them killed him for being in league with Amanda, she’d lose everything. But she tried anyway. Why? This isn’t in the original game – it got patched in later because it wasn’t finished at first, but Amanda has sex with Victor right before he goes to get the Mask. We know that Amanda can absorb Seeing powers through sex – she did exactly that to at least 2 Seeing Ones prior to this. What if Amanda tried to absorb Victor’s Seeing powers, hoping that would transfer the avatar-ship to her, so she could open Xu’thrar herself? It would explain why she thought there were any way in hell she could open Xu’thrar despite establishing time and again that she knows Victor is the only one who can. But that then begs the question: why try to open Xu’thrar herself? Amanda’s relationship with lauv’abrarc This one seems simple – she worships him, right? He’s the god of lust. I don’t think so. This guy has been screaming in her head since she was a child. A Cult dedicated to him absolutely destroyed her life. They imprisoned and raped her. They murdered her unborn child and forced her to give birth to a demon-baby (that they sacrificed). Her time there ensured that even when she tried to put it behind her, she couldn’t – her libido, fueled by lauv’abrarc’s influence, proved too much for her and she ended up (1) sacrificing her third child, breaking her husband’s heart; (2) breaking her husband’s mind; and (3) returning to the very Cult that wrecked her life. I humbly propose that interpreting Amanda as wanting dire and brutal vengeance for all of this isn’t that far out of line. It would explain why she wanted the Cult united. Right at the winter solstice, at the end of the game, she invites all current and former Cultists to a grand gathering at the mansion. When her child attacks the mansion, anyone who’d ever followed the Cult’s tenets was all there, conveniently in one place to get butchered. If people had steadily deserted beforehand, this wouldn’t have worked. It explains how Amanda would see the Cult’s goals as opposed to hers, even if the Cult endeavored to free lauv’abrarc. If the Cult had done so, someone might’ve succeeded – and Amanda doesn’t want that. She wanted to free him herself – to kill him and exact revenge for him wrecking her life. This also explains why she wanted to open Xu’thrar herself rather than have Victor do it. That part didn’t work, but it explains why she tried. Note that when Victor is exploring the mansion in the aftermath of Amanda’s wrath, he finds the statue of lauv’abrarc shattered. Who shattered it? Remember, the Cultists worship him. We’ve established that they don’t know that he’s the one imprisoned in Xu’thrar. They don’t know what he’ll do if he gets free. Exactly nobody would have reason to defile his shrine. Except Amanda. Finally, why does Amanda absorb Seeing powers prior to Victor? Amanda says she did it to “countless” Seeing Ones. If Amanda just wants to free lauv’abrarc to turn humans into perpetual cum fountains, there would be no point in bolstering her own power. But if she were planning to destroy lauv’abrarc, it stands to reason that she’d need to power up and power up drastically. Putting it all together Thinking through this way, we paint a picture of a broken, vengeful woman who desperately wants the screaming in her head to stop and the source of that screaming dead for what it did to her. Her plot would thus progress as so: 1994: Amanda Moon is born. She receives horrifying, incomprehensible visions throughout her childhood and adulthood, but tries to live a normal life. 2017: The Cult of Ecstasy kidnaps Amanda. 2018: Jonathan rescues Amanda. 2019: Amanda succumbs to her frustrated hyper-libido and opens her own portal to Lusst’ghaa. She and Jonathan spend a year there. This is where I think Amanda first concocted her plan. Between 2018 and 2019, Amanda tried to live a normal life and push all the Cult experiences behind her. But lauv’abrarc’s screams continued. Her experiences likely made her even more sensitive to his voice. Her heightened libido proved too much for her and she broke Jonathan’s mind with sex and sacrificed her third child to Lusst’ghaa. She spent the better part of a year having wild sex in Lusst’ghaa, satiating her frustrated libido. Once it died down, Amanda was able to think more rationally again, and was horrified at what she’d become. Amanda would write, much later, that when she saw how Jonathan reacted to their child – mutated and monstrous from Lusst’ghaa’s influence – she felt extreme guilt and wondered to herself whether sexual bliss really were worth it. Jonathan was so happy when she became pregnant. That’s not something sexual ecstasy could ever replicate. Amanda sees only one way forward: embrace lust and use it against her enemies. At this point is where she becomes Ac’mlale’s avatar. She uses her command of Essence to call out to Seeing Ones. She lures them to Lusst’ghaa and takes their powers through sex before having her child murder them. Maybe she thought killing them would free them from their Seeing curse. Maybe she just didn’t want loose ends. On the summer solstice of 2020, Amanda sends her child to Sabinian’s mansion in the events of Lust from Beyond: Prologue. Christopher becomes the latest addition to her body count and she appears at the mansion to assume command of the Cult. On the summer solstice of 2021, Amanda discovers that Victor is Ughro’ecna’s avatar. She secretly has Jonathan kill Lily, driving Victor into despair, making him easy prey for her to recruit into the Cult. Victor spends the next 6 months serving Amanda, studying how to open Xu’thrar. On the winter solstice of 2021, Victor discovers how to get the Mask of Ughro’ecna. Amanda senses her plans are finally going to come to fruition, so she has sex with Victor and takes his powers, leaving him just enough to get the Mask. While he’s gone, the Cultists discover Amanda’s lies and rebel against her. But only then, in the end, did they understand the true extent of the Queen’s wrath. Amanda summons her child into the mansion and massacres the Cultists…which she was going to do anyway. She recovers the Mask from the Shackleys (before brutally decapitating one of them) and finds Victor unconscious on the floor of her room. She ignores him and goes to Xu’thrar herself, but to her dismay, the door doesn’t open. Victor then appears and reveals that he has turned against her. Confronted with the possibility that all her schemes were falling apart right when she was about to claim victory, Amanda goes into a furious frenzy – fully succumbing to her Queen of Ecstasy persona – and attacks Victor. Victor fights back, but is ultimately unable to harm her. Amanda manages to control her rage and plays her last card: she will use Victor’s lust against him. Victor succumbs to his lust and has sex with Amanda, surrendering to her. He then dons the Mask of Ughro’ecna and opens Xu’thrar while Amanda and her child watch. This is where the game ends. In my head-canon, Amanda then surprises Victor by having her child subdue him while she declares that lauv’abrarc’s time is at an end. Amanda exacts her final revenge, destroying lauv’abrarc and taking his powers the same way she took the Seeing powers from before. And here’s where things get interesting for me. Amanda’s spent her entire life buffeted around by alien forces way the hell above her pay grade. Now, for the first time, she’s free and the one in command of those forces, having ascended the mantle of Lustful God(dess). What will she do? What does a newly apotheosed human do? …I have an entire crossover head-canon that answers that, but I’m not going to write all of that here. Thanks for reading! As you may know, I really hate leaving something incomplete. There’s a list of games I’ve played that I’ve tried, time and time again, to finish, and I just…can’t. And it bothers me, but I just can’t bring myself to play through these. So it continues to bother me.
If you’re expecting me to say, “I’m weird; get over it,” congratulations! I’m weird; get over it. …Anyway, I thought I’d write out a few thoughts on games that I probably won’t ever finish. I…don’t really know why this is on my mind. It just is, so let’s go. The Last Remnant I first heard of this game in 2009, where my friend was telling me that there are these 4-armed guys and they can either quad-wield or dual-wield but hold each sword with 2 hands. It sounded…interesting? And later, I read more on it, and there was this blurb about tactical battles and how you build up squads where the squad’s capabilities depend on the individuals making up the squad. It sounded a lot like Bahamut Lagoon. Up to 4 characters comprise each of your units in Bahamut Lagoon and each unit has different abilities depending on the characters. A heavy armor character can’t move very far, but put him in a party with a light armor character and that party will have better movement range than if you put 4 heavy armors together. The Last Remnant…is not like Bahamut Lagoon. For one, it’s not a tactical RPG. Battles do indeed take place between squads/armies, but there’s no tactical movement. Battles happen kind of like in a regular RPG. And, probably the biggest issue I had…you don’t control your characters. You kind of give them vague suggestions and then they do whatever they want. It’s kind of like the Magus Sisters from Final Fantasy X, but every single one of your characters is under that system. The gameplay confused the hell out of me, the PC port is clunky, and the voiced lines are cringey (mostly, the main character’s lines). I’ve tried playing this game so many times, since it looks absolutely gorgeous and I think there’s a great story underneath it all, but…this game’s on the backburner for the foreseeable future. Final Fantasy XII I’ve tried to play this game at least 5 times and the furthest I got was when Penelo joins the party, which is really early in the game. I don’t know what it is – I mean I hate the battle system, but I feel like I could eventually get used to it. Hell, from what I understand, you’re supposed to make the game play itself in battles, so if I play my cards right, the battle system will become irrelevant as my party’s going to be fighting battles on their own. And I hated the battle system in Final Fantasy XIII, but I got through that. I think it’s because the game takes itself too seriously. It’s meant to have a more mature story, I guess, but by “mature” they meant “has lots of political intrigue” and political intrigue plots generally bore me. I had the same problem with Final Fantasy Tactics, which has this class system warfare and scheming in the royal family and I just couldn’t get into it. Incidentally, FFXII and FFT both take place in the same world, so…maybe some part of me just hates Ivalice? Who knows. Every few years I get an urge to try to play FFXII (and then promptly drop it soon after) so maybe one day I’ll actually get through it. Or maybe not. Pillars of Eternity I’ve played a decent number of CRPGs – I’ve an entire section of my site dedicated to them. I took my time with Pillars, like how I normally would play one of these games. I managed to clear a difficult dungeon with just 2 squishy mages before someone told me (1) that’s an optional dungeon meant to be a challenge for later and (2) there’s a front-line tanky character I could’ve recruited beforehand. I did a quest where I was supposed to sneak into some guy’s castle, but I marched in through the front door and systematically massacred everyone inside. But…this game has pacing issues. My character apparently awakened to his past lives, which is bad news because knowing that can drive him crazy, so my character decides to track down a guy he thinks is responsible for awakening him so the guy can undo it. Why my character thinks this guy will undo the awakening or even whether undoing it is possible is…not explained. So the entire motivation for my character is murky and the game is so slow that I got tired of waiting for the game to explain to me what the hell is going on while I did sidequest after sidequest. Mass Effect The first one. Now this game and its series is hilariously popular, so I have just no clue why I could never play past the introduction. That’s…about it, really. I’ve played several Bioware games and they’ve all pulled me in pretty consistently at the beginning, so why I lost interest so early on baffles me. I’d say Mass Effect has the highest chance of getting off this list, but given it’s been in my Steam library for circa 2 years, it’ll be awhile. Today marks the 25th Pokémon Day. Pokémon Red and Green first came out in Japan on the 27th of February, 1996. They came out in America – with Green changed to Blue for some reason – in 1998, which is when I started with the series.
As a side note, you would not believe the confusion changing that color caused. The main character in the game is canonically named Red. Since in Japan, the paired game is Pokémon Green, the rival character is named Green. The manga, which had the female protagonist that didn’t appear in the first generation games, thus named the female protagonist Blue. But then Pokémon Green became Pokémon Blue in America, so the rival’s name changed to Blue in America, meaning the manga female protagonist became Green. I’m not sure whether Green and Leaf, the female protagonist in Pokémon LeafGreen, are the same person – I don’t think so, meaning the Green that appears in the Let’s Go games is her own character, separate from Leaf. As a side note, manga Green/Blue is kind of terrifyingly insane, which mirrors what Green does in Let’s Go – after you defeat her, she throws Poké Balls at you and asks you if you want to become her Pokémon. Hot. …Anyway, I’m probably the biggest Pokémon nerd ever, but I’ve levied my fair number of critiques on my beloved franchise. Notably…they’ve released pretty much the same game like…let me count. 24 times by the end of Generation VI. R/B/Y, G/S/C, R/S/E, FR/LG, D/P/Pt, HG/SS, B/W, B2/W2, X/Y, OR/AS. Generation VII was the first time they really changed the formula, and it wasn’t a major change. I haven’t played Sw/Sh, but from what I know, it returned to the regular formula. Well, the 25th anniversary brought news both good and bad. The bad news, if you can call it that, is that Diamond and Pearl are getting remakes: Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. I don’t think these games need remakes, I didn’t think OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire are better than Emerald is, and see above for my opinion on releasing the same game multiple times, but a lot of people were looking forward to this, and hey, they could do worse than revisit Sinnoh. The good news? Pokémon Legends: Arceus. I’ve been clamoring for something like this. Instead of making a new generation where it’s the same formula but new creatures, do things with the gigantic amount of lore and worldbuilding you already have. Pokémon Legends: Arceus takes place in Sinnoh, long ago, and it’s an open-world RPG. You roam a wilderness. You see Pokémon in their natural habitat. You explore the lore of the region surrounding where the Original One lives – or at least the place he’s associated with. Arceus, being Pokémon God, probably doesn’t live anywhere. This game isn’t due for awhile, but man, I hope they get it right. After 25 years of the same thing – a great same thing, but the same thing – let’s go somewhere new. Praise the Original One. Praise the Trio Master of Creation. Praise the Trio Master of the Lakes. |
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