Recent reviews by zero

woohoo for friendship

I enjoyed this game a lot, despite it taking me... over a year to beat. Starting with its strong points, I'm a big fan of the Persona game formula in general; I think it's very fun and engaging. I think this has my favorite story of the Persona games I've played, which is a pretty common opinion; I also think it has the best characters. They felt a lot more fleshed out to me than the ones in other games. Although the layout and models are pretty lacking since this is a PSP game, I do like the general art direction a lot as well. The music is great, it's Persona, I don't need to say anything about that. In terms of flaws, TARTARUS SUCKS. It's a repetitive slog and I hated playing through it, although the combat itself is pretty fun. I ended up setting my game to the lowest difficulty level so I could get through it as quickly as possible. Other than that, I think my main complaint is that it kind of sucks visually (besides the art), but because of its age I can't fault it that much. Also, none of the important moments would have had as much impact if I didn't have a guide telling me when to watch the animated cutscenes from FES on hand, but I don't know if they could have added those in or not. Overall 8/10. Maybe 7.5 because I really truly hated Tartarus gameplay.

A short, toxic fairytale yuri VN: exactly what it's described as, basically. I enjoyed it quite a bit! The art is gorgeous and the music is very good, albeit a bit repetitive. I enjoyed the writing style a lot, and the narrative framing is clever. Princess FTW! 6.5/10.

Very different from the first game in a lot of ways, but the same in all the ones that matter. A vast improvement in basically every way. Visually gorgeous (an extremely huge leap from the very simple design of the first game) and a really interesting read. It took me about an hour to beat it once, and another hour to get all of the endings, which I definitely recommend doing. They're all good in different ways and help flesh out the story. The default ending and ending 4 were my favorites personally. I'd say the first game is definitely scarier because of its simplicity, but this game dives much deeper into its topics, characters, and story. Overall a great experience. 7.5/10.

A very interesting game, despite only being 20 minutes long. The narration is fun and gets you thinking. The audio & visual presentation is done very well (for what the game is going for) and adds a lot to the experience. Worth a play if you like visual novels! 6/10 (only because of the length; would likely be a higher score if it was longer).

I'd like to preface this review by saying that this was my first ever Final Fantasy game. I went into this thinking "Well, I'm curious what the hype is about and it's on sale so I might as well give it a try. I probably won't be a huge fan, though." And now here I am approximately 3 days later, just having beat the game, with both the original and Crisis Core newly sitting in my library. I feel like that says enough. As far as specifics go, the characters are phenomenal, and I thought the story was really good too, even though I'm not a fan of games heavily relying on sequels. The ending didn't make much sense but for now I'm going to assume that's because of my lack of knowledge of the original—although for a game clearly advertised towards newcomers to the series, there's definitely a lot I didn't understand. Hopefully they fix that with the sequels, but we can only wait and see I suppose. Visually, I don't need to say anything. It's one of the best looking games out there and the music is just as good. Gameplay wise I actually enjoyed the combat much more than I thought I would, but action games aren't really my thing so I played on easy so I could focus on the story. My biggest gripe with this game is that it sends you through way too many convoluted sequences of running around, solving puzzles, and fighting mobs just to the next plot point. There's a sequence like this in every chapter and it gets really annoying after a while. I assume this is to pad out the runtime since they needed to make a full game out of however many hours of the original, but I think there are other ways they could've done it that aren't a pain in the ass to play. Aside that, though, I had a really good time with this game and I'd recommend picking it up while it's on sale. 8/10.

I think the best word to sum up this game would be... messy? For the first three quarters or so, it's a phenomenal psychological mystery/suspense visual novel that plays with your expectations, has (mostly) great character writing, and is overall incredibly engaging... and then in the final route it just falls flat on its face with poor explanations and weird solutions to all of its mysteries that either feel contrived or like they were made up on the spot. It sucks, because I loved this game up to that point, sans a weird kinda romantic relationship with a teenage girl in the third route (although it doesn't really go anywhere). Unfortunately the writers decided the best way to answer everything was multiple hours straight of exposition dumping and a bunch of poorly handled conclusion scenes. And then there's an extra that tries to explain everything but just feels like promo for another game set in the same world that doesn't even have an English release. So incredibly annoying. I don't have a ton to say about the art or music; they're all around pretty unremarkable, but definitely not bad, and they set the tone well. The voice acting is mostly great although sometimes it's quieter than the music for some reason. I thought the translation team did a good job with what they had, though it might be kinda confusing for those not very familiar with Japanese honorifics or honestly just the Japanese language in general. It can get pretty wordy and hard to understand at some points, especially near the end; I think some things were translated too literally and others were just impossible to translate properly. Overall I don't regret buying or playing this, because for the most part I had a great time; the ending just pissed me off, and I think this is the common response. If you like mystery VNs and are willing to buy it (I'd wait for a sale, personally) I think it's worth picking up, but if that's not your niche and you wanna try one, maybe skip this and pick up like... Zero Escape or Umineko or something. 6.5/10.

I really liked this game! Short and sweet. It's right up my alley (horroresque mystery visual novel) so I'd absolutely recommend it to anyone else who likes that king of thing. When I say horroresque, I mean that it's not particularly scary—it's just horror-themed in the atmospheric sense. The story is tightly written while staying pretty simple, and I liked both it & the characters a lot. My favorite part was the visual presentation, though—most VNs usually have a vaguely similar style, but this one is super unique. Besides the art just being super nice, the way the scenes are framed gives it an almost cinematic feel despite everything being still images. The music is also really good. Great read! 8/10.

I find this game fascinating both in concept and execution. Although the gameplay can get quite repetitive, by the time I reached the ending it felt well-earned and I really like the way the story builds on itself throughout the loops. My biggest complaint is that if you get stuck with one or two events left at the end, you'll have to grind loops until you get them, which is extremely annoying; but it's not a huge deal and I don't think it happens to most people. I was just unlucky. I really liked the story, and I think it was woven into the gameplay very well. I do wish some of the lore was elaborated on, but within the confines of the game I think it's done really well. The art is also very unique and I really like it. It's not a perfect game but I think it knows what it wants to accomplish and it does it well. 8/10.

Persona fan plays Persona for the first time... who would've thought. I watched a playthrough of vanilla P5 back in 2020 and I loved it, but I avoided stuff for Royal as much as I could because I wanted to play it myself if at all possible. And it finally got ported! I have a lot of thoughts but I'll keep this short. I had a great time with it. I love all the new things they added, especially Sumi, Maruki, and extra time with Akechi. I liked the gameplay more than I thought I would—I expected to get overwhelmed, with everything going on, but I didnt! I think part of that is that I already knew the basics and the story, though. In terms of Persona 5 in general, the story has its flaws, but overall I think it's very good and certainly a good time. The graphics and music are phenomenal. I definitely recommend this game to anyone with the time to spare to play it. 8/10.