Recent reviews by Xoffy

tldr; wait for sale to pick it up and pray for enhancement mods by then
or
play Persona 3 FES with controlled party member mod

first game I have 100% achievements on Steam

My experience with the Persona series, like a lot of others, started with Persona 5. Back when the game originally came out in the west during early 2017, I picked the game up on PS4 with a friend and didn't expect to like it that much due to never having gotten into a singleplayer RPG prior. I ended up playing the vanilla game three times over. Truly opened up my mind and broadened my horizons in terms of what aspects of games can be interesting and fun. Fast-forward three years, an enhanced version of the game, Persona 5 Royal released and it was a fantastic, justified and welcome adjustment to the original game. So when Persona 4 Golden was announced to be coming to Steam mere months later, I got excited to play the previous games. I played probably the first few hours of Golden and put it down after getting stuck at Yukiko's castle, which is kinda funny now.

First Experience with Persona 3 FES & Persona 4 Golden
I first originally properly played through Persona 3 FES using PCSX2 just over a year ago, during January of 2022. I decided to finally go through the Persona backlog because of my long-ass university break. Picked the game up and finished it within a couple of weeks. Something about the characters, their struggles and development truly resonated with me without being too cheesy or cringe. The end of that game made me genuinely sad that it was over. The difficulty was much higher than Persona 5/5R (despite me using a controlled party mod) and felt more raw in a good way. I know there is a stigma around "less popular opinion = cooler" or whatever but I genuinely connected with the characters more (except Ken -- ♥♥♥♥ Ken, he's annoying as ♥♥♥♥. I'M GONNA KILL YOU! headass dumbass kid). Kimi no Kioku hits hard to this day.

A few days after, I played and finished Persona 4 Golden within two weeks as well, with most of the combat systems in that game having various enhancements over Persona 3 FES. Objectively, P4G is the best Persona game, a great balance between gameplay, characters and writing, but in my personal opinion, after having finished P4G, it was still P3FES that was the favourite. Which got me super hyped when they once again, within a few months of finishing a Persona game, announced the 3/4/5 trilogy coming to all platforms.

Persona 3 Portable on Steam
I was shocked to see the version they decided to port over was Portable. I know for an absolute fact that the least powerful system out of all the consoles, the Switch, can run Persona 3 FES. I have seen video evidence of this, so it came across as a weird option. Though this announcement was kinda poorly timed, as I had just bought a PSVita (Persona 4 Dancing Edition) just to play Persona 2 and Persona 3 Portable. Persona 3 Remake Rumours; If the Persona 3 Remake rumours are true, this may be due to the remake not including the option to play the female protagonist, which would make sense considering Atlus' previous "Atlus moments". Still, this gave me even more of an excuse to give Portable a try, and to play the FEMC route.

Story (No Spoilers)
For my first Persona 3 Portable playthrough, I went with the FEMC on Hard difficulty as it's considered the more unique Portable experience, and it is true. Many would tell you to play as the male protagonist first and THEN play as the FEMC in another playthrough. I think that's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and a waste of time, especially if you plan on playing the rumoured Persona 3 Remake. While the FEMC playthrough is a little different, the overarching story remains the same. What changes are the people that are attached to each Arcana's social link. The FEMC playthrough makes more sense in terms of social links, as you will get to know each individual character that is important to the story. The male protagonist playthrough is more of a Persona 3 purist run/waifu collector.

Visuals
For both playthroughs, I played at 4K@120fps. If there is anyone qualified to speak on the visuals as a normal player, it is me. The AI image upscaling is lazy and actually kind of a joke. On the first day when you are making your way to the dormitory and it pans up to the green moon, you can see the tear lines combining the three images where the AI didn't know what to do with, and that's just one of many examples. The Persona icon in combat is completely screwed. The background environments are not good. Simply not good. UI and character art are very clean though. Hopefully mods can fix some of these visuals, but atleast you can play at 120fps natively now.

Audio
Mostly the same as visuals, lazily done. There are audio comparisons of the PSP original to this port for the main character's Persona awakening scene and somehow the PSP audio is WAY clearer. Not sure what happened for the battle audio to be literally worse than the original but there is already a mod that fixes battle audio. Again, mods should fix this element of the game.

Gameplay
Obviously, the biggest change between FES and Portable are the ways in which the gameplay is presented, regardless of which MC you pick. Dungeons remain mostly unchanged besides a few graphical downgrades from FES to Portable. The city has gone from an explorable 3D map design to visual novel PNGs, which I thought would actually bother me more than it did. The visual novel style ended up growing on me and I didn't mind it. After finishing this game and going back to Persona 5 Royal, it was actually kind of jarring having the characters talking with dialogue at the bottom and stuff happening on screen as well. The addition of skill cards is nice, again, this is just standard from FES to Portable, not a port exclusive or anything. A new port exclusive feature however, is Quick Save. An option that allows you to save the game at any pause-able moment and exit to the main menu to pick back up later. These quick saves disappear after you load back into the game, but can be exploited in Tartarus floors to keep randomising the floor. Only glitch during both my playthroughs was Yukari getting two turns at two random points in the game, not even One More's. And ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I had to keep doing triangle fusions at the end of my SECOND PLAYTHROUGH for 2 HOURS STRAIGHT before getting a fusion accident, I made the entire compendium already and never experienced one. Bad luck, I guess.

Now for my biggest complaint for this port. Why are there no story cutscenes? They do such a better job at conveying what's happening during MAJOR plot points rather than a background fading or moving and a character DESCRIBING what's happening. It would have been so easy to implement this, but my theory behind this is either pure laziness that is further reflected in other aspects of this port, or that they did think of it, but didn't know how to implement it for the FEMC too, as all the original cutscenes are only for the male protagonist. Also, why keep the Ken romance? What the ♥♥♥♥.

Overall
I actually ended up finishing my first run of Portable the same real life day as the day Nyx comes down, January 31st, which was pure coincidence and I thought was pretty cool as I was looking back on my achievements. Despite all the ♥♥♥♥ that I just talked on the port, the game itself overall holds up as one of my favourite games of all time. I will forever have memories of trying to force my Thanatos to inherit certain skills, pressing circle, circle, cross, up, cross for an hour straight. The FES way. The characters and gameplay, regardless of how grindy it might be, truly grab and stand out to me. I love this game. Hope the rumoured remake is great. I hit the word limit.

This game is able to be 10/10 material, and if you're looking for a world that rivals GTA V's, look elsewhere, for now.

Though immersive with the tall skyscrapers and detailed city, the NPCs sometimes ruin immersion. Some examples, such as; the police that spawn behind you suddenly when you become wanted, the drivers of cars that do not go around obstacles to reach their destination, which instead, stay still and wait for the obstacle to move, then continue along their predetermined path.

The world of Night City is still immersive, but there are many technical aspects for them to fix, such as NPC model glitches, t-poses, animation failures, dialogue failure, V being bald in shadows and most importantly, performance issues. There are also improvements needed to be made, with many additional features to be added, for the immersion of the game.

In terms of the performance and technical issues, if you're willing to look past them for now, this game will offer you a rich story full of choices, with characters that you will care about. The substance of the game is great, but the world can be improved greatly. I managed to roll credits and finish side quest chains of important characters that I cared for within my 44 hours of playtime, ending the main story at level 27.

8.5/10 (Patch 1.04)
p.s. judy 4 life xoxo

i ♥♥♥♥ myself

*UPDATED 6TH OCT*
This review is ENTIRELY my opinion and is supposed to be informative.

The singleplayer of Black Ops 3 is so incredibly boring it makes me want to fall asleep. I'm only Rank 6/25 (or something like that), but it's a waste of time. All the single-player camos are boring and bad, so it's not even worth it for the camos. If you're looking for a singleplayer experience, this NOT it.

Zombies is a classic Treyarch gamemode first introduced in World at War, and even after Black Ops 1 & 2, this is still incredible.. WITH THE SEASON PASS. I cannot stress enough that Zombies is completely useless if you don't have the season pass. *UPDATE* But since mods have come out, zombies has never been so fun.* Zombies only has 1 MAP w/o the season pass, which is a bit ridiculous, but regardless, if you DO end up getting the season pass, it's well worth it. There are in-depth easter eggs in every single map, with great detail and attention to the story. IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A FANTASTIC ZOMBIES EXPERIENCE, DO NOT BUY W/O SEASON PASS! YOU CAN STILL HAVE A VERY FUN TIME ON MODDED MAPS.

Multiplayer is probably the most popular gamemode of the 3, but is a bit of a broken mess. The controller support in this game is so incredibly infuriating it makes me want to leap off of a building, and the aim assist is the cause of the problem (instead of having a rant about why the aim assist is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥, I'm going to continue). The season pass for Black Ops 3 on PC for Multiplayer only is probably the biggest waste of money ever, as nobody plays the DLC after a few days of release. Though they have started to intergrate the DLC maps into the normal map pool, it's still a bit of a waste.

Supply drops are the worst thing to happen to Call of Duty ever. Activision has ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over all Call of Duty games since Advanced Warfare (which I got ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ VAC'd on) with micro-transactions, or "COD Points". These COD Points can be used on Extra camos and Supply Drops (as of 1/9/16 [D/M/Y]). Supply drops are basically CSGO cases, but instead of getting one item, you get 3 (but you can actually trade in CSGO unlike this game). Supply drops can be earned in-game with Cryptokeys (which can be acquired by playing the game), and you have the choice of a Common Supply Drop, or a Rare Supply Drop. Only Rare Supply Drops can be bought with COD Points, and Rare Supply Drops give you a better chance for rare items. There are probably around 25 of them right now, with half of them being Melee Weapons. It's extremely rare to get these items with Common Supply Drops. And this is the part that pisses me off the most. YOU CAN GET DUPLICATES. Duplicates can be burned for more Cryptokeys, with Common being burned for 1 Cryptokey, Rare being burned for 3 Cryptokeys, Legendaries being burned for 7 Cryptokeys and Epic's being burned for 10 Cryptokeys. So if you get a Black Market weapon you already have.. well then ♥♥♥♥ you, because you can only burn it for 10 or 7 cryptokeys. The gameplay in multiplayer is OK and the community is toxic (you might want to rebind some keys). If you're looking for a multiplayer only experience, I would recommend buying the multiplayer starter pack (which only includes multiplayer and some restrictions, but you can upgrade to the full game whenever).

I would NOT recommend this game if you are a veteran at Call of Duty, because the "Exos" are ridiculous.

Modded Zombies is the best thing ever. There are currently 8 pages of mods and it will only grow and grow. This is the best thing to happen to BO3 on PC. Zombies will now be fresh for anyone who doesn't have the season pass. Halehlujah.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III is an OK game with great developers working on a terrible PC port. I can't help but feel that this platform (PC) is a third-wheel to the COD franchise, with every year having terrible PC ports and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ performance. If you're in it for the gameplay, buy the Multiplayer Starter Pack, if you don't like it, then refund it, if you like it, upgrade and buy the full game.

I would rate this game 8/10 on consoles, since it's not so bad bugs & performance wise, but this is PC.

I rate this game 7.5/10 (with Season Pass).
I rate this game 7/10 (without Season Pass).

Ranking system is ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Only get this game is you want to play something else other than competitive or don't care about your rank.

Possibly one of the best free-roam games I've ever played.

If you enjoy open world, beautiful scenery, explosions and wing-suiting, this game is definitely for you.

Positives and Negatives (In My Experience [20> hrs])

POSITIVE
• Amazing graphics
• A lot of content (I've played 22hrs and only have completed 44%)
• Like Just Cause 2, but improved to make traveling in the air easier.
• Easy vehicle controls (in my opinion)
• Amazing soundtrack
• A really interesting and original upgrade system, toggle on and off the upgrades you've unlocked.
• Challenges actually have a purpose, linking to the upgrade system, doing a certain challenge gives you gears, which are your upgrade points, they separate to Destruction, Explosives, Weapons, Tether, Traversal, Land, Air & Sea Vehicles. Which like I mentioned before, are all able to be toggled on and off, which is neat.

NEGATIVE
• A kind-of rough launch (AMD Issues, Lock-on Missiles Glitch, etc.) [Restart Game to Fix Lock-on Missiles]
• A decent story, not the best story I've ever played at all, 25 missions in total. (Yes, I completed the story)
• Again with the story, there isn't really a connection between the player and the other characters.
Example (SPOILER) ~ When Dimah dies, I didn't feel sad at all, and wasn't really satisfied with killing the general.

Overall, this is an amazing game with an ehh story. If you're only interested in the story, I would just watch a walkthrough,
the story really isn't worth the 60$.

OVERALL ~ 8/10

Guy got mad at me for not completing an objective, shortly after that, the server crashed. 10.5/10. Best game.

Give me a reason NOT to say this game is 10.5/10.

Yet Another Zombie Defense. Great game, but sometimes gets repetative, however. This game is probably one of the best Zombie Defences out there, I was gifted this by a friend and I liked it, only played half an hour though due to being a bit repetative, but it's alright. I mean, if you get the trading cards you could sell them for money and earn profit, but I would only recommend this if you would like a 30mins-1hr time waste. 6.5/10