August 2020
“Worse than alone / Exiled
Worse than exiled / Dead
Worse than Dead / Forgotten” - Persona 2: Innocent Sin
What was thought to be the typical zombie defense turned out to be a pretty decent turn based zombie RPG. A variety of tasks, skill points, and decisions shape each and every playthrough as you must level up and assign people to jobs or if they join you out on the field in wave after wave of turn based combat until you either succeed, turn back, or die. Various quests will come to you in a limited time fashion as every day counts between dwindling resources and important events. The story itself isn’t particularly amazing, but it is enough as the gameplay carries it quite well.
Lewd? Love Routes, but nothing past that.
Recommend? Yes, I quite enjoyed this and quite tempted to do a few more playthroughs. However, it does get a bit repetitive between major scene changes.
Taking the established series of No More Heroes and put it into a top down beat-em up arcade-like game. The jokes, references, and great boss battles are all there plus retains it’s very weird style of gameplay/narrative. You once again play as Travis and can co-op (or instead play as) the villainous father of previous enemy encounter Bad Girl, Bad Man. Though you both are enemies, you must work together to get out of the video console Death Drive Mark 2 where each level takes place inside of a different game until you get all of the Death Balls to make a Dragon Ball Z-esque wish.
I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I said I wasn’t at least a little bit biased as I do love the series and everything that Suda51 touches. Also considering the fact this game has it’s own way of revealing that all of Suda51’s more modern releases are all in the same universe only suckers me more. That being said, the gameplay wasn’t particularly great (maybe it’s better when you have a friend) as it does get quite repetitive and would have almost liked each game to have a unique mechanic or even genre to spice it up. Still, the boss battles are quite enjoyable, and the story does alright throughout most of it.
Lewd? Mostly just lewd words, but nope otherwise.
Recommend? Unfortunately, I don’t really recommend this for the masses. I may have enjoyed it, but don’t suspect anyone really would unless they are a fan of the series.
Was able to get the last few stars with a friend. Cooked, Cleaned, and Completed.
All DLCs and achievements are well done.
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Paper Mario- Nintendo 64
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Paper Mario
Nintendo 64
I am very quickly realizing that I only really like Mario games when they are in a more comical style of writing. Paper Mario is a turn based RPG that has you once again saving Princess Peach from Bowser who stole the Star Rod to make his wish to become powerful while stealing all of the major stars. You must team up with a variety of friends to recapture the stars, become more powerful, and save Peach as well as the Mushroom Kingdom.
As I am a sucker for RPG/JRPG/Turn Based RPG plus the comical storytelling and unique visuals easily made this quite the entertaining experience. That being said there were a few flaws that did not sit right. First in foremost, you get quite a few allies, but found very few to be applicable in combat. They were there mostly to swap out for puzzle solving/obstacle clearing while I only really used 1 or 2 out of the 8 allies available. Secondly, though the combat was generally good with a more interesting action commands that kept you interactive in the turn based setting, it still felt quite flawed and was quite easy to get into an unfortunate cycle for some bosses/enemies since your ally is limited to their abilities and cannot use items. Still, very enjoyable and I look forward to the rest of the series.
Lewd? Not a chance.
Recommend? Very much so.
Persona 2:Innocent Sin
PSP/PS Vita
I will have to note that I played the PSP version as it was the only one available in the US, so some quality of life changes may be due to that.
Where Persona Revelations was more of a typical JRPG with a focused contact/beast master mechanic and horror setting, Persona 2 really makes leaps and bounds to make a much more interesting experience. The story and thematic was very good, a much-improved combat system, and even a much better card system. For example, in Persona Revelations if you succeeded in a contact with a demon then you would get their specific card and you would need the correct combination of demons to get the summon you want. In P2:IS demons now give you a set number (based on their level) of cards that match their arcana. This makes contacting any demon so much more relevant that before. Fusion spells make the combat system much more dynamic as well as being able to do group contacts create interesting dialogue and more ways to interact with demons. The characters were both well written and voice acted for the moments they talk and each one stood out without any major eclipse as they all held nearly equal importance. You will also encounter characters from the previous game for those who enjoy little call backs such as that.
The story, simply amazing. It kept me engaged and interested every step of the way. Rumors coming true, secret cults, crazy scenarios… all of it simply sublime. As usual, Persona music was great.
Now to the faults. The game itself was quite easy, though it did let me focus on the story more, I didn’t quite get the challenge I usually enjoy. On top of that, the encounter rate is ridiculous. Every few steps I would encounter an enemy.
Lewd? Not so much.
Best Girl? Lisa Silverman (Ginko)
Best Boy? Eikichi Mishina
Recommend? Despite it being quite limited in availability, I do very much recommend this game. As it stands it is my favorite in the series out of the three I have played thus far.
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
PSX
Once again, an availability issue as the PSP version was not available and had to go back to the PS1. This means a lot of the quality of life that Innocent Sin may have provided is now gone.
Eternal Punishment is the direct sequel to Innocent Sin. It is quite playable if you have not played Innocent Sin due to the premise it sets, but you will be missing out on a few things that many would otherwise appreciate. Once again you will encounter characters from the previous entries. I wasn’t quite as interested in the story as Innocent Sin, but that doesn’t mean it was still just as good. They really are their own thing as they focus on different aspects. You do take on a relatively new set of characters and thus get a different dynamic as far as relationships go. Still, you are exploring the very same maps as before, this time with some slight differences. Everything else as far as combat and mechanics stay relatively the same. Also once again, the music is exquisite.
Cons? The menu system/UI was quite annoying. Going into a menu in combat to go into a sub menu to get into a sub menu to automate turn to readjust into a submenu into a submenu was quite annoying. Similarly, the main menu you encounter to do various options with party members and personas was not quite so intuitive. Likely due to being the older version, this game’s voice acting was simply not great and the characters were not nearly as exciting as the previous group. This is not to say they didn’t have their own interesting stories or that I didn’t like them. However, their developments felt much more subtle and sort of toned down in comparison (at least until their climaxes).
Still, I loved it all quite a bit and Innocent Sin only won out by just a bit more.
Lewd? Not so much.
Best Girl? Ulala Serizawa
Best Boy? Baofu
Recommend? Yes! Persona 3, 4, and 5 often get the focus, but Persona 2 (IS and EP) are simply amazing and often underrated. Quite glad I decided to play through the series in full.
If you liked Paper Mario I highly recommend the sequel, Thousand Year Door. It’s my all time favorite game and it’s even better
Definitely! I’ve always wanted to play it in my early years, but it was out of reach. Now, in my later years it wasn’t relevant until I saw some gameplay for Origami and reminded me I should play the series. Pretty excited to get into it, though with so many JRPG’s lately I have to make sure I don’t burn myself out.
Thanks for the recommend and increasing my anticipation! ^_^