:)
I really like this game.
Tbf that playtime is wildly inflated because I like keeping games open while I'm not actually playing them, but nonetheless this game is really good and one of the most fun games I've played in a long time. (the actual game I'm talking about btw is Touhou: Artificial Dream in Arcadia but the title is too long and awkward sounding to naturally fit it into a sentence without it sounding weird)
I used to really like Megaten, and then I stopped really liking Megaten, because I realized that I really didn't like 90% of the Megaten games I had played and that in reality I just happened to really like that other 10%. I have not played any kind of SMT game in years, I had pretty much completely lost interest in the series after playing multiple games back to back that I fucking hated and getting disillusioned with a few of the games that I had enjoyed. But now I kinda want to try it again, at the very least SMT 1 and 2, because I never played those to begin with and this game is such a blatant copy of those games in every way, and I mean that in a good way, a very very good way. This is one of the most passionate indie games I have ever seen, it is so incredibly clear that the creator of this game is such a massive fan of both SMT and Touhou, like it just bleeds love, it so accurately captures the essence of what makes SMT enjoyable while still feeling unique. It's super impressive how well this game replicates the style of SMT 1, the pixel art, the music, even down to the design of dungeon layouts, it's all so uniquely SMT despite this not being an SMT game and also being developed by a single person who has never worked on an SMT game in their life.
Unlike with SMT, I know comparably little about Touhou, I've never finished any of the games, and I can only name a handful of characters. Playing this game with so little knowledge of the series it's based in, you would think would be a detriment, but in reality I think it made it a lot more fun, everything came off as new and interesting, and it's a surprisingly good entry-point to Touhou. I think a monster collecting RPG is possibly the best genre to put a series with hundreds of named characters in if you want to really quickly learn and remember most of those characters. Before playing this I could not name a single location within the Touhou universe, but now I know the differences between Hell, Old Hell, the Animal Realm (a location within Hell), and Makai (NOT Hell, but is filled with demons). Even without having a deep knowledge of Touhou myself, it's very obvious that the creator does, as I was playing I did some research into some of the characters that I thought looked interesting, and there is such a variety of allusions to Touhou as a whole, from forgotten mid-bosses from the 1st PC-98 game, to characters that have only appeared in obscure one-off doujin works. It's not a very dialogue heavy game but what is there displays so much personality, a lot of small lines are used really well to convey a lot about certain characters, and even things like movesets and stats sometimes feel like they tell a bit about that character's personality, or play into their visual design.
I almost completely forgot to mention the bullet hell negotiation minigames that are used to capture sleepers, which is odd because it's actually one of favorite parts of the game, I absolutely loved these short little shmup segments. Every single sleeper has their own bullet hell style that's unique to them, and these too say a lot about the characters they're associated with, like for example when you try to catch Yukari, she wants you dead, filling your screen with bullets and lasers, but then a character like Koishi doesn't really throw much at you.
There's so many memorable little moments in this game that I love, and I have little enough concern for cohesive writing that I just kinda wanna talk about a few of them. I really like how they often pair up encounters in areas with characters that are associated with each other, like for example whenever you encounter Joon, she'll always be alongside Shion because they're sisters, and there are a lot of cases of that, and I think that's really neat.
By far the lowest point of the entire game, and the only time I can really say I thoroughly was not enjoying myself was the teleporter maze in the Moon Palace. I don't know why, but every SMT game feels the need to include at least 1 overly long and tedious teleporter maze, the one in this game isn't nearly as bad as anything in actual SMT, but I still spent at least 2 hours mapping out the entire room, and I am comedically bad at navigation in video games, so it got really frustrating.
I know I praised the dialogue quite a bit, and it is generally pretty good, but there are a lot of times where it's humor can be kinda hit or miss. There are a lot of memes in this game, and occasionally they actually are pretty funny and do work, but more often than not they feel kinda forced. Like a decent portion of the achievement names are memes, and those are fine, but like, some of the inclusions in game are really out of place.
When I initially reached the end of the main game I was honestly kind of disappointed, the final boss wasn't really great, the 1st phase was against a clone of yourself and it was really bad, it kinda just felt like an RNG-fest, and the follow up fight against Yukari was fine but it kinda just existed, I don't have much to say about it. The stuff after the final boss however, is fantastic, the entire post-game takes place in Makai and it adds an extra 6 or 7 hours of gameplay with by far the best dungeons in the entire game. I love the aesthetics of Makai, all of the characters that appear in the location, the gimmicks of each of the dungeons, the music, it's all the best the game has to offer. The real peak of the post-game, and really of the game as a whole however, is the final boss against Shinki, it is a long, brutally difficult fight, but it is so satisfying to learn it's patterns and consistently counter every move she makes. The whole gimmick of the fight is that Shinki only has 1 weakness at a time, and that weakness changes every few turns, and on the turn that she changes weakness she also gives herself max buffs in everything, and max debuffs your entire party in everything. She also has 25,000 health, which means that it is a very long fight, my successful attempt took nearly 20 minutes, but that gives you a lot of time to learn and perfect a pattern of moves to make each turn, and after a while you start to notice a sort of cycle occurring between each weakness swap so she becomes more predictable and thus it becomes a much more manageable endurance test. I am not capable of conveying with text how much enjoyment and satisfaction I felt when I started understanding that fight, and especially when I finally beat it. It is now genuinely one of my top gamer moments of all time.
This is actually one of my favorite games now, it's so good.
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currently stopped at 12/2. there’s a lot i wanna talk about. this game makes me feel so incredibly strange. ill leave a very messy ramble under the cut
being past a majority of the significant moments i feel like i can give a pretty lengthy discussion of my feelings
the game does what it says on the tin it’s an hd remake. storyline (at least as of the date i cited) is by and large approximately the same.
the game itself is gorgeous it looks amazing. there is so much clear effort put into every little aspect, of which everyone is already greatly aware
i have highly mixed feelings
things i am enjoying
a nice handful of the link episodes and optional content are feel good and sweet moments that give a better impression of the cast’s relationship, which is always welcome. particular examples im personally really about include shinji’s link episodes and the group study sessions
theurgy moves and how they reflect each characters growth in their second move that unlocks with their ult persona. trismegistus’s theurgy killed me dead.
lots of very welcome qol changes that streamline numerous parts of the original game in a way that feels pretty good. i particularly enjoy the text message function and how it reminds you who’s available which days while also letting you fast travel directly to the link in question, and the net functionality thing that lets me see what others decided to do each day. a ton of helpful stuff for someone really forgetful basically
ive been playing on peaceful because im not good at rpgs (yes i spent $70 on a game from a genre i am notoriously bad at!!!!) so i can’t speak much to a lot of gameplay stuff but im glad tartarus has more to it and has also received qol changes that make it less of a slog to grind (at least in my experience). in general tartarus’s overhaul rules; visually the alternate environments with different corresponding floor layouts are awesome
they let ryoji be bisexual outwardly! kinda pretty much? much like aigis’s “I know you should be with a man” in portable it’s hard not to take “I want to be more than a friend to you” as anything other than explicitly gay. i still have a few more scenes with the guy so it might take a minute before i can be fully confident in this point.
things im not enjoying
the quality of the character writing in a lot of places is either off, irritating, or it flat out feels incorrect in some instances. whether it’s aki dropping the p word as liberally as he does or mitsuru being constantly put forward as intimidating and that’s the whole joke, or the weird new speech quirks aigis has, there are moments you can very much tell the writers are going “how many times can we fit this same unfunny joke or bit across the game”. it feels like a greater chunk of the time that they don’t Know what to do with the characters so they fall back on pushing whichever flagship trait that character is known for and it really hurts the overall enjoyment of the additional content when it feels so…shallow? as a result. not ALL of it is this way but there is a significant enough pattern that it’s genuinely a bother
how little they use the potential of this remake to demonstrate individual character dynamics that aren’t otherwise frequently touched on (i.e say yukari and shinji or aki or like aigis and shinji or fuuka and aki; there’s like a ton of character duos within sees that we just don’t really have a grasp on how they feel about each other). i was especially disappointed at the lack of shinji with other people than the rest of senpai squad or the protag, which is what i was most looking forward to having more of going in. maybe some of what i was hoping for is in tartarus dialogue i didn’t wind up triggering (which there is an insane amount of that id love to pick through once im done) but just based on the episodes i played and the hangouts i did it’s still like man. i wanted to see him being friends with other members yk? they barely took any cues from the portable slink.
BECAUSE the story is written so closely to the original any weird inconsistencies remain the same, although there are a handful of moments where they clarify certain important things that i don’t believe were in the originals. on a similar note whereas they smartened up and made stuff like romance optional and removed that notorious transphobic scene, they’re still not immune to being really fucking weird about age gaps and grooming !!! and of course the sexualization of highschoolers remains ‘Detrimental’ to the storyline 😐
ok i writing this as i am so sleep I am falling asleep with my phone. my primary thoughts for now make of that what you will. god i hate video games
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Playable Persona Poll ROUND 2
Sorry for the late update I was lazy and sleepy lol
Round 1 has come to a close! This was unexpected to say the least! First of all, every single Persona 2 party member available succeeded! Considering how those games are treated by fans and Atlus alike, I did not see this coming (I hope my previous layout didn't have anything to do with it...?). I mean, even Makoto Yuki, protagonist of Persona 3, lost to an oldsona character!
There were quite a few close calls! Eikichi, Koromaru, and Kotone all won with less than 51% of the vote! I even remember Kotone and her opponent Naoto being tied a few times when I checked. I also witnessed a few switches! If memory serves, Yosuke and Ann were far ahead of their opponents at some point during the poll, and yet neither moved on!
I also notice that every single Persona 1 party member available has been defeated. I can't say I'm surprised though... even among oldsona fans, I feel like I don't see them given much love.
Anyways, Round 2 is upon us! Ren has decided to listen to Morgana and will be getting some sleep this time, whereas a whole slew of new characters are about to be introduced! This should go live on April 9th!
Links will be added once the polls are up:
Hidehiko Uesugi vs Chie Satonaka
Metis vs Koromaru
Junpei Iori vs Futaba Sakura
Teddie vs Kotone Shiomi
Shinjiro Aragaki vs Maya Amano
Eriko Kirishima vs Lisa Silverman
Ulala Serizawa vs Eikichi Mishina
Yukino Mayuzumi vs Tatsuya Suou
Maki Sonomura vs Jun Kurosu
Aigis vs Yukari Takeba
Katsuya Suou vs Yusuke Kitagawa
Yu Narukami vs Ryuji Sakamoto
Mitsuru Kirijo vs Yukiko Amagi
Kanji Tatsumi vs Goro Akechi
Naoya Toudou vs Baofu
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Out-of-luck Lockdown: Part 1.
Wow...More units are here than I thought there would be.
They just need time to prepare. Then they’ll do a huge sweep of the lab until they find what they’re looking for.
Yo, Kaede! Shuichi!
Huh?
*Some familiar voices are heard nearby, which Kaede and Shuichi turn to see.
How’s that new upgraded spear treatin’ ya?
We came to help!
Yeah!
Oh great, you guys are here! That’ll make things a lot easier.
We still helping soldiers get ready. Once they done, we go into lab.
Your friends seemed pretty insistent upon helping out. I appreciate that bond, so I decided to let them tag along.
...If it’s all the same to you, Mrs Chairwoman...I was actually hoping that we could get a head start on the investigation by ourselves.
Yes, myself and my two allies here are of the same mind. We’ve already set up our individual forces at each lab exit, and were hoping to explore inside as soon as possible.
Is that so?
Yeah. We kinda got a feel of the layout and we’re currently the only three with the map. I’m not expecting we’ll find much, but we need to get this place sorted out as much as possible. Before Zetsubou arrive.
It’s true that we’re on a time budget. I guess we’d better let them go.
Yeah, I trust Kuripa to stay on top of this sort of thing. Daffy as he may be, he knows when to switch into work mode.
Psh...Thanks Boss...
Just one more thing before we depart. What happened with Hikaru Ando?
I can answer that.
*Setsuka joins the group.
Doc has been detained in one of the nearby camps we set up. We’ve actually brought down Doctor Kimura to take a look at him.
Seiko’s here?
We might not be able to communicate with her, but we know we can trust her with this sort of thing. She’ll find a way to get that parasite out of his system safely and soundly.
Despite our insistence that she should step back, Ms Eden Owari has decided to accompany her.
Eden can stay. Like I said, Ando would have gotten away if it wasn’t for her.
I suppose that’s all I needed to know. Try and get the doctor fixed up as soon as you can so we can get as much information out of him as possible.
Will do, second Chairman.
Catch you guys later.
*Munakata and Kaede head off, but before they can leave, Shuichi grabs Kuripa and whispers to him.
You three seem to be getting along well.
I’m just as surprised as you. Turns out we make a pretty good team.
...
Kuripa, listen...Something doesn’t feel totally right about this whole situation. I get the feeling bad things are gonna happen soon.
Why, because we’re winning? Makes sense. Every time we win lately, it comes at some kind of cost.
Look, Kaede trusts you. They aren’t as much of a threat on their own, but the Monokubs still may have some tricks up their sleeve, and they’re still in there. Not to mention, Zetsubou are probably on their way.
Please...Promise me that my and my girlfriend’s trust in you isn’t misplaced, ok? Please, make sure she stays safe.
Of course, of course. I get why you’re saying this. I haven’t given you much reason to believe in me lately.
But I promise I’ll protect her.
*Kuripa waggles his finger, then pursues his allies.
[Zetsubou HQ, shortly afterwards]
YOU IMBECILE!
...
*In the main lobby of the base, Akira Tsuchiya sits lazily on the sofa, as Mikihiko barks angrily in his face. Yukari, Celeste and Tsumugi stand nearby, baring witness to this interaction.
I think you fail to realize just how important that facility was to Zetsubou’s goals, and now the Future Foundation are clearing it out! We’ve even lost Ando, our one source of producing more parasites!
Because of your laziness, the Future Foundation got into the lab, and our plan to brainwash the cities has gone kaput! What do you have to say for yourself!?
...Yes...!
Huh...!? Wait...
*Mikihiko suddenly notices something, reaching over to Akira’s ear and yanking out an earpiece. He listens to it and hears the sounds of Japanese horse racing through it.
That’s it! I’m killing him! Lady Shirogane, permission to kill!
*Mikihiko grabs an ice pick from the table and thrusts it towards Akira’s eye, who doesn’t even flinch.
Denied! *sigh* Mikihiko, I appreciate it, but let me take care of this.
*Tsumugi goes and stands over Akira.
You mad at me too, lady?
Not as mad at you as I usually would be.
Let the Future Foundation have this victory. They haven’t stopped us. They’ve only delayed the inevitable.
What do you mean?
I had figured it would take a fair few more years to set up the game for Survivor. We’re going to move towards the final phase soon enough anyway.
Once that happens, we’ll have plenty of time on our hands. All we’ll have to do is repeat our process. Capture Ando and brainwash him again.
Besides, I’m sure the Doctor will cooperate once he finds out we have his darling daughter with us. We aren’t done and dusted just yet.
I agree. This victory is a trifle compared to our successes over the Future Foundation.
Still, don’t you think we’re getting a little cocky? We lost Emilia Feng and our weapon supply not too long ago. Even if we can replicate Feng’s procedure, don’t you think the numerous victory’s the Future Foundation have over us is concerning?
I joined this group and betrayed them because I believed you had the potential to give me exactly what I want. Now there’s no going back. So don’t you go letting me down, Shirogane.
Your feistiness is appreciated, Celeste. And believe me, I intend to reward you for it.
For now though, Akira, keep an eye on that lab. If anything big comes up, you know what to do.
Sure. I’ll take a look now.
OW!
*Akira lazily gets up, steps on Mikihiko’s foot on his way past, and checks the large monitor in the corner.
Hm...Now THIS is juicy~
What is it Akira?
Looks like the FF went back inside the lab to scout, see if they could find any parasites left over.
Then just tell the Monokuma’s to tear them apart!
I can’t. They already destroyed all our units in the lab. According to the vital signs, only the little one’s are left.
The Monokubs?
Yeah, those guys. Not much they can do on their own without those exisals up and running right? And that’s gonna take some time.
Ooh...Akamatsu’s really taking this seriously. She just dipped her hand in a whole box of sludge!
...!?
What did you just say...?
Huh? Wh-What’s with the scary face?
*Everyone looks towards Tsumugi, concerned.
Akira...who is in that lab? Some soldiers?
No, not many people actually. Just three targets. Kuripa Kurafto, Kyosuke Munakata and Kaede Akamatsu.
...!
*Tsumugi suddenly turns her back and starts pacing back and forth, her body slightly trembling.
M-Mugi-chan? What’s wrong?
Lady Shirogane, are you alright? You don’t feel well?
Akira...
*Tsumugi raises her head.
Activate the complete shutdown of the lab, enable all defense mechanisms and the plating on the large doors. Now.
What...!?
*Tsumugi’s request surprises even the stoic hacker. Everyone looks towards her with surprise.
Wh-Why?
Just do it...! Now...!
Lady Shirogane, if you’re hoping to trap the Future Foundation inside, wouldn’t it be best to wait until a few more soldiers step in?
Yeah, none of the people Akira mentioned are even targets. We should wait until Kirigiri and Saihara go back inside or-
I SAID DO IIIIIIIIIIT! DOOO ITT NOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWW!!!
!!!??
!!!??
!!!??
!!!??
*Everyone panics as Tsumugi suddenly screams out her command. Akira frantically goes to his monitor and types something in...However...none of the operatives realize they are being subtly watched.
...Oh no...
You find anything?
Ah!? Uh...no, no, nothing here...
...You alright?
Yeah, I’m fine just...Just a little jumpy is all.
It’s true that danger could be lurking around every corner. We shouldn’t let our guards down.
♪ *Hirari hirari mekuri mekuru! Sutoorii sutoorii! Kidoairaku sewashii!* ♪
Uuuh I think that’s mine.
*Kuripa picks up his phone.
‘Ello ello? What’s the situtation?
Uchui: KURIPA! GET OUT OF THE LAB!
Uchui!?
“Uchui!?”
Kamukura is calling you...!?
Shirogane is activating a shutdown on the lab! Get out of there NOW or you’ll be trapped in!
*He hangs up.
What the fresh hell?
*BLARE!* *BLARE!* *BLARE!*
!!!??
!!!??
!!!??
*As soon as the call ends, a loud alarm suddenly sounds out, and all of a sudden, heavy shielding shuts over the lab doors.
...That’s not good...!
We’re in trouble, aren’t we?
LET’S MOVE!
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