geniunely not trying to put words in ur mouth im geniunely asking: what do you actually like about persona 5? from all ur rants im just wondering why you didnt drop the game bc it seems (again, im not trying to put words in ur mouth) that it simply not for you? i geniunely have not felt any of the issues you bring up outside of the writing ones and i cannot tell if i'm just easily pleased and not good at discerning what a good game is or we simply have dif things we enjoy in a video game. i hate getting tone across text but im asking out of geniune curiosity im not trying to attack your opinion (;-;)

Nah, i dont feel like ur attacking me, and I hope u dont feel the same when u see my complaints! Lmao. In my defense, I am replaying the game for the first time after completing my first file back in 2020, so alot of the faults i kinda shrugged off in my first playthrough are now glaringly in my face now that I no longer have the confusion and interest in learning the main story to keep me occupied. The game is clunky all the way through, and at some times, even frustratingly so.

But despite that, i do like this game. Alot! Its probably one of my top games ever if im being honest!

This ended up way longer than I intended, so im putting it under a readmore to keep the post short on dashboards

If i had to describe what I liked about the game in the simplest way imaginable…I think I would say, I like how the game makes me feel :) I like the music. I like the vibe. I like the immersion from city to city, and I like the premise! I like the characters and I like the connections you make with these characters! As im replaying this game, i am most excited to see Akira and his comments about the world :) i like hearing everyones voices, I like their little interactions in Mementos, and I like seeing them fight!

P5 is the first game I played in the series; its the game that introduced me to SMT in the first place! And it (smt) is a series that my longtime best friend LOVES and never thought hed be able to share with me! It is a game i keep very near to my heart; it has influenced me in ways i did not think would happen in the short couple of years since i first finished it. It genuinely keeps me awake some nights thinking about the world this game has created, and I think that is a testament to the impact its had, be it good or bad.

The joke about wishing theyd make a persona game that was Good is that despite all of its numerous flaws, the games manage to snatch your attention and pull you in anyway. Imagine if they made a game that had all of those things that i mentioned I loved, but done Right and executed Properly?? Where I got to have a story that made sense and didnt need to be spoonfed to me (in like an HOUR of dialogue and scenes; an HOUR!), and characters that talked and bonded beyond the tiny snippets of interaction theyre allowed to have in mementos? Combat that let me use PERSONAS i liked instead of BUILDS that stop me from getting instakilled throughout the entirety of the endgame, and a Persona building mechanic that didnt feel like I was shooting in the dark looking for possible fusions that end up not even being useful in the endgame.

Ive mentioned it before, but I complain so much bc I have seen what a good p5 game looks like, and its Strikers almost to a T. Combat is still your typical warriors-esque style combat, but it is at least different from the turn based strategy of the main game. Characters talk to each other freely, they hang out and comfort each other in a way that feels more connected that the base game. Strikers implements the ability to see ALL possible fusions with ALL registered personas, not just the ones in your Stock, so you can fuse easily without having yo consult a guide. The story feels like it makes SENSE with antagonists that feel morally grey and sympathetic. Genuinely, alot of the complaints for p5 I had were almost immediately rectified in this game.

But please also know that the praises I sing for this game is only bc of the groundwork laid by p5 and the world it created. Thats what I like about this game, that it had such a captivating premise and cast of characters, that a DIFFERENT company was able to hit the ground running with them. P5 had alot happening in that game, but i think what it had most was potential. The effort put into this game is astronomical, and the possible connections you can outright MISS if u arent paying attention was worth the money and time to implement; even if it meant that it could be considered a waste of resources to higher ups.

Books and games and part time jobs???!! Silly little cutscenes that add nothing to the game PLOTwise, but define and flesh out the personality of your protagonist. There was alot of love put into this game, and its evident by the fact that we have NOT seen a new persona game released; they bank on existing titles bc they are unwilling to make a game like this from scratch again. They dont want to ‘waste’ resources on good voice acting and a complex, overarching story; they dont want to waste money on scenes a player may never see, on routes a player may never get to experience. Making a game that gives u even the slightest bit of freedom means more money in programming and detailing that freedom. This has been an issue for a WHILE, and its a miracle that the gaming landscape had space for a colossal title like p5!

I complain bc I want better, and I do not think that is inherently at odds with my love of this game. In b4 im told to get good; ive played on hard and tested out merciless (its NOT fun, im making godbuilds again and its boring 😞). Its not the most accessible turnbased rpg; theres no colorblind modes, and the affinity system is convoluted and overwhelming. Combo moves are hard to keep track of and it can be incredibly frustrating to see your turns being skipped or seeing characters take extreme technical damage without understanding WHY it happened. The fact that they KNEW the game was desperate for qol improvements by the time royal came out, and instead of updating the base game to have those improvements too, they just pushed the royal edition out for people to play instead. It sucks! Customers and fans deserve better than being forced to shell out money for a game they already played !

As the gaming climate gets more and more hostile and unbearable, I think it is good to look at your games critically, and understand why products come out subpar. Persona 5 is a fun game that has a nice cast and an interesting premise, but it is ultimately tied down by its refusal to build on existing building blocks regarding its combat, and it insists on having insulting and downright out of character dialogue and scenes to appease the audience its designed to be targeted to. It is easy to forget sometimes that queer ppl are infact NOT the prime target of these games, its cishet gamer bros from aged 16 to 40 who will laugh at homophobic comments, who drool over a 16 yr old girl with a 16 yr old mindset and a grown womans body, who need to be placated with constant sexual comments to deal with a convoluted story that will inevitably make zero sense until its laid out for you before the literal end of the game.

Its bad. Its good. Its so shallow and its unbelievable that they thought having the plot twist make ZERO sense until they showed CUTSCENES of YOUR character discussing Goro and his connections to the metaverse for endgame SHOCK VALUE was more important than just having your team be smart and piece it together over time. Its shit. Its literally amazing. It let you FUCK your teacher ??????????????what the FUCK. They also let me shoot a god in the face w the best looking ult persona in the world so i can ignore that shit. And ultimately that is how i got through the game. Lol.

sso vs the concept of good gameplay. yeah its another fucking book length post >:3

thoughts from someone with a brain full of what good game design means and tons of years of studying and analysing that topic etc, bc of game design being one of my main interests.

basically the major thing i want to say about the hollow woods update aside from "yay forest kinda pretty :)" is that most of it doesn't really consist of what i would call gameplay. this is ofc something u can argue back and forth that im also open to, bc respectful analytical discussion is healthy.

the firefly stuff id personally call something more like "satisfaction play" than gameplay (idk if there's a widespread term that anyone else made up already). there is zero challenge to gathering fireflies - it's on the level of poking a glitter slime simulation app. it might feel satisfying to collect them, but there is no practised skill needed, no thinking or planning or anything. so i don't consider this "gameplay", but "satisfaction play" in itself isn't a bad thing, either. it's not that "gameplay" would be inherently better than "satisfaction play" in every case.

the puzzles are gameplay, i think - not very challenging gameplay (the answers are right there as soon as the puzzle is presented), but it *is* arguably gameplay, since we do call puzzle-solving "gameplay" in general. there is some argument there to be made about what a "puzzle" really means, and what is a simple "request and task" rather than a "puzzle", or what "knowing a real life fact" (what is 180 degrees?) versus "having to figure something out using information available inside the game" might mean for how we view what is or isn't a puzzle. but that's not specific to sso at all (a question for tons of various "puzzles" as seen in tons of various games).

there's nothing wrong in itself with satisfaction play, or with easy puzzles. sometimes that's exactly what an audience wants. but sso has a bigger issue, in that the main gameplay until now has been races (or courses, tracks, but let's say races) and that those races are not especially well designed. that there is very little of really challenging, fun, satisfying, rewarding gameplay in sso - in the terms of what people usually expect from videogames (of the gameplay-based type, not satisfaction play-based).

don't jump to conclusions here, but: i often make a comparison to mariokart, a game with a primary race mechanic. i used to play mariokart a lot because it was just really fun. it was fun alone or with friends or strangers, and it was fun to try to beat my best score, and it was fun to explore different ways of beating the same track. when you design a game, you have to think really heavily about: is the core gameplay loop fun? what makes people want to play this? to *re*play this? does it feel satisfying and exciting? is it better or at the same level as its competitors? what kind of things appeal to the target audience? and so on.

somehow sso has never felt like mariokart (except that one rainbow race, obvs), and i don't mean that sso could just "copy mariokart", this isnt the point. what i do mean is that there has to be a way to make your racing mechanic (if it is a primary mechanic of your game!) actually fun, engaging and challenging in the right way - the good game design way, not the clunky, frustrating and broken way. (yes, i know the engine is spaghetti garbage. no, i don't think that's a get-out-of-jail-free card for every problem that sse has.)

they made some progress with this when they added a completely out-of-place, more challenging race in one of the more recent story quests (i forget exactly when that was, but the race was in hollow woods). the problem then was that within the context of sso and what they have taught the players about their game, this race was thrown at us with no preparation for its challenges, which is bad game design. you want to introduce your player to different challenges and allow them to practice and learn, which didn't happen when we jump from "races with basically no skill needed to pass" to "a race with new things happening everywhere you need to react to while also successfully following a new path" out of nowhere. the intent was good - more challenging and exciting, dramatic races - the execution wasn't great.

they also made some progress with this when they revamped a few of the champs. the revamps aren't perfect, but they're good, and it was a good step towards improving core gameplay mechanics, that not only are genuinely enjoyable to many players but also *fit into the theme of the game* (as in, beating others at horse sports is a common theme within the equestrian theme). (i'm personally in shock that we don't have more champs across the map since all of these years, and that they aren't better already, since it's one of the most "regular videogame quality" content this game has and it shouldve been relatively easy to add more as well as maintaining and improving what was there).

so, back to the new valedale stuff.... sort of. there have been some puzzles in sso before, and some random gameplay (the click timing of searching for gold). the stuff we've had before: it's usually very basic puzzles and random gameplay, partially on behalf of that - for a long time - there doesn't seem to have been that much resources put into fighting with the engine to create new things that weren't in the code before, and partially because of a view held by some people at the company that games for young girls don't need to have any actual well-designed challenging gameplay, and that it's better to make it ridiculously easy so that nobody ever really loses or gets stuck on anything. you don't have to practice to beat any of the races - you might have to practice to get a top score or win a champ, but none of those are required for progress. similarly, there wasn't any real challenge that i remember to the absolute majority of non-racing quests, either. you might have to hit a thing with the right timing once in a while, but it's always easy (other games do this too - see QTE in certain AAA games!), or you might have to remember a number or a word for a minute and answer a question or type in a code correctly.

more or less everytime that there were puzzles in sso, they held your hand through it - whether you wanted to or not. the same is true for the rune puzzles, which have their solution blatantly in front of you as soon as they load. there is no changing actual difficulty level to make it more fitting to the player (which doesn't necessarily have to be a literal level setting - it can come organically, such as giving extra explanations, or slowing a timer down, after a player has failed a task 3 times, etc). yes, you can make the rune puzzles more complex in some sense - a bigger grid, or choosing the type of moves you are worse at - but the solution is always right in front of you, regardless. they hold your hand whether you like it or not, by the type of puzzle that they introduced.

races in sso have a "gold, silver or bronze" system, but we don't actually see that the races have been correctly playtested to properly reflect what a time worthy of each medal should be, and we also don't really gain anything from reaching any medal. i never feel a thing about getting this or that medal, because they mean nothing. it might be a good thing that we're never asked in a quest to "complete this race with a gold medal" or "complete this race under a certain time" or "complete this jumping course with no faults", since that could lock some players out of completing quests (while this is the case for most other games, there is also an important discussion happening around accessibility in game completion).

there are ways to make the medals in races matter, feel accurate, and feel rewarding. there are ways to make races more challenging or more interesting without just being more clunky or frustrating. there are ways to do that while keeping them more or less grounded in reality, and ways to do that while incorporating non-realistic elements that are fun and feel fitting (remembering that this is a game with magic and fantasy from the start). they could have added faults to jumping courses forever ago, they could have added dressage forever ago, and improved on gameplay like pole bending and barrel racing, and so on, and all while allowing players at all skill levels to still complete tasks and complete races, but also allowing players to challenge themselves for rewards.

if the core gameplay - around races and championships, around horse care, horse bonding and horse training - or around magic and protecting what's dear, or around rescue missions with the rangers, or tons of other stuff i can think up that would fit this game - if that stuff felt like actually well designed gameplay, something fun, not frustrating and buggy, challenging in the right ways and rewarding. if all that was done well, then adding some "satisfaction play" with fireflies or some simple puzzles with blatant solutions wouldn't be as easy to criticise.

the closest thing we got to challenging gameplay that you can really clearly *lose* at - that there is a risk and a skill involved - were some of the druid training missions. they still suffered from some clunky frustrations and non-ideal design decisions, but it was an attempt at more regular gameplay (among the non-racing gameplay). comparing the new gameplay in valedale to the druid training, you can see that the risk of failure has gone down a lot or been removed completely, rather than being built upon any more. they also didn't continue to update druid training in any way afaik or to build upon that foundation for other gameplay. (i'm open to that druid training may have been too difficult for a small subset of players, and that's a valid discussion. but i also think it was optional?)

i don't have a really nice tidy thought to end this with, and im really sleepy rn and going to bed. but the overall point is that if sso had other, well-designed and well-functioning gameplay that felt satisfying and rewarding for players, the flaws of the new valedale stuff would be less glaring. as things are, the lack of challenge and the lack of fun gameplay are really glaring problems with it, as well as the lack of reasonable rewards. (it makes very little sense that you have to purchase the items you unlock, but this is the same company that charged whatever x starcoins it was for those recoloured balloon pets, so.)

What do you feel like palworld does right compared to pokemon? Ive thought about playing it but im on the fence about it

ok get ready for a novel!!!

essentially, palworld just has the thing in it that made us all love pokemon ... the fun designs and the gotta catch em all loop. but like. it doesnt include all the stuff that made the pokemon series run stale a long time ago

its. definitely, absolutely, 100% an early access game. dont go into it thinking it wont be. there are janky textures and visible seams and surprise areas where youll fall through the map. but unlike with pokemon games, pocketpair has been on the ball in terms of patching the worst of the jank. for example, there are collectibles you can find around the map that are supposed to increase your chances of successful captures ... but a bug made the inverse happen, where if you got those collectibles, your capture rate success would actually plummet. pocketpair has already introduced a patch that has fixed that, as well as regularly (every other day, it feels like) rolling out more new patches to make the game better. this in itself is already amazing, bc i cant think of a lot of studios that are this attentive to patching things THIS QUICKLY and THIS REGULARLY and it clearly shows respect for their playerbase and their game... which. gamefreak has proven to not have, given the state scarlet and violet, supposedly "completed" games, was released in. that in itself makes me much, much more patient with the jank in the game. its nice to feel like im playing a game made by a studio that wants their players to have fun.

the gameplay loop also is jsut very very satisfying. its very well tied in with the survival aspects of the game. essentially. you catch more pals to upgrade your base and get access to new resources and tools, and then with these new resources and tools, you are able to start catching higher level pals with better abilities, which then you can use to further upgrade your base and access newer tools/resources, etc etc. its very fun and rewarding.

the story ... is very very very VERY sparse. i am assumign more will be added in the future but its really just a game that plops you into the world and tells you "ok, go do whatever the fuck" and for me personally, i really enjoy that. there is a tutorial, but its pretty much optional, and there are towers and alpha pals that you can fight in a way that could be considered similar to gym leaders, but its like. not at all the focus of the game like it is with pokemon. in pokemon, the aim in every single game is just "go beat the guy, and then go beat the next guy, then go beat the next guy." and in palworld, i havent even beaten any of the towers yet but im almost done completely upgrading my base and unlocking all the different mechanics and am fairly close to the level cap. you really can just. go and do whatever you want, when you want, how you want. and i love that.

edit

also! would like to mention: your experience with the game is HIGHLY customizable to your personal preferences. they let you edit a lot of different aspects of the game, down to things like whether or not you drop all your items if you die, how long night and day can last, how quickly your tools deteriorate, and a lot more. so things that would probably normally really frustrate me, arent an issue for me anymore. its only as grindy as your want it to be.

small thoughts about RE8 Mercenaries bc it seems to be the least talked about game mode but ive played a lot of it and you should try it:

it's fun to explore levels we've already seen from a new perspective in this mode, mowing down enemies and racking up combos is satisfying and a little addictive. You can perfect every level with practice and kill every enemy in a single combo, I find it much more enjoyable with the melee characters than the ranged characters, though.

I like that Heisenberg smokes between combos, im surprised I haven't seen more of his fans hyped about this, very sexy detail. I like how excited he gets when you kill miranda in the bloody village, he desserved to get his shot at her. He is the best character to play mercenaries as, it goes from an above average rail shooter to a very satisfying hack and slash with his hammer. I wish he would be nicer to moreau when he fights him, though. I find it very difficult to kill moreau in mercenaries, and in general, he desserved better.

Dimitresque is very fun to play as, her special moves are very silly and campy, and I love the sheer delight she gets from massacering enemies. it's satisfying to stred through enemies on lower difficulties, but on hard she feels underpowered which kind of betrays her character. if you look down you can see her boobs, by the way, in case you wanted that.

Chris is a really boring addition to me, when you only have him and Ethan to play as he's a welcome change of pace, but he's made totally obsolete by Heisenberg. I'm sure he's fun for fans of the Resident Evil series as a whole though, I'm only a devotee of RE8.

I'm biased, but I think The Duke would have been a much more interesting choice for a mercenaries playable character. Slower movement in exchange for massive damage capacity, weilding weapons that ethan has sold to him maybe, food based power-ups, teleportation based special moves? I think he would bring a lot of whimsy to the gameplay, it's always fun to have a jolly and jovial chatecter absolutely pulverising enemies. The problem with this though is that doing so would require revealing more about Duke, and part of his intrigue is how vague and liminal he is. His characterization also spills into his environments, all his elaborate shop setups add a lot to his character design and I'm not sure how well he would work in other environments that are not his own. His isolation from the rest of the game makes him a great comfort to players any I wonder if that would be ruined by throwing him into the action. I just know he could kick ass given the opportunity. It's probably just a game mechanic and not necessarily reflective of in-game lore, especially since mercenaries is extended universe gameplay, but I think it's telling of his secret strength that even the lords can't attack him in his merchant room. Maybe when I get SSS on all the stages this will be my reward. I want to be able to see his boobs like we get to see dimitresque's, its only fair. I would also like to petition for Capcom to let him have his full range of animations when he's in his merchant room, if you wait around too long he gets trapped in an endless loop of burning himself with his cigar! Poor baby!

as much as i claim to be ride or die for "gates to infinity is better than super mystery dungeon", i will concede that there are three things about it that bug me immensely.

they don't really sell the "relationships between pokémon are souring, fights are breaking out all the time, and lots of folks are losing hope" thing super well bc for one, you don't actually see a lot of arguments between the townsfolk except for the few occasions that one appears in a cutscene, and two, the music in post town is so flippin' cheerful at all times.

being able to do more than one job per in-game day would be nice. this one doesn't bug me too much on it's own bc i enjoy the gameplay loop fine enough (i like the feeling of gradually building up paradise, it's satisfying), but...

earning money takes forever, and items feel way too expensive bc of it. like, i kinda feel the same way abt explorers, but in that game you just generally find more items and money in dungeons, and the jobs tend to pay slightly more. like i'm a good handful of hours in, and i'm still not comfortable enough to buy reviver seeds and still feel confident that i'll have enough money for facilities in paradise.

how would you rank every fnaf game?

terrible question to ask me because unfortunately me and my tastes are Annoying. all personal opinion. obviously.

not going to include games i didn't play, for the most part. gave little explanations as to why i placed them where i did because i'm annoying. sorry anon

1- fnaf 1 nostalgia blind but i think it has the most solid gameplay loop w/o being overwhelming and i like the general ugly grungy aesthetic. i think it works best in the series as a horror game and has the best atmosphere. i wish freddy himself had more of a presence in-game.

2- fnaf 2 i think the gamplay is honestly cluttered but the game is iconic. i also think it has some of my fav character designs in the whole series. too chaotic to be even remotely scary however. atmosphere kinda sucks. i think seeing the animatronics down the hall w/ no door fucking rules.

3- fnaf 3 honestly i barely remember the gameplay loop but i remember liking it at the time even if im still of the opinion springtrap should've been a freddy suit. the ending screens still make me a little emotional. i think i am the only person in the world who thinks the phantoms are cool.

4- controversial take. fnaf world look fnaf world is Bad but i am paradoxically endeared to it. i think the designs is cute and im fond of the repetitive gameplay, even if the effects of the game are nauseating and its gameplay is bland. i love to do occasional challenge runs of fnaf world. help me.

5- fnaf 4 i could get into how i feel abt the soft reset of fnaf lore here but i wont. i have trouble processing sound so this game was literally unplayable for me. i found the designs of the animatronics to be over the top to the point of goofiness but i'm endeared to them regardless. mostly higher up bc of nostalgia. nightmare's jumpscare is cool however.

6- ultimate custom night i only played it very briefly but it does what it wants to do just fine so its alright. i don't find the humour very funny but i like hearing some of the voices and i appreciate the concept, i guess.

7- sister location did not like sister location. sorry. the designs are fun though, it was nice to see some humanoid animatronics. this is the point where i jumped ship bc i didnt like the direction the games were going anymore.

8- security breach sorry i lied i didnt play this one but i was exceptionally disappointed with its execution. some of the designs are fun but i am significantly less endeared to its quirks than others. i can at the very least appreciate the actual design of the map and some of the sound work. the clanking footsteps of the animatronics is very satisfying to me for some reason.

i didn't play pizza sim bc i jumped ship at SL so i dont really have any opinions on it other than i predicted porkpatch's existence and i really like him. also didnt play vr bc i don't have access to vr.

idk if star rail would be half as fun if i weren't totally up to date on honkai impact and at least exposed to genshin. it doesnt take itself very seriously theres a lot of jokes about game development and reused mechanics and random assorted scifi pop culture references. it is fun to play because i've felt the gameplay loop evolve from early honkai to now and it does feel super clean and satisfying and fun now. i think it's especially susceptible to gacha roll baiting bc the abilities are so essential to combat where you could get away with raw button mashing patience in honkai and genshin. but i am enjoying running around collecting treasure and visual novel crumbs and looking at my wife himeko who is so so alive

My current main gacha rotation is as follows: fgo, bandori, priconne, and proseka. Though more heavily priconne bc it’s basically the sole autobattler i play, and proseka bc im just now leveling up and min-maxing. Who knows how it will continue to evolve

Now, to pour some out for our fallen: [longpost i.e. me yelling at a wall about nothing in particular, for my own posterity]

(these are all games i’ve played for a considerable amount of time, or at least enough to know that it’s not for me)

love live sif: super retired from this one, not only is the ui relatively aged but i’m done with this game’s gacha system. Plus im not super passionate about the new generations past sunshine. i really loved and have a lot of fond memories of playing it, and at least i finished u’s story ig

pocket camp: yo i am all but retired here. as nice and sweet of a game it is to look at and keep on my radar, their monetization model and delegating most of the best items to spur you to buy a lot of in-game currency is not to my taste, and it took me like three years of almost consistent play to come to this conclusion. The amount of free currency you earn is not nearly enough to viably pull/buy for things you want. At least it has a low storage requirement and is around if i just want to run around for a bit

feh: i forget when i truly dropped off but i think it was because i got tired of running stages to get my characters to a good level and fell behind in the story. the gameplay loop just didn’t do it for me

dragalia lost: i’d really cite this as The One that i really was excited for, especially bc it was releasing at a time when i was already pretty familiar with gacha. again i didn’t click with the gameplay, the auto battle wasn’t a viable method for me starting out especially with f2p ok units, and i’d be damned if i said that the game would not give me a 5* rare no matter how much i begged. i never did get one naturally before i came back briefly for a 5* guaranteed, and that’s when i knew i’d been cursed lol

granblue fantasy: i really wanted to like this one since the character designs are great and varied, and the collabs are super nice, but i think the gameplay again was just not doing it for me. i dropped off the story but keep it on my phone because why tf not, it’s literally a browser game. i do remember i played gbf while staying in akiba and my internet speeds were lightning fast compared to when i play in america, so that was cool. i still go in to pull during free pulls (if i remember my login info)

genshin: man o man. again the character designs are the best part but this game has the double whammy of not having a super satisfying game loop and having a story that’s all over the place. i mostly got pissed that free gacha currency was sparse and progressing through the game was near impossible if you save currency like i do, unless you whaled for the proper units. i might still return if it releases on switch given how much i’ve begged for it, but honestly i’d be ok if i didn’t. also cmon, the storage requirement was HUGE and every update requires you to have double its requirement or smth... man

dreamy vocal: this one’s a weird one but i’m pretty sure i played enough of it to know that it’s like every weird a*s tencent game you’ve ever seen and it gives me pain, miku or no miku. i’m just eternally grateful we were given proseka by the lovely geniuses at craft egg instead

mario kart tour: man what da hell. how is this actually not as satisfying as console MK. i can’t even form a well-rounded opinion on it, it just strikes me as weird

bsd tales of the lost: no particular reason here. the story was the same as the anime so it kept reminding me that i hadn’t finished the anime i guess lol. the gameplay was engaging enough but i grew tired of it at some point or hit a wall when my progression started really getting held back by my units or just level requirements. rolled some pretty nice units tho

magia record: i feel really awful about the fate of the EN server but similarly the gameplay just felt so weird. like fate but not? and now especially since the EN server died and the main reason i’d want to play is to read the story... this is pretty much a dead end :( i can appreciate from afar i suppose

revue starlight: wrowww also thought this might be The One because i really liked the starlight anime. but i was honestly a little disillusioned once it was established strictly as a battler game than one with some rhythm elements? mayb i wasn’t versed enough in autobattlers at the time but again the gameplay failed to capture my attention, and it seemed to be exploiting the openendedness of the anime’s ending to just retcon the stage girls’ suffering idk lmao help

There’s probably way more games i’ve played and have just relegated to the back of my mind. Regardless

Stuff I briefly touched, and could come back to if i suddenly had a change of heart, but for the most part i’ll pass

pokemon master S*X: pokemon gacha shouldve been a slam dunk for me but the combat system that was not as reminiscent of the base franchise as i’d hoped was enough to turn me off :( tis a shame, i definitely liked the concept of key characters returning as summonable

touken ranbu: ahhhhhhh man again this’ll prbly remain a game that i look upon from afar, even after begging for it for literally years. i played for a few hours and couldn’t get the hang of the gameplay loop even with guides. the browser version will hopefully stick around in case i want to pick it up again

imas: ok this is also starting to age rapidly but it’s cute and a huge franchise. i’m not sure if that’s for better or worse. i’m sure the story isn’t too deep and am definitely not a fan of their manager character (?) being a lawless horny self insert (at least in the fan material lol)/the characters fawning all over them, but the live graphics and costumes were nice.

argonavis: had relatively high hopes for this one but again it ended up getting handled by a different studio than craft egg, and i wasn’t super impressed by the gameplay. no EN version was enough for me to at least hold off for the time being, i’d be more than willing to come back for nayuta

i7: i’ve actually tried the jp version and the gameplay was alright. knowing myself i was only there to adore gaku but the menu ui was both aged and confusing, and the main reason i’d need an english version is for the story, so i ended up dropping :( i’d easily return if an EN version came out

sifas: mannnn why does this take up SO much storage. i’ve again fallen off of caring too much about the new generations of love live, but i really tried to get on board with this game. even understanding that this was more of a unit leveler, i still couldn’t get the hang of it or understand the seemingly complex leveling system. which is a shame because they have some great riko cards :C

nier reincarnation: i wasn’t going to go down with this ship but definitely wanted to give it a try. some of the pain points were the dark ui (true to the aesthetic, not a bad point per se but just enough to turn me off) and its nature as an autobattler, but autobattles were kind of tedious? somehow? and the story and especially the voice acting was good but not enough to sell me. also i just feel bad for en on the rushed release schedule to try to catch up

d4dj: dang it i also wanted to like this one a lot especially as another bushi franchise but, i can’t help it, the character designs are kind of offputting TT_TT what’s more the dj mechanic of the gameplay is kind of fun but somehow more frustrating and a tad gimmicky in the face of missed input. ... also u tellin me these catholic school girls are all dj’s? wh-

Stuff i want to at least try dammit

uma musume: man wtf is this game even about. why does it take up just as much storage as priconne, cygames. why must i suffer. i just wanna know what’s going on with these horse girls or w/e (chara designs are undeniably p nice. world flipper [cmon lets go haruhi collab] will hopefully tide me over?)

pripara/prichan: i also don’t know wtf this game is about but i see it mentioned pretty often with other cutesy idol games. i wanna know

twisted wonderland: euhghuaghga pls give me actually good EN joseimuke. pls. i need it

assault lily: i have hopes that because it’s a bushi franchise we may see it soon. it’s hard to get info on the gameplay but i’d like to give it a brief shot

still chugging along on ass creed origins. i’m enjoying parts of it but so much of it just keeps reminding me of other games that i enjoyed more lol. like ass creed syndicate had more focus on city takeover which i prefer to just wandering open world-y gameplay and better assassination levels. (also no “go kill ten hyenas to upgrade your arrow capacity” nonsense.) and as far as the open world-y stuff goes, games like tw3 and esp hzd did it better. and the stealth gameplay’s definitely been done better like i keep longing for dh2′s enemy ai lol. 

and the combat was a lot more simplified in syndicate. i got stuck in a really frustrating loop while trying to kill a phylake that i was appropriately leveled for. bc i was fighting him in a road, random soldiers kept riding by and before i even had the chance to register they were there, they’d take off half my health shooting arrows at me from horse back. next thing i knew the boss would manage to kill me with one of those staggering combo thingies that no matter how many times you mash the dodge button you can’t get out of. like i can get they wanted to make it more challenging than syndicate was since it did feel like playing with training wheels on at times, but when you got the hang of it it was really satisfying. maybe i just haven’t managed to get the hang of origins’s combat? thirty-ish hours in lol?

i do really like bayek tho he’s a cutie. and i was so excited to get to a section where you get to play as aya and of course. it’s a naval combat section. woohoo. i get that was a popular aspect of black flag but no thanks lol. also it took me until that section where she has a lot of dialogue to realize she’s voiced by alix regan which like. nothing against her as an actress but they did manage to find a black guy for bayek so it’s odd they just went with the whitest person they could get for aya? lmao.