Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@LtSarge Just wanted to say, despite having zero awareness about the Fire Emblem franchise, I really enjoyed reading your review of The Sacred Stones back there! The way you describe all the possible approaches to its gameplay really helped convey the depth that so obviously drew you in, and your enthusiasm for the experience shone through. I also quite like the sound of a game that wants you to enjoy it, and doesn't arbitrarily make itself unnecessarily difficult. I get the impression that those complaining about it being "too easy" would've lazily relied on Seth because they could, rather than recognising him as a sort of motivational stealth tutorial and then going out and building their own, even more powerful units. Thanks for sharing, and for the education about a series which, until today, had completely eluded me!

@RogerRoger Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed reading it! Yeah, I feel like Sacred Stones does a great job of teaching the player to become better at the game compared to other entries I've played. Because in all honesty, after having played this game, I kinda want to experience even more tactical RPGs that have eluded me all these years because I wasn't confident enough to play them. There are so many I've been wanting to play, such as Final Fantasy Tactics, XCOM, Mario + Rabbids, Valkyria Chronicles, Wasteland 3 and so on. I also just remembered that Nintendo is releasing remakes of Advance Wars 1 and 2 on Switch next year, which is a franchise that's very similar to Fire Emblem, so I'm definitely getting those on day one now.

But yeah, the problem with tactical RPGs is that most of them are quite challenging so it's rather hard to find a game for beginners that will help ease you into the gameplay and make you become generally better at the genre. So I'm really glad that I've finally found a good entry point with Sacred Stones as I feel more confident now in playing all these aforementioned games.

And the thing is that I've been searching for a genre to delve into that I have very little prior experience with for a long time now. It's kinda like when I started to discover turn-based JRPGs all those years ago and fell in love with that genre. I want that to happen with tactical RPGs now as the gameplay is fairly new to me (i.e. I'm not good at it so I have something to strive towards getting better at) but it's still the same thing with JRPGs in that you interact with characters, form strong attachments to them, experience a world full of rich stories, lore and so on. In other words, the familiar stuff that I love is still there but now the gameplay is different and challenging, which makes for a more fresh experience. So while Sacred Stones wasn't the next Persona 4 Golden or Trails of Cold Steel for me, perhaps there are other tactical RPGs that could end up being just that. Just the potential alone is making me excited for what's to come!

Shin Megami Tensei V - One Week and Forty Hours In

This is going to be a little different than my norm in this thread, as it neither really counts as an 'early impression,' nor does it count for a full review. But people who know me will be unsurprised to learn I've been massively hyped about this release for years, coming as it does from one of my absolute favorite JRPG franchises. Developer Atlus is arguably at the height of its historical popularity at the moment after the surprising level of mainstream penetration that was achieved by Persona 5, one of the most iconic genre releases of the last console generation, and so expectations have been running high regarding the impending release of the long-awaited sequel to that other, far older and more hardcore MegaTen series, especially after early trailers and footage have showcased something that looks wholly more ambitious than anything the developer has attempted to date. So, nearly halfway through the game, has Atlus succeeded in taking Shin Megami Tensei to the next level?

Some establishing context would probably be helpful: in this game, you play as, is standard for the series (and Atlus games in general, really), an unnamed (and very androgynous) silent protagonist who is little more than an ordinary high school student. The tranquility of his existence is disrupted when the school informs its students about a series of brutal murders that have been happening in his section of Tokyo. Your character finds himself inadvertently drawn into investigating a tunnel with some classmates where demon sightings have been reported, only for the tunnel to collapse, plunging everyone into another dimension. Your protagonist awakens in a bizarre, dream-like desert landscape (which bears an eerie resemblance to Tokyo) where he is immediately assailed by demons, and one of his classmates is abducted by an angel. Before a pack of demons is able to rip him apart, a mysterious cybernetic hunk named Aogami appears from the sky in a flash of lightning, like anime Terminator, and offers to save your life if you'll agree to take his hand (as mysterious cybernetic hunks are wont to do). Touching his hand begins a process that fuses your character and the mysterious man together into an entity we later learn is known as a Nahobino, which appears to have deep connections to the underlying lore of the game. For our purposes, though, the pretty boy protagonist and metallic hunk meld into a fused form that's equal parts Power Ranger and drag queen. Your character gains a skin-tight armor suit, an absolutely luscious and free-flowing mane of long blue hair, and, for whatever reason, his right hand is now able to turn into a light saber. After dispatching the demons in a tutorial battle, your Nahobino (who shares a consciousness with Aogami and can communicate telepathically with him) sets off to rescue his friend who was abducted by the angel.

Less Breath of the Wild, More Xenoblade Chronicles

SMT V's early footage showed off the Nahobino sliding and naruto running across gigantic landscapes, prompting speculation about the nature of the game's structure. SMT games have, traditionally, featured abstract, pulled out world maps for players to wander around in, with the camera pulling back into a proper third-person (or first-person in the oldest games) viewpoint when players would visit towns and dungeons. SMT IV bucked this trend a bit by featuring desiccated urban environments for players to explore, but most exploration of Tokyo still saw the player become a cursor on a map. Had SMT V fully shrugged off the limitations of its predecessors and gone open world with its game design?

Well, kind of, but not really. Players actually will see the return of the dreaded 'cursor on a map' viewpoint at the very start of the game as they wander around Tokyo, but, even moreso than SMT III: Nocturne, the developers seem eager to get players into the action as quickly as possible, and it's scarcely more than twenty minutes before the unnamed protagonist finds himself in Da'at. And Da'at, players will quickly come to find, is a sort of gigantic open air dungeon that is split into multiple zones across the game, which replace wholesale the more traditional map and unique location/dungeon layout of previous games.

SMT V takes a sledgehammer to the design traits of previous games in the series, frankly, as even putting aside the very open nature of the maps now, Atlus has heavily integrated platforming and collect-a-thon elements into the game. Your character can jump! And learning to platform will be necessary, as the landscapes the Nahobino explores will often require physical problem solving to navigate through. If you need to get to something on a hill, for example, you might need to survey the landscape and deduce that you'll be able to reach it if you scale that abandoned office building in the distance and then circle back around to your goal. There was at least one locked building which required my character to climb some nearby crates and then jump onto the roof to squeeze in through an open skylight. SMT V possesses an impressive sense of 3D verticality to it. And, thankfully, given all of the falls you'll be taking when you get too close to the edges of cliffs or building rooftops, there's no fall damage to worry about.

And you'll be doing a lot of this, since there are so many things your character can collect. Atlus' goal with SMT V was to emphasize atmosphere and exploration, and it has pretty brilliantly accomplished this goal, as every aspect of the experience seems to designed to encourage the player to poke around their environments as much as possible. SMT V is a game driven by player curiosity, and, in pretty much every instance, that curiosity is rewarded in some small way; with loot, rare items, rare enemies, potential side-quests, and especially Miman, small, Korok-like demons who will reward you with Glory when found, a resource that is used to strengthen the innate capabilities of your Nahobino: allowing him to use more skills, carry more demons in his stock, improve his negotiation tactics, etc.

Despite this sometimes staggering sense of openness, though, it quickly becomes clear that, as wide as the landscapes are, they're still designed to funnel you down the landscape in a specific way, because this is, after all, a linear JRPG at heart. This combination of design linearity and huge, open-ended environments is more than a little reminiscent of Nintendo's first-party Xenoblade Chronicles franchise, and that similarity extends to the way demons are situated in your environments as well. Like in XC, SMT V likes to toss in vastly overleveled enemies into the mix that will chase you if you stray too close to them. Although, unlike in XC, the game is very fair about making sure the player is able to escape from these enemies (in XC, large enemies can and will attack and kill you from a distance, which is endlessly frustrating). The director of SMT V is also the director of Atlus' Etrian Odyssey series, which also incorporates large, dangerous enemies that will chase you on the map, so the game makes effective use of these enemies not just as dangers to be avoided but also as obstacles in the path of certain items and side-quests. In one side-quest, for example, I was tasked by a demon with stealing the egg of an enormous bird monster so that he could make an omelet. This involved a lot of running and hide to avoid detection by the bird monster as I snuck into its nest and snagged its egg, and ended with a high-octane escape after the bird returned and chased me down across the map.

Side-quests in this game are generally high-quality across the board. While a few are standard resource collections affairs, many more of them involve unique tasks that make them rather memorable, and this is generally because of both the QoL features found throughout this game as well as the superb writing of the demons in general. SMT V's UI is probably my favorite in the series: the battle UI featuring cards that sit on the right side of the screen is directly lifted from the controversial Atlus/Nintendo crossover title Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and however people feel about that game, little criticism has ever been levied at its clean interface, which is put to effective use here, telling the player everything they need to know (and highlighting what they don't know) with easy-to-see symbols and bright colors. Additionally, the game features a detailed in-game map that unlocks gradually as the player clears out obstacles across the map (yes, it's very Ubisoft-esque in that respect, but I liked that the game made these obstacles unique mini-bosses instead of towers, or some variant thereof) that also minimizes any frustration associated with navigation or quest location tracking. It's all very, very polished.

The real stars of the show, though, are the demons themselves, and the game feels like it was designed around showcasing these creatures in every way imaginable. The large environments allow for the demons to naturalistically prowl the map, and they often do in great number, which must be a lot for the Nintendo Switch's puny processor to handle. The 3D models used for these entities also appear to be hugely improved over the ones utilized for your Personas in Persona 5, as they're extremely detailed and well-animated, from just their idle animations to some of the impressively detailed attacks they can engage in. It's clear a ton of effort was poured into the presentation of this game, and especially of the demons in it.

"Hey, Listen!"

So, one of the more interesting additions to the game comes in the form of "navigator demons." These demons will follow you around outside of battle and helpfully locate hidden items (and, sometimes, enemies) as you wander the wastes of Da'at. A few of these are more generic demons, but one of them, Amanozako, is absolutely bursting with personality, although whether you find her charming or gratingly annoying will probably vary from person-to-person. Her general chattiness and high-pitched squeals of "Hey, hey, hey!" will probably evoke memories of The Legend of Zelda's sometimes abrasive companion fairies.

I mentioned before that the focus was on the demons, and this extends to narrative and character as well. While the human characters in this game are mostly forgettable non-entities (which isn't SMT V's only sin, but I'll get back to that), the demons are absolutely bursting with personality. Their sidequests do a great job of fleshing out lore and character relationships between different demons, and negotiations are the funnest (and funniest!) they've ever been in the series. Atlus' localization team did an amazing job of giving each of these characters a unique voice and sense of identity that makes them feel like so much more than the fusion fodder they're often accused of being.

A bit of a side-note, but part of what makes the negotiations so much fun in this entry is how they've been overhauled. While the mechanic is unique and arguably series-defining, many previous mainline SMT games have also made them somewhat difficult to engage in. The first three games are all pretty notorious for how difficult it often is to convince these damned things to join you, and, more often than not, players would have to endure many instances of a demon accepting their offerings of macca, items, HP, etc. before either attacking them or running away. This worked against their strength as monster-collecting games. SMT IV did a good job of removing the complete reliance on RNG by making answers at least partially contingent on the personality type of the demon, and SMT V goes further by making it where demons almost never run off with your stuff, and are, in general, much more forgiving about your answers to their queries. Don't get me wrong: relations can and will still break down from time to time, but it doesn't feel as expected anymore. Many demons I've been able to recruit on my first attempt at talking with them, which almost never happened in the first three games. And, while this is subjective, I also feel like conversations in this game are less random: the back-and-forth between demons and myself feel like actual communication and less like infuriating RNG checks.

Hardcore, but Balanced

Atlus hasn't, by any means, re-invented the wheel when it comes to the battle system in this game. It's still very much the iconic press-turn combat system that they first introduced to the world in SMT III: Nocturne back in 2003. Or, rather, based on the updated version of that system that featured in 2016's SMT IV: Apocalypse, which made demons more unique by giving them affinities toward certain types of skills based on their race. There have been some notable alterations to it that change how it plays, though. The MOST notable change in the game comes via the way they've changed support skills. In previous games, buffs and debuffs were party-wide spells that could be layered on up to three times. Once they were applied, the only they thing that could alter them were other support spells that weakened or negated the effects outright. In SMT V, however, they've been wildly nerfed to put them in line with how support skills work in Persona games: by default, the beginning support skills only target one party member, and last only three turns unless applied. I imagine the intention was to help balance out the dramatic impact these skills had on the gameplay, since, in games like SMT III, a large chunk of the challenge could be removed outright if the enemy didn't possess skills that removed the effects of these skills. I'm beginning to get to the portion of the game now where party-wide support skills are beginning to crop up, but I won't pretend I'm not a little disappointed by the way in which these skills have been nerfed, even if some balancing was needed.

In terms of changes to long-standing aspects of the series that I'm not quite on-board with, it's also worth mentioning that Atlus has, for some reason, nerfed the concentrate/charge skills in this particular entry. Previously, using charge before a physical attack, or concentrate before a magic attack, caused the subsequent skill to do 2.5x its normal damage. It was a risk/reward element, you didn't do damage for one turn and then committed to using an attack skill the next, but, for your patience, it did extra damage. Now, concentrate/charge only causes the skill following them to do 1.8x damage at full affinity, which is... worse than if you just used the same move twice. I suppose the intention is to use them in conjunction with MP-costly abilities, but reducing their strategic effectiveness is baffling to me, as they're hardly worth wasting one of your demons' precious skill slots on now.

On the plus side, an alteration I'm actually a huge fan of is giving several demons neat, race-specific skills that can't be inherited by other types of demons. These skills tend to be more powerful than generic equivalent skills that can be transmitted through the fusion process. They also have really neat unique animations. It's another way that Atlus has combated the image of demons as ultimately being disposable, as certain race-specific skills are good enough that you might want to hold onto certain demons for longer than you would otherwise.

Factoring into this are another set of race-specific skills that tie into the game's new gimmick, the Magatsuhi Gauge. A resource called Magatsuhi will accumulate as you battle demons (Magatsuhi orbs can also be found in the environments) and, when when the gauge containing it fills up, you'll be able to use special abilities for a single turn. The default one that Nahobino has access to is a skill that makes it where all of your attacks register as critical hits for one term, but as you play through the game and complete side-quests, you'll gain talismans for specific types of demons that unlock custom Magatsuhi skills for all demons contained within that category. They aren't necessarily needed to win the game or even do well in battle, but they have a variety of different effects and add that little bit of depth to combat in this game. Also, as usual with SMT, enemies will also have access to the Magatsuhi gauge, so you'll want to watch out for elemental super-moves when triggered by a boss.

And, speaking of which, the bosses in this game are great. This is pretty typical for SMT, which has become infamous for its brutal bosses, and this game is no exception. You know you're playing SMT when the very first boss you encounter within the first ten hours of the game is brutal, terrifying, and looks like he'd be a mid-to-late-game boss in any other JRPG property. Thankfully, the hard mode (which I started on and chickened out of after the second boss whipped me into humility) is rather fair in SMT V. Previous games sometimes introduced aggravating changes in hard mode that jacked up prices for items and re-summoning demons from the compendium, lowered xp gain from battles, etc., but this game doesn't bother with such cheap tricks. It simply makes an already challenging experience that little bit more dangerous, to the point where I even felt kind of apprehensive fighting normal scrub mobs in the wasteland. This omnipresent fear of death won't appeal to everyone (and, indeed, eventually wore me out), but it's a nice compliment to the atmosphere of this game, which sees you attempting to survive for hours on end in deadly, demon-filled hellscapes.

No discussion of the mechanics in this game would be complete without mentioning essences, though, which are the most convenient method yet for customizing your protagonist's skillset and now can even be used to customize your demons. A demon's essence is like an imprint of their essential abilities, and they can be used to allow demons to easily inherit powerful skills and even elemental resistances that, again, makes them more valuable for longer durations. Essences can also be used to customize what your Nahobino is resistant to, like the magatama in Nocturne. While I prefer SMT IV's method of demon skill transference thematically, it can't be denied that this is far more flexibility in terms of build variety than has ever been allowed in previous SMT titles.

What the Hell Is Even Going On?

There's no easy way to address this issue, so I'm just going to be blunt: the narrative elements in this game are disappointing. I believe I've already mentioned that the characters are completely forgettable, but, honestly, that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this game's failure as a story. The pacing is really the worst of it, I think: it feels like there's thirty minutes of actual story movement and development per ten hours or so of gameplay. Intriguing concepts and mysteries are alluded to and then dropped outright as the game goes back to its status quo of exploration and demon-collecting. Now, on some level, this isn't new for this particular series: after all, SMT III was particularly notorious for feeling almost plotless at times. I would argue that SMT III's setup, where the plot is happening in the background and you're just trying to survive and figure out what the hell is going on, is a far better match for this sort of story pacing, though. Narrative elements were scant throughout that game, but each story update felt significant and gave you the sense that you were consistently getting closer to understanding the mysteries at the core of that particular title. That... is just not true here. The plot in SMT V is fairly straightforward, but so underdeveloped that the player never really has much of an investment in what's going on around them. SMT III: Nocturne utilized the element of mystery effectively in this regard, because, in that game, you never really felt like you were fully supposed to understand what was happening. Here, it just feels like Atlus' writers got bored and never expanded the story beyond a very skeletal structure.

On some level, this doesn't matter. SMT games have always been gameplay-first experiences, games you play when you want to get away from the endless dialogue and plot development in other games. Perhaps, on some level, the connection some draw from this series to Pokemon is more meaningful, since, like in Pokemon, SMT games minimize narrative elements to fully bring the focus back to exploration and monster-collecting. And, if it wasn't clear from some of my glowing writing before, this game does an absolutely amazing job, in that regard. As a monster collector, SMT V is easily the best entry in the series to date, and perhaps the subgenre as a whole. But this can't fully excuse Atlus' narrative failings otherwise. It's especially disappointing given how good the characters and plot pacing were in SMT IV and SMT IV: Apocalypse. While neither game was filled with dialogue, they did a good job of connecting the monster-collecting and dungeon crawling bits with surprisingly engaging apocalyptic stories. Hell, even the original SNES SMT (which I reviewed the GBA port of recently) does a good job of balancing these elements. Maybe Atlus' is struggling to unify its new approach to exploration and level design with narrative development, but it's hard to escape the feeling that the narrative failure here keeps this game from achieving its true potential, as it's so good in almost every other respect.

And, look, I'm a little over halfway through the game, to my understanding, so maybe Atlus will somehow save this as the game goes on and end it with a really gripping, compelling narrative, or even give us a reason to care about the people who are supposedly allies with my protagonist. But if I feel this way after forty hours with the game, I get the feeling it's not going to improve substantially enough to significantly sway my opinion on the writing and pacing of the main plot.

Very Pretty, Except When It's Not

Shin Megami Tensei V is easily Atlus' most technically and visually demanding game to date. It's arguably the first game they've ever made that doesn't feel like it could have been made to run on a Playstation 2. That seems like damning praise, but its attention to detail, sometimes dense environments, particle effects, and the general scope of the whole affair makes it feel like a distinctly modern game in a way that Atlus games haven't really even attempted before now. And, as a Nintendo Switch exclusive, it's really pushing the little guy. On some level, that's readily apparent when you play the game, as it sometimes feels less like an experience optimized for the mobile chipset and more like one of those downgraded ports of demanding PS4 games. This is most noticeable in terms of the resolution and textures on the character models themselves, as, during the game's elaborate and beautiful demon fusion sequences, the framerate will briefly slow to a crawl and the models, while extremely detailed, will look slightly fuzzy. You'll also notice this distinct fuzziness on character models in the menu screen when it zooms in.

Having said this, to be absolutely clear, the game does not run poorly. I've heard that particular line bandied about by people who are sour that they can't play this at 4K/60 at high settings on their beefy rigs or next-gen consoles, but it really does run remarkably well on the hardware considering what it's doing. There are some frame drops here and there, to be sure, but most of the game runs fluidly enough, and it's only really noticeable in those forementioned fusion cutscenes. Likewise, while the resolution tends to be somewhat lower than ideal, it's also stable enough and doesn't bottom out like certain other demanding JRPGs do on the system. In terms of presentation, it's a pretty good match for something like Dragon Quest XI S: clearly visually compromised, but still very nice looking. Especially with the wonderful vivid and stylized use of color throughout.

I should also mention that the game has pretty impressive load times. The initial load into the game probably takes twenty seconds or so, but actually fast-traveling around the a given area of the game is, if not instantaneous, than close enough that it's functionally identical. And even on occasions where it spends more than a few seconds loading, one doesn't notice the time at all thanks to the lore entries on various demons it'll randomly load up. Generally, you have enough time to read one of these before the games gets you where you need to be.

On the topic of presentation, I also want to briefly call attention to the absolutely superb sound design and music in this game. SMT V is, simply put, a treat for the ears. Returning composer Ryota Kozuka, who also did the absolutely phenomenal OSTs for the SMT IV duology on the 3DS, turns in some of his best work here. The pieces hit a variety of moods, from creepy ambience to blood-boiling, hard-rocking battle themes, but it almost all has a very grungy, crunchy sound to it that I really love. I'll link a few pieces below. The wastes of Da'at achieve a large portion of their atmosphere not just from the music, but also from the distant growls, chirps, and unearthly squeals of demons around you. It can actually be quite unnerving with headphones on.

Oh, and the english dub cast does a pretty good job in their roles. It's just too bad they aren't given more of an opportunity to shine.

At the beginning of this write-up, I asked a question: has Atlus succeeded in taking Shin Megami Tensei to the next level? The answer: not fully, but it certainly excels in several respects. SMT V is a flawed product in some ways, but those flaws haven't really put a damper on my experience, as the basic gameplay loop, presentation, music, boss battles, etc. are all so fantastic. So far, it's definitely my favorite new game released in 2021, and I'm excited to keep playing it for another 30 - 40 hours and see everything it has to offer. I'll expand my review of its basic mechanics, themes, etc. when I finish the game, as well as offer a full evaluation of it as a finished product. So far, I'm impressed.

@Ralizah Great write-up! Even though you haven't finished the game, playing a JRPG for 40 hours should still be able to give you a decent picture of what the game is like as a whole and I feel like I got that from your impressions. I can't imagine the story suddenly getting better in the second half of the game and if it does, then that's poor pacing by the developer.

Speaking of the story, did you happen to watch IGN's review of SMT5? They criticised it for not having a good story just like you did, but they did so while comparing the game to Persona 5 and that ticked a lot of people off, lol. Just look at the like/dislike ratio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUj6nYJaZvM I feel like even if the Persona comparison was unwarranted, it does seem like the story in SMT5 could've been much better compared to previous SMT games like IV as you mentioned.

Anyway, after reading about the game's open world aspect and new emphasis on platforming as well as collecting stuff, I've now become even more interested in this game. Granted, it still seems like a difficult experience but I do think I want to play it as my second SMT game, perhaps after IV or something. It just seems like a very well-crafted game that I'd enjoy, especially on the Switch.

When it comes to performance, it does seem like a lot of Switch JRPGs are having graphical/performance issues or downgrades in general when compared to other systems. I've been buying so many games lately on Switch that are also available on PS4, such as Ys VIII, Persona 5 Strikers, Trials of Mana and NEO: The World Ends With You and all of them are downgraded on Switch in terms of visuals, loading times, and especially frame rate. However, despite all of this, I would still prefer to play games like these and SMT5 on Switch because of the portability. I just don't like spending dozens of hours on JRPGs in front of the TV. So in that regard, I'll be getting the Switch versions of these games anytime I can. I'm guessing that's your preference as well? Did you play much of SMT5 in handheld mode?

I also have some last points/questions that I want to bring up. I've always wondered about charge/concentrate in Persona, now that you mentioned that they used to do 2.5x damage in the next round but now they only do 1.8x. Did those attacks also do 2.5x damage in Persona 5? Because I've always thought: why not just do the same attack twice instead of wasting a round charging up? Lastly, how are deaths/game overs handled in SMT5 and across the difficulty settings? Do you get sent back to a previous save point and if so, how frequent are the save points in this game? Is there an instant retry on the easier difficulty settings?

@Ralizah When the Switch just released, many people were clamoring for every game to release on it, so they could play it in handheld. But I think for every Switch third party exclusive you're going to see the opposite, especially with next gen out now: people will be sad they can't play the game on their fancy new machine. It's probably a back and forth that will go on for eternity!

@LtSarge They also do 2.5 damage in Persona 5 Royal at least. The description of the skill says "more than two times the damage" or something.

The IGN review is weird. I do believe there is a merit to having someone review the game comparing it to Persona in some ways, as most players will have played Persona, but might not have played SMT. There are a multitude of reviews out there, so all these comments seem so overblown and just gatekeerper-ish. That being said, I don't think that IGN review was very helpful for me, @Ralizah's piece here has been so much more helpful in deciding when to get the game for me. So thanks, Ral!

@LtSarge Oh yes, I've kept myself apprised of the IGN review situation ("Persona without the heart" will forever be a meme in this community, lol). She really triggered a portion of the fandom with the Persona 5 references in her piece. I understand why she was doing it (this was probably her second Atlus JRPG after P5, and I imagine that'll be true for a lot of people), but I also understand the frustrations of the community when several critics have, in the past, attacked the SMT games for not being like their more popular spinoff series. To her credit, she has confronted this head-on, and actually went on an SMT-related podcast to discuss her review with the host.

Well, keep in mind this game has multiple difficulty settings, and so is one of the more accessible entries in the series as a result. You can start on casual difficulty in this, for example, whereas something like SMT IV forces you to die multiple times before it'll allow you to unlock an easier difficulty setting. This game also doesn't have an insane difficulty spike near the beginning like SMT IV did.

SMT IV was actually my introduction to the series, though, and I loved it, despite its flaws. Amazing atmosphere, some really cool, shocking story beats, and, of course, engaging gameplay, gorgeous music, etc.

But yeah, if the collect-a-thon/platforming/exploration aspects of SMT V sound appealing, you'll be well-served in that regard. It's really well done.

I also prefer playing JRPGs on Switch when the option is there, yes. Downgrades don't bother me if they're not too severe, given handheld mode is such a cool and useful trade-off, and since I tend to play across a multitude of platforms and so am used to variable performance in my games anyway. Almost all demanding games last gen were downgraded on PS4 compared to PC, for example, but PS4 didn't have anything comparable to handheld mode to make the sacrifices worth it, so I generally went with PC for the few AAA multiplats I purchased.

Yeah, handheld mode holds up fine in SMT V. I played on the TV when possible, but I've been glued to it throughout the week, so I've also spent a decent bit of time with it undocked. There's the usual small hit to the resolution/image quality compared to docked mode, of course, but it's nothing dramatic.

The multiplier for charge/concentrate in the most recent Persona games was 2.5x, yes. That's the reason it's worth using, because it causes more damage than just using the same move twice and also saves on MP costs for costly skills.

SMT V is very old school when it comes to saving, which might be another thing that attracts you more to the 3DS games. In the 3DS games, you could save almost anywhere, but here, you're reliant on saving at Leyline Founts, which also connect you to the World of Shadows (this game's equivalent of the Velvet Room), the primary vendor in this game, a healing station, and other Founts throughout the landscape. These Founts are also spaced out rather widely, and finding new ones will often be your priority as you explore the various zones in this game. Thankfully, this isn't really an issue since it's only a few hours in that the game gives you the ability to immediately warp to the last Leyline Fount you interacted with at any time. So there's never any real danger of losing progress if you need to save, because save points are just a button tap away.

Unfortunately, no instant retry. You get booted to the title screen upon death. Thankfully, the load times are quick enough that I never found this too painful, as it's easy to click back into your save file fairly quickly when you skip the game's (very cool) death animation.

@Kidfried I agree. There'll always be this back-and-forth between people who want better performance and people who want more versatility with their exclusives. P5 vs SMT V is a great example: many people, including me, wanted P5 on Switch so we could play it portably. And I imagine a lot of PS5 owners will want this game on home consoles so they can play it at a smoother framerate and higher resolution (which I understand; I only made the mistake of trying to play a Switch game on a 4K set once, lol).

Glad I was able to help! I'm guessing you're going to wait to see if the rumors about home console ports of this pan out?

@Kidfried @Ralizah Well, now I've learned something new about Persona 5 regarding charge/concentration! That's good to know for future playthroughs.

Yeah I mean, it was totally unnecessary to keep comparing SMT5 to Persona 5 but it still felt like the responses were way too harsh since she still gave the game an 8/10. It's weird because I remember watching the review first and thinking it was pretty good overall, but then I scrolled down to the YouTube comments and everybody was absolutely destroying her, lol.

@Ralizah I'm really glad to hear that both SMT IV and V are very accessible games, both in terms of difficulty settings but also saving. I think you've pretty much convinced me to play through these two games and I've added both of them to my watchlist now. After Persona 5, I've always felt like I wanted to get better at its gameplay loop and I hope that with SMT being more difficult than Persona in general that it will push me to become better. I'm really looking forward to playing them!

Radiohead's KID A MNESIA Exihibition'

IMPRESSIONS

• It's free! That's great, but I should also stress that you shouldn't expect a lengthy experience or something technically impressive.
• This is not a game, but rather a museum walking simulator. If that doesn't sound in any way fun to you, then this is probably not for you!
• You don't need to know both albums Kid A and Amnesiac inside out, but at least listen to them both once before playing this "game". The game really helps to bring the album to live, but it does depend on you at least being aware of what's on the album.
• The game is designed as a museum, in which you can freely walk from room to room, each with its own theme. Of course it's not a regular museum; there's a lot more going on.
• Stanley Donwood is Radiohead's visual artist, moreso than the music it's his artwork on display here. His work for Kid A and Amnesiac was also his most iconic, so it makes a lot of sense to have him be the star of the show. If, like me, you like visiting modern art musea and love Donwood's style, you'll certainly appreciate everything going on here. The game will show off a lot of different things: visuals for the album, sketches, videos, related work and new stuff.
• Musically there are some nice things going on too, although less the focus here. There are a few Radiohead songs in here, some live recordings, nice remixes, but a few rooms also do a great job of highlighting certain parts of the songs, like only the vocals or the bass. To me this really helped to get new perspective on the music too, even though it's not mindblowing.
• Feel I need to stress this: this experience is not like a visualizer for the album. It's rather a deconstructed version of the album. From song songs you'll only hear fragments, or just a few instruments. If you want the album, listen the album!
• I've been talking about music and visuals seperately so far, but this game is definitely more than the sum of its parts. There's synergy between what you see and hear, and also to how you approach each room. Music might kick in at the exact same moment you enter a room, the room itself might change based on how you wlak through it. It's not a game, but it does use the medium of video games to give you an experience that you can only have in a game.
• I got stuck at some point and didn't know how to progress in the museum. If this happens to you, here is my tip: walk in the green light in the pyramid.

CONCLUSION

Just try this little experience if you like Radiohead's music, Donwood's art or preferably both! The game is a great combination between walking through an art museum and providing visuals for two iconic albums. It's neither of those, but rather something in between. It's free, so even if not all rooms are interesting to you, I promise there will be a few that you'll like enough to warrant the experience.

Grade: 9/10 if you're a fan!

@LtSarge Yeah, I'm almost a total stranger to the Tactical RPG sub-genre. I say "almost" because of an attempted playthrough of Mario + Rabbids a couple years back, which unfortunately had to be abandoned in its fourth quarter. Given its subject matter, I'd imagine that's another one which eases newcomers into the genre (can't say for certain without having played any comparative examples) so that might be where you wanna head next, now that The Sacred Stones has gotten you off to a good start. I really hope your forthcoming exploration of the genre is a rewarding one! Because I agree that sharing a struggle alongside your characters can heighten your connection with them, absolutely. Best of luck!

***

@Ralizah Well, this is earlier than I was expecting! Had a little bet with myself about whether you'd crack and write an impressions piece, or whether you'd wait to write a full review. I owe me five bucks.

Not that I'm complaining, of course! This is the most anticipated post of the topic, and you haven't disappointed in the slightest. Your writing has never been better. I love how you've formally structured your ongoing thoughts into subtitled sections and framed them against the question you've been hoping about for years, and clearly considering since launch. Every point you make or element you discuss flows beautifully into the next. It's like reading liquid gold.

It's therefore a shame that, at least thusfar, SMT V doesn't appear to be a comparable home run / slam dunk / hole-in-one / yahtzee (delete according to personal sports preference). Its premise definitely reminded me of what you'd described in your previous SMT reviews, at least until the whole "Drag Queen T-800 Jedi" thing came up (now there's an image) and then you started describing its wholesale changes to gameplay and exploration of Da'at. There's clearly a lot to love about the experience, and the way you describe it is infectiously positive at times but, as I was reading, I thought it all sounded like stuff I'd recognise from other games, or welcome because of how it makes everything easier, and that's not necessarily a good thing in a series with such a unique identity.

Especially when you then reveal that the story isn't quite holding everything together. When it comes to the balance between story and gameplay, each game is gonna make its own decision and that's fine, but I'd almost find a bad minimalist story more of a problem, I reckon. Here's hoping for some kind of spectacular twist or revelation to make it all worthwhile!

But it's a testament to SMT V that, despite your honesty about the above, you're still having an absolute blast with it. Whilst it's admirable that you've taken a step back, to ensure that you're not allowing your intense passion for the game and its wider series to sugar-coat any critical analysis, it's more important that you enjoy yourself, and I'm ultimately real glad to see that you are. You make one heck of an advocate, that's for sure, as you've even managed to make me curious!

***

@Kidfried That sure sounds like a fascinating experience, and I can think of a hundred soundtracks, albums and artists that I'd love to see in such a setting! It's just a shame that Radiohead isn't one of them, but I'm real pleased that, as a fan, you've been able to get such a kick from it. To be able to live inside music like that, to explore it and think about it differently, must be a treat!

@RogerRoger Yeah, I agree that it would be fun to engage with other music in a similar way too. It has to be music with a strong and distinct visual angle to work as well as this.

(The James Bond intros would be a lot of fun)

@Kidfried Nice write-up. This definitely seems like one of the oddest experiences on PSN: deconstructed versions of albums turned into a walking simulator where you examine concept art, listen to snippets of music, etc. And it's even free. I appreciate you making the effort to explain what exactly this is, since, honestly, I've been baffled since I first heard this mentioned. My first guess WOULD have been that it was an artful way of presenting the music from the forementioned albums in a more visual format, but it sounds much more like a compliment to the experience of listening to them than anything.

I've never listened to Radiohead before, but if I ever find myself taken with their music, I'll definitely check this out at some point.

@LtSarge The review score was never the issue. SMT V is high quality, and even her review mostly reflects that. She just unknowingly stumbled into a very sensitive issue for the SMT fanbase online, lol. I do think there is a larger discussion to be had here about the sort of expertise we should expect from video game reviewers, since her review would have been more useful had it instead drawn more parallels with other Shin Megami Tensei games instead of comparing it directly to a series that, in certain respects, is wildly different, but, as usual, I do agree the angry/toxic reactions were over-the-top. It's an earnest, if imperfect, review by a player new to the franchise, not some mean-spirited indictment by a vindictive Persona fan.

But people on the internet always need to be angry about something, and this is just an extension of that.

Anyway, SMT V is far more accessible than SMT IV, since, like I said, it doesn't have the massive difficulty spike near the start that SMT IV does. That's not meant to scare you off of it, though. It's a great game, and conquering it WILL make you a much better MegaTen/Persona player, since you pretty much have to understand and consistently exploit the battle mechanics in order to win. SMT IV also has an amazing aesthetic, although it only comes into its own after the first dungeon. You'll see what I mean if you play the game. It's a really awesome twist of perspective.

SMT IV: Apocalypse, a sidequel to SMT IV, is actually the most accessible entry in the series, and also the most story-heavy. If it didn't spoil certain aspects of SMT IV, I'd say it was the ideal branching off point for Persona fans. It also arguably has the most balanced difficulty level and battle mechanics in the entire series.

@RogerRoger You know I don't have that much self-control.

Yeah, SMT V isn't fully a slam dunk, which is unfortunate, but thankfully it's successful in the ways I really needed it to be successful.

The minimalistic story wouldn't be an issue if it was structured in a way that fed into that minimalism. SMT III was, so, for the most part, the story approach in that game worked. This game's structure is one that would work far better with more character development, a stronger emphasis on set-pieces, etc. It has some of those, and they're pretty cool when they crop up! But they're too far apart and not developed enough to be properly impactful, which is a shame.

I do think it's worth pointing out that, despite porting design elements from other series that have never been in the SMT games to date, it still feels like an SMT game and, by and large, the changes are mostly big improvements on what came before. It's a testament to how good the combat and balancing is that this is still so challenging on hard difficulty despite stripping out almost all of the elements of the series that made it artificially difficult.

Despite tearing hard into certain aspects of the game in my piece, the flaws are more a theoretical annoyance for me than anything. Ultimately, I probably don't play SMT games for their stories any more than Dark Souls players do, since they live or die on the combat, atmosphere, and monster-collecting gameplay loop. But it'd be nice, nonetheless, to be able to recommend it wholeheartedly to people without needing to put an asterisk next to it.

@Kidfried Good shout, yeah. That's why I love soundtracks so much, because they've been composed to match, evoke or compliment specific scenes, emotions or tones, so I think they'd work really well. Here's hoping this particular project gains some traction, and encourages others to give it a go!

***

@Ralizah I know, I know. It was a foolish bet. This is why I don't gamble!

There are so, so many imperfect games that I adore, so I understand that some of your criticisms weren't to be taken as criticisms, if that makes sense. It's just a relief that this wasn't some kind of savage teardown as you walked away from an unfinished playthrough, and that your huge amount of hype is holding water for now. At least, when there is some story to be had, it arrives in cool set-piece form! Judging by those screencaps you posted, I'd imagine those can get pretty spectacular!

And that's always a good feeling to have, that a sequel has the right DNA at its core. That's probably how you're able to sit there and go "okay, this isn't perfect, and this isn't perfect, but it doesn't matter because I'm still having the time of my life" and that's part of being a fan. Somehow, in some way, you know that you're getting what you turned up for, and that's what counts.

Here's to the second part of your post, and seeing how it all comes together!

@RogerRoger Apologies for the very late reply.

Ugh Wiimote. I admit they were pretty good for rail shooters though: Dead Space Extraction was rather enjoyable for what it was, and is a good example of developers putting in effort making bespoke games for a weaker system.

We are of the same mind, so thanks for bravely opening that box!

There's a sweet spot for game length, and 10-15 hours is a pretty reasonable experience for me. Remember when CoDs started releasing with six-hour campaigns? At the time people were not happy, but there was further value in the multiplayer offerings. A lot of people do only buy a few games a year, often around Christmas, so I can see why they would want something that lasts. For hobbyist gamers it's perhaps less of an issue. When I've had less money I've simply prioritised what games I want most, rather than what would offer the most playtime, and always enjoyed replaying favourites. And yeah, old games really seemed to lean hard into difficulty extending replayability. It took me a long time to complete Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as a child! It's not really a tactic I like, but I think it was a combination of wanting to make something that lasts, alongside game design simply being limited by the technology of the era. Obviously a lot of games lacked saves because including it made the cartridges more expensive.

Although I have to chuckle at you calling a twenty-hour game "snappy" because, in my book, twenty hours is pretty hefty.

Haha, well for a Japanese RPG they are snappy! I find them easy to get into and know both games very well, so it's a kind of comfort-food gaming alongside the likes of Ocarina of Time. Although Final Fantasy IV isn't my favourite in the series by a long shot, it's the one I've replayed the most. So, depending on the game how long it is isn't necessarily what's most important, but how replayable it is.

I've never played Half Life 2. I tried playing the first game, and fell off it real quick. Wasn't for me.

At the time I wasn't really into FPS games, and the only one I'd ever played before was BioShock (which I loved, but not for its FPSishness). Half Life 2 and its episodes just clicked so much. I played them during quite a difficult time at home, and having that to focus on was really beneficial. I've never played the first Half Life, but my understanding is that HL2 is a lot more open and ambitious, and it had a pretty revolutionary physics system. The level design is impeccable, and the gunplay is excellent. It's actually not too dissimilar to something like Wolfenstein: The New Order, with its "old-fashioned" approach to level design. The marquee feature is the "gravity gun", which is intuitive and encourages player creativity. It allows you to pick up a number of items and use them as projectiles: my favourites are the mini saws in the horror-themed Ravenholm level. There are some vehicle sections that are less fun, but that often seems to be the case in FPS games! Anyway, I'm a bit hyper for Half Life 2, so will stop now. 😂

And I would wholeheartedly recommend Ōkami. It's rather delightful! Aside from the little bug man that lives in Ameterasu's fur and is a complete pervert.

@LtSarge Wonderful and informative Fire Emblem review. It's great to see older games reviewed. Fire Emblem is a series I've been meaning to get into for a long time: I have the 3DS entries, as well as Sacred Stones (which was one of the 3DS Ambassador titles). It's great to hear that the difficulty is just right, thanks to the ability to grind. One thing that has put me off the older games is the permadeath feature, but I think I've always approached TRPGs the wrong way, in turn making them more difficult than they need to be. My tactic in other strategy games was to get through maps as quickly as possible, rather than taking my time, which then led to frustration.

@Ralizah Ooh, fabulous Shin Megami Tensei V impressions piece. I love your description of Nahubino! Much like Persona 5 the setup sounds utterly ridiculous on paper, does't it? I was a little surprised at how quickly the game got going: it really doesn't mess around. Thus far I've found the demons and exploration to be the main draw. I love how snappy the battle system is, and talking to the various demons is quite rewarding, with some very darkly comic dialogue. Other than the story (which we've talked about elsewhere), I'm very impressed with the game. Nahubino's agility and jump ability really opens up the game more than simply having larger environments. And how cute are the Miman?

The performance is a mixed bag for me, and I wonder if the Switch is truly the best system for the game. It's what it's on, and it's not affected my enjoyment, but I see the gorgeous animations, updated demon designs and artistic flourishes, and then see the compromises needed to get the game running. On the TV the lack of post-processing and heavy pop-in is rather distracting, so I've been playing in handheld mode as I prefer the lower resolution.

I haven't seen the furore over the IGN review. I agree that SMT and Persona are completely different beasts, and not that useful as a point of comparison. However, anyone expecting Persona is going to be disappointed. It's not unreasonable to assume that the series is a stepping stone to SMT, given Persona's popularity. Personally, I find the more "pure" RPG experience refreshing, and the higher difficulty is welcome.

@Kidfried Nice impressions. It sounds like a nice little experience, and a really interesting way to engage with the music. I really like the idea of a virtual audio-visual museum, with the deconstructed music harmonising with the art. It reminds me a little of an interactive David Bowie exhibition that's on iOS, but that costs £10! I've said before that I'm not a Radiohead fan, but as per your advice I have listened to bits and bobs, and now am not quite so averse to them.

@mookysam Thanks mate! Yeah I actually played The Sacred Stones on 3DS as I also got it as part of the ambassador program. It felt perfect on there and I'm glad that I ended up choosing that version over the Wii U one (which I also have) since it was rather tempting to play it on Wii U due to save states. But yeah, it really isn't necessary to use save states in this game as it's not too difficult to get through.

I was the same actually. I'm an impulsive person in general so I tend to lose my patience when playing tactical RPGs like Fire Emblem. But once the gameplay clicks with you, you start to instinctively take your time as you really want to win the battle without losing any units. And yeah, it happened sometimes that I lost a unit and decided to start over, but it helped me learn an important lesson as a result. Which is that you shouldn't try to use all units you get access to. There will be some really good ones and some that just aren't that good, and you should mostly use units that are very strong. My issue was that I tried to level up everyone because I didn't know when I would need them. Most of the time though, you are going to use units that have horses because they have high movement which makes the game easier to play. So after a certain point in the game, it was fairly obvious to me that I just needed to bring with me all my cavaliers, my strongest foot soldiers and maybe some flying units or archers depending on the situation. So my best advice is to simply leave the weaker units behind and don't be afraid to only use the few strongest ones at first. Then when you get access to the grinding area, you can experiment with other units and find out which ones have great potential. For example, one of my strongest units (who actually ended up killing the final boss in one hit!) was in the beginning one of my weakest ones with low HP and he did barely any damage. Then I leveled him up, changed his class to a Pirate and he became an absolute beast with high speed, high attack and high defense. After some time I changed his class to a Berserker and he became absolutely unstoppable. I would've never realised his potential if it weren't for the grinding area. So it's important to use the strongest units but also experiment with the newer ones you get in order to find even more stronger ones to add to your team.

@mookysam No apology necessary, and thank you for replying!

I do remember more than a few Wiimote calibration issues, but it was fairly good at pointing and clicking, which is why I figured it'd work well with the rail shooter genre. I'd expect any port to be properly adapted for the technology, short of a bespoke version. What was your specific issue with the Wiimote?

You have my respect for completing Sonic 2 properly! I always used to use the level select cheat hidden in the Sound Test, at least when playing on an original MegaDrive. But you're right, fun is fun, regardless of whether it lasts ten minutes or ten weeks. And you're right about Christmas being a typical focal point for people to update their collections, today of all days. I see many folks (including some forum regulars) taking advantage of Black Friday sales and buying in bulk to stock up. As much as you and I agree that a game's length isn't as crucial as its quality, I can understand how somebody burning through a stack of six games inside of a week might be a little disappointed.

Oh, from what I gather, heck yes, a twenty-hour JRPG would be considered snappy! A lot of my comfort food gaming could probably be consumed within a day, even without knowing it pixel-for-pixel.

Your passion for Half Life 2 is clear, and makes me feel bad for dismissing its predecessor so readily, so maybe I should give the series another pass at some point. I'm glad it was there for you during a difficult time, and that it helped (we've all got "that" game in our collections, I'm sure). I have heard of some of its more famous features, most notably the Gravity Gun. Didn't realise it had vehicle sections, though! That is a surprise. Games of that era were always trying to include those, and yet they hardly ever worked. Knowing me, they'll probably end up being my favourite levels!

And thanks for the Ōkami recommendation! I'm sure it's a matter of when now, not if.

@mookysam Thanks!

MegaTen games can be difficult to describe to newbies without getting raised eyebrows.

"It's an RPG set in a fantasy post-apocalypse with heavy inspiration taken from Hinduism and classical Indian mythology. Oh, and also, you have to cannibalize your opponents to grow stronger."

"Well, you see, it's an RPG where you play as a teenager in modern Tokyo, and it has heavy life sim elements like dating, working jobs, hanging out with friends, etc. Also, it explores sociological/psychological themes within a Nietzschean paradigm, there's heavy use of Jungian symbolism, and you basically enter fantasy otherworlds, befriend entities within the collective unconscious, and masquerade as a sort of superhero while still trying to keep your grades up."

"OK, so, these games are like apocalyptic versions of Pokemon, except gods and mythological entities from world mythology are the monsters you collect. Typically you need to choose a side in a brutal ideological war between competing factions of religious fascists who worship God and social darwinists who serve Lucifer. Also, in the latest one, you look like a power ranger in drag."

I suppose the uniqueness of Atlus' games are part of their appeal, though.

The Miman are interesting. Very ugly-cute. I'm glad there's a reasonable number of them in the game and they're not just pouring out your ears like the koroks in BotW.

SMT V definitely feels like it would have been a much nicer fit on the PS4, technically. Whereas Persona 5 doesn't feel like it's taking advantage of the PS4's technology AT ALL in terms of character model detail, level design, etc. The only way I can explain it is that the team that makes Nintendo games wanted to go big on potato hardware, and the team that releases games on Playstation consoles is still married to the idea that game design peaked on the PS2.

I have a few issues with the gameplay. But, in general, SMT V is pretty much my ideal monster collector game, and the best entry in the series from that perspective. It feels like solidly 70% of the effort in this game was poured into the demons. It's everything I've ever wanted from a Pokemon game, tbh.

And, on that note, I'm starting to wish there was LESS plot than there was. Or, rather, that it wasn't structuring itself like a plot-driven JRPG when it CLEARLY has no interest in developing a proper narrative. You could remove pretty much everything related to Bethel and most of the characters in this game and it would, if anything, improve it.

Back in 2009, Lara Croft was in an awkward position.

Tomb Raider Underworld had been released the previous year, concluding a trilogy which had spanned a console generation gap, and had therefore felt a little outdated towards its end. Design trends were shifting. The First Lady of Gaming was starting to show her age, especially during the inevitable comparisons to "dude raider" Nathan Drake and his critical darling of a sequel, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. In order to stay relevant, developer Crystal Dynamics would have to take drastic action.

Early concept art for what eventually became Tomb Raider (2013) showed a teenage Lara riding on horseback through a misty forest of dead trees, using a bow and arrows to fend off several terrifying witches plucked straight out of that cursed videotape from The Ring. Initial reaction was highly sceptical; there had always been horror elements in classic Tomb Raider games, but this artwork, combined with the tagline "A Survivor is Born" being trademarked in late 2010, made some fans think that Lara was being dragged down a path more suited to the Claire Redfields and Leon S. Kennedys of the gaming world.

As with all projects, however, the final product bore little resemblance to its initial pitch. There's quite a lot of material available on the official Tomb Raider YouTube channel showing what might've been but, somewhere along the line, the horse got deleted, the witches were reworked and almost removed entirely, and the story of Lara's first expedition became much more grounded. Shipwrecked on the cursed Japanese island of Yamatai, she and her motley crew must figure out how to survive, who a mysterious scavenger cult are after, and why they all appear to be trapped by some supernatural storms.

The game still represents a big uptick for the series' horror vibe, right down to that aforementioned crew, who provide the typical "Who will live, and who will die?" intrigue of an ensemble cast. Some of them are even likeable, but it's Lara who (obviously) gets the spotlight. Despite this, her motivations are nebulous at best. We get audio logs and diary insights into the others, but Lara just periodically mumbles some musings about wanting to survive, and maybe feeling a tad guilty for getting everybody stranded. This might sound like a criticism, but it makes for a believable origin, given that she's always been an accidental hero, with the world-ending ramifications of the relics she sought being secondary to her obsessive thrill-seeking kleptomania. But that's a story for another time; Tomb Raider (2013) is more interested in showing us how Lara became a fearless adventurer, not why. Hence that tagline, "A Survivor is Born", which gently reframes her as a sort of Bear Grylls in the making, instead of the gender-swapped Indiana Jones she used to be.

This approach was not without controversy. Unhelpful pre-release developer interviews suggested that presenting players with a more vulnerable Lara would "make people want to protect her" and this, coupled with a preview of a sequence showing a male enemy forcing himself on a captive Lara, generated a minor outcry. These elements cause very little discomfort when you actually play the game for yourself; overall, its characterisation is solid, charting a logical course for Lara's ascent to unbridled badassery. The offending sequence is nowhere near as sensationalist as journalists and commentators seemed to want it to be. Would it be written differently today? Of course it would. Is that a problem? Of course it isn't.

Another element of the game's previews which caused some concern amongst long-term fans was the apparent abundance of semi-scripted, cinematic set pieces. Clips of Lara running towards the camera as things exploded behind her were deemed to be "too similar" to Nathan Drake's latest linear exploits. Again, as is often the case, the reality revealed the folly of a knee-jerk reaction; all of that brilliant trailer fodder comprises ten, maybe fifteen minutes of the game's twelve hour story. The rest of the time (and for an additional six to eight hours of compulsive collecting) you're left to enjoy a sizeable series of interconnected linear-plus maps, which challenge Lara to run, jump, climb, shoot and backtrack but also, most importantly, think. Not to any brain-aching degree, I'll grant you, but there are still moments where you're forced to stop, look up at a ledge you want to reach, and wonder, "Okay, just how the heck do I get up there?!" With so many weapons and items at your disposal, from chasm-crossing rope arrows to flaming torches that'll be extinguished if you carry them under a waterfall, you can have a lot to consider. Uncharted might've made for a better rollercoaster ride, but Tomb Raider (2013) is a much better game, offering players more involvement and agency in its proceedings.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the game's seven Optional Tombs, which are squirreled away in overgrown corners of certain areas and present Lara with a specific puzzle to solve, in order to reach a rare reward. At this point in the trilogy (...oh yeah, spoiler alert, this is gonna be a long one, sorry) said puzzles are almost insultingly simple, and Lara's own brand of Detective Vision, named "Survivor Instincts", can make a mockery of them, but they demonstrate how Crystal Dynamics didn't forget about the series' roots in a rush to streamline and modernise everything. Conversely, having them be entirely optional to the story satiates the more immediate desires of those looking to enjoy a playable movie. The bottom line is that yes, despite initial appearances, there is actual tomb raiding in this Tomb Raider game.

There's also an online multiplayer mode, using the game's combat mechanics (which honestly, are a bit clunky in a basic firefight) to offer up deathmatch, rescue and capture the flag sessions, but I've never been bothered enough to try it, so I can't pass judgement. From what I gather, people found it okay enough, but the fact that it never made a return in future games speaks volumes to me.

Tomb Raider (2013) was initially released on PC, PS3 and Xbox360, and then became Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition on PS4 and XboxONE the following year. Including all of the multiplayer DLC, as well as fancy new technology for Lara's hair and a 60fps framerate on PS4, this upgrade took an already gorgeous game and made it an eighth generation contender. The problem is, some of the additional lens flare and particle effects can occasionally obscure the action, all but ensuring a couple of gruesome deaths during visually busy, semi-scripted sliding sequences. Nevertheless, I'd still argue that playing on PS4 is the best approach, with a powerful PC in second place and the PS3 original as a surprisingly viable third.

***

Lara Croft was back.

Her reboot had been enough of a critical and commercial success to guarantee a sequel, even if publisher Square Enix were reportedly disappointed that the game hadn't made them more money (apparently, selling 3.4 million copies within three weeks of a Q1 launch isn't enough to please a boardroom full of suits, which explains a lot about the gaming industry's ongoing problem with expectation versus reality). A few short months later, Microsoft spectacularly dropped the ball with their disastrous XboxONE reveal. That might seem like an odd thing to randomly mention but, when considered alongside Square Enix's reaction... well, people do stupid things when they're desperate, don't they?

Rise of the Tomb Raider launched on November 10, 2015 as a timed exclusive for Xbox360 and XboxONE, with Microsoft Studios temporarily sitting in the publisher's seat. In the face of fan outrage, all parties openly admitted that Microsoft had thrown cash at the game because they didn't have an answer to Sony's successful Uncharted franchise, and they badly needed a major brand to prop up the XboxONE as it struggled to shrug off its awful reputation. Quite why they decided to launch Rise on the same day as Fallout 4 is anybody's guess but, sufficed to say, sales weren't the Band-Aid they needed, and the game languished in relative obscurity until its exclusivity window had passed.

When it finally crossed over to PS4 on October 11, 2016, it became Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration to coincide with the 20th Anniversary of Lara's original debut, and was packed with expanded content both old and new, at no extra cost. It didn't even come in a box; physical copies shipped in the back of a beautiful miniature artbook. It was an obvious apology.

And a slightly unnecessary one because, as much as I hate to admit it, all of that extra Microsoft money must've been put to good use. Rise of the Tomb Raider is a very impressive game.

We join Lara halfway up a mountain in Siberia. Emboldened by her experience on Yamatai, she's seeking an immortality myth with the help of friend and fellow survivor Jonah. After an extended prologue which flashes back to a small tomb in Syria, we return to the snow and ice and succumb to an avalanche which immediately devolves Lara back to where we first met her in 2013. Get ready to learn all about crafting, Survivor Instincts and rope arrows all over again!

Aside from this contrived compulsion to tutorialise, Rise ends up adding a lot to its predecessor's winning formula. It expands both the story and gameplay without overloading either aspect, although Crystal Dynamics fail to balance these competing elements properly on occasion, the unfortunate result of which is some disjointed pacing. At times, the game can feel equal parts bloated and rushed, trying to keep you engaged with intrigue and depth whilst also distracting you with countless hours of optional and ultimately unimportant busywork. You'll sink entire evenings into exploring hidden crypts, learning new languages and fulfilling side quests, only to then arrive at a major story beat and be disappointed that it lasts all of five minutes. This gives you a choice; you can either sprint through the story of Rise inside a weekend, or clear your entire schedule for a fortnight and aim for 100% completion.

And that's without even touching upon all of that aforementioned expanded content, included by default in 20 Year Celebration on PS4 and purchasable everywhere else. One piece of DLC is integrated into the main game's map, a long side quest called Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch which is an example of how to do the ol' hallucination trope justice, and stars Ashly Burch as an NPC who must've been off sick the day they handed out lip syncing animation (perhaps the only presentational flaw in the entire game, it must be said). Then there's Cold Darkness Awakened, a separate chunk of non-canon sandbox story in which Ms. Burch's character returns to help Lara shut down an old, malfunctioning Soviet chemical weapons factory that just so happens to be overrun with zombies. It sounds lazy, and it shouldn't work, but it really, really does. It's tense and creepy and wonderfully addictive.

Elsewhere, the game's Endurance Mode casts one or two players out into a procedurally-generated Siberian wilderness to see how long they can survive. With warmth and hunger meters constantly ticking down, you must dash about pilfering relics and artefacts from caves and crypts whilst also building campfires, hunting for food, and fighting enemies both human and animal. It's perfect on paper, and executed rather well, but I always find myself reaching a certain point and thinking, "This was cool an' all, but I need more context than a scorecard." At which point, there remains Blood Ties, a return to Croft Manor after its long absence from the series. It's kind of a walking simulator, also playable in VR, during which you help Lara piece together enough evidence to stop her uncle from seizing control of the estate. This is where the 20 Year Celebration release crams in its most obvious Easter Eggs, alongside the classic Lara models that can be worn like outfits during level replays and New Game Plus.

Despite these charming callbacks to the franchise's past, the core story of Rise attempts to soften some of Lara's self-centeredness, allowing her to become a traditional "save the world" hero as the game's villains nefariously strive for world domination. After an ending which sadly feels like a copy-paste from the previous game (only this time, it's bigger... thank you, Micro$oft) we're shown a safer, more straightforward series of conclusions and cliffhangers. These do the job in context, but they also destroy any attempt to unify the multiple Lara Crofts scattered throughout history. It becomes increasingly difficult to imagine this incarnation donning hot pants and answering job offers with, "Sorry, I only play for sport."

Which is strange when you consider that, according to Crystal Dynamics themselves, the entire point of this reboot trilogy was to show how Lara became the Tomb Raider. If that was supposed to be our final destination, then why were we getting further away from it? Back in early 2017, fans were nervous. Was one last, solitary game gonna be able to bridge that widening gap?

Then came the news that Crystal Dynamics were leaving Lara behind, in favour of making Marvel games, and we all know how that went.

So, step forward, Eidos Montréal. No pressure or anything.

***

I'm making it sound more dramatic than it was. The fan reaction might've framed the switch as a betrayal by Crystal Dynamics, abandoning the trilogy and allowing it to be finished by an untested, unfamiliar new developer, but the truth was that Eidos Montréal had acted as a support studio for the previous two games, and that Crystal Dynamics were simply flipping that relationship, staying on to guide, advise and lend a hand where necessary. Those desperate to assign yet another controversy to yet another Tomb Raider game would have to look elsewhere (and trust me, they did; more on that later).

Despite being leaked very early in its development (in late 2016, somebody took a sneaky over-the-shoulder snapshot of an Eidos Montréal employee's laptop as they worked during a subway ride, grabbing the game's title) marketing for Shadow of the Tomb Raider didn't begin until six months before its scheduled launch on September 14, 2018. This compressed hype train revealed the story's dark tone, used the tagline "Become the Tomb Raider" to assure people that the trilogy's narrative arc hadn't been forgotten, and previewed a steady stream of fresh, oft-requested gameplay features and improvements, making it look like the most incredible and immersive Tomb Raider game ever made.

It also revealed that the game would ship with the series' first ever dedicated Photo Mode, which isn't why it's my favourite of the trilogy, I assure you. Honest.

One of the biggest headlines was that, after some waist-deep wading in Tomb Raider (2013) and very linear, almost scripted corridor swimming in Rise, full underwater environments would be making a comeback, allowing Lara to freely explore sunken ruins and recover submerged treasure whilst dodging deadly eels and patrols of piranha fish. Back on land, traversal would now include the ability to climb on certain ceilings and scale overhangs. Lara would be able to drop a rappelling line where necessary and use it to swing across what would otherwise be an impassable abyss. Lastly, the game would take players to the hidden city of Paititi, a large hub world which would force our rich, white protagonist to stop blindly carving a swathe through Latin America and actually interact with its indigenous population.

As noble as the inclusion of Paititi is (complete with its dual set of dialogue options, allowing its citizens to talk in their own language if you prefer) its inclusion brings the story's brisk pace to a screeching halt, and its sheer size and complexity can be a little overwhelming. It also plays home to a couple of really boring side quests that amount to wandering about and chatting to a half-dozen folks for barely any payoff; thankfully, as you'd expect, they're entirely optional. As are another batch of Challenge Tombs and crypts, although I would advise against skipping them. After the idea's underwhelming introduction in 2013, these pleasant diversions reached their potential in Rise but here, in Shadow, they borderline exceed it, providing some of the game's most memorable moments. What's even better is that, thanks to the genius implementation of isolated difficulty settings for all three gameplay aspects, you can still be tested by their mechanics without also having to be a regular Annie Oakley in combat.

Said combat is scaled way back in Shadow, however, becoming far less frequent than it was in the previous two games. Each encounter has also been designed to encourage Lara to get much more "up close and personal" with her prey, as you smear mud all over her face and hide her in the jungle's undergrowth (or overgrowth) whilst she brandishes a large hunting knife. This feels satisfyingly lethal to execute, if you'll pardon the pun, but it's also in service of the story's take on Lara herself, and that aforementioned need to finish adding, or at least explaining, all the layers of her character.

I can't decide whether the Lara who starts Shadow is the natural embodiment of a conflict between obsessive and heroic personality traits, or whether she's merely a convenient retcon, walking back some of what happened in Rise in order to write a more interesting story. Perhaps it doesn't matter, as the end result is the same either way. Blinded by her personal proximity to ongoing events, Lara triggers the Mayan apocalypse and must fix her mistake before Trinity, the villains who've got her all riled up, seize the opportunity to reshape the world as they see fit. For the first two-thirds of the game, this premise really delivers, asking probing questions to generate real insight, weight and some genuine heart, so it's a shame when the final act descends into something altogether more generic, as Lara races to retrieve the MacGuffiniest of MacGuffins from a Very Bad Man™ before the credits roll. Regardless of this slightly disappointing destination, the journey itself remains worthwhile, visiting the darkest depths of the series' potential along the way. As an attempt to explain Lara beyond her surface-level details, it's admirable, if not perfect.

Speaking of those surface-level details, and as I previously promised to mention, Lara's updated appearance for Shadow was the target of obnoxious online criticism as soon as the first trailer dropped, for looking "too ripped" and therefore "ugly" and "not feminine enough" (ignoring the fact that somebody who hangs off cliffs for a living would believably develop arms the size of Christmas hams). In yet another display of their superb attention to detail, Eidos Montréal had engineered Lara so that when climbing or pulling a bowstring, her muscles would be noticeably more defined than when she was just jogging or standing idle, but they still caved to the demands of entitled Twitter jockeys and toned down their original intentions. The variable effect is still present in the final game, but so is a "Muscle Intensity" slider in the Photo Mode, which always reverts to the lowest setting by default. And this is why we can't have nice things anymore.

Shadow received seven months of post-launch support, with the developers releasing a steady stream of brand new, narrative-driven Challenge Tombs, some of which rank among my favourite locations from the entire franchise. Whilst not as diverse as the DLC found in Rise, these expanded side quests double down on jaw-dropping spectacle and escapism, and all are seamlessly folded into the main game itself, making Shadow seem less scattershot with its content. Bundled together and relaunched as Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition on November 4, 2019, it also recently received a PS5 patch to boost its 4K Resolution Mode to 60fps, making its 1080p Framerate Mode all but redundant on modern hardware. Wherever you choose to play it, though, it'll be a breathtakingly pretty game.

***

The last time I reviewed a Tomb Raider trilogy developed by Crystal Dynamics, my opinion lessened with each subsequent entry, so perhaps it's fortuitous that another developer (albeit one that had been apprenticing for two games) was handed the reins for this latest Lara's final fling. That isn't to criticise Crystal Dynamics in any way, nor is it to undermine their remarkable achievement in creating and maintaining the majority of this reboot project. It's just rare to see such a typical trilogy trend reversed because here, this time around, things start out great and only get greater.

Tomb Raider (2013) is a textbook example of how to reinvent and reinvigorate an institution. It's more atmospheric than its successors, and benefits from a tighter focus. The gameplay is raw and the story is simple, but it's ideal groundwork for what follows. Not only does it still hold up today, but I'm confident it'll still hold up decades down the line. It's a modern classic.

Rise of the Tomb Raider, once it had stopped being kicked about by corporate shenanigans, is arguably the best videogame of the bunch. The variety found in its additional content will keep you playing long after you think you're done, out of willingness rather than obligation, but even the main game itself is packed with thoughtful, and therefore welcome, improvements. It's a bona fide blockbuster.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a supremely confident game. It opens with a plane crash but, unlike the avalanche in Rise, this catastrophe doesn't devolve Lara for very long, and that's indicative of its whole approach. It wants you to have fun, to be able to wander off the beaten path every now and again, and to ultimately feel like a raider of tombs. To help facilitate this, Lara is at her most capable, demonstrating her growth over the course of the trilogy, and the game itself is also far less intrusive, no longer dragging you into its menus whenever you pick up a trinket or find an audio log. It's dark and disturbing, but also carefree and awe-inspiring, and always more exciting than not. Eidos Montréal should be freakin' proud of themselves because, in almost every way, it's the ultimate Tomb Raider experience.

And, after those conclusions, I don't think I need to reiterate which is my favourite.

@RogerRoger Rog, what a fantastic read and a fitting tribute to an outstanding trilogy. I really enjoyed your behind-the-scene nuggets which give nice context and paint an interesting backstory.

It brought back great memories of my own playthroughs of each of the games.

@RogerRoger Excellent read, thank you! I really enjoyed this trilogy and personally felt like it gained momentum as it went along. As a fan of the ‘Legend’ era, I’m happy to see the series was able to continue to move forward in a positive direction. For whatever reason, Blood Ties stands out for me as a unique and particularly enjoyable piece of DLC. Something about exploring Croft manor is so “Tomb Raider” to me and it was a wonderful addition.

@RogerRoger Great piece, Rog! You're really good at crafting narratives that smoothly transition the reader from one game to another, and making it feel like one unified bit of writing instead of three reviews stapled together.

I enjoyed the brief detours into discussions of game performance, small nitpicks with how they're designed, DLC content, and the controversies and development changes that cropped up throughout the series. The extra modes and DLC content for Rise actually sound pretty unique and diverse.

Your discussion of how the trilogy was originally supposed to transition the character into a place where she resembled the Lara of old before Rise derailed the arc of her characterization kinda reminds me of how often I heard people argue that Casino Royale was going to be a 'character prequel' for James Bond, explain how trauma and betrayal would fashion him into the suave but cold-hearted customer that Sean Connery best exemplified in his performances as the character. But, as we both know, that never happened.

I have access to at least two of these games on PS4, and one on PC, so I really need to get around to starting them eventually. Frankly, they sound like the series I was hoping Uncharted would be.