Another
terrible Persona formula retread with incredibly distracting visual
effects and word bubbles in 35 different fonts constantly popping up on
screen, a fairy sidekick infinitely more condescending and insufferable
than Navi, and dialog that all reads like a smug-shit Redditor arguing
with his sockpuppet accounts - nothing but snappy back-and-forth stuffed
with the same repeated platitudes and smug one-liners and cutesy turns of phrase and snarky quips and grandiose comic book villain speeches to firmly establish that you're reading the ethos of their latest straw man. Said straw men are of course always quickly, cleanly defeated with one boss battle and all the harm they do is instantly undone, because it's not like brutality and mob violence just begets more of the same, or that removing one bad person from the equation won't instantly solve systemic problems; nope, that's far too mature and might actually show that even well-intentioned actions can have serious negative consequences. But don't tell that to the armchair moralists this trash was written for, because they earnestly believe performative tough-talk with no thought spared for nuance or realism or even taking any action beyond 'pwning' people on the internet makes them infallible superheroes, and anyone who says it doesn't is just another villain for them to defeat say more mean words to at a future date. Masturbatory shit like this gets boring to read and listen to really fucking fast, and the fact that they have the gall to charge you $70 for the privilege of sitting through 100+ hours of it is just plain insulting. Moreso because whenever they're not proselytizing at you, they're treating you like you're braindead - rather than
letting you intuit anything through subtext or even context, the game
shows you something, then a character explains it to you in simple
words, then another character (or two, or three) has to tell it to you
again five seconds later just to make sure you fucking get it. Seriously every other scene goes exactly like
this:
Game shows the player a map
DIPSHIT FAIRY: This is a map! Boy it's a well made map! You know what a map is, right Main Character?
OTHER GUY: This map will show us to our destination!
YET ANOTHER GUY: Our destination is here! Click the location on the map to lead us there, Main Character!
This
is an M-rated video game not Dora the Explorer. Actually I take that
back, I'd rather watch Dora the Explorer; at least the characters in
that talk like real people and not charismaless Beetlejuices.
Oh and you can spare me your black-and-white straw man bullshit about how I just hate this game for 'being woke' or whatever; I'm about as left wing as you can get. I just hate when megacorporations superficially appropriate political movements so they can score easy brownie points with impressionable dickheads and bank a few million more bucks for the rich conservatives on their board of directors. It was insulting as shit in 1995 with Breath of Fire 2, again in 2002 with Final Fantasy X, and it's disingenuous smug crap here too. Instead of giving money to already well-paid hacks so you can conflate your fictional feats of heroism with actual good deeds and win the adoration of impressionable idiots on the internet, toss that $70 to Amnesty International, or at the very least toss a few bucks to an indie dev who would kill for a tiny fraction of the revenue this shit will generate; at least that way you're doing some actual good in the world instead of being part of the fucking problem. Because talking out of one side of your mouth about how good and pious you are while telling me to kill myself over a fucking video game review out of the other sure as hell doesn't make you look like a paragon of virtue...
Screenshot removed because looking at this game gives me a migraine
Developer: Atlus Studio Zero
Publisher: Sega
Released: 2024
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, XBox Series
Oh and if you want to give the impression that your game's really progressive maybe don't use fascist dogwhistles, like describing your idealized utopia with the phrase "one united tribe". Just sayin'...