Recent reviews by Leo

(i'm just the average consumer so im not good at writing indepth reviews like this lmao. rather, this is more indepth than how i usually write my reviews)

Aaaah man, the story of hope. Such a tale can be difficult to craft if you cannot resonate with your audience, but Atlus did that well.

I've only played the SMT and Persona series from Atlus, but man their take on dark fantasy is definitely something I didn't expect. There are themes that can get your skin crawling somewhat, but those moments give so much oomph to the triumphs ahead.

As for gameplay, I haven't played any Atlus games after Persona 5 Royal years ago when it first came out on consoles, so it's gonna be my reference for comparing modern Atlus.

Metaphor still has the daily system. I love and hate it parts of it, personally, no matter the game, the constraint of doing limited stuff in a limited time sometimes gets to me.
But I think Metaphor strikes a good balance of "spend your time wisely" and "just do whatever you wanna do". I did it blind but making sure to travel the world, and by the end of the calendar, I had less than a week left, and that includes doing the coliseum stuff. You can definitely have way more leeway if you want to skip the coliseum in favor of focusing on other stuff. It'll probably be 2 more weeks to max out stuff which is imo more than enough to get everything done without caring about minmaxing, like what I did. I just focused on spending days doing at least one of all events that provide royal virtue points, because I just wanted to see what little dialogue they spun up for this.

Royal Virtues, the equivalent to Traits in Persona 5, are done way better here, in my opinion. In past Persona games, I've personally disliked that you had to waste an additional afternoon/night if you chose the wrong answers during these bond events. In Metaphor, they just freely let you choose whatever choice suits you without punishing you for it. Choices in Follower events give you MAG (used for Archetypes) instead of bond points or whatever, which have no impact to how Follower events progress, as they are guaranteed to rank up whenever you finish them.
Also I should note that it was so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nice to not feel the need to whip out the notepad for Followers AT ALL. IN PAST GAMES, IT ANNOYED ME SO DAMN MUCH WHENEVER I HAD TO REMEMBER 7 DIFFERENT PEOPLE'S SCHEDULES AND THEN TAILOR MY SCHEDULE SO I CAN MAX OUT THEIR DAMN RANKS.
Metaphor feels way more free form and I REALLY hope they maintain this for future games.

SPEAKING OF ARCHETYPES. I REALLY love how the focus is much more vertical for your "summons/creatures" when compared to SMT and Persona. Each cast member can be customized heavily to your liking (I have Hulkenberg on her final Archetype using Commander buffs and Faker debuffs for dodge tanking) and I much more appreciate that. Having a smaller set of creatures and developing on them more feels more close and personal to me than having a huge variety of creatures.

Battle system, may be hit or miss for some but it was a hit for me, personally. Trying to craft builds and teams to make sure you can win before giving the enemy a turn or 2 for the overworld, then trying to balance defense and offense during boss fights is exciting.
The way they handled encounters in dungeons is so refreshing, it's not just your simple "press Square to start fight with an advantage". No no no, you have to earn it. You have to attack enemies in the overworld to bring down their stun bar, doing so will give you your average "start fight with an advantage". But if you mess up and the enemy retaliates before you can react to dodge, the game just reminds you that Atlus is responsible for the SMT franchise.
Going through P5R on Hard, I never felt the need to tailor my team towards enemy weaknesses until the postgame content. But by then, I already had access to crazy crits and/or Almighty so it felt moot to me, so during the story I just ran whoever I wanted and never got punished until postgame. Whereas in Metaphor, it strikes a very nice balance of difficulty between Persona and SMT. Metaphor is definitely grindy on Hard difficulty but fights requiring that kind of grind is something I missed from playing the SMT games (last I played was SMT4, have not touched SMT5 yet). Tailoring your team around encounters is why I LOVED SMT so much, and it's what I missed in Persona, but I'm glad I can somewhat relive it here in Metaphor without it being as agonizing as SMT (I'm getting old).

Overall, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fantastic game. I cannot recommend it enough. The story of hope is definitely a tale worth playing through. I cannot wait for the next entry in the Metaphor IP, if they choose to do so. They cut so much filler from their usual gameplay design and I'm all for it.
Never in my life would I have expected a game to grab my heart stronger than Persona 3 did back in the day, but I'm glad Atlus still continues to be great and prove me wrong.
Metaphor is now my personal favorite entry from the Atlus library right now and I can't wait to see what's in store for the future. Cheers!

Really fun game. I played a lot of Mist and Vesper, pretty solved what I wanted from them and got so much mileage pre-Limbo. Trying out Shell now because his execution is so much fun and I'm dying alot lmao.
Coming from Risk of Rain 2, you can see how much this game is inspired off of it. It gets alot of roguelike elements done right.

My cons with this game isnt alot tbh but I hope they do get addressed someday.
I wish worlds 1 and 4 had another biome or 2, instead of the 1 they both currently hve.
I wish earlier bosses would have more patterns/mechanics that are at least somewhat close to later world bosses

Overall, great game. Highly recommend!

i wish i started playing sooner

Get to an area, hint towards plot, MINIGAME TIME! Plot appears, head to next area, hint towards plot, MORE MINIGAMES!
It's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ exhausting, I can't even remember the reason why we ended up at the Golden Saucer with how much pausing there is between areas. Hit Corel Prison and guess what, more minigames to feed the chocobo to progress the plot even more.

It's hard to recommend a game that is still taking its time on letting you fully enjoy the game, not really allowing players to get a full scope of the game to properly review it.
Wait for the timegates (I think it's like 2 weeks after launch), then go and try the game. It's annoying trying to stretch as much as you can do everyday because the game is intentionally trying to artificially prolong player retention.

no lmfao. homework turned into a game

flip

I recommend it ONLY IF your machine is able to handle the unoptimized crap that this game has. I've personally had an alright time, but that's because I've updated my hardware for this game cuz I love this franchise and didn't want to miss out.
I've had several friends crash multiple times in a day, sometimes multiple times in a single hunt. Thank ♥♥♥♥ they can at least rejoin the quest if they crash mid-quest.
Disconnecting in the middle of a quest is also annoyingly present from time to time, disconnecting from friends and you can't really reconnect mid-quest (afaik).

Not too much content yet, you can do everything the game mainly offers in under 100 hours.
Main story lasts about 12-15 hours even with doing side quests (different from optional quests).
Doing decoration and artian part farming is what's gonna take bulk of your time if you're into that. Decoration isn't also as horrid as it was in World, so thank god.
Getting all the achievements can also add a chunky amount of hours, mainly whopper fishing and crown farming for me.

I personally think this isn't worth $70 because the content feels very small, so if that's a factor to you, I'd wait until more Title Updates drop or probably when/if the expansion comes out.
But if you are having a MH itch and you want something new, this game is worth it imo.

Fix the problem (triple support) that killed a good portion of Overwatch's playerbase and this will be an even greater game

Sun Haven is my personal favorite between Stardew Valley and Fields of Mistria.

The main reasons are the day length slider, which can extend to a maximum of 40 real-life minutes per in-game day, and the absence of a stamina system. I tend to get very ambitious in these types of games, wanting to do everything, and in comparison, both Fields of Mistria and Stardew Valley feel overwhelming and limiting when I want to do that. Fields of Mistria is a bit more flexible than Stardew Valley, but Sun Haven really allows me to feel free.

I love being able to use spells to help with the farm, Earthquake tilling the ground for you and Rain Cloud being able to water a 5x10 area is satisfying. Speaking of spells, being able to use Chain Lightning and Fireball for combat is sick too. The combat in this game isn't really a highlight, I see it more as a nice addition, it's nothing to write home for, but I do love the existence of it in a magic-heavy game.