Recent reviews by MapleJava

I really wanted to like this game, as I enjoyed the original, but theres a lot of issues that make this game feel much weaker than the predecessor

+Music is just as good
+Areas still look pretty decent
+New tools are very useful, especially the hoverboard to help with movement, and having the bookmarker also function as a radar to help with collectibles
+at least double the locations compared to the original

-Some areas are much weaker than the original, Minami is much less memorable than Domo Paradiso from the original IMO, Plus some areas look worse, such asMinami having awkward unity terrain hills with no detail and crypts just looking flat out ugly.
-Many areas just feel like long quests with backtracking now. the original game had these issues too, but felt not as tedious due to the fact that many locations had multiple objectives that could be done in any order.
-Story just felt worse. It wasn't too strong in the original, but barely mattered in this 2nd game.
-Theres way too much reuse, obviously yes you can reuse assets, but it was much more egregious here, with several NPCS used in the original, and the only new NPCS being the same human asset. They were less terrible in the original due to the lower poly models, especially with them matching the already PS1 style, but with the new style being Y2K-Dreamcast like, they stick out like a sore thumb alongside the reused ps1 models. Besides that, theres barely any new unique NPCS, with the humans and robots being reused a comedic amount of times. Also the background/non-interactible NPCS look just ugly, compared to just having the nude low poly models of humans wandering around, even worse when comparing to original's Geocity doing something unique and having them all be emissions.
-Barely any new ads, it felt like they used the same small batch of ads throughout, when doing a short replay of the original, there was a much larger count then whats shown, same for products available to buy. in this game, it felt like the same 6 designs were just taken and then thrown on random models that didnt feel like they even matched at all, so using the credit card felt worse.
-Camera is much more annoying now. The original had some kind of free-form allowing you to see how many icons you could cram in your view to get the most amount of likes, here it feels like you have to move around just to get the right angle just to match the 4 corners. At some point, just standing relatively close and spamming clicks until I got the image taken ended up being the way I did the photos
-Outdated memes kinda didn't fit the vibe at all. With the whole vibe being Y2K, instead it just felt like reusing jokes, and using way too new things like NFTS and crypto throughout.

If you want to play this, i'd suggest just playing the original instead.

this is the greatest fighting game ever made not just because the creator invited me to izakaya after a tournament but everybody should play this game

YOU ARE KINOKO

WE ARE KINOKO

made me cry

fih <3

absolutely incomprehensible. i am enamored.

As a kickstarter backer, although there's a lot of things that I didn't really like, I still think its a pretty good game and worth experiencing

+Unique art style throughout, almost Studio TRIGGER-like
+Very cool looking areas throughout
+There is a large amount of good music to enjoy.
+The voicework is really good too.
+The writing is fairly good as well as characterization.
+The extra arcade mode is very nice to have

-The story is not bad but just alright, it feels a bit short, and then suddenly ramps up to 100 when it feels like it hasn't reached that point in the story yet.
-The story and ending is really nice, but it also has a really loose, interpretive and overall incomprehensibility to it, almost like Suda51's method of twists and turns.
-Some bugs, but nothing game breaking, with the lightbulb crash being honestly pretty funny.
---The rhythm game is also a bit too punishing. Unlike some rhythm games where messing up can be recovered, the health system in the gameplay uses a "exhaust" system, so it never regenerates, meaning screwups happen a lot.
---Screwups also makes it a pain with harder difficulties. I played through all of this on expert, but had to switch towards hard at the very end cause of the dynamic points in charting, notably "fight" portions, where the screen instantly switches towards the other side, giving you several notes in succession without any warning, meaning a huge chunk of your health just goes away because "you didn't see our unpredictable notes". This also somewhat happens in just the regular mode.
---Some of the minigames are frustrating or just awkward. Stuff like baseball is annoying to do since it feels like some points it doesn't keep the same rhythm or follow the rhythm. The jump rope I couldn't even do.
---Autosaves genuinely makes this frustrating to do everything in the story since there are lots of points in the story that are just points of no return. You end up doing stuff, but sometimes it just immediately advances.
---Battles also have some "lose to continue, but with a special scene if you do win", but these points are also annoying to do, because sometimes you aren't even allowed to retry. It happens a lot that you are constantly on edge trying not to game over since you know you only get one chance, and the autosave will screw you over regardless.
-----Prisonball.

A lot of my issues can be solved with patches, which they noted in patchnotes, but there are a few things that are a bit awkward, but overall its still a really good game and a good rhythm game to play with.

this isnt persona

its peak

good music, good visuals but really weird not including keyboard controls, also since no online or even local play it very much feels like its ported straight from the arcade requiring you to actually find a real person who fws tgm as much as you do

finally gave rathalos his theme back actual 10/10