Jake Schweber – Google

The Wonderful 101 gets a 1.01/10 from me. Why such specific numbers you ask? Well I’ll tell you. Let me regale you in a tale for the ages. *Ahem* I just came down with COVID today and I realized I’m going to be stuck in my apartment for a little while. So I went on the Nintendo e-shop and found the wonderful 101 remastered on sale for $20.00 and I thought, “why the heck not?” 2 hours in and I wish I would’ve chosen otherwise knowing what was in store for me. So let’s begin with why I don’t like this game. 1. The story - it’s ridiculous and feels like a Saturday morning cartoon done in a pseudo anime style. And it has some truly corny puns. But I can look past that. Some I actually enjoy. But I’m just not a fan of it. 2. The camera - I can’t see what my character is doing. The camera is so far zoomed out and the game is so fast paced that I lose track of everything during the heat of battle. It’s good for cinematic moments but bad for moment to moment gameplay. 3. The frame rate - (note this may differ on other consoles but I played on the switch and this was my experience) the frame rate wasn’t too bad most of the time. But during boss battles, it would dip into the low 20s and would cost me a hit or worse, a life. 4. The controls - these controls are overly complicated for what’s supposed to be a hack n slash style action game. The button layout isn’t intuitive at all and creating weapons with the right analog stick (or touch screen if you’re playing on the switch like me) never felt right. Plus I could never successfully dodge without feeling vulnerable to attacks. I also noticed some input delay on certain commands like the previously mentioned dodge. 5. the UI - there’s way too much clutter on the screen for me to keep track of during the game. It’s information overload. The game doesn’t explain its mechanics very well, which leads to moments of confusion and frustration when you don’t know which button does what. 6. Lastly, the difficulty or selective difficulty to put it one way - this game is not beginner friendly. Granted I’m playing on normal but I should not be seeing the game over screen this many times. The enemies and bosses take too many hits to kill and you get sent flying away if you get hit by them. Oh and most larger enemies have ranged weapons. You don’t. At least I don’t yet. Now the game will resume where you died with the enemy at the same health as when you died. But where’s the challenge in that? There’s no skill mastery involved with this game. You just keep mashing buttons until you kill the thing or you die, respawn and keep mashing until the thing dies. Sorry for the elongated rant. But this game really bothered me after trying to complete a bonus mission for a half hour. It’s a shame because I’ve heard really good things about it. Maybe the remastered version is inferior and the original is a great game. Sadly I’ll never know. Sorry wonderful 101. You were not wonderful at all. Thumbs down 👎🏻 Also forgot to add something I just found out. Sometimes you can’t pause the game during the heat of the battle. That’s right, you can’t PAUSE THE F**KING GAME during the chaotic fighting sections. You know what…I’m taking away that .01 I had for laughs. This is a 1/10 game.

My Persona 5 story: This was my first Persona/Shin Migami Tensei (hope that’s how you say it) game. I actually didn’t get around to playing Persona 5 until last year and I’ll explain why. I am NOT an RPG fan at all. I can’t ever finish them. I find them to be too grind heavy and a lot of the stories I find to be cliche or uninspired. With characters that don’t seem like real people, but quirky video game characters instead. I just find the games to be boring overall and they take forever to complete. With that being said, I’d heard nothing but positivity surrounding this game. That it was not just one of the best games of the series, but one of the best RPGs, or just games rather, of the decade. However I was still skeptical. Then I heard about some of my favorite content creators on YouTube endlessly praising the game when they themselves aren’t RPG fans either. That definitely got me curious about it. But I still passed on buying it around Mid 2017. Then Joker got announced for Smash Bros and my interest immediately kicked in. I thought, “this has to be an important game for this character to make it into smash.” But I still didn’t buy the game. Mostly because I was still playing Smash Bros and Insomniac’s Spider-Man. So Persona 5 still eluded me for 3 years since it first came out. Until one fateful day. October 15th, 2019. The game was on sale on the PlayStation network for $19.99. I thought to myself “Okay, it’s time to finally give this game a try.” Especially since Persona 5 Royal was coming out 6 months from the time. I started it up. I watched the beautifully stylish intro cutscene, and I started the game. And now April 15, 2020. Exactly 6 months from the day I purchased and downloaded the game. What do I have to say about it. Did it live up to the hype? Or was it one big disappointment? Well I can definitely say without hesitation that Persona 5 does not live up to the hype. IT EXCEEDED IT AND THEN SOME!! This game surpassed any expectation I ever had about it. And I’m so happy I got the chance to experience it. I won’t spoil anything about the actual game because I want people to experience it for themselves. But trust me. This game is worth every bit of your time and money. This is hands down the best RPG I’ve ever played. If you haven’t played Persona 5 yet, I would strongly recommend you to get your hands on this game by any means necessary. Or get Persona 5 Royal, which just came out. Even if you are not an RPG fan like myself, give this game a try. I can not recommend this game enough. And I want to thank everyone at Atlus for making this game. I love this game. And I think you will too if you try it.