Recent reviews by jalipeno97

this is my game of the year for 2025. such a masterful work of art, from the narrative, to the visuals, to the insanely well put together combat. the narrative is incredibly moving especially in the later acts. i related so much in fact to the protagonist and their struggles that i ended up choosing the bad ending of the game, knowing full well i would have made the same decision if i were in their shoes.

easily the new best way to play the game going forward, especially considering the seamlessly implemented gamepad support and console versions to come soon. pretty much all of the new assets can be disabled for those wanting a vanilla experience as well

very well designed game. i understand why the gameplay change is controversial but i still really enjoyed it for what it was and felt it had the core of doom in it. music isnt as good as mick gordons but still serves the game well. only real issue is the rt requirement will tank performance for many prospective players. i use an rx6700xt and to get playable performance i had to run the game on full low settings at 720p

technical issues running the game aside, this game is a mockery of everything immersive sims stand for an i cannot recommend it to anyone. the goals of streamlining the dx formula have significantly reduced all of the things that made the series great to begin with: player freedom, experimentation and emergent gameplay. just a few examples of poor design:

-) ammo is now universal between all weapons and reloading doesnt exist. no alternate ammo types or anything, you just get a "gun" metre
-) the 9 augmentation slots of the original game have been reduced to six, each containing 2 standard and one black market augmentation. biomods can only be upgraded twice as opposed to the original 3 times, and the augments are either returning from the first game with severely limited usability, or their usefulness extends to "you can hack vending machines"
-) no matter how you spec out your character, combat is 90% of the time the only solution to any given problem. with how limited the augmentation options are, no matter what character you build youll end up speccing somewhat into combat
-) movement is awful, weapon feel is somehow worse than the original game. and this is especially sinful considering this games much heavier combat focus
-) main objectives follow the same formula of having two slightly different objectives for whatever two factions are begging for your attention at the time, i.e: break into a hangar and either kill or revive the frozen body there. minor objectives still required for progression tend to have but one solution, usually depending on the user having equipment to handle it, and supplying the equipment in the room prior for this express purpose
-) writing and voicework isnt great like the first game, but this game also loses all of the appeal of the writing of the original. everyone speaks in a stilted tone with unnatural language and im pretty sure one of the major characters literally uses a text to speech voice
-) plot makes no sense and attempts to make every ending of the original game canon in the most unsatisfying and confusing way possible. characters have no depth, your decisions have only the impact of what minor deviation you make in your current objective and what enemies you will be fighting in the next map (even then, the first 2/3rds of the game wont even alter enemy types based on your choices because they havent gotten to the "cool" twist yet). your ending is essentially decided the moment you complete the second to last objective, where the game gives you a list of the active factions and you just buddy up with whoever you wanted
-) i completed the game in under an hour. yes its that short. that was also my FIRST playthrough. this is compared to the original deus ex which lasts about 30 hours on a first playthrough and offers near endless replay value

past how poorly the game is designed, it doesnt even function properly on modern windows. it took me 3 weeks to get this game to run on my machine and it required a fanmade patch, the dgvoodoo wrapper, installing process lasso to limit the game to only two cores else it would crash on every single loading screen, running the game in windows 95 compatability mode for some reason, AND it requires being run as an administrator meaning the steam overlay wouldnt function.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME

the best unreal tournament title, epic, please bring these back :(

classic title thats aged extremely well in all departments (except gameplay unfortunately, expect your fair share of classic adventure game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ deaths)

i absolutely adore the visuals and atmosphere however and its absolutely worth a playthrough for that alone at the very least, long live the amiga

really fun metroidvania fps title, just dont do what i did and play on hard for your first playthrough. the game is utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on anything above medium

honestly a pleasant short romp, i enjoyed both games equally, 80s cryptic nonsense aside

7 years of development and we have. half life 2 but it looks slightly different and feels off. great job guys

jalipeno goty 2024
(NOMINATED FOR SEVERAL AWARDS LFG)

this game ♥♥♥♥♥♥ rocks, its simultaneously a showcase of the best of atlus game design over the last 20 years, as well as being extremely refreshing in both gameplay concepts and world design. im generally not a fan of fantasy settings, but this twist on the genre caught my attention for the runtime of the game

the realtime combat aspect of the game is extremely undermarketted, it adds significantly more depth to gameplay than just stunning normal enemies and instakilling weaker ones. once an enemy is stunned, you can yield your assault and use the advantage to make an escape and preserve resources. the weapon type the player character wields affects realtime combat in several ways; the mage and healer can restore health for the party with aoe damage; the thief can steal items away from enemies by stunning them on the field; weapon damage type and power affects the strength and speed of your attacks and dodging. the realtime combat adds so much depth to the dungeon crawling that it makes the lackluster and frankly worse than the original dungeon crawling featured in p3 reload look ridiculous by comparison

squad battles got just as much attention, with the solid foundation of the press turn system from mainline smt, as well as a formation mechanic straight out of oldschool megaten, with a twist. synthesis skills come straight from persona 2s fusion spells and offer great utility at the cost of a heftier turn icon cost. (for example, until the very end of the game you can only cast multitarget magic with synthesis skills) this is all not mentioning the archetype system, which manages to bring the job system seen in games from other developers into atlus catalogue, but with significant room for customisation and minmaxing as the fans expect

i could ramble on about the story for several paragraphs, so ill cut myself short and say that its great and kept my attention for the entire runtime. my only real complaints with the game come with where it borrows too heavily from persona. i dont mind the bonds system, i think it was tastefully implemented into the game, allowing for a stronger combat focus. what i take issue with is the calendar system as implemented. in a game which wants the player to explore every nook and cranny and has such strong combat, the calendar system actively discourages the player from enjoying the best part of the game. i think a strict timeslot based system was a bad decision, and that the game would have benefitted greatly from having less focus on time managment and allowing the player to explore the world without worry of missing out on the other half of the game

all in all, this game is absolutely worth your time and should not be dimissed as simply "fantasy persona"