With visual novel discourse flaring up lately, especially after the reveal of Date Everything!, I want to circle back to Class of '09 (and by extension the sequel, The Re-Up) which I played earlier this year. If you haven't seen the discourse, the argument is essentially that visual novels are often seen with contempt in the West and that Western visual novels are made as parodies of the stereotypes associated with the genre. I'll quickly throw out that I do not agree with this position. Not that I believe it never happens or that visual novels are not misunderstood by English-speaking audiences, but that I think the argument is reductive and throws the baby out with the bathwater. Here, though, I want to focus on Class of '09 in particular because I've seen it mischaracterized so often in regards to this discourse.

I've heard it said that Class of '09 is an irony-poisoned work built on a faulty perception of dating sims, and I can understand why someone would come to that conclusion. The game literally advertises itself as a "rejection sim" on Steam where, instead of a generic high school boy protagonist that has half a dozen girls throwing themselves at him for no reason as per the stereotype, you play as a sociopathic girl telling a bunch of loser boys that can't take "no" for an answer to kill themselves. And absolutely, this marketing does rely on the stereotypes associated with romance and dating sim visual novels. But to stop here would be missing the core of what Class of '09 really is.

Despite its initial presentation as a "rejection sim," Class of '09 isn't really about the boys, and it's not interested in the stereotypes associated with romantic visual novels despite its marketing. Most routes have nothing to do with willingly interacting with men at all. Rather, the boys are the ones to force themselves into Nicole's life despite her repeated attempts to belittle and humiliate them. They think she's playing hard to get, and there's very little catharsis in telling them to fuck off and kill themselves because they just can't get it through their thick skulls that Nicole actually means it.

I want to say, explicitly, that Nicole is a bad person. Of course she is! She's a bully and an enabler. You can argue the men around her deserve it, but men aren't her only targets; she's cruel to anyone and everyone other than her friend Jecka. How could she not be a bad person? She exists in a world where, because of creepy boys and apathetic adults, half of whom (the male half) are pedophiles, she's shackled by the desires and expectations of men if she doesn't assert herself.

This is made explicit when, in one route, Nicole decides to be nice to the boys. Relatively. She's unenthusiastic and lets them hold conversations entirely one-sided, but at least she doesn't tell them to kill themselves. And with this sliver of reciprocation, if you can even call it that, they project their own interests onto her and drag her along to hangouts she has no interest in and construct a version of her in their heads that she is in no way playing into. It's outside this route, with her cruelty and antipathy, that she's able to maintain her autonomy, regardless of whom she hurts as a consequence. And even then, her behaviour rarely deters boys.

Nicole's cruelty isn't a radical feminist rejection of men; it's a manifestation of the reality that she needs to put herself first because nobody else will.

The words "irony-poisoned" used to criticize this game really struck a chord with me because lately I've been working on unpacking my own ingrained irony-poisoned attitudes (check out my Hypnospace Outlaw review where I cover this topic). But I don't really feel that here. Class of '09 is so authentic, if not earnest, in its depiction of high school. Of course it's heightened to ridiculous extremes for comedic effect, but even as someone who attended a small, relatively drama-free high school around 2020 in Canada, I saw the way we interacted as teenagers reflected in these characters. Its edge is sharp enough to leave a wound with just a prick, but it channels that edge into a meaningful point about Nicole's lived reality and how her gender defines others' expectations of her.

Class of '09 is absolutely mean-spirited. It's cynical and cruel, dripping in venom, and I won't laud it as heartfelt and sincere, two things I value in art and two things this game very much is not. As funny as I found it, I don't want to engage with this type of comedy too often with how miserable its worldview is. It's satirical and completely over-the-top, but that's done with respect to its themes and not as an attack on visual novels as a medium. To label it an irony-poisoned mockery of the medium is reductive and misses what the game is doing. Class of '09 is not a parody of dating sims, and while it does play with the idea, it's meaningful in its own right divorced from the stereotypes it pays homage to.

eu chorei em múltiplos momentos de Wattam, por motivos que eu nem sei se conseguiria elaborar. talvez seja pelo amor à Terra, talvez seja pelo amor ao próximo, talvez seja pelas risadinhas que os personagens fazem quando eles fazem um círculo segurando as mãos uns dos outros. esse jogo me tratou de forma tão doce que eu percebi o quanto que eu sinto falta de receber contato humano e o quanto eu odeio viver em um mundo coberto em chamas que parecem nunca cessar. a conclusão da história ser um ode esperançoso ao perdão é lindo.

depois de eu ter completado a história do jogo, eu liguei ele por mais um tempo, só pra me deixar brincar um pouco nesse mundinho. pra ver se eu me sinto criança por mais um tempinho.

Another one of those games where one such as myself couldn't possibly give it high praise or condemnation, but also defies to be marked by any kind of middling opinion. It's a sort of Frankensteins monster of teen fiction. Nostalgic and twee vignettes, tense Degrassi flavored school drama, meditations on art and philosophy, budding sapphic romance. On the other hand, there are completely infuriating time magic subplots, creepy depictions of sexual violence, and murder mystery drama. It not only is unfocused in what it's trying to accomplish aesthetically, but it completely trips over itself constantly through its narrative. One could liken it to the video game version of The Book of Henry, obviously not thematically, but purely in how utterly infuriating and mesmerizing it is. Thematically I would say it's closer in spirit to Donnie Darko. In spite of the flaws, in spite of the trainwreck moments, in spite of everything, you certainly can't say this game is forgettable. As such, I could easily recommend this game to anyone searching for trash media and likes to have a good laugh and enjoy themselves. This is not to say it's a game without seriously emotional moments, because it certainly has those too. Just watch out because the game will likely abrade you.

'Persona 3 FES Fan Excited To Finish Persona 3 FES For The First Time'

(Contains spoilers for Persona 3 FES: The Journey)

The second the trailer for that hilariously overpriced DLC expansion pass for Persona 3 Reload dropped, I realized I had to be more than a stereotype. It was time for me to beat the Persona fan allegations of “knowing a story only because I watched the cutscenes on YouTube.” It was time for me to beat The Answer before it becomes cool…

Okay. That's all like. 30% of my actual motivation for doing this. I replayed the entirety of The Journey beforehand as a way to cement my feelings towards the original in the wake of Reload. And due to my various gripes with Reload’s presentation and also generally just preferring the original on most fronts, I didn’t think it’d be right if my first, proper experience with The Answer was through its remake. Though I’ve replayed Persona 3 FES many times before, this post-story gamemode was something I was never in the mood to finish after reaching the phenomenal conclusion of the original story. I never saw a continuation as necessary. And I think P3’s dungeon crawling loses much of its thematic meaning and intrigue when you divorce it from its other social sim half. Even now, after properly finishing The Answer, I’d say my initial concerns weren’t unfounded. But there definitely is still much worth in the experience.

Right off the bat, I adore the set up. Characterization is one of Persona 3’s strong suits, and it’s on full display here. You’re immediately stricken by its understated, yet somber tone. The rest of the story is quite solid in showcasing the various ways each member of SEES have either developed or regressed since the original story’s end, but the banter of the opening few scenes alone communicates these ideas in such a perfect fashion. SEES’ fallibility has always been one of my favorite aspects about them as a cast. They’re beloved for that sense of realness and humanity that permeates throughout each member, and their flaws being so highlighted is a key part as to why. They might dramatically “complete” their character arcs through Persona evolutions or strengthen their own convictions to the degree where they can clash with the embodiment of death itself. But none of that means the writers won’t continue to portray them as the messy little fucked up group of teens that they are. And this idea is what The Answer most strongly reinforces. As showcasing the self-destructive actions they make in reaction to facing such a devastating loss is the entire crux of the story.

The Answer shines the most with its character writing in three clear cases: Aigis, Metis, and Yukari. The former is a perfect lead for the protagonist to pass his torch to. Aigis’s arc up until this point already shared much in common with her emo husband, as they both primarily developed and gained a sense of identity through their collective experiences alongside their friends. So fully cementing her as a Wild Card just feels extremely right, especially after the bond the two form in the main story and this version's newly added Aeon social link (best social link in the series btw). Newcomer Metis exists primarily to strengthen Aigis’ character arc and she does a phenomenal job at that. It’s clear from the start that she’s meant to reflect Aigis in a symbolic sense and the parallels between them only grow stronger in terms of effectiveness as the story builds up their relationship. But despite playing a more function oriented role in the narrative, she is still incredibly entertaining. I clapped at every scene where Akihiko threatened her life and she responds by casually telling him to shut the fuck up. Then there’s Yukari. Do I even need to justify her role? I feel like that’s just a waste of breath. Shocking: a 17 year old girl gets a little bit mean when the boy she loves dies in the arms of another girl who’s neglecting to face the full reality of his death. Anyways, she’s great here. Though I definitely feel like her story could’ve been told with a better degree of nuance. Yukari’s always been one of the more empathetic cast members and seeing her act so abrasive towards everyone in general is a bit off putting at times. But I still respect the idea behind it all and it results in these beautiful emotionally charged scenes that’re on par with some of the best from the base game.

Though where this story really begins to lose me is its poor pacing and sloppy structure. It’s a case of stretching such a short narrative extremely thin. There’s just not enough here to justify going through seven different sequences of dungeon crawling. And while I’d compliment the characterization, I honestly feel the arcs of Aigis, Metis, and Yukari are the only things here that felt like they were written with complete confidence and intention. There’s this specific and formulaic way they go about exploring SEES as characters for the entire middle point of the story that feels so… random? They’re nice scenes to see, especially since I adore these characters, but I honestly can’t tell you how the looks into the past are supposed to add to the story’s statement in any substantial way. Also not a big fan of Metis’s info dumping or SEES’ guesswork, as a lot of it comes off as these awkward justifications for the story’s progression. It results in these genuinely intriguing mysteries and heartfelt conflicts that feel clunky in their resolutions.

I had negative expectations for the gameplay here. And that left me kinda shocked when I walked away enjoying most of the experience. The Answer is nothing but dungeon crawling, set on hardmode, with more complex boss design, and restricted access to certain quality of life features. On paper that all sounds fucking terrible. And some of it is. I, for the life of me, still question why they decided to remove warp stations before boss floors in favor of one way teleporters and a save point. To the point where I grabbed a mod that lets you fully heal at said save points (Sorry for being a filthy CHEATER, but I did not have the strength to deal with such a waste of time. I have a life 💔). But after getting over a lot of the annoyances that came from the simple concept of these changes, I came to realize that The Answer truly appeals to little freaks like me. Someone who genuinely likes Persona 3 FES’s flawed, yet bold battle system.

Battles can be infuriating on occasion due to the amped up resistances of most enemies and how that tends to bring out the worst of the AI party system, but I generally found them fun to fight. Though the one thing I’d like to acknowledge in particular are the nerfs to Fusion. That’s right. My The Answer hot take isn’t that weak shit like “it’s actually good” or “Yukari is reasonable.” It’s that the lack of arcana burst and compendium are valuable changes that add a different layer to the way you’re expected to engage with the dungeon crawling. Foresight is paramount and every fusion you make feels important. Between making sure I had each buff skill accounted for at any given moment or making the most of EXP share passives by transferring them to Personae with desirable skills, it feels like The Answer was able to bring out a niche appeal of the Fusion system the other mainline titles rarely nail. Due to my foresight and knowledge of the base game’s skill progression, I almost never had to stop and grind like I was expecting to. I was entirely prepared for 99% of the encounters I faced (fuck the penultimate Abyss of Time fight oh my god) and that felt extremely rewarding. I get that it’s harsh in design and not everyone’s experience is going to go as smoothly. But I found it was an interesting twist on a system that normally becomes less and less substantive to engage with as the game goes on.

It was really satisfying to see the credits draw to a close. I’ve been madly in love with Persona 3 FES for almost four years now and, though it’s funny to say, today is the day I finally finished it properly. While a lot of my initial assessments of The Answer came to be true, I’m glad I was still able to get something out of it in this playthrough. I’m still shocked by the amount of enjoyment I was able to find in its challenge run-esque design mentality. And best of all, it’s given me an excuse to brainrot over Persona 3 for a little while longer, thanks to the ways it expands on its cast. As flawed and half baked as it feels in so many regards, I’d say I overall enjoyed my time with it. Can’t wait to see how I feel about its remake, especially given the announcement that they’ll be adding in more story scenes. Now, someone come restrain me before I buy the $35 expansion pass for Persona 3 Reload. Hurry… There’s not much time. The microchip is beeping oh god o h no I. LOVE ATLUS GAAAAAAH!!!

So much fondness for this one locked away in the childhood memories, really. But that doesn't make it a game of substance, and as much as I could wax poetic about the beauty of playing this with my friend when I was little, that still doesn't mean I should hype this thing up. So I went back through the story and was a bit disappointed to find the game wasn't all that spectacular. Perfectly fine and enjoyable turn based strategy rpg stuff. Fun unit creation, and colorful demonic characters in a silly demonic world.

Even though it isn't very good, it does have a memorable cast of characters. Not written well, but there's something endearing about how dorky everyone is. The main character thinks he's the shit, the entire game, as he's put into a dog kennel. As he's turned into a book. As his ex girlfriend dies in front of him after confessing her feelings to him. As people break their back for him to survive. He obviously learns in the end, but he makes for a really punchable clown guy, and I enjoyed the energy he brought. He's a very peggable pathetic character who you wanna see get better. I mean pathetic.

He and all of the other characters in the game are demonic overlords who control their own nether realms, something similar to demon lords in forgotten realms. So we have, petty EGL demon girls who mess with him. A dark demon lord with three consciousnesses, a very effeminate demon, snide fallen angel, and rude dragon all fused into one. An old man dragon, the ex girlfriend who shouldn't settle, and much more! I was getting invested in these emotionally immature demon lords all acting like they're in their early 20s! Girl! I get it. Okay. You know what, I can appreciate this.

Honestly I try to channel a similar energy to Pram in my life. That's my whole problem. That's everything wrong with me. Why was this as relatable as it was? I didn't think it was particularly good. The plotline was very dumb. Good dumb. And it only made like two Monty Python jokes, so it isn't all bad.

I feel miserable. You know what that means: Youtube Playables.

This is utter slop. You get money, you buy two of a kind, you merge them to make a stronger guy, rinse and repeat. The game feigns strategic depths by giving you a grid to move your units around but it hardly matters. Nothing matters in this game. Even if you lose, you get money to try again. The game is a neverending perpetual cycle of uselessness. There's no point to playing this.

This game is a tunnel without a light at the end; it is a tomb with none buried.

Do yourself a favor and find something else to play. Merge Master is not worth your time.

Colorblindness Rating: A
No color issues here.

After completing Astro Bot’s final, most difficult challenge after a couple of honest attempts, a friend of mine had to remind me that, “[I] already practiced it 14 year’s [sic] ago.” Being a modern 3D platformer, there are worse things to be called than “Super Mario Galaxy 3”, and Astro Bot certainly lives up to the legacies that it’s so clearly enamored by, but it does leave me a little perplexed that its reception is this overwhelmingly positive. Don’t get me wrong, Team ASOBI shows off an enormous degree of game design talent over the game’s duration, Astro Bot’s quality is no fluke. But for how special I want to sit here and claim it is, I find it so lacking in its own aesthetic and creative identity that completing the game had me feeling a bit hollow. Which feels weird, considering how much joy I experienced while playing it and how much I want to go back and keep playing it after I’ve already 100%’d it!

On the face of it, there’s nothing fundamentally “wrong” with being a little identity-agnostic, with franchises like Super Mario having relied heavily on repurposed aesthetics, ideas, and iconography for decades now, but Astro Bot’s pseudo-Super Smash Bros. approach consistently made me question if I was enjoying a particular moment for what it was or simply due to it shotgun blasting me in the face with an obscure, forgotten IP as the the game’s own form of Super Mario 64 power stars and the occasional special level themed around a series within the “PlayStation brand”. Sometimes this question would end up being answered for me as I’d be hit with an entire-level themed around one of Sony’s more modern franchises; my interest slowly waning as I play out facile vignettes of the type of game that makes me mentally groan every time I see one of them being advertised in a PlayStation Showcases.

It’s difficult to say if that’s a step above or below the deification of Sony hardware and peripherals that encapsulated most of the visual language of Astro’s Playroom, but it at least gives the game freedom to be varied with the aesthetics of its individual, non-Sony-ified levels (and it helps that two of the special levels based on Sony properties are actually really fun references that add genuinely fun wrinkles to the gameplay). And even if I’ve been backhandedly referring to the individually themed Astro Bots as Sony Funko Pops for a while now – which is a bit of an exaggeration on my part – I’ll definitely say there’s some clear passion going into the references from Team ASOBI themselves. You can tell that at the end of the day, even if there’s clearly something very slightly sinister bubbling under the surface of Astro Bot’s occasionally cynical but mostly corny adoration of PlayStation as a family of intellectual properties, these are people who genuinely love video games. On the other hand, having an Astro Bot of Elliot Page’s character from Beyond: Two Souls is pretty fucking heinous! Tone deaf as fuck. I fucking hate that David Cage is still allowed to develop games in this industry and still getting acknowledgements from Sony themselves. Also I’m just really sick of seeing these tiny little freaks, especially when they’re dressed as characters that I actually like, doing little Fortnite dances when I beat a level!!! I don’t need to be seeing that.

The titular Astro Bot itself is a charming enough design, not quite as offensive as the Rabbid or the Minion, but it’s difficult for me to see it as anything but a forced mascot at times; that is to say, Astro Bot ends up feeling like less of its own thing and more of an extension of the PlayStation branding, even if its origins are a lot more complex than that. You could argue Nintendo does the same thing, and I’d agree! Something about seeing the PlayStation logo on the in-game collectables fills my heart with the same harrowing disappointment that I feel when I think about how stifled creatively stifled Nintendo’s games have become during the Wii U and Switch era. It feels a little awkward to gas the game up too much when it’s aesthetically mired by the same constipation of expression in the name of corporate branding that the games it’s inspired by are afflicted with themselves.

But who’s to let the fact that the intersection of art and commerce is a four-way intersection where the lights are always red in one of the intersecting streets completely deprive them of joy? Astro Bot is such a wonderful little toy to just waste time with. Its bouncy and addictive soundtrack, the candy-coated color schemes and captivating landscapes that rest along the skylines of the game’s levels full of genuinely charming details, the immaculate sound design that consistently made my cat think that our house was under fucking attack (like Playroom, hands down the best utilization of the DualSense’s built-in speakers), and the relentlessly eclectic gameplay defined by level design and pacing that genuinely might surpass most other games in the 3D platformer genre; this is the most fun I’ve had with a 3D platformer since playing the original Super Mario Galaxy as a teenager.

I’d consider myself a connoisseur of sorts when it comes to 3D platformers, particularly of the collectathon variety, and we really do have something special here. I’d put it up there with the likes of Banjo-Kazooie, Super Mario 64, Jumping Flash! and Spyro the Dragon (specifically games that I personally think are cool as fuck) if not for the fact that it’s difficult to find anything distinctly “Astro Botian” to sink my teeth into aesthetically, outside of the mechanical fauna. Maybe that’ll come to me with time, but I really wish there was something else it leaned into outside of the Super Smash Bros-core power stars and its fetishistic adulation of PlayStation as a brand. I think I’d be able to stomach it better if it had been reserved for specifically IPs that Japan Studio had worked on? I don’t know, it’s cute that they let you dress up the robot like Kat from Gravity Rush, though I kinda wish they left the Team ICO references to non-Astro Bot-ified things. I’d like some things to be sacred. Though maybe getting jumpscared by THIS (made it a link to preserve the surprise for the kindred souls who also don’t want to be spoiled on the funniest reference in the game) makes all the corporate ass-patting worth it somehow…

The gameplay itself is uh, I hesitate to say it’s plagiarism, not that I’d really care that somebody was stealing ideas from Nintendo in the first place, but it’s very heavily inspired by EAD/EPD Tokyo’s work on the Super Mario franchise to say the least! This shit’s got 3.5 out of the 4 nozzles from Super Mario Sunshine in it (though Playroom did already have one of them from what I remember), as well as multiple modifications of Super Mario Galaxy/Super Mario Galaxy 2 power ups. Enemy archetypes were also heavily influenced by said games, but in every single case of Team ASOBI copping a game mechanic from EAD/EPD, they really only improved upon it? It helps that Astro Bot isn’t weighed down by decades of mechanical tradition and unnecessary vestigial elements like the Super Mario series often is; each level and mechanic really gets its own space to breathe and leave an impact within the player’s mind when you play things a bit looser like this. Astro Bot is on some Lies of P shit, in the best way possible.

I can’t say any of the boss designs left much of an impression on me though, particularly the main antagonist, who feels like a scrapped villain from an early cut of the Jimmy Neutron movie or something. Not even a dig against the character designers, it just feels like a very bizarre choice for a main antagonist. The boss fights themselves are all pretty fun though! They do stick pretty religiously to the “three hits and they die” rule, but the individual steps to actually get to those three hits vary wildly, which allows for some really creative and hectic boss design. Really, some of the best in the genre, even I can admit that. Also love how many surprise midbosses there are throughout the game, and I love that said midbosses DON’T give you extra health points like the main bosses do.

I feel that particular aspect of Astro Bot is gonna turn some people off, but the fact it’s so easy to jump right back into the action when you do die makes the one hit point thing really work for me. A huge issue in a lot of these types of games is everything is already excessively low in stakes while also giving you a fluffy health bar, and it sucks a lot of the grit out of the moment-to-moment gameplay. Making Astro Bot “fragile” while maintaining a low stakes fail state just works somehow! I love getting offed by a random pig or whatever! It encourages you to engage with environmental hazards in an honest way while also not overly punishing less skilled players. It’s smart, I like it! Also helps that Astro Bot has so many different fucked up death animations, another thing ASOBI consistently oneups Nintendo EPD with (love when Astro Bot’s “flesh” gets melted off by acid and all that remains is its skeleton or when it gets disintegrated into nothing by a little bit of lava, very charming stuff going on here).

I just wish there were more for me personally to grab onto with this game outside of its pretty fucking excellent gameplay. Maybe I’ll come to love it more with time? Particularly if my hunch that Sony is gonna market the hell out of these little shits over the next few years ends up not being correct somehow. I hope Sony themselves takes a cue from Nintendo and stays subtle with Astro Bot’s branding in the future, but it’s difficult to say with them after their weird ass MCU-esque push of the broader PlayStation brand in the late 10s/early 20s. I’d also love to see Team ASOBI tackle a completely new IP, they’ve def got the chops to make something truly special if given the chance. I guess it’d also be okay if they made a new Ape Escape instead, they clearly got what it takes to make a new entry that’d be unique enough to justify its own existence. Please no fucking remakes though, publishers need to stop doing that “we need to remake the old ones before we can greenlight the new one” thing if they’re actually gonna bother reviving older games, and the Ape Escape series really doesn’t need remakes in the first place. Anyways, Astro Bot fun, capitalism is corroding all of our minds, and everyone who enjoys this game needs to apologize to Super Mario Sunshine RIGHT fucking now.