AAA Three-for-one 2017 (Pokemon: Ultra Sun, Sonic Forces, and Persona 5)

GOTY season is right around the corner, and in the interest of getting the lists out as close to on time as possible, I've decided to wrap up the last three reviews I need to write in one three-for-one rapidfire extravaganza! Only, this time my subjects are AAA titles. I started playing the subjects of these reviews, Sonic Forces, Persona 5 and Pokemon: Ultra Sun pretty late in the year, which is why these reviews are so doggoned delayed. Well, let's get started.

Pokemon: Ultra Sun

I can't say that I followed the development of Ultra Sun (hereafter referred to as US because I'm lazy) closely. I figured it was going to be a sequel to last year's Sun and Moon. So, imagine my disappointment when I realized I was essentially just playing a re-release of a game barely a year old. Pokemon: Ultra Sun is the better version of the two versions of the same game that are currently out, but while US does greatly improve on certain aspects of its predecessor, there are several flaws from the originals that haven't been fixed. I find this game to be hard to judge, and I almost didn't write a review, but I decided to go ahead and do my due dilligence. Let's get started.

Pokemon: Ultra Sun once again takes place in the Alola region of the Pokemon world: an island nation akin to Hawaii. You play as a kid with no dad who gets a Pokemon and sets out on a journey. In this case, that journey is the island challenge: a right of passage wherein Alolan youngsters travel the islands facing trials from each island's captains. If you played the original Sun and Moon, you know what this story is minus a few changes. Some of these changes are good (in that the whole "Ultra Wormhole" side of things is way more fleshed out) and some are bad (in that the legendary Pokemon we focus on this time around is the painfully forgettable Necrozma), but all-in-all it is a little better executed. Despite that, I think having to pay another $40 for what could've easily been DLC on top of the original games is a little much. If not a DLC, then a proper sequel a-la Black and White 2. It appears that Game Freak just couldn't be bothered to put forth that kind of effort. Look, it's a Pokemon story, you know how it goes. Let's move on.

Speaking of knowing how it goes, do I really need to discuss gameplay with you people? It's Pokemon gameplay: turn-based combat based on a rock-paper-scissors-esque "type" system. One thing I will say about US is that the developers have ramped up the challenge since last time. I still never lost a battle, but I found myself having to struggle through challenging battles far more frequently. Not only that, but US sports what is easily the single most difficult mandatory legendary battle in Pokemon history. It was a welcome change from the all-too-easy Sun and Moon. Other than the challenge, though, nothing of note changed in the combat.

What I find puzzling about US is where extra effort evidently went. For instance, most character models are slightly animated when they lose a battle. You know how, when you beat a trainer, it used to just show them looking upset? Well, this time, they move slightly. They released a whole new copy of the game for that, and in the meantime, they didn't bother to patch the game's horrid framerate in battles where more than two Pokemon are involved. In addition, while the developers did make the 40 minute long closing sequence more interesting by having stuff happen while the credits rolled, they still put the save point after that 40 minutes of credits. I don't think it would've been hard to put the automatic save right after becoming champion so you don't lose your progress if your 3DS turns off while the credits are going (which did happen to me, by the way, so I'm a little bitter). Game Freak put some effort into this rerelease, but it feels like their priorities were a little out-of-whack. 

Let's talk about what I liked, though. I've spent enough time complaining. For starters, US is far more content-rich than its predecessor. I've ragged on the game for being too similar to Sun and Moon, but Game Freak did actually make a lot more stuff to do. There are collectible totem stickers scattered through the islands that can be traded in for versions of the totem Pokemon. There's a surfing minigame where you earn beach points (which can be redeemed for prizes) by riding a mantine to the next island, performing stunts along the way. Later on, there's even a minigame where you can travel to different worlds with the possibility of meeting rare Pokemon. Speaking of which, the developers have also created a handful of entirely new Pokemon for this game. It's a small handful, but I do have to give props, because that was a handful more new Pokemon than I was expecting. The content-rich nature of US also extends to its much meatier post-game content. In Sun and Moon, post-game content consisted of catching the ultra-beasts, and then they once again foisted their god awful battle tower variant upon the player. I've never understood why Game Freak continues to put battle tower variants in the post-game content. It's like, never once have I said "You know what I'd really like to do in this Pokemon game? Battle without having my Pokemon gain experience!" But I digress. In US, there's some more ultra-beast catching, then they briefly introduce another battle tower-esque area, then there's a brand new bonus area with content that will surely be a nostalgia trip for veteran trainers such as myself. Rest assured, there's plenty to do in US, even if paying another $40 for it seems in poor taste. 

Ultimately, Ultra Sun is the better version of the generation 7 games, but it's too-little, too-late. There's no denying that the gameplay has been ramped up to be more challenging, that there's significantly more content available, and that the story is more compelling this time around. If all of these things had been offered as DLC, or if they'd been incorporated into a direct sequel, or if they'd at least fixed what was wrong with the originals, I would be lavishing this game with praise. But as it stands, Pokemon: Ultra Sun feels more like a re-try than a standalone product, and it feels like Game Freak is asking us to foot the bill because they feel they didn't get it right the first time. I had fun with Ultra Sun, but there just isn't enough here to justify its price tag so soon after the original Sun and Moon were released. If you're a diehard Pokemon fan, then you're guaranteed to enjoy yourself. As it stands, however, Game Freak just didn't try very hard, and I don't recommend that you encourage this behavior.  

Let us review:

Every problem from originals still present - 1.0

$40 price tag for content befitting dlc - 1.0

Essentially just a re-try that we're paying for - 1.0

The final score for Pokemon: Ultra Sun is...

7.0/10 - Ok

Better luck next time, Game Freak, better luck next time

Sonic Forces

When I was in college, I took a poetry writing class. Much to my disappointment, the focus of the class was on crappy freeform poetry. However, I decided to roll with it with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek. I ended up writing the following poem for an assignment: "All this lust is just Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. What matters is an oven mitt being used in place of a pocket square. Would you like fries with that?" Another one was: "There's an empty coke can sitting on the table. The coke inside is undoubtedly too warm now." I wrote several poems of about that calibre, each one taking approximately a minute to concoct. My point in bringing this up is to say that, whatever effort I put into that class, it was more effort than went into Sonic Forces. In a word, Sonic Forces is dreadful. In several words, Sonic Forces is a lazy, schizophrenic, pitiful attempt to piggyback off the success of Sonic Mania. I'd like to apologize in advance, because this review is undoubtedly going to mimic the game's schizophrenic nature. If you were to play this game (which I don't recommend you do), you'd understand what I mean. In the interest of being transparent, I must come forward and mention that Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on the Gamecube was the first game I ever played. It was my introduction to gaming, and I have it to thank for the fact that I ever got enough into the hobby to start my own review blog. So, you can decide for yourself whether or not I'm letting my nostalgia get in the way of my reasoning, but something tells me you won't reach that conclusion. Now, let me tell you why you should absolutely not spend your money on Sonic Forces.

Because Sonic has been around forever, I'm going to assume that all my readers know the characters. Sonic Forces starts off with a promising idea: Dr. Eggman creates a weapon that successfully defeats Sonic, and he takes over the world. The rest of Sonic's friends form a resistance to try and take the world back. One day, a nameless civilian (created by you) joins the resistance and starts proving himself in the field, filling the void left by Sonic's defeat. A promising idea, but the Sonic Team just couldn't manage to not screw it up. You only play as your created character for a few missions, and Sonic is rescued from Eggman's prison by mission 2 or 3. So, you alternate between playing as your character, playing as Sonic, playing as both at the same time, and playing as the 2D sonic from Sonic Generations because of the developers' aforementioned desperation to piggyback off of Sonic Mania. Folks, this story is all over the freakin' map. First, villains from Sonic's past (including Shadow) are helping out Dr. Eggman, but then they actually aren't because they're virtual reality copies of them that the new villain, Infinite, can create with the power of the whatever-the-hell ruby (it's so forgettable I've forgotten the name). Then, Sonic is supposedly being tortured every day by Dr. Eggman (because for some reason people want Sonic to have more mature stories) but he's still whipping out the same god awful cringey one-liners he always does when we see him in this prison where he's supposedly been having his fingernails ripped out or his skin peeled off or whatever Dr. Eggman's method of choice is (do you see how freaking ridiculous the whole idea of the mature sonic story is?). Then it looks like Infinite (the new villain, in case you've already forgotten) is going to betray Dr. Eggman in order to take over the world himself, but then Dr. Eggman's secretly been working on something even more powerful and then another character randomly shows up at the game's climax and.....*sigh*....folks, the story is terrible. I know that one shouldn't judge something like Sonic the Hedgehog based on the story, but when it's this offensively bad, and when the whole thing is executed like a classic Right Trigger run-on sentence, it's time to start taking off points. What makes the story even worse is the fact that the developers tried to convince players that they're going on missions when they're really just doing the usual sonic levels. Countless times, I'd just be going along doing the sonic thing (namely just moving forward until I reached the end of the stage), and then Knuckles would say "He did it!" over the communication lines. These weren't infiltration missions, they'd be things like finding out the source of Infinite's power. The story is that lazy. They just took Sonic levels and pretended we were doing something else. And then they completely forget about some of the characters they bring up. At one point, Chaos is a villain, but it never shows up again after the opening sequences, not even as a vr projection. And don't even get me started on the terrible writing. My personal favorite is when, in response to Sonic saying "Let's finish this, Eggman," Eggman says, "It'll be your finish, Sonic." I need a drink. 

Gameplay isn't much better. It alternates between three modes: Full 3D with the camera behind the character, full 3D with the camera to the side of the character (so it looks kind of 2D), and somewhere between 2 and 3D (which is reserved for the classic Sonic...geez this is confusing to describe). The game alternates between the first two of these modes on a whim, and that makes the gameplay even more nauseating. It always feels like the environments are blurring a little too much from the speed, and I found that I could almost never make out what was in front of me. This caused me to run into enemies far too often. Maybe I'm just old, but this game physically hurt my eyes to play. I know that hasn't been a part of Sonic forever. I mean, I re-played Sonic Adventure 2: Battle a matter of months ago and had no trouble following along with anything on screen. In Sonic Forces, however, you're not so much playing the game as you are enduring the game and seeing things happen. Every one of the stages is essentially just 2-3 minutes of blur with your character sometimes doing things without your input and sometimes needing your input, then it's over and you're left wondering what exactly just happened. There was a jungle level wherein you play as Sonic, and at this point my jaw was hanging loose at the sheer mess of chaos on screen. Then, a giant snake appeared out of nowhere, there was a series of quicktime events, and within the span of 5 seconds, Sonic had one-linered his way out of the snake and had finished the stage. Then my jaw hit the floor, and I just sat there in silent reflection for a second as I tried to mentally work my way through what I'd just experienced. Eventually, I yelled the word "WHAT?!" out loud. That's pretty much my reaction to all the gameplay. The only time that gameplay somewhat improves is in the classic sonic style levels. Gameplay slows down enough so that I was able to at least understand what was going on. It still isn't good though, because all the characters control terribly. This means several accidental deaths because the game interprets your input as a suggestion. It's not a problem exclusive to the classic style levels, the terrible sense of control will have you leaping to your death a number of times. 

Another aspect of gameplay that irked me was its recycling of areas. You go to green hill as many as 5 times in this game! 30something stages and the developers have you going to the exact same places over and over again! How freaking lazy can you get, Sonic Team? How lazy is lazy enough?!

I ended up sitting in my chair and praying to God that the game would end. It looked like I was close, and then the game just continued to drag on and on for a few more stages. When the game finally ended, I was so relieved. And then I looked down at my watch and noticed that a grand total of 3 hours had passed. This game is 3 hours long. Yes, there's side content to be done, but why on Earth would you want to do that? It puts me in an odd place. Selling what essentially amounts to 3 hours of gameplay is a crime, but what about when it's an absolute blessing that the game wasn't any longer? In the end, I'm still going to penalize the game for it, but it's an interesting bit of internal dialogue. 

Another thing to note, it doesn't look like they were able to get Crush 40 for this soundtrack. It should say something that they ended up recruiting Hoobastank of all bands to perform the main theme. A forgettable band plays a forgettable theme for an unfortunately-not-forgettable game, and the world keeps on turning.

At this point, I feel like this entire review has been nothing but nonsense and broken grammar, but when I start thinking about Sonic Forces, I remember all the confusion and the chaos and the messiness of it all and it puts me in an uncomfortable mental state. The one good thing in this game is the fact that the credits song is decent. The lyrics are cringey, but it's not a bad song, at least. Beyond that, everything about Sonic Forces is not just bad, it's offensively bad. It's bad to the point where it's physically painful. With this game, the Sonic team recycled the same few areas over and over again, threw together a nonsensical story with as many characters as they could force in, filled each mission with enough on-screen junk to make a Phantom Menace-era George Lucas say "isn't that a little excessive?", and ultimately only produced a three hour experience. Sonic team should be ashamed of themselves. If I'd put something as bad as Sonic Forces onto the market, I would never live down the sense of humiliation I felt. 

Let us flagellate....I mean, review:

3 hour campaign - 1.0

Schizophrenic story - 1.0

Unfollowable gameplay - 1.0

Poor sense of control - 1.0

Recycled areas across 30 stages - 1.0

3 hour campaign felt like a blessing - 1.0

Playing was actually painful on the eyes - 1.0

The final score for Sonic Forces is...

3.0/10 - Bad

Shame on you, Sonic Team, shame on you 

Persona 5

Can we talk about something more pleasant now? How does a good game that simply oozes style sound to you? After that Sonic Forces review, I'd really like to review something good. If you're new to the Persona series like I am, Persona 5 is going to take some getting used to. It has a day-to-day slow kind of pacing that you'll need to spend some time with before you start appreciating it. But once you get used to it, it becomes really endearing. Now, just to be clear, at the time of writing I haven't yet finished Persona 5. I have about 15 hours or so on record, and from what I hear, I have something like 100 hours to go to finish the story, and I don't think that's going to happen this year. As far as I've gotten, though, I'm sure nothing radical is going to change, so I feel that I can judge pretty clearly. Let's get started.

Right from the get-go, Persona 5 is dripping with personality and sheer style. You're greeted with a stylish opening with a funky theme tune that's a sure-in for a spot on my "best soundtrack piece" list this year. I personally watched it all the way through each time I started up the game. It sets the stage for a game with an equal level of personality. Persona 5 puts you in the shoes of a high school student who has been branded as a criminal for the unforgivable crime of stopping a man from sexually assaulting a woman....wait...what? Is Japanese society really that sexist? I'm sure there's more to the story that will become more evident as I go along, but at the moment it seems like that's the crime that everybody hates him for. Anyway, he's forced to move to Tokyo and attend a different school because of it. At this school, there are rumors that the P.E. teacher, Mr. Kamoshida, has been physically abusing his students and sexually harassing female students, but because of the success of the volleyball team, he is untouchable. 

On the protagonist's first day of school, he meets Ryuji Sakamoto, another student labeled as a troublemaker. On their way into school, however, a strange app appears on our hero's phone, and he and Ryuji end up at a giant castle instead of their school. As they enter, they find that Mr. Kamoshida, rules over this castle as King. Inside the castle, they meet Morgana, a talking cat who explains the situation to them. They had entered into Kamoshida's "palace," a physical manifestation of his perception. Inside this world, they have the ability to utilize Personas: manifestations of their personalities that symbolize their rebellion against the palace leader. They also learn that if they can steal the treasure of the palace, they can cause Kamoshida to have a change of heart and force him to confess his crimes. The gist of the story is that they, along with a cast of characters that gradually join their group, "The Phantom Thieves," essentially act as after-school guardians of justice who break into the palaces of criminals and force them into a change of heart. Think Death Note, but with confessions and a few extra steps. 

What strikes me about the story is how flawlessly it seams with the gameplay. Persona 5 is essentially a turn-based combat game half the time and a life simulator for the other half. You can only purchase healing items and weapons in the real world, so you'll need to do things like get a part time job for money or take on challenges to increase some of your stats if you want to be able to survive in the palaces. However, there are deadlines for each palace. There's always some stake that causes you to have to force your target to confess their crimes before a given date, so it's a game about balancing your preparation in the real world with your progress in the palaces. Thus far, this system has been successful in keeping me from resting on my laurels. 

The life simulator side of things mainly consists of you strengthening your bonds with your friends, working, reading books, taking exams at school, and making purchases for palace raids. Ultimately, it's not the meat of the experience, so the fact that it isn't very exciting can be overlooked.

The gameplay that ultimately matters here is the turn-based rpg side of things. You have a number of options when you enter into combat: use a melee weapon, a gun, guard yourself from damage in the next turn, analyze the enemy, or use a persona. All of these except using a persona should be self-explanatory. Essentially, think of the persona system as a Pokemon battle. When you go up against enemies, they'll have specific weaknesses, so you'll want to use a persona that can utilize that. For instance, if you're going up against an icy-looking enemy, you might use a persona that has a fire skill. Hitting an enemy's weakness will knock it down, causing it to skip a turn. If you happen to knock down all the enemies on the field, you'll initiate a "Hold up." This means that you and your party will surround the enemies and hold them at gunpoint while you negotiate. You can ask an enemy to lend you their power, causing them to become one of your personas, you can ask for money, or you can ask for an item. Alternatively, you can launch a massively powerful all-out attack to possibly finish off every enemy at once.
These are supposed to be rapidfire reviews, so let's just say that what I've described doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the depth of Persona 5's gameplay. There's so much to it that I could write you a novel on it and not be done. It's a little overwhelming, but definitely manageable if you don't utilize every little aspect of it. I will say this, though: It does get very repetitive. There's plenty of enemy variety, but there's not enough variety in enemy groupings. You're going to end up entering combat, singing along with the song, and initiating a hold up hundreds of times before you're even 20 hours in. As much as I love the song (You never see it co-miiiiiiiiing), after the first hundred times, it starts to get old. That's one thing that I don't see changing as the game continues. I'm pretty sure this repetition is going to be with the game for the long haul.
I also have to say that the repetition isn't exclusive to the gameplay. Repetition is also far too prevalent in the game's dialogue. In every palace I've been in, a character will say something along the lines of "He doesn't even view us as people!" every single time we come across evidence of the palace leader's crimes. In palace 2, this was especially bad. It's a small gripe, but I found myself saying "WE GET IT! HE'S A BAD PERSON!" internally far too often.
One last gripe on gameplay is stealth. The idea is that if you're spotted by an enemy before combat begins, the castle's security will go up, and if it gets too high, you get kicked out. So, you hide behind cover and wait to ambush enemies. I felt that it was a weak addition, and it added to the feeling of repetition to constantly have to ambush every enemy I came across.

Now we come to the technical side. As a technical package, Persona 5 is strong. I never noticed any framerate drops, even when there were as many as 5 enemies and 4 party members on screen (take notes, Game Freak). In addition, I never noticed any bugs, texture pop-ins, or crashes. Load times are also merciful.
I've spoken a little bit about Persona 5's music adding to its personality, and I'd like to drive that point home. The soundtrack is funky. It's the kind of soundtrack I've never heard before, where every track is completely unique and compelling at the same time. Strangely enough, it works whenever it's utilized. Whether it's a boss fight or a quiet moment in the city at night, the jazzy style always works.

Ultimately, I've been enjoying my time with Persona 5 enough that the upcoming 100 or so hours I have left doesn't seem so bad. For the price of admission, you're getting a solid jrpg with some of the best gameplay-to-story syncing I've ever seen. I wish I could've done a full review of this game so I could go into much greater details about how much fun the characters are and how fulfilling the combat is in spite of its repetition. For the time being, though, I hope I've at least gotten the point across. And in case I haven't, let me leave off my last review of 2017 with the following words: Wake up, get up, get out there and buy Persona 5.

Let us review:
Repetitive combat - 1.0
Repetitive dialogue - 0.5
Weak stealth - 0.3

The final score for Persona 5 is...

8.2/10 - Good
[Post-publishing note, did my math wrong initially and came out with 8.7. I blame Sonic Forces]
[Second post-publishing note, did my math wrong yet again and came out with 8.3. SONIC FORCES!!!!!]
Great work, Atlus, great work

Now, for your listening pleasure, the opening theme of Persona 5