Suikoden
(Completed on 12 Oct 2025)

I only played this because I wanted to play Suikoden II, and planned on doing the thing where you use a Suikoden save to start the game so you get whatever extras that comes with
By and large, not a very good game, but it is pretty short for an RPG (my time was around 26 hours) so it’s not like the agony drags out for weeks on end.
For those who don’t know what Suikoden is, the entire “hook” of the game is that there are 108 possible party members, from which you will choose 6 to make your party at any given time. You “recruit” them throughout the game, and after being recruited they go to a castle that serves as your home base.
This is a very, very good idea, which in this game is not executed very well. There are two big problems:
(1) Even though you can have 6 people in the party at a time, this is almost never true in practice. The Main Character can’t leave, which is understandable, but every new chapter of the game seems to have at least 1 required party member taking up space. Even at the very final battle, there are 3 required members so you’re really only choosing 3 more out of the possible 106 left. It feels almost like the HM system on Pokemon. Like there’s this terrible game mechanic always standing in the way of your absolute freedom
(2) Despite (1) being true almost all the time, you can tell the developers really wanted to make it so that any party can win the game. It is very, very clear that you are supposed to choose the characters you like, rather than trying to minmax. For this reason, the game ends up way WAY too easy. There is not a single difficult battle in the game, never a time when you have to use your brain power to think up how to exploit weaknesses or devise some kind of special strategy, literally nothing at all that the game is asking you to do as far as execution.
Which, honestly, (2) would almost be forgivable if it wasn’t for (1) being in the way.
There are also things about the game design which aren’t even annoyances, but seem poorly thought out. For example, there is an MP system which works like Final Fantasy 1, where every spell has a set number of times you’re allowed to cast it, and those casts come back when you sleep in an Inn. In Suikoden, these spells come from Runes which you attach to your character. Each character can only have exactly 1 Rune attached, and you get whatever spells the Rune comes with. If it has some really high level magic on it, and you don’t have the MP for that, you raise the character’s level until they get an MP and become allowed to cast it. Some characters, however, come with Runes attached to them which cannot be removed. Their 1 Rune slot is forever taken up by something special to their character. The problem is that some of these characters have MP, despite their Rune not providing something that requires MP. Their MP can literally never be used, because their Rune cannot be switched out, so what is the point of giving them the MP at all?
All of that being said, I do still think I’ll move on to the 2nd game eventually, because I know this is a long-running and beloved series, and I know there are a lot of good ideas here and they just needed to be refined across a few more games.
There is also a LOT else they got right. The character avatars and sprites look awesome, their personalities are all distinct, which are mostly believable and lovable. The music is famous and for great reason. The sound design and story design is great.
Speaking of which, this game is also one of the rare few JRPG’s where the story is coherent. It has a beginning, middle, and end; characters have their own motivations which you can understand; events logically follow one another from one plot beat to the next. Credit where due on that; you don’t see many JRPG’s where that’s true so I gotta call it out when I spot it

∞ Posted on 10 Oct 2025

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∞ Posted on 8 Oct 2025

サーフィン CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Persona 3: FES
(Completed on 28 Sep 2025)

This is the first Shin Megami Tensei game I have ever completed, and it is my impression that this is one of the lower-commitment / less-brutal ones.
Total completion time was almost exactly 100 hours. That feels about right; I don’t think any of that number represents e.g. leaving it running overnight or some such thing.
Only “The Journey” is covered by this review. I did not even attempt to play “The Answer.” Maybe I will someday, but the main campaign feels so all-encompassing and so overwhelming that at this point I’m mostly glad to be out of it.
Which is not to say that this is in any way a bad game. I liked it a lot, and I now totally understand that feeling people talk about where, when it’s over, you just want to go back into Persona world and hang out with your friends. The characters are all very well developed and obviously you get lots of time with them
The gameplay loop is actually extremely simple, but maybe I’m only saying this because there are entire sections of it which I never engaged with.
For example, I never used weapon fusion to make anything good.
I also did not spend a lot of time on the mechanics of fusing monsters. I’d pull up to Elizabeth every few levels, fuse some higher level monsters, and leave it at that. I never went deep on finding “the best recipes” or trying to get a whole bunch of killer attacks on one monster.
I wasn’t even purposely trying to avoid engaging with the fusion system; I just happened to make some good ones by about halfway through the game and never really needed anything better. (This is playing on Normal mode)
For the record, those were:
- Surt (Ragnarok + Fire Amp + Fire Boost is a killer; it’s hard to beat in terms of pure damage dealt)
- Odin (Thunder Reign + Spell Master takes care of a LOT)
- Alice (Die for me!)
- Daisoujou (Samsara)
- Lilim (Very early in the game, I figured out how to fuse her with 1 each of the major elemental spells, so this was the best walking-around monster for the entire game. You can almost always ‘All-Out Attack’ any opposing party with this. When you can’t, switch to either Alice or Daisoujou)
The Tartarus bosses make it really fun to try and find a party / Persona combination which covers weaknesses and can still hit in every situation. This is not always easy and P3FES is in no way a “push X to win” game. Especially some of the late game bosses. You actually have to think about how to approach them.
Something else I was not familiar with before playing this game was how legendary the soundtracks are. That status is SO so deserved, the music in this game is like nothing else. Sometimes when I’m playing RPG’s and they get grindy I will throw on something else like an audiobook or whatever, but I never did this with P3. The soundtrack (and the entire rest of the sound design, character voices etc) deserves all the hype it gets
Speaking of soundtrack, a pro tip is: when you’re in Tartarus, ask Fuuka to change the BGM for you.
Bottom line: P3:FES is great, I do recommend it, and while I will not be covering this on here (because retro only) I have it on good authority that the Reload version is also worth it, though it’s not an exact remake of the original.

∞ Posted on 8 Oct 2025

サーフィン CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Adverntures of Lolo
(Completed on 2 Oct 2025)

The perfect little palate-cleanser puzzle game after spending months on something as big and involved as Persona 3
Not too easy, not too hard, would recommend to people of any skill level
The entire soundtrack is 1 song and I have to admit it does get annoying after a while. Find something else to listen to while playing.
Made by HAL, so there’s a certain bar of quality that is guaranteed

∞ Posted on 8 Oct 2025

サーフィン CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
(Completed on 4 Oct 2025)

A truly excellent port of a truly excellent game. Like several other retro games featured on this site, the Switch version is part of a larger pack (“The Dominus Collection”). The price of the entire pack is worth it just for the port of this game.
I don’t want this entire review to just be about how good M2 is at porting software, but every affordance you could think to want is here; nothing about these games “doesn’t translate” just because they were originally DS games.
By this point in the life of these Castlevania games, I think Konami had learned to avoid a lot of common problems. For example, in Order of Ecclesia, yes you can grind as much as you want, but it’s never really needed if you’re not hunting for rare item drops or something. By the same token, there is no Symphony-of-the-Night issue where you’re essentially invincible by the end of the game and there’s no challenge any more.
This playthrough was just a normal run through Normal difficulty. I did not do the extra hidden areas just outside Dracula’s castle, or go for total side quest completion in Wygol village.
The glyph and union system never ever gets old; learning new setups, cycling between them, figuring out the best combos for different bosses, all extremely rewarding.
Some of the boss balancing it a little wack; there are definitely main-game bosses which took me way more tries to beat than Dracula himself. But you kinda forgive this because the balancing is so perfect in all other ways. Enemy weaknesses and resistances are also taken very seriously which means you’re always working the glyph system.
And it’s a damn good thing the regular enemies in regular rooms are well-balanced, because the overworld of this game is HUGE. Yes you’re in Dracula’s Castle by the end, but you have to fight through several earlier levels, themselves each filled with several bosses, in order to get there.
Everyone who likes metroidvanias even a little bit should absolutely play Order of Ecclesia. It is Mt Rushmore of the genre.

∞ Posted on 8 Oct 2025

サーフィン CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Ninja Gaiden Sigma
(Completed on 31 Mar 2025)

It is kinda unbelievable that this is a 21 year old game.
I had no frame of reference at all for what’s going on here, other than Ninja Gaiden on the NES (also reviewed on this site!)
Mainly, I know I want to play the 2nd one of these, but I figured it would be best to start with the first game first. They all come in 1 package anyway.
On the Switch, load times are pretty brutal (especially when walking around large areas like in the city) but this game has been released a million times on a million platforms so if you don’t care about playing handheld, you’re sure to find it elsewhere
If your only frame of reference is the 1st Ninja Gaiden game on NES, there’s lots here for you! It has obnoxious enemy placement! It has slippery platforming! There are even areas where you can “walk enemies off the screen” to despawn them, just like the original! You wouldn’t necessarily think all this stuff could translate from 2D to 3D, but it does!
I played on Normal mode, never caved and dropped down to Ninja Dog, and I think that’s probably as good as I can do without hundreds of hours of practice. “Hard” or “Very Hard” would be awful, however, “Normal” is not quite as brutal as the original on NES.
I am unsure as to “the lore” on which of the 3D Ninja Gaiden games people like, and which versions of them are supposed to be “the best.” They’ve been remade about a billion times and for every platform under the sun
This game does a great job of capturing that same feeling that the NES games used to give; some areas are extremely annoying until you learn how to do it; some areas are genuinely difficult and demanding that you execute. But once you are through it you feel like you’ve accomplished something and you know you could do it again, but better next time.
The combat in this game is THE ENTIRE thing. Some areas want you to do these little Legend of Zelda style puzzles to advance to the next room in a dungeon or whatever, but that stuff is honestly pointless. You don’t care about anything other than the combat.
The world does feel big and fleshed-out though. The combat encounters seem to happen all over the place and you can use the entire world to move around them. It’s not like Bayonetta 1 where every combat encounter is in its own little arena.
Once again if you like these kind of games, you know you like these kind of games. I loved it so much, when I finished my first play-through, I immediately started another one just so I could be in those early levels and see how much better I’d got at the game.

∞ Posted on 8 Oct 2025

サーフィン CLASSIC VIDYA REVIEW

Ratchet & Clank
(Completed on 17 May 2025)

Very fun little adventure game / collectathon which can be as deep as you make it.
There is a “linear” way to play the game, where you ignore all side missions and only go straight for the missions that will advance the story
However, side missions are REWARDING. They get you power-ups and better guns, which brings us to the WHOLE THING that this game actually is:
The weapons system. There are so many different guns, which do so many different things, it never gets old.
While barely any weapons are required to finish 99% of the game (if you’re good enough), there is still a sense of choosing the right loadout for the right situation. Yeah you CAN do almost everything with just the wrench. But you are rewarded for not doing that
As indicated in the ending screen, I got barely any secrets on the first play through. The replay value is I assume because on a new game you keep all your stuff, you’ll know where to go for every secret, and you can keep piling up money and finish buying all the upgrades.
The only thing about Ratchet & Clank which is NOT that great, is the final boss fight. There are 2 ways to beat it, and neither requires any skill whatsoever on your part. (1) There’s a super ultra giga weapon you can buy earlier in the game if you farm enough bolts (don’t remember the name of this and I didn’t get it) or (2) bring enough bolts into the fight that you can always use the PDA to replenish all ammunition. There is no way, as far as I know, to beat the final boss with the wrench.
Taking the skill out of the final boss fight just makes it boring / anticlimactic when there are so many sections in the rest of the game which do ask you to do something skilled as far as platforming, combat etc.