Before release, looking at all the promotional material and trailers, I was fully convinced that Zenless Zone Zero would finally become the one Mihoyo game to draw me in. Genshin utterly failed me almost immediately from the start and Star Rail would sadly leave me bored just shortly after the introduction. Star Rail and ZZZ in particular feel curated to my usual tastes in video gaming, that I could easily imagine myself spending countless hours away on the grind. ZZZ almost succeeded in that. But during my previous session, I had an epiphany. I asked myself, "what am I doing this for?"

The answer is nothing.

In my desperate attempt to enjoy ZZZ, I largely ignored several initial issues I found during my first impressions in efforts to give ZZZ breathing room, a chance to impress me. I sometimes feel I was too hasty in my dismissal of Genshin and Star Rail and failed to give them proper time to fully flesh out their ideas to me. Maybe ZZZ can be more of a "modern anime" gacha and could be a game I find myself falling back to and enjoying an hour of grind or two. To give credit where it is due, the five hours I spent with ZZZ is longer than the three I spent with Star Rail and only one I spent with Genshin. That's it, that's my only positive.

Oh, sure, the animation is cool, I guess, if you're not sick of Mihoyo's boring, market-safe, character designs. While I lasted five hours with the mushy gameplay, I'll have to admit that I gave up with the story right away. After the introduction, I began skipping the cutscenes as I find the story, as usual with Mihoyo games, vapid as shit. Even before you skip a scene, a window pops up detailing the plot highlights of the scene the you are about to skip. Thanks for that! It's almost like Mihoyo know that their stories aren't worth caring about and that they're a waste of time.

I guess gachas just aren't for me then. Well, at least Mihoyo's gachas. Maybe Persona 5X will be the one to open my wallet. Probably not honestly, as it's easy to just divert my eyes into another game with more meaning and purpose than solely being a slot machine. I would advise those seeking to spend hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars elsewhere to, let's say, playing an actual video game.

I fucking love Persona 3. But for years on end, I always avoided The Answer. Discussions online would always conclude with The Answer being nothing but just grindy, non-canon filler. An expansion not worth your time. My impressionable 14-year-old self sadly dismissed it entirely because of its reputation and moved on to other entries in the Shin Megami Tensei series. With The Answer returning to Persona 3 Reload as ($35?!) DLC, I finally decided to proceed with my belated playthrough so that I may draw fair comparisons between the original and the remake when the time comes.

It's astounding how the message of this epilogue went over so many people's heads. The Answer is such a bittersweet conclusion to my favorite game of all time and its exploration of the grief felt by the cast after the main game's ending is beautifully told, albeit the player must endure exhausting gameplay in between each impactful scene, derailing the pace a bit. Nevertheless, it's wild how many in the community misunderstood certain plot elements like Yukari's behavior or the true reasoning behind what transpired on the Promised Day. Yukari was so valid here. I don't wish to speak much about it, but I cannot figure out how The Answer mischaracterize any of its party members nor how it "ruins" the message of the main game. If anything, it elevates my feelings of the original and now I loathe myself for putting it off for so long.

Hopefully Reload's interpretation of the Answer can offer more accessibility to those put off by its increased challenge and endless dungeon crawl and its absence of the fucking compendium because seriously that choice is the only thing that really bothered me. On any note, see you in September! Maybe I'll actually jot down my thoughts about Persona 3 Reload as a whole when that time comes.