This post contains affiliate links to products on Amazon.com for four of the video games.

This video may contain spoilers for the following games: Persona 5, Tekken 7, Tales of Berseria, Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, and Tiny Bird Garden.

Last year, I didn’t cover what I played during 2016 so I’ll tell you now a lot of it was Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden, which I loved. I have friends who like the series, and I was interested after seeing a Persona 5 trailer. I also played Tales of Vesperia, but anyway, back to the Persona series.

I enjoy summoning personas and strengthening and leveling them. In Persona 4, I loved the concept of confronting that part of you that you don’t like and embracing it to then actually empower you. My Jin Saga 2 fan-fiction works to that same end. Persona 5 wasn’t really like that. The personas of the party members revealed themselves at especially tense, often angered, moments as opposed to being an antagonist, an antagonistic presence within. So, with all that said, in case it has not been clear, the first game I played, at least in full for 2017, was Persona 5, a turn-based Japanese role-playing game.

I thoroughly enjoyed the combat of Persona 5 with summoning personas, the usual physical attacks, and the addition of the baton pass. I thought the music was really good in some of the dungeons, called palaces in the game, the casino probably being my favorite. I liked the main character’s outfit and smirk. I like to play New Game Plus iterations a lot, so I even played it a good three times over, or more.

I didn’t really care for the prison aesthetics, even given the full context of the story. I honestly don’t really think it’s a very good story. Too much hinges on conveniently not showing you certain things for a special twist. The first dungeon made me really uncomfortable, and it was a chore to get through every time.

I played Persona 5 up until Tekken 7 was released on June 2nd. Then after that, I shifted gears go ahead and focus on Tekken 7, a 3D fighting game, and I gave Persona 5 only a little more time in between to wrap up a few loose ends.

If you are unfamiliar with my views on the Tekken series, they amount to that I’m more of a Jin and Devil Jin fan first and not really much of a Tekken fan since Tekken 6, when the game itself ditched a story mode and replaced with an entire mode specifically for two expansion characters, one of them being my most character ever. Tekken 7 did very, very little to compensate for the general awfulness from Tekken 6. So far as the story presentation goes, the nicest thing I can say about it is that it delivered what it promised: a confrontation between Heihachi and Kazuya. There was hardly any Jin, and he was basically there to be chased and held. I’m also going to point out that this is the first time we see a Mishima character who is a woman, the first time one is playable, and her story is that she’s dead because Heihachi had to kill her. All around, I considered the story to be really bad. You can see my further comments in it in my review for Tekken 7 from earlier in 2017.

The customization was also lacking though points for having a nice, rich black color. They took it away at some point and eventually added it back, so, I was glad for that. I enjoyed practicing my electric wind god fists and sharing my first time ever of doing three in a row. I learned a few cool combos to do in practice mode.

I watched some competitive tournament-level Tekken in 2017, and Qudans, the best Devil Jin player in the world, won the Tekken World Tour, so that was really cool. I made a video about that too if you want to check it out.

At the end of July, I had to take a trip up to Michigan with family and I could tell before I left, and I felt it when I came back, that I felt I was pretty much done with the game, and I was.

We’re going to backtrack for a moment here because I want to talk about something in between the games. Before I played Persona 5, I tried playing Tales of Berseria and while playing that, I found out that you cannot take screenshots or save clips with the PS4 SHARE button for almost all of it, the main exception being the administrative zones, which are kind of like the coliseum. I was annoyed by that since I consider the sharing feature a really great option for this current age of technology. So, I just, I set aside Tales of Berseria. I was annoyed and frustrated and then I found out the same thing applied to Persona 5. You cannot share screenshots or save clips except for like, the very beginning. And I really, really wanted to play Persona 5, more than Berseria. To anyone listening and watching with any power here, I really resent that that was done, and I think that Namco, Atlus, and any other company that does these things should stop. I can spoil things to people without a PS4 SHARE button and in Berseria’s case, I can do those things, saving screnshots, saving clips, on the PC version, so really, other than annoying people like me, what do you think you’re actually accomplishing? A work-around, for anyone wondering, is that if you have a PC that can do PS4 remote play, to do that.

I like to tweet about my gaming and I would have liked screenshots or small clips, especially for a video like this one, and that is exactly what I did with Tekken 7 and something I really liked about it and found significantly better and more enjoyable in the whole experience, compared to both Tales of Berseria and Persona 5. At some point, I bought a PC that could do remote play for this reason and admittedly am now saving up for a PC that can actually play these games, that have PC versions.

Anyway, so after some cooling down and having a PC where I can remote play, I started up Tales of Berseria again. I really enjoyed it. I think it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. The Tales games are action Japanese role-playing games, rather than turn-based like the Persona series. I played Tales of Vesperia during 2016 and even a little bit, some of the beginning of 2017, but it was sort of like the tail end of that game, I was almost done. In Tales of Berseria, the main character is Velvet, a teenage girl who becomes a special kind of daemon called a therion: a daemon that can eat daemons. The story, in my opinion, was extremely interesting and engaging, exploring philosophical differences, fascism, slavery, fear, consequences of one’s actions, and personal growth. Some of the themes I find questionable, but I think the story itself admits that by continually reminding you that your party is a group of selfish characters who do questionable things. Even so, I liked every character in the party with perhaps Magilou being my least favorite because she can be a bit annoying and abusive toward her malak, Bienfu with the story playing it up for laughs, as if he is deserving of the abuse because he’s such a creep. My favorite character is Velvet, by a lot. I was honestly very happy to play as an angry dark-haired girl with powerful demonic powers. I wish her default outfit weren’t so awful, I admit.

At some point, I found myself dedicating a lot of time and in-game money to creating the most powerful versions of weapons and eventually I gave up when I started to realize how much time that was amounting to. After all, you can’t even keep your weapons into a New Game Plus anyway.

Eventually, I started up Kingdom Hearts, another action JRPG, again, because we now have the PS4 Final Mix version and partly because my daughter seemed interested from a video she was watching of Kingdom Hearts II. She’s 4 and half now, and she’s really enjoying it. She can actually do a lot on her own, but I get to help with things like figuring out how to progress the story and do boss fights. I’m helping her on her own save file, at first it was in Beginner mode, but she’s also got one in regular [Normal] mode that we’ve been working on. I don’t think I’ll be going all out with completing the journal, ’cause I mean, I’ve already done it twice, at least two full games of Kingdom Hearts years apart. This PS4 version does let me share things too and even includes information about what is and isn’t allowed, which is way better than just outright intentionally removing the ability to do these things, Atlus and Namco, so, thank you Square-Enix.

I followed an artist on Twitter named Daisy, who was kind enough to return the follow, and she is the artist for an independent game called Tiny Bird Garden. I saw the trailer some months ago, and it looked really cute. I downloaded it on the iPad for my daughter and on the iPhone for me. It is indeed very cute. You have a garden where you can fill a feeder with seed and check in on cute Tiny Birds. They say things, leave feathers to act as currency in the game with their comments in the mail, and you can buy them toys, treats, and hats to connect with them and fill up their hearts. There’s also a feature I’ve only used a little bit where you can put pictures of them and stickers on your own photos, so that’s pretty cool. So, great work Daisy, I hope things go well for you as an independent game developer.

Those are the main games I played in 2017. Surprisingly, they were all released in 2017 even if Kingdom Hearts Final Mix for the PS4 is a remaster of an older game. It’s not altogether unheard of for me to play a game the year it is released. It is pretty rare for me to willingly pay for 2 of them day 1 (Persona 5 and Tekken 7 in case you’re wondering). Berseria was a gift for my birthday. Up on the horizon for 2018 is possibly reviews of games I’ve already played or just playing them again because I enjoyed them. My husband recently reminded me that Dissidia is coming out for the PS4, so I might check that out. I have some other non-video-game hopes and projects as well.

All in all, that’s a wrap for this video, and I thank you for your time.