So, I've been an outsider fan of Persona for a while now. But, due to the games not being available on the platforms I own, I haven't been able to play them for myself. Watched P5 playthroughs and the like. Until P4G dropped on steam. Bought it on release to show my support, but haven't finished it until recently. JRPGs have never been my favorite, they've just kind of existed to me.

This game singlehandedly not only reinforced my enjoyment for the franchise, but has made me eagerly await for upcoming Persona releases on PC and put JRPGs on the map for me.


The characters of this game are memorable, well written, and have fantastic chemistry. The battle system, while somewhat aged, is nowhere near clunky. The plot is tightly written, crafted with expertise, and has great pacing. The soundtrack can't be described by mere words. There's nothing bad I can really come up with about this game. Other than its obvious age.

This game is a steal at its current price. Atlus, please drop Persona 5 Royal on Steam so I can happily give you more money and destroy another mass sum of hours of my life.

Thank you for dropping Persona 5 Royal on Steam and letting me destroy another mass sum of hours from my life.

So, I'm a huge fan of co-op shooters. I've played a lot of Payday 2, Killing Floor 2, L4D2 and I've been playing Deep Rock recently and dabbled in B4B, mediocre at best that game is.

The Anacrusis just has this flare that I absolutely love. I'm a sucker for 70's aesthetics, and The Anacrusis nails that to a tee, from the music to the level design, architecture and atmosphere. There are some problems, I will go over those in a bit. But for a foundation, this is one of the best co-op shooters I've played in a while.

Let's start with problems. I've played through all 4 chapters, but have the most experience with Chapter 1. A lot of these are crossed off because these devs are really good at taking in community feedback, which is actually bonkers how much they listen, it's wonderful.

1. No text chat/voice chat off by default. This is a very highly team focused game. It's really frustrating when I want to communicate to my team through voice but they don't have it on due to it being off by default. Already addressed with a prompt coming to suggest adjusting voice settings on start-up.

2. Mouse Acceleration? Question mark because this one doesn't bother me, but it might others, as it has been cited as an issue. Addressed and dealt with.

3. No vote/kick function. I've already been dealing with "teammates" keeping saferooms open so we cannot progress and deliberate friendly fire. My only option is to leave these games, due to no vote option. Just fixed with the free weekend!

4. Very janky/rapid movement in general. I don't know if this is an engine issue or just early access crust (no offense of course), but when dealing with Brutes, the distance that people are flung and what direction they are flung can vary wildly. It's often disorienting getting hit by a Brute and then teleporting to where you end up. Gameplay is a lot more smooth, along with not teleporting places! Thank you devs!

5. Uneven level length. Chapter 1 is objectively the largest of the 3 chapters, and feels like a full L4D "campaign" to me, but the other two chapters, while fun in their own right, don't stack up. Chapter 3 was somewhat close, but Chapter 2 was incredibly short. Just a nitpick/odd design choice I noticed. I'd also like to see the amount of chapters a chapter/campaign has before going into it.

6. HUD/Viewmodel bugs. My partner and I ran into a few of these during our playthroughs, and while some could be fixed by just swapping to AFK, others required you to leave the lobby to reset it. This is expected of Early Access, so I'm not too worried about it. Already addressed and fixed!

7. Little weapon variety. 3 primary guns, 1 secondary, and 3 power weapons. The Blaster Rifle feels very lackluster compared to the SMB and Shotgun Blaster. I hope there are more weapons coming before or during post launch. Already addressed and have added variants, mods and new weapons as well.

Now, that seems like a lot of negatives that I've come up with, but to me, the positives heavily outweigh them and these negatives can (and have) easily gone away with time.

Here are the positives.

1. Character interaction. I absolutely love when characters interact with one another, and tell a story through their dialogue. I'm getting a lot of vibes from this game from that as well. I'd love even more character interaction between the group! Side note, I would LOVE a character preference system in this game so you could choose a character preferred that you would want to play as in game, or how you prefer them 1-4, one being most preferred and 4 being least. Already addressed and added! These devs listen so much, and it's delightful.

2. The Perk System. This is a fantastic idea to add a huge amount of replayability to this kind of game. A small nitpick i have is some perks are SOOOOO much better than others, (Looking at you Goo Nullifier/Charge Extender/Fast Healing.) and the perk pool is kinda small with 40 at the time of this review. But other than those small gripes, absolutely fantastic. It combines growing power with rewarding exploration, peak game design. This also kinda is a reason I prefer Chapter 1, because of how much I'm able to build my power over the longer course of that mission.

3a. Addictive gameplay and great gunplay. Guns are fun to use, enemies are fun to shoot, what more could you ask for? Another thing this game has going for it is the variety of grenades. There are so many grenades, all of them having really unique purposes, which I really love.

3b. HOLY MOTHER OF MODS, the mod system for guns is actually genius. There's actually a purpose to check guns outside of safe rooms as they could possibly have fantastic mods to help with how you play. I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner, as it's a phenomenal change to the game.

4. Groovy soundtrack/score. More of this please, I love the funky 70s vibe that these jams give off during gameplay, along with how they contribute to the hectic nature of the hordes.

5. AFK mode is wonderful, glad that was salvaged from L4D2. Needs to be normalized in Co-Op shooters. Slight nitpick, similar to L4D, it would be awesome if it automatically switched on after a certain period of time. Fixed, works perfectly now.

6. Specials are unique, easily distinguishable from a crowd, and provide their own unique problems to each fight. Eggs are also super terrifying balls of death that I dread triggering.

7. Crescendo events are nice and varied with different holdout locations or gauntlets. More crescendos in my opinion need to be specified, however. An example is the run to the saferoom through the park in Chapter 1. Maybe a gate or indicator that it will alert the aliens? Just spitballing. Game Instructor is more informative now as well on crescendos!

8. The overall feel and care put into this game. I know you guys are hard at work in this game, and as a message to the devs personally. I am loving this game, this game has a wonderful soul, and I will be watching this game with keen interest for the rest of the year.

So, you could probably tell my feelings overall on this game. This is basically all my thoughts I could sum up in my head at the moment, but as co-op shooters go, this one has the potential of being one of the greats. Pick this one up and give it a shot if you like co-op shooting games. Just expect some EA jank.

Edit: Fixed some things and crossed off negatives that have been addressed/fixed.

Edit 2: This game is getting so much love put into it, I hate seeing so many of the top reviews being negative. It's like I'm taking crazy pills, they're putting so much effort into it with all these patches and changes lifted straight from the community.

Edit 3: Striked out some more fixes that the devs made. Please ignore the top review, he only has less than an hour of playtime and played it when the game came out, this game has gotten significantly better and will only get better with time. At the time of writing this edit, the game is 9 bucks, which is an absolute steal seeing as you get all future battlepasses for free with the game.