Hm. That's mildly gay.

on one hand i get it, because p5 does have some really fundamentally ~groundbreaking~ design; the face buttons mapped to different actions rather than having to scroll through menus is nice and makes combat feel a little bit snappier and more involved, and perhaps most importantly, it appeals to people not traditionally inclined to play turn based RPGs. yakuza/rgg 7 and 8 also use the same approach for these reasons imo (and stylistically it is very similar overall, lol).

(7's combat isn't great but 8's was so good i literally spent like 30 hours grinding just because it felt good and was fun)

carrying this kind of thing forward is perfectly fine in my opinion. being able to blast through a battle, especially if you're backtracking or revisiting an area with lower level enemies, combat shouldn't be something a player avoids due to the tedium.

huh, okay. i guess on his wikipedia page it shows that he hasn't been art director since p4dan. i thought he had drawn the p5 sprites, but it's been too long for me to remember for sure what exactly he's credited for (besides character design). either way i really dislike the key art and character renders. i've messed around with the og sprites enough to know that they were far from perfect, and i'm not a purist with that kind of thing, but yosuke looks markedly worse imho (everyone else is Fine)

oh my god wait LMAO i looked at it again 💀

Media analysis is absolutely imperative to develop as a skill, so even if you don't want to share it, it's great to talk to friends or even just write it out without posting. Practicing by stretching those writing muscles will help immensely with both ability and confidence. In your case, I think that you may just need to put yourself out there and not worry too much about how it may be received. Write for yourself.

I'm not sure I've ever thought about confidence as it relates to sharing my thoughts, I just do it, because I truly believe in what I believe and I want to share it with people and start a conversation that might fuel further exploration. And while there have definitely been times I've felt like an idiot for getting stuff wrong, (mostly misremembering phrasing or something that does alter the overall meaning where it no longer fits), you just kind of have to take the L and recalibrate. It doesn't mean all of your ideas are stupid, or that you yourself are, it's just that you put a few pieces together wrong or jumped to a conclusion before everything was considered. One of the most important things you can do when analyzing media is being open to different interpretations (not just from others, but also from yourself) until you sus out the one you can put your full weight behind. You might run through a couple different iterations before you land on one that ties everything together, and you might look back and scoff at how silly those previous thoughts were, or you might say, "hey, I was right!"