Kowloon High-School Chronicle

Playtime on Steam is misleading. I've played this game thrice- once on the PS2 in it's original Japanese, once on the Switch, and now on Steam (primarily on the Deck). This is one of my favorite games of all time (if not just my fav straight-up), and one that hugely changed the way I look at games as an artform. A very unique blend of genres, styles, and aesthetics that hasn't been replicated before or since. While it's frequently, reductively compared to Persona (and it'll certainly appeal to many fans of that series), Kowloon's deeply strange systems, singular focus on characters, episodic structure, and wider, weirder blend of genres makes the comparison mostly falter past surface-level.
It's definitely not for everybody- the game is intentionally obtuse, massively important systems go poorly explained (if at-all), the translation is occasionally wonky, and the pace can charitably be described as a slow burn. The game also includes some problematic tropes from the time of its release, that'll unfortunately turn off many who are unable to look past them. If you are however, and you're looking for a deceptively ambitious, one-of-a-kind work of art that manages to become more than the sum of it's parts, I'm more than willing to give this a glowing recommendation. Purveyors of the weird and obscure in particular should absolutely give this game a play: there's nothing else quite like it. If it hits for how it did for me, you'll never be able to look at the medium the same way again.

This game slaps. Just like how you can slap two items together and end up with infinite energy, or how you can just jam a pencil inside a stupid demon bat's face (and you might be asked to do so by a small impoverished child).
There's certainly a mechanics issue where the player can get knowledge checked such as the importance of AP in combat and just how crucial the Mind stat is to character development, but these do not diminish from the game much as it is a decent length so if you feel you screwed up your character, you can easily restart and fast forward through the dialogue at your leisure.
There's some unfortunate content in the game (Is Sudo trans or gay? Either way it's a bad look) but seeing as it originally came out in 2004 and how the original publishers would end up doing a lot worse on that front? That can be chalked up to the times. In a way, this helps center the game in the past of 2004 with its bizarro laptop tablet with text message capabilities and delightfully "cheap" pictures as background backed with an amazing soundtrack.
This game has a vibe and I encourage you to take a look at the gameplay, the characters and if it strikes a single chord in you, dive in. You'll find something in these ruins.

10/10, would get a hamburger by spinning counter clock-wise in front of a door in a forest with mirrors to display as a side decoration at the currently planned expo for a british museum again.

Obtuse? - nope.
Cryptic, demanding, thought provoking and best of all yet ironic -
Archaic by design of its reintroduction...totally.
Phenomenal dungeon crawling and puzzle solving from 2004 direct from Japan and Atlus thanks to Arc systems.
Entwining mysteries and deciphering ancient civilizations through the lens of high school students moonlighting as adventurers.
By day drama plays out as class and teachers take precedent in visual novel format, an affectionate system of conversation is simple yet emotive enough in all manners , and expect to get retorts of varying degrees.
Nighttime is for spelunking and archeology, gearing up and dungeon diving.
Shortcuts are found, walls can be blasted, floors crumbled etc.
Inventory management and crafting.
Monster diversity and status effects. Leveling, skill and ability points, and you are able to farm.
Kowloon High School Chronicle is a solid experience and the dungeons hold great trepidation and ambiance.

Kowloon is a game that genuinely tries things I haven't seen in other games. As a half visual novel half DRPG hybrid it's weird, creative, and at times downright cryptic. It's very easy to get stuck fumbling around with the mechanics at the start as they aren't properly explained. I literally had to look up what the dialogue cross said online because the font was barely legible to me. Once I did finally figure things out however, the game started to make a lot more sense and exploring the ruins felt like second nature. The combat also has a great feel to it and there's decent variety in the builds you can make, some of them more exploitable than others.
Overall, the game just has a lot of personality coupled with a very distinct presentation that keeps the player interested. I'd say the story is more of a slow burn but there's plenty of twists and turns that helps it ramp up into something that's hard to put down. It's also primarily episodic so I can see it feeling a bit more digestible for someone who doesn't like to play rpgs for long hours at a time.
There's so much more I'd like to say, but Kowloon is such a bizarre blend of ideas and genres that you really just have to experience it firsthand to fully appreciate.

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