I originally wrote a pretty critical post of the form and then figured I should actually watch some of the video if I'm going to say this much about it. I watched the beginning and about half of the S-Link sections (jumping around), and I wasn't very impressed.
He makes plenty of good points, but there are a lot of bad ones too. There's way too much of a focus on "logical consistency" in regards to how characters act, without recognizing that people aren't always logical. And while I didn't much care for mementos either, and I thought his emphasis on how it takes agency away from the characters was interesting, a.) he just keeps repeating the same point over and over and b.) I think there should have been some recognition of how it's sometimes good to get help from people capable of helping you. He really cares about whether or not characters are solving their own problems, which, y'know, there's a point to be made there, but the specific way he kept framing it felt super judgy. It was less "this character has no say" and more "this character isn't doing anything". I also think he's wrong about like half of the specific interpretations he makes.
He's also just way too impressed with himself. He starts with how the video couldn't have been cut down (and with how he's the first person to ever criticize P5, which, no), yet he makes the same point about mementos about 16 times and goes on multiple tirades where he'll ask a half-dozen rhetorical, redundant questions about a minor plot inconsistency. Like, yeah dude, you could have used an editor.
I don't even like this game. I'm an easy mark for a video like this, and yet he couldn't even get me.
Anyway, below is the post I originally wrote, which is more about longform essays in general. Spending an hour with Cvit didn't change my mind on any of it.
Somebody upthread mentioned nitpicks, and that's my issue with most of these "longform" essayists (and there are critics I genuinely like who fall into this trap sometimes too). They focus on so many specific details that in a lot of ways obfuscate the larger point being made (or, in a lot of cases, distract from the fact that there is no larger point). It's like a math problem where if they can prove that there are a certain number of "bad things" within the work of art, then they also prove that the art is bad, which is apparently the only thing criticism is good for. This is why at the absolute worst end of the "longform" spectrum you'll find idiots claiming to be "objective art critics".
There are of course exceptions who use longform video well, but using it well doesn't mean providing an insurmountable list of examples that only serve to prove a very simplistic point. I have not watched this video, but looking at the structure laid out in the timestamps and seeing how people are responding in the thread doesn't give me any desire to either.
You could probably do a good series of videos where you went through each S-Link and each video was well thought out and had its own point (and maybe there's even an overarching one at the end). But talking about them all in this one grand video about the game means that they all have to serve whatever larger point the critic is making about the game, which reduces each one to simply an example and probably also limits the range of conclusions you can come to. (You could also do the opposite: make one video with a point about the S-Links, but then you should pick-and-choose key examples, not exhaustively catalogue them). And then the second part of the video being organized by the narrative order of the dungeons: Again you could probably do a series about that, but more significantly, chronological criticism of a narrative is often worthless. Like, if there's some thematic connection you see between Madarame, Futaba, and Shido's dungeons, then talk about that theme and how it translates across them. Don't wait around and talk about the same theme three times in three different parts of your critique. It blunts the message and pads the runtime.
Idk, that's just some friendly advice I'd give someone making a video like this. I want there to be more good games crit on youtube and appreciate the ambition these people have, but I think all the time and effort that obviously went into something like this could be better spent on something more focused.
(insert joke about long-ass post complaining about long-ass videos here)
