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Something something Halloween, everyone. It's Monday, so obviously I feel like living death. Obviously. I am under-rested and feeling pretty bitter about holidays in general at this point, but the blame is squarely at the feet of the guy that didn't go to bed at a good hour. Never mind that I am working 15 minutes early today, and will be for the duration. It doesn't seem like a big deal in the big scheme of things, but when the alarm goes off and you distinctly remember being allowed to sleep 15 minutes more last Friday, that placebo becomes an awfully bitter pill.
So, Persona! I've been a fan of this series for a very long time, now and I feel like each iteration has something to recommend it. It's pretty tempting to compare it to older games, but I'm not exactly reviewing the whole line. I feel like a comparison to Persona 3 is pretty apt, though, considering that the interface and structure are almost identical. Generally speaking, I like any game that has both A. Tarot card themed powers and B. allows me to push around mythical deities with no negative ramifications.
P3 was, honestly, pretty nuts. Compared to a game where a giant Babel tower erupts from the ground during a fictional 13th hour where everyone turns into coffins and includes a puppy and a robot in your player characters roster in a world which is, ostensibly, supposed to be similar to the one we inhabit, hanging out in a weird TV world seems pretty mundane.
Gameplay, like usual, seems to consist primarily of time management and running down endless hallways, which means that I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I like a game that can basically be played in an Excel spreadsheet. I think it comes down to the game presenting you with the 'One More Turn' scenario that Civilization likes to use. If you play for a game day, you can visit your social link friends and you are sporadically rewarded by a combination of storyline and improving the strength of your monster summoning. It's reasonably easy to puzzle out how to max all of the social links in one play through if you're interested.
The big draw of the game isn't the famous continuous dungeon grind, exactly, which features the same weird enemies over and over again with palette swaps, but rather the story that the game tells. The core of the story is that you're a transfer student to a middle-of-nowhere small town where the most interesting place to hang out at is the local Wal-Mart. (Or, I'm sorry, Junes.) About the time you show up, a bunch of grisly murders start to occur. Also, people are put in a weird television world and you have magic super powers. Sounds similar to my experiences, except replace 'weird tv world' with the comic shop, 'super powers' with self-esteem issues, and immediately being the most popular kid in school with awkward, mean-spirited social pariah.
Actually, there isn't much to the main story, and the dimensions of it really don't change all the way until the end. One by one, people are tossed into the weird dimension and you go and save them - generally adding them to your party. The real motivator is the story in inherent in the social links as you get to know the people in the town. Most of those stories don't have anything to do with the conflict at all, but they're pretty compelling.
I always feel a bit like a sociopath playing some of those stories, since the best way to get ahead is to just say exactly what the character wants to hear. "Sure, you're a great person. Whatever you want, as long as my Social Rank increases."
I kid because I pretend that I love.
P4, like its predecessor, has a lot going on and most of those things resemble mini-games. The persona fusion system, for example, starts off with the real small fry of the spirit world and over time and with creative application, you end up summoning the real big names like archangels, Norse and Greek gods, and I think I'm currently all set to summon Lucifer. It's cool to get to the end game where you're collecting deities like Pokemon cards and blasting the hell out of hapless monsters with 'em.
Ok, so, overall the game play gets kind of repetitive and, at 60 hours, that's probably a bad thing. Combat is, however, facilitated by the novel invention of actually being able to control what your characters do which P3 decided wasn't strictly necessary. It's saved in that combat itself is pretty painless, imo, and everything else is terribly addictive. One caveat, though. The game is effectively timed - you can run out of days if you're not careful and even though it's a boon in the sense of creating a sense of urgency, it's possible to find yourself under leveled and struggling to get to the boss on the level before the time's up. Kind of unlikely, but it's possible.
Overall, the mechanics arn't anything to write home about - they're serviceable. The story, themes, and atmosphere are the thing and we'll get into that later.
So, Persona! I've been a fan of this series for a very long time, now and I feel like each iteration has something to recommend it. It's pretty tempting to compare it to older games, but I'm not exactly reviewing the whole line. I feel like a comparison to Persona 3 is pretty apt, though, considering that the interface and structure are almost identical. Generally speaking, I like any game that has both A. Tarot card themed powers and B. allows me to push around mythical deities with no negative ramifications.
P3 was, honestly, pretty nuts. Compared to a game where a giant Babel tower erupts from the ground during a fictional 13th hour where everyone turns into coffins and includes a puppy and a robot in your player characters roster in a world which is, ostensibly, supposed to be similar to the one we inhabit, hanging out in a weird TV world seems pretty mundane.
Gameplay, like usual, seems to consist primarily of time management and running down endless hallways, which means that I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I like a game that can basically be played in an Excel spreadsheet. I think it comes down to the game presenting you with the 'One More Turn' scenario that Civilization likes to use. If you play for a game day, you can visit your social link friends and you are sporadically rewarded by a combination of storyline and improving the strength of your monster summoning. It's reasonably easy to puzzle out how to max all of the social links in one play through if you're interested.
The big draw of the game isn't the famous continuous dungeon grind, exactly, which features the same weird enemies over and over again with palette swaps, but rather the story that the game tells. The core of the story is that you're a transfer student to a middle-of-nowhere small town where the most interesting place to hang out at is the local Wal-Mart. (Or, I'm sorry, Junes.) About the time you show up, a bunch of grisly murders start to occur. Also, people are put in a weird television world and you have magic super powers. Sounds similar to my experiences, except replace 'weird tv world' with the comic shop, 'super powers' with self-esteem issues, and immediately being the most popular kid in school with awkward, mean-spirited social pariah.
Actually, there isn't much to the main story, and the dimensions of it really don't change all the way until the end. One by one, people are tossed into the weird dimension and you go and save them - generally adding them to your party. The real motivator is the story in inherent in the social links as you get to know the people in the town. Most of those stories don't have anything to do with the conflict at all, but they're pretty compelling.
I always feel a bit like a sociopath playing some of those stories, since the best way to get ahead is to just say exactly what the character wants to hear. "Sure, you're a great person. Whatever you want, as long as my Social Rank increases."
I kid because I pretend that I love.
P4, like its predecessor, has a lot going on and most of those things resemble mini-games. The persona fusion system, for example, starts off with the real small fry of the spirit world and over time and with creative application, you end up summoning the real big names like archangels, Norse and Greek gods, and I think I'm currently all set to summon Lucifer. It's cool to get to the end game where you're collecting deities like Pokemon cards and blasting the hell out of hapless monsters with 'em.
Ok, so, overall the game play gets kind of repetitive and, at 60 hours, that's probably a bad thing. Combat is, however, facilitated by the novel invention of actually being able to control what your characters do which P3 decided wasn't strictly necessary. It's saved in that combat itself is pretty painless, imo, and everything else is terribly addictive. One caveat, though. The game is effectively timed - you can run out of days if you're not careful and even though it's a boon in the sense of creating a sense of urgency, it's possible to find yourself under leveled and struggling to get to the boss on the level before the time's up. Kind of unlikely, but it's possible.
Overall, the mechanics arn't anything to write home about - they're serviceable. The story, themes, and atmosphere are the thing and we'll get into that later.
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