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I've been meaning to finish Persona 1 since I just had the Playstation 1 disk and was dating Violet seriously. I don't mean that I've been meaning to start Persona. I mean that I've been meaning to finish my playthrough. I've started twice. It's not that great a game. I have it. I'm slogging through it now. I'm getting fairly close. I suppose I've clocked about 30-40 hours off and on over the last year or two. I guess there's probably about 30 to go. It doesn't take up time in a normal, meaningful way; I play it when I'm sipping coffee and scrolling down tumblr or when I'm checking RPG.net to see if they have anything to say about WoD or Exalted (and that's about it, these days). I play it when I'm sitting on the toilet. Or I did. With the end approaching, I designate time, as if for a chore. It's on a list.
Persona's an interesting game that spawned an increasingly successful franchise almost despite itself. The characterization presented in the first game is weak, the graphics are uninspired (it's a fairly early Playstation title, so that's no surprise), and the plot is perfunctory - mostly a setup for random monster battles and dungeons that appear to be designed at random. The combats were initially weirdly balanced to the point that they appeared buggy. It was re-made as a PSP title with cleaned up graphics, fairly impressive video scenes, and cleaned up mechanics. It's a legacy title; it's what you buy to fill out your collection with the re-made Persona : IS and EP, which are significantly more worthwhile from a player's perspective. I'm slogging through the game to have beaten the entire collection (hopefully, at some point) and almost out of what I would consider respect for the series. But why respect, of all things?
Persona offered something that other games didn't offer and at a level of complexity that its future titles would not bother to model. It was one of the few games where it wasn't just possible to communicate with your enemies (simple as their AIs inevitably were), and not just expected, but mandatory. Talking to enemies convincingly renders their spell card unto you. When you have their spell card, you can either mash it up with another monster's spell card in order to create better personas (basically a spirit grafted to a character which renders bonuses, some weaknesses, higher stats, and a bevy of powers you can swap in and out) or, as long as you carry it and don't fuse it, they act as a get out of jail free card during fights. The monster you have a card for shows up, you talk to it and show it your card, and it recognizes your contract with it, then leaves - effectively allowing you to skip the fight.
Summoning new persona for new powers is complicated, involving a large chart full of signs for good matches, poor matches, normal and strange matches. There are a list of mythical beats and characters a mile long, each associated with one of the Major Arcana of the tarot. The personas have levels and improve with use, and at a max level you can trade them in for difficult to find items.
You can buy guns, bullets, melee weapons, and a whole set of armor (greaves, boots, helmets, and body pieces, and they're all expensive), spell items, healing items. You can gamble in a casino where you play the games your character sits at. People at diners will help you remember your objectives in the story. Your last two characters are recruited manually from a list of secret characters. There's an entire side quest that takes over from the main quest that you can undertake without ever touching the normal quest, with a totally different plot and character.
Basically, there's very little plot - it's the video game equivalent of a complicated RPG dungeon grind. People misunderstand what Persona is about - game one is hardly about the plot at all. It's literally a mashup of a ton of complicated, intermeshing mechanics where the goal of the game is actually to grind at a furious pace, building the biggest, most badass team you can while taking these brand-new, never seen before mechanics for a trial run. Once I realized the purpose - that the game is basically a huge Excel spreadsheet with graphics for people with a special brand of obsessive-compulsive focus, it made perfect sense to me. It's fun, just not the kind of fun you find in gaming much, anymore. It's practically a dead format that would have made much more sense on a PC during the early days of computer gaming.
It's close to both Persona 2 titles in how it plays where Persona 2 games are much more sophisticated in terms of plot and smoother mechanically (though they remain huge, intense grinds) and almost totally divorced from Personas 3 and 4. I find it to be a very interesting phenomenon.
Now. We're going to need to get to the grocery store, today and hopefully we'll manage to even see Pacific Rim. (I've heard good things from most people, I've heard reports that it was bad from friends of friends, but I'm ignoring that.) The upcoming days menu looks like steamed asparagus with poached egg and grated espresso-rind cheese served with either herbed roasted potatoes or buttered sweet corn, garlic hummus with rough-chopped parsley and roasted onions and pita chips, chicken and wild rice soup with parsley or kale, salad with tomato and half a turkey sandwich, and rajma masala served over jasmine rice.
I'm excited to let you know how the movie was. I also totally have to make it to the library. My books are a day over due.
Additionally, I'm killing time doing yard work until Katie gets home. Our mower is broken, so I'm literally weed whacking my overgrown backyard into submission foot by bloody foot. Wish me luck.
Persona's an interesting game that spawned an increasingly successful franchise almost despite itself. The characterization presented in the first game is weak, the graphics are uninspired (it's a fairly early Playstation title, so that's no surprise), and the plot is perfunctory - mostly a setup for random monster battles and dungeons that appear to be designed at random. The combats were initially weirdly balanced to the point that they appeared buggy. It was re-made as a PSP title with cleaned up graphics, fairly impressive video scenes, and cleaned up mechanics. It's a legacy title; it's what you buy to fill out your collection with the re-made Persona : IS and EP, which are significantly more worthwhile from a player's perspective. I'm slogging through the game to have beaten the entire collection (hopefully, at some point) and almost out of what I would consider respect for the series. But why respect, of all things?
Persona offered something that other games didn't offer and at a level of complexity that its future titles would not bother to model. It was one of the few games where it wasn't just possible to communicate with your enemies (simple as their AIs inevitably were), and not just expected, but mandatory. Talking to enemies convincingly renders their spell card unto you. When you have their spell card, you can either mash it up with another monster's spell card in order to create better personas (basically a spirit grafted to a character which renders bonuses, some weaknesses, higher stats, and a bevy of powers you can swap in and out) or, as long as you carry it and don't fuse it, they act as a get out of jail free card during fights. The monster you have a card for shows up, you talk to it and show it your card, and it recognizes your contract with it, then leaves - effectively allowing you to skip the fight.
Summoning new persona for new powers is complicated, involving a large chart full of signs for good matches, poor matches, normal and strange matches. There are a list of mythical beats and characters a mile long, each associated with one of the Major Arcana of the tarot. The personas have levels and improve with use, and at a max level you can trade them in for difficult to find items.
You can buy guns, bullets, melee weapons, and a whole set of armor (greaves, boots, helmets, and body pieces, and they're all expensive), spell items, healing items. You can gamble in a casino where you play the games your character sits at. People at diners will help you remember your objectives in the story. Your last two characters are recruited manually from a list of secret characters. There's an entire side quest that takes over from the main quest that you can undertake without ever touching the normal quest, with a totally different plot and character.
Basically, there's very little plot - it's the video game equivalent of a complicated RPG dungeon grind. People misunderstand what Persona is about - game one is hardly about the plot at all. It's literally a mashup of a ton of complicated, intermeshing mechanics where the goal of the game is actually to grind at a furious pace, building the biggest, most badass team you can while taking these brand-new, never seen before mechanics for a trial run. Once I realized the purpose - that the game is basically a huge Excel spreadsheet with graphics for people with a special brand of obsessive-compulsive focus, it made perfect sense to me. It's fun, just not the kind of fun you find in gaming much, anymore. It's practically a dead format that would have made much more sense on a PC during the early days of computer gaming.
It's close to both Persona 2 titles in how it plays where Persona 2 games are much more sophisticated in terms of plot and smoother mechanically (though they remain huge, intense grinds) and almost totally divorced from Personas 3 and 4. I find it to be a very interesting phenomenon.
Now. We're going to need to get to the grocery store, today and hopefully we'll manage to even see Pacific Rim. (I've heard good things from most people, I've heard reports that it was bad from friends of friends, but I'm ignoring that.) The upcoming days menu looks like steamed asparagus with poached egg and grated espresso-rind cheese served with either herbed roasted potatoes or buttered sweet corn, garlic hummus with rough-chopped parsley and roasted onions and pita chips, chicken and wild rice soup with parsley or kale, salad with tomato and half a turkey sandwich, and rajma masala served over jasmine rice.
I'm excited to let you know how the movie was. I also totally have to make it to the library. My books are a day over due.
Additionally, I'm killing time doing yard work until Katie gets home. Our mower is broken, so I'm literally weed whacking my overgrown backyard into submission foot by bloody foot. Wish me luck.
