Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
So much better than P3 and P4. Even though the PSP version'll come out and I've only got so much room on this memory card, I'm definitely keeping that pre-final boss save. So much character and plot awesomeness! And the concepts!
One little bit: If you talk to people in the final dungeon, and also in the shops around town during that sequence, Baofu will say things like, 'I know Nyarlathotep's only human because only a human looks down on others like that.' The thing about eldritch abominations is thatthey don't care. Generally, they don't even notice us. They could exterminate us in passing and not see anything wrong with it: they're personifications of this poem -
A man said to the universe
Sir, I exist.
The universe replied, Yes
But that does not inspire in me
A sense of obligation.
We're here! We're alive! ...So?
Persona's version of Nyarlathotep, though, is a part of the Collective Unconscious. He might be "the seething mass of stupidity at the heart of the universe," but as he himself says, that seething mass of stupidity is us. Hatred, anger, giving the party access to the Velvet Room because he's just toying with them: Baofu says it better, but Nyarlathotep is very human, being made up of everyone's pettiness and flaws. Just like Philemon, who shares the face of the main character in both games, just like the personae... "We have met the enemy, and he is us," to quote Pogo. Unlike Lovecraft, Persona's theme is that yes, people's thoughts and dreams matter. Rumors can control reality because people do. If anything, Nyarlathotep is the inverse of a cosmic horror, being born of humanity instead of alien to it, but that certainly doesn't make him any less dangerous in a series like this: for humanity to fight him is to fight/face themselves, and that's tough.
One thing I don't agree with Baofu about is that he says the reason Nyarlathotep is intimidating despite being only human is that it's like the difference between a child and an adult: Nyarlathotep is older than the party, he knows more, just like an adult knows more and has more power to affect the world than children, who are powerless by comparison. The thing about Nyarlathotep, though, is that he really is a child. He's childishness. The will to be cruel just because it's clever, that lack of compassion: Philemon's the adult, being the manifestation of humanity's ability to grow up and solve its own problems.
Right down to catching flack for it from one of the children, for not being perfect, not being able to solve all their problems. Or the way things that matter so much to a child can not matter so much to someone who is more mature and has seen plenty more stuff to cry about... He may be the manifestation of what's best about the MC, and humanity as a while, but he too is still human. Children realizing that their parents are flawed and that it's generally a matter of they couldn't instead of they didn't try is a hard thing since it means admitting that becoming adults doesn't mean they'll become suddenly wiser or able to solve their own problems or anything.
Interestingly, Elizabeth's decision to try to make humanity evolve faster to save P3's MC does explain why she'd be kicked out of the Velvet Room. Belief that humanity can't evolve on its own, without actual interference as opposed to giving them the tools they need to do it themselves. Frustration at how it isn't evolving and letting the MC be freed... Since she's part of the collective unconscious too, and Nyarlathotep is made up of everyone's hatred, anger, contempt for others and feelings like that... A part of her is now Nyarlathotep. The Velvet Room used to serve as a safe place to put people who had their heads screwed with by Nyarly, but now it's only open to Wild Cards: I have to wonder what caused the drastic increase in security, why they're only helping a chosen few instead of everyone with a persona.
Since Philemon showed up looking like the protagonists instead of looking like themselves to everyone, and the Wild Cards are those in whom human potential is strongest? If his servants are only able to bring out that potential in those who contain much more of Philemon's essence than everyone else, that has all kinds of bad implications.
If something happened to the power of humanity, its potential to evolve and ability to face themselves? Obviously not good. Fortunately, the king of trolls is also absent, aside from P4's shadows, who resemble what Nyarlathotep gets up to in more ways than the yellow eyes.
Since Collective Unconscious beings also get power from belief (if people know they're real, then they become part of that person's reality, like rumors), Nyarlathotep was actually getting serious power-ups from the protagonists. Such powerful persona users? And he generally made damn sure that they'd remember him and know that he'd be back. I have to wonder, then, how much power he got from Philemon knowing that he existed/acknowledging his existence. Since a problem can't be solved without first being faced, it would be counter to Philemon's nature to refuse to admit the existence of humanity's weaknesses/Nyarlathotep. And since he basically IS the power of persona, if you think about it? Especially in terms of P4, how personae are born from facing oneself.
It's a wonderful metaphor for 'where the rising ape meets the falling angel,' how we constantly have to fight to overcome our own flaws, because petty cruelty is the default.
I want to see a fic with the P4 version of Philemon. Older protagonist + butterfly mask + nice suit. Longish silver hair in a ponytail. And of course the whole conversation about how no, he's not Yu's yellow-eyed shadow. The diametric opposite, in fact. Am I the only one who thought Yosuke's shadow was the most like Nyarlathotep himself?
While P4 has characters that are much more three-dimensional than P3's, the plot and the reasons all of it are happening are still pretty underwhelming. Of course, P4 is about the journey and having fun on the way, but even when there's the risk of everything being swallowed by the fog, none of it feels very earth-shaking. P2 EP, though, has a plot with a very high HSQ and really makes P4 and P3 feel like the kiddie versions by comparison (DemiKids/Devil Children - I want those games!). This is the work of the game studio that made Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, which starts off with the destruction of the world, leaving behind a twisted wasteland inhabited by demons and ghosts, like the quote in the intro.
Solely inhabited by demons and ghosts, in fact... As the player slowly realizes. There's no normalcy left, and trying to restore it is a futile dream because not only are the last parts of the normal, human world anything but reliable anchors, all this will just happen again unless you actually do something instead of just refusing to face reality and trying to get your comfortable little bubble back.
Really, this duology ends up a scathing indictment of that idea: innocence lost cannot be regained, and the characters realize too late that they shouldn't want that, not when what they gained in return for the loss of that innocence is so precious.
It's also a proper Shin Megami Tensei mythorgasm. I hope that when they do the PSP remake translation, they realise that 'Waitly' is actually Whateley. I've heard the PSP version has even more Lovecraft referencesHASTURCOMEFORTH. I love the dialogue of the Lovecraftian demons like the Shoggoth, even though I'm probably getting only half the references, like to The Colour Out of Space.
The intracacies of the demon rumor system are a little annoying, like how rumors won't show up unless you've gotten and spread the right rumors that were available earlier. I finally figured out where I screwed up and locked myself out of the treasure in one dungeon: I didn't get all the rumors about Stuparideth's skill because I didn't spread one of the secondary rumors and the demons I pacted with in that dungeon were the dumb ones that don't know rumors. Since they told me this in the dialogue, I really have no excuse for continuing to ask them for information.
Still, that is nowhere near as annoying as the social links in P3 and P4: instead of taking up playtime/demanding that you spend an hour on boring stuff before you can get back to the actual gameplay, demon contacting instead allows you to manage a dungeon's challenge level. Don't like that certain demons have skills that will remove half your money? Contract with them so they leave you alone and you get Free Tarot cards! Or guaranteed spell cards...
The combo system is much more intuitive and obviously useful than Digital Devil Saga's, which I didn't really start using/see the point of until I was playing Digital Devil Saga 2 on hard mode and actually needed the skill slots that otherwise would have been taken up by things like Maragi & Mabufula. The combination of game flow and pausing to rework strategies has the good points of an Active Time Battle System without being an actual ATBS, emphasis on the BS. Although FFX-2 made it work, surprisingly. Unlike FFIV and FFVI, I didn't put down the controller and just not pick it up again because I realized I wasn't having fun - I hate time pressure. The one thing it really could use is more physical-centered combos. There were magical/phys combinations, but sometimes they would damage an enemy that resisted one ingredient or another and sometimes they'd get reflected back in my face: despite the listed resistances in analyze data, there wasn't much way to tell which of them would work on an enemy that resisted/nulled/whatevered phys or magic without trying it.
It ended up like P4, where the physical attacks could be surprisingly useful, but since P2's mutation system means that you miss out on a lot of cool stuff if you don't end battles with combos, using physical as a damage dealer was rarely a good idea. By the way, character weapons are useless except for one bonus dungeon, if you're muted or if they boost SATK or something useful. Spend the money on armor, because if you're using the weapons, then you're not ranking up your personae and that is bad.
It's not that you need a guide to play this game, it's that there is so much awesome tucked away in various places that it's a shame to miss it. Like the Hastur P-Talk conversation with the Biyarky...
One little bit: If you talk to people in the final dungeon, and also in the shops around town during that sequence, Baofu will say things like, 'I know Nyarlathotep's only human because only a human looks down on others like that.' The thing about eldritch abominations is thatthey don't care. Generally, they don't even notice us. They could exterminate us in passing and not see anything wrong with it: they're personifications of this poem -
A man said to the universe
Sir, I exist.
The universe replied, Yes
But that does not inspire in me
A sense of obligation.
We're here! We're alive! ...So?
Persona's version of Nyarlathotep, though, is a part of the Collective Unconscious. He might be "the seething mass of stupidity at the heart of the universe," but as he himself says, that seething mass of stupidity is us. Hatred, anger, giving the party access to the Velvet Room because he's just toying with them: Baofu says it better, but Nyarlathotep is very human, being made up of everyone's pettiness and flaws. Just like Philemon, who shares the face of the main character in both games, just like the personae... "We have met the enemy, and he is us," to quote Pogo. Unlike Lovecraft, Persona's theme is that yes, people's thoughts and dreams matter. Rumors can control reality because people do. If anything, Nyarlathotep is the inverse of a cosmic horror, being born of humanity instead of alien to it, but that certainly doesn't make him any less dangerous in a series like this: for humanity to fight him is to fight/face themselves, and that's tough.
One thing I don't agree with Baofu about is that he says the reason Nyarlathotep is intimidating despite being only human is that it's like the difference between a child and an adult: Nyarlathotep is older than the party, he knows more, just like an adult knows more and has more power to affect the world than children, who are powerless by comparison. The thing about Nyarlathotep, though, is that he really is a child. He's childishness. The will to be cruel just because it's clever, that lack of compassion: Philemon's the adult, being the manifestation of humanity's ability to grow up and solve its own problems.
Right down to catching flack for it from one of the children, for not being perfect, not being able to solve all their problems. Or the way things that matter so much to a child can not matter so much to someone who is more mature and has seen plenty more stuff to cry about... He may be the manifestation of what's best about the MC, and humanity as a while, but he too is still human. Children realizing that their parents are flawed and that it's generally a matter of they couldn't instead of they didn't try is a hard thing since it means admitting that becoming adults doesn't mean they'll become suddenly wiser or able to solve their own problems or anything.
Interestingly, Elizabeth's decision to try to make humanity evolve faster to save P3's MC does explain why she'd be kicked out of the Velvet Room. Belief that humanity can't evolve on its own, without actual interference as opposed to giving them the tools they need to do it themselves. Frustration at how it isn't evolving and letting the MC be freed... Since she's part of the collective unconscious too, and Nyarlathotep is made up of everyone's hatred, anger, contempt for others and feelings like that... A part of her is now Nyarlathotep. The Velvet Room used to serve as a safe place to put people who had their heads screwed with by Nyarly, but now it's only open to Wild Cards: I have to wonder what caused the drastic increase in security, why they're only helping a chosen few instead of everyone with a persona.
Since Philemon showed up looking like the protagonists instead of looking like themselves to everyone, and the Wild Cards are those in whom human potential is strongest? If his servants are only able to bring out that potential in those who contain much more of Philemon's essence than everyone else, that has all kinds of bad implications.
If something happened to the power of humanity, its potential to evolve and ability to face themselves? Obviously not good. Fortunately, the king of trolls is also absent, aside from P4's shadows, who resemble what Nyarlathotep gets up to in more ways than the yellow eyes.
Since Collective Unconscious beings also get power from belief (if people know they're real, then they become part of that person's reality, like rumors), Nyarlathotep was actually getting serious power-ups from the protagonists. Such powerful persona users? And he generally made damn sure that they'd remember him and know that he'd be back. I have to wonder, then, how much power he got from Philemon knowing that he existed/acknowledging his existence. Since a problem can't be solved without first being faced, it would be counter to Philemon's nature to refuse to admit the existence of humanity's weaknesses/Nyarlathotep. And since he basically IS the power of persona, if you think about it? Especially in terms of P4, how personae are born from facing oneself.
It's a wonderful metaphor for 'where the rising ape meets the falling angel,' how we constantly have to fight to overcome our own flaws, because petty cruelty is the default.
I want to see a fic with the P4 version of Philemon. Older protagonist + butterfly mask + nice suit. Longish silver hair in a ponytail. And of course the whole conversation about how no, he's not Yu's yellow-eyed shadow. The diametric opposite, in fact. Am I the only one who thought Yosuke's shadow was the most like Nyarlathotep himself?
While P4 has characters that are much more three-dimensional than P3's, the plot and the reasons all of it are happening are still pretty underwhelming. Of course, P4 is about the journey and having fun on the way, but even when there's the risk of everything being swallowed by the fog, none of it feels very earth-shaking. P2 EP, though, has a plot with a very high HSQ and really makes P4 and P3 feel like the kiddie versions by comparison (DemiKids/Devil Children - I want those games!). This is the work of the game studio that made Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, which starts off with the destruction of the world, leaving behind a twisted wasteland inhabited by demons and ghosts, like the quote in the intro.
Solely inhabited by demons and ghosts, in fact... As the player slowly realizes. There's no normalcy left, and trying to restore it is a futile dream because not only are the last parts of the normal, human world anything but reliable anchors, all this will just happen again unless you actually do something instead of just refusing to face reality and trying to get your comfortable little bubble back.
Really, this duology ends up a scathing indictment of that idea: innocence lost cannot be regained, and the characters realize too late that they shouldn't want that, not when what they gained in return for the loss of that innocence is so precious.
It's also a proper Shin Megami Tensei mythorgasm. I hope that when they do the PSP remake translation, they realise that 'Waitly' is actually Whateley. I've heard the PSP version has even more Lovecraft referencesHASTURCOMEFORTH. I love the dialogue of the Lovecraftian demons like the Shoggoth, even though I'm probably getting only half the references, like to The Colour Out of Space.
The intracacies of the demon rumor system are a little annoying, like how rumors won't show up unless you've gotten and spread the right rumors that were available earlier. I finally figured out where I screwed up and locked myself out of the treasure in one dungeon: I didn't get all the rumors about Stuparideth's skill because I didn't spread one of the secondary rumors and the demons I pacted with in that dungeon were the dumb ones that don't know rumors. Since they told me this in the dialogue, I really have no excuse for continuing to ask them for information.
Still, that is nowhere near as annoying as the social links in P3 and P4: instead of taking up playtime/demanding that you spend an hour on boring stuff before you can get back to the actual gameplay, demon contacting instead allows you to manage a dungeon's challenge level. Don't like that certain demons have skills that will remove half your money? Contract with them so they leave you alone and you get Free Tarot cards! Or guaranteed spell cards...
The combo system is much more intuitive and obviously useful than Digital Devil Saga's, which I didn't really start using/see the point of until I was playing Digital Devil Saga 2 on hard mode and actually needed the skill slots that otherwise would have been taken up by things like Maragi & Mabufula. The combination of game flow and pausing to rework strategies has the good points of an Active Time Battle System without being an actual ATBS, emphasis on the BS. Although FFX-2 made it work, surprisingly. Unlike FFIV and FFVI, I didn't put down the controller and just not pick it up again because I realized I wasn't having fun - I hate time pressure. The one thing it really could use is more physical-centered combos. There were magical/phys combinations, but sometimes they would damage an enemy that resisted one ingredient or another and sometimes they'd get reflected back in my face: despite the listed resistances in analyze data, there wasn't much way to tell which of them would work on an enemy that resisted/nulled/whatevered phys or magic without trying it.
It ended up like P4, where the physical attacks could be surprisingly useful, but since P2's mutation system means that you miss out on a lot of cool stuff if you don't end battles with combos, using physical as a damage dealer was rarely a good idea. By the way, character weapons are useless except for one bonus dungeon, if you're muted or if they boost SATK or something useful. Spend the money on armor, because if you're using the weapons, then you're not ranking up your personae and that is bad.
It's not that you need a guide to play this game, it's that there is so much awesome tucked away in various places that it's a shame to miss it. Like the Hastur P-Talk conversation with the Biyarky...