Persona 4
I'd originally started playing Persona 3 back in January 2012 while I was on medical leave. I liked it, but the game requires characters to shoot themselves in the head with a gun every time they summoned a Persona character. I wasn't in the best headspace, so I stopped playing it because I really did not need to see that so frequently. Maybe some day I'll return!
Anyway, I started playing this game courtesy of
the_andy.
Persona 4 is an RPG that takes place in modern-day Japan. My character and the other playable characters all attend the same high school in a small Japanese town.
The protagonist (in my game, "Kevin McHale," lol) moves to Inaba to live with his uncle and cousin for a year. He doesn't know his uncle very well, so things are a little awkward at first, both at home as well as at school, where he has to learn to make new friends.
As I manage the protagonist's social life (through a game system called "Socal Link"), I also work part-time jobs to earn money and life skills (Understanding, Expression, Courage, etc.) and try to do well in school.
A couple of gruesome murders happen about the same time the protagonist moves to town. His uncle is a detective for the police department, but the protagonist and his friends keep trying to solve the murders on their own: mostly because the protagonist has the ability to enter another world through television screens - a place where people are taken during the time when they disappear from the real world but before they are killed.
The protagonist and his friends are able to create and use their own personas to fight against enemies in this world only after they have "faced" their own shadow selves, and confronted some of the true feelings within themselves that they had previously tried to deny and ignore. (Examples: Yukiko doesn't really want to inherit her parents' famous inn; Kanji is bisexual.)
The opening that plays every time I turn on the PlayStation is totally boss, and it's pretty representative of the game. Since it plays every time, it always feels like I'm watching an episode of anime.
The gameplay is much better than the beginning of Persona 3 especially; things are introduced at a slower pace, and things like Social Links and Personas are explained a little bitter, in my opinion. I think that I'll have a much easier time of it whenever I return to Persona 3.
The music is great. The voice-acting is also great.
My character is better able to summon (adopt) and create different personas based on how strong his social links are with the people in his life in the real world. THIS UNSUBTLE METAPHOR AMIRITE?!
Things That Suck
The thing that prevents the game from being perfect for me is its treatment of women. The students' homeroom teacher and some of the boys (Yosuke especially) are constantly making comments about wanting to be with girls/being attracted to girls, and it is always played for laughs.
The only character who consistently refuses to play along is Yukiko, which is probably one of the reasons she's my fave (that and just about everything else makes her a dead ringer for Rei Hino/Sailor Mars; she's the person in the background of the DW icon on this post!).
Another thing that's awful was the inclusion of Teddie, an obnoxious blue bear, as a "cheerleader" in a corner of the screen during every battle in the "shadow world" of the TV. TV will yell at the protagonist when people's HP are low, when someone gets KO'ed, and also cheer everyone when they're doing well. IT'S SO OBNOXIOUS. I get tense during video game fights anyway and the last thing I need is a grating voice screaming at me.
At a certain point in the game, the cheerleader changes, though, thank God.
Future
I'm not finished yet with the game; I'm at the end of August right now.
I tweet about this game pretty frequently whenever I play it! Lately, there have been a couple of great plot twists, and I expect they'll only get bigger/more epic as the characters get closer to figuring out who the killer is (they'd briefly succeeded in preventing the murders, and then everything got blown to shit).
I suspect this will be a game I buy for myself and replay in years to come! It's rare for me to connect so deeply with a video game outside the Final Fantasy franchise.
If you don't do video games, there is also an anime helpfully titled: Persona 4: The Animation. If you live in the US, I believe you can watch it for free at Anime News Network (&/or Hulu?!) right now. I'm at work, otherwise I'd link.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. You can comment here or there.
There are <
> comments on this post at Dreamwidth.
Anyway, I started playing this game courtesy of
the_andy.
Persona 4 is an RPG that takes place in modern-day Japan. My character and the other playable characters all attend the same high school in a small Japanese town.
The protagonist (in my game, "Kevin McHale," lol) moves to Inaba to live with his uncle and cousin for a year. He doesn't know his uncle very well, so things are a little awkward at first, both at home as well as at school, where he has to learn to make new friends.
As I manage the protagonist's social life (through a game system called "Socal Link"), I also work part-time jobs to earn money and life skills (Understanding, Expression, Courage, etc.) and try to do well in school.
A couple of gruesome murders happen about the same time the protagonist moves to town. His uncle is a detective for the police department, but the protagonist and his friends keep trying to solve the murders on their own: mostly because the protagonist has the ability to enter another world through television screens - a place where people are taken during the time when they disappear from the real world but before they are killed.
The protagonist and his friends are able to create and use their own personas to fight against enemies in this world only after they have "faced" their own shadow selves, and confronted some of the true feelings within themselves that they had previously tried to deny and ignore. (Examples: Yukiko doesn't really want to inherit her parents' famous inn; Kanji is bisexual.)
The opening that plays every time I turn on the PlayStation is totally boss, and it's pretty representative of the game. Since it plays every time, it always feels like I'm watching an episode of anime.
The gameplay is much better than the beginning of Persona 3 especially; things are introduced at a slower pace, and things like Social Links and Personas are explained a little bitter, in my opinion. I think that I'll have a much easier time of it whenever I return to Persona 3.
Click to viewThe music is great. The voice-acting is also great.
My character is better able to summon (adopt) and create different personas based on how strong his social links are with the people in his life in the real world. THIS UNSUBTLE METAPHOR AMIRITE?!
Things That Suck
The thing that prevents the game from being perfect for me is its treatment of women. The students' homeroom teacher and some of the boys (Yosuke especially) are constantly making comments about wanting to be with girls/being attracted to girls, and it is always played for laughs.
The only character who consistently refuses to play along is Yukiko, which is probably one of the reasons she's my fave (that and just about everything else makes her a dead ringer for Rei Hino/Sailor Mars; she's the person in the background of the DW icon on this post!).
Another thing that's awful was the inclusion of Teddie, an obnoxious blue bear, as a "cheerleader" in a corner of the screen during every battle in the "shadow world" of the TV. TV will yell at the protagonist when people's HP are low, when someone gets KO'ed, and also cheer everyone when they're doing well. IT'S SO OBNOXIOUS. I get tense during video game fights anyway and the last thing I need is a grating voice screaming at me.
At a certain point in the game, the cheerleader changes, though, thank God.
Future
I'm not finished yet with the game; I'm at the end of August right now.
I tweet about this game pretty frequently whenever I play it! Lately, there have been a couple of great plot twists, and I expect they'll only get bigger/more epic as the characters get closer to figuring out who the killer is (they'd briefly succeeded in preventing the murders, and then everything got blown to shit).
I suspect this will be a game I buy for myself and replay in years to come! It's rare for me to connect so deeply with a video game outside the Final Fantasy franchise.
If you don't do video games, there is also an anime helpfully titled: Persona 4: The Animation. If you live in the US, I believe you can watch it for free at Anime News Network (&/or Hulu?!) right now. I'm at work, otherwise I'd link.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. You can comment here or there.
There are <
> comments on this post at Dreamwidth.