Persona Q, Shadow of Persona 3 & 4
I’ve been enjoying Persona Q-it’s a fun dungeon crawler with fanservicy bits-but I haven’t felt the same sense of awe I felt playing the original games. All of the spin offs work like supplementary material to the original game, fun in their own right, but now they seem to bury the main game. Maybe that’s why lately I’ve felt disengaged from the fandom. I didn’t buy the second Arena game yet; the first one was okay, a decent fighting game, but, again, left me feeling something was missing. For a moment I found myself wondering why I was ever so enthralled with this series, and I realized I was letting the saturation of spin-off games color my impressions of the original game. I want to get that enthrallment back.
Many of the characters have been reduced to jokes. Akihiko, especially, comes to mind-the entirety of his character now seems to be that he’s a protein junkie and fitness buff. Chie likes meat, did they mention? These quirks have become the sum entirety of the character. I realize the writers of the spinoffs assume people playing the game played the original and therefore were exposed to the nuance of the characters, but, again, that is being buried. I appreciate the efforts at Naoto/Kanji fanservice but it seems so very tacked on. Especially in Persona Q-the rearrangement of the timeline is discordant with their developing dynamic in the original game at that time. Kanji’s voice actor injects some real Kanji-esque essence, though; it does feel like it is Kanji that is talking. Souji-Yu/Yosuke, man, they’re really jamming that in there. It’s a solid ship, but the way the writers are shoehorning it into the spinoffs feels baity. The interactions between the P3 and P4 characters feel forced. The dialogue bits are dumps used as a medium for expanding on in-jokes.
I did appreciate the answer in the Group Date Café pertaining to slugging it out at a riverbed to proclaim one’s true love-that rings quite true with the original game.
It’s starting to feel more like a one-note character ensemble fanservicy moe moe crap thing. I’m glad Persona 4, especially, did so well that it’s introduced a lot of people to Shin Megami Tensei and Atlus at large, but these latest attempts to cash in seem so lazy. I’m not even sure if lazy is the right word. Superficial, maybe. No, that’s not quite right either. Unimpressive. It’s too much fanservice too far separated from any quality base. It’s disproportionate. I understand people whose first exposure to the Persona series is the spinoff stuff and they conclude it’s another gimmicky flat JRPG thing.
I also realize I have been avoiding the fandom because there’s a fanfic I started writing a while ago and have made no progress on in, shit, it’s been years, hasn’t it. So I’ve felt in a way guilty and inadequate, like I have no right to be there, and re-examining the game makes me ache for time lost. I could have finished it a long time ago. But those thoughts are unhelpful. I feel far more comfortable in the Gyakuten Saiban fandom because I finished at least a main story arc in the Narumitsu shit I wrote for that, so I feel like I actually contributed something to the fabric of the English language fandom. No, I don’t feel that I have to contribute to a fandom to belong to it, but when there’s a story I desperately want to tell I’m uncomfortable if I haven’t at least made that known. I told myself it’s because I wanted to see how the spinoff games changed the continuity of the main series but to be honest, I’m afraid of writing. I’m afraid it will be mediocre and it never seems as good as it is in my head. But that’s always the case. That’s the attitude that results in nothing ever getting done. I realize that, and yet I still do it. It’s really pathetic. I never feel like I’m *ready* to do my best work. But I’ll never feel ready. It’s just something you have to do regardless. I’ve spent too much of my time paralyzed by the feeling that the time isn’t right to progress with something.
I’ve also been focusing on original work, but I’d have a hell of a lot more done on that too if I could get over the same fears.
There is a lot of awesome stuff that could have been done with a Persona universe crossover. There are a lot of issues that could be discussed. I feel a lot of potential has been squandered to make a few easy bucks. Atlus is resting on its laurels from the original games. It is fine to enjoy your laurels, and luxuriate in them a little, but Persona 4 came out in 2008. That’s quite a long rest indeed.
Many of the characters have been reduced to jokes. Akihiko, especially, comes to mind-the entirety of his character now seems to be that he’s a protein junkie and fitness buff. Chie likes meat, did they mention? These quirks have become the sum entirety of the character. I realize the writers of the spinoffs assume people playing the game played the original and therefore were exposed to the nuance of the characters, but, again, that is being buried. I appreciate the efforts at Naoto/Kanji fanservice but it seems so very tacked on. Especially in Persona Q-the rearrangement of the timeline is discordant with their developing dynamic in the original game at that time. Kanji’s voice actor injects some real Kanji-esque essence, though; it does feel like it is Kanji that is talking. Souji-Yu/Yosuke, man, they’re really jamming that in there. It’s a solid ship, but the way the writers are shoehorning it into the spinoffs feels baity. The interactions between the P3 and P4 characters feel forced. The dialogue bits are dumps used as a medium for expanding on in-jokes.
I did appreciate the answer in the Group Date Café pertaining to slugging it out at a riverbed to proclaim one’s true love-that rings quite true with the original game.
It’s starting to feel more like a one-note character ensemble fanservicy moe moe crap thing. I’m glad Persona 4, especially, did so well that it’s introduced a lot of people to Shin Megami Tensei and Atlus at large, but these latest attempts to cash in seem so lazy. I’m not even sure if lazy is the right word. Superficial, maybe. No, that’s not quite right either. Unimpressive. It’s too much fanservice too far separated from any quality base. It’s disproportionate. I understand people whose first exposure to the Persona series is the spinoff stuff and they conclude it’s another gimmicky flat JRPG thing.
I also realize I have been avoiding the fandom because there’s a fanfic I started writing a while ago and have made no progress on in, shit, it’s been years, hasn’t it. So I’ve felt in a way guilty and inadequate, like I have no right to be there, and re-examining the game makes me ache for time lost. I could have finished it a long time ago. But those thoughts are unhelpful. I feel far more comfortable in the Gyakuten Saiban fandom because I finished at least a main story arc in the Narumitsu shit I wrote for that, so I feel like I actually contributed something to the fabric of the English language fandom. No, I don’t feel that I have to contribute to a fandom to belong to it, but when there’s a story I desperately want to tell I’m uncomfortable if I haven’t at least made that known. I told myself it’s because I wanted to see how the spinoff games changed the continuity of the main series but to be honest, I’m afraid of writing. I’m afraid it will be mediocre and it never seems as good as it is in my head. But that’s always the case. That’s the attitude that results in nothing ever getting done. I realize that, and yet I still do it. It’s really pathetic. I never feel like I’m *ready* to do my best work. But I’ll never feel ready. It’s just something you have to do regardless. I’ve spent too much of my time paralyzed by the feeling that the time isn’t right to progress with something.
I’ve also been focusing on original work, but I’d have a hell of a lot more done on that too if I could get over the same fears.
There is a lot of awesome stuff that could have been done with a Persona universe crossover. There are a lot of issues that could be discussed. I feel a lot of potential has been squandered to make a few easy bucks. Atlus is resting on its laurels from the original games. It is fine to enjoy your laurels, and luxuriate in them a little, but Persona 4 came out in 2008. That’s quite a long rest indeed.