[game review] IT'S MOONSHEEN AND CHIRA'S FAULT
First, though:
1000 Words - a lovely comic I just found on devart randomly. It's 53 pages long (each page being a single panel) of sheer lovely. I ... I bawled like a baby about 75% of the way through it, because it touched me very deeply. It's about divorce, and the power of artwork and words - when they fail and when they work.
Now onto other important matters! Well. Maybe important matters!
SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: PERSONA 4
I'm sure all of you have heard at least once about Persona 3, the game where to get into a battle you SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE HEAD. You might not know anything else about that game. Persona 4 does not have that nifty little note to it, but I promise you it's every bit as fun (perhaps funner! and I do not care that 'funner' is not a word!)
I've played approximately 20 hours Persona 4 as of right now, which means I'm less than a third of the way through the game. So far, the best description I can come up with for the game is RPG-slash-dating game with a side order of strategy.
Storyline (8/10)
Protagonist shows up in Inaba, a quiet rural town, after his parents decide to go overseas for work. Now dumped in the lap of a detective and his cute little daughter, you must attend school in this tiny little town for one year.
However, almost immediately after you get there, people start getting murdered (and in pretty gruesome ways). This doesn't really effect you at first, but due to a rumor going around school (that if you look into your tv at midnight when it rains, you'll see your soulmate), you ... NEARLY GET SUCKED INTO YOUR TELEVISION! (you know, this brings up an interesting question that I don't know the answer to because I never played the very beginning of 3: how do the characters discover they have to shoot themselves in the head to release their persona? Because, you know, most hilarious suicide attempt ever. "I want to die ... HOLY SHIT WHAT JUST CAME OUT OF MY HEAD".) Anyway, you discover there's a world on the other side of the TV that you can access, and it turns out the people getting murdered are being thrown into this TV world. They're safe from the monsters there until the concealing fog that penetrates TV world dissipates, which is always when fog rolls into real-world Inaba. You, being awesome, decide that along with your friends you will go into the TV world and save the victims while trying to solve the mystery.
Now, the TV world itself murders people, but it's by an odd mechanism: a person in the TV world develops a shadow self made up of all the things they want to hide or deny about their person. These shadow selves, once faced up to, become Persona. Before that, they're bosses. And also the short-term Big Bad/Plot Point. The story is surprisingly engaging. I'm really curious why the murderer is throwing people into the TV world, or if there really IS a murderer. Meeting each Big Bad is pretty much the most awesome thing ever (Kanji. I have nothing else to say.) The downside is that it's a tad shallow, and occasionally you as the player will find yourself yelling at the characters what the next plot point is while they stumble over themselves trying to figure out what you already know.
Battle System (9/10)
Persona 4 is a true turn-based RPG (although I'm not sure if the game will wait infinitely for you to pick a move - I turned away during a battle and I'm not sure if I hit a button or not, but eventually Protagonist just attacked). You control Protagonist and, like Kingdom Hearts, your battle companions have a range of fighting options which the AI controls (Act Freely, Full Assault, etc) or you can pick to control them directly. The AI is very impressive: the badguys are generally just dumb enough to give you a chance even when you're a little underleveled, and your battle companions learn as they fight - not only new moves, but also what skills to use against which enemies (when you discover an enemy weakness, the characters will utilize it). They can generally be relied on to heal when needed and not waste too much SP (Soul Points, which are like MP in any other game). In other words, I leave them on AI control unless it's a boss fight and it works.
Everyone in the game besides Protagonist has one Persona, formed from the confidence gained by facing their inner self. Protagonist is Way More Awesome than anyone else and has room in his soul for a number of personas, which can be gained by random chance after a battle. As a result, while everyone else has a specialty element (fire, wind, ice), Protagonist can specialize in any element and has a range of personas to choose from in each battle.
Strategy is very important in this game as well. To defeat enemies, especially bosses, stat hits for your characters can be almost as important as physical/magical attacks. Knocking enemies down is almost as useful as killing them and can give you additional attacks or allow your whole group to attack as a team in a comical cloud of smoke spouting words like "WHACK" and "BAM". Use this as often as possible - there is no penalty for its use, and the characters seem to feel good about it.
Items gained in battle are useless until they've been brought to a particular store to be fused into equipment for your characters (or for fulfilling requests). You also gain EXP and yen.
Overall I enjoy battle quite a lot in this game, and I think you will, too. The one glaring flaw in battle is that if Protagonist is knocked out, it's game over - even if the rest of your party is standing. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT.
Oh, and you fight with a golf club sometimes (I think Yousuke is equipped with a wrench at the moment). In other words, sheer awesome cannot describe the weapons.
Game Mechanics (8/10)
Persona 4, like 3, has the large draw of being a rare RPG where you are not just carting your character from one event trigger to another. (Okay, most RPGs open up about halfway through and let you do your own thing for a loooong while, but still. Eventually you will be back to an event trigger.) Instead, you are walking Protagonist through a year of his life in a new town, following events from day to day to day with a fair amount of control over your time.
It seems obvious, then, that you would want to spend all your time in the TV world leveling up, but normal, daily activities also help your stats, almost as much as actual battle. Your social links - which are enhanced by spending time with people, attending clubs (soccer or basketball, drama or music), and doing well on tests - are all very important to forming more and more powerful personas. The higher a particular social rank is, the bigger the stat enhancements for a particular type of persona (based on tarot cards - Fool, Magician, etc). Other stats to raise (Diligence, Courage, Knowledge, Understanding, and Expression) allow you to get better-paying part-time jobs, have bolder conversations, and complete more activities (which all in turn enhance your social stats).
Of course the greatest asset that you will never have enough of is time. Your character can only pick a maximum of (generally) two activities a day - one for the afternoon on schooldays (Monday-Saturday) or daytime (Sunday), and one for the evening. Afternoon activities include school clubs, studying, hanging out with friends, and going into the TV world. Evening activities include going fishing, doing a part-time job, and reading a book. If you go into the TV world you will not be able to do a night activity because you will be too tired.
I mentioned in the above section that Protagonist has a number of persona to choose from in battle. Well, Protagonist can make his own persona by fusing other persona together. Creating persona in a tarot area where you have a high social link score can allow the persona to instantly gain a few levels after creation. Your level as determined by EXP effects how powerful a persona you can create. Persona fusions are also effected by the 'fusion forecast' (the weather. YEAH I KNOW). While you can only carry a limited number of persona with you into battle, if you register your persona you can 'purchase' them back after 'releasing' them.
I've heard - and I have NOT gotten to this stage - that you can date people after you've achieved a high enough social link with them. Apparently you can date more than one girl at a time (and this all gets hilarious).
In the end, though, it's all about saving people from the TV world. If you fail to save them before the fog rolls in you are sent a week back in time to try again. All stats gained during that week are lost. I really enjoy doing all the real world stuff, silly though it is, but for a world that is so incredibly free it only highlights the restrictions. So far I've 'leveled up' my social links pretty evenly but I'm starting to get the idea that I should be concentrating on a few arenas because there just isn't enough time to be awesome at everything. I DUNNO.
Dungeons are pretty boring and straightforward - mazes that you have to discover as you travel through them, and each level of a dungeon contains more powerful monsters, etc etc. Encounters aren't random so you can run away from an enemy if you see one and you're not in the mood with good success. However, the game allows you to gain or lose the advantage depending on who is facing whom when you encounter an enemy, and that mechanic is totally whacked. Think of it as random 'ambush' or 'advantage', because I know my head hurts trying to figure it out ("IT WAS FACING AWAY FROM ME WHY DO I NOT HAVE THE ADVANTAGE!?") It's also important to know that there are no save points in dungeons except right before the boss fight, so you'll want to keep Goho-M (Immediate Dungeon Escape) on you when you go to the TV world (if you use Goho-M to escape, you can go back to where you were when you return to the TV world). Be prepared to occasionally lose hours of gameplay to bad luck.
And conserve your SP enhancing stuff! You can't buy things that restore your SP (realistically, because how are you going to explain to the grocery store owner that you need something that will restore your soul?) You can gain a character that will restore your SP but it's EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE until late in the game. My strategy is to use up all my SP in the dungeon, then escape to come back another day (sleeping restores your health and SP).
Characters (10/10)
AHAHA I AM KIND OF IN LOVE WITH YOUSUKE (halcyonjazz says that he's the 'unofficial main character'). Uh. This game has some really awesome characters going on up in here. Everyone I've met is pretty fleshed out and even the one-dimensional characters are interesting enough to keep me engaged (even if they don't get more personality at least they have interesting pasts). Because the game's theme is 'the person within' (hence, persona), no one is quite what they seem, creating inversions of character stereotypes that stumble more heavily upon the AWESOME that is reality.
Most of the characters are genuinely funny and I can promise you'll get curious about them as the game goes on (which adds a fun element to the 'getting to know people so your stats are higher' thing). Also, watch your gaydar. It will go off. A lot. Or, alternatively, be hysterically WRONG.
Dubbing (8/10)
Because America is not awesome enough to handle a game with characters speaking Japanese and just giving them subtitles, this game is heavily dubbed. But. It's dubbed pretty well! Yousuke's voice actor gets better with time and he's pretty decent even at the start. Chie's voice threw me for a bit of a loop (it's too mature), but you warm up to her too. Yukiko is the weakest one so far, IMHO. There's a few other characters that have lines but suffice to say this game doesn't make me want to shut up the characters by cutting them off. In fact, I've caught myself wanting to hear how a particular line will be read!
For me, guys, this is incredible.
Music/Sounds (8/10)
The music can get a little repetitive in dungeons, but the theme song and a few of the other ones are really catchy and enjoyable. The sounds are helpful alerts and some of them are downright pleasing to the ear (I like the menu sounds and, oddly, the sound of people walking. I DUNNO). The game comes with a CD of its music so I guess they want you to love it. Might as well - you'll be listening to it for like 80 hours of gameplay!
Graphics/Design (8/10)
Please bear in mind this game is for the ps2, so the graphics just aren't OMG AMAZING. That being said they're very solid and I haven't really caught my character walking through walls or anything like that. The style is slightly cartoony (think anime) and the characters have a variety of emoticons and motions to express themselves, although the game will tell you what the character feels if you don't get it ("Yousuke looks disappointed ..."). The lighting is nice and tells you a lot about the weather. The speech bubbles for the characters are decorated with their current expression as well and I find them very entertaining.
The battle system is where the graphics really shine, since it's obvious the creators put a lot of work into the personas. With so many to create and use, it's impressive that the graphics team put together a unique set of moves for each persona with their own physical movements and attack appearances. The personas themselves are beautiful designs: I'll admit right now that if I were to cosplay from this game, I'd want to be a persona. MAN THEY ARE COOL-LOOKING.
The cutscenes are anime. Nothing to say about these - they're well-animated but I'm a little bored by the style. Oh well.
OVERALL: 8.5/10 - so far this game is pretty freaking sweet! The characters and storyline are interesting, the gameplay is fun and challenging, and you have a lot of freedom to do whatever. It's also long, at 60-80 hours of gameplay. If you have some time to kill this summer, why not waste your time pretending you're a student in Japan who fights TV monsters? =D
1000 Words - a lovely comic I just found on devart randomly. It's 53 pages long (each page being a single panel) of sheer lovely. I ... I bawled like a baby about 75% of the way through it, because it touched me very deeply. It's about divorce, and the power of artwork and words - when they fail and when they work.
Now onto other important matters! Well. Maybe important matters!
SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: PERSONA 4
I'm sure all of you have heard at least once about Persona 3, the game where to get into a battle you SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE HEAD. You might not know anything else about that game. Persona 4 does not have that nifty little note to it, but I promise you it's every bit as fun (perhaps funner! and I do not care that 'funner' is not a word!)
I've played approximately 20 hours Persona 4 as of right now, which means I'm less than a third of the way through the game. So far, the best description I can come up with for the game is RPG-slash-dating game with a side order of strategy.
Storyline (8/10)
Protagonist shows up in Inaba, a quiet rural town, after his parents decide to go overseas for work. Now dumped in the lap of a detective and his cute little daughter, you must attend school in this tiny little town for one year.
However, almost immediately after you get there, people start getting murdered (and in pretty gruesome ways). This doesn't really effect you at first, but due to a rumor going around school (that if you look into your tv at midnight when it rains, you'll see your soulmate), you ... NEARLY GET SUCKED INTO YOUR TELEVISION! (you know, this brings up an interesting question that I don't know the answer to because I never played the very beginning of 3: how do the characters discover they have to shoot themselves in the head to release their persona? Because, you know, most hilarious suicide attempt ever. "I want to die ... HOLY SHIT WHAT JUST CAME OUT OF MY HEAD".) Anyway, you discover there's a world on the other side of the TV that you can access, and it turns out the people getting murdered are being thrown into this TV world. They're safe from the monsters there until the concealing fog that penetrates TV world dissipates, which is always when fog rolls into real-world Inaba. You, being awesome, decide that along with your friends you will go into the TV world and save the victims while trying to solve the mystery.
Now, the TV world itself murders people, but it's by an odd mechanism: a person in the TV world develops a shadow self made up of all the things they want to hide or deny about their person. These shadow selves, once faced up to, become Persona. Before that, they're bosses. And also the short-term Big Bad/Plot Point. The story is surprisingly engaging. I'm really curious why the murderer is throwing people into the TV world, or if there really IS a murderer. Meeting each Big Bad is pretty much the most awesome thing ever (Kanji. I have nothing else to say.) The downside is that it's a tad shallow, and occasionally you as the player will find yourself yelling at the characters what the next plot point is while they stumble over themselves trying to figure out what you already know.
Battle System (9/10)
Persona 4 is a true turn-based RPG (although I'm not sure if the game will wait infinitely for you to pick a move - I turned away during a battle and I'm not sure if I hit a button or not, but eventually Protagonist just attacked). You control Protagonist and, like Kingdom Hearts, your battle companions have a range of fighting options which the AI controls (Act Freely, Full Assault, etc) or you can pick to control them directly. The AI is very impressive: the badguys are generally just dumb enough to give you a chance even when you're a little underleveled, and your battle companions learn as they fight - not only new moves, but also what skills to use against which enemies (when you discover an enemy weakness, the characters will utilize it). They can generally be relied on to heal when needed and not waste too much SP (Soul Points, which are like MP in any other game). In other words, I leave them on AI control unless it's a boss fight and it works.
Everyone in the game besides Protagonist has one Persona, formed from the confidence gained by facing their inner self. Protagonist is Way More Awesome than anyone else and has room in his soul for a number of personas, which can be gained by random chance after a battle. As a result, while everyone else has a specialty element (fire, wind, ice), Protagonist can specialize in any element and has a range of personas to choose from in each battle.
Strategy is very important in this game as well. To defeat enemies, especially bosses, stat hits for your characters can be almost as important as physical/magical attacks. Knocking enemies down is almost as useful as killing them and can give you additional attacks or allow your whole group to attack as a team in a comical cloud of smoke spouting words like "WHACK" and "BAM". Use this as often as possible - there is no penalty for its use, and the characters seem to feel good about it.
Items gained in battle are useless until they've been brought to a particular store to be fused into equipment for your characters (or for fulfilling requests). You also gain EXP and yen.
Overall I enjoy battle quite a lot in this game, and I think you will, too. The one glaring flaw in battle is that if Protagonist is knocked out, it's game over - even if the rest of your party is standing. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT.
Oh, and you fight with a golf club sometimes (I think Yousuke is equipped with a wrench at the moment). In other words, sheer awesome cannot describe the weapons.
Game Mechanics (8/10)
Persona 4, like 3, has the large draw of being a rare RPG where you are not just carting your character from one event trigger to another. (Okay, most RPGs open up about halfway through and let you do your own thing for a loooong while, but still. Eventually you will be back to an event trigger.) Instead, you are walking Protagonist through a year of his life in a new town, following events from day to day to day with a fair amount of control over your time.
It seems obvious, then, that you would want to spend all your time in the TV world leveling up, but normal, daily activities also help your stats, almost as much as actual battle. Your social links - which are enhanced by spending time with people, attending clubs (soccer or basketball, drama or music), and doing well on tests - are all very important to forming more and more powerful personas. The higher a particular social rank is, the bigger the stat enhancements for a particular type of persona (based on tarot cards - Fool, Magician, etc). Other stats to raise (Diligence, Courage, Knowledge, Understanding, and Expression) allow you to get better-paying part-time jobs, have bolder conversations, and complete more activities (which all in turn enhance your social stats).
Of course the greatest asset that you will never have enough of is time. Your character can only pick a maximum of (generally) two activities a day - one for the afternoon on schooldays (Monday-Saturday) or daytime (Sunday), and one for the evening. Afternoon activities include school clubs, studying, hanging out with friends, and going into the TV world. Evening activities include going fishing, doing a part-time job, and reading a book. If you go into the TV world you will not be able to do a night activity because you will be too tired.
I mentioned in the above section that Protagonist has a number of persona to choose from in battle. Well, Protagonist can make his own persona by fusing other persona together. Creating persona in a tarot area where you have a high social link score can allow the persona to instantly gain a few levels after creation. Your level as determined by EXP effects how powerful a persona you can create. Persona fusions are also effected by the 'fusion forecast' (the weather. YEAH I KNOW). While you can only carry a limited number of persona with you into battle, if you register your persona you can 'purchase' them back after 'releasing' them.
I've heard - and I have NOT gotten to this stage - that you can date people after you've achieved a high enough social link with them. Apparently you can date more than one girl at a time (and this all gets hilarious).
In the end, though, it's all about saving people from the TV world. If you fail to save them before the fog rolls in you are sent a week back in time to try again. All stats gained during that week are lost. I really enjoy doing all the real world stuff, silly though it is, but for a world that is so incredibly free it only highlights the restrictions. So far I've 'leveled up' my social links pretty evenly but I'm starting to get the idea that I should be concentrating on a few arenas because there just isn't enough time to be awesome at everything. I DUNNO.
Dungeons are pretty boring and straightforward - mazes that you have to discover as you travel through them, and each level of a dungeon contains more powerful monsters, etc etc. Encounters aren't random so you can run away from an enemy if you see one and you're not in the mood with good success. However, the game allows you to gain or lose the advantage depending on who is facing whom when you encounter an enemy, and that mechanic is totally whacked. Think of it as random 'ambush' or 'advantage', because I know my head hurts trying to figure it out ("IT WAS FACING AWAY FROM ME WHY DO I NOT HAVE THE ADVANTAGE!?") It's also important to know that there are no save points in dungeons except right before the boss fight, so you'll want to keep Goho-M (Immediate Dungeon Escape) on you when you go to the TV world (if you use Goho-M to escape, you can go back to where you were when you return to the TV world). Be prepared to occasionally lose hours of gameplay to bad luck.
And conserve your SP enhancing stuff! You can't buy things that restore your SP (realistically, because how are you going to explain to the grocery store owner that you need something that will restore your soul?) You can gain a character that will restore your SP but it's EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE until late in the game. My strategy is to use up all my SP in the dungeon, then escape to come back another day (sleeping restores your health and SP).
Characters (10/10)
AHAHA I AM KIND OF IN LOVE WITH YOUSUKE (halcyonjazz says that he's the 'unofficial main character'). Uh. This game has some really awesome characters going on up in here. Everyone I've met is pretty fleshed out and even the one-dimensional characters are interesting enough to keep me engaged (even if they don't get more personality at least they have interesting pasts). Because the game's theme is 'the person within' (hence, persona), no one is quite what they seem, creating inversions of character stereotypes that stumble more heavily upon the AWESOME that is reality.
Most of the characters are genuinely funny and I can promise you'll get curious about them as the game goes on (which adds a fun element to the 'getting to know people so your stats are higher' thing). Also, watch your gaydar. It will go off. A lot. Or, alternatively, be hysterically WRONG.
Dubbing (8/10)
Because America is not awesome enough to handle a game with characters speaking Japanese and just giving them subtitles, this game is heavily dubbed. But. It's dubbed pretty well! Yousuke's voice actor gets better with time and he's pretty decent even at the start. Chie's voice threw me for a bit of a loop (it's too mature), but you warm up to her too. Yukiko is the weakest one so far, IMHO. There's a few other characters that have lines but suffice to say this game doesn't make me want to shut up the characters by cutting them off. In fact, I've caught myself wanting to hear how a particular line will be read!
For me, guys, this is incredible.
Music/Sounds (8/10)
The music can get a little repetitive in dungeons, but the theme song and a few of the other ones are really catchy and enjoyable. The sounds are helpful alerts and some of them are downright pleasing to the ear (I like the menu sounds and, oddly, the sound of people walking. I DUNNO). The game comes with a CD of its music so I guess they want you to love it. Might as well - you'll be listening to it for like 80 hours of gameplay!
Graphics/Design (8/10)
Please bear in mind this game is for the ps2, so the graphics just aren't OMG AMAZING. That being said they're very solid and I haven't really caught my character walking through walls or anything like that. The style is slightly cartoony (think anime) and the characters have a variety of emoticons and motions to express themselves, although the game will tell you what the character feels if you don't get it ("Yousuke looks disappointed ..."). The lighting is nice and tells you a lot about the weather. The speech bubbles for the characters are decorated with their current expression as well and I find them very entertaining.
The battle system is where the graphics really shine, since it's obvious the creators put a lot of work into the personas. With so many to create and use, it's impressive that the graphics team put together a unique set of moves for each persona with their own physical movements and attack appearances. The personas themselves are beautiful designs: I'll admit right now that if I were to cosplay from this game, I'd want to be a persona. MAN THEY ARE COOL-LOOKING.
The cutscenes are anime. Nothing to say about these - they're well-animated but I'm a little bored by the style. Oh well.
OVERALL: 8.5/10 - so far this game is pretty freaking sweet! The characters and storyline are interesting, the gameplay is fun and challenging, and you have a lot of freedom to do whatever. It's also long, at 60-80 hours of gameplay. If you have some time to kill this summer, why not waste your time pretending you're a student in Japan who fights TV monsters? =D