[insert title] 2-18-12

Pray to God that this does not read like it was horribly rushed due to being sick last weekend.

So I mentioned last week that a friend of mine lent me a PSP with a copy of Shin Megami Tensei Persona. I would have hoped to have played a lot more than I already have by now, but part of it was due to me starting a new game for a few hours since I messed up the steps necessary to get a specific party member later in the game. Another factor was real life getting in the way of things. Whatever, point is, I’ve been playing Persona for the PSP, and I think I’ve already played enough hours that I can write something more in depth.

So yeah, it’s a Persona game, but barely anything like what most people recognize as a Persona game. This is before Persona 3, and based on what I’ve read and seen, resembles a lot more like the main Shin Megami Tensei games. There’s first person dungeon crawling, there are conversations with demons, there are random battles, and extending from that, there are situations where the game kicks your ass just by bad, dumb luck. Like getting attacked from behind, which you have no way of really avoiding since it is all random encounters.

I emphasize that point in particular because that is exactly what happened to me when I last played the game, which was Thursday night. About 5-6 hours into my current game, I was getting into battles with some pretty high level demons that I’ve managed to get out of with a bit of conversing. But then I get thrown into a battle with the enemy having attacked me from behind. They got the jump on me, and cast a status ailment that prevents my party members from attack, and after getting killed after making decent progress from the last save point, I quit in frustration. And this is on the easy difficulty setting.

Compared to the easy difficulty here, the one in Persona 3 FES didn’t have this stuff happen to me, and you had 10 chances to revive on that setting. That stuff isn’t here in Persona, and playing this, I feel, has given me a good idea of what to expect should I play any of the main line Shin Megami Tensei games.

All the stuff I’ve said about frustrations I’ve had doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not having fun. The one thing that this game has, and the other Persona games have, is an interesting world and characters, and the story is certainly the main thing that is compelling me to continue. The demon conversation mechanic is pretty interesting to, trying to figure out what is the right thing to say to an enemy to get a reward, or change its mood, or whatever. And the music inside the school (when there aren’t any demons around) is pretty catchy.

Yeah, that’s all I can figure out to say at the moment. I’ll keep playing; hopefully I won’t very much more problems with random battles that I have no way of winning.

And the Rest

Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution

You can see bits of VF4 in the main banner, and I would have had a lot more to say, but I didn’t feel like making a banner specific for this game. I’ll just say, I bought it for ten bucks a couple weeks ago, and now I will always have a use for that Tekken 10 Anniversary arcade stick I got for my PS2. Also, Virtua Fighter is still the best fighting game series ever created.

Elder Scrolls V Skyrim

After reinstalling and updating mods, and with my PS3 working again with my PC, I got back into Skyrim last weekend. And I restarted my character, because it had been so long since I last played, and I used the Oghma Infinium exploit to raise all my stats to 100, which in retrospect I feel bad about. Also, I had almost forgotten just how much I enjoy the little details I come across. However insignificant they are to the task I’m focused on, I’m always fascinated by them, and since I always try to role play in these kinds of games, I try to do something that fits with that situation and my character. It actually makes the caves way more interesting than they have any real right to be.

Things Other Than Games

Well, I got sick last Saturday and felt miserable up until about Tuesday or Wednesday, so I blame that for making me feel rushed as I type up this whole thing. Probably didn’t help much that this past week was Spirit Week at my school. Spirit Week brings out the worst of my snarky, sarcastic, smart ass self since I do not care at all for Spirit Week. It was even worse for me as senior since there was a lot more stuff that my class needed to do, which I didn’t want to do (hell, I ended up just leaving during 6 hour since there was no class going and everyone was down in the gym. No one really notices where I am, so that works for me). Weird thing was that the last day is Spirit Day, which is where you can wear red, white, blue, or a combination of those colors (you know, because it’s patriotic), a classmate jokingly suggested that since I always wear red as part of my uniform I should have come in dressed in all black. The fact that I actually considered doing that, just to spite everyone, says a lot about me as a person.

The bright end of that dark tunnel was me getting to hang out with some friends outside of school, one of those friends being the one that lent me the PSP. Last night was a lot of fun, with one of the friends, a girl, being exceptionally cheerful and entertaining, which felt much needed to melt the cold recesses of my black heart. The fact that I did not mind when she gave me a hug, and I don’t like getting hugs, probably says something. Even I realize I need something to balance out smart ass, cynical me.

In Conclusion

Well, I managed to pull this all together the night before. Hopefully next time I’ll be more prepared and have things planned out. Thanks for reading anyway.

Also, if things go as planned, I’ll be on a podcast with Sparklykiss to talk about Mass Effect, because she wants to, and I figured “hey, why not?”

Peace.

Pray to God that this does not read like it was horribly rushed due to being sick last weekend.

So I mentioned last week that a friend of mine lent me a PSP with a copy of Shin Megami Tensei Persona. I would have hoped to have played a lot more than I already have by now, but part of it was due to me starting a new game for a few hours since I messed up the steps necessary to get a specific party member later in the game. Another factor was real life getting in the way of things. Whatever, point is, I’ve been playing Persona for the PSP, and I think I’ve already played enough hours that I can write something more in depth.

So yeah, it’s a Persona game, but barely anything like what most people recognize as a Persona game. This is before Persona 3, and based on what I’ve read and seen, resembles a lot more like the main Shin Megami Tensei games. There’s first person dungeon crawling, there are conversations with demons, there are random battles, and extending from that, there are situations where the game kicks your ass just by bad, dumb luck. Like getting attacked from behind, which you have no way of really avoiding since it is all random encounters.

I emphasize that point in particular because that is exactly what happened to me when I last played the game, which was Thursday night. About 5-6 hours into my current game, I was getting into battles with some pretty high level demons that I’ve managed to get out of with a bit of conversing. But then I get thrown into a battle with the enemy having attacked me from behind. They got the jump on me, and cast a status ailment that prevents my party members from attack, and after getting killed after making decent progress from the last save point, I quit in frustration. And this is on the easy difficulty setting.

Compared to the easy difficulty here, the one in Persona 3 FES didn’t have this stuff happen to me, and you had 10 chances to revive on that setting. That stuff isn’t here in Persona, and playing this, I feel, has given me a good idea of what to expect should I play any of the main line Shin Megami Tensei games.

All the stuff I’ve said about frustrations I’ve had doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not having fun. The one thing that this game has, and the other Persona games have, is an interesting world and characters, and the story is certainly the main thing that is compelling me to continue. The demon conversation mechanic is pretty interesting to, trying to figure out what is the right thing to say to an enemy to get a reward, or change its mood, or whatever. And the music inside the school (when there aren’t any demons around) is pretty catchy.

Yeah, that’s all I can figure out to say at the moment. I’ll keep playing; hopefully I won’t very much more problems with random battles that I have no way of winning.

And the Rest

Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution

You can see bits of VF4 in the main banner, and I would have had a lot more to say, but I didn’t feel like making a banner specific for this game. I’ll just say, I bought it for ten bucks a couple weeks ago, and now I will always have a use for that Tekken 10 Anniversary arcade stick I got for my PS2. Also, Virtua Fighter is still the best fighting game series ever created.

Elder Scrolls V Skyrim

After reinstalling and updating mods, and with my PS3 working again with my PC, I got back into Skyrim last weekend. And I restarted my character, because it had been so long since I last played, and I used the Oghma Infinium exploit to raise all my stats to 100, which in retrospect I feel bad about. Also, I had almost forgotten just how much I enjoy the little details I come across. However insignificant they are to the task I’m focused on, I’m always fascinated by them, and since I always try to role play in these kinds of games, I try to do something that fits with that situation and my character. It actually makes the caves way more interesting than they have any real right to be.

Things Other Than Games

Well, I got sick last Saturday and felt miserable up until about Tuesday or Wednesday, so I blame that for making me feel rushed as I type up this whole thing. Probably didn’t help much that this past week was Spirit Week at my school. Spirit Week brings out the worst of my snarky, sarcastic, smart ass self since I do not care at all for Spirit Week. It was even worse for me as senior since there was a lot more stuff that my class needed to do, which I didn’t want to do (hell, I ended up just leaving during 6 hour since there was no class going and everyone was down in the gym. No one really notices where I am, so that works for me). Weird thing was that the last day is Spirit Day, which is where you can wear red, white, blue, or a combination of those colors (you know, because it’s patriotic), a classmate jokingly suggested that since I always wear red as part of my uniform I should have come in dressed in all black. The fact that I actually considered doing that, just to spite everyone, says a lot about me as a person.

The bright end of that dark tunnel was me getting to hang out with some friends outside of school, one of those friends being the one that lent me the PSP. Last night was a lot of fun, with one of the friends, a girl, being exceptionally cheerful and entertaining, which felt much needed to melt the cold recesses of my black heart. The fact that I did not mind when she gave me a hug, and I don’t like getting hugs, probably says something. Even I realize I need something to balance out smart ass, cynical me.

In Conclusion

Well, I managed to pull this all together the night before. Hopefully next time I’ll be more prepared and have things planned out. Thanks for reading anyway.

Also, if things go as planned, I’ll be on a podcast with Sparklykiss to talk about Mass Effect, because she wants to, and I figured “hey, why not?”

Peace.

Yea, that's the Persona 1 experience: an interesting story combined with frustrating gameplay mechanics. I don't even think you can grind in the game, since experience is based on your level of participation in battle. That may not sound like much, but wait until you're trying bring a low level party member up to speed late in the game.

Good stuff, man. I've been on the fence about purchasing Persona 1, and I think this helps sway my decision to the negative. I never got much into Virtua Fighter, mostly because the characters never really grabbed me.

A really interesting read this week. As somebody who's currently playing their first Persona game (specifically P3: FES), it's cool to get a perspective on where the series started and what directions it's moved in since its inception. I'm in the same boat as Sparky on this one, not sure I could go back to something as mechanically archaic and punishing as the original Persona - hell, P3 has proven plenty capable of stressing me out with unfair deaths and lost progress aplenty, and in the grand scheme of things it's really not that unforgiving a game.

Aw man, Virtua Fighter 4! Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I've never been big on fighting games, with three notable exceptions to the rule - Tekken 3, Soul Calibur III, and Virtua Fighter 4. I must've devoted well over a hundred hours to playing that game, trying my damndest to master Kage-Maru, and although I was never amazing, it's the closest I've ever come to being even remotely good at a fighting game. I made the upgrade from vanilla VF4 to Evolution about halfway through my four-month obsession with the game, and it's seriously impressive how much that version of the game adds in terms of character customization and the huge Quest mode. It's a brilliant fighting game, incredibly tricky but oh so rewarding when everything comes together.

For getting ambushed in battles, I recommend going into your formation settings and creating a second formation identical to the one you are currently using. During battle you can change formation, so if you get attacked from behind, spend a turn changing to that second formation to get yourself facing forward again.

I am also playing this game, but took a break from it for the relative hand-holding of FF XIII. I've played many SMT games, so that helped prepare me for basically the same dungeon crawling, but with more punishing gameplay and more frustrating fusion rules. It definitely has some frustrating flaws, but I like playing it because I can see how they streamlined and balanced the same type of gameplay for later SMT games such as Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga. Those games can still be challenging but there is more balance to them. One good choice was doing away with all those subtypes and subcategories of spells and demons. yeesh. Like you, I am playing this for the story and characters. I am so glad they remade this with better graphics, music, translation, and a really easy to use interface. It looks great. I'll be really happy to finally complete it. Then on to Innocent Sin!

As someone who also happens to be borrowing a PSP from a friend who also happens to have Shin Megami Tensei Persona, I can't say I am particularly enthused about playing that particular title (Actually I kind of just wanted the PSP for Final Fantasy Tactics) and your write up confirms that it's pretty much the old, super grindy and rather punishing RPG I imagined it to be.