Jeff Gerstmann's review of Persona (Gamespot, 1997)

I happened to stumble across this randomly and thought some people here might get a kick out of it.

http://www.gamespot.com/persona/reviews/persona-review-2548899/

Ha-HA! Joke's on you, wumps!

Man its only 500 on amazon

http://www.gamespot.com/persona/reviews/persona-review-2548899/

Now it's a link!

"FANS OF THE GENRE SHOULD ENJOY Persona."

There's a real skill in writing a good short review. Review lengths have always interested me, guess which is best comes down to personal opinion.

@bbalpert said:

Ha-HA! Joke's on you, wumps!

Fuck, who comments on a 15 year old review?

I don't understand how anyone could enjoy the original Persona. Even the 2 Persona 2's are so full of shitty gameplay mechanics that it makes them just a pain to enjoy. Fuck the conversations to get demons. Random as hell and just straight up dumb.

I don't think Jeff played all of that

Heh, for some reason, I'm also doubtful that Jeff would have finished this game before reviewing it.

Just like majoras mask :D i kid i kid!

@pie: Yeah, I think he said on the Endurance Run that he had only played a little of it.

@bbalpert said:

Ha-HA! Joke's on you, wumps!

Also, this being the first comment was hillarious.

I expected a negative vibe because anime is for jerks, but that interview is positive.

@machofantastico:

For this review, I feel the opposite. It seems like he doesn't really discuss any major gameplay features in depth or describe anything that makes Persona particularly good. I understand that you use guns in a modern setting, but that's about it.

I think it's about time we generated a list of all the games that the staff reviewed during their time at gamespot. I'm sure we'd find a lot of interesting pieces.

It's one of the reasons I enjoy The Av Club.

http://www.gamespot.com/users/Jeff/contributions?mode=reviews

"Capturing the spirit of Zelda and Beyond Oasis, Legacy of Kain is a great hack-and-slash role-playing game. With lots challenging and fun gameplay, sucking the blood out of hapless prisoners and townspeople is pure Playstation pleasure."

Tell me more about this Playstation pleasure Jeff. I need to get it on some of this.

I'm going to assume you played the game recently and not 15 years ago when he wrote that review. The original Persona was still flawed, but it was much more novel during a time when RPGs rarely ventured outside of the usual fantasy tropes and Final Fantasy was still king.

Although, despite their flaws I still enjoy P1/P2 to a certain degree even today.

@cale:

Is that Jeff's equivalent of "Play it loud in stereo, dude"?

I think it's funny that Young Jeff writes in the exact way that old Jeff currently makes fun of, and also Young Jeff actually played JRPGs. These reviews are products of a different time, that's for sure. On the other hand, what I played of the PSP remake suggested that the original Persona wasn't all that great to begin with, even without an infamously botched localization.

@video_game_king said:

Now I have to know this guy exists, thanks for that. I guess now I know why I'm stupid at least, it's because I didn't buy Donkey Kong Country.

@cale:

Actually, the guy reviewing those games has been dead for several years.

@video_game_king said:

Dies, died.. dead? Oh well, at least his legacy will continue on YouTube. He didn't even sound that old!

Actually...

@video_game_king said:

Judging age by voice alone was supposed to be one of my superpowers... Today just keeps getting worse and worse. I need some Playstation pleasure to take the edge off. A Bombcast wouldn't hurt either.

@yadilie said:

A lot of it is playing it in 1997. Those early Playstation JRPGs have some clunky mechanics and japanese nonsense that are either charming or infuriating. I remember really liking Legend of Legaia for the PS1 and when I tried to go back a few years ago.... ugh. UGH. In addition, Persona 1 came out before FF7, Wild Arms, Grandia, Breath of Fire III/IV, Xenogears, and the rest of the "JRPG classics," so there wasn't a ton of competition, either.

Also, the N64 and PS1 had a ton of classic games that had shitty gameplay mechanics. We didn't know any better, especially not until 1998, the best year in gaming.

George Wood

how do you post youtube vids here?

Rugrats Review

@oursin_360 said:

When you're typing in a post, do you see the word "Video" right beside Quote, Link, and Img? Clicking on that lets you enter a video URL.

That's been a common mechanic in all of the Shin Megami Tensei games. It still is. It was in Nocturne, it was in Strange Journey, and it's still in the upcoming fourth game.

I don't know how it worked in the original Persona, but in Nocturne and SJ, it's usually a similar conversation and it's easy to get the demon after a few tries. If you could easily get them on the first try then it would be kind of trivial. I can see how this would be annoying, but it doesn't bother me at all. A different mechanic would be welcome, but I'm not really asking for it.

@yadilie said:

That's why I'm generally not very enthusiastic about the main Shin Megami Tensei series either. Some people love it, and I'm fine with that, but the demon conversations can be pretty unintuitive until you look up how they work (depending on the game), and they're just really grindy games that you have to play exactly right or you just get completely owned by every enemy.

It might be that I just don't like dungeon crawlers.

@oursin_360: The problem there is 42 pages of pagination. It's terribly inconvenient. There is no reason it couldn't all exist on a single page other than to sell 42 times the ads.

I agree with most of what you say in regards to a lot of other sadistic japanese dungeon crawlers, but I also really like Nocturne despite it being really hard and sort of grindy. Demon negotiation, while a dumb, outdated mechanic about on-par with catch rates in Pokemon isn't really an issue in that game because you get most of your best guys through fusion anyways, like Persona.

@believer258:

It was more obtuse in the original Persona, from what I remember. Innocent Sin nailed it in that there was an actual logic behind them.

@arbitrarywater: Yeah, I keep meaning to play Nocturne since I've heard a lot of positive things about it. Maybe one day I will somehow get a copy of it.

Brand new comment? "Patrick Sucks". Way to go, Mister Cheif.

Persona 1 and 2's negotiation system is pretty weak honestly. Unlike the better examples like Strange Journey or Raidou 2, it basically boils down to finding the dialogue choice that works through trial and error and then spamming it repeatedly until it fills up the bar you want. It's not nearly as entertaining as how the main series does it. (With the exception of Nocturne, which I consider to have probably the worst variation of the system.)

Really? I think Legend of Legaia holds up quite well actually, I've played it several times over the years. The game does kind of drag near the end, and the arts system does get kind of tedious after awhile, but other than that I think it's still a good JRPG. (Legaia 2 on the other hand...)

I had a similar experience with Xenogears though. I tried playing that recently and it didn't hold up nearly as well as I remembered.

Everytime i do that it says it doesn't recognize the site? weird

Most of the games aren't really that grindy at all honestly. It's usually more about the demons you use than your levels. In more recent games it's even less true, because the Press Turn System (and it's variations) tend to promote strategic play over just brute force. People always talk about how hard Nocturne is, but that's only if you ignore all the ways you can break it that have nothing to do with leveling.

In my (almost finished) playthrough of Nocturne, I didn't find it particularly grindy except for the bit before Matador (that fight could have been better prepared-for by the devs) and the part where I decided it would be a good idea to 100% the game during the last few hours, so I trotted back through getting all the Magatamas and finishing the Labyrinth. If someone doesn't do that latter part then I can see beating the game without much grinding, provided they are actually good at it and smart with demon choice, buffs, etc.

Difficulty, though, is something that Nocturne has in spades. Never underestimate anything in that game, even the fucking slimes.

He also reviewed Persona 2 EP

Back when a 7.3 was a solid score.

Wait.

This page says the game released in Nov of 96. It was reviewed Feb of 97.

Maybe it took him that long to finish it. I guess that might make sense then.

Sigh, ya I remember 97 Gamespot. Man it was SO different back then you guys. The background was pitch black!

That's not a review, it's a 5 paragraph essay.

A lot of Gamespot's reviews in that era were total jokes. Five paragraphs? Some games received one-paragraph reviews.

Negotiations in IV are seemingly less random or not random. Plus if you mess up you can just talk to the same demon again and not choose that same option. Most of the time they just straight up ask for items instead of asking questions. There are tons of ways you can choose to affect conversation and negotiations, some of which makes it really rewarding. Plus you get insane EXP if you successfully negotiate, too.

So yeah, while negotiation still needs to be a thing, many problems with it have been addressed in IV.

It still is but for some reason people think even an 8 is a bad score now

With a lot of filler. The 2nd paragraph is mostly just stating what the game is not.

Were the reviews back then always so short? I was 8 when this was released and probably didn't know what the internet was to go with that