"I think the Nyx battle was probably more enjoyable for me, since I really didn't like the way Izanami was revealed at the last second out of nowhere. I know there were hints, but the whole thing still came off as a bit ridiculous to me.Also, I loved the 'sealing' portion of the Nyx battle, it really gave me the sense that 'everything has led to this moment'. The music was great too, since I recognized it from the very first cutscene in the game."
The music "Burn my Dread" is the main theme of Persona 3 so wasn't it played in more sections then in the beginning (if that's what you are referring to)? I loved how they remixed the Velvet Room theme to make it sound totally epic during that boss battle. I still think Izanami's reveal was a little crazy so I still prefer Nyx. And I find it rather awesome that to terminate the fight, the main character only lifted a finger while Persona 4's main character did some "super-crazy-awesome!" seal attack to finish it.
"
That "super-crazy-awesome!" seal attack wasn't really that super crazy. The P4 main character isn't a messianic figure like P3's. The power to truly defeat Izanami lies within his final Persona, Izanagi-no-Okami, which from a story standpoint makes much more sense than just giving the finger and watching her explode.
@FluxWaveZ: I think you're overthinking it a bit. Essentially, whatever danger the other characters were in, they were freed when Izanami was defeated. As for the S. Links, those that appear are as they exist in his heart. His friendship with those characters is what gives him his strength.
" Nyx is an epic, but mostly tedious and overdone boss fight. I haven't played P4 (but I have spoiled myself on most of it), but Izanami is supposedly less tedious. However, I am going to have to side with Flux WaveZ on this one. I feel the same way about the true ending of P4 as I feel about The Answer. It may have answered some things, but the plot would have been stronger without it. "
You might feel differently if you actually play the game, as opposed to just reading up on it.
@FluxWaveZ said:
" @Hailinel: I indeed remember both lectures for the games. I didn't think of them as foreshadowing but now that you mention, it did serve a purpose on hinting at what would come next. And if all the Personas that the other party members have served a role in the story of Izanagi/Izanami, that would be very impressive. Too bad they didn't explain more of it in the game, though...Maybe if I play through the game again I'll detect more hints of the gas attendant being suspicious or something. It just felt to me as if they could have revealed in the end any random NPC and have that person revealed to be Izanami. Although, I suppose the gas attendant was the only one that the main character has physical contact with and the controller rumbled at the moment of that handshake to hint at its significance... And I fully agree with your explanation of Persona 4 being a mystery. I guess that's why there was no build-up to Izanami's reveal as knowing she was coming because it's all about reveal and not anticipation. Oh, but one thing I found strange with Izanami's boss battle; when she uses that "thousand curse" attack or something and your teammates sacrifice themselves one by one for the main character (which was really cool), and eventually ending up in the main character falling to that attack, I felt as if only the main character was in danger of dying and that the other teammates who also got hit by that same attack had just dissapeared momentarily with that scene with him lying and seemingly about to die. "
We can't really see what happened to the other characters after they take the attack meant for him, but it's likely that they ended up in similar fog-filled voids. However, the power of the main character's S. Links gave him the strength to pull himself out.
" I think the Atlus pokemon type games were on the GBA.
Also a new run of Nocturne is out on Amazon. $30 until this run is depleated.
"
A little late, but thanks for the tip! I was able to order a copy of Nocturne for a friend of mine and it just arrived yestery. :) I already have a copy of my own and it's an awesome game.
" I bitched about the differences between P3 FES and P4 in my thread "Persona 3 fanatic not loving P4 so far" but I've come to accept P4 for what it is. Plus, having now worked my way through about 80% of the game, I do believe it is a better game than P3. However, that being said, I still prefer the story, characters and time management of P3 over P4. But, as I said, even though they are very similar, they are also in many aspects different games and should be enjoyed on their own merits. In P4 you can screw up S. Links I think, although I never tried purposely. I did give Yosuke a wrong answer in class once and the game said I need to apologize. I didn't and my link still progressed, but that might be because I was eventually involved in sequences where I received group "love" from all my close social links. In P3 I kept "cheating" on Fuuka so that relationship soured time and time again. "
I never screwed up a Social Link to the point of breaking it, but I did reverse the P4 Moon Social Link (Ai) early on. I was able fix it without much trouble, but it probably cost me time that I could have used to get her closer to maxed. I ended P4 with her at rank 8. Giving characters wrong answers during class and so on won't reverse links. You can only do so by making poor dialogue choices during the actual S. Link events.
" @Hailinel: Adachi was definitely a better villain than Ikkutsuki, much because of the reasons you stated. But I guess it was those "hints" that I wanted more of to feel that Izanami's revelation was important. But now that you mention the gas attendant appears only on rainy days, and that I remember that she does mention the rumor about the Midnight Channel early on, it does feel rather surprising that that simple person you meet in the beginning of the game and that you can randomly talk to throughout the course of the game turns out to be behind everything.
I guess I feel as if you could just cut the whole scene with the gas attendant in the beginning and then cut the scene of him turning out to be Izanami and the only thing that would effect is not clearing up some of the remaining mysteries. Any other scene that is significant to the story, except for some of the characters' kidnappings, could probably not be cut out because that would probably make something else in the story make no sense. I feel as though more presence of the gas attendant throughout the story would have rectified that, maybe even actually having a part-time job working at the gas station; every time you would go there you would talk with that gas attendant and the dialogue would bring potential hints and could act as foreshadowing.
What I liked about Nyx is that you knew it was coming, it didn't happen immediately like Izanami with the player going "wtf!?". Nyx was like an impending doom that you were going to have to face on a certain day, giving that consideration as you prepared for that day but Izanami happened so suddenly and you had to face her on the exact same day of her revelation, there was basically no time to prepare or to "fear" her coming. With Persona 3, when the days to Nyx's arrival were counting down, I felt I was getting closer to the end of it all.
But, thinking back on it, the gas attendant's revelation was not as bad as I think, I suppose. On the back of my mind the entire time I was playing the game I remembered that the controller had rumbled when I had that handshake with the gas attendant in the beginning of the game and that Nanako came back from the bathroom, observing that the main character looked sick. Having all that be connected together by Izanami was pretty cool, and I also looked at my controller when that flashback happened and the rumble happened again going "Oh, man..." :P So yeah, I think it could have been executed better, but thinking back on it, I guess it was a very important moment in the game. (I wonder if with that I'm contradicting myself in this comment... Oh well. >_>)
Edit: I found this blog post on Destructoid that kind of states some of my thought on the endings. Looking back on this thread, I'm happy I'm not the only one who had issues with how P4 ended, heh... "
There was more foreshadowing than this though, and more than I had stated in my previous post. You remember the lecture on the legend of Izanagi and Izanami during the class trip? Persona 3 had a very similar lecture on the nature of the tarot. It's not something that you're ever quizzed on, but rather is supposed to hint at things to come. And while it's not as obvious to most westerners (a friend of mine actually pointed this out), the Personas that the other party members have are figures that play some role in the legend, though the game never came out and said it because we got what was essentially the Cliff's Notes version. There are enough hints scattered throughout the game that it pretty much does everything it can to hint that Izanami is somewhere out there without pointing a blinking neon arrow at the gas station attendant.
And as for not having time to "fear" Izanami's coming, fear isn't the predominant emotion that Persona 4 evokes. In Persona 3, there's a sense of dread coursing through the entire game, from the earliest parts up until just prior to Nyx's arrival. Persona 4 on the other hand is a mystery. The characters take a proactive approach in the case from the start because they don't feel that the police are doing a good job, an idea jump-started when it's discovered that you somehow gained the ability to enter televisions. They're more intent on solving the mystery than they are fighting for the sake of the world. It's just that the truth turned out to be more than it appeared at first, and that Izanami played Adachi, Namatame and Souji like a trio of fiddles.
This isn't to say that I don't find Nyx impressive at all, because I do. She was a pretty epic boss encounter, but in terms of lead-up, general plotting, characterization and the actual boss fight itself, I found Izanami to be much more satisfying.
@ArmaziLLa: If the original story is a tour of Hell, why would you find turning it into an action game understandable? Why would you find turning it into any kind of game understandable? If I had to make a Dante's Inferno game for some reason, the only real way I could conceive it would be to make an adventure game. No, they aren't as appealing to the masses as Bloody McGore: Demon Killer Xtreme, but it's the genre that has the best chance of maintaining both the nature and the spirit of the original text. Interaction based on character dialogue and puzzles is more akin to what Dante the poet would probably be capable of and excel at as opposed to Dante, the tries-way-too-hard-to-be-badass warrior.
Honestly, I find the game to simply be a terrible idea and I have no intention of supporting EA in any way regarding it.
"I have 12 personas as my favourites and also as my main personas.Each of them has unique skill that cannot be inherited.And all of their levels are 99(maximum):P1.Yoshitsune2.Helel3.Satan4.Loki5.Surt6.Thor7.Odin8.Daisoujou9.Alice10.Trumpeter11.Shiva12.NornCan you figure out each of their unique skills? :P I also like Izanagi no Okami because of his good looking and crazy stats.But he does not have unique skill so he is not my main persona :P"
Isn't his true ending super attack an exclusive? Their exclusives are mostly the extreme to 1 enemy attacks btw :P (Satans Armageddon is almighty to everyone iirc) My favorite is Horus, I got a thing for all those birdlike Personas of the Sun Arcana. "
I ended up fusing an awesomely overpowered Horus in Persona 3 and ended up using it as my main Persona in the endgame. I wasn't as impressed with him in Persona 4, but in Persona 3, using Horus = Good Times.
Hmm? Are you saying that you can reverse/break S. Links in P4, or is it that a typo and you meant to say you can't? Because you most definitely can.
As for the splitting up party members, that was never really something I used much in P3. I actually dreaded climbing to the next floor to find my party separated. It's also not an element that would make much sense in Persona 4. The dungeons in P4 are much more structured than P3. They're governed by more rules. Characters can't magically appear on different parts of the floor, you do have the ability to go downstairs, and Death doesn't chase you, though you can still fight Death as an optional boss on the second playthrough.
Many elements of the game are much better than P3, like being able to control your whole party, all of your party members existing as social links (as opposed to just the girls), and tying those Social Links to tangible combat benefits. It's not that they took things out willy-nilly. Atlus refined what they created in Persona 3 and enhanced it for Persona 4, stripping out elements that didn't work as well or that were mainly an annoyance while taking the parts that did work and made them better.
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