Better Late Than Never: My Own Persona 4 Endurance Run - Part 1

By MattyFTM March 29, 2010 9 Comments

Welcome to the first in a series of blogs I call "Better Late Than Never" in which I will document my playthrough of a game that so many Giant Bombers hold close to their heart - Persona 4. Prior to the Endurance Run I had very little knowledge of the Persona series, yet the Endurance Run had intrigued me, and after watching about a dozen or so episodes, I had decided I wanted to play it for myself, so I stopped watching the ER to avoid spoiling the game for me, and purchased a copy of the game (well, I actually purchased two copies of it accidentally, but I'll go into that another time). However, I'm easily distracted, and never even put the disk into my trusty PS2. 

So here I am, nearly a year later, and I've finally got around to playing some Persona 4. The first hour and a half or so seemed extremely boring. It was probably just because I had already seen it when watching the Endurance Run. It's just setting up the story, and has virtually no gameplay, and I already knew what happened. I just wanted to get to playing the goddamn game. But it did refresh my memory and set up the story quite well, so I can't really complain. One of the main things I was reminded of is how insanely Japanese the game is. Everything from the anime cut scenes to the storyline itself just screams out "DUDE!!!! JAPAN!!!". From the constant usage of Japanese honorifics like -san and -senpai to going to school on a Saturday, it's all mad Japanese. And that's really awesome.
 

So, after the first hour and a half or so the actual game started with a few fights against shadows and Youske's persona. The fighting system already seems really cool. Most of my experience with Japanese RPG's comes from the Final Fantasy series. The FF ATB system always seems to rely on me constantly pressing the X button in order to issue an attack command, mixed with an occasional cure spell, or an attack spell for the bosses. There was a bit more to it than that, but that summarizes it pretty well. Already the Persona 4 battle scheme seems so much more in-depth, with specific enemies being weak to specific attacks, and defending seeming to play more of a significant role. Overall it just seems more strategy based. 
 
Not long after, we ended up in the first dungeon, which just seems extremely bland and uninteresting. It doesn't stand out, it just seems like a generic video game hallway. But ultimately it's fine as a location for the shadows to reside and to have some battles. All went well and I rescued Chie with little trouble. 
 

Next though we return to the real world, and I actually get to explore the world on my own. And now I'm feeling completely overwhelmed. In a way, it seems weird that a game hold your hand through the first couple of ours of a game, and then throw you into the deep end with no warning. It does make sense, since the hand holding was for storytelling purposes, but still, at the moment I haven't got a clue what to do. The whole time management, persona fusion and everything else just seems so crazy. I'm not used to be given this much freedom in a JRPG. So far I've played a few days and I've joined the soccer team, spent some time with Youske and spent some time studying in the library. I have no idea when I should be venturing back into the dungeon to rescue Yukiko, or how much time I should be spending with other people, or anything like that.
 
Anyways, that's where I am at the moment, about 4 hours in. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it after playing for a while longer. I don't know how often I'll do one of these blogs - it depends how often I have something to say about the game. I'm not going to rush through it - I think if I pace myself I'll have more chance of actually getting through the whole game. And I have other stuff to do, I can't dedicate too much time to playing the game, so I'll be taking it slow and steady.

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