Quick Look: Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

When Jeff said "you bullied me for the last time!" was I the only one who was thinking: "Damn... too soon". However, I found it to be delightfully offensive.

The statue walking around thing is a throwback to Persona 2. Well, the whole rumor coming true thing, in fact. It's a cute nod to an earlier game, if that's what it is. Too bad the rest of the writing is awful.

Weird robot voice: "Ha, ha, Rise. You are popular, so your kar-ah-oh-kay singing will be popular. And you there. Here are your character details."

. . .

*sigh* I'm going to end up playing this, but like Dan with Terminator: Genisys, I'm going to do so ignoring my better judgment.

Oh, and Persona 3 is great. Jeff is being silly.

I dunno man, I put a solid 130 hours into P3 and it was pretty garbage-y. Just way too somber and depressing. Anything that wasn't was too hamfisted to enjoy. That last multi-stage bossfight was all about hitting you over the head with its ideology. Ugh. Persona 4 is better both as a game and an evolution of the formula: the devs came out of P3 development and realized, "This is nothow you tell a story."

A persona quick look is the best kind of quick look.

Jyeah.

You have to wonder why they didn't just use the cartoon versions of the persona people instead of the chibi, considering that it would actually look good on a 3DS compared to a rendered 3d model

Having just played P3P, I'm gonna agree with just about all of this. Persona 3's got some truly great stuff in it, but the storyline is ponderous to the point of being nearly non-existent, the characters are less fun (though in a couple of cases more interesting) and act more like adults than high schoolers and the gameplay is WAAAAAAAAAAAY more grind-focused. Oh and major S. links don't open until it's basically impossible to 10 them your first play-through.

That said, I actually do like parts of the S. link system more (romances getting jealous, people getting resentful if you don't spend time with them, etc) but you can tell the devs learned a LOT from what 3 did wrong. And actually even MORE from what 4 did wrong in 4 Golden.

I'm not a JRPG fan and don't understand the appeal of this series. Perhaps I should go back and watch the ER.

I wanna settle a self-bet: what's your hands-down most favorite P3 S. Link?

PS While the S. Link intricacies were theoretically interesting, the fact that I got penalized for not hanging out with Classmate Girl and got set back 2 "dates" before I could progress, was too much to swallow.

@ch3burashka: Despite the fact that it starts WAAAAY too late, I've always been a huge fan of Mitsuru's S. link.

...

That was the wrong answer.

I wonder why the voice audio quality was garbage for them and the rest was fine. I downloaded the game and have not had any issues with the voice auido quality sounding the way it does on the QL. Mine doesn't sound blown out or overly downsampled at all.

@hassun: I have the game, and the voices aren't muffled at all. Something weird must have been going on with their audio setup for this.

@tonch: Awesome, thank you for the reply. I think I'll get it now. :)
Are you enjoying the game?

This game is pretty addictive ("one more floor..."). I haven't really played much of EO (I do have a copy of the first one but due to timing I got busy with school and didn't have time to play more than a couple hours of it). But as someone else mentioned, it is pretty satisfying mapping out each level of a dungeon, especially because the map becomes more important for solving "navigation puzzles" involving FOE's that move in different ways and/or finding special events (so adding your own symbols vs. just the floors/walls can help you). It's a bit annoying that you actually have to walk on a tile to get credit (though it makes sense since there are a few cases where you need to figure out how to do that without fighting an FOE).

The music is pretty awesome and I just spent more hours than I meant to clearing out the 2nd dungeon. The battle system is pretty fun too, though with the sub-personas and boost system you can exploit it pretty hard to get tons of free heals etc (I'm playing on normal).

It does seem incredibly expensive to pull personas out of the compendium though. Fusing is similar to Golden where you can choose skills to pass on; I do miss S-links though (the only way to level personas is to equip them AFAIK).

What... 8+ pages and no love for Vinny Coneheads references or anyone noting that Rei + Zen = raisin?

Forgot about "Sacrifice Spread", which let's you feed personas to other ones to level them (unlocked at some point after triangle fusion). This is useful for getting some value out of duplicate personas picked up during a run, though I still feel like the limit on # of personas held is small.

HAH! What was the expected one?

Yeah, I'm liking it so far. The characters are kind of hollow one-note versions of themselves (Chie never stops talking about meat, Akihiko never stops talking about protein, etc), but otherwise it's good.

As far as the gameplay goes, if you've never played Etrian Odyssey before, try the demo for Etrian Odyssey Untold on the eShop. That will give you a very close idea to what Persona Q's gameplay is like, with the map-making and formation-based combat.

That voice acting is rough.

Memories... Can't wait to pick this up.

@griffinmills: I never even thought about it sounding like raisin, mainly because I'm pretty sure Zenrei is a Japanese term.

This was the perfect game for those two to quick look while Vinny was in town.

The problem with Japanese RPGs is that as the hardware gets more powerful, the characters look more and more like anime. I love P4 because of Giant Bomb, and I played P3 after the fact and had a great time with that as well, but if it hadn't been for the site, I would never have touched something with this style.

Oh, man, I'm jonesing for some Persona quick look action.

Or I could actually buy this game. I liked Etrian Odyssey and love the P4 Endurance Run. This could be my chance to enjoy that fiction for myself.

I can't believe the name field won't let Charlie fit... what kind of a Persona game is this!?

@animateria: Didn't Jeff play through the game on his own time?

Don't really like the chibi art style, but man that music is so awesome!!

Personally I would have gone with Chaz Tunoku. Or CMoney Tunoku.

Only 8 minutes into the quick look, but the audio quality of Margaret's voice seems kinda... low. Like, recorded-on-a-cheap-mic-from-home kind of low. But maybe I'm imagining it.

EDIT: Okay, Vinny acknowledged it. Not crazy here.

@generic_username:

Gotta compress the shit out of the voices so they fit on a 3DS cart

Makes me really long for more Jeff n Vinny quicklooks

the writing in this game and the arena games are like persona 4 fanfic. real bad lol

@ravingham91 said:

I know this is a year-old comment, but for anyone else there technically is a fairly major P4/P4ER spoiler. It's pretty subtle, so it probably won't actually spoil you unless you already know what it is though.

@rorie@vinny - This QL isn't tagged to Persona Q on the wiki. Could do with adding if either of you get a second.

I love hip hop