Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4

So I've been a fan of the website Giantbomb. Maybe you've heard of it (lawlz, funny joke NOBODY has ever made before). Every so often, the website's editors, Jeff Gertsmann and Vinny Corleone, embark on an epic journey called the Endurance Run. This isn't a sequel to the Simon Pegg film Run Fatboy Run. However, there are jokes to be heard in the video feature. But what exactly are the two joking about? A little game called Persona 4. But read this review and you will understand that the game ITSELF is a big joke.

After hearing a good amount of praise going toward the videos about how funny they were, I thought I'd watch a few. I skipped to around episode 16. I watched about 5 minutes of it and though "HEY, this is a game alright! Maybe I should try it out!" So I did. No wait, I didn't. Instead I attempted to FIND the game. I spent a whole day buzzing around my town searching for a damn copy of the game. I went to about 3 Gamestops, 1 Gamecrazy, and 1 Toys R Us, and NONE of them ever had a single copy of the game. It wasn't sold out because of how amazing it was. No game retailer was ever given a copy of the game to sell. And none of the dumbasses from the actual game retailers had actually heard of the game. Instead they just stood there with their mouths open thinking I was going to ask for Battletoads next.

My last trip of the day took me to the place every gamer buys his games, Toys R Us (They even abbreviate the "r" to replicate how we type things in game chat). I look around the massive PS2 section, but no luck. I don't even see P3, P2, PP2, or crap. Like the other retailers, I ask the employee at the games section why I can't find the game. She then tells me (Yes, a she) that I can only get that game through ordering on Amazon and recieving it through the mail. Bull-freaking-crap. You're telling me that I went to a handfull of game retailers who are supposed to have an idea of what the hell I want to play and they don't know crap. Yet the store who specializes in drooling 2 years killing themselves on small coloful objects tells me that I can't even get the game physically and pay physical money and have an idiotic game retailer employee physically hand me a hard copy of the game? Screw it, what can I even do about it. So I go online and check out the sales. They have it marked down for $40. A little expensive for what I expected a freaking PS2 game to be, but at least it wasn't the average $60.

So I order the game. Takes about a week to get here. Now I'm already put into a negative view of the game becuase of how cheap this Atlus company was to give the game out to retailers so I can BUY the damn thing, but that part of the story is over. And if you're asking "why is this part of the review?" If a game developer released the greatest game ever, but only made one copy of it, it wouldn't really be considered the greatest game ever because there is such a small amount of people who can play and own the game. All in all, it is very much up to the review to point out how "available" a game is so the reader knows if they have a chance to play the game they are reading about.

Skip to a week later. I am now an official owner of the last PS2 game to ever come out. Feels kind of bittersweet. Not really. It feels almost purely sour to see one of my favorite consoles come to an end and to see people still making games for the out of date son-of-a-bitch. With many tears fallen, I start the game. The first thing to hit me, maybe the gayest song I have ever heard. Some J-Pop crap started playing before I could smash my tv and get it out of my head. How gay was it? I listened to "It's Raining Men" to cleanse myself. Skipping the music, I make a new profile aaaaand watch. I sit in my chair for three hours. Watching. I look on the box to make sure the controller has any uses for the buttons other than "X". And then I watch some more. Appartently they use this movie, I mean televison series, I mean introduction to give you a run down on all the characters and set up the plot. And that could all work, if that stuff didn't suck so much.

The main character of the game sets foot in a Japanese high school, which is similar to any other high school except the teachers can abuse and say whatever the hell they want to kids and when a student yells "rape" nobody listens. At this high school, you'll meet your friends who accompany you on your journey. The game tries to emotionally connect you to these characters through a dating sim system (Yes, it is as lame as it sounds) in which the character would forcibley bawl out their inner most secrets about how their uncle touched them as a small child. All of which went over my head because I could give a bigger whoop about these problem childs. You see, most of the game is set up to make the player connect with the characters, but I had an easier time connecting with the latest cast of "Rock of Love." Just because somebody is on the edge of suicide and I am there to comfort them doesn't mean I actually like them, I'm just trying to keep them from killing themselves. But by the end of the game, I didn't care whether my friends ended up getting killed in the television because I was starting to suspect the main character was the one throwing them in tv's just to shut up the annoyingness. Seriously, Yoskue, if you talk about your Saki-Senpai one more time, I'm going to drown you in actual Sake.

That gets me on another major part of the game, the plot. Now I enjoy a good plot in my games. An overly played, super convoluted, slow plot filled with unneeded twists that make the game go on for 50 more hours than it needed to does not make a plot "good." It just makes me want to shoot myself. But the game is arrogant of it's plot, it tries to shove it down your throat through boring, unmotivated "scenes" where pictures of the characters would pop up when they talk. The way they do this just made conversations seem unrealistic. Oh, and the localization is probably the worst I've seen in years. How the hell can the localization team go from naming a character Izanagi and then turn around and make the character Funky Student. Come on localization team, choose one country or the other, don't try to half ass this. Going back to the plot, it was bad. It revolves around a murder case where people are "thrown into tv's and die." I know, as writers, we are running out of ideas to use for plots, but don't jump ship just yet. I've heard some stupid concepts to use, but this is the stupidest I've heard in years. Maybe it could be a comment on how our childeren are absorbed by addicition to tv, but I doubt it. That seems to be something to smart for a team who made a "Funky Student."

The game lags on for about 80 hours of just drawing out a horrible plot. If you are asking why I played through the whole game, let me explain to you in this way. It's like wacthing a train wreck. Everything is so horrible and you know nothing good can come out of it, yet, you can't turn away. That's exactly what I went through, an 80 hour train wreck. And the game doesn't even end on a good note. At some point in the game, the devlopers thought it would be fun to end the game for about 99% of the people who played the game and insert a puzzle that you can only get if you have a Walkthough in hand. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Note to Atlus, you want people to play your game right? Then how about allowing me to properly end the game instead of making me waste 80 hours of my life just to get an absolute horrible ending. Maybe I should look on the bright side and be glad I didn't have to play the game anymore, but man, what a way to make me hate a game.

After playing the game for 20 hours, I was surprised to see that there was an actual game thrown in there as well. But this isn't worth much mention. It's a too simplistic turn base RPG that stole many ideas from the Pokemon franchise (Way to appeal to a mature audience by stealing the ideas from the largest kids franchise). Attacks are worded out in gibberish so you have to keep pressing square everytime you attack or else you might use the attack that slits the player's wrists. And the last few bosses aren't even that hard. All you have to do is use your most powerful attack until the bar runs out. Not very strategic. And there is a fusion system too, but after giving no explanation to why I would ever want to fuse I spent about 3 minutes in there, said screw it and just won my pocket monsters though a poor man's shuffle.

All in all, this game hardly does anything right and does pretty much everything wrong. It tries to be all deep and crap, but it ended up being about as deep as a 2 inch penis can penetrate. It was dull, long and annoying, with a laskluster ending that didn't get anywhere and every now and then it allowed me to play with frustrating controls and attack enemies using nonsense names. Persona 4 is an alright game if you watch it through the Endurance Run and laugh at the jokes Jeff and Vinny point out (Which they will never run out of. Trust me). But whatever you do, don't play it.

(This review does not reflect my actual thoughts of the game, Persona 4. In reality, I loved the hell out of this game and would reccomend it to anyone who would like to induldge themselves into a wonderful story with coloful characters. The star score reflects my actual feelings)