This post brought to you by the characters P and 3.

[ultranos]

One day, I feel like I should write the Big Damn Shin Megami Tensei/Persona Post about why I love this series and spin-off series so much, about the characters and plots and mechanics and gameplay and philosophy and everything else. Because it's at the point where I'm contemplating the prices on the Persona 1 PSP remake, because that's about the only way I can still throw money at Atlus (other than buying SMT: Strange Journey).

I have also realized that I have bought P3 3 times, in 3 different forms. I don't actually regret this at all.

I guess it's because where lots of other people pick up TV shows to sink time into and find glee in, I do it with games. And if I've seemed a bit distant lately, it's because I don't know how to talk to people on my flist about this. I can post about it, but it's not...I don't know. I want to make people understand, because yes, I love them, but I also think other people would too. I dunno. I guess I can't see much difference in time commitment to spending 60 hours on a game and watching 60 hours worth of TV. :/

Maybe my brain's wired strangely.

Comments

[synecdochic]

LET US TALK ABOUT P3 WITH EPIC GLEE.

[ultranos]

I AM SO THERE.

The thing I've found that really sells me on an RPG are the characters. And, obviously, P3 hits that so damn hard. EVERYONE has issues. Well, maybe not Koromaru. :)

I'll admit that Yukari kind of grated on me at first, but after about 2 months, I started liking her, and after the Beach Wham Episode I kind of started to love her. Mitsuru and Akihiko (and their codependency and trust issues) enamored me from the start.

And HOW MUCH do I love that all the Tarot stuff in the game ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE? Like plot and character development-wise?! It's INCREDIBLE.

[synecdochic]

I've always been impressed at the Persona games' ability to get the tarot right! I've been pondering making a version of the P3 tarot deck, actually, since the major arcana cards are so gorgeous. We've been pondering who would belong to each of the court cards. (Well, some of them are gimmes. Mitsuru is the Queen of Wands in anybody's deck, and Akihiko the King of Wands, or maybe the King of Cups. And I could really see Junpei as the Knight of Swords. But I digress.)

Yukari annoyed me a bit at first -- I think it has something to do with how shrill her voice actress can be at times, actually, plus she has those moments of total immaturity -- but as she starts to grow throughout the game, she really started to grow on me too. Mitsuru's resolution scene wound up having me cheering Yukari on like whoa! But on the whole, I didn't really hate anyone but Ken. (HATE KEN. HATE. FUCKING BRAT. I traded [spoiler] for you? FUCK YOU, KID.)

...I just got very distracted from writing this response by the kitten exploring. KITTEN.

[ultranos]

That's almost as bad as me trying to figure out what Major Arcana gets tapped when I hang out with my friends. :) But yes, a Persona-themed tarot deck is so obvious I wonder why Atlus hasn't just made one yet. :)

A lot of my irritation at Yukari came from the voice actress, who isn't bad, per se, but can get kind of shrill. And seeing her character arc, I forgave her later for a lot of that immaturity. Because the game does treat its characters like the age they actually are. She's 15! I was an idiot at age 15. And it's a nice difference from other JRPGs where you're age 15, an ace mecha pilot and army officer and not awkward at all. :)

(I...forgave Ken a bit due to the "age 12/13" thing. A bit. But I *facepalmed* a lot it. "WE COULD HAVE AVOIDED ALL OF THIS, PEOPLE, GODDAMN IT. D:")

Kittens will do that. What with their adorable kitten-ness.

[synecdochic]

Yeah, the ability of the game to actually make them teenagers is impressive. And I gave them a lot of slack for it. I mean, I was kind of an idiot at 15, too!

(I don't forgive Ken at all. COME ON, YOU LITTLE SHIT, YOU ARE NOT WORTH THE TRADE. I had him in my party once, and that was because I needed another person in the party to finish off a Tartarus run and everyone else was tired. He died every other turn, too. Fucking brat.)

[ultranos]

It really is! And once you realize that they're, for the most part, acting their age, it becomes a lot easier to give them that slack.

(Okay, so, you're better than me, who hasn't even USED HIM AT ALL yet. This is "forgive you enough to not put your AI on STUPID and watch you die just for the hell of it" levels. :P I'm vindictive when I need to be. I usually schedule Tartarus runs so that I'm okay if my main party gets tired.)

[synecdochic]

Yeah, we only did it once. And he was so useless that it was like, okay, fuck it, you can just STAY DOWNSTAIRS OR STAY DEAD.

I love it when a walkthrough recommends Ken for a particular boss or whatever. THANKS, I'LL PASS. And I really think that we should be able to sacrifice him to Thanatos or something. *G*

[ultranos]

HAAAA.

So, apparently Ken's useful because the spear is Pierce, which only Yukari also has. I LIKE YUKARI BETTER. AND IF I WANT A SPEAR, I'LL USE ONE MYSELF, KTHNX.

Why would you do that to poor Thanatos? He'd get indigestion.

[synecdochic]

....Good point. I like [spoiler] too much to do that to him, anyway. *G* (Hm. Do we still have to be vague about spoilers in an entry six months back or so? *laugh*)

NOT TO MENTION THAT IF IT REALLY IS A PROBLEM YOU CAN ALWAYS JUST HIT THE THING WITH MAGIC. I honestly almost never used the Persona physical attacks, much less the weapons!

[ultranos]

Sometimes, I think in mechanics too much for my own good. XD (I have no idea. It is amusing, though.)

YES. MAGIC IS YOUR FRIEND. I love how this is the case, and you will be so very, very sorry if you just try to win by hitting the "Attack" button all the time. And physical Persona skills are so tricky, because of the "cast from HP" thing, that unless it really is the absolute best thing I can do at the moment, I'll just poke at it with a sword if I have to.

[synecdochic]

"Poke at it with a sword" is usually a good option, yes! Sometimes I'll be like, fuck it, I'm just going to hit it and hope it goes away.

(The absolute best is when you luck out with elemental affinity on a new Shadow and kill it before Fuuka can scan it. Hee hee hee.)

I was really pleasantly surprised by the game mechanics. It makes a lovely balance of various gameplay tactics, and it prevents the slugfest that RPGs often turn into in late stages, where your physical attacks are so much more powerful than your magic ones that it's just not worth the MP/SP/whatever. If there's one thing that annoys me about the game, it's that SP recovery items are so rare.

[ultranos]

Sometimes that even works and doesn't backfire horribly!

(I love it when that happens. "Let me scan it's weakness." "FOUND IT! :D")

That's what I like. The balance is such that it builds on what strategies you've developed over the course of the game. If you've sat and perfected how to do Fusions, how to scan and attack weaknesses, how to protect your own weaknesses, and such early on, the game rewards you later because it's the best strategy later on. Too many RPGs to try out these things, and maybe they're useful for a dungeon or two, and then you ditch them and never use it again once you have Ultima Weapon or whatever. It teaches you (harshly, at times) how to play it correctly.

SP items are to be hoarded like gold. This leads to amusing situations where I realize I have Somas and spend time wondering if it's worth it to use a smart bomb. (In the original version, there used to be a bug that restored HP/SP in the lobby of Tartarus. It got fixed, though. *sadface*) It is annoying, but it does help against grinding, so I'm torn about it.

[synecdochic]

Yeah. I like grinding, dammit! I relied on the HP/SP restore in the Tartarus lobby a lot, especially when combined with the teleport to lobby gizmos right before each Guardian Boss. When I got into Monad, though, I just started saying fuck it and using my Somas and Chewing Souls and the like -- it was easier than popping back out a lot. (And then it's hello, level 99!)

I have peeked ahead in the walkthrough and seen that the final boss has fourteen fucking forms. I think this is cheating. Final bosses should be allowed at most four.

(We're probably going to hit it this weekend or early next week. *g* I'm looking forward to seeing how the ending goes. I already know what's going to happen, I think -- the story's been telegraphing it the whole way -- but I'm curious about the details...)

[ultranos]

Grinding is fun! There is nothing quite like griding, say, Alice, up there and then you get Die for Me! and everything just starts dying in a radius. It's fun! And I so very much miss the HP/SP restore thing in P3P. The clock now makes me pay for it.

It does have 14 forms! But they all make sense thematically! I AM SO TORN. (It goes fast at high levels and if you know what you're doing.)

(I love how the game telegraphs the ending from the intro movie. Not only that, but there's a reason they only put the first verse of "Burn My Dread" into that clip. The entire song telegraphs everything.)

[synecdochic]

It is telegraphing like a telegraphing thing. I have money on the ending being what I think it is, inside the household. (Except nobody would take the money, since they all agree.)

(When I fused Thanatos, I kept twiddling until it inherited Die for Me! and now THINGS FEAR ME MWAH HA HA HA HA.)

[ultranos]

It is! It very much is! And I love that about the storytelling because it's doing foreshadowing so damn well but the ending's still going to affect you. (My friend who was playing over the summer got creeped out when ~all of us showed up as she was in the final ascent and just watched both the game and her reaction.)

(One of my ultimate goals is to fuse something with Die for Me! and whatever-comes-after-Megidolon (Last Word?) and possibly Brave Blade or something and just WALK ALL OVER PUNY SHADOWS HAAAAH.)

[synecdochic]

I am totally going to do that when we go NG+. First time through I was mostly concentrating on getting Growth 1/2/3 and appropriate elemental attacks on things, not to mention having matching arcana for the social links I was about to go working on, but the NG+ playthrough is going to be all about creating the ultimate fighting Persona ever.

*g* I can imagine it being fun to watch people's reactions. We've been playing with three of us -- me, sarah, and our tenant, who is totally new to JRPGs and who is loving it -- and it's great to play in groups, so much. I love seeing how everyone sees something different.

[ultranos]

A good decision. :) But there is something viscerally satisfying about crafting the ultimate fighting Persona ever. (I do love my resistances. Oh, and Victory Cry is just about the greatest thing ever, which is why you get it so damn late.)

Watching her playthrough turned into a social event, and then pairs of us who'd played before would go off and discuss things in-depth. Because we're crazy like that. And the game gives you so much to talk about and analyze.

[synecdochic]

IT SO DOES. I can't wait to do a NG+ playthrough and watch everything, omg.

*cough*

[shanghairain]

I am the master of Skill Change Roulette.

Re: *cough*

[ultranos]

Only in P4, dammit! And yes. I can't tell if it's because you're just that lucky or you have infinite patience.