Gaming World Forums
General Category => Entertainment and Media => Topic started by: maladroithim on December 12, 2008, 04:22:25 pm
-
There was a hype topic about this awhile ago, and the game is out now. I don't really go to sites like RPGamer very often anymore so I am not certain how people who are into RPGs are reacting to the game, but I have been playing it and I assume that someone is playing it here also.
Persona 4 is a Japanese RPG for Playstation 2. It is a straight-up sequel to Persona 3. It feels like a yearly iteration on Persona 3 in the spirit of American games like Gears of War 2 or whatever. So, your feelings for Persona 3 will probably be the same as for Persona 4.
For those of you who haven't played Persona 3, I will give a rundown of both games because they have the same structure. In Persona 4, you spend half of your time in a high school life sim that is pretty self-aware and funny (but is still a Japanese life sim so watch out), and half of your time dungeon crawling. The dungeon crawling is pretty hardcore and is more like Wizardry than Final Fantasy. What you do in the day-to-day life stuff affects your statistics and character interactions in battles, so aside from the reasonably good writing and clever dialog, the life sim offers some tangible benefits too. If you don't like the life sim portions much you can skimp on them just as easily as you can skimp on dungeon crawling by not exploring very thoroughly. Either way, Persona 4 is ripe with Japanese pop art, and that sort of thing can either make it or break it.
Being that Persona 4 is a Shin Megami Tensei game, there is plenty of monster collecting and breeding. The nomenclature is a little different, but basically you are collecting monsters, fusing them together, and bringing them with you into battle. The monster breeding and leveling system is pretty robust.
Persona 4's premise sets your mute hero in a small Japanese farming community. I don't recall why but he is going to high school there and living with his uncle. The city has been plagued by a rash of creepy murders. Not too far into the game, the hero gets sucked into a bizarre alternative universe inside of the television that is filled with monsters and evil (this is very post-modern). The writing is pretty decent and takes advantage of its unusual setting. As an aside, Japan's standard of a small farming community is much different from what I am used to in America!
The thing that interests me the most about Persona 4 is that the game-breaking crap that dragged down Persona 3 is more or less all completely gone. Most significantly you can control your party members in battle. This is such a big deal that it is advertised as a feature on the box. Dungeons are streamlined and I don't think they are randomly generated anymore, you go to more than one location, you can fast travel around town, there are more save points etc. The interface is much more functional and gives you a lot more information. If Persona 3 were a PC game these would have all been fixed in a patch, so I guess I am taking Persona 4 as an expansion pack with gameplay fixes.
I am not very far into the game but I love it. Is anyone else playing it? I remember a lot of people here played Persona 3, so I am curious.
Screens:
(https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/bp2.blogger.com/_8bboYCEIv2I/R-g1OpHap_I/AAAAAAAAApo/YNDKnQWIVOY/s400/HD_Persona4.jpeg)
(https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/img.vidaextra.com/2008/03/240308_persona4_01.jpeg)
-
it looked like a pretty normal jrpg.
the only SMT games i've really been interested in are Nocturne and DDS, which are both like impossible to find so fuck me.
-
Still haven't played this yet.
Is there only one dungeon in this game? I swear I hated Persona 3 because the dungeon design was so terrible and all that happened was going up this tower just fighting the whole time. The sim part wasn't actually bad, and I enjoyed the dialogue. Battles were pretty fun too. Just the dungeon is so...bad. It reminds me of Shining in the Darkness on Genesis where the walls would change color but the dungeon still looked exactly the same.
I tried really hard to like Persona 3. It's kind of weird because I used to like dungeon crawler games, but this just didn't do it for me. By the way if there is a Shin Megami game where you actually have diverse dungeons, I must know.
-
(https://legacy.gamingw.net/etc/img.vidaextra.com/2008/03/240308_persona4_01.jpeg)
when will japan create a realistic portrayal of black people...
-
Despite its look, this is not a normal jrpg game :(
I don't like the dungeon design in P3 too, but they fix that in P4. No stupid random dungeon crawler which change only the texture of the wall/floor/ceiling ! There are some dungeon's gimmicks like in Nocturne (For example, the warp floor.)
They've also improved the Social Link system so that it isn't boring anymore. Social Link also play a more important role than in P3, since your party member will learn new skill through Social Link.
Basically, they've fixed a lot of flaws in P3. I guess it's because P3 is more like an experiment game to breakthrough the same old jrpg. The story is also really really good in my opinion. I cried at the ending, since you really feel attached to all the characters. :)
Of course I could be a bit bias because I'm a big megaten fan but that doesn't change the fact that this is a great game! :welp:
-
Still haven't played this yet.
Is there only one dungeon in this game? I swear I hated Persona 3 because the dungeon design was so terrible and all that happened was going up this tower just fighting the whole time. The sim part wasn't actually bad, and I enjoyed the dialogue. Battles were pretty fun too. Just the dungeon is so...bad. It reminds me of Shining in the Darkness on Genesis where the walls would change color but the dungeon still looked exactly the same.
I tried really hard to like Persona 3. It's kind of weird because I used to like dungeon crawler games, but this just didn't do it for me. By the way if there is a Shin Megami game where you actually have diverse dungeons, I must know.
maybe you skipped maladroithim's post because he pretty much explained all of that:
The thing that interests me the most about Persona 4 is that the game-breaking crap that dragged down Persona 3 is more or less all completely gone. Most significantly you can control your party members in battle. This is such a big deal that it is advertised as a feature on the box. Dungeons are streamlined and I don't think they are randomly generated anymore, you go to more than one location, you can fast travel around town, there are more save points etc. The interface is much more functional and gives you a lot more information. If Persona 3 were a PC game these would have all been fixed in a patch, so I guess I am taking Persona 4 as an expansion pack with gameplay fixes.
You did not say much about the story besides the PORTAL/ALTERNATE UNIVERSE and MURDERS (i guess the party members are mute too?!?) so i can't really say much about this. :welp: the screenshots doesn't tell
much!
-
Taken from Wikipedia.org (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_4)
Persona 4 takes place in the same universe as Persona 3 in a rural town named Inaba. There have been mysterious murders occurring whenever there was fog after heavy rain.
There were also rumors about a channel on television airing only at midnight called Mayonaka TV (The Midnight Channel in the English version), during which it is said that one can see his/her "other half" when staring at the TV screen. After hearing about a recent unsolved murder which occurred during the fog, the characters—the main character, Chie, and Yōsuke—discuss how each of them had attempted to watch the mysterious TV channel and witnessed the murder victim.
The protagonist later realizes that during midnight when the channel is on, his body can phase into his television set as a gateway to enter another world infested with shadows. After discovering this, they all decide to explore. When first completely entering the world, dazed and confused, the main character meets Teddie.
Mayonaka TV and the town murders seem to have a connection. The murder victims may be merely victims of Mayonaka TV. Everyone decides that they will together try to solve the mysterious murders by exploring the hidden world of Mayonaka TV.
Despite the brightness of the yellow which is the main color scheme of the game, the story itself is pretty dark. I'd say it's darker than P3. At least in P3 nobody is dead from falling from the sky and stabbed by the antenna!
-
Never played any of the Persona games. In fact, the only megaten game I own is Nocturne which I loved playing. I'm pretty interested in this game, though unfortunately it's only out in Europe spring 2009.
I kind of wish there would be more than one dungeon. It's something that I generally dislike in video games for some reason.
-
daDAdaDAAAAAA!! junpei has leveled up!!!
-
So, your feelings for Persona 3 will probably be the same as for Persona 4.
oh, rabid contempt then? EXCELLENT. just what i was in the mood fordaDAdaDAAAAAA!! junpei has leveled up!!!
man i remember bort had that faggot as his avatar for a while before persona 3 came out. after i finally had the opportunity to play the miserable game i went around gw for a week wanting to verbally abuse bort everytime i saw him.
-
the funny thing is, i thought he looked like kind of a cool guy in the picture before i actually played the game. then i bought it ) and thought jesus why did he have this guy as his avatar
-
he looks like a pokemon trainer.
-
nah man he had this good expression on his face; it did not match his ingame character ("persona" if you will) at all. he looked dramatic kinda and it made me think persona 3 was gonna be like persona 2 and it wasn't at all.
-
gonna catch those pokemon
cause im a real goody
gonna catch the pokemon
while my face is moody!
~junpei, bort's avatar
also if he had it pre-persona 3's release maybe he just liked the picture?
-
Yeah, Junpei is a really annoying character and Yosuke in 4 is almost exactly the same, but a little bit more tolerable.
I seriously hated Junpei, especially that bullshit love story involving that apathetic artist girl who hates everyone.
-
gonna catch those pokemon
cause im a real goody
gonna catch the pokemon
while my face is moody!
~junpei, bort's avatar
also if he had it pre-persona 3's release maybe he just liked the picture?
did you even play the game
also no not moody more like CONFUSED. it matched the character art from earlier games but that was about the only similarity.
-
did you even play the game
also no not moody more like CONFUSED. it matched the character art from earlier games but that was about the only similarity.
nah im just an ass and was hoping to start a derail where i convinced people i thought "goody" and "moody" rhymed perfectly :(
but no if he had it before the game came out maybe he didn't know!
-
no he definitely didn't know because as soon as he played the game he was like UGH.... and changed his avatar, but he looked....he looked so cool from the character art...
-
Played the game for 50 minutes.
It's better than I thought. There has literally been one fight for the first hour and it somehow got me interested with the storyline. It's very well done so far, and the dialogue and voice acting is pretty much better than any jrpg out there. The problem I have right now is that most of the characters act the exact same way as the ones from Persona 3. Yosuke is EXACTLY like Junpei, and the black haired girl is just like the chick from the last one too. Most popular girl in school, hangs out with the new guy, has no boyfriend. Things kind of play out the same way too, it would have been nice if they had different personalities. Thankfully there are more characters like your uncle and his daughter who make up for it.
It's really up to how the dungeons feel and how good the battles are to see if I like it or not.
-
someone who hate all parts of persona 3 please play this so i know whether it sucks or not!
-
someone who hate all parts of persona 3 please play this so i know whether it sucks or not!
You will not like it.
Dunno what else to say, but it's pretty much Persona 3. Kind of like Gears of War 2 is basically like the first but spiced up a bit.
-
Neophyte, the character development get better and better as you play the game. The casts during the midgame are very different from P3. I found the characters in P4 to be more likable.
I don't know if it's the English voice acting that does that, but Yukiko (the black hair girl) is really different from Mitsuru in P3. She isn't that bossy and more polite. The reason why she has no boyfriend is because she's too busy managing the hotel and most of the time, she didn't realize that guys are hitting on her.
I agree to some extent that Yosuke is very similar to Junpei. But somehow I find them different. You can learn more about the characters by rank up their social link(which is something they should have done in P3. ) so that's probably why I prefer Yosuke than Junpei.
-
holy shit why do you guys like this series? i haven't played it but from what i've heard it sounds like a big glob of everything shitty with jrpgs/anime.
-
holy shit why do you guys like this series? i haven't played it but from what i've heard it sounds like a big glob of everything shitty with jrpgs/anime.
no not at all. they are hardcore kinda because lol japan but the first two, nocturne, and dds were good games. actually i only played a bit of dds and the first one was kinda horrible in terms of MECHANICS/DESIGN but it had ideas!!! and persona 2/nocturne are legitimately good.
also thanks neophyte! people were saying HMM IT IMPROVES ON ALL OF THE FLAWS so i was getting sort of confused. one of the worst things imo was the absence of story from most of persona 3. it was like here, do meaningless, inane sim shit with one-dimensional characters and crawl dungeons for 30 days, then have a little big of story progression!
-
Well the characters aren't bad, hima. But my first impression was that they are essentially the same. You have a mute hero, a clumsy guy who attempts to hit on some chicks, and the attractive girl who all the guys want to get with. It's not bad, and thankfully there are more characters this time around...but I'd like it to be something different.
But I haven't gotten that far yet, maybe when I get a few hours in I'll come back and see if anything changes. I'm not sure how the story progresses mid game, I didn't like how P3 did that either. Hopefully the game is more story driven, because right now that's what's keeping me interested.
-
@Neophyte
Yeah I understand that. That was pretty much my first impression too. But you'll get to see some very different characters later on. :)
@headphonics
I think that's what all the life/dating simulation game suffer. It's pretty repetitive and the story doesn't progress much. I think in P4, they solve this by reduce the point require for level up Social Link so that you can meet Social Link event easier. There are also quests and fishing minigame, which I don't really like it by the way, for you to do too.
My complaint about this game has to be the way you got new equipments at the store. Why can't the storekeeper just list all the new stuffs in one window instead of saying 'Oh that is XXX. Wait a minute I'm going to make something out of that. Here's YYY'. Repeat this 20 times when you sell almost all of your stuffs.
-
i haven't been following
but whoever thought it'd be a good idea to put life/dating sim concepts into a jrpg should be shot
-
I was expecting it to involve the Demons themselves, you know since the whole Demon System is their trademark.
-
Persona didn't really become popular until the third game.
-
i haven't been following
but whoever thought it'd be a good idea to put life/dating sim concepts into a jrpg should be shot
lol those crazi japans :fogetrolleyes:
wat will they think off next :welp:
-
Persona didn't really become popular until the third game.
Which is kinda sad since the second one is WAY better.
-
It's definitely better where plot and character development is concerned, but the gameplay was utter crap. The battlesystem was about as clunky as can be, although it was still an improvement over the abysmal Revelations: Persona one.
I think the way they streamlined the gameplay was great. They balanced it so you could beat enemies at lightning speed, but you still had to stay on your toes cause they can just as easily kick your ass if you let them.
-
man i couldn't disagree more
demon contracts, fusion spells with other pt members, multiple persona's for pt members, CONTROLLABLE pt members(thankfully they brought this back in p4). these are things that should have never been removed.
the knock down system, does not give the enemy the same advantages as you, they don't get the gang up option when your team is down and chances are you attacked the enemy from behind giving your team the first round to themselves(or you hit them face to face which at least guarantees the MC first attack) making it a quick battle, unless you or your computer team-mates do something stupid.
walking though Tarturus was boring(yet somehow better the the p1 dungeons, probably because they are short and not in first person)
rumor system is much more interesting then school/life-sim and really could have been expanded on, though coming up with something new would have been better.
i did enjoy p3(really!), but its got nothing on p2
-
Which is kinda sad since the second one is WAY better.
Seriously. I feel the games lost it's charm by the third. Now it just seems like the generic jrpg fare.... only this time being self aware... which doesn't exactly make it any more palatable.
-
I just got done explaining to a friend how broken some of the game mechanics are in this game. For example, the initiative system that allows you to attack the enemy (or not) to determine who gets the initiative in the fight is terribly coded and carries over some prominent flaws associated with it from Persona 3. It's pretty simple, you attack the shadow before it touches you and no initiatives are given. You get the advantage if you hit it in the back and the shadows get it if you are caught off guard, can't swing in time or the game simply doesn't register your attack.
There have been several times when I have hit a shadow in the back and didn't get the initiative in battle. This is pretty annoying because you can't actually sneak up on a shadow without alerting it, so it's pretty much impossible to do but it does work SOMETIMES giving you the illusion that it's functional when it really isn't. Sometimes my weapon will magically not hit the shadow and I'll get hit instead and start off the battle at a severe disadvantage - of course, this is due to the game having poor collision detection. However, I should mention that it sometimes miraculously works in my favor by not giving the advantage to the enemy, even though I missed my strike and got hit. One time, I have even hit the shadow as it approached me and the enemy STILL managed to get the initiative...that shit completely baffles me.
The part that makes it infuriating is when you find yourself up against five strong enemies and they all get to go before you and assault you with a barrage of high level magic and other annoying shit like fear or confuse spells that have a ridiculous success rate of at least 80%. This pretty much spelled disaster for me a few times because the persona I had on the MC was weak against wind and the AI appropriately decided to use Garu multiple times to kill him. The first hit knocked him down and left him with about 10 HP, that SAME enemy got another turn for using a knock-down attack which it used to cast the same spell again. Before I knew it, I had a game over because the main character died. Luckily, I'm on beginner mode and I still had 8 moon tsukubames in my inventory (each one revives your party to max health/SP if the MC dies). Even after using one, the next enemy did the same fucking thing and killed the MC before I could even get a fucking chance to change his persona. After that bullshit, I just reset the game since I had already wasted two of those items in a similar situation prior to that and I wanted to keep them for later on in the game when I absolutely needed them. There's no telling if I would have survived that battle anyway, because Teddie is a fucking faggot sometimes and takes forever to find an escape path.
Anyway, before that, I had just cleared a time-consuming 9 floor dungeon and defeated a mini boss and just needed to get to one of the scarce save points. You can imagine how pissed I was to lose to a few basic enemies that got the upper hand due to a glitch of some kind. But seriously, I expected the game to be a breeze on beginner mode, and yet I still have to level grind and it's already getting tedious because of how similar the game is to 3 (recycled enemies galore). Apparently Atlus boosted the difficulty because of the player now being able to give direct commands to characters, so beginner mode really isn't as easy as it sounds. Quite the opposite actually, I find myself being unable to progress quickly due to items and equipment being so expensive and enemies not dropping enough money. Why the fuck should I spend 20k yen just to restore my party's health while in the TV world? Why are medicines 1K each and only heal like 60HP? That's practically worthless...and why does summoning a level 2 Slime persona cost only about 200-400 less than a much higher level persona (the price is supposed to be level appropriate, but the prices don't reflect that)? So many things don't make sense. I must be missing something because I shouldn't walk out of a dungeon after level grinding and barely have enough to buy one piece of equipment.
-
This game also has terrible music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvieRMygJ6E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPogJsxnpAM
-
Did you try selling the stuffs you got from enemies? After all the grinding you should have tons of item by now. Selling them also bring more equipments into the store. That's the reason why they don't drop that much money.
As for the advantage thing, I think it also has to do with the party agi and tarot card effect. Hit or being hit first just affect the probability. As for the monsters, if your level is higher than them then it's easier to sneak up on them. The reason for the price being not that different is probably due to the persona fusion. If it's too low then it'd too easy to create a big persona from keeping on buying low level personas and fusion them.
Personally, I think the difficulty is ok for a Megaten game (I'd even say it's easier than an average megaten game.). I went for Expert mode on my first playthrough and have no problem beating the game. I understand about the lack of healing item at the beginning, but I use food item that you can buy for like 200 or 400 yen instead. Later on you'll be able to heal your sp during you're in the tv world and then you can use healing magic instead.
-
This game seriously rules. I can't remember the last time I was so addicted to a game, let alone one that's an RPG. The writing is great, the music owns, making new Personas is fun, and the battles are challenging. Games like this are what make me thankful to be an Aspie. Here's a little gameplay footage by yours truly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFQNbfDvPBo
-
someone who hate all parts of persona 3 please play this so i know whether it sucks or not!
i didn't put much time into it, but i couldn't get into persona 3 at all.
-
Megaten games tend to have music that is an aquired taste at best. Cept for their old stuff that stuffs the shit.
I found myself a bit overwhelmed with all of the systems in place. I feel like their making their games too complicated sometimes, and biting off more then they can chew.
-
This game also has terrible music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvieRMygJ6E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPogJsxnpAM
Thats a shame, Persona 3 actually had some good tracks (some terrible ones too though).
-
It's a mixed bag, but the good songs are always instrumental and they're still severely outnumbered by chipper J-pop tunes that would drive any normal person insane.
Shoji Meguro is actually very talented and I like his music, but this is not his area of expertise. Annnnnd, I don't know why you can't disable music, that's unheard of for a late 2008 title.
-
I will be buying this the first chance I get, yessir! I haven't played Persona FES in months, but whatevs. Kinda surprised this game is out so soon though (I don't really keep up with games anymore).
As much as I loved Persona 3, and I'm really happy that the MegaTen series are actually selling now, but at the same time, if Persona 2: Eternal Punishment had gotten this much attention, we may have gotten Innocent Sin (which obviously doesn't matter now, but still). The Persona 2s (Eternal Punishment more so) are heaps and bounds better than Persona 3. Darker, deeper storyline, mature characters, and just a better everything (though the fights are much more fast-paced in P3, not that I don't care about battle systems that much). I miss talking to the demons and asking them dumbass questions for tarot cards. I miss spreading rumors about store owners being eaten by sharks.
Persona 2 is just too awesome for words (though admittedly, it took me a while to actually get into it. When I first played it, I was like "WTF did I just buy????), though Persona 3 is a really good game in its own right. I just try not to compare the two unlike some of the more hardcore Persona fans, who jump ship upon P3's release.
-
Seriously if you compare them to P2 both P3 and P4 pale, but they are fantastic games on their own merits, especially when you consider how abysmal the jRPG market has been as of late. Personally I think the games strike a pretty damn good balance between innovation and familiarity.
That being said there are some design decisions that were completely retarded, for example I'm glad that character control was restored because it was fucking ridiculous for a turn-based RPG to have AI-controlled allies. I still don't like the removal of conversations with demons but when you come down to it that system was pretty repetitive and got boring fast. You'd get demons with the same personalities and therefore dialogues in practically every dungeon. If it was fleshed out a bit more it could be awesome but as it stands so far it's kinda meh.
-
Since I haven't played P4 yet, I don't really know if it's dark or lighthearted, but I kind of wish that a future Persona game would have a similar feel/ambiance/whatever as the Persona: Trinity Soul anime. It managed to balance the dark and lighthearted themes, giving it a mysterious ambiance. It also had a great, modern setting, interesting and likable characters, and awesome music. I seriously loved the setting (winter and spring) and the modern architecture.
-
Seriously. I feel the games lost it's charm by the third. Now it just seems like the generic jrpg fare.... only this time being self aware... which doesn't exactly make it any more palatable.
The good news is that Persona 4 gets really interesting towards the end, and it feels more like the older games. November and December are amazing. The bad news is that there's a hell of a lot of really annoying JRPG/anime bullshit to go through to get there.
Um... it would have worked a lot better without the whole "Dating sim" nonsense, but that goes without saying. Well I guess it would have worked better if it hadn't just reused so much of Persona 3's system and if the other party members could change Personas and if you didn't get Game Over when the hero dies. I can understand that last bit in P3, because of their horrible design choices, but here? It seems like the game's way of creating artificial difficulty.
-
This game also has terrible music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvieRMygJ6E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPogJsxnpAM
You're mad, that music is almost as fantastic as this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHGIBfdi-pM
-
Man, someone also linked that same song after I mentioned P4 music sucking, I guess Blue Dragon Eternity is pretty famous now.
How is it possible for a song to suck that badly? Argh.
-
I fell in love with that song after Barkley's Shut up and Jam Gaiden.
I'd compare Persona4's music more to this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1EFHMwKdkY, morphed with this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE7M3XWO3Y0. So I can understand your loathing for it but after constant exposure you might grow to like it.
Anyways theres a prospect that there will be something worse out there, now or later.
-
Liked Persona 3, but my Sister spoiled it for me.
I already got spoiled as to who the killer is in Persona 4, but that's really only half the story I guess.
Either way I'm liking it.
-
I just beat this game yesterday, but I only got the normal ending; some of the requirements for getting this "true" ending are just really dumb. For example, you won't even be making choices with another character, it's something stupid like going to Junes and attempting to go to the food court but deciding not to about 3 times and then refusing to go back to your own home.
I will also say that the second form of the first "last" boss has a pretty dope song.
-
Naw, it's just "Keep trying to go back to Junes's Food Court after you've talked to everyone until it lets you" and then it gives you some pretty clear instructions on what to do.
Of course, the True Ending storyline is completely retarded and it would be best to just ignore it.
-
I agree, it's best to avoid it and ignore it. Better yet look it up on google if your so curious.
-
Megaten games tend to have music that is an aquired taste at best. Cept for their old stuff that stuffs the shit.
I actually didn't mind P3's music. I got tired of the Tartarus (or whatever) theme VERY fast, but I liked the other tracks.
But still... A MegaTen game having bad music is like...unheard of.
-
It's not just for the true ending, since you get an extra boss as well - plus you also learn who is behind everything. Not sure why you'd dismiss that as unnecessary.
Naw, it's just "Keep trying to go back to Junes's Food Court after you've talked to everyone until it lets you" and then it gives you some pretty clear instructions on what to do.
That's pretty much what I just said.