On Persona 3 and 4

So it was around 2007 or so when Persona 3 (the original not FES or Portable) was a new thing. But I was completely unaware of ATLUS or the MegaTen franchise as a whole until a friend of mine told me about it and I was intrigued so I got it based solely on his recommendation. I had played plenty of RPGs before that point in time but the intro was unlike anything I had seen before as was the general setting, combat, soundtrack, etc. I got hooked on it pretty quickly and later beat it with not much delay. Some enjoyable memories were learning what skills did and looking at the compendium entries with the Velvet Room music playing in the background. I remember beating the final boss as Surt as my main persona but he didn't have a too impressive skillset and I pretty much spammed Ragnarok for most of it. My team was Aigis, Yukari and Junpei I think. Good times. I even later got FES but I never played Portable and don't really plan on doing so.

And after FES was Persona 4. There was some special pre-order thing going on with half of the whole thing being split in half or something. I got the second half of the soundtrack, artbook and teddie plushie that stares with those soulless eyes. My friend got the other stuff. I obsessed over P4 as well for some time but only played through it twice; once for the normal ending and again for the true ending then I didn't really touch it much after that. I guess despite being hyped for it at the time it didn't leave as strong as impression on me probably since it was just more of the same albeit improved in certain areas.

After Persona 4 there was a point where I realized just how big the MegaTen franchise truly was. My next game was Strange Journey (although I didn't get into that one right way. Not until playing Etrian Odyssey 3 anyway.) and then Nocturne, Raidou vs the Soulless Army... Truly I felt and comprehended the hunger
Anyway Persona 4 would explode in popularity and with that the arrival of Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4 Golden. At the time I was completely disinterested in both of these titles and was fighting futile battle atop the Mt. Atlus US Forums over the PSP port of Eternal Punishment. "Surely they won't neglect to localize a Persona game in this day and age?". Oh how naive I was.

These days I have around 13 MegaTen titles. So what do I think of Persona 3 and 4 now? Well Persona 3 is good. Persona 4 though I feel has more praise than it deserves. Not that I don't like it but it's a bit much and it's overstayed it's welcome.  I'm interested in Persona Q and Arena 2. It's a shame there's no Persona 1 or 2 characters in either game since there's some cool characters in those games. Oh well. I have some interest in a Vita but not so much for Golden or Dancing all night. All I really want out of Persona 5 is basically for it to stand apart from the other games. Having a new cast unrelated to Persona 3 and 4 crew and changing up or removing the calendar and social link systems are also good.

One last thing I noticed sort of recently that's kind of...weird and unrelated is the portraits in Persona 4 in comparison to Persona 3 and also Persona 2

seriously what is up with that?

In case you're not seeing it I mean how most of the Persona 4 characters have the same pose for all their expressions. Also Yukiko and Rise have this thing where both of their arms are stuck to the sides of their body at all times. Naoto escaped this fate but only half way. Poor girl.

Oh right I had a blog

Been awhile huh? Well things have been pretty quiet mostly with not much going on. I got around to playing Dragon Warrior 1&2 for the Gameboy Color. Dragon Warrior 1 was pretty simple but I wasn't really expecting otherwise from a pretty old game. The second game is pretty similar but you instead have multiple party members instead of having to solo everything also more than one enemy to fight at once too. The second game was quite harder espesically the penultimate dungeon and pretty much everything after that, except the final dungeon which was strangely simple compared to the final dungeon of the first game. The final boss was also more brutal too with him being able to wipe you out pretty quickly. Both games were pretty good overall although I got kinda lost after I got the boat in the second game.

I still check on my Animal Crossing village every so often but nearly as much as I did when the game first came out.

I picked up Radiant Historia after hearing some good things about it and yeah it's pretty good. The time traveling mechanic is pretty great. I like the story so far too.

I might ask for a PS3 for Christmas. Not sure what games to get with it though

That's all I got! See ya next year!

Tales of the Abyss and King Abaddon stuff

So I recently beat Tales of the Abyss. I ended up with something like 2300 Grade at the end of it. The one I didn't care for was how much back-tracking there was. It got pretty out of hand in the latter half of the game but it was pretty enjoyable overall.

I'm nearing the end of Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon. Currently at Chapter 5. I've been doing mostly side stuff. I haven't found the will to play it some more lately. The combat is an improvement for sure but I don't really like the MAG system and how reliant it is on you hitting weaknesses. If you can't hit a weakness then your MAG runs out pretty quickly and no MAG means no healing or elemental attacks which makes fights harder than they need to be. Luckily almost every boss/enemy has a weakness. It's just a matter of randomly picking except for some obvious ones like Jack Frost and Pyro Jack. They removed the elemental bullets from the last game. Keeping them would've been a reliable way to gain MAG without having to use skills to get some back.But at least you have infinite bullets.

The presentation is kind of lacking compared to Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army; the previous Devil Summoner game I mentioned just before. There's these neat style of cutscenes in Soulless Army that are in-engine which have plenty of character. I didn't really think much about it when I first played through it but when I started playing King Abaddon their absence stuck out to me. One thing that I really don't like is how much music it reuses. I mean I'm not expecting a brand new soundtrack but it seems a bit excessive with how much is re-used. Some themes like for the Nameless Shrine, Detective agency are ok. But they did really need to reuse the final dungeon theme from the last game for alot of the dungeons? Or reusing the same title theme? I didn't care for the remix of the town theme. Some of the things they removed or added seem kind of strange.

In Soulless Army you could fuse a demon with your sword which would power it up and let you gain resistance to one of several types of damage (Physical, Fire, Ice, Wind , Electric, Death, Mind). And a stat boost. It was a nice way to get rid of a demon you didn't really want without outright getting rid of it. But now you have to get materials and pay money. The materials you get from demons (Pyro Steel, Bronze, Silver, etc) or side quests. There's 3 "kinds" of swords. Axe, Lance and Blade. Demons have some unique skills that'll require one of three types. It seems more complicated than it needs to be. You can do a special attack with them and each type is unique. Blades just hit everything around you, Axes make you leap into the air and slam the ground with the Axe or just stab rapidly with the Lance Unfortunately using these eats up MAG so you can't really use them too much. There's this weird thing with the Lance types where if you hit the button to the special attack once it'll eat up MAG so you have to rapidly press it for the full animation. There's also the lack of sacrificial fusion which is weird (Lances' special attack is the weakest too which is lame)  

Case Files are now just side quests whereas they just let you have a brief summary of the previous episode. Alot of them require you to deliver items but some of those require you to go out of your way to do things like take a photo of something or get something that you can only get in a certain place (as opposed to just happening to having the item on you by the time the case and clearing it there.)The other kind just require you to go to some place and typically fight a demon. These are pretty unique usually. Getting Case Files usually requires you to go out of your way to get them in other words talking to everyone. Even demons. You can get some nice stuff from clearing Case Files but they're just sort of there. It's a way to add extra hours to the game I guess.

 The last odd thing is the inclusion of alignments. The is the first Devil Summoner game to have them and they're generally stuck in the mainline series. It's not really annoying or good or anything. It's just...there. You know when you're asked an alignment question whenever the control vibrates a little.

 So King Abaddon is a good game but I like the previous Devil Summoner game more even though the combat is more clunky

No fancy pictures for you. Bye!