What Are You Currently Playing? 6.65: Neighbor of the Beast

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Question: If I were ever to get into the massive beast that is the Persona franchise, where would be best for me to start? You'd think that would be pretty self-explanatory, but interestingly enough, hardly anyone I know ever mentions the original, and two of my friends from college said that they first started the series with Persona 2 and absolutely loved it.

[Foggle]

The Persona 2 duology (Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment) is the crown jewel of the series as far as I'm concerned. Best story, best characters, best dungeons (until 5), great music, good battle system, cool artwork. Persona 1 has aged worse than most PS1 games to the point where I'd go so far as to call the original version unplayable. The PSP remake plays better but it's still an average dungeon crawler and they ditched the PS1 original's amazing soundtrack for some reason. Persona 3 is extremely engaging and unique but I guarantee you will hate the battle system. It's total shit unless you play the PSP port, which is unfortunately gimped in quite a few other ways, making it only really worthwhile if you'd rather play as the female protagonist. Persona 4, Q, and Arena I couldn't get into. The writing and characters just didn't resonate with me at all. Persona 5 has just about everything I love to see in a video game (funky soundtrack, beautiful artwork, cool and stylish combat, elements of other genres sprinkled in), but I'm also having trouble getting into it for some reason.

My advice: play the Persona 2 games, then, if you like them, pick up either Persona 5 or something from one of the other SMT franchises, like Digital Devil Saga or Nocturne. If you like Persona 5, you may want to check out Persona 3 and 4, but check YouTube first to make sure you'd be into them. Oh, and play Catherine as well. It might actually be my favorite game from the Persona Team! That said, if you're looking to get into a long-running JRPG franchise, I hear a certain prequel about Japanese gangsters is pretty sweet...

[Spark Of Spirit]

What's the difference in the battle system between 3 FES and the PSP one?

I'd say just start with 5. If you like it then work back.

[Mustang]

Persona 5 is my 1st game in the series and while I've been thinking about going back to play the older games I don't think I will. I like how the dungeons are in Persona 5, but they just go on for far too long, and I don't feel like going through that anymore, especially if the older games dungeons are bland. That aside, I'm currently on my 5th palace. I have Ann maxed and I think everyone else have either 6-8 stars. I'm in the month of September with all my stats at 3. If I were to try to describe the story, I'd say think Death Note with a blend of Scooby Doo (probably a bad comparison). As for the characters, I like everyone except Ryuji. As the story progress my hate for him gets stronger. I just can't stand that boy at all. I also had a hatred for Morgana, but he/she's growing onto me. Had to take a break because the palaces do cause fatigue. There was also a long stretch of doing nothing. I don't know if I liked how long that went on either. It's a great game, but I think it's overrated as well, but it's flashiness is what I think is winning people over.

[Foggle]

Persona 5 has, by far, the longest dungeons in the series. Too long. The ones in Persona 2 are much more manageable while still being well-designed, and the ones in P3 and 4 feel like afterthoughts, but at least they don't go on forever.

If I were to try to describe the story, I'd say think Death Note with a blend of Scooby Doo (probably a bad comparison).

That's almost the exact plot of Persona 4 to be honest.

What's the difference in the battle system between 3 FES and the PSP one?

In Persona 3 Portable you can control your party members during battle. In the original version/FES you... can't. Meaning you have to rely on the brain-dead AI (along with some vague party strategies) to do the right thing every turn, which they frequently won't. Oh, and did I mention that the game has enemies with instant death spells (including full party wipes), a mechanic where if the main character dies it's Game Over, and an hour-long final boss? It's exactly as fun as it sounds. I adore the game's style, music, and characters but I don't think I can ever replay it because of this.

[Peanutbutter]

Currently enjoying Shantae: Half-Genie Hero. Its a WayForward game, and its tremendous so far. I'm only halfway into the mermaid stage, but egad is every background and stage music fantastic! I can't wait to finish this and Yakuza 0 so I can try out Neir: Auromata. Like I've said elseware, 2017 is killing it in the video games department so far!

[Spark Of Spirit]

Some more free stuff will be added to Super Bomberman R in a future update:





Good stuff. Now throw in Higgins Bomber, Bonk Bomber, and Goemon Bomber.

Also, the update that just went out increased the framerate from locked 30fps to locked 60fps, gave single player a camera control option, and added four new battle maps.

Really gotta hand to the Bomberman team here. They've been making all the right moves.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Also, I just beat the Dragon's Trap (or Curse, depending on your system of choice) remake. Still a classic. I enjoyed the new graphics and sound effects, but the new music didn't do anything for me. Glad I had the choice to keep the old soundtrack.

If you've never played the game before, it's a pretty good way to give the Wonder Boy in Monster World series a shot.

[Mustang]

Stumbled upon my 1st roadblock in Persona 5. Currently in the 6th palace and I haven't seen a single game over screen until now. Keep running into some demon that keeps striking the MC with Fear and then proceeds to cast Ghastly/Ghostly Encounter (I think that's the name) wiping me out completely. Very frustrating, especially since I'm trying to get through this one part without having to use my items. I don't think I even have an item to cure that fear status. Even more messed up, my party line-up, I don't think anyone else have the ability to cure that status effect. Gotta go back to the real world and prepare and here I thought I was doing so good up until this point. Even had a couple characters at level 50 and now I gotta do the shit again.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Just beat the main campaign in The Last of Us. I had so much ammo stocked up that I just mowed down all of the enemies in the final area of the game rather than trying to stealth my way through it like you're clearly meant to do. It's funny trying to fight them that way since this AI clearly wasn't designed that well for actual Gears of War style shoot-outs, so they mostly just stayed around one cover spot which allowed me to snipe them with the hunting rifle from a relatively safe distance. I could have used stealth to get through that section of course, but I just wanted to kind of finish up the game at that point, since by now I was really feeling the repetition of it all.

Overall, yeah, production values aside (which are going to feel dated in another few years, anyways) this game was over-hyped beyond belief. It's a mechanically shallow game with a boring and lifeless soundtrack that tells a predictable and done to death story. On its own the game is alright with some interesting concepts that it tries to tackle with its gameplay, but the end result feels pretty hollow, IMO.

Am I being too harsh on this game? Maybe, but I'm only really judging it by the same standards that I judge any other game by. I never really found myself that invested in the story-line that people seem to praise so much, and the gameplay is an amalgamation of different elements that have each been done better in other titles. To be clear, I don't think of this as a bad game by any means. Just an average to slightly above average stealth/shooter hybrid with some light puzzle solving and adventure elements. As I said, I enjoy this more than the Uncharted games, at least, since over here there is at least a good bit of player choice and open environments to allow you the freedom to tackle the encounters in a multitude of ways that you choose. I just find that the actual mechanics of the game feel pretty bland once you realize that you've already discovered most if not all of its nuance long before you even reach the halfway point in the story.

I'll still play the DLC just because I have it, but I don't expect to be jumping on board for The Last of Us 2 unless it somehow makes some drastic improvements to the enemy AI and decides to give you an option to skip the walking sections, which considering how up their own asses Naughty Dog are these days, I don't think is likely to happen.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I don't think you're being too harsh. I think most reviewers treat movie games with kid gloves the same way most anime reviewers treat moe. It's all about how polished it looks on the surface without any mention that what's under the hood is not anything fantastic at all. Yet it gets perfect scores regardless. It's probably not to the extent of Guerrilla Games (the Killzone trilogy's hype was way over the top) but it feels like since Uncharted 2 that most reviewers ignore the problems in Naughty Dog's games in a way they never did beforehand.

Not to say I hate movie games. I quite enjoyed playing through Titanfall 2. But are these games really worth full price for such a one and done experience? Personally, I don't think so.

[Peanutbutter]

Its the story that makes or breaks movie games. I don't see how Last of Us' plot was "done to death". Unless noting how many dystopias we've seen in games which have been done since way back in the 16-bit era, I thought Last of Us handled its setting well while breaking a number of clichés. Plus, the ending is fantastic and not usually how things go right at the end.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Aside from the fact that the general plot outline takes a lot from Children of Men, it's full of cliches from dystopian cinema (taking bits and pieces from different sources of inspiration such as titles ranging from A Boy and His Dog to Day of the Dead), which to be fair this game was clearly trying to emulate, but unlike those stories it doesn't really convey a clear and concise message of the story's theme, which is supposed to be about there always being something to fight for, yet the game half-assedly only starts playing on that theme towards the end, rather than constantly evoking its message throughout portions of the story. Joel and Ellie's relationship itself isn't even gradually built up over time as you would expect. Their attitudes towards each other only drastically alter off-screen during time-skips, rather than subtly developing over time. But my biggest issue with the story are the clearly manipulative moments that try and get you to feel whatever the developers want you to feel. Joel's daughter dying in the first 20 minutes falls flat because you not only see it coming, but you barely know the character. Likewise, there are a pair of characters introduced into the story for the sole purpose of being killed off to generate drama, while ultimately serving no major purpose to the story.

Really, though, what gets me about the presentation of the story is that it's heavily reliant on using cutscenes and forced walking segments (which as Foggle stated, really hurts its replay value) in order to convey its plot, which I find to be conceptually lazy for a game that's main focus is its narrative, as opposed to other narrative-driven games that tell their stories in a unique way that only games can as opposed to other mediums, such as BioShock, Nier, Max Payne, PT, Deadly Premonition, or some of Suda 51's earlier games.

Of course, none of this is to say that it's wrong if you or others enjoy it. It's great that so many people get enjoyment out of something. I just personally can't acknowledge it as a masterpiece, or anything really above average based on the reasons stated above. To me, personally, The Last of Us is a movie game that just isn't a very good movie and barely even a good a game.

[Peanutbutter]

Well that's fine that you don't find it perfect, no one is asking you too. I do think you're wrong about Joel and Elle's relationship not being shown gradually improving onscreen, and its clear that the events we see DO leave it an impact on them so it just isn't accurate to say that those moments are manipulative.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

My points aren't wrong simply because I interpreted them a different way than you or others may have. The manipulative moments that I'm referring to are, from my perspective, manipulative in the sense of how they are executed. Whenever we see a moment meant to get some kind of emotional response, it seems like the only way that the writing seems to know how to do that is by trying to make that given moment seem like a big deal and plays it up in every possible way, to the point where it feels overdone. There's hardly any sense of subtlety in any of these scenes.

But at any rate, I'm not too interested in having a debate over the merits or lack thereof regarding TLOU's story-telling. If you enjoyed it then that's great. Essentially, it's just not my kind of game. On its own, I have no issues with its popularity with many other gamers. My main issue stems from how many future single-player games seem to want to ape aspects of this game that I don't find to be particularly enjoyable or interesting, namely the forced walking segments and over-reliance on scripted set-pieces, along with generally shallow mechanics.

To be fair, though, big budget AAA games have been moving in a direction that I largely can't stand since long before this game came out.