Overall, sorta meh.
That entirely sums up my feelings about the game. The combat was incredibly repetitive, the out of combat was pretty boring (It impressed me ... well, once comes to mind. The dungeon in the ice world with the mirror bits was cool), and the game was over all way too easy. The roommate whose VC I'm playing this on would blame me for it being easy, as he says I powergamed - But, really, I just made smart choices. I didn't ever grind, I just fought the enemies I ended up running into. Hell, I tried to get away from most fights. I ended up at level 23 at the end of the game, out of 27. The badge system for power ups was pretty cool, I have to admit. However, the amount of customization is kinda... lamely small. You pretty much have to use most of your BP just to increase defense and attack power, which are really just sorta lame uses for the BP. The story, what of it there was, was bad. Meh.
SMRPG was pretty much better in every aspect. Of course, Square had a hand in making SMRPG, and that was when Square was pumping out great RPGs. So... There you go. Of course, Intelligent Systems was the devs for this game, and they make Fire Emblem. So, what the hell, guys? What the hell.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Friday, January 02, 2009
Persona 3: FES, part 1.
So. I got this game 2 weeks ago, to the day. Since then, I've played for 70 hours. Yeah. That's averaging 5 hours a day, ignoring that there's been a handful of days that I haven't played it. And the number of hours I've lost due to wipes. Oh, the hours I've lost due to wipes... But, I wanted to put down some of my impressions of it.
First, I think I have to say that this is the best RPG that I've played in years. No, really. That I could play 70 hours over that time period says a lot. I've not been able to do that for awhile. The blend of customization, difficulty, and good writing has pulled me into this game like I haven't been for awhile.
For those that have no clue about how Persona 3 works (like me, before playing it!), the game is played day by day. Each day you have activities that you do after school - hanging out with people, attending clubs, etc. (I have to say, when I first started playing, I felt a tad overwhelmed with how many different things I could do. Too many things to do, so few days! Sorta felt like real life.) At night you can either do more activities or go to Tartarus. Tartarus is the dungeon that you adventure in. In the day stuff, you go to school, make friends, date, etc. This is done via a system called Social Links. The more you hang out with people, the higher a Social Link rank you have with the person. The scenes are well done and I found them to be very interesting. I tend to want to watch these more than explore the dungeon, most of the time. The higher Social Link you have, the better the Personas you fuse will be. Personas being the spirits(?) that help you in combat.
So, combat in this game actually involves strategy and real threat. I've Game Over'd more times to random combats than bosses. Difficulty in an RPG? I don't think I've encountered that in a non-SRPG in years. It's amazing. The good majority of those deaths have been because I screwed up and not cheese. Of course, there's a bit of cheese, but that happens. With better prep and not letting the enemy get advantage on me, I'd have not game over'd nearly as many times. In combat, if you hit an enemy with their weakness (Or a critical hit) it knocks them over and you get another action. This applies to you and the enemy. I've had the enemy get advantage on me, take advantage of my weaknesses, and take me out. It's painful, but... That's how it goes. Also, this is one of the games that I find Instant Death and Status Effects not insanely BS. Mostly because they have the same odds to work on you as to work on enemies ... and in the case of status effects, BOSSES. Yeah. I've seen bosses get charmed. THat's an amazing sight that would warm any cynical RPGer's heart. Instant Death is a legit way to get rid of enemy groups, too.
The Main Character in the game can swap Personas from a group you can take with you. This means he can take any role, as all of your stats, skils, and weaknesses/resistances come from your Persona. Need a healer? Switch Persona (in combat, even) to a persona with healing spells. Bam, healer. Need to be resistant to an element, need to cast a certain spell? Hope you have the right persona with you. You ... did prepare your Personas beforehand, right? You can fuse Personas to get new, stronger ones. They take some of the traits of their parents, so you get a great amount of customization, between what Persona you take with you and what their traits are. Now, all your party members have a set Persona, so they're static in how their skills etc. work.
Audio/Visualwise, the game is top notch. I like the songs that play - They don't annoy me after hearing them for hours on end, though the other people in the house have been bothered... <_< (Heh. I've caught my sister and niece humming along with the battle theme). I like the visual style - It looks nice and it's clean.
Of course, I do have some complaints about the game. It's not perfect. I have had a few cheese deaths - Enemy critical hits the Main Character, knocks him down, hits him again and ... All of the sudden I go from full HP to none. Oops. And that's Game Over. The second the MC dies, you're done. Even if you have a persona that can cast a resurrection spell in your party. Which doesn't make much sense to me. Speaking of in your party, it's entirely AI controlled. Uggggh. Do I really need to say more? And, with the way the game handles party members and being in your party, there's no easy way to handle equipping your party members. You have to talk to them and handle equipment individually, not via a nice organized way. Bleh.
And the Social Links... The system results in a lot of good things, with you being able to choose who you talk to, when you do so, how your relationships with people grow, and so on. However, in dialogue, it seems like the entire point is sucking up to the person you're talking with. =/ That, and then once you max out their social link with a person, you can safely never talk to them again with no negative effects. Mechanicswise, sure, this makes sense. It just feels sorta lame and I laugh at how it kinda clunks. This has resulted in me and my niece laughing a number of times at the mechanics as we watched it play out. I was dating a girl and then working on dating another chick. The MC is the master of Hit it and Quit it. =P
The difficulty, while something I laud, also tends to have brick wall moments. Those are annoying, but not really a deal breaker. They require you to go back, level up and fuse Personas to find a certain skill, etc. The game does have grinding, but it's not really excessive.
This wraps up this bit. I'll do a second post after I've put another 70 hours into the game, heh.
First, I think I have to say that this is the best RPG that I've played in years. No, really. That I could play 70 hours over that time period says a lot. I've not been able to do that for awhile. The blend of customization, difficulty, and good writing has pulled me into this game like I haven't been for awhile.
For those that have no clue about how Persona 3 works (like me, before playing it!), the game is played day by day. Each day you have activities that you do after school - hanging out with people, attending clubs, etc. (I have to say, when I first started playing, I felt a tad overwhelmed with how many different things I could do. Too many things to do, so few days! Sorta felt like real life.) At night you can either do more activities or go to Tartarus. Tartarus is the dungeon that you adventure in. In the day stuff, you go to school, make friends, date, etc. This is done via a system called Social Links. The more you hang out with people, the higher a Social Link rank you have with the person. The scenes are well done and I found them to be very interesting. I tend to want to watch these more than explore the dungeon, most of the time. The higher Social Link you have, the better the Personas you fuse will be. Personas being the spirits(?) that help you in combat.
So, combat in this game actually involves strategy and real threat. I've Game Over'd more times to random combats than bosses. Difficulty in an RPG? I don't think I've encountered that in a non-SRPG in years. It's amazing. The good majority of those deaths have been because I screwed up and not cheese. Of course, there's a bit of cheese, but that happens. With better prep and not letting the enemy get advantage on me, I'd have not game over'd nearly as many times. In combat, if you hit an enemy with their weakness (Or a critical hit) it knocks them over and you get another action. This applies to you and the enemy. I've had the enemy get advantage on me, take advantage of my weaknesses, and take me out. It's painful, but... That's how it goes. Also, this is one of the games that I find Instant Death and Status Effects not insanely BS. Mostly because they have the same odds to work on you as to work on enemies ... and in the case of status effects, BOSSES. Yeah. I've seen bosses get charmed. THat's an amazing sight that would warm any cynical RPGer's heart. Instant Death is a legit way to get rid of enemy groups, too.
The Main Character in the game can swap Personas from a group you can take with you. This means he can take any role, as all of your stats, skils, and weaknesses/resistances come from your Persona. Need a healer? Switch Persona (in combat, even) to a persona with healing spells. Bam, healer. Need to be resistant to an element, need to cast a certain spell? Hope you have the right persona with you. You ... did prepare your Personas beforehand, right? You can fuse Personas to get new, stronger ones. They take some of the traits of their parents, so you get a great amount of customization, between what Persona you take with you and what their traits are. Now, all your party members have a set Persona, so they're static in how their skills etc. work.
Audio/Visualwise, the game is top notch. I like the songs that play - They don't annoy me after hearing them for hours on end, though the other people in the house have been bothered... <_< (Heh. I've caught my sister and niece humming along with the battle theme). I like the visual style - It looks nice and it's clean.
Of course, I do have some complaints about the game. It's not perfect. I have had a few cheese deaths - Enemy critical hits the Main Character, knocks him down, hits him again and ... All of the sudden I go from full HP to none. Oops. And that's Game Over. The second the MC dies, you're done. Even if you have a persona that can cast a resurrection spell in your party. Which doesn't make much sense to me. Speaking of in your party, it's entirely AI controlled. Uggggh. Do I really need to say more? And, with the way the game handles party members and being in your party, there's no easy way to handle equipping your party members. You have to talk to them and handle equipment individually, not via a nice organized way. Bleh.
And the Social Links... The system results in a lot of good things, with you being able to choose who you talk to, when you do so, how your relationships with people grow, and so on. However, in dialogue, it seems like the entire point is sucking up to the person you're talking with. =/ That, and then once you max out their social link with a person, you can safely never talk to them again with no negative effects. Mechanicswise, sure, this makes sense. It just feels sorta lame and I laugh at how it kinda clunks. This has resulted in me and my niece laughing a number of times at the mechanics as we watched it play out. I was dating a girl and then working on dating another chick. The MC is the master of Hit it and Quit it. =P
The difficulty, while something I laud, also tends to have brick wall moments. Those are annoying, but not really a deal breaker. They require you to go back, level up and fuse Personas to find a certain skill, etc. The game does have grinding, but it's not really excessive.
This wraps up this bit. I'll do a second post after I've put another 70 hours into the game, heh.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)