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Games => General Gaming => Topic started by: Quemaqua on Wednesday, July 25, 2007, 06:37:48 AM
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It's... good?! (http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/rpg/persona3/review.html)
I honestly don't know why, but I expected this game to be kind of lame. It just didn't look that great to me early on. The review makes it sound right up my alley, though, so I'm pretty happy about that. The first one was pretty crazy.
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Man, I loved Persona back on the Saturn! I think also have the PSone version lying around somewhere.
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I never did play Persona 2 even though I enjoyed Persona. I might have to consider checking this game out.
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It sounds dark and twisted, and right now I can't get enough dark and twisted stuff. I'm seriously having a mental breakdown. It's kind of awesome.
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Recalled, due to a defect in the art book.
"Presented with the choice of compromising on the quality of the art book, or shipping the game without said extra, we decided to have the art book redone with a higher quality binding, which will cause a very short delay in the ship date of the title."
That deserves some accolade. A lot of companies would have shipped as-is
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I think I'll pick this up. I played the second one on the PS, and was into for quite a bit. Then it got kind of stupid so I stopped playing. We'll see how this one goes, but did anyone grab it?
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Not I. It's a bit low on the priority list, and I can't spare the money for it.
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I picked it up last night. Seems pretty badass, but I only put like an hour or so into it and it starts off a bit slow (non-interactive). I'll give some further impressions in a bit. One note that probably won't matter to anyone else: there's no sound options in the config menu. Hence my post in the other thread about stereo adapters.
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This is probably the best RPG I've ever played. So far, it might even be the best game I've ever played. It's so fresh and unique. I've got to run but I'll get more into it later.
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Jeez, it's really that good? I mean, that's a pretty big statement right there.
But I must know more now. I was curious before, and now you've made me extra curious.
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The game is a bit more expensive than most. Maybe by about $10 or so here. You do, however, get quite a bit for that - the game, the manual, an artbook, and a soundtrack CD. As far as I know this is the standard version, not some special edition. The artbook is something you might look. It's small...about the dimensions of a paperback book, but has 50 or so pages, and is hardcover. I just kind of looked through it and it seems pretty nice. I haven't checked out the CD yet but I've heard good things.
I can't remember what they said in the review, but here's my thoughts so far:
I'm not too far into the game - maybe about 4 or 5 hours of actual playtime. I mention this because my opinion of it could change, and there's entire aspects of the game I haven't even fiddled with yet. I've always been bit interested in the Persona games, but P2 wasn't to my liking. This, however, is a whole different story.
The presentation is top-notch. This game has style. The interface, art, graphics, and music all mix so well. You've seen the screen shots and everything, but the music is just great. It's not something you'd ever expect in an RPG. I can't really even explain it to be honest, but it's good and it suits the game really well.
I'm sure you know the basics of the game. You're a high school kid who hunts demons or 'Shadows' in his spare time with some friends. The method in which you do so is to shoot yourself in the head to summon your Persona - basically magic or special attacks. The game is set up as some weird cross between something like Animal Crossing and a dungeon crawler. Your goals (so far) are very simple and split between the two. Go to school, study, make friends, and hunt Shadows. Every day you wake up, go through the different periods of the day (a lot of them are skipped, but random events do pop up), and then after school you have free time until you go to bed. How you use this time is up to you - study, go shopping to buy equipment for your battles, hang out with friends, go to your sport practice, explore the town, whatever. Certain things use up that entire period of free time, other things don't. After that, you decide if you want to explore the dungeon (randomly generated every night), study, or go to bed early. All of these have different benefits and you'll be mixing it up a bit.
That's the fun of it...there's so much little stuff to do, but everything comes back to increasing your stats, getting items, or whatever. So, it's not like you're wasting time if you're hanging out with friends - it's something you need to do, and there's probaly a lot of strategy involved in your time management later. That said, the modern atmosphere, music, and light hearted tone of the daytime school segment of the game is both entertaining and the really refreshing part of this. That's not to say, however, that the dungeon crawl is the weak point.
The dungeon is randomly generated, and I haven't gotten that far into it yet, but it seems that every few floors there's basically a point where you can start from the next time around. I'm assuming your goal is to get to the end of the labyrinth. Every 'block' seems to have a miniboss, and from my understanding there's a boss fight once a month. For the rest of the time, you're just trying to make your way up the tower, killing 'shadows', getting items, leveling up, and building up your Personae.
You don't really have any direct control over your allies, but the AI is good, and the battle system seems to work really well. Both simple and complex if that makes any sense. I can't really say much about the actual systems of combining Personae (except that both the level of the personae, the types themselves and your 'social links' all play a big part). I haven't gotten too far into it yet.
I don't really know what else to say - it's great because there's little else like it out there. It breaks up the dungeon crawl with the 'real life' segment and vice versa - it just works.
This thread is good to explain more (and spoilers are hidden) if the forums aren't locked when you look: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2593118
I'll fill you in with more as I go along, but if you have any questions, just ask.
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Thanks for the update. Keep us posted.
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I'm a bit further in, and with each hour that passes I become more enthralled with this game. If you want to talk about how to do non-linear game play correctly, this is it. It's not the shitty form of non-linear gameplay you find in most RPGs that people claim is non-linear. It's not like 90% of the game is the same, but if you choose to choke a little girl instead of buying her ice cream a thousand times you'll have some new abilities, a few lines of text will be different, and you'll get a different ending. You have a year, a schedule, and a goal. Apart from that there are very few things you HAVE to do, but a lot of things you can do. They don't vary in gameplay at all, but as your choices accumulate they have a profound effect on your ability to achieve your end goal.
I'd imagine I'm only 5% or less into the game, but I'm almost at the point where I can suggest everyone run out and buy it before it becomes rare, even if it means selling your most prized possessions. It's that good. Most of the fears I had about the system of gameplay have not materialized at this point, and aspects I had previously thought were minor gameplay elements turn out to be major ones.
I'm finding it hard to put down the game. I'm also finding it hard to find any major flaws. I was worried about the grinding and the dungeon crawl aspect (random dungeons...ew), but it's split up so much that it doesn't even really matter. The dungeons and enemies change enough so I don't imagine you'd get too bored and you never actually really have to go to the dungeon (with very few exceptions), so if you do get bored you can mix it up for the next couple of days and work on improving your non-dungeon stats or your social links.
Great game, I'll post more when I'm further into it.
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Damn it. Guess I really do need to go buy it, then.
As far as story, I assume you don't need to be all that familiar with the series to enjoy it? I've played both of the NA-released Persona games and was only marginally into them (the translations were a bit funny and I don't know that they've aged very well), so I want to make sure this can be enjoyed without a great depth of knowledge beforehand.
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Not at all. I played maybe 8 or so hours of the second one before deciding it kind of sucked and giving up on it. From what I can tell this is a completely different universe with references to a few of the old characters thrown in and a couple of appearances (like how a Cid shows up in every FF game). Apart from that I don't think there's any overlap at all.
Going from what I know of the past games (how they were all linked and the game play style) I'd say this was a complete reboot of the series. Sort of a new theme, new game play elements and a lot of the core principles of the games have been stripped out. For instance, I remember the thing I really didn't like about the second game was the battle system. Old school boring RPG battle system, but with the conversation aspect. Crack jokes with demons to get them to like you? Fucking lame. That's all gone now, replaced with a more natural but still strategic system.
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Not at all. I played maybe 8 or so hours of the second one before deciding it kind of sucked and giving up on it. From what I can tell this is a completely different universe with references to a few of the old characters thrown in and a couple of appearances (like how a Cid shows up in every FF game). Apart from that I don't think there's any overlap at all.
Going from what I know of the past games (how they were all linked and the game play style) I'd say this was a complete reboot of the series. Sort of a new theme, new game play elements and a lot of the core principles of the games have been stripped out. For instance, I remember the thing I really didn't like about the second game was the battle system. Old school boring RPG battle system, but with the conversation aspect. Crack jokes with demons to get them to like you? Fucking lame. That's all gone now, replaced with a more natural but still strategic system.
That's actually really good to hear that from you, this was why I was afraid to jump into this game right away because I never got to play much of the 2nd one. I am probably definitely going to have to get this game now, I've been craving another RPG to play, haven't played one since Grim Grimoire a few months ago. Thanks for the impressions.
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Shit, Grim Grimoire. I forgot about that one. I can't spend all this money! STOP MESSING WITH MY MIND!
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Well, I went out and bought it. Didn't want to risk never finding it with the art book and OST in case it was rereleased later or something in another pack. The book is actually quite nice. It's obviously small and not super detailed, but it's hardbound and nicely printed, and it features all the characters and their personae. On the whole, it made a very nice introduction to the game itself since I haven't popped the disk in yet. Nothing spoiley, just pretty pictures that give you a nice idea of what's in the game. I'm torn with the personae designs. Some of them seem a little derivative, and others are just plain fucking awesome. In any case, the art direction seems very solid, and it's creative and out there and lots of fun. Also, very dark. For instance, normal people turn into coffins during the Dark Hour, so there's some pictures of streets lined with standing coffins that are pretty cool.
Haven't listened to the OST, so no comments there; except that it's only a single disk, and the last 2 OSTs I purchased were 4 CDs apiece, so it's hard to say whether this one is complete or not. Still, the game only costs the regular $49.99 retail, so the extra stuff is basically free anyway. Awesome.
As for the game... like I said, I haven't popped it in yet. I'll be doing that tonight because Vagrant Story has resumed utterly kicking my ass in the last quarter or so of the game, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is seeming just a little bit too fantastical for what I want to play right now, and Persona 3 seems nice and dark and moody, which sounds really nice right about now.
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Nice, let me know what you think. I've been pretty busy so I'm not all that far into it, maybe a few months in game time, but it's still pretty fun.
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Will post impressions soon. Gonna' go dig in now.
Also, check out the Gametrailers video review (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23708.html).
EDIT - Put a couple hours into it. First impressions are both good and bad.
The good - holyshitartdesignzomg. Seriously, this game is stylistic as you could want. The opening is beautiful, the beginning of starting a new game is beautiful... it's great. I love it. Also, the sound design is... quirky, but fitting. Very mordern soundtrack, very poppy, even occasionally tries (and possibly sometimes fails) to be hip. Still, it seems appropriate and it's unique and I like it. Game is dark and moody and the plot seems to be unfolding convincingly enough into something enjoyable. Also, the English voice acting is good.
The bad? Well... the English voice acting sucks. What I mean to say is that some of the characters are voiced really, really unconvincingly. The guy from the velvet room and the school board president are what I'm mostly thinking. Most of the actual characters in your group don't seem half bad, though. Mitsuru and Yukari are competent and enjoyable despite occasionally stilted delivery (mostly awkward pauses that are more the fault of the dialogue than the actresses), and despite some localization cheese, Junpei is actually good as well. The first teacher you come across is also pleasant. Akihiko's voice is competent, but the delivery seems to have more considerable problems with him. It's just overdone and doesn't always seem to quite match the intended sentiment. I don't know if this will all improve as things go on, but I *sincerely* wish this game included the option for the original Japanese audio. The reading here is serviceable, and some actors are fine, but the consistency just isn't there. In addition, the game's opening is a bit too long. Well, for what it is. The problem isn't that it's long, because long cinematic openings are okay in my book, it's just that it tries to involve you by getting you to do things now and again, but nothing it has you do is interesting. So it feels more like a chore to do it when they could have just done it for you. They should have either taken that control away from you at those points instead of making you do it, or they should have stretched it out a bit further and given your early actions more substance.
Other than that... no complaints. Despite some uneven elements going in thus far, the high points have been pretty high. I'm really looking forward to actually playing the game for real next time. I do greatly enjoy the way school is meshed with the fantastic stuff.
EDIT x2 - Updated impressions ahoy!
So I'm a few game days in now (about 5 actual hours), and I'm really, really enjoying the game. The sort of uneven English presentation is still a little bothersome, but everything else has smoothed out nicely for me. I love the way the school thing works, and have built a few friendships now and spent some time raising stats, and I've also spent some time in the tower battling the nasties, which turns out to be pretty good fun as well.
Combat works thusly - check your stats (your characters can be tired or well rested depending on school and town-based events, and how often they've been smacking demons around in the tower), head into tower, wander around tower killing things and finding stuff and heading up higher until everybody is exhausted and your combat efficiency starts to drop. Or at least that's the idea. I got to the first "boss" level, or what I gather is the first boss level, and everyone was tired, so I headed back out to fight another day. But I don't know how necessary this was, as even though all 3 of my characters were exhausted at that point, they were still thoroughly kicking ass. But I didn't want to risk it, so I didn't. I should be able to teleport back to that level now anyway, so there was little point.
I love the way the combat works in relation to the other stuff. My first "optional" Tartarus visit was great. I plowed through 4 levels despite everyone's insistence that I should call it a night, and it actually started to feel like I was really a high school student out doing something late at night and was going to pay for it the next day. It was true, too, as when I got back to the main floor of the tower, my mates all ditched me due to their exhaustion. But I went back for another round, and realized quickly that this was stupid... because I couldn't just walk back out if I wanted to, I had to find a portal thing to take me back. Had some relatively tense battles all by my lonesome, but fortunately found a portal on the 2nd floor that took me back after I made a little extra yen. Then, of course, it took several game days for my character to get battle-ready again, so I spent some time going to bed early, then checking stuff out around the school, doing some stuff with friends, and doing a little studying before taking advantage of the Dark Hour again and using demons as punching bags.
It's weird that you don't have lots of control over your other characters, and this is sure to be off-putting for some JRPG vets, but it's actually not too far off from what we had with FFXII. And the individuality of the other characters is emphasized because of this. They aren't you, you have to talk to them. Want to change their equipment? Talk to them, change it, and then listen to them actually thank you for the cool new stuff you gave them. Want healing? Ask for it from the healing character. You get to understand the AI a bit and realize what it likes to do in certain situations, and thus far it seems that this gives characters even greater personality, because the standard archetypes they correspond to also come out when they fight... which is cooler than you might think.
The design has grown on me as well. It's seeming almost more along the lines of Jet Grind Radio on DC, just without skates and with horrible bloodthirsty demons. In any case, it's weird and oddball and maybe even silly, but it works.
So yeah, those considering taking the plunge... may well be worth the trouble as gpw said. I'm having a great time so far, despite a few bumps in the road.
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So, as you may know I just recently got back into this and am really enjoying it once again. I looked up the game recently, and apparently Persona 3:FES is out in a month or so. This is an expansion which changes some stuff in the main game and adds an extra 'campaign' which is apparently about 30hrs long. While I am pretty pumped, I kind of wish I had just waited for this.
Then again, it does retail for something like $29.99 and that's pretty good. I also don't think it comes with any extras unlike the original release.
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Yeah, no extras with this version. I preordered it because I'm assuming like P3, it will be very hard to locate not-so-long after release.
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I'll probably try to pick it up at one of the local stores after release. I hope I can continue a game midway through the main game on FES though.
Oh, and I think I have a much better system for organizing and fusing my Personas now. Makes the game so much better when I actually know what I'm doing in that category.
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I forgot how much this game can kick you in the nuts at times.
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Heh. I dropped the ball with it since I got distracted and stopped before I really got far in, but Julia's playing it now and loving it.
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Persona 3 FES is now out for the lower price. If anyone is at all interested now is most likely the time to get the game. I think I'm pretty close to the end, but it's kind of hard to tell.
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Yeah, I say grab it before it gets obscure and harder to find. It's the definitive version of the game, featuring some extra personas, some extra junk here or there, and the extended bit at the end which supposedly tacks on another 30 hours (though is supposedly disappointing since it's basically all straight dungeon crawling and lacks all the features of the main game). No matter how you tackle it, it's a really cool game at a cheap price that's got extra content over the standard edition. I most likely won't grab it myself since Julia's happy enough with what she's got already and I honestly don't know if I'll have the time for it with everything else that rates higher on my list, but we'll see.
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Aparently Atlus is printing FES in much higher quantities than their usual games, which is nice. I was originally planning on picking it up, but I've got like 80 hours logged onto the main game (I don't know how much of that is actually playing time and how much of it is just having the game running while I do other things). I'm tempted to go through it again now that I understand the system better and try to max out some persona/social links, but I don't think I'd be able to do it.
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So, I finally finished this game just now, and it was a bit of a grind at times. All said and done I had about 110+ hours on the game clock, which isn't too far off the average for the first play through. That seems pretty whacked, but I'm fairly sure you could cut it down a hell of a lot by just hitting the dungeon up one night a month instead of multiple nights. I also unknowingly broke the game by getting a little too into fusing personas near the end and ended up with a fusion spell that kills everything in one hit (except for the insane last boss).
It's a unique and really well done game, and like most SMT games (or at least the Persona branch) seem to be a lot deeper in both plot and gameplay than pretty much all the other straight jrpg games out there. The only major downside I can see with the game is the lack of a "fast forward" button as doing the same things (basically) day to day gets kind of tedious, especially for the last couple of months.
I think I'm going to skip out on P3: FES, but I'm looking forward to P4.
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I think I'll look into getting this now. I've considered it for a long time now, but since my 360 just went tits up (RRoD) I'll have the time and dedication to play this.
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Another RROD? Jesus. What's that... five or six on this forum alone?
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I think I'll look into getting this now. I've considered it for a long time now, but since my 360 just went tits up (RRoD) I'll have the time and dedication to play this.
Get Persona 3:FES. It's like $30, includes the original and the expansion, as well as some new gameplay tweaks. It does not, however have the art book or CD. If you really want that and can't find it send me a PM.
I was thinking about this today at work (while trying not to think about anything work related or the little piece of rock scratching my cornea all day), and I think it's handsdown the best ending to a Jrpg I've ever come across if you look a little deeper into it.
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I picked up FES a couple of weeks ago and will probably start playing it soon after I finish Silent Hill Origins which I'm currently playing now. I'm looking forward to playing it.
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For me it kind of turned into a Pokemon thing at the end where I just needed to fuse all the best Personae. The one thing I can suggest is to use a FAQ or something like that for some of the more complicated ones (they're side quests given to you by someone and ....you'll see later). Otherwise, you'll be pulling your freaking hair out. Basically, I went through the game kind of doing my own thing until the last month or so, where I started grinding and building up for fusing according to guides. If I hadn't, we'd probably be looking at a 130 hour game....or me getting my ass kicked a lot at the end.
Has anyone played any of the other SMT PS2 games? I've been reading a Lets Play! for Digital Devil Saga and it looks pretty sweet.
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I've played a number of MegaTen games in the past, from SNES to PS2, and they're sort of hit or miss for me. I really like Persona 3, but the original Persona bored the living crap out of me no matter how hard I tried to like it. I liked a lot of what I saw from Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, but I never did pick it up, and the Digital Devil Saga games seemed to be rather firmly entrenched in the Love It or Hate It group. They sounded awesome on some levels, totally not so awesome on others. The series is pretty eclectic and weird, though, and there are a lot more games in the series than most people are aware. I don't know whether or not many of the Jap-only ones have seen English translations and such, though I know there's a lot of interest in one that's been done for the first half of Persona 2 which we didn't get over here (for anyone who doesn't know, we just got the latter half... Persona 2 is sort of split into two separate games), but unfortunately that's just a text translation, not a ROM hack, or at least last I checked. Can they even do that kind of thing with PS games?
Let me know if you ever dig into one of the DDS games. I've never talked to anybody that's played one, but I've always been a little curious.
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Another RROD? Jesus. What's that... five or six on this forum alone?
Pretty much everyone who uses the thing. Who's left? Que has moved on to the PS3. No one else here has a clean 360 history that I know of. Did I miss anyone? Even if I did, very sad when the exception is a unit which doesn't piss itself and die.
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Well, I haven't *completely* moved on. Just as far as cross platform stuff goes. Plus Julia still plays the hell out of the thing, so it may well die at some point. I'm entirely surprised it hasn't yet since our apartment gets hotter than anyplace you can imagine. Virtually no insulation and no breeze around here whenever it gets hot. It was over 100 degrees in our living room the other day when it was maybe 87 outside.
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100? Jesus. I would die before the 360.
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Welcome to the hell that is my life.
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*Sigh* Trade you any day. But then I'd spend less on games and more on AC. :)
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I've played a number of MegaTen games in the past, from SNES to PS2, and they're sort of hit or miss for me. I really like Persona 3, but the original Persona bored the living crap out of me no matter how hard I tried to like it. I liked a lot of what I saw from Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, but I never did pick it up, and the Digital Devil Saga games seemed to be rather firmly entrenched in the Love It or Hate It group. They sounded awesome on some levels, totally not so awesome on others. The series is pretty eclectic and weird, though, and there are a lot more games in the series than most people are aware. I don't know whether or not many of the Jap-only ones have seen English translations and such, though I know there's a lot of interest in one that's been done for the first half of Persona 2 which we didn't get over here (for anyone who doesn't know, we just got the latter half... Persona 2 is sort of split into two separate games), but unfortunately that's just a text translation, not a ROM hack, or at least last I checked. Can they even do that kind of thing with PS games?
Let me know if you ever dig into one of the DDS games. I've never talked to anybody that's played one, but I've always been a little curious.
Yeah, I liked the idea of Persona 2: Innocent Sin (I think that was the one released here) when I played it on ePSXe, but after getting like 10 hours into it I realized that everything cool about the game was completely killed by the core gameplay mechanic of contacting demons. Sure, that doesn't sound so bad on the surface, but when you're looking for a serial killer in an insane asylum where the staff and inmates have been slaughtered by demons and gangsters, it kind of seems lame that your female boxer character is pretending to testify against a blood sucking monster while your cop character pretends to interrogate him....all to get him to give you a new Persona card. And the demon just sits there confused after it probably just killed people for just being there while it lets these clowns act like total fools. Just stupid.
P3 seemed like the point where they fixed the series as far as I'm concerned. Having a reporter pretend to interview a demon to scare it just has no place in a game about serial killers, the occult, and people who's faces melt off.
As for your interest in DDS, check this out. (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2848158) It's the Let's Play! I've been following, and while it might not seem like an entertaining concept to watch someone else play a game, it's a good way to find out if you're into it (and actually pretty entertaining in general for some games). Go to the update, watch the videos, and then follow the screenshots/commentary (skipping those covered in the video).
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Well I played it for the first time tonight and I think I'm going to like it, it's pretty fun so far. I'll post details as I get further along but I'm looking forward to playing more.
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pssst
Daytime = social links
Nighttime = raise social stats
Last day before full moon = people never get tired
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Julia grabbed FES today. She's about halfway through the main game, but decided she loved it enough she wanted to start over with the extended version so she could try some of the new tweaks and junk. She's pretty into it.
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Yeah, that's realistically the way to do it. Like I said, my game clock had somewhere around 110 hours by the end of it and there was no way I was going to go through the entire main game to see what was in FES.
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Though you don't have to, right? You can just jump right into the end scenario if you want (which admittedly isn't everything since there's new stuff in the main game as well) as far as I know.
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pssst
Daytime = social links
Nighttime = raise social stats
Last day before full moon = people never get tired
So should I only battle on the freebie nights? Or should I battle every night, wait till my party gets tired and leave as soon as they do?
EDIT: After looking at some FAQs on the basics of the game, I noticed this about FES:
In <FES> however, you will NOT have infinite stamina on the nights before the full moon and you will get tired. It does take longer to get tired on these nights, and allies that are tired won’t automatically leave Tartarus the next time you go back to the lobby. Also keep in mind that if you or any of your allies are already tired/sick when the night before a full moon comes around they will remain tired/sick.
I'm wondering if this applies to the main game "The Journey" or if it only applies to "The Answer" part of FES, guess I'll have to test it out on one of those nights.
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Though you don't have to, right? You can just jump right into the end scenario if you want (which admittedly isn't everything since there's new stuff in the main game as well) as far as I know.
Yeah, you can just play "The Answer" (the second scenario) without replaying through the first part ("The Journey"). Like you said though, there's new stuff in the main game and a lot of people want to see that. The second scenario looks cool, but it's aparently a pure dungeon crawl (in a completely different dungeon); no S-links or anything, which is both good and bad by the end of the game. I don't know if you can play it without a completed game save from the first scenario though.
So should I only battle on the freebie nights? Or should I battle every night, wait till my party gets tired and leave as soon as they do?
Well, I wouldn't go all out either way. I mixed it up a lot, going to Tartarus when I felt like it (and generally when I was in great condition), and buidling up my academics, charisma, and courage on the off nights. A lot of people with the original would only go to Tartarus on the last night, but I don't really suggest that either. I always figured if I did that there would be a good chance I'd get stuck without healing items or something like that.
In the end, it doesn't make a huge difference. The thing is that you want to have your academics, courage, and charisma hitting certain points by certain dates (more or less) in order to open up new social links and get good marks on exams (which nets you items I didn't use until the very very end of the game and probably could have gotten away without using them at all). You also generally don't want to waste a lot of time during the day building up these stats, as that takes away from valuable social link time.
It still isnt a huge deal unless you want to try to max out as many S-links as you can (I didn't even come close) but for the last like 2-3 months of gametime I literally had nothing to do at night. There was only one nighttime S-link in the version I have (I think there are two in FES), and after your stats are maxed and that s-link is maxed it's basically go to Tartarus or sleep.
It all evens out pretty well, since as you level up you tend to get tired less. I was generally as far as I could go in Tartarus each month after 1-2 nights spent there. Everything beyond that was basically just leveling up and building persona for fusing. The difficulty level in Tartarus scales kind of weird in that at first it almost seemed like a tast to get to the top of the block, but soon it was pretty easy. You will die a lot more than in most RPGs though, and I strongly suggest hoarding hommonculi. Nothing worrse than grinding nine floors of Tartarus, getting a bunch of cool shit and personae and then all of a sudden loosing it all because of an instant death spell.
Are you in the Velvet Room yet?
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Are you in the Velvet Room yet?
Yeah, I just completed my first night into Tarturus and first day of being able to explore the school on my own (the day the boxing captain asks you to meet him at the police station). I went into the Velvet Room after coming back from that day of school just to see what happened and Igor explained his purpose there with fusing the cards.
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Awesome. Elizabeth gives you requests/side missions. Some of these (the only really important ones that can't be completed just by going through Tartarus as far as I'm concerned) are Persona fusing requests. Use a FAQ, trust me.
I actually didn't do any right until the end (I needed to in order to get a really badass persona I read about), and it worked out well that way, but you can get some pretty good persona through her requests.
Talking about the game makes me really anxious for P4.
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So apparently Persona 3 is getting a PSP port. There will be extra characters, you can play through as a girl, and you'll be able to control characters directly because it'll borrow the battle system from Persona 4. There'll also be an extra super-epic-ultra-hard mode.
No idea about a US release, but it looks like it'll be hitting Japan in November. I'm... kind of considering importing it. I really did like the game, and it'll be easier to make time for it if I get the JPN version and have it help me study while I play.