In anime-esque news: I just finally finished off Persona 4, I started it about a week or so ago at a friend's cajoling at how good it was. I was immediately turned off at first by how the game seems to start by running in hands-off visual novel-style story mode for maybe a solid 2 hours with only a save point every half hour. My friend kept on assuring that it gets better, so that's the only reason I stuck with it.
Then when I finally got full control, and could actually DO THINGS in the game world, THEN I started enjoying myself. I don't know why it forced me to wait before letting me do stuff, but it's kind of alienating two completely separate demographics:
1) People that genuinely enjoy the hands off gameplay with only the occasional fight would be sorely alienated to find out that that's only every now and again now, and now you're expected to make every choice for yourself now.
2) Peopl like myself that don't like it, and are immediately turned off by the game's on-the-rails storytelling and want to DO THINGS, and are never assured that the opportunity to have freedom is two hours away, so they're likely to be alienated in that way.
So I think that design was superbly poor.
However, once I got into the game and started enjoying myself with the world, I gotta say I really liked it. The world is very small and never gets much larger, but there's alot of things to do. You have roughly a year of in-game time to interact with it and get everything you want out of it.
In that year, the highlight is interacting with your team members, other classmates, and other people through clubs and occupations to build social links that help you in the actual dungeoneering aspect of the game. While that was all well and good, the characters were really involving and I enjoyed learning all their backstories.
I thought that the actual combat was interesting, but when all was said and done, I wish it had asked more of me. The final boss felt like more of the same old same old that I'd been dominating in all the dungeons prior, and I really hate that. I found myself enjoying the domestic portions where you develop social links far more than the combat and adventuring portion, because the game is structured in such a way that your actions ARE important because everything eats time, and of that you only have so much so you have to go in your mind "What's most important to me that I'm going to spend my completely finite resource on it?" and so the relationships in the game become important to you. Apparently if you follow a guide you can play in the most efficient way possible and max out everyone's social links, but that's missing the point completely IMO.
However, with everything over and done with, I still feel unsatisfied. Even though the time mechanics gives your actions an inflated sense of importance, it feels like you're never presented with any real, hard choices to make. That everything in the world was smoothed over to present a very clean, almost kid-friendly world where you never have to make any real hard choices, suffer any lasting sacrifices, or face any critical dilemmas that you can't walk away from. By the time the ending rolls around, the game's all too happy to snatch the last few days of your calendar away from you, and hurtle you back into hands-off storymode, where you're given the specially prepared perfect happy Disney-esque ending that you've been playing 80-90 hours to see, and it just feels hollow and forced.
The stinger though, the real stinger, is that in the game, you get into close familial, platonic, and romantic relationships with a plethora of other characters, and at the end they're all gushing their hearts out of you saying how much they're going to miss you and how they're never going to forget you... and your Main Character doesn't say or do anything, he just stands there ramrod stiff doing nothing except listen on your behalf, and that, that right there, really left a sour taste in my mouth as a final note to the game.
I'm thinking "Okay, Main character, we've been through alot together, I've only been controlling you for what amounts to over 3... almost 4 solid fucking days now. It's been a long time since I've gotten invested in a videogame, so I'm sorry if I have some high expectations for you. I know you're supposed to be the voiceless, emotionless stand-in for the player, much like Crono before you you're not supposed to be your own character, merely the surrogate for myself in the game world. However, I like to think that while you started as a blank slate at the game's start, that I've only been guiding you, molding you so that while you reflect me, you can trust that how I've molded you entitles you to continue thinking in ways that are consistent with the choices I've forced you to choose. I say this because, at the end of this game, as your short digital life draws to a close, I'll forgive you if you rebel against me and desperately grab at the smallest hint of your own identity while you still have the opportunity. I'd be so proud to see you at the end of it all, if you break down crying having to leave the family that loved you and housed you and fed you, if you lose control and hug all your friends that supported you and protected you in the wildly dangerous adventure you shared, if you get emotional and passionate at having to leave your girlfriend and kiss her goodbye like you really mean it, I'll forgive you because that's how I molded you to be! ... and the fact that you don't, that you just continue staring in silence as the credits roll, that despite all the time we've spent together, you still haven't grown any... I can only say that I'm so disappointed."
And that's my summarized thoughts of the game.
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Topic: I like anime, do you like anime? (Read 3127532 times)