December 27, 2008

Persona 4 Post-Mortem

I BEAT PERSONA 4!

I didn’t get the true ending, though I have a save so I can, if I wanted. But I don’t want. But dammit, I BEAT PERSONA 4!

It’s so rare for me to actually beat a jRPG. I normally start so, so many of these, so many games in general, and never beat them. To overcome having new, shiny Christmas games and still beat it? It feels good. Real good.

The game itself is really great, too. I mean, some of the characters are kind of horrible. I hate Yosuke, and I hate Rise, but they’re both a believable kind of person I hate, as opposed to one who is unrealistic. The game is just so… realistic in its characters. It’s almost boring sometimes because of it, but they really spoke to me.
Picking Beginner was completely the right choice for me, though. I never had to restart or anything, which is probably what helped get me all the way through it. Never did I have to redo a battle or anything. The boss A.I. kind of would act stupid in my favor, and the 10 respawns, which I thought would be a very minor benefit, were actually a huge help in reducing the frustration of hard boss battles. I very much recommend anyone coming to this game because they heard about the cool characters and shit to pick Beginner. Also, to have a guide. It will up your enjoyment of the story, I promise.

The rest is probably all spoilers, so…
SPOILARZ

When Nanako “died” it seriously hit me with an emotional reaction. All of the Nanako stuff did. It played me the whole game, making me expect her always around. It worked PERFECTLY. I really appreciate games that can do that to me. Still, when she turned out to NOT be dead, I threw up my paws in anger. I complained. How dare the game make me feel so bad for nothing? It didn’t make me hate it by any means, but man, it affected me. I’m not all that cool with the game undercutting the emotional reaction like that.
Still, the path for the bad ending that I didn’t go on was… awesome. The whole idea that my party was emotionally charged and about to commit murder? It was so perfect, because I was affected emotionally at this point too. I’m completely unsure how you’d NOT get the bad ending, though. I used the guide to pick what I was supposed to say, and without it, I probably would have never picked some of those things. Then again, I have no idea how anyone would get the True Ending without a guide either, so…
Still, man, my main character was like… the calmest person in the history of ever. The entire time, everyone would be SO ANGRY GRRR GONNA KILL and my responses would always be “Hey, let’s calm down.” Again and again. And finally, in that scene, I got to go “CALM THE HELL DOWN” which felt good. Real good.

But yeah, the game was 70 hours of goodness. It came out EXACTLY when I needed a long awesome game. Everything was right for Persona 4 to succeed. And it totally, totally did.
Totally.

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