The Blogtastic Blogfest that is www.getmeoutofthis.net!

« The Homework Schedule for the week of August 26th | Main | Some thoughts on poetry. »

August 28, 2007

Today's Topics: Human Mating Rituals, Persona 3, and Turning Oxygenarian.

So there's this new girl, Sarah, at work. She's competent. Yay! Also, she keeps talking to me. This is not a bad thing, since, you know, having friends at work is good, and she certianly seems like a cool person, and I could always use more female friends. But tonight, I started wondering if maybe she liked me... like... liked me... you know? I mean, I'm happy and taken, it doesn't especially matter in the long run, but... I'm extremely oblivious to such things. I really don't see anyone as a potential mate or date. My mind really doesn't register anyone that way, until something happens to click them into that sort of designation... the sorts of things that don't happen in normal day to day conversation... things like "Hello, I would like to date you/have sex with you." Doesn't really happen. (At least, not too often. Heh.)
Anyway, the point is, if she was interested, I would not have a clue whatsoever. I remember, a couple of days before graduation, realizing that Lindsay Kuper really did talk to me a lot. Granted, most of this was in Calc, a class with but 7 or so people in it, but she'd strike up a conversation other times, too. It just sort of slowly dawned on me that maybe that sort of behavior is the sort of thing that a guy (yes, well, she didn't know that) is supposed to pick up on and use as a base to ask someone out... you know?
I just really don't know! My strategy in love has been fruitful, of course. I have a boyfriend I'm crazy about, and although I've had heartbreak in other relationships, I think, in general, I came out the better for them. But I just have no reference or context to normal dating rituals. It's all kind of perplexing to me. I just sort of have to wonder if that's a problem. I just sort of have to wonder if me not doing anything in reaction to this stuff is... I dunno... insulting or frustrating for people. I just... I dunno, I just wonder. It's what I do.

So yeah, I already didn't follow that homework schedule in the last post. Thanks, my moody self! But eh, I'm alright.

Oh, but yeah, the other thing that put me into the "thinking about dating" sort of mindset has been Persona 3. Cause there is dating in that... and I read these conversations with the girls that my character is supposed to be hitting on, eventually anyway, and it's just friendship... and I know I'm SUPPOSED to be looking at them and say "Well, I'll work towards dating her." But I don't. They're just another character to talk to and learn their story. And their stories are not very interesting to me, actually. So I don't bother with them much.

But Persona 3! It's a damn good game! But there are four main possibilities for criticism, and I'm going to list them and talk about why they don't bother me.
1. You can't control your party. Apparently the Japanese play Dragon Quest with the party AI on, and never really control them, so I guess this setup isn't weird to them. Honestly, though, it works in this game. The game is about social relationships, and it makes sense for these people to be your friends in battle, and not minions to control. The AI is pretty good, anyway. There are very few times when my party members do something I don't want to do (most of the time this is casting debuffs on hard regular enemies... the debuffs work well, but I'd often rather them save their SP at that point... but I guess that's why I should assign them the Conserve SP tactic, huh?). Also, the range of actions your party members can do are much, much smaller than yours, because you can switch personas and weaponry and generally have to juggle a lot more. Also, you can issue a Rush command by pressing Triangle that not only makes the battle animations run at a quick pace, but makes everyone in your party pick normal attack and gang up on one enemy at a time. Between this and not having to pick options for every character in the party, the traditional turn-based battles go very quickly, and I think that's a plus. I think they addressed the problems of not being able to directly command the party pretty well, but that's just me.
2. At least half the game is a life sim. A lot of the game has you interacting with people to build your Social Links, which buff your Personas, which makes you better in battle. You have to date and pick the right options and what not to build  trust with people... I can easily see how this could bore the shit out of some people. But Atlus translated it really well, and it's all really well written and pretty interesting... and you can only do like... 2 actions in the span of a day in the game, so it too moves pretty fast paced. You have to choose who to prioritize and then go with it and see what happens. I enjoy it, but it's not for everyone.
3. Tartarus is Randomly Generated each time you enter. This also doesn't bother me. Since almost all of the plot happens in the life sim part, the pure dungeon crawl makes for a nice change of pace. The scenery changes every couple of floors. Most of the time you're trying to race up to the next boss floor (where there is a teleporter that lets you teleport from the ground floor directly there, skipping the floors in between from then on) before your party gets tired. The tired mechanic I've actually never found annoying. When my characters get tired, I know it's time to stop grinding for gold or whatnot. It's often around the time when I'm ready for that change of pace found in getting back to the life sim.
4. The game has a strict time limit. The game only lasts for one school year, then you face the last boss, whether you're ready or not. Actually, there are large bosses every full moon on the calendar, so you have to be ready by the time they come around. It has yet to be a problem for me, though. As long as you go to Tartarus every time your party is rested and healthy, you get enough experience to survive. As soon as you can easily get up to the barrier (which is after about three bosses worth of floors, which disappears after you beat the next big Full Moon boss) then you should be able to beat the next big boss with no problem as long as you attack it intelligently. I've gotten to that point a good game week or so before the full moon event, giving me extra time to dick around and build up social links with no problems.

Anyway, I really like Persona 3. It's going to keep my interest for awhile longer, most definately. It's actually taking away from my KoL time, which is suprising, as KoL has held my interest firmly for so long. If I keep only checking it every couple of days, I think I'm going to do an Oxycore run next time, or at least an Oxy run... apparently most people who play those play them because you get significantly less turns a day since your only options for extra turns are rare Spleen items, so you don't feel overwhelmed by stuff you have to do (and if you don't do it, you're wasting time you could be using to do awesome things). That sounds pretty good right now. I do feel kinda bad not using all my turns like I should.

Anyway, I guess it's about bedtime. Goodnight.

Posted by poetfox at August 28, 2007 01:48 AM

Comments

Post a comment