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Shin Megami Tensei and Persona

I played 20 hours of nocturne and I want all of them back
that game never got better even when people told me I "just had to play a little more"
 
MMan7172 said:
I'm out unless I want bitch about how much attention P4 gets.
Thing is, I actually still believe Persona 4's success is well deserved (p3 less so). I'm a lot less blind to its flaws then when I first played it (the true last boss is the most enormous let down plotwise imo), but at its heart its still an excellent game. Just comparing the original versions ultra stylish intro to the pale imitation that SMT X FE brings really showcases that IMO.

My main problem with Persona is the rip offs (Devil Survivor 2 being the most egregious IMO) and attempts at milking it are really starting to wear thin.

Ruin said:
I played 20 hours of nocturne and I want all of them back
that game never got better even when people told me I "just had to play a little more"

Yo, not trying to convince you, but real talk: What did you not like about it? Too much grinding? Environments too bland?
 
Squire Grooktook said:
IMO that's the best part of Nocturne though. No other game has such a thick atmosphere of isolation and loneliness then Nocturne, while still having just the right amount of plot/characterization on top of being a super fun game.
I want to agree, and Nocturne is a fun game. I think the feeling of isolation works best in the beginning areas of the game because you are literally an unimportant guy who is caught up in things far bigger than you.
 
Squire Grooktook said:
Thing is, I actually still believe Persona 4's success is well deserved (p3 less so). I'm a lot less blind to its flaws then when I first played it, but at its heart its still an excellent game. Just comparing the original versions ultra stylish intro to the pale imitation that SMT X FE brings really showcases that IMO.

My main problem with Persona is the rip offs (Devil Survivor 2 being the most egregious IMO) and attempts at milking it are really starting to wear thin.

Persona 4 isn't bad, it's really good. But when your JRPG game that is arguably not even the best in the series is getting an official dancing game is when you've taken a couple steps too far.
 
P2 is honestly my candidate for best in the series, with 3 being second...4 was good, but it had a more lackluster story, characters I connected with less (Kanji and Yosuke being the exceptions), and overall just didn't click like with 3 or 2. Now, the fighting game is passable because its basically Persona the fighting game...minus everything from 1 and 2, which was a totally wasted opportunity.
 
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Squire Grooktook said:
Yo, not trying to convince you, but real talk: What did you not like about it? Too much grinding? Environments too bland?
I couldn't get into the atmosphere it was trying to put down. It never really felt like I was actually doing anything other than going around and seeing how shitty everything was. I get that I never got to the point where Reasons were starting to form, I never really felt like a part of the world. Just a tattooed dude that when around punching people for arbitrary reasons.
I never even really felt isolated or anything either. I mean you run into NPCs all the time, most of them are even fairly nice. So it's like I didn't even feel like anything was wrong. Like yeah, humanity was destroyed but nothing really felt any more different than a regular jrpg. It's just instead of "Random Citizen A" you get "Randon Horrible Demon A".
Did not care of the characters that much either. They all seemed so... standard. like "oh there's the power-hungry cult guy", "oh there's the social darwinist.", "oh there's Lucifer". No one was particularly compelling or interesting, let alone likable (And I really feel that was due to the game's lack of voice acting, like holy shit. This game just gives you nothing).
Also yeah
the game's palette and environments are just oppressive. I get making something ugly or desolate on purpose, but Nocturne was just drab and had nothing really memorable to it. It was just grey desert with pieces of tokyo here and there. The occasional cult monolith too.
I think DDS did Press Turns better too. Like the basics were identical but I just liked having the set party with a lot of creative freedom to what I pleased with them. I honestly never gelled with SMT's brand of Mons either, but that's really just personal preference.

Music's pretty tight though, I can give it that.
Nocturne's not a bad game, but it did a lot of things that really just made me bored.
And I don't play games to be bored.
 
North888 said:
P2 is honestly my candidate for best in the series, with 3 being second...4 was good, but it had a more lackluster story, characters I connected with less (Kanji and Yosuke being the exceptions), and overall just didn't click like with 3 or 2. Now, the fighting game is passable because its basically Persona the fighting game...minus everything from 1 and 2, which was a totally wasted opportunity.

IMO 4 is a lot better then 3, at least in terms of gameplay and plot. Holy hell is the gameplay better though.

Plot-wise that was like, the worst execution I've ever seen of a memento mori. Thinking about it almost makes me want to read Ray Bradbury's Frost and Fire again to remember how it's really done.

Seriously, best short story ever written.



Ruin said:
I couldn't get into the atmosphere it was trying to put down. It never really felt like I was actually doing anything other than going around and seeing how shitty everything was. I get that I never got to the point where Reasons were starting to form, I never really felt like a part of the world. Just a tattooed dude that when around punching people for arbitrary reasons.
I never even really felt isolated or anything either. I mean you run into NPCs all the time, most of them are even fairly nice. So it's like I didn't even feel like anything was wrong. Like yeah, humanity was destroyed but nothing really felt any more different than a regular jrpg. It's just instead of "Random Citizen A" you get "Randon Horrible Demon A".

I think the "random dude going around punching people" aspect is part of what gets the atmosphere going in all smt games. You're not a "big player" in the grand scheme of things, your a single independent entity with your own agenda on nobodies radar (at first) that ends up tipping the balance. I think the sense and theme of choice wouldn't be as clear if your character was more involved with the rest of the world.

As for npc's, the fact that most of them are pretty much all "holed up" in specific places, not allowed to leave lest monsters attack them, and still with monsters wandering around even in the supposedly safe zone is what sells that. Plus, particularly with me, I spent a long time just wandering around, so I didn't get much talking regardless. I guess you could say it doesn't do anything differently from other rpg's in that respect, but it tends to make you think a little bit more about what it'd be like to live in a world where you can't take ten steps from your house without being eaten.

Ruin said:
Did not care of the characters that much either. They all seemed so... standard. like "oh there's the power-hungry cult guy", "oh there's the social darwinist.", "oh there's Lucifer". No one was particularly compelling or interesting, let alone likable (And I really feel that was due to the game's lack of voice acting, like holy shit. This game just gives you nothing).

I think the characters are a little stale if you look at them that way, but part of the appeal is that so little is said about them prior to their transformation. It lets your imagination run wild as to what they have experienced in the vortex world without you, what's going through their heads, how they ultimately end up like that, etc. It's a very classical rpg in that "imagine it for yourself" way.

But yeah I get you.
 
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Ruin said:
snips
You're not supposed to like these guys. Until you meet Fedora guy who you met at the start and your teacher, a lot of the characters spiral downward quickly. I started the game to get Dante, but it drew me in as I went. I normally feel that the game should draw you in right from the start, but with Nocturne, it feels like the average fair until things start to heat up in all honesty. Nocturne is easily the best in the series atm, but I can see your reasonng completely. But man, just wait till you meet the manikins and find out their fate. Oh god the wrath I felt.

EDIT:
On 3, I personally prefer the story. It felt more epic, like you were leading up to a giant goal. If 4 had ended with Adachi and the eye and it just being a small town issue I would have been fine. It was a down-too-earth story on a smaller scale with large scale-implications, but the ending and some other elements of it really torn me from that experience. 3 I felt made that large scale implications and grand story a lot more real. I connected with the majority of the cast and the combat was a lot heavier on self-reliance while balancing ally A.I., and it worked at times. Most of the time there were issues, I will admit 100%. 4 had the better battle system, but 3 felt more approachable and had better cast imo
 
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the main thing here is that there's a difference between "likably unlikable" and "unlikably unlikeable"
or rather a kind of unlikable that interesting and well-written
of which I found there to be none of in Nocturne
it was just dicks and assholes everywhere
and all the NPCs were unpleasant too
 
Ruin said:
it was just dicks and assholes everywhere
and all the NPCs were unpleasant too

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and assholes
 
North888 said:
On 3, I personally prefer the story. It felt more epic, like you were leading up to a giant goal. If 4 had ended with Adachi and the eye and it just being a small town issue I would have been fine. It was a down-too-earth story on a smaller scale with large scale-implications, but the ending and some other elements of it really torn me from that experience. 3 I felt made that large scale implications and grand story a lot more real. I connected with the majority of the cast and the combat was a lot heavier on self-reliance while balancing ally A.I., and it worked at times. Most of the time there were issues, I will admit 100%. 4 had the better battle system, but 3 felt more approachable and had better cast imo

That's the first time I've ever heard Persona 3 called "approachable", or the game as a whole for that matter. IMO the game has neither the expertly streamlined and focused gameplay of 4, nor the classic dungeon crawl fundamentals of the first two. It's a weird experiment that feels all kinds of off in regards to progression and combat imo, especially in the beginning. It took a sequel to really refine the game into something top notch.

As for the story, I feel Persona 4 has the better characters (for the most part) and plot. The swapping out of a sense of impending doom (something I usually like) for mystery was far more enticing, especially since as I mentioned, the memento mori aspect was really poorly handled imo (pro writing tip, if you want mortality to be the central theme of your work, try to get it across with more subtle/deep means then literally telling the player they're gonna die fifty thousand times and that they can't beat the final boss who they almost certainly will in some way or another).

The conclusion indeed was the weakest part of Persona 4, but it was no worse then P3's conclusion. The main problem with P4's twist (or lack thereof) is that after all that build up about "the truth!!!" and how you might not like what you find/are you sure you're ready/blahblahblah, the truth was something that didn't shake the characters beliefs or worldview at all. But again, the same could be said of P3's moon monster. Both are really just standard jrpg world destroyers IMHO, Zeromus and Necron were more memorable/likable.

At least Persona 4 was a fun build up though, even if it didn't amount to much.
 
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True. Again. This may be biased from my end, but I really prefer the characters in 3. They evolve on screen as the story goes on, far more than the P4 cast who evolve as social links. You can actively see this evolution and that evolution is rewarded with their persona evolutions. The gameplay was the weakest and it was an experiment, but I prefer Tartarus in that it evolved and you could choose the difficulty to match where you needed to be as opposed to grinding against enemies noticably weaker then you in order to be ready for the next dungeon, like in 4.

3's story has a lot more fantasy to it, with robots like Aigis and the depression plague a la Persona 2, and I think Death rather than mortality was the theme. As heavy handed as it was, it was also subtle in some areas. Notably, every character in 3, including Labrys in 4A, has death involved as a massive part of their character. Some aren't immediate, but loss is a key feature to both characters and social links (Dieing Young Man and the Old Couple). It may be my bias, but I see 3 as with the more likable cast and prefer it for that and its story compared to 4.
 
Those are some valid points but I just want to point out that...
North888 said:
I think Death rather than mortality was the theme.
Pretty much the same thing lol.
 
Squire Grooktook said:
Pretty much the same thing lol.
I mean, I guess. I always considered Mortality to be something more specific than death, focusing on the character's weakness and strive to improve in an oppressive situation. Being mortal, being weak and susceptible to nature is not the same as the implications of loss, death, contemplation of the end of one's own life, etc. Basically I consider mortality in this sense a totally different thing. Sorry if my viewing of it wasn't accurate to what you had in mind.
 
North888 said:
I mean, I guess. I always considered Mortality to be something more specific than death, focusing on the character's weakness and strive to improve in an oppressive situation. Being mortal, being weak and susceptible to nature is not the same as the implications of loss, death, contemplation of the end of one's own life, etc. Basically I consider mortality in this sense a totally different thing. Sorry if my viewing of it wasn't accurate to what you had in mind.

Mortality means that you are subject to the inevitability of dying. You're probably confused by the tendency of gods and demons to throw around the word "mortal" in relation to weakness/powerlessness, but it just means that you're not immortal. Being weak and susceptible doesn't technically have anything to do with it (most mortals are weak, but you could have a god like being with a finite lifespan who's powerful but still subject to mortality).
 
Ah, I see. That point does make sense in that context then.
 
Best girl got their trailer (edit: replaced with English subbed version)
 
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Dat shoulder shimmy tho
 
What we need for tne next persona game is a REAL conflict in the character's life and personality. Like a drug addict, someone with a phobia do deal (like Maya in p2)... well, someone with bigger problems to face. Kanji and Ken were the closest of it IMO, but then a single shocking event and everyone is blue sky, flowers and butterflies again.

Sucks to have a game called PERSONA and the character's personality is challenged so little.

And the biggest irony of the newer titles is that the character with the least traumas is the one that evolved the most in the game (Junpei). From mood maker to jealous bastard, to coming into terms to its role, to being afraid of losing even that role... the dude realy grows as the game goes
 
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DukeMagus said:
And the biggest irony of the newer titles is that the character with the least traumas is the one that evolved the most in the game (Junpei). From mood maker to jealous bastard, to coming into terms to its role, to being afraid of losing even that role... the dude realy grows as the game goes

Can't say I'm surprised he gets the most growth of the modern cast. He's a principal player in the biggest subplot of either game thanks to Chidori.
 
hey guys what's goin' on in here oh okay nevermind
 
A lot of big challenges come from the social links. It's why I didn't like your allies being social links in P4. Instead of some mundane event challenging them, I'd like to see the change during the story. It's why I like P3 more in some ways. The characters are challenged in more than one way most of the time as opposed to the one time event that it is in P4 :/
That said, I really would love to see some of conflict from P2 come back. I mean, Baofu had some pretty tough stuff, and Maya had a TON of issues (like overcoming some envy of the rest of the cast). Heck, Ulala had one of the most interesting twists and is one of the most well rounded characters, cosnidering her design is just supposed to be some random lady. I mean, she sells lingerie but it has nothing to do with anything, and she's a fun character.
 
P4's Shadows got overplayed and turned into pure laziness before the story was halfway done, yes.
 
shoryusatsu999 said:
Can't say I'm surprised he gets the most growth of the modern cast. He's a principal player in the biggest subplot of either game thanks to REDACTED.


Here's the ironic part: he makes progress BEFORE his traumatic event (the one you forgot to put under spoilers). Mitsuro keeps her "ice queen" personality through almost all the game, akihiko only changes from the "forget fun and girls, i must train" mood when the character behind his traumatic event appears, Yukari faces her big plot point too early, but she doesn't get more level headed or straightforward or anything, her mood does not oscillate at all. Aigis is the second character with the biggest change, since she transcends her origin, but doesn't change the way she sees the others. And ken appears ahd gets its event too soon to actually change.
 
he makes negative progress
and super negative progress if you're the female protag

seriously P3P Junpei is the worst character in the series
 
That's not exactly ironic. Most of SEES got the biggest amount of character development directly from the biggest traumatic event they go through, which are almost always a part of the main plot only. Said plot also tends to move along pretty quickly once said events occur. That means there isn't much in-game time to show that character development (Social Links can't show that development because they can be done at any time after unlocking and generally aren't related to the main plot). Because Junpei is heavily tied into the Strega subplot through Chidori (not even gonna bother with spoiler tags for a game that's almost a decade old), he has a lot more time to develop as a character than anyone else in the game. They tried something similar with Teddie in P4, but I don't think it had the impact that Junpei's development did because there were no deaths involved.
 
my favorite thing with the social links in P3 is how Mitsuru actually becomes a worse character in hers
 
let's just be glad
that nobody is Ken
because Ken did EVERYTHING wrong.
and Shinji would probably agree.
or at the very least Akihiko.
 
Ruin said:
he makes negative progress
and super negative progress if you're the female protag

seriously P3P Junpei is the worst character in the series

Arguable. Watching get jealous of the protagonist, getting over it and later questioning his place in the world after his "hero time" is over is something really refreshing, specially for a cast so hell bent on keeping the stereotype on every time. Also, all of this happened BEFORE chihiro (and chihiro sucks as a character, even if she's cute)
 
SanoBaron said:
let's just be glad
that nobody is Ken
because Ken did EVERYTHING wrong.
and Shinji would probably agree.
or at the very least Akihiko.
I'm so glad the movies exist so I can point people who hated Ken in the games to that. He was handled so much better in the second movie (as was shinji imo).
 
So here's a progress report on my converting the second Digital Devil story into an ebook file.

After an hour or so of copying the text from the source website and getting it properly formatted I finally have my first pass at a digital file. However when I examine the file in Calibre's edit book function I find a lot of embedded information about my computer (my name and such) which I think are the result of me putting all the text into a word processor first than exporting to the next format.

I'm working on finding a quick way to removing all that info since I don't want that public. The PDF will probably come along faster once I get the .epub sorted out.

I haven't actually read the story yet so I'll probably do that first, both to make sure that everything made it though, and to find out what happens.
 
DukeMagus said:
(and chihiro sucks as a character, even if she's cute)
God,I hated the Male Social Links of Persona 3,and Chihiro is probably the biggest reason.There are just some characters I can't see ever caring about,Like Maya(Hermit S.link).
"Oh I don't want to do my job"
"Oh I'm scared to argue with the scummy teacher"
"Oh cigarette thief"
(Atleast the Emperor has Odin,Christ...)
 
oh, that Chihiro, got it. I confused myself with all the Junpei talk >_<

The emperor was pretty good I think. Considering he was just a student. And to be fair, that scummy teacher never did get waht he deserved...

Also, no one can argue that the Dieing Young Man is best social link.
 
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North888 said:
Also, no one can argue that the Dieing Young Man is best social link.
Pink Alligators crying rivers of irony for life,man.
 
Hafta agree. Young dying man would be an awesome character to the party, even better than Shinjiro, since it would face fear of death in a different way.

From the "meaningless" S.Links, i like the weird monk.
 
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