Persona 3: Battling Death. For a Long, Long Time
On Friday, a little after 5:00 in the morning, I defeated Death / Nyx in Persona 3. The battle with the "Avatar of Nyx" had begun nearly three hours earlier. Or, more specifically, it had been about three hours since I had last been able to save my game. I'm not positive of the timing, because I lose track of time easily when I'm absorbed in a game.

And to its credit, Persona 3 proved plenty absorbing for me. I think my final time clocked in was pushing 140 hours. I think that's a record for me for a single-player game - Oblivion clocked in at around 126 hours. Granted, some of that time was spent goofing around trying to make every persona I could in what amounted to an M-rated Pokemon game. Or just talking to people of no consequence. Or wandering around half-asleep through interminable dungeon sequences battling random monsters. But those were all amusing activities.

The overblown anime-style storyline was the clincher for me, though. Complete with soap-opera sub-dramas, teen angst, and the inevitable end-of-the-world looming disaster. It all culminated a little too late on Thursday night. Or, technically, Friday morning.

The two "sub-bosses" - the nihilistic remaining members of Strega ushering in the end of the world - were relative pushovers. Those fights were quick and not too difficult, and the cut-scene dialogs pretty much doubled their duration. I enjoyed it. But they perhaps lulled me into a false belief that I was much closer to the end than I really was.

I expected that the final battle would be a little longer than that of the Strega members. I remember the boss battles in Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy VII taking over half an hour each, so I expected I'd go to bed a little later than usual. Maybe three or three-thirty. I'd taken the day off of work the next day, so I figured it would not be a problem. But adding in the cut-scenes and dialog, the whole thing ended up taking nearly three hours!

What is this, an MMO?

One thing that was very cool (and different) is that the "final" boss, Death (the "Avatar of Nyx") is not simply a stereotypical world-destroying monster. He's got a role to play, and he actually seems a little regretful that he has to do it. The "harbinger" side of him was once in human form, and formed bonds of friendship with the player-controled characters he now has to fight. He's also got a much closer relationship with the main character due to circumstances I won't spoil here (though I'm spoiling everything else... I don't know why I am drawing a line here).

Out of genuine sympathy, he's offered them a chance to "go quietly" and painlessly in a way that would actually delay the inevitable end-of-the-world for a short season. He's hesitant to do his duty, and even expresses regret that more people aren't like the PCs - for if they were, perhaps there would be a real chance to stop the Fall that he's ushering in.

It was definitely a great, dramatic, and climactic battle. As these things should be. But three freakin' hours?

Developer-dudes, please search your code base for a function called "SaveGame()" or something like that. I'm sure it's in there somewhere. Would it kill you to add some extra calls to it once in a while? Sheesh. Not that three hours isn't too long no matter what. I mean, Luke's final battle with Darth Vader was only something like ten minutes of screen time.

For those unfamiliar with Persona 3, the entire game is themed around the tarot. The demonic "shadows" you face are all patterned after major arcana in the tarot deck, as are the "personas" that you summon to create magical effects. So naturally, when it came time to face the destroyer of all life on planet Earth, there was going to be a tarot theme.

After a lengthy introductory cut-scene, the battle was joined. The boss battle was actually something like a dozen battles, as the avatar takes upon himself different aspects - each a different major arcana of the tarot, with different powers. Some of the battles only took about four "rounds" - one or two to figure out what his strengths and weaknesses were, and then two more to press home the advantage and take him down. Figure about one minute per round, times four rounds, times something like a dozen different forms. Plus dialog as he transitioned. And a bathroom break.

That was only phase one.

Phase one-point-five was completely unique to me. It included a super-boss appearing in the family room at a little after four in the morning, bearing the aspect of Annoyed Wife Wondering Why Her Husband Was Playing a Videogame at Four In The Morning. This threat was greater than any I'd faced before in a game, but fortunately I won by playing the "sympathy" card --- by that time, it had been about an hour and a half since I had been able to save my game, and I was in the final battle which was surely ALMOST OVER by now!

Since she had been interested in the story in the game anyway, she grumpily sat down and watched. She wanted to see the end, too, and so if she was up anyway, she wasn't gonna let me finish it without her.

I'm so happy I married a gamer.

So she watched me play phase 2. In the aspect of Death, the boss had a special power called "moonless gown" that made him reflect all attacks back on the originator. While the party AI is actually pretty good through most of the game, my party members (Yukari, Mitsuru, and Aigis) were apparently completely incapable of recognizing that the gown effect had been put up or taken down. Or they were just too stupid to react propertly. So they'd usually try to hurt themselves right after he put up the power, until I told them to wait - and then after he'd drop the power they would STILL stand around waiting and skipping their chances to go until after I gave the all-clear signal.

This was particularly dangerous with Aigis, the shadow-killing robot. While Mitsuru and Yukari were usually immune to their own effects (until good ol' Nyx-Avatar-boy broke their immunity with one of his own powers), Aigis's main attack was a physical strike which would knock herself unconscious in a single hit. After wasting time and resources restoring her when the moonless gown went up, I finally decided I'd have to do without her very potent attacks. I permanently switched her to heal / support mode for the rest of the battle.

Aigis had some nice buffs, but even more important she had the power to heal a character back to full health. So I figured she'd still be helpful even though I was effectively battling the boss with one mechanical arm tied behind my back.

But this cunning plan backfired near the end of the combat. After about twenty minutes or so of nuking the crap out of Death's true form, he was only a sliver away from dying. One solid hit would have nailed him. And then he cast a spell which charmed Aigis and my main character.

Aigis, now charmed and allied with the Harbinger of the Fall, currently set to "heal / support" mode, helpfully used her power to heal the boss. To FULL health. Something like 6,000 hit points. So we were right back to square one again. Only this time, we were starting with two charmed characters - including my own - which prevented me from issuing new orders are trying to dispel the charm effect.

ARGH!!!!!

The second time around, things went a little more smoothly. I knew what I was doing now, and while it was still slow, we lucked out and were not charmed at the end. Death went down.

Briefly. Because as always happens in these games, the end is never quite the end. At this point, it was cut-scene and dialog-time, followed by a pseudo-interactive sequence where I got to battle the "real" boss, the true form of Nyx, and ... blah blah blah.

It was all over shortly after five, but then we had the epilogue to go through. After battling bosses all night long, I wasn't about to go to bed without finding out what happens in the end. The game skips ahead to graduation week several weeks later, and you get to find out what happens to many of the lives you've touched over the course of the year. Well, all the relationships you maxed out, at least. Which was extremely cool (and also very funny in the case of the "Maya" epilogue).

The ending was sweet, but also sad. Satisfying in a way. I managed to find my way to bed before dawn. Mainly because dawn comes late this time of year.

So, my take-aways from this experience:

#1- JRPG final boss battles are, in general, way too freaking long. When a battle takes longer than a feature-length movie, something is wrong.

#2 - In spite of that, I thought this was one of the more satisfying and awesome climax-battles I've enjoyed in a videogame. The tight continuation of the theming, the storyline and actual character of Death (he IS someone you kinda know, after all), and the need to pull upon all of your knowledge gained throughout the game to deal with shifting challenges was pretty dang cool.

#3 - Designers - healing spells should ALWAYS be capped to a certain level. Please. Think about the children. And charmed robots.

#4 - I can understand not having a save game feature in the middle of a normal combat. But when combats go into extended overtime and goes for more than ten minutes, that's just abusive.

#5 - Optional epilogues based on your actions and relationships developed during the game - I'm a huge fan. It's a great way to personalize a game - pretty critical in JRPGs, which are typically rabidly linear.

I'll have a lot more to say about this game in coming posts. Suffice to say Persona 3 has joined my list of favorites.

Labels: Mainstream Games, Roleplaying Games

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