Now Playing: Persona 4
A couple of weeks ago, I started playing Persona 4. As you may remember, I was really impressed with Persona 3. In an era where the most recent Final Fantasy game felt awfully stale (yet expensively so), Persona 3 showed a surprising amount of innovation. Maybe it's just because I'm not fully caught up on jRPGs lately, but I was impressed.

Interestingly enough, Persona 4 doesn't seem to try to push the graphical bar much. Instead, it is focused on - *GASP* - improving the gameplay, and giving the player more interesting decisions. I'm stunned. Do developers still DO that? That is just so.... 1990's.

Story-wise, it's not quite as compelling as the previous game for me. But the dialog seems slightly better written - though still often erring on the side of cute & silly, when it's not head-scratchingly translated. The storyline isn't quite so dark as Persona 3, which is neither good nor bad. Just different.

Once again, you are a transferring high school student in a new town. Where Persona 3 thrust you into what felt like an existing, secret war that you only barely understood at first, Persona 4 starts with a murder mystery. A TV news anchor, the center of a scandal involving her affair with a political figure (and husband to a famous singer), has fled to the small country town of Inaba - coincidentally, at the same place and time as the player character - to get out of the media limelight. Whereupon, she mysteriously vanishes. On a foggy morning several days later, she turns up dead - hanging upside-down from a TV antenna. A few days later, a high school senior - the girl who discovered the body - disappears. Her body is found during the next big fog in the same way.

During this time, a rumor begins to spread among the youth of Inaba about the "midnight channel." If you stare into a turned-off television at midnight on a rainy night, they say, you will see the face of your soul-mate. An experiment among the player character and his newfound friends reveals that this is a partial truth - it is not the viewer's soul-mate that is found, but the image (initially fuzzy and distorted) of the next person to be kidnapped and murdered.

But more importantly - the player character discovers, quite by accident, that he has another power - to enter through the TV screeen into this alternate dimension where the "midnight channel" is airing. And to take others with him. The initial experiments are quite amusing, involving smaller TV screens, and an alarming discovery by a distressed friend that there are no bathrooms in this mysterious world. (Though, apparently, there can be bath HOUSES).

Naturally, the alternate world is filled with monstrous, deadly "shadows." Those who are kidnapped and thrown into this world come face-to-face with the darker side of their personality. As the weather changes in the "real world," their dark-side personality - which has the potential to become a magic-using Persona - will turn on their original counterpart and kill them.

Strangely, this alter-ego persona that first appears on the midnight channel - before their "original" disappears. Somebody else (apparently) - with the same power as the player character - is throwing these people into the TV world to kill them.

I'm personally just amused by having the intrepid adventurers meet in the food court of the new mall / department store prior to entering deadly dungeons and facing tons of horrible (or just plain WEIRD) monsters in mortal combat. (They do this because there's a big-screen TV on display in the electronics department that's easier to enter as a group). The adventurers also learn very quickly the importance of concealing their weaponry prior to entering the dungeon when the small-town police department is frantically searching for a serial killer.

Persona 4 is so far taking the "social link" mechanic of Persona 3 to a new level. In particular, you have the ability to improve social links with your fellow team-mates, which not only improves your ability to fuse more powerful Personas, but also gives them additional abilities in combat. In particular, an early improvement is that they may intercept an otherwise mortal blow intended for you. While I'd consider that something that would make more sense with a much higher social link level, it really helps even out the difficulty level - as the game is over when you are "killed," but the other team members are merely knocked unconscious and can be revived.

There also seems to be a lot more things to do outside of adventuring in the dungeons of the TV world. You have more characteristics to improve upon than in the previous game - which seem to have greater impact on what you can do and say. Actions you take - like attending club meetings - may affect your characteristics as well as improving social links (or providing you with extra cash, if you take on a part-time job). At least so far, the choices seem to abound, either regularly scheduled or randomly appearing. And it's never entirely certain where they will lead. One night, I just happened to find something iffy inside the refridgerator. Eating it raised my Courage, but also left me feeling unwell - requiring me to cancel any other evening plans and go straight to bed.

Players also no longer have to cope with long-term fatigue. There are enough other time-management elements to the game that I could see this being an unnecessary and unwanted aspect of the game to manage this time around.

Oh, and this time around, the characters no longer shoot themselves in the head with pistol-like evokers. It's still nowhere close to suitable for younger audiences, although the violence is fairly cartoony and lacking in blood. The language can get harsh, and it deals with adult situations, including (so far) issues of sex, murder, and homosexuality. In spite of being about high school students, it earns its "M" rating.

Again - it's not hooked me in like Persona 3 did, though the characters and story are really staring to grow on me. At least - for now - I'm still able to maintain the discipline to only play it for a few minutes to an hour. Usually.

Labels: Mainstream Games, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:28 AM (Permalink)