So, after a good 3 months of slowly trudging through this game, I have finally beaten it! Actually, I lied: I haven't beaten it; I just gave up on the final dungeon. My need to create the perfect persona but lack of money to do so made me sad. I did the next thing to actually beating it; I YouTubed the ending that was coming. XD
So, I played this off of a PS2 emulator for the computer. Without the "save any time" thing, I don't think I would have even gotten this far in the game. I died countless times and rage quit even more. Anyway, onto the review:
Gameplay:
The game is broken up into two clearly distinctive phases. There are dungeon battle days, where you need to save someone, and then dating sim time, where you need to get with every girl (and guy). The battles played like any other RPG, with an intricate demon fusing system that I loved, being the staple of a Persona series game. The battles were pretty ordinary; it just got frustrating at times to figure out weaknesses of monsters after randomly dying from one-shots. It made for an overly difficult game that I was not expecting. The length of this game is pretty long, too; I have 56 hours clocked on the save game, and that doesn't include all the time I spent dying. On the dating sim side, I have never actually played anything of this sort, so I can't comment much about it. I am pretty sure that the system in this game was much simpler than games devoted purely to dating sims. It made for an interesting experience; it has been a while since an RPG actually put a bit of challenge in it for me.
~9/10
Story:
The story does take a few twists and turns, though nothing was super spectacular. I could tell who the true culprit was from pretty early on, so I was not very surprised with most of the twists. I guess the only thing I did miss was the "true" ending stuff, as there was pretty small indication that he had anything to do with the plot. It seemed more like it was thrown in at the end to create a different ending. I guess I've just seen better stories, so this one wasn't a "zomg moment" as everything was unfolding. Some of the side stories for the characters were just downright boring, and I was just skipping through. The woes of a small town.
~7.5/10
Graphics:
It was nothing stunning, but it is a pretty dated game on a dated console. Still, it was better than some of the random crap I play. I guess the thing I did like the most was the anime cutscenes they had. There was only a few in number and more would have been preferred. Overall, it was pretty good quality that is decent even for standards now.
~7.5/10
Sound:
I'm not a big fan of sound, but I was forced to listen to it. I knew I could outright disable the sound on the emulator, but I wanted my voice acting. There was no control to adjust just the volume of the game, so I was stuck listening to all the music, for once. Luckily, it wasn't too bad. The music started to feel repetitive very quickly, though; maybe if they had more soundtracks, I would have like it more, but it wasn't bad overall.
~8/10
Replayability:
Well, they encourage a second playthrough with extra bosses and such. I don't see much replayability after the second time, though, as you will have cleared everything by then. At least you can get a solid second time around to catch all the subtle cues that are dropped for the mystery unfolding, if you missed it the first time.
~6.5/10
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| Correct answer is, "I have Juness..." |
Personal Satisfaction:
It has been a while since I found a challenging game, so it was pretty fun even if I didn't actually beat the game. I mainly started playing it after the announcement of the Persona 4 anime, to be ready for what was going to happen. I enjoyed it enough that I will be watching the anime for sure. I didn't like the clear phases for the game, though; it felt like the game was much more restricting of your freedom because of it. That was my only real problem.
~8.5/10
Overall:
It was a fun game even if I had countless ragequits while playing the game. I mean, I rarely come back to a game when I ragequit, but to keep coming back to try and beat it showed that I enjoyed it quite a bit. I guess the biggest thing for me will always be the gameplay, and I love the demon fusing system in Persona games. It was definitely worth the time to play this game.
Final Score: [8/10]
~Pearz
