Kids, shoot yourself in the head and gain super powers! The SMT / Megaten / Persona thread

"Why has that 16 year old girl got such a deep voice? And why has that twelve year old boy got such a high-pitched voice?"

"Why has that 16 year old girl got such a deep voice? And why has that twelve year old boy got such a high-pitched voice?"

http://www.decisionproblem.com/persona3-1.gif

i feel like i've been playing persona 4 for ages and ages and ages all the time and i have had it three weeks and have twenty hours on my save file. i think time spent playing videogames passes differently to how it did when i was fourteen

the emphasis on the quotidian in persona 4 is fantastic. i think my summary of the first dungeon above made the game sound way more kinetic + eventful than it actually is

there's a kind of actual emotional weight in e.g. the game making you come home every day and see your 8yo cousin sat in exactly the same place watching the same tv shows because her father's too devoted to his work

this is also the first game in which i have attempted to ask a character for her phone number right out, been told my courage stat is too low, and had to find an excuse to make it look like i need it instead

i have basically the exact opposite problem like oh wow wtf happened to saturday

ha maybe thats why i couldnt vibe p4 as hard? it is a quotidian as a game about using elaborate anime guardians to battle shadow monsters can be, i guess? thats actually one of my fave things about p3/4 tho the fact that you can easily spend a week in gameplay terms just going to school, hanging with friends, going back to the dorm, running track, playing games at the arcade and studying for exams and all of these have equal weight to the times where u and yr crew have to stand tall cause the shadows are long and the moon is full

i guess its natural because im playing it now but i keep comparing persona to star ocean 4 and its interesting - the combat in SO4 is way deeper and more challenging on a strategic level than persona but the game is way less satisfying. persona has to be one of the first rpgs to make me realize how much a strong, involving story can do for a game and now im annoyed when developers try to pass off retardo-twee cliches and stilted exposition as "moving" "cinematic" ideas to hang a game on

haha i was considering doing a max your s.link/100% completion guide to this and was wondering like: i get why ppl read/want walkthroughs and to know what the best answers are, how to boost academics &c but what do the ppl following my 100% single playthrough guides getting out of the game?

Got P3:fes used for $20 today. Did they leave the japanese language track on here or must I suffer bad Anglo voice actors?

no japanese language track, unfortunately. fans have made "undub" discs with the japanese audio & english subtitles, but you'll need to have swap magic or something to make it work.

i gave in and played the extra bit in P4.

Can you even turn the voice acting off? Persona IV is much better for having found the option to do that. ALthough it is a little odd when the new guy in the party starts talking in battles and I find myself going "WHat? He doesn't sound like that"

have come back to this after an ill-thought-out diversion into playing fahrenheit and silent hill 2 and reading poetry and shit

q.: i have reached the summer holidays. does the game calendar run into the next term, or is that it, for the going to school bit? will i have to reload an old save if i decide i want to see the end of the annoying drama chick's plotline?

yeah. u can check the calendar in game to see what day is back 2 school for planning s.links

I don't like the overly structured day periods.

yeah, that's what put me off the game.

wusses

also, thank you, i have now ceased wondering if i have had my last chance to talk to an annoying drama chick. this is a little too much like my actual high school experience oh well

2 things

1. mitsuo's dungeon is fantastic on a good two and a half levels
2. becoming kind of apparent that the animated cut scene stuff went to more than one studio — some of it is really slick but the occasional shot (one of the first ones after teddie shows up in the real word, e.g.) is on some kind of 70s hannah-barbera tip

p3 cut scenes were better than p4 i think. tbf i totally loved the structured nature of the game it gave the ocd/superorganized side of me pleasure actually

haha here's the s.link calendar i made for p3:

http://i622.photobucket.com/albums/tt305/a-zA-Z0-9-/persona3calendar.jpg

see i loved planning that stuff out but its not for everyone

holy shit

tht is next level :D

I love this game and really need to get back to it but damn if ps2 games not look horrible on hd sets

i also like the structured days but i haven't made any spreadsheets

it kind of helps to get rid of the typical videogame time impasse, where you get the feeling that the entire world is waiting for you to do your next notable action and things will not change until then

this can only work 'cause the game's world is so small, i guess

i looked at an faq and saw there are several months of game time left

i just found out i'm losing my job, otoh i may actually have time to finish this game now

Today's random jrpg observation is from playing Suikoden IV: I always like games where you get a stronghold, to hold all your shit and/or people you pick up along the way. The thing I dig about this game is that your stronghold is your ride. Instead of the usual FF-style airship, you actually get a boat w/ which you need to defend tactically.

I don't know if I should be put off by the fact that I enjoy the jrpg mechanic WAY too much. Then again, rpgs have been my favorite kind of game since playing Ultima: Exodus or Ultima V 20 years ago.

I mean, shit, I get bored with one jrpg, there's always 3 more to try, and there's like God knows how many such games for the snes/sega/GBA/etc

On a related note, on a whim I've started playing Secret of Mana, since I always wondered what the deal was with people reffing Seiken Densetsu 3 alla time.

SoM is great for a lot of reasons, but a good portion of the magic is that it allowed 2-3 player CO-OP(!) RPG play in the SNES era which was wonderful. I always mean to play SD3, though, only touched it for maybe an hour.

Can we have a general random jrpg observations thread? I see myself spending a lot of time on such things in the weeks to follow :|

Today's random jrpg observation is from playing Suikoden IV: I always like games where you get a stronghold, to hold all your shit and/or people you pick up along the way. The thing I dig about this game is that your stronghold is your ride. Instead of the usual FF-style airship, you actually get a boat w/ which you need to defend tactically.

TOTALLY agree w/ this, which is why the Suikoden games are pretty much the only "genre" games I still enjoy!

Have we posted this yet? http://megaten.aeriagames.com/

SMT the MMO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB4WyHe-HRM

dammit, strange journey has way too much grinding. i got to the end boss and it killed me in one hit. i spent 5 hours grinding and now it kills me in 2. this would have been great as a 20 hour game + bonus quests but at 60+ hours it is way too long.

At 18 hours in (and with P3P on its way to take up my time!) that is not what I wanted to hear.

yeah, have to admit that I've stalled out on strange journey as well.

i didnt mind but its p much the only game ive played all year so

yeah, same here actually.

I got frustrated by the dark rooms in delphinus (sp?) that also had conveyor belts. didn't realize I had to go back to the ship and build an app and got hella lost/frustrated.

prob due for a second wind by now.

I've just done that bit and thought they made it almost too obvious that you had to go back! Maybe I just happened to stumble across the right people to talk to.

haha it probably was really obvious. my playtime had gotten very fragmented at that point, so I would boot the game up after two weeks and be like, "umm... I think I'm supposed to do this now..."

Persona 4 remake announced for Vita with "new characters, movie events, animated scenes, and more. It will include 1.5 times the amount of voice-overs seen in the PS2 version. Marie, voiced by Kana Hanazawa, is one of the new characters."

also .... a 2D fighter(!) for 360/PS3/Arcade "has a new story that takes place two years after the events of Persona 4. Characters from Persona 4 and Persona 3 will feature in the game."

and finally basic prep has finished for Persona 5, no platform details though.

lol, had to look up what a "vita" even is

lol me too

you can watch 1st episode of P4 anime here
http://www.theanimenetwork.com/Anime/Persona-4/Episode-1/Watch
its pretty much a straight retelling with english subs - supposed to be another 20+ episodes?!

persona 4 arena, who's gonna get it for ps3 and fight with me?

i was hoping someone would be posting something about strange journey to motivate me to pick it up again

haha me too

should i buy strange journey or devil survivor (or radiant historia)

devil survivor's story manages to be at the same time embarrassingly animu~/awful and, like, actually kind of fucked uppedly depressing. the game parts of it are pretty amazing though, sort of ff tactics + pokemon + each unit is 3 units so you get some crazy tag teams running around.

haven't played strange journey but i kinda want to. never really gotten into that FPS dungeon style though.

Read this whole thread again and now I basically need to find a way to play Persona 4 again, I never got very far and now I realize it is basically the only video game I want to play right now. Soooo any MTLers have a not-broken PS2/that game? :(

animu like persona animu or animu like eternal sonata animu?

most relatively recent pcs should be able to run pcsx2, which is way easier to set up than its ps1 predecessor.

yet to play eternal sonata. it is pretty persona-ish in that it minute-to-minute manages to jump between "god this is some dumb atlus boobs and giggles stuff" and "oh man this is actually kind of depressing" but the nadirs are nadirier and the peaks aren't as peaky.

it doesn't matter though because the SRPG + persona blending (What do they call it again? splicing or whatever?) = maximum enjoyment.

persona 4 vita is so good. i am going to play it for 1000 hours this weekend.

don't think there's a midnight channel irl

how much extra stuff was added to P4V? on the fence about buying it, already played through P4 on PS2 twice, but 3 years ago now.

per the somethingawful thread:

-Improved Graphics
-Choose which skills Personas inherit
-Two new Social Links: Marie and Adachi
-New Personas, as well as third tier Personas for party members (Unlocked by reaching Rank 10, then spending time with them again after 1/10)
-New difficulty levels (Very easy, easy, normal, hard, very hard)
-More Voice acting
-New animated cutscenes
-New areas (Beach and a ski resort, Okina City, increased access to Inaba at night)
-New events (Halloween, Skiing!)
-BIKES! (You can get around town on motorbikes, and your party members learn new skills by going on Bike dates with you)
-Tag Team attacks
-Wi-Fi features. Use SOS to connect to other players, gaining HP and SP depending on how many you connect with. Furthermore, you can also see what other players are doing at the same time of the game you’re at.
-Gardening! (Which gets you items that can do things like cast Makarakarn)
-Bug Catching Mini-game (Use them as bait for the Fishing Mini-game!)
-A Quiz show mini-game
-Scene Skip
-The game is extended to February 24th (so long as you avoid the bad endings)

just murdering dudes in mitsuo's dungeon right now. those tag team attacks are great--sometimes after an all-out attack (in my party) chie and yukiko will automatically do a decent bit of damage to all enemies, usually wiping them out. and they're like "yukiko, it's time!" "okay chie!" and it makes me think of "computer blue" off purple rain

thanks for that, even more indecisive now! can you run about town or is it all menus like P3P? that was a bit of a turnoff for me.