Persona 2: Innocent Sin – On hold

19.10.11 / Atlus, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: / Comments: (4)
Tags: , , , ,

Every once in a while, you should do something you don’t usually do, just to remind yourself why you don’t usually do it. I started Persona 2: Innocent Sin several days ago, and now I remember exactly why I don’t play games in a series too quickly after each other: it’s boring! Especially when they’re very similar in terms of settings and gameplay.

I’m sure P1 and P2 will have very different stories, but at the beginning it’s the same high school setting, same “demons from out of nowhere” thing, same-ish kind of city and many of the same stores. I fought the first boss (Principal Hanya) right before stopping, and at about two hours in P2 is just P1 with more annoying party members and much, much easier battles. I seriously can’t believe how easy, I’m thinking of switching to the Hard setting, which I have never done in an Atlus game before.

Well, I guess it’s not the whole party that’s annoying. Just this ditzy reporter girl named Maya and this American girl with a kung fu fetish in my party named Lisa. Oh gawd, Lisa. And she keeps spouting out this bad Cantonese. Like “Kaumenna” instead of “Gaau meng a” or “Holeen” instead of “Ho lin”, it is so painful to read. It’s probably meant to be, and it’s working like a charm. Do I have a fixed party in this game or can I get rid of her? *fingers crossed*

P2 has also brought back the crazy number of options for contacting demons so I’m going to need a FAQ again before too long. =_= It’s much funnier this time round though, because when it says “Sing” or “Dance”, they actually do sing and dance. Even when “Sing” doesn’t work I keep picking that option just to see Michel’s act. Man, I thought it would be bad, but this is just incredible. If there’s one video game character who cannot afford to drop out of school, it’s him.

Dang, talking about this made me want to continue the game. But I know I’d just end up frustrated and bored so I’m going to wait at least another month.

Besides, you know how in Persona the town just went crazy out of the blue through no fault of yours? In Innocent Sin the main character Tatsuya seems like a bit of twat. I wouldn’t be surprised if he really did do something bad, with that attitude. I won’t be amused if I put in all that effort just to find out he was asking for it </understatement>.

What I’m even more worried about is that the “Sin” will turn out to be some ambiguous bullshit that doesn’t make any sense at all. I haven’t had that problem with the other Persona games so far, but I can’t say that of some of the SMT games. Nocturne for example, all I know is the world went kablooey, then I went around killing lots of demons as well as some of my friends, then at some point Dante from Devil May Cry joined me because of my ravishing shirtless torso (there can be no other reason), and then the last thing I remember was sinking down into some depths Terminator 2-style. Awesome game, but I still don’t know what it was all about. Digital Devil Saga wasn’t much better. The first game was good, the second game was doing well until suddenly, fwoop, we flew into the sun. And then Serph was a hermaphrodite.

So I’ll play something else and come back later. Prepare myself mentally, and all that. For better or for worse, Persona 2 isn’t going anywhere.

New Year’s game resolutions

02.11.10 / Namco, PS2, RPG, Video game / Author: / Comments Off
Tags: , , , , , , ,

[Obviously an old post (3rd January 2010), now appearing here because of site crash and recovery. Happily enough I managed to play every single one of these games]

Finally finished Xenosaga III, and with it the whole series. I thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay in all three games, even the undoubtedly inferior II. I also liked most of the characters, except that stubborn, idiotic, moronic Shion. People talk about how fresh it is to have a female character as the lead, but Shion only makes girls look bad, being dumb, weak-willed, dishonest, helpless, only finding meaning in and being redeemed by the males in her life (Kevin, Allen, Jin). But apart from her I enjoyed all the other characters, especially chaos. Throughout the series I was hoping he had a really unique backstory and interesting powers, but we find out everything about him in the last 30 minutes of the entire series and it’s not that interesting either, so…yeah. I learned a lot more about him from reading wikis than I ever did from the game itself. That’s the sure sign of bad writing and an overly-complicated plot.

Real life kept me from playing a lot of games last year, so I’m going to be much less ambitious in my gaming plans this year. There are only a few major games I want to finish, and then I’ll leave the rest to chance, or to whenever something I just *have* to play comes out. Here’s what I want to get done, ASAP:

1. Saga 2. I just killed Apollo, I think I have just one more boss to go.

2. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey – I’ve had it for a while but I haven’t even started it yet.

3. Harvest Moon: Twin Villages. When it comes out, I’m gonna be all over it!

4. Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2: Almost done with 1, I just went back to kill a few side-bosses and now they’re kicking my ass.

5. Angelique Special 2: Old game for PSX, but it’s been on my mind lately.

6. Dragon Quest 9: I’m a few levels into this. It’s interesting, but not especially gripping. But I’ll get to it sometime.

7. Atelier Lina: Lise and Annie were pretty much fail as far as I’m concerned, so I haven’t been in a hurry to get to this one. I wish they’d go back to the pure alchemy-centrism of the older games.

If I manage to finish just these by the end of the year, it’ll be enough for me. Yeah, I’m that busy.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

02.11.10 / Atlus, PS2, RPG, Video game / Author: / Comments: (0)
Tags: , , , , ,

I finally finished Digital Devil Saga 2, and it was a complete disappointment (more on the whole game if and when I can ever be bothered). Also finished one round of Lina no Atelier, though I didn’t get a good ending it wasn’t that bad after all. More on that as well later.

However, I just picked up SMT: Nocturne, I’m only 2 hours in and I’m having a great time! I missed fusing personas/demons from the later games, and the Magatama system looks remarkably fun. It’s not that hard either, so far anyway. I’m guessing part of the legendary difficulty comes from the fact that it was the first SMT game for a lot of people. That, and if you throw a skill away it’s gone forever. I’ll have to be careful about that, but Fire Emblem Path of Radiance was kinda like that and I managed it just fine, so I think I’ll be okay.

But I like the post-apocalyptic landscape so far, and the relative lack of NPCs is fun too, especially the lack of dumbass party members slowing you down, whining, bitching, moaning, leaving your party at the worst time. This game is awesome! Well, 2 hours of it is awesome anyway. So if you don’t see any posts for a while, you know what I’m getting up to.