I give up on Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth because I can’t get into it. I’ve been struggling for months, but it’s such a chore. The game itself isn’t that hard, but mentally it’s a chore and a burden.
1. Too much talking. I fast-forwarded like 15 minutes of talking and cutscenes before they even let me play. Because there are so many characters, every scene must have everyone chipping in a couple of lines, then more lines, then even more lines.
Not to mention, a lot of the conversation is about nonconsequential “comedic” stuff that I really don’t need to see when I’m trying to get my bearings in a dungeon. Like they will interrupt critical progress with a scene of someone eating cardboard. Seriously, cardboard. Like it’s supposed to be funny. And it didn’t end there but the scene dragged on even further with Akihiko and Shinji arguing about protein bars for like 5 minutes, blah blah blah “Apologize to the food!” blah blah. No Atlus, apologize to me for making such a game. I quit after that scene. I could see the writing on the wall.
2. Not only is there too much talking but also a lot of it is out of character. I really don’t remember Akihiko being such a dumb musclehead or Junpei being so childish in Persona 3, though it has been years since I last played it. All their tiny character quirks are being played up to the max so it’s more like a parody than a spin-off game. Which is okay if that’s what you were looking for, but for me it was too much “wacky anime hijinks” for my liking – and I say that as someone who likes wacky anime hijinks in moderation.
3. I was playing Shadow of the Labyrinth partly to see the P3 characters again but mostly to see if I could get into Etrian Odyssey gameplay at last. Alas, I don’t think the series is for me. The walking is slow, mapping is tedious even with the paths drawn for you, dodging F.O.E.S. is tedious and it feels like it takes forever to traverse a single floor.
4. I’m not in the mood to fiddle with personas right now. Yeah yeah I know, why play a Persona game when you don’t want to deal with personas? Well I thought I would be okay, but I’ve realized that I don’t have any energy for complicated systems these days. When you have personas, you have to get them, fuse them, level them, switch them out when they’re obsolete, carry over abilities, etc etc. It’s way too much work for me right now.
Honestly it’s not just Persona Q. I don’t think I’ll be able to play a “proper” RPG for a while. They’re all either too talky, too slow or too fiddly. I freely confess: my attention span is 0 now. All I want are quick thrills, pretty graphics and non-frustrating gameplay. I thought I could get that from action RPGs, but even stuff like the Ys games and God Eater Burst force you to spend the first hour roaming around town, talking to people, watching cutscenes. I don’t wannaaaaa.
All this to say, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is probably not a bad game. I’m just not in the mood to appreciate a game with a fiddly system and a lot of talking right now. I’ve been trying to play it for months now, but making only tiny bits of progress. It’s time to give up and move on.
I totally understand you on that one. When I played the sequel, I was also royally annoyed by the cast’s over-the-top antics and the constant narrative interruptions while I was trying to crawl… Although I ultimately learnt to love ’em all. And I absolutely adored the crawling, so it was overall a great experience for me.
On a more general subject, I’d like to know how you feel about the tidal wave of Switch RPGs crashing on our shores these days, and most especially about the SRPGs — Brigandine, Fire Emblem Three Houses, Langrisser and the like. Do you think it’s something that could motivate you to purchase a Switch again on the long run, if/when you feel like playing complex RPGs again?
Nope, I feel nothing but annoyance thinking about SRPGs these days. I haven’t played any in a long while and found to some surprise that I don’t miss them at all.
I do want to get another Switch eventually, but the motivating factors are
1) all the Picross (yes, really)
2) Rune Factory 5 whenever it comes out and
3) If Xenoblade Chronicles X is released, it will be a day-one buy.
The only thing I really wanted to play was Xenoblade 2, and I played it, so I’m satisfied now. Also it would be nice if Nintendo fixed the joycon drift issue at some point.