Except… (spoilers for about 8 hours in follow)

The first time I am able to talk with Morrigan after she joins my party, the very first question I can ask is:

Uh… what?

I haven’t seen you as a shapechanger! No shapes have been changed! The only shapes that I’ve even encountered are your rather questionably exposed breasts!

Dammit, Bioware! How in the hell did you let the ruination of a surprise that big through QA?

Oh well. Back to it, I guess.

Oh, and sorry I haven’t been that prolific lately.  But I’m sure you remember the last time I posted, about all the games that were coming out?  Yeah, that happened.  Don’t worry, it should only last for another month or so.  Then I’ll get back to angrily chastising badly made Japanese RPG’s.

You could always check out my side project at http://2-vs-2.com…

The Beatles: Rock Band

Why I shouldn’t have bought it:

I’m not very familiar with the catalog of The Beatles at all. Not as a point of pride or anything – I was just too busy listening to the same Anthrax album over and over to try something new. Also, I’ve already bought way too many music games over the last decade. Did I really need another one?

Why I bought it anyway:

Because it has vocal harmonies. That’s really it for me. But my lovely fiancée, as a big Beatles fan, is really enjoying it on its merits. Hearing her sing Beatles songs as we’re walking to dinner is a nice bonus, too. So far, it’s been a blast, especially with four players and two microphones. Playing Expert guitar on “Twist and Shout” while singing Paul McCartney’s vocals was the most fun I’ve had in a music game since the first Rock Band was released.

When it came out:

September 9

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story

Why I shouldn’t buy it:

The most recent Mario & Luigi RPG was kind of misguided. The clunky “babies + grown-ups” control scheme never really clicked with me, and so it ended up being more of a chore than I was expecting, especially after its predecessor.

Why I’ll probably buy it anyway:

The first Mario & Luigi RPG – for the GBA – was a total surprise hit for me. The gameplay was a blast, even if it was rather simple compared to most RPG’s I’m used to. And it featured some incredible translation, with bizarre characters saying things like:

“I have fury! In the last moments of the finale of the finale, when relief leads to negligence that begets rashness…that is when the comeback that faltered comes back and beats your pathetic comeback that I scoff at!”

When does it come out?

September 14

Scribblenauts

Why I shouldn’t buy it:

I only just played Drawn to Life a few weeks ago, after hearing good things about it for a while. Its gimmick never really hooked me, though — maybe because I spent way too long designing the perfect avatar (with a stop sign for a head and a NES Game Pak for a torso) and not enough time playing its stripped-down platform mechanics.

Why I’ll probably buy it anyway:

The description of this game sounds too good to be true, by all accounts. There are puzzles and obstacles, and you can attempt to solve them / get past them by writing the name of any object. ANY object. The object will then appear on the screen and, if it can, be the solution. Yes, please.

When does it come out?

September 15

Trine

Why I shouldn’t buy it:

It’s from an unproven developer and it’s taken way too long to come out for PSN? Yeah, I’ve really got nothing here.

Why I’ll definitely be buying it anyway:

It’s a completely gorgeous side-scroller / platformer / puzzler that features co-op. Like LittleBigPlanet, only more than a novelty. Also, it features three uniquely playing characters, one of which can draw shapes on the screen to create objects.

When does it come out?

Well, it’s already out for the PC. Has been for a while, in fact. But due to several small bugs that have popped up in the past few weeks, its PSN release has been delayed for months now. The latest word from Sony is that it will be released either September 15 or September 22.

Alpha Protocol

Why I shouldn’t buy it:

I love the guys at Obsidian – I even interviewed with them five years ago. Their combined experience is nothing to scoff at. The only problem is, I haven’t really enjoyed their games that much. I mean, they’ve certainly been competent, which is more than you can say about a lot of releases in the last few years. But neither Knights of the Old Republic II nor Neverwinter Nights 2 really did anything for me.

Why I’ll definitely be buying it anyway:

Present-day RPG. That’s all you need to do to get my money: make a RPG that’s set in the present day. Or the near future. I don’t want to set an arbitrary time window, but anything that’s not straight fantasy, sci-fi, etc. will get my attention. Now, keeping it is another matter. I’m looking at you, Lionheart. And you, Arcanum. And you too, Planescape: Torment. Although I’m looking at you because you’re so awesome that I can’t look away.

When does it come out?

October 6

Borderlands

Why I shouldn’t buy it:

It’s a shooter. Generally, I’m not wild about shooters, on consoles or PC. Other than the Half-Life series — which, wouldn’t you know it, actually cares about narrative — they’re just not my thing.

Why I’ll probably be buying it anyway:

Because it has enough twists that it’s swung back to being my thing again. Borderlands is a co-op shooter with Diablo-style loot and a gorgeous art style — not to mention some of the ballsiest box art I’ve ever seen.

When does it come out?

October 20

Uncharted 2

Why I shouldn’t buy it:

Because I’ll be out of money by this point? Other than that, I really have no excuse.

Why I’ll definitely be buying it anyway:

The first Uncharted surprised the hell out of me when I finally cracked it open a few months after I finally got a PlayStation 3 back in April. The gameplay wasn’t necessarily that awesome — the Tomb Raider-style exploration and puzzle solving kept me interested, but once the shooting stared, I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

However, one thing that never got old was the dialogue. Quite simply, the voice acting and writing in Uncharted was the best I’ve seen in years. I’d play a hyperrealistic racing sim / RTS to get to experience that level of performance again.

When does it come out?

Sometime in October

Dragon Age

Why I shouldn’t buy it:

Because it’s another fantasy RPG. Haven’t we had enough of those?

Why I’m definitely buying it:

No, we haven’t had enough of those, especially of the quality that I know Bioware can produce. While the early press for this game was kind of weird — the praise for the incredibly rote, predictable races was especially baffling — I’m willing to give Bioware both the benefit of the doubt and a lot of money. Baldur’s Gate II was an all-time classic, and I haven’t played a good fantasy RPG since Oblivion.

When does it come out?

November 3

Assassin’s Creed II

Why I shouldn’t buy it:

The most obvious innovations in this game (you can fly! you can swim! you can kill two people at once!) don’t sound that impressive.

Why I’ll definitely be buying it anyway:

The latest trailer is cut to a Justice song!

Okay, seriously, Assassin’s Creed was a fantastic game. Even though the gameplay never really evolved beyond “do the same few things over and over again”, those same few things were always fun. Combine that with some really classy presentation and voice acting — and the promise of less flag-hunting and more badassery — and I’m in.

When does it come out?

November 17

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Why I shouldn’t buy it:

I’ve never finished Super Mario Galaxy. New Super Mario Bros. for the DS was okay, but nothing special. I’m just generally kind of sour on Nintendo’s first-party titles lately — which means I’m going to get beat up by my fiancée.

Why I’ll probably buy it anyway:

My fiancée would beat me up if I didn’t buy it, but even if that weren’t true, it’s a co-op Mario game! We haven’t had one of those since, what, the original Mario Bros.? Plus, I feel like Nintendo has a lifetime pass from me when it comes to their core Mario games after Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, and so on.

When does it come out?

Q4 2009

Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Why I shouldn’t buy it:

At this point, if I’ve bought all the previous games, I will have spent over $500 in games in the last three months. Plus, as much as the Zelda series has given me over the years, its most recent efforts haven’t all been winners. Twilight Princess in particular was kind of disappointing.

Why I’ll probably buy it anyway:

The last Zelda game for the Nintendo DS (Phantom Hourglass) was a hell of a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I don’t think this one will be out in time for our Thanksgiving trip to Tokyo, but it’ll be perfect for my Christmas trip to the east coast.

When does it come out?

December 7

Now, this doesn’t even include my “want to play” list, which contains some titles releasing this year that may end up adding to that $500 total:

• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2(never finished the first one, but I should probably play this one for reference if nothing else)
• Persona PSP (I played the original thirteen years ago and was lukewarm on it, but Persona 4 still fills me with a warm glow, as you may have heard)
• Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (which has to be the worst name for a game that I’ve seen in a long time)
• Brütal Legend (although from what I’ve heard of the game mechanics in the last few weeks, this one is falling fast)
• Modern Warfare 2 (I’ve actually never played its supposedly transcendent multiplayer, but its singleplayer was pretty damn impressive)
• Max Payne 3 (for all its faults, the Max Payne series has been one of the biggest innovators of storytelling and presentation in a genre that’s famous for neither)

It also doesn’t include the “definitely buying in Q1 2010″ list, which is mercifully only at four so far: BioShock 2, Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII, and Heavy Rain.

Maybe I should start picking lottery numbers.

Or "FERD" for short.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Fire Emblem series. Something about the universe has always kept me at arm’s length. Maybe it’s the character perma-death. Maybe it’s the rapid deterioration of weapons. Maybe it’s the very generic-seeming fantasy world. Whatever the cause, the fact remains that the most time I’ve ever spent with its characters was playing Roy and Marth in Super Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube.

Still, I’m a big fan of strategy/tactical RPG’s. Final Fantasy Tactics, Shining Force, Front Mission… these are all games that occupy a special place in my heart. So many months ago, when I saw that it was getting reviewed fairly well, I placed Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn in my GameFly queue and promptly forgot about it. After all, games that I actually want to play on the Wii have been scarce since Super Mario Galaxy.

Unfortunately, GameFly’s system is so fickle that I was reminded in a hurry last week — when the company decided to skip over Ghostbusters (360), Ghostbusters (PS3), Prototype (PS3), Prototype (360), Tales of Vesperia, Crackdown, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, King of Fighters XII, and Knights in the Nightmare, and go straight for the bottom of my list.

As it turns out, there’s a reason why it was near the bottom of my queue — I only played it for about a half-hour before putting it back in my mailbox. It’s not a terrible game, but I don’t really have the patience for anything less than “great” at the moment. I did take notes along the way, though. So let’s get to it.

Tue 08/25 11:48:20 PM Opening cutscene is pretty damned stylish, with gorgeous characters.  Only… it’s a Wii game, so it’s in no way going to be representative of the actual graphics.

Maybe this isn’t a fair criticism to make anymore. After all, the difference between pre-rendered movies and in-game assets used to be huge, and no one complained. But in this day and age, when the other current-gen systems are able to pull off in-engine cutscenes that look almost as good as what Fire Emblem does here in their opening FMV, it’s hard to not be a little let down.

So what’s the solution here? Is there even a problem? I mean, you can guarantee that there will be FMV in Final Fantasy XIII that will look even better than the in-game graphics, which are bound to be among the best in the business when that game is released next year… and I probably won’t bat an eyelash. So I should probably back off, and stop criticizing cool cutscenes.

Tue 08/25 11:48:56 PM And sure enough, the full-body character portraits once the game starts are completely ordinary.  Why won’t more companies use concept artists like the Magna Carta guy?

Not that Hyung Tae-Kim is perfect or anything. His characters have anatomy that is even more questionable than that drawn by modern comic book artists. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look damn good anyway.

Maybe I’m just burned out on anime-style character portraits after playing so much Persona 4, Persona 3, Devil Survivor, and so on. Or maybe the bar was set too high by those character designs.

Tue 08/25 11:50:00 PM “Edward, you know that’s not how it works. I foresee some things, but I don’t get to choose what I see.”  I know you have to have some exposition in situations like this, but we’re literally three lines into the game.  You probably should have let this one breathe a bit.

Especially since I immediately forgot about her “foresight” once the fight starts. A proper scene detailing her power(s) in a non-combat context would probably have worked better here.

(Of course, there probably was one at some point – I just didn’t stick around to see it.)

Tue 08/25 11:50:34 PM Within 60 seconds of the game starting, we’ve got “bandits” and the “Imperial Occupation Army”.  I don’t know if I can do this.

Although at least they really sell it. It’s not just “yeah, we’re near a mountain, so there’s bandits”. A townsperson and her child actually give an explanation that’s interesting, even if it does ladle on the exposition even more thickly.

Tue 08/25 11:51:34 PM Wow, this is certainly old-school.  A rigid X/Y grid and everything.

It is possible to rotate the camera in 45-degree increments, but I felt like I should let Fire Emblem be Fire Emblem, and let Final Fantasy Tactics be… much, much better.

Tue 08/25 11:52:12 PM I’m going to put down $10 right now on that companion bird turning into a phoenix at some point.  Just sayin’.

I would have lost that bet, although I feel like I should only have to pay up a fiver after seeing what the bird actually is. (spoilers, of course)

Tue 08/25 11:53:45 PM Ugh, now I remember why I don’t play Wii games that often.  The controls at the bottom of the screen: “2: Move / B + 2: Next Unit / B + 1: Status / A: Map Menu / +: Conditions”.  Which ones are B and 1 again?  I wonder if Intelligent Systems (or whoever developed this game) must be itching to develop for a console with normal controls.

It turns out that I did get the developer right, which I’m kind of surprised by — it can be hard to keep track of the second-party developers in Japan sometimes.

And maybe it’s unfair to pick on the Wii controls — after all, it’s hard to argue with over fifty million systems sold. But for a game like this which uses no motion controls, it can be a little confusing to figure out what means what. Hell, even in a game that does use the motion controls, it’s still confusing.

Tue 08/25 11:55:53 PM Wow, the combat is very Shining Force-y.  I guess I’ve never really been up on the Fire Emblem mechanics, but that seems new.

Tue 08/25 11:56:11 PM Speaking of which, Shining Force III was awesome.  :)

Maybe I’m blinded by nostalgia, but I remember Shining Force III as being one of the most underrated games of the 32-bit era. It didn’t help that the upcoming Dreamcast snuffed out the Saturn’s life before its time. I still need to play the second and third “episodes” of SFIII, which were sadly never released domestically. The idea of playing the same general story from three different perspectives is still appealing.

Tue 08/25 11:58:38 PM Nice touch there, having the SILVER-HAIRED MAIDEN talking in another language that the bandit doesn’t realize is a spell.  The language had its own script, too.  I feel like the localization is going to outpace everything else in this game.

Wed 08/26 12:01:51 AM Just so you don’t think I’m nothing but a sourpuss about these liveblogs, I’ll say that there is a way to do this kind of game very well: Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3.  Unfortunately, that game has so many cutscenes, and the fights are so difficult, that I’ve had trouble making it through.

I should probably just buy it and finish it, since I think I got about 40% of the way through the game before moving on to something else. I just love the art style and universe.

Wed 08/26 12:03:08 AM “A little bird told me.  Yours, in fact.  *tweet*”  Did you not think we knew what you meant?  Also, the bird tweeting reminded me of inappropriate VO from other games, like Bart inexplicably having VO for yelling “Jerk!” at Rasmus in a boss fight.  Just weird.

I am, of course, referring to another underrated classic of the 32-bit era, Square’s Xenogears. Although maybe “underrated” isn’t the right word, since the game was critically acclaimed. Maybe “underappreciated” would be better. The game is certainly not without its faults — its regrettable pseudo-sequels chief among them — but in my book, it stands with Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Cross as one of the best RPG’s of its time.

Wed 08/26 12:05:26 AM Ah, but that’s a REALLY nice feature, being able to “click” on an enemy and have their attack/move range stay up on the screen after you move the cursor away.  I love it!

Wed 08/26 12:08:22 AM Ha!  I know I was playing with fire there by having the main character go after the boss with half health, but having the GAME END on the FIRST FIGHT when ONLY ONE of my characters gets killed is a shelf level event for me.  Sorry, Fire Emblem.  I’ve got many, many better games that I could be playing.

And that’s it for Fire Emblem. To be honest, I don’t think I necessarily gave it a fair shake. But my time is limited these days. I have enough good titles in my to-play list that I don’t want to waste it replaying the initial mission of a years-old Wii game. Or, for that matter, a years-old 360 game, which is coming up next on this blog. See you soon, faithful readers.

He's taller than me, but not by much.

Day 1 of my new life. Today I start my new job as a game tester at Legend Entertainment. It was a great first day; I got to play Wheel of Time for most of the day, and talk to intelligent people, whom I didn’t know, about video games. Life is good.

That was what I wrote on my personal web site (they weren’t called “blogs” yet) on August 25, 1999.   Ten years of game development later, life is still good.

The highest point: Three weeks of directing some of the best voice actors in the business as they acted out every line of my script — and raved about it as they were doing it.

The lowest point: Getting caught in a wave of layoffs two months later, and watching the universe that I had created get mangled to the point where it was savaged in the press upon its release.

There have definitely been more highlights than lowlights, though.

Bring on decade #2!

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Love that title screen.

If you’ve talked to me lately about video games, it’s likely that I’ve brought up Persona 4 as an example of how to do them right. It’s a modern classic. While talking to a friend via IM a few weeks ago, he — perhaps tired of hearing me say how good it was — wondered why I wasn’t doing a “liveblog” of that game, since I loved it so much.

But that wasn’t really an option, since I didn’t start doing these “liveblogs” until I was five hours from the end. However, since I haven’t found an RPG since then that I’ve liked as much, I figured I’d give it another playthrough. I don’t know how long it will last, but at least I can try to articulate why I love the game to the degree that I do.

Since I’m writing this liveblog on my second time through the game, I’ll be talking about things that happen all through the story. This will obviously result in some rather massive spoilers from time to time. I’ve blocked out these sections with colored bars: spoilers for the current point in the story will be hidden behind green bars, while spoilers that give away things that happen later in the game (including the ending!) are behind black bars. Just hover over them to see what I’m talking about.

Keep in mind, however, that if you’re reading this in an RSS reader, those spoiler tags WILL NOT WORK! So proceed at your own risk.

Sat 08/08 12:08:47 AM So here we go! This is probably the fastest I’ve ever replayed an RPG before — besting even Chrono Trigger. I do think Persona 4 is one of the best RPG’s I’ve ever played, if not THE best console RPG. So I think it’s worth it.

I know, that’s a bold statement. But if we’re talking about story plus gameplay plus voice acting plus emotional impact plus a bunch of arbitrary factors I could come up with, it’s in the top tier. Maybe Final Fantasy VI is still #1, and I should give decisions like this some time to breathe. But in my opinion, it doesn’t get much better than Persona 4.

Sat 08/08 12:09:19 AM The opening cutscene does show all the party members, which I usually don’t like, but they do it so stylishly that it’s hard to dislike.

See my Star Ocean liveblog for my previous take on this.

Sat 08/08 12:10:13 AM On the other hand, the second video clip that plays is full of spoilers! It shows Naoto as a party member, Shadow Teddie, and… fishing.

This, I can’t really forgive. I mean, sure, it does show a bunch of the more impressive boss fights from the game, but those moments where you see the bosses for the first time are some of the best “whoa!” times in the game.

Sat 08/08 12:10:54 AM It also shows a bunch of stylish combat scenes, reminding me just how distinctive and stylish this game is. So I’m torn.

So yeah. In conclusion, “stylish”. This second opening cutscene also shows a lot of the interesting party dynamics that Persona 4 features, like characters taking a killing blow for the main character, performing an enemy-killing super move, or helping up a downed friend. Good stuff, especially after Persona 3, which features such interesting combat dynamics as “not being able to control your party”, “getting ‘tired’ after a half-hour of combat”, and “advancing slower than levels 70-80 in World of Warcraft“.

Sat 08/08 12:11:30 AM I definitely love the idea of the city boy moving to the country and getting caught up in everything. When I first played through the game, I thought that… never mind, we’ll get into that when we get there.

See below. The “city boy moving to the country” thing never really comes up outside of the first few scenes — in fact, Yosuke gets more attention for being a former city boy than the main character.

Now that I’m thinking about it, none of the major male high school student characters are really “from the country”, or at least, they don’t seem to be natural byproducts of their environment. The MC and Yosuke are transplants, and Kanji is an ambiguously gay not-biker. Of all of them, it seems like Mitsuo Kubo is the most “normal” non-urban kid, and he turns out to be a murdering psychopath. I wonder if that was intentional.

Sat 08/08 12:14:04 AM - As a device, I have to say I love the glasses -- especially compared to the gun-shaped "evokers" that people point at their heads and "shoot" in Persona 3. Frequent readers of this blog may know that I just gave up on Persona 3 last night, after fifty (!) hours of mostly nothing happening. I've been trying to think about why that is, but honestly, it comes down to its successor doing every single thing better. We'll talk about that as we proceed.

Sat 08/08 12:14:58 AM I should say, however, that it’s a quarter past midnight on Saturday morning, so this first sesson may not last long. But for now, let’s start a “New Game Plus”. I see that it took me 82 hours and 40 minutes to finish on my first attempt — and that’s without much grinding.

That may be an exaggeration. I probably spent some of that time grinding, but not more than five hours or so. The game features such good experience scaling that grinding for extended periods of time really isn’t necessary.

You can never tell with these games whether you actually need to level all your party members. For instance, my fiancée and I just finished Final Fantasy VII, which features a three-sided boss battle near the end. Having Cloud, Red XIII, and Tifa as the only decently leveled characters made this boss fight a pain in the butt. Thankfully, there is no such problem in Persona 4, other than certain characters not being ideal for certain boss fights due to elemental weaknesses. By the end of the game, I was sticking with the MC, Yosuke, Chie, and Teddie — because his buff spells made him a better healer than Yukiko would have been.

Sat 08/08 12:16:25 AM Ah yes, I’d forgotten that the game lets you choose a difficulty level for battles. I chose “NORMAL” the first time through, and was quite happy with the balancing, so I think I’ll do that again here — although I’ll be carrying over a few things from my previous game.

The “NORMAL” difficulty gave me trouble occasionally, but that was mostly due to making dumb mistakes — like casting an instant kill light spell on something that reflected it back at the MC. That lost me an hour of progress. I never really came close to giving up, though — the story kept me going even when the gameplay wasn’t mind-blowing.

Sat 08/08 12:18:18 AM So, the game starts with a cutscene showing the exterior of the limousine that houses the Velvet Room. Having played a few games in the Persona and “MegaTen” series, finding the Velvet Room inside a freaking limo was a pleasant surprise in my first playthrough.

One of the few things I ended up liking about Persona 3 was the Velvet Room effects — instead of a limousine, it took the form of an old-school elevator. Good stuff.

It’s always interesting to me to see what staples a franchise carries over from game to game. Final Fantasy tends to only recycle a few creatures, one piece of music, and airships, while the Dragon Quest series features similar enemies in nearly all their titles.

Sat 08/08 12:19:20 AM The actor who plays Igor in P4 played “Chairman Ikutsuki” of P3. His delivery is much better suited to this character than the previous one — which could be said of most of the performances in P3.

Not to keep beating up on Persona 3, but it did feature some truly dreadful voice acting — and not just of the “I’ve done way too much anime, and am going to overdo everything” variety. Some characters were just completely off from the beginning.

The funny part is, I thought the two best performances came from the only two people in the cast that I also directed on Space Siege: Michelle Ruff and Liam O’Brien. Everyone else in the game was pretty bad, especially Mela Lee as Fuuka.

Sat 08/08 12:20:12 AM So the first time through the game, I played as “Grant Roberts”, which was okay — I wasn’t sure how “Japanese” the game was going to be. It turns out… EXTREMELY Japanese. Which was another pleasant surprise. So this time, I’ll be playing my standard “Japanese” name – Kazuya Hasukawa.

I’ve been using “Hasukawa” as a nickname online for almost fifteen years now. It originally comes from an anime called ここはグリーン・ウッド (”Here is Greenwood”). The main characters feature Kazuya Hasukawa, and his two “senpai”, Mitsuru Ikeda and Shinobu Tezuka. The short version is that these three characters were rather striking analogs to me (Hasukawa), my friend Joe (Mitsuru), and our friend Brandon (Shinobu). In the many years since, the parallels between Hasukawa and I have become much less significant, but there’s no going back now. I use “Hasukawa” in many different places.

When “Hasukawa” is not available, I use “Zaelunas”, which is a character I made up for a MUD that Joe and I worked on back in the mid-nineties. What’s weird is that at some point, someone discovered the name “Zaelunas Nightsky” and has been using it in other places. I still don’t know how it ever became public.

Sat 08/08 12:21:42 AM I’ll probably be talking about the UI quite a bit, but it bears mentioning early on. It’s very stylish without being over-the-top, like Star Ocean’s was.

Again, stylish. But yes, the UI is quite unique in this game. Persona 3’s was similarly minimalist, but the omnipresent blue was less appealing than the bright canary yellow of P4. It (P4) also features a lot of skewed backgrounds and non-functional “noise”, but it’s never distracting.

Sat 08/08 12:22:55 AM Igor talks a lot about the “mystery” early on, and they’re not kidding. This game has so many twists and turns that by the end, I was left reeling and speechless.

I obviously don’t want to discuss them too much here, but the game does a very good job keeping you guessing. Or, at least, a very good job of pulling the rug out from under you.

Sat 08/08 12:23:58 AM The P4 comic (warning: spoilers) that was linked the other day was pretty hilarious, and did a great job of conveying just how weird Rise’s commercial was.

There doesn’t seem to be any reason for it, other than foreshadowing Rise’s eventual involvement in the story. And incidentally, that comic made me laugh out loud a few times. If you’ve played the game, you should definitely check it out.

Sat 08/08 12:25:06 AM Wow, Namatame looks so clean-cut and uncrazy in his first appearance.

The game doesn’t do a very good job of keeping him relevant throughout the game. Yes, he shows up from time to time wandering the streets, but it’s hard to reconcile him with the guy who’s talked about in the opening sequences.

Sat 08/08 12:25:56 AM Oh, okay, wow, the opening cutscene features the “Adachi throws his first victim in the TV” footage. I obviously wasn’t able to make sense of it the first time through.

I wonder if it’s supposed to be as confusing to the player as it is to the main character. I also wonder what it means from a fiction perspective — the MC doesn’t have visions of any other of the murders happening.

Sat 08/08 12:29:11 AM Ah, Dojima. I think his performance is actually the second-worst of the major characters — only Yukiko’s was worse. But don’t get me wrong — even the worst performance in this game is better than a lot that I’ve experienced lately.

At the time of this writing, I thought his was the second-worst. But then Chie started talking. I think the two of them are probably about even. However, like I said, even the worst performance in this game is roughly on par with the best performance in Persona 3. I guess that’s what an average localization will get you.

Sat 08/08 12:31:25 AM I’m going to try maxing out all the Social Links this time through, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the story. Which means looking up the “correct” response to say to Dojima at the very beginning of the game.

This should be much easier, as I discovered a little later that all my stats (Courage, Understanding, Knowledge, Diligence, and Expression) carried over from the previous playthrough. That means no more folding paper cranes at night, no more studying in the library, and so on. That time will be split between more dungeon runs and more Social Links.

Sat 08/08 12:34:55 AM Awww, Nanako’s so adorable and bashful at the beginning!

I don’t know if this is because she’s a shy kid, or if it’s because she’s got a little girl crush on a high schooler — cousin or not. The translation seems to imply that she’s embarrassed by her father pointing out her shyness for different reasons, and she does say “I’m going to marry big bro!” at some point later on in the game.

Sat 08/08 12:36:08 AM In retrospect, I probably should have picked up on something being fishy at the gas station at the beginning of the game — but they hadn’t really established just how much random crap they were going to show in cutscenes. So they did a good job of keeping the surprise.

By the time this revelation rolled around at the end of the game, I was already kind of spoiled for it — simply because I had to go online and figure out how to not get the crappiest ending. Probably the worst decision this game makes.

There’s a larger blog post in me about multiple endings that will probably come out at some point. This game, and the most recent Castlevania for the DS are the most egregious offenders lately.

Sat 08/08 12:37:03 AM Interesting that the handshake with the attendant actually causes a little controller vibration.

Sat 08/08 12:38:31 AM Oh, and there was a delivery truck just leaving the gas station right as Dojima’s car pulls in. Nice touch.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this kind of foreshadowing at the beginning the game. The most obvious and awkward foreshadowing is clearly Mitsuo Kubo hitting on Yukiko outside the school entrance, but that’s a byproduct of the game being handcuffed by showing character portraits.

Speaking of character portraits, I got really excited when I got about two-thirds of the way through the game to the school trip. Since I had never made it further than three hours into Persona 3, I didn’t recognize the two characters from that game. So I figured they were going to feature in a P4 expansion pack or something, since the portraits had already been drawn. Oh well.

Sat 08/08 12:40:36 AM As another unfair comparison between P3 and P4, this game’s “shit goes down on rainy days” feels much more natural than the rigid “shit goes down on full moon days” in P3.

Again, I didn’t make it far enough in P3 to see if they ever explained the “full moon” thing, but I’ll wager that if they did, it wasn’t as well-handled as P4’s explanation of the fog-and-rain phenomenon.

Sat 08/08 12:45:07 AM Ah, Junes. And more importantly, Nanako singing the Junes song! My first time through the game, I thought that Junes was going to figure extremely prominently — that the game was going to focus heavily on Junes kind of taking over the small town of Inaba. Not so much.

The first “real” murder does reference the pseudo-big-box store moving into Inaba, and making life difficult for the local liquor store. But that’s really the only time it’s ever mentioned in the game. Some characters reference wanting to leave Inaba someday, or feeling stifled by the smallness of the town, but those sentiments never coalesce into a theme.

Sat 08/08 12:46:55 AM Interesting contrast between the big(ger) city environment of P3, where you could go out in the evening and still study at night, with the countryside town of P4, where you only get one opportunity to do stuff after school.

Although there was never much to do at night in P3 besides “look at a text box that told you how your stats increased”. Well, okay, there were a few Social Links you could check out, but for the most part, everything shut down.

Sat 08/08 12:49:11 AM - The edge of screen effect is near-constant inside the TV during P4, and it never really gets old. Nice and subtle.

Sat 08/08 12:50:35 AM So I don’t remember who this is supposed to be in the first fight. Izanami, I guess?

Since the initial micro-dungeon looks similar to the final-for-reals dungeon, I assume that’s who it’s supposed to be. But my memory of that part of the ending is a little fuzzy.

Sat 08/08 12:53:16 AM As far as housemates go, Dojima and Nanako are so much more interesting than the frankly quite irritating classmates in P3.

This is one of the things that bothered me the most about P3. None of the main character’s classmates — they’re certainly not “friends” — are really likeable at all. Yukari is a priss who is always offended by something. Junpei is an idiot who gets irrationally jealous of the MC and then snaps out of it almost immediately. Akihiko is a fancy boy who’s always being all emo about the past. Fuuka is constantly amazed at how great everyone on the team is, and is all shy and unassuming and boring. Aigis is the boilerplate “android who tries to become more human” character we’ve all seen before. And Koromaru is… well, okay, it’s hard to argue with a freaking dog being a party member. Kudos there.

Again, I “only” made it fifty hours into Persona 3, so maybe these characters eventually transformed into great, humanized companions. But the party members (and NPC’s) in Persona 4 don’t need dozens of hours to be interesting.

Sat 08/08 12:54:58 AM Not the most glamorous introduction for a character, but Yosuke is probably my favorite in the game. And not to get too nerdy with the references, but Yuri Lowenthal’s performance is goddamned PERFECT. Even better than his role in Prince of Persia.

I may be a little biased — his performance in Space Siege was one of the best in the game. I’m not sure if any of his stuff made it into the final product, but he was as great as usual for the roles I gave him. Also, not to toot my own horn, but when a guy as talented as Yuri complimented the hell out of my script… well, that was a good day — which was capped by going out for dinner and drinks with him and Troy Baker. Good times!

(We’ll talk more about Troy later.)

Sat 08/08 12:55:40 AM I never really understood why Chie and Yukiko get to wear something other than their uniforms.

I did a tiny bit of research and was unable to find anything useful. I guess there’s a little suspension of disbelief that’s required in situations like this. Although now that I think about it, the characters in the first Persona all wore the same uniforms. So I guess it’s a recent development. Not necessarily an unwelcome one, either.

Sat 08/08 12:56:52 AM Morooka is pretty entertaining, and it was pretty damn shocking when he turns up dead later.

All of the teachers seem like fairly rote characters — I feel like I’ve seen them in many different anime series before. The abrasive jackass, the slutty cougar, the distracted nerd, etc. But even while they’re forced to inhabit these well-worn stereotypes, the characters all manage to make their mark.

Sat 08/08 12:57:12 AM Although his invocation of “life-journals” and “my-places” is a little ridiculous.

I confess that since I’ve never worked on a game that takes place in the “real world”, I don’t know how I’d handle situations like this. I mean, you can’t have Morooka say “you kids today, with your social networking sites, and your personal weblogs“. So I guess a half-hearted attempt at realism is the only way to go.

Sat 08/08 12:57:55 AM Chie’s commiseration is pretty endearing.

I had to re-watch this section to see what I meant by this phrase. It turns out I was simply referring to her saying “Morooka’s the worst! Sorry that you’re stuck here for a year!” Chie’s constant optimism is a very good thing to have in the initial group, since Yosuke’s kind of emo at times and Yukiko’s… well, Yukiko.

Sat 08/08 12:59:51 AM Good stuff early on with the school closing and the sirens announcing something significant. It does a good job of selling the “nothing ever happens in this podunk town” vibe early on.

Sat 08/08 1:03:13 AM Heh. Remember what I said earlier about “how much random crap they were going to throw in cutscenes”? Yeah, Chie’s DVD scene was a little strange.

As seen at about 9:00 of this video. It’s a funny scene, but on the second playthrough, it seems very out of place.

Sat 08/08 1:03:59 AM Although maybe they just do it so they can make it not seem weird when Mitsuo Kubo is all like “hey, what’s up, just because I have a portrait doesn’t mean I’ll be important later”.

In retrospect, I’m not really sure why they needed to have Mitsuo Kubo show up at this point. Sure, it ties in later when everyone says “Hey, remember that guy? Wasn’t he creepy?”, but why bother? All it does is tip the player off that this guy is going to feature later.

Sat 08/08 1:06:49 AM Ah, the introduction of the ominous piano noodling theme. It never gets old.

Good thing, too, since it plays very, very often throughout the game. In general, the music in this game is top-notch. Very different from normal RPG fare, but unlike Persona 3, it’s not ostentatiously weird. The main battle music somehow never got old, even though it had vocals. A rare feat.

I’ll try to stop picking on P3. For all its faults, it did some things right. Just nothing right compared to its successor.

Sat 08/08 1:08:03 AM Kind of cool how P4 is like “OH MY GOD SOMEONE GOT KILLED”, and that’s a big deal. After all, it’s a small town. Kind of refreshing considering the fact that people getting killed is kind of de rigeur for most popular fiction these days.

Sat 08/08 1:13:04 AM Yuri’s experience with Japanese is obvious when he does things like, you know, reading his character’s name. Rolls off the tongue a lot better than a lot of other characters/actors.

Sat 08/08 1:18:18 AM I like how they set up Saki as someone who’s going to be a main character, and then BAM!

It kind of reminds me of the original plan for the main character of Lost, which can be found here. Obviously, the series would have been significantly different if they would have stuck to the original script — and probably not for the better. But it certainly would have been ballsy.

Also, I know that Yosuke is supposed to have been close to Saki — or, at least, he was infatuated with her. I feel like they could have set that up a little better, which would have not only made this event more powerful, but lent a little more insight into Yosuke’s early behavior.

Sat 08/08 1:20:28 AM I also like how they set up the Midnight Channel as a local legend kind of thing (with “soulmates” and everything), when it turns out to be rather radically different.

Lost in my reduction of the concept to “a local legend kind of thing” is just how cool the base concept of the “Midnight Channel” is. Watch a TV at midnight when it’s off and something will appear? That’s really cool! A great fable in the modern age.

And speaking of the modern age, this game does a very good job of really making you feel like it’s set in a real world, if not the real world. Most of the time, when you think to yourself “oh, come on, [character x], just do this, it’s so obvious!”, they’ll do it. Whether it’s “try using your cell phone!” or something more exotic, it’s rare that the world feels “off” – which makes the supernatural elements of the game have a much better foundation.

Sat 08/08 1:23:49 AM Man, I really want to look at my menu screen to see what I carried over, but they don’t even let you access it for at least an hour. For now, it’s time for bed.

This is probably a smart decision on their part, since they’d have to completely disable things like “Persona”, “S. Link”, and so on.

Sun 08/09 1:42:05 PM The main character putting his hand (and head) through the TV is a pretty great “whoa!” moment early on. It’s interesting how it becomes so blase later on. “Oh, yeah, let’s go inside the TV on Thursday. Cool, see you there!”

Sun 08/09 1:43:48 PM It’s kind of a weird contrast between the realistic pseudo-suspense horror of the initial Midnight Channel discovery… and my teacher the next day wearing an Egyptian headdress with one of those cane thingies. I’m sure those things have names.

I guess it’s just called a “crook”. Or a staff.

Sun 08/09 1:45:23 PM Ah the quiz questions. Some of them are so easy (like this first one), but some of them are pretty much impossible without looking them up. I wish they’d done something to combat looking up the answers — like only allow ten seconds to respond, or something. It would have made the answering process less game-able without being too game-y.

Sun 08/09 1:49:26 PM I definitely like the progression of “Midnight Channel shows you your soulmate” to “Midnight Channel shows someone’s inner self”, and so on. Good stuff.

Sun 08/09 1:53:35 PM I’m pretty glad that the saga of Yosuke’s bladder begins and ends in this scene.

The less said about it, the better. I mean, sure, the need to urinate does add a certain amount of tension to a scene, but it mostly just makes Yosuke seem like an idiot.

Sun 08/09 1:54:11 PM So the first time everyone goes inside the TV, they fall a great distance and land on their asses. Does that happen every time?

I guess the answer to this is tied to “how can party members enter the TV by themselves without the main character?”, which is never really answered either. Teddie specifically calls out the MC as “the one who can bring people to this world”. I guess that actually means “the one who can bring people to this world, and then not be required to be around when they return”.

Sun 08/09 1:54:31 PM - I forgot about the chalk outlines of bodies on the floor of the TV set. Very cool environmental design in here.

Sun 08/09 1:58:01 PM I wonder how much the different dialogue choices trigger actual different dialogue. It’s hard to tell sometimes if all responses lead to the same “node”, or if some just have additional filler, or if some are different entirely.

Sun 08/09 2:00:21 PM So did they intentionally have Yosuke’s bladder be a big deal to try to distract from who the posters are showing?

The answer to this is “no”, since it’s answered as soon as the trio leaves the TV. So I remain mystified as to its purpose.

Sun 08/09 2:01:55 PM Having seen the other concepts for Teddie in the included art book, I wonder how different the tone of the game would have been if they’d used a more serious appearance. He kind breaks up the mood of this initial scene by looking so ridiculous.

I was going to link to images of his other concepts, but apparently they’re not available online — and I’m not going to violate copyright by scanning them in. But they were a lot more melancholy and strange than the one Atlus ended up using.

Sun 08/09 2:04:05 PM Chie’s performance isn’t very good. Kind of a shame that three of the five main female characters (Chie, Yukiko, and Naoto) turn in lesser performances than the men. Maybe that’s their anime roots showing.

Sun 08/09 2:07:40 PM Heh. The Amagi inn sounds similar to a place we stayed at when we were in Edinburgh. We could have used a hot spring after the day we went to the castle.

I’m referring to the “hot young daughter who’s essentially running the inn” aspect, and that we got rained on pretty hard during our visit to Scotland. Which I highly recommend, by the way.

Sun 08/09 2:08:15 PM Thank god there’s no “Tired” or “Sick” status in this game. What a pain in the ass that was in P3.

I mean, I get why they did it — to create a disincentive for players to just endlessly grind in Tartarus. But couldn’t that have been accomplished by not having the party get fully restored when they go back to the lobby, and getting rid of the “Tired” concept altogether?

Sun 08/09 2:09:35 PM - The silhouette of Saki's body hanging from the telephone pole is pretty damned creepy.

Sun 08/09 2:10:36 PM I had remembered the translation of this game being a lot better than P3, but playing it now, I’m not sure that that’s actually true.

I think what I was actually remembering was the voice acting being a lot better. Listening to some of Yosuke’s lines, they’re just as weirdly written as some P3 stuff, but his performance makes it all okay.

Sun 08/09 2:13:12 PM “The cause of death was some unknown poison”. Interesting how these rumors all turn out to be rumors.

Sun 08/09 2:14:56 PM Honestly, I just wish they’d named the main character and had the other characters say his name. This “Well…? What do you think…?” stuff is unfortunate.

Sun 08/09 2:19:18 PM I really dig the real-world considerations. Yosuke tries to tie a rope around his waist to protect himself, checks his cell phone for reception inside the TV world, etc.

Sun 08/09 2:19:52 PM Oh god, we’ve reached the five minute scene of “You’re behind this!” “No we’re not!” “Yes you are!” “No, you are!” “How dare you!” “You’re doing this!” “No I’m not!” “You are!”

I’m still not sure why this scene needed to be as long as it ended up. Basically, all they’re accomplishing is “Teddie thinks Yosuke and the MC are suspicious, and vice versa. Teddie is hollow inside.” But it goes on for quite a while.

Sun 08/09 2:25:42 PM “I’m Yosuke Hanamura, and this is my buddy.”

This is probably the worst line in the game for the “you can name the protagonist anything”. In pretty much every other circumstance that I can remember, they dance around omitting the name or solve the problem some other way. But here, the line I quote is the actual VO for the scene, while in the text box they replace “my buddy” with [firstname] [lastname]. I know it’s a tradition in the series to be able to name the main character and everything, but this just makes me lament the missed opportunity.

This tradition is particularly egregious in the latest Shin Megami Tensei game for the DS: Devil Survivor. It requires the player to enter a first name, a last name, and a nickname… but all three of these fields have a six-character maximum. While that’s plenty in Japan, it’s not at all plenty in English. I ended up having to name my character “Grant Robrts”, with the nickname “G-Unit”…which, of course, is how everyone refers to me in the game. Oh well.

Sun 08/09 2:26:09 PM Ah, the glasses. Sweet!

As someone who was eager to get his first pair of glasses (at age 23), I was pretty thrilled to see them used as a plot device in P4. It helps that all of the characters look like badasses with them on. Especially the main character, who looks pretty nondescript and weird without them.

Sun 08/09 2:27:22 PM “Who’s this Saki-senpai girl? Someone you know?” “That’s not important right now.” Kind of like the entirety of FF8.

This is Teddie talking to Yosuke, and while it’s not particularly problematic, I’m overly sensitive to it after just finishing Final Fantasy VIII with the lovely Virginia. Throughout that game, whenever anything out of the ordinary happens, the cast (and the main character in particular) will quickly dismiss it, with the excuse of “we can’t possibly understand what’s going on, so let’s not even discuss it and just continue as if nothing happened”.

Sun 08/09 2:28:55 PM The cutscene where the main character uses a Persona for the first time is pretty damned awesome. I actually went “YEAH!” when he whispers “Persona” and starts the ass-kicking. I may or may not have woken up my fiancée.

Although a lot of this is due to the fact that they wait a long time to have a Persona finally show up, and pack the first few hours with a lot of interesting story without much action.

Sun 08/09 2:30:38 PM Awww, man, my analysis data doesn’t carry over with New Game Plus? :(

This seems like kind of a crappy oversight. Yes, part of the initial playthrough was figuring out which spells were good against which enemies. But why do I have to do that again on my second playthrough? Maybe it was just too much data to carry over for some reason.

Sun 08/09 2:42:57 PM - The victory screen is very stylish, with the bright yellows, icons for EXP/money/item, etc. They've got a good UI team.

Sun 08/09 2:44:35 PM They shouldn’t have let Teddie say “Amazing, Sensei!” before he uses “sensei” for the first time.

This is one of the things that Teddie says when the main character levels up. Unfortunately, the explanation of why he calls the MC “sensei” (which is, of course, an easy way to never have to say his name) comes immediately after this fight. Which makes this VO a little strange.

Sun 08/09 2:44:50 PM “You are now able to create Personas up to level 2!” Wow, thanks.

Fortunately, I can buy Personas of any level, which I would do later. Unfortunately, I only finished my first playthrough with about 18,000 yen, so I didn’t have nearly enough to buy my über-Personas from the Compendium. I could go back to my last save and sell off all my items, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the best use of my time.

Sun 08/09 2:51:23 PM I really like the brief monologues that start with “I am a Shadow… the true self”. Of course, it helps that the “Shadow Self” battle music is probably the best in the game.

Sun 08/09 2:57:08 PM The first boss fight (”Boss Battle!”) is pretty well balanced. They give you just enough SP and HP to barely win.

Which is easy to do, since your options are very limited at this stage, without access to the Compendium, and so on. Later boss fights may have been just as expertly balanced, but with the wide variety of available strategies due to different Persona collections, it was hard to tell. Plus, it didn’t help that I didn’t really feel like I got the hang of fusing, etc. until nearly the end of the game.

And yes, that was a Bookworm Adventures reference.

Sun 08/09 3:00:08 PM It’s such a much more interesting plot in this game, and gimmick (people face their inner selves that they don’t share with anyone), and method of acquiring Personas, etc. Compared to P3, where it’s like “Yeah, we all have the ‘potential’, and we point these fake guns at our heads.”

Sun 08/09 3:04:49 PM The display on the TV’s around the big one is kind of creepy.

It’s not worth finding a movie of it, really. Basically, it’s just a slowly zooming shot of a field of flowers. It only serves to show that the other TV’s in the area are actually on, but on my second playthrough, I’m finding my eyes wandering a lot more during some of the more mundane cutscenes.

Sun 08/09 3:10:21 PM Okay, two hours in and I can finally access the main menu. Looks like my stats have all carried over. All 5’s.

Which enables some scenes that aren’t possible to see on the first playthrough, like the main character being more forward with girls, being courageous enough to stand up to people, and so on. I’m looking forward to more of those.

Sun 08/09 3:11:30 PM I never really bothered with buffs and debuffs until I got about halfway through the game — and didn’t really bother with trying to carry over good Persona skills until after that. So this will be interesting this time. Rakunda is definitely something to hold on to.

I kind of went overboard in the opposite direction when I was playing P3, to the point where I had Rakunda (lower target defense), Auto-Tarukaja (raise self attack), Auto-Rakukaja (raise self defense), and Auto-Sukukaja (raise self hit/evasion) on a bunch of Personas.

Sun 08/09 3:12:48 PM All the Max Social Link items carry over, too. I’m not sure what they do, since I can’t seem to wear them.

Sun 08/09 3:13:17 PM Ah, and I can carry 12 Personas at the beginning. That’ll be very handy.

Although it’s very strange that they enable things like this, but don’t carry over things like analysis data. Oh well, I guess I’ll just play with a FAQ open.

Sun 08/09 3:16:23 PM Interesting things here. First of all, being able to tell that the person is wearing a kimono on the Midnight Channel is a bit TOO obvious. Maybe it would have been better if they just said they had long black hair. Of course, that’s pretty much all women in Japan. So never mind.

Sun 08/09 3:16:54 PM Also, I like that the game’s like “here’s what happens if you try to interact with people on the Midnight Channel”. It’s good to establish the ground rules in a situation this weird.

Sun 08/09 3:18:03 PM Actually, I’ve found something that was better in P3 vs. P4: the Velvet Room attendant. Elizabeth is much cuter than Margaret.

I didn’t realize until after I was doing research later on that the two are actually sisters. Elizabeth also has a much more interesting personality than Margaret, although the “daffy person who’s not familiar with customs in the ‘real world’” archetype is pretty well-worn at this point.

Sun 08/09 3:21:48 PM At level 1, party members can take a mortal blow for me in battle… but the game doesn’t explain that if the main character dies, then the game’s over. Seems like a rather glaring oversight.

This is a pretty huge deal, and one that Atlus really should have conveyed to the player (via either a text pop-up or VO). Luckily, I found out about “main character death = reload” before it actually happened to me, but I imagine there are quite a few people who didn’t have that luxury.

Sun 08/09 3:29:37 PM As pun-loving characters go, I think Teddie is a wee bit more interesting than that dumbass from P3.

And his puns are better, too.

Sun 08/09 3:30:04 PM I like how Adachi is deliberately trying to throw as many theories at Dojima as possible to muddy the waters.

I confess that I found Adachi to be a little suspicious from the beginning, but never to the point where I thought he was the main culprit. Although the game masks his involvement pretty well, in my opinion.

Sun 08/09 3:30:54 PM That comic really was right on the money about that scene. Dojima: “Our perp… has to be someone in Inaba.” Oh, you think so, doctor?

Sun 08/09 3:34:16 PM I’m kind of shocked that a Google Image Search for “yukiko ‘lacy unmentionables’” turns up zero results.  Not even any fan art!  I guess Chie and Rise are the big attractions.

I’m not that creepy — Yukiko actually mentions her “lacy unmentionables” (with a gratuitous crotch grab for emphasis) in this scene.

I actually chose Yukiko as my only “girlfriend” my first time through the game, rejecting quite a few others along the way. That ended up being pretty damned disappointing, as the only time your “girlfriend” actually matters is during an event towards the end of the game.

Sun 08/09 3:35:08 PM - I like that we get to see Yosuke's casual clothes, but I wish they'd given him a "jammies" portrait to go with the main character (who I'm just going to refer to as "MC" from now on).

Sun 08/09 3:38:33 PM Oh, Yosuke. Your wallet chain is the only part about you I don’t like.

Well, okay, I also don’t like his battle with his bladder. But other than that, he’s great.

Sun 08/09 3:40:28 PM I still don’t know if I like the “you and Yosuke got arrested” scene (9:15). I like the idea of “shit, we’ve got important business to conduct, we don’t have time for this!”, but the execution was a little sloppy. It’s still better than most scenes in other RPG’s I’ve played lately, though.

One thing this scene shows off really well is how much a large animation team can add to the experience. Custom animations for Yosuke acting like an idiot really help sell the scene.

Sun 08/09 3:44:19 PM I confess to being a little disappointed that the antagonist was only responsible for two deaths in the entire game, but that’s probably because I’ve been conditioned by these games to expect antagonists that are trying to DESTROY THE WORLD OMG.

Sun 08/09 3:52:26 PM They go out of their way to explain some things that wouldn’t ordinarily need explaining – like “we’ll be too suspicious if we show up with a bunch of weapons, so we’ll hide them under our school uniforms!”

This does seem to contradict what I said earlier about them throwing in little details to make the story more realistic. But at this point, I’m kind of along for the ride, so I’m willing to allow for some conceits.

Sun 08/09 4:04:22 PM The game does a very good job of slowly explaining and introducing things, like not giving you the whole world map, slowly rolling out the part-time jobs, etc.

I tend to go back and forth on this issue. I still think the best way to handle it, even if it’s becoming a little clichéd at this point, is the “Abilitease” — give the player a wide range of skills at the beginning of the game to give them a taste of what’s to come, and then strip it down to the basics soon after. But in some genres and some cases, this is not necessarily the best way to handle things. P4 is one of those cases.

Sun 08/09 4:14:51 PM Two huge improvements over P3 immediately show themselves – being able to control allies during battle, and dungeons beside “Tartarus”.

The ability to control allies is a big deal. Not only does it prevent the player from playing exactly the way they want to, but it makes it so that you can’t tell when a party member gets a new ability.

Plus, I’ve played way too many games that feature one giant dungeon that’s divided into sections… and I almost never like it. The dungeons in P4 have great personality, music, and visuals.

Sun 08/09 4:23:05 PM I know that the Giant Bomb guys complained that no one ever thought to go “DON’T DENY YOUR SHADOW AND WE WON’T HAVE TO FIGHT IT”, but I like what Kanji says later about how you have to fight it yourself.

Sun 08/09 4:23:41 PM Man, the design for Shadow Chie is REALLY cool.

Sun 08/09 4:29:10 PM Chie’s voice acting is pretty good when she’s sad, but not so much when she’s not.

I guess the lesser performances aren’t that bad, but when you hold them up against Yosuke’s and Kanji’s, there’s really no comparison.

Sun 08/09 4:38:43 PM And that’s all for today. I’m really eager to start with the fusion and stuff, but the game doesn’t let you do that for a while, I guess. I think this will mark the end of the first post. Next time, I’ll be grinding for a while until I rescue Yukiko. See you then!

Mon 08/10 10:39:59 PM Man, the difference between Yosuke and Junpei is night and day, as far as main character friends go. Or was I not supposed to look at him as a friend? I could never tell. He was always just kind of a stupid jackass.

Mon 08/10 10:40:57 PM Huh, I’m glad I had the courage to actually say “Falling for me, huh?” and have everyone laugh about it. That was a pretty nice moment that I don’t think was possible the first time through the game.

It was initially a weird moment, where I chose an option that looked like me being a flirtatious jackass, only to see it turn into a “I was obviously joking” line. But this mini-scene between Yosuke, Chie, and the main character shows them as fast friends in a way that isn’t ever shown in a “regular” playthrough. I wish there were more scenes like this.

Mon 08/10 10:41:23 PM I guess I was lying about The Saga of Yosuke’s Bladder being over.

Thankfully it doesn’t ever come up again. Although honestly, I would be more tolerant of the “OMG HAVE TO PEE” element of the game if it actually came up later, or was a consistent aspect to his character.

Mon 08/10 10:43:02 PM I had forgotten that if you don’t rescue someone by the time the fog appears, THE GAME ENDS. Maybe I’ll look up what actually happens on YouTube.

This is explained better than the “main character death equals end of game”, but not by much. I wonder if they were intentionally a little vague about this issue so players would experience it and realize just how dire the situation is. Of course, I never had to worry about it because I tried to save the people as soon as I possibly could, but…

In fact, I wish I’d received a better reward for rescuing them quickly.

Mon 08/10 10:43:31 PM I like that they came up with new quiz questions for the “English” class. Some of them were pretty hard.

I’m not able to find examples with a quick Google search. But basically, in the Japanese version, the English class featured basic questions that would be fairly easy for a native speaker. In the English version, there are lots of questions about indefinite articles and the like. I mean, there are more difficult topics than indefinite articles, but that’s the only one I remember right now.

Mon 08/10 10:46:19 PM Oh, square button. You really are as wonderful as that woman in the Shopping District says.

In P4, pressing the square button while not in a dungeon brings up a teleportation mini-menu that lets you easily travel from screen to screen. And not to harp on P3 more than I already have, but that game really could have used that functionality. The woman in the Shopping District goes on for a few boxes of text about how awesome it is. And while I don’t necessarily like that kind of breaking the fourth wall in a game like this, it’s hard to dislike it when she’s so, so right.

Mon 08/10 10:46:54 PM Is it weird that after playing Persona 4, I kind of want to visit a small Japanese town when I travel there this November? And, like, explore a high school? That’s not creepy at all, right? Wait, where are you going?

Mon 08/10 10:48:39 PM I agree with the Giant Bomb guys when they said that the finer points of Persona fusion (or, really, any points) could have been better explained. Considering how useful it is to fuse powerful Personas with lots of skills, I feel like I missed out on a lot of ass-kicking.

Unfortunately, unlike the “main character death = end of game” concept, this one would take longer than a single text box to explain, so I don’t know how you’d do it. Unless there was an option on the main menu that was, like, “Fusion Tutorial” or something. I’ve seen stranger things.

Mon 08/10 10:50:15 PM Oh, interesting, so it looks like I can summon all the Personas in my Compendium?! That’s going to seriously unbalance things. Although I don’t have enough money to summon the real heavy hitters. Not yet, anyway.

It doesn’t necessarily unbalance things as much as I thought it would, though, since the main character is only one person. Yosuke and Chie still take thirty hits to kill sewer rats while the MC is spending 128SP on Megamabufudynamo. I still need to get the money to summon Trumpeter, though. He’s got some serious game.

Mon 08/10 10:50:35 PM Whoa! I just accidentally hit L1 and discovered that… every Persona has its own little multi-sentence blurb describing it. Wow.

They’re pretty well-written, too. It makes me wonder how many of them are real legends and which ones Atlus just made up. Writing back story like this was one of the more fun elements of Space Siege, although I imagine none of it actually made it into the final product.

Mon 08/10 10:53:00 PM I think I’ll hold off on paying to summon these guys for now, and just stick to the low-level Personas for a bit.

Mon 08/10 10:55:52 PM “Materials are useless sitting in your inventory, so there’s no reason to not sell them to Diadara.” Yeah, except for that one quest that requires 10 Thick Hides, or something. Jerks.

Yeah, so everyone who’s reading this and hasn’t yet played the game (which I imagine is not a significant percentage), for god’s sake, hang on to all those Thick Hides that you collect. This quest went the entire game unfinished because I accidentally sold off all of mine. Which is really kind of annoying, since I’m pretty sure it’s the only quest in the game that you can mess up like that.

Mon 08/10 11:01:16 PM Okay, I lied. I’m summoning Ose, so I can hopefully wreck some Shadows up in this… castle.

Although my reign of terror only lasted until a few levels into the castle. Part of the terms of me deciding to play through the game for a second time was the assurance that I’d be able to annihilate everything in my path. If that’s not the case, I don’t think I can do it again. At least not so soon.

Mon 08/10 11:03:18 PM I’m not sure if I like the names of items in this game, like “Goho-M”, “Second Maid”, etc.

Mon 08/10 11:22:16 PM Aww, man, I don’t have any chest keys? That would have been a reasonable thing to carry over.

I’m not sure how far back the tradition goes, but it’s still a little irksome to me. And since the names don’t even signify what the items are, it’s even weirder. Although I suppose even the mighty Square Enix has the same “problem” — the petrification status is cured by the “Gold Needle”, and so on. Maybe I just need to relax.

Mon 08/10 11:13:06 PM I forgot about the mesages that you hear every time you reach a new floor. It’s weird — the, I think.

Especially since one of the few things that can only happen in the second playthrough is THE REAPER appearing if you open chests. Come on, Atlus, don’t you want me to see your optional boss? And get slaughtered by him because I don’t have any good Personas yet?

Mon 08/10 11:28:15 PM Party members calling for heals

These last four notes were taken after my laptop blue-screened, so they’re a bit terser than usual. This one is in reference to Yosuke getting triggered to ask for healing after we finished a fight with him at less than 30% health or so. It’s a nice touch, especially considering that it’s easy to forget about party members’ condition after fights sometimes.

Mon 08/10 11:31:44 PM Very different SP-wise

I was referring to the difference between Persona 3, where your SP is automatically restored when you return to the entrance, and P4, where early on in the game, SP is the only reason to go back home. It helps to sell the idea of taking your time to finish a dungeon, not rushing into things blindly, etc. It’s also a little frustrating towards the beginning when you just want to hurry up and save people.

Mon 08/10 11:34:38 PM Soccer this time

The ability to join a sports team is one of the first things to unlock. Last time, I chose basketball, which just ended up being the saga of Kou and his adopted family. Boring. This time, I’m going to choose the soccer team, as I’ve heard that Daisuke needs help with the ladies. I’ve got the courage to hook you up, man!

Mon 08/10 11:36:54 PM Walking to school vs. O hai

In Persona 3, every day at school would begin the same way — the main character would be walking towards the entrance, when suddenly a “friend” of his would notice and call him over. I was never really understood why this happened, since all the characters live in the same building. “Oh, hi there, guy who sleeps in the room next to me! Fancy meeting you here, when we’re never more than twenty feet apart, like, ever!” Needless to say, I prefer the small town vibe of P4, with everyone running into each other on the way to school because there are no other roads.

And that’s going to be it for now, since my friend Josie has borrowed my Persona 4 disc. I’m looking forward to getting it back and continuing this endeavor, but it’ll be nice to take a break.

Thanks for reading. Now if you haven’t bought the game yet, go do it.

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So it was with some trepidation that I opened the three-disc (!) envelope from GameFly that contained Star Ocean: The Last Hope. I had heard good things about it from a friend, and I was in the mood for another JRPG after Persona 4 treated me so well. But was I going to lose interest like I did with its predecessor?

The answer is “no” — I lost interest much, much quicker.

Thanks to KaddyGamer for his Star Ocean: The Last Hope YouTube playthrough, which provided video evidence for several observations below. Now let’s get to it!

Tue 11:30:38 PM Let’s DO this, Square Enix! After eighty-two hours of Persona 4, I’m not afraid of you!

And after about four hours of Star Ocean, I’m still not afraid. In the meantime, I’ve also been giving Persona 3: FES another shot, after abandoning it at about the three-hours mark back in 2007. It turns out that I would have been better off just playing through Persona 4 again. Or maybe I should finally cave and try Blue Dragon? Tales of Vesperia? I don’t know. The bar has been set pretty damned high with P4.

Tue 11:31:02 PM I’m not wild about you showing scenes from what appears to be the destruction of Earth in your pre-main menu opening cinematic, though. Not cool!

This is something that I really don’t get with games — RPG’s in particular. I’ve already bought (or rented) your game. At this point, I would guess that at least 99% of people who buy RPG’s know something about the game before they begin playing. So why show a montage of your cutscenes at the beginning?

I mean, I know that this is nothing new. Most movie trailers give away the entire movie in three minutes. But this is like buying a DVD and then having a trailer for the DVD play once you start the movie.

Tue 11:32:40 PM The “World Republic Federation”, eh? That must be the short version.

The Star Ocean series is usually pretty good about establishing jargon and seamlessly integrating it into conversations. But the initial use of “World Republic Federation” was an exception. It felt like someone saying “United States of America”.

Tue 11:32:55 PM Dude, Africa’s not messing around! They’re launching nukes all up in South America’s grill!

It’s always interesting to see how different franchises deal with the lesser developed continents in the future. In Space Siege, I made one of the five evacuation ships (the Soyinka) depart from Africa, and named it after Akinwande Oluwole “Wole” Soyinka, the first African to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Just one of many tiny details that were a lot of fun to come up with for Space Siege, even if it never actually appeared in the game. But let’s not go there.

Tue 11:33:10 PM Why isn’t there any dramatic music playing over this opening cinematic?

I started to wonder if this was a bug after a while, as many of the opening cinematics had no auxiliary music.

Tue 11:33:41 PM The “WARP SUCCESSFUL” vignette was pretty cool.

At approximately 5:58 of this video, that is. I couldn’t help but smile at the joyous pseudo-NASA engineers rejoicing at the message on the screen. Good camera shake, too.

Tue 11:35:16 PM : "How long are you going to keep treating me like a child?" I guess about as long as you're wearing a pink ribbon in your hair and dressing like a waitress.

Tue 11:35:55 PM Really nice lighting in the cutscene. The lip-syncing? Not so much.

The lip-syncing itself wasn’t that bad — at least as far as matching up with the VO. But their facial animation in general was not particularly good.

Tue 11:36:29 PM Ah, overly complicated battle music! I should have been expecting you, seeing as how this is a Star Ocean game. I wonder if Motoi Sakuraba did the soundtrack.

I’m referring to the battle theme from the second Star Ocean game, which has the rather awesome title of “STAB THE SWORD OF JUSTICE”. Specifically, the breakdown at around 0:48 sounds like someone did a lot of coke and then rolled their elbows on a keyboard. The main battle theme for Till the End of Time was just as… intense, but not quite as spastic.

Tue 11:37:49 PM I still can’t believe the main character’s name is “EDGE MAVERICK”.

One of the all-time great RPG names. And by “great” I mean “not great”. I’ve already covered this extensively on Twitter. And by “extensively” I mean “pithily piggybacking on a Mystery Science Theater 3000 joke”.

Star Ocean has a history of going off the deep end with main character names, though — in Till the End of Time, we had “Fate Linegod” (rechristened as “Fayt Leingod” in the U.S.)

Tue 11:40:31 PM This is a very complicated opening battle tutorial. I wonder if they wouldn’t have been better off spreading it out among a bunch of battles. I also wonder if I’m going to never feel in control of combat in this game, just like the PS2’s Till the End of Time.

See below.

Tue 11:42:39 PM Not wild about the English voices so far. I wonder if I’ll get to change that setting.

The answer to this was, regrettably, no. Even if I hadn’t just finished Persona 4 — which featured the best voice acting I’d heard in an RPG since Final Fantasy XII — the English actors in The Last Hope would still have been terrible. I also had heard from my boss that it actually gets worse over the course of the game.

Tue 11:45:07 PM Heh. The “Blindside” concept seems like it’ll make combat feel even more chaotic. Not exactly what I was looking for.

And it didn’t really get better. I got a little better at executing them later, but once combat progressed beyond the first few “real” battles, I found I was spending more time trying to execute the perfect blindside than actually fighting.

Tue 11:50:09 PM I am just completely not getting the “Long” Blindside. Not a good sign.

This was another problem, although again, if they had introduced these concepts over the course of real battles, it probably would have been easier to “get”.

Tue 11:52:01 PM Not good at all. If I jump into the wall, my animation “sticks” and I can’t move for three seconds.

Considering the history of Star Ocean and bugs, I shouldn’t really have been surprised by this. But in the opening battle tutorial? Yikes.

Tue 11:52:19 PM If I thought I could actually perform well in combat without doing this tutorial, I’d skip it. But somehow, I doubt I can.

This turned out to not be true, which was disappointing.

Tue 11:56:37 PM “How do we make enemies lose sight of a character?” Well, maybe if you told me which direction to do your stupid Blindside move, I’d have an answer for you.

Wed 12:00:33 AM Aaaaaand I died in the Battle Simulator. Do not want.

Wed 12:02:57 AM I really like the LCARS-style animating textures on the floor of the battle simulation.

I swear, I’m not really that much of a Star Trek nerd. Not that there’s anything wrong with Star Trek nerds. But in case you don’t recognize the term, here’s what I’m talking about.

Wed 12:03:14 AM And I also like the “Rush Combo” thing where you have to enter commands to do team attacks. Very FFX-like.

Although I quickly forgot about the ability to do the super attack things, because of:

Wed 12:05:10 AM And there’s a “bonus board” that offers meta-bonuses for combat… with four types of gems that can fill it up, and the gems can merge into big gems, and you only l… JESUS ENOUGH ALREADY!

I think they introduced a few too many new combat variables this time around. Or, at least, too many for me.

Wed 12:05:41 AM I really prefer the way Eternal Sonata handled battle tutorials. Except, well, all the dialogue lasted about an hour for each one. So like that, only more reasonable.

For an example of this, see the 1:35 mark of this video.

Wed 12:08:56 AM I think you should have given me an achievement for finishing your battle simulator.

Considering how freely other games seem to give out achievements these days, The Last Hope was awfully stingy. I only unlocked 1 out of its total of 50.

Wed 12:09:07 AM And again, no sound or music in space. Is that intentional? It seems weird.

Before you e-mail me, I know that sound doesn’t travel in space. But with entertainment, you have to take certain liberties. I think the Battlestar Galactica “re-imagining” solved this problem well by making things mostly silent, but still audible.

Wed 12:10:23 AM I hope our space uniforms in 2087 are as cool as these look.

Wed 12:10:41 AM Stop casting the “Lightspeed Kenny” guy. He can’t not sound like an archvillain.

Otherwise known as Michael McConnohie. I intentionally didn’t cast him in Space Siege because his voice was too distinctive. Of course, then I cast Richard Epcar as one of the main characters, so maybe I should shut up.

Wed 12:11:08 AM OH JESUS CHRIST SHUT UP. After Persona 4 voice acting, this is just an abomination.

Wed 12:11:57 AM : Oh god, the UI is... bright and busy.

Wed 12:13:09 AM LIKE: How World War III happened. Very nice.

I don’t remember what it was, but a quick GameFAQs search turns up this: “The third global military conflict in Earth’s history, fought in A.D 2064 between the World Republic Federation and an alliance of opposing nations after a fracturing of views over space-development rights. An initial attack with electromagnetic weapons designed to disable information networks and paralyze urban areas triggered a malfunction in unmanned drone bombers, causing them to launch nuclear missiles at cities. The chaos that prevailed over the next few hours resulted in the widespread use of weapons of mass destruction in retaliation, devastating the planet’s environment and putting the human race in danger of total annihilation. A cease-fire agreement was signed between both sides two weeks later in the interest of preserving mankind, marking an official end to the war.”

Wed 12:13:19 AM DISLIKE: How scrolling too far to the bottom resets the text window to the top.

Totally don’t understand UI decisions like this one. If you hold down the “scroll down” button (or direction?), the view resets to the top of the text after a very brief delay at the bottom. Why would anyone ever use that “feature”?

Wed 12:14:30 AM I’ve always loved the incredible level of detail that Star Ocean games have — specifically, their “dictionaries”. Coming up with all this stuff must be a lot of fun… at first.

I certainly enjoyed doing it on Space Siege, although none of it ever saw the light of day. You can see some of it at http://grantroberts.com/work.

Wed 12:17:17 AM LOVE: The “Synopsis” section of the menu. More games should have this. Love it.

This is essentially just a brief summary of the game so far. In addition to providing a valuable resource to someone who hasn’t played in a while, this is also useful to get the developers’ take on what actually happened.

Wed 12:17:41 AM Especially when I’m too busy wrinkling my nose at the voice acting and taking notes to pay as close attention to the cutscenes as I should.

Wed 12:18:24 AM Ooooo, “Battle Trophies”. I like it. Looking forward to collecting these.

They’re kind of like mini-achievements, which is good, since regular achievements are pretty hard to come by. Plus, each character has their own 100 “battle trophies”. It’s a pretty awesome idea — one of the few that I found in my admittedly limited time playing this game.

Wed 12:21:58 AM Wow, I can rename the main character. But I don’t want to, Square Enix. You’ve made your bed.

I don’t really get why games with voice acting let you do this. Well, okay. In Dragon Quest VIII, I guess the series had a history of the silent, nameless protagonist, so having the other characters call him “guv” worked. But EDGE MAVERICK talks all the time. So replacing his name doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Wed 12:26:20 AM Hey, cool. Space bathroom and shower. Where are the three seashells?

The legacy of Demolition Man lives on.

Wed 12:28:29 AM : How exactly does one sit in these chairs?

Wed 12:30:41 AM Oh, this voice acting is going to be a problem. I don’t know if I can do this.

Wed 12:31:26 AM Okay, I changed my mind. I want Earth to blow up.

Wed 12:31:58 AM What are you standing in front of, girl? A green screen?

The above entries were all in reference to the introduction of “Welch” (which you can, but probably shouldn’t watch at 4:36 of this video), which pretty much singlehandedly soured me on the game. The voice acting and characterizations were already pretty bad, but this was beyond the pale.

Wed 12:34:17 AM And what are you wearing, exactly, “Captain Almedio”?

He’s also in the video I just linked. I can understand wanting your space heroes to look cool and distinctive, but considering how much effort they put into maintaining a veneer of realism in the Star Ocean series, some of their character designs were just ridiculous.

Wed 12:35:35 AM And the parade of godawful facial hair continues. Although I guess if you look back at the Civil War, there was some pretty horrible facial hair there.

There are no images of “Captain Grafton” that I can find, which is probably for the best. Sufice it to say that he had a spectacular mustache. I think he’s at the tail end of the video above.

Wed 12:38:43 AM Why was that post-wormhole 180-degree camera spin necessary? Urk.

Upon rewatching it (at 2:05 of this video), it’s more like a 720-degree spin. Still… urk.

Wed 12:41:59 AM This is a very intense, story-rich cutscene… that is significantly undermined by the captain’s face not budging an inch while he’s barking out orders.

The cutscenes in general suffered greatly from the dichotomy between their technical detail (which was amazing) and, well, the rest of it. Timing, animations, etc. were nowhere near as good as that found in, like, Vagrant Story.

The “captain’s face” issue starts at about 4:30 of this video.

Wed 12:43:13 AM I guess it wouldn’t be a Star Ocean game without a crash landing on an undeveloped planet. So will I be spending three hours here or forty?

I’m referring to Till the End of Time again here, of course. I could never tell if I liked that game’s structure or not — you start on one planet, unexpectedly end up marooned on another for five hours, and then spend the bulk of the game on a third planet. It was pretty surprising, and I liked that the game wasn’t just zipping from planet to planet like Mass Effect / KotOR, but the game’s universe was so rich with detail that I wanted to explore more locations.

Wed 12:44:14 AM Why do I have to switch to “run” mode every time I’m navigating an area? What possible purpose could that serve?

This was another horrible decision. Maybe I just didn’t play through enough of the game to see what the point was of having to “walk” every time I enter a new screen? I don’t know. But still. It’s 2009. Let me navigate through your areas in a consistent way, please. If Final Fantasy XIII does this, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Wed 12:46:34 AM “Crowe F. Almedio” sounds like an anagram for something.

Wed 12:48:01 AM Here are some: “Decimal Woofer”; “Reclaimed Woof”; “A Mediocre Fowl”; “Deface Oil Worm”; and, of course, “Camel Firewood”.

All found through http://wordsmith.org/anagram/, of course.

Wed 12:53:24 AM Wow, that's some serious HDR. Or bloom. Or whatever.

Wed 12:55:04 AM Very cool animation on the post-use save point.

Wed 1:01:04 AM Think how much cooler it would have been to pick up this sword and start fighting giant alien insects if the “Battle Tutorial” hadn’t already shown me using one.

Wed 1:02:00 AM Okay, so my first “real” fight went really smoothly, and doing Blindsides was much, much easier. That whole initial “Battle Tutorial” section should not have been there — or, at least, it should have been opt-in instead of forcing me into it.

Wed 1:03:21 AM This is strange. Is it a bug? After the fight’s over, and the victory screens have disappeared, “Edge” (still not comfortable with it) is just standing there with nothing else on the screen. I guess I’ll push “A”, then…

I never did get used to this. I guess they just wanted you to have an opportunity to look at the characters posing before going back to the map? But it still felt like innovation for the sake of innovation.

Wed 1:08:02 AM Ah, sweet! Interruptions! I mean, the voice acting is pretty wretched. But at least they have an interruption system.

At 8:25 of this video. Man, I’d love to work on a game that actually had working crosstalk someday. It feels like one of the last frontiers to conquer in video game dialogue.

Wed 1:10:14 AM I kind of don’t want anyone to join my party. The combat was pretty fun by myself. I don’t want to have to worry about the bow-wielding fairy girl with her armored pink high heels.

Wed 1:11:24 AM I think it would have been pretty cool if the two characters were unable to fit through a door because their giant sword and bow blocked their exit.

Wed 1:13:17 AM Well, it’s just starting to get good, but I’ve got to go to bed. I think once we get rid of all the annoying characters (I give the annoying mustache superior officer about 10 hours, 15 tops before his ship is destroyed), the cutscenes should be a lot more bearable. For now, though, it’s save point time, followed by bedtime. Good night!

Wed 9:51:18 PM This game certainly is gorgeous, I’ll give it that. The water is particularly nice.

Wed 9:54:09 PM “Diligence! Diligence!” Um… virtues of the Gargoyle race from Ultima VI! Concepts that Persona 4 probably handled better than you!

This is one of the things Reimi says as a victory quote. Not very good translation, especially considering how colloquial her character is in most other situations.

Wed 9:57:25 PM VA: “It looks like a s****y Wii game blown up.” I think she’s exaggerating a bit.

This is my fiancée, Virginia. I’m not really sure why she thought the game didn’t look good, as I think it’s one of the more impressive games I’ve ever played, visually.

Wed 10:06:34 PM Reimi: “I’m so glad everyone’s safe!” Uh, did you not notice your childhood sweetheart lying in a pool of his own gore over there?

Wed 10:11:19 PM I kind of like how an enemy has moved off the path so I can’t get him. But I wonder if that’s going to get annoying later on.

Wed 10:32:42 PM Starting to feel like I’m a little more in control of combat, if only because I’m jumping around a lot more.

Wed 10:42:30 PM I was just about to complain about the female characters always having lower defense than the males, but I see that Reini has a 50% higher defense than I do. Never mind, I’ll shut up.

Wed 10:57:08 PM There has to be another way to get my health back, right? I’m completely out of blueberries.

There wasn’t. This whole first area seemed like it needed another two or three balancing passes.

Wed 11:03:07 PM I’m getting a ton of “battle trophies”, but no achievements yet. Talk about stingy.

Wed 11:04:34 PM Weird decisions on map markings. Every place you can jump up (or down) is marked, but not which direction you move in. There are symbols that aren’t explained anywhere. And yet, so much of the game IS explained in other areas. Just strange.

Wed 11:08:24 PM I feel like the bonus board breaking should be accompanied by a glass-smashing sound. Much like the one that surely accompanied someone smashing my rear passenger vent window this morning.

Wed 11:18:27 PM Ugh. So I gave the guy lying on the beach a wide berth so I could keep exploring… and I trigger the cutscene anyway. Booooo.

Wed 11:20:16 PM I like the two kids wordlessly saluting the dead guy. Nice touch.

Wed 11:20:36 PM Oh jesus, elf ears? Seriously?

Wed 11:21:46 PM Although I like that the goddamned elf prince has a translator. Another nice touch.

The above three comments start at around 3:10 of this video. Again, technically beautiful cutscenes marred by unfortunate character decisions.

Wed 11:26:27 PM Another combat that felt completely out of control. Apparently he had armor that I was able to break? Sure, I guess, but why did it take me until 90% of the way through the fight to break it? Was it by design? Or was I just doing it wrong?

After watching KaddyGamer defeat this boss (at the end of the above video), I realized that yes, that’s the way the fight was supposed to go. I guess I’m just used to fights like this featuring a character shouting something about not attacking while the dragon is in mist form, or waiting for the tail to lower so the machine doesn’t retaliate with its laser attack, or hitting the orbs so they change from red back to blue, or something.

Wed 11:27:33 PM Very cool ittle device that EDGE MAVERICK uses to store the meteor bit.

Wed 11:27:54 PM “Faize Sheifa Baleth”? TO THE ANAGRAM SITE!

Wed 11:29:48 PM “A Sizeable Heath Fife”; “Azalea Beef Fish Hit”;

Wed 11:30:01 PM And, of course, “If Fez, Sheathe Labia”

Wed 11:35:36 PM Dude, if I don’t get to fly that “Sol” thing by the end of this game, I’m going to be pissed.

As seen at 2:40 of this video.

Wed 11:39:13 PM Definitely like that you can set individual skills to “off” in battle so as to not waste MP.

Wed 11:42:17 PM Every time I hear “Maybe now I can be some help to everyone”, I shake my head in exasperation. Strong female characters, please! Even the innkeeper and the secret coward in Persona 4 weren’t emo martyrs all the time. MAN UP, REIMI.

Thu 12:02:15 AM That’s it for tonight. This game seems like it’s going to have some significant pacing issues, but we’ll see, I guess.

Yes, we will see — after this stretch, my patience grew very thin.

Thu 11:14:17 PM Come on, the shop screen doesn’t show me how much of an object I already have? What is this, 1988?

Thu 11:18:59 PM Very cool interior in the Exploration Base. It’s so nice to see a sci-fi world where nothing is DARK or GRITTY.

And that’s how my time with Star Ocean: The Last Hope ends — once I got back to the base, I just kind of lost my momentum. Maybe I just didn’t have any interest in continuing to experience the bad voice acting. Maybe it’s because I was distracted by other games (namely, the Final Fantasy IV: The After Years episodes). But I don’t think I’ll be going back.

This is the second JRPG this year that I’ve just kind of lost interest in. I made it through more of Eternal Sonata, but I felt the same way about that game that I did about The Last Hope: after Persona 4, you RPG’s are going to have to work a lot harder for my affection.

See you next time.

So I’ve got an upcoming trip to the east coast. I don’t know how I keep ending up going back to Northern Virginia every summer, when one of the main reasons I moved away from the area was to get away from Northern Virginia summers. But I do not argue.

Since this is the first of five trips of 2,000 or more miles in the next five months, I decided to swing by GameStop to see if they had any DS games for the trip. Specifically, I’ve heard good things about Dragon Quest V and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. So after picking up my fiancée’s shoes from the shoe repair shop, I paid a visit to our local overpriced mall.

Dragon Quest V. Wait, IV. What'd I say?

I didn’t see either of the games on the wall at GameStop, so I figured I’d ask the clerk — who had just finished extolling the virtues of how awesome it is to save $2 by purchasing the used version of a game, then sell it back the next day and buy something else. Used, of course.

As of this writing, I have never lost my cool and yelled at employees who suggest this — after all, they probably have no idea that neither developers nor publishers make any money off used game sales. But it’s still pretty frustrating.

Anyway, I successfully talked the customer out of Lost: Via Domus and into Fallout 3, and proceeded to inquire about the availability of my two targets.

First of all, Devil Survivor was sold out. The closest copy? 20 minutes south in Burien. Strike one.

However, they did have a copy of Dragon Quest. So the employee took his unfortunate blond dye job to the back to grab it for me. He comes back, box in hand, and proceeds to ring me up. I swipe my card and am about to sign when I notice that he’s grabbed a copy of Dragon Quest IV, and not V. Strike two.

I point out that he’s brought me the wrong game, at which point he mumbles something about not being able to read properly, and some other such nonsense. He then tells me to sign for the purchase anyway. Uh, no, I don’t think I’ll be doing that. Strike three.

He continues to cancel the transaction, but not before turning the signature capture device around, taking the little pen, scribbling a fake signature, and hitting “Accept”. Strike four, five, six, and seven.

I mean, sure, retail is hard. Maybe it’s easier to to a refund of something that someone’s actually signed for. But you don’t just do that, right? Or is my inner old man showing?

So I assume I’ll have a refund on my statement the next time I look. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll have one more reason to hate GameStop on Monday morning.

Oh, and they didn’t have Dragon Quest V, either. Apparently it’s been discontinued. Helloooooooo, Amazon.