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| I have never seen so many loading screens, and at the same time them last so little. |
Dear Internet,
Well, I
was wondering how soon it would be before I got a "game over." I think it happened around the six hour mark,
or maybe the seven hour mark. I am not
sure. What I am sure about is the forty-five
minutes of gameplay I lost because the game does not like to give you
savepoints among other things. I can
understand a game having only a few savepoints to make the player more
conscience about their actions. Rougelike
games have this aspect hardwired into the gameplay. They are made so that the player losses
either all their data or a large chuck of it because of a lack of consistent
save points. That is understandable, but
only to a point. The point that I get
upset about is when the game decides that added game mechanics that had been
left out are suddenly vital to forwarding the game while at the same time
punishing the player for not learning quick enough. That is a bit to say and should be broken up
a bit.
I want
to recall my review about "Brutal Legend." In it, I mentioned a simple thing: do not
teach in the middle of a test." That
means that a game should not try to instruct the player about a game mechanic
while at the same time testing the player either on that same mechanic or some
older one. "Persona" does this
with its demon card mechanic. About five
hours in, the game decides to let me on in a little secret. I can talk to the demons that I am fighting
and get soul cards. I can then merge
these cards together and gain access to stronger Persona, or magical creatures
that fight for me if you want to simplify it.
Since up to that point I had absolutely no trouble in defeating anything
that came my way, I decided to keep banging my head against the wall, I mean
attack head on with a few magic attacks scattered here and there. However, eventually I came across an enemy
that had an attack that could take out half my team in one go and leave me
struggling to stand back up. Doing my
normal thing could not cut it and forced a game over. Forty five minutes down the drain.
Why do
I mention the two together? Is it because
at that point I lost all the calluses that my head banging worked up? No, it is because the game pretty much was
saying that I needed to start grinding for soul cards and Personas because it
was attacking with methods specifically targeted towards players who did not change
up their team's mechanics. I do not mind
this too much in some games. Games are
supposed to make the player think about different ways to solve a puzzle or
overcome an obstacle. But when they begin
to attach a forty plus minute penalty because the player is given a challenge
that they cannot prepare for, I call unfairness. This example of loss time is not even the
worst example. Twice now, I have noticed
that the amount of time between available savespots was about an hour and a half. If I had died for any little thing, that
would have been an hour plus down the drain.
Maybe I would not mind it if the game did not have so many things lined
up to shoot down the player.
There
are the interactions with the enemy for starters. I said you can talk to the demons to get them
to hand over soul cards. To do this, you
have to select one of your five team members and select one of their four
unique options. Each of these twenty
options will interact differently with the demons. The demons themselves have different properties
like happy, strong, weak and so forth. You
are supposed to think about how the various interactions would appeal to the
demons and make them side with you.
However, the way it works out is like a cross between Russian Roulette
and Old Maid. Each of the various demons
acts nearly completely different than those that have similar
characteristics. While "Sing"
might work on one "Happy" demon, it will have the opposite effect on another
"Happy" demon. Sometimes using
"Sing" on the same demon will have different effects. There is supposed to be some sort of
influence during the fazes of the moon, which is an in game time keeper, but the
game does nothing to tell you about what is the best time to do so. Is a full moon better than a new moon? There is nothing to suggest either because
the game is extremely frugal with its instructions. So the player has to almost choose at random
from the twenty different interactions hoping that they are not going to incite
the demon. This is where the Russian
Roulette part comes in. If you make the
wrong interaction, which is more likely than a neutral interaction or a
positive one, the demon will get upset enough that something will occur to affect
the battle. The character might be
stricken with terror and cannot move or something to that effect. What is much more likely to occur is that the
demon will become enraged and have its stats boosted. Afterwards, the demon will begin to scrub the
floor with the player.
At that
point, unless you want to risk coming across an enemy that you might tick off by
dancing within its vicinity, the best option is to grind for a soul card right
next to a save and healing spot. Between
never venturing more than five spaces away from a save spot and trying to sing
to demons, I finally was able to chance getting two soul cards. Then I was able to merge them and get a
really strong Persona to fight by my side.
I go to equip the demon thing and what happens? The game will not let me equip it because it
is too strong for any of my characters.
What is the point of even letting me get the Persona if the game will
not let me use it? The point of finally
figuring out how the blasted system works and getting it to do what I want seems
to be moot because the game decides to hand me things it will not allow me to
use. This is as bad as
"Borderlands," which would hand you countless weapons that you could
not use until you leveled up. You would
hold onto that gun until you could use it, only to find that the randomly dropped
common weapons by that time greatly overshadowed the special gun you wasted an
inventory space for hours. "Persona"
is perhaps the inverse of that plus more.
Instead of spending an hour waiting to get to use a weapon, you spend an
hour trying to get a weapon you cannot use and then spend another few hours
waiting to use it. From what I read
online, you might end up with a Persona that none of your characters can use,
but I am unsure of that.
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| Perhaps it is all a subtle "Blue Velvet" reference. |
The
whole thing just feels like a tumbling mess of problems. You can easily get to the point that you are surrounded
by enemies with no added Personas because the game makes no push for you to
make use of the side game mechanic until it is too late. The difficulty curve comes out of nowhere
come post-factory levels. It was only
after seven hours did I start to actually think seriously about the fights
because I began to worry about losing. Suddenly,
the dungeons become like truly pointless mazes with no point in going down the
dead ends, the kind meant for mice.
Sadly, the cheese at the end of the maze is not quite worth it, and the
maze is not fun either. The story gets
boring rather quickly and begins to completely ignore some aspects.
For
example, after fainting early in the story, the school nurse, who is actually a
doctor, clears you as medically fit. A
teacher, who does not believe the expertise of a medical doctor in inspecting
whether or not a person is medically fit, tells you and your group to go to a
hospital. In the hospital, you are placed in a position
to either aid a woman trapped under a bookcase or leave her. I tried to help her and was forced into a
battle. After the battle, the woman
disappears and is not even mentioned.
Nobody talks about her and the issue is brushed under the rug, or
bookshelf in this case. The rest of the
story seems to be threadbare. Demons are
escaping into the world and Guido Sardenia is the cause. The protagonists believe that killing him
will stop the demons. This makes as much
sense as saying that killing an arsonist will stop the wildfire. Perhaps the rest of the story will elaborate
upon the various ends that the characters are aiming for, but I find myself not
even caring about either them or the story.
I will
try for one more day to get through this game.
If nothing causes me to even want to continue to play this game, I might
have to drop it in favor of continuing the Backlog. This is a last resort, I assure you. I do not want to skimp on what I said I would
do. However, this game truly is trying
to test my patience between slow and boring gameplay that is either too easy or
too broken and a story that is only half there.
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| Did I mention that experience is based on how useful the character was in battle? |
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
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