Dear Internet,
I am
not so small that I cannot admit when I am wrong. It would behoove me to say that my
observation is inaccurate when it is such.
During today's five or so hours of "revelations: Persona," I
came across a number of things that contradict my previous letters to you. Some of them flat out make me rescind a
criticism, while others only alter the criticism a minor amount.
For
starters, one of the big things I did not like was the exclusion of a world map
to navigate the overworld. I said this
because opening up the menu and navigating to the "Map" option would yield
nothing. However, there is indeed a
world map included in the game. It is
even fully labeled. To bring it up I had
to use one of the trigger buttons.
Sadly, since I have to play the game without any included manual, I am
relying solely upon the instructions included in the game. The game does not tell you that you have the
ability to look at a map, so I am assuming that the instruction manual
explicitly stated as such. If the
instruction manual does not say as such, then the criticism against the game
stands just as firm as when I said it.
However, the fact that the game does nothing to let the player know
about such a feature at any part of the game is still a strike against it.
 |
| At least I leveled up quite a bit by wandering an hour around and around. |
Then
there is the game mechanic where the player recruits the demons to join the
player. I mistakenly used the term
"soul cards" throughout the previous entry. The correct term is "Spell Card." Either way, the game still handles
interacting with the demons as being awkward and unreliable. One moment dancing is pleasing to the
demon. In the next moment, the same demon
thinks you are mocking it by dancing.
Only after grinding for these cards can the player begin to get a feel
for what would be a successful interaction.
By spending a little time grinding today, I was able to find a few
things that the game does right concerning this mechanic. The foremost is the various interactions that
the demons respond with. Until they
begin to repeat, which is not occurring too much right now, each demon has a
rather individual personality. What
makes it entertaining is their reactions to your prompts. When one of my male characters begins to hit
on another male demon, the demon will reply with a rather timid response wondering
if the player character is sane or just plain weird. Some of the responses can be downright funny
and sometimes worth exploring the various interactions. The best thing about the mechanic that I
discovered today was that trying to interact with demons whose spell cards you already
have in your possession flee upon being talked to. On top of that, they will sometimes give the
player a bonus item. The reason that I like
this feature is that when the player is spending time to grind for cards, they
can clear away the monsters that they do not need for the battle. If an interaction goes sour and the demon is
enraged, the player is only then forced to battle the one monster type that he
failed to interact instead of having to fight all the monsters in the battle. It is important to remember that when an
interaction goes sour, the player can lose a whole turn because of it or get a
status effect. Being able to clear away the
unneeded monsters lowers the ante that the player is forced to make.
I am
not sure if I mentioned money yet, Internet.
At the end of a battle that the player won by defeating the enemy
through fighting, instead of talking to the demons, money is awarded. Sometimes demons will ask for some cash. The player can give it to them to placate the
monsters. Other than that, I am more
than ten hours in, and I have just finally found a store to buy things to spend
the three grand that I have accumulated.
The problem is that when I go to buy equipment for my characters, the
store has no way of informing me as to whether or not the equipment will be
better or worse than my equipped items.
This means that I am buying blind and cannot know if the item I am
buying is better or worse without writing all the information down to determine
the truth. I would have to write down
all the stats for the equipment I currently have and cross reference that with
the items in the store. It gets worse because
not all items can be equipped to all the characters. Some characters can only wield certain
weapons. Again, I am buying rather blind
and cannot seem to find vital information about the items until I have already
bought the equipment. Because of this, I
am sticking to whatever I pick up along the way.
There
are a few things that I liked about today's playthrough. RoboRat, the cause of my forty-five minute
loss of time, apparently chose not to use "Nuke" on me. I am not sure if this is because I mixed p my
equipped Persona or because I was able to kill it before it got a chance. Since I had a much easier time against the
mechanical rodent, I was able to enjoy the background music that played while
the battle was fought. The game has a
nice selection of music so far, at least when it decides to try. Short of the hospital's creepy screaming
track, the dungeons are echoing hallways where footsteps sound like a cross
between cymbals and clogs. The Velvet
Room song and those that play in the stores do a great job of creating a unique
setting within the game.
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| Now this is satisfying. |
So
there you have it, Internet, a few rescinded criticisms, a few new ones, and a
dash of praise to make it all bittersweet. The story is still rather hollow and more than
a bit uninteresting. The fact that it
continues to progress now that I make use of different Personas is about the
all that makes me continue to play. The
game is still handing me more Persona combinations that I am unable to use than
those that I can, which makes the game annoying rather than difficult. Let us hope tomorrow is a bit more fun.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
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