Persona 4: The epitome of dumbing down

• Compass wrote on 2014-12-21 17:27
  So I just got Persona 4 and I'm not enjoying it at all. excuse the grammar mistakes, this was done hastily as a way to vent.
  
  The Persona series started of as a spin-off of the mainline Shin Megami Tensei, unlike Shin Megami Tensei, the Persona is focused more on character development.
  
  The character in the Shin Megami Tensei series devices were used a plot devices, they're not there to for friendship, they tag along with you because they want to help you uncover what's going on and as the story progresses save the world on how they see fit.
  
  Persona on the other hand embraces this, the focal point of the franchise has always been character development. In order to reach the biggest audience they could Kazuma Kaneko and Cozy Okada made the focus on(or at least start with) high school students due to high school being the most common place where people (start to) change.
  
  The first three Persona games handled character development differently, there were no social links which is a good thing which meant character development was mostly focused on the party. The most recent Persona games introduced social links which is where the dating sim element comes in. Social Links introduce character development for people who mostly don't play a role in the "main story", while you will have social links with your party members, most of them don't really know about what you're doing and don't really keep in contact with you unless you improve their social links. Through these social links you discover a problem the social linkee is facing and you help them through it changing their character in some way. And of course if you decide to start and complete a social link with your party member you will know more about them and see their character develop along with what's going on in the "main story".
  
  I'm not a fan of social links, while I do find some of them entertaining the concept of them is something I'm against. Social links due to the fact that it limits what the series is supposed to stand for due to a person having a certain amount of time to complete the recent/Hashino Persona games. Odds are you're not going to complete all the social links in one run, I guess this is supposed to encourage re-playability but the thing is that the only freedom you have in game are social links and upgrading your stats (courage, smart, forget the rest). It'd be a better experience if social links were removed completely.
  
  As I said I don't like social links, I think they were meant to be there to show character development to people who are too dumb to see character development in a the standard way. It seems Persona 4 doesn't care about character development if it can be called that or sees it's fan as morons due to how it presents it stupidly simplistic character development between party members. In Persona 3 you saw your character develop as you progressed you played the game, in Persona 4 the character development between the party members last like 2 minutes.
  
  So this is how character development in persona works. Think of shadows as someone's negative side in this case
  Shadow Party member will talk about the negative things that they don't want to make known public, this can be negative or doubtful feelings about anything really to how they view their friends, to what they they worry about in their daily life,etc
  The party member will of course deny this since its things they don't want to hear and/or be announced publicly and will say something along the lines of "you're not me!" then a boss battle with ensue. Not counting the length of the boss battle.
  After the boss battle the party member will talk to their shadow and accept their flaws. It should be noted that the flaws listed by the shadows are the only way that you first learn about them contributing to terrible character development in Persona 4.
  The whole process last 2 minutes at most and is the most laziest form of character development (as I said if it can be called that). This is not how it works.
  
  Don't let the ESRB misguide you to think this a mature RPG, it's not. It's a kids game that's trying to be much more mature than it is.
  
  There's also the dumbing down of the gameplay itself. Overall Persona 4 is without the weakest Persona game. Just like Shin Megami Tensei IV, the game itself gets praise from people who are new to the series and due to the "B-but I'm new to the series and I really like it! You're wrong for not liking something I do since I have good taste!" mentality people defend this.
• GODZILLA wrote on 2014-12-21 19:46
  Personally I don't mind social links. I would however like them to go back to the kind of crazy storytelling they had with 1 and 2. Innocent Sin's probably my favorite cuz it escalates into this insanely awesome thing with Nazi's and aliens and different timelines convergence or something and it's whacky and kinda stupid but I love it.
• Fabian wrote on 2014-12-21 23:54
  Everything seemed good until I read your last paragraph. You what, mate? SMT IV is the best thing ever. Another word and there'll be an e-fight on your ass.
  
  I knew Persona was different than SMT, but I didn't think it'd be this much. Mhmm, I wanted to to get it on with Isabeau, so I guess it were a Persona game, it'd have been possible?
• Compass wrote on 2014-12-22 00:15

  Quote from GODZILLA;1258177:

  Personally I don't mind social links. I would however like them to go back to the kind of crazy storytelling they had with 1 and 2. Innocent Sin's probably my favorite cuz it escalates into this insanely awesome thing with Nazi's and aliens and different timelines convergence or something and it's whacky and kinda stupid but I love it.

  
  Sadly not going to happen. Cozy Okada left Atlus after Nocturne, after that Hashino was in charge of directing the Persona games which is why the first three games are different than the last two main persona games
  
  
  

  Quote from Fabian;1258205:

  SMT IV is the best thing ever. Another word and there'll be an e-fight on your ass.

  
  It's not. It's considered to be the weakest mainline game and one of the weaker games in the entire MegaTen franchise for good reasons, although music is really good which is probably the reason I kept playing it.
• Fabian wrote on 2014-12-22 02:52
  Explain. This one might have been my first SMT game, but others who have played previous games have found it good. Only newbies complain about the lack of moving sprites, or that their character doesn't appear during the fight. So I would like to know why you find it bad.
• Lan wrote on 2014-12-22 03:04

  Quote from Fabian;1258226:

  Explain. This one might have been my first SMT game, but others who have played previous games have found it good. Only newbies complain about the lack of moving sprites, or that their character doesn't appear during the fight. So I would like to know why you find it bad.

  
  
  I think he's complaining about difficulty and story. While still decently hard at times SMTIV is easier and more forgiving than the other games. Story wise if you compare SMT III to IV it's obvious that III's story is deeper while IV is more by the books? Anyway I still enjoyed IV a lot.
  
  Oh yeah, I think he talked about hating the fact that he can easily be one shot and that it is kill them before they kill you type of deal.
• Fabian wrote on 2014-12-22 03:47

  Quote from Lan;1258229:

  I think he's complaining about difficulty and story. While still decently hard at times SMTIV is easier and more forgiving than the other games. Story wise if you compare SMT III to IV it's obvious that III's story is deeper while IV is more by the books? Anyway I still enjoyed IV a lot.
  
  Oh yeah, I think he talked about hating the fact that he can easily be one shot and that it is kill them before they kill you type of deal.

  
  
  What. It's just difficult early on (I didn't even know what the fuck to do), then once you get the hang of the turn system (turn system is god), you can steam roll pretty much anything by adding Repel, Drain, Null, and getting turns like no tomorrow. I mean, until you reach Beelzebub or the DLC bosses and they spam Almightys because your party is immune to everything (really surprised me). ;D
  
  I think I'll have to play the other games, because I don't think anything can go deeper than SMT IV Neutral route (like +40 more hours of gameplay than the other three routes o_e).
• Compass wrote on 2014-12-22 04:16

  Quote from Fabian;1258226:

  Explain. This one might have been my first SMT game, but others who have played previous games have found it good. Only newbies complain about the lack of moving sprites, or that their character doesn't appear during the fight. So I would like to know why you find it bad.

  
  It's not a bad game, it's still good but that doesn't change the fact that it's one of the weaker games in the entire franchise.
  
  First of the story is weak, this is considered the biggest complaint. Compared to the past games, and MegaTen quality it's just not that good. While the first few hours are interesting as the game progresses the story becomes less and less interesting and grows more dull. As someone who's been into MegaTen for a very long time it felt weird and disappointing.
  
  Which brings difficulty into this. like the story quality, the difficulty in the beginning is great. Once you get the hang of the turn-press system you start doing pretty good and it's pretty much the difficulty the game should have stayed at, but it didn't. The game difficulty actually became easier as you progress to the point where it's incredibly easy to one shot monsters at the start of late early game/early mid-game. It felt like I was playing with cheat codes on, it just ruined the experience, the only battles that were (somewhat) difficult were the boss battles.
• Fabian wrote on 2014-12-22 07:11
  I found the story very engaging, so I suppose it's a matter of opinion in this case. I personally found it very interesting the way it was set up; medieval fantasy kingdom where people fight demons, then the book rebellion starts, and people start turning into demons, which I thought was bullshit. just something the government was doing to keep people from reading books. Then there was the whole Naraku maze and going lower and lower and turns out we were on the sky all along, and then and then and then....lots of stuff. I really liked it.
  
  The thing about getting easier as you progressed was a given, after all, you get that one thing that recovers MP at lv20, which takes care of your dependence on healing stones and revival things. I might be biased since to me it's the best 3DS game I've played so far (haven't played Fire Emblem), but I still think it's an amazing game. I still can't find a flaw big enough to put it down as the weakest of the bunch. Any suggestions on SMT games better than this one so I can make a decision on its worthiness?
• Compass wrote on 2014-12-22 21:39

  Quote from Fabian;1258245:

  I found the story very engaging, so I suppose it's a matter of opinion in this case.

  
  It's not really an opinion that it's generally considered to be the weakest mainline game in the series.
  
  

  Quote from Fabian;1258245:

  The thing about getting easier as you progressed was a given, after all, you get that one thing that recovers MP at lv20, which takes care of your dependence on healing stones and revival things.

  
  No, the MP regen was not an issue. It was found in the other games within the MegaTen franchise, it's nothing new, and the games that did have them still provided great difficulty. The game relies on one stat through the entire game, and that's magic, while that proved to be fine early game the issue became bigger and bigger as the game started to throw easier and easier enemies as you progressed. It's a balancing issue, not an issue presented by a mechanic.
  
  You're allowed to like the game, if you like it that's good, but the general opinion of the game by MegaTen veterans is that it's the weakest mainline game. Opinions from people who are new into the games are not going to change that. What I'm trying to say don't be a Lan.
  Lan is someone who got into the series recently, and like I said in my initial post, he's someone who recently got into the series and likes SMT IV and can and will not take any negative criticism. Any negative criticism is a form of attack and disliking a certain mechanic/element/part of the game is viewed as completely hating the game to ignorant fanboys like Lan.
  
  It's people like Lan that are cancer to fanbases, disregarding actual flaws even from people who been a fan of the franchises for longer than he has. Saying comments like this or that I wasn't allowed judge SMT IV for silly reasons providing nothing constructive to say.
  
  
  

  Quote from Fabian;1258245:

  I still can't find a flaw big enough to put it down as the weakest of the bunch.

  
  But earlier you said "I knew Persona was different than SMT, but I didn't think it'd be this much." have you played any mainline games at all? You have to play the games in order to rank them, and that post made it seem like you never played a mainline game at all.
  
  

  Quote from Fabian;1258245:

  Any suggestions on SMT games better than this one so I can make a decision on its worthiness?

  
  Shin Megami Tensei 1, 2 Nocturne, and Strange Journey are all the superior games, but if you want superior games outside of the mainline games Digital Devil Saga, the first four Persona games, Soul Hackers, Last Bible series, etc just avoid garbage like Giten and DemiKids. SMT IV is a good game to get into the franchise, but don't go one expecting every mainline game to play like or be like SMT IV, all these games have their own unique "personality".
• Lan wrote on 2014-12-23 03:17
  ಠ_ಠ Are you trying to start something?