Because I always enjoy watching fans clash about this in other gaming sites. Which is your favorite of the two "popular" Persona games and why?
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Because I always enjoy watching fans clash about this in other gaming sites. Which is your favorite of the two "popular" Persona games and why?
It's a genuinely tough decision but I always weigh in on Persona 3 as the better game. I prefer it, though the two are both so fantastic that you couldn't go wrong either way. The story in P4 was a bit more convoluted, but the characters were charming and the way you needed to acquire each new party member (I'll keep that vague for those who haven't played) is awesome.
Still, at the end of the discussion, P3 gets my vote if only because Tartarus was so damn good. I loved how closely it felt to Nocturne while integrating all of the Persona 1 & 2 quirks. Plus, MITSURU :love:
While I think P3 is the better game, I like P4 more. The stories are equally good, even if 4's a bit more convoluted. The themes are also both pretty profound and well thought/out, but the characters of Persona 4 just take the cake and make the whole ride a blast.
Also, gameplay-wise, P3 is better, but 4 does three individual aspects better. One - character Ai is now optional. Two: female social links do not default to romance. Three: the TV world is soooooooo much better than Tartarus. A bunch of smaller dungeons is way less tedious than one 300-floor monstrosity that's the same throughout the whole game.
They are about equal in my mind, honestly. I pretty much like the aspects of both of the games that have already been mentioned above. I can say I vastly preferred the TV World over Tartarus for the most part.
I liked the cast of both games about equally for different reasons. P4's cast annoyed me less throughout the game, but I did kind of like that the team in P3 didn't necessarily all become the closest of friends like in P4. I do like that you can have social links with all of your team in 4; and like White Wizard said, I'm happy that you can do a friendship route for the girls. That being said, I kind of wish there was more to the friendship route. You get a little more interaction when you become romantically involved, and that bothers me a little.
The characters and plot I felt were handled better in P4 then in P3 so it goes to that game in that regard.
Combat I felt take a step forward with the changes to the knock down system, and a step back with the reduction of Physical attacks to just one type. In the end I think the step forward was bigger then the step back though, but I do hope to see a return of three physical attack types.
As for the dungeon crawling, I think the different level designs are much more well done in TV world then Tartarus, and didn't feel like they just designed one small set of rooms and then re skinned them for all the floors.
I know Wolfy here liked being able to split the group to cover ground faster, though to be honest I don't miss that function at all. I was way to paranoid of party splitting in that game. :p
I liked P4's premis of giving certain dungeons a bit of a gimmick, though it wasn't really that impactful most of the time.
The Social links in P4 were also better done I felt, and I loved how the links with your party members reflected in battle. Great touch right there. However P3 does still hold the single best Social Link with Sun, that one is just so damn awesome.
In almost every technical regard, Persona 4 does better than Persona 3. It's not perfect (minor things like the reduction of physical attacks to a single type, or the change to not being able to split up the party if you wanted [why would you want to?]), but it's far better, from a technical standpoint. The dungeons are better designed and better integrated with the story. The Social Links have more options than just romance (if their writing had been practiced enough Persona 3 would have featured this too).
However, I like Persona 3 far more. Mostly because of the scope of the story. Persona 3 is, from the start, a battle of human emotions and feelings. It's a war against the Shadows, and an exploration of their world. Persona 4 is a murder mystery, with some supernatural elements. I love the individual character dungeons, but I can't help but feel that the characters just never actually awakened to the world around them.
I love the story focus in Persona 3, because I really like exploring the huge, world-shattering things about the Persona world. In Persona 4, we only get a tiny bit of that near the end, and afterward, the characters go back to their lives. Part of why I loved Persona 4 Arena's story is because the Investigation Team finally realizes how much more is out there, and that they're a part of something much larger than just themselves or their town.
I rank them
P3P
P4
P3 FES
Dunno where I'd put Persona 4 Golden in there. I wonder if it would feel overwhelming if you hadn't played the original?
I voted for P2 just because I'm hip and you're all posers.
Seriously, it's the Final Fantasy VI of SMT. You all should appreciate the fact all you're doing is arguing which is better, FFVII or VIII.
That's not really a fair comparison. VI and VII are very alike. 2 and 3 are not. P3 is a reboot. VII is just a next step.
Persona 2 is a fantastic game. I just don't really think of it as a Persona game. I think of it as a Shin Megami Tensei game. While the lore and backstory might be incredibly important to setting up the world of the Persona games. But the games themselves went through such a radical shift that I feel that the actual Persona series didn't really start until Persona 3. The feel of the games, the themes, the gameplay, even the world. The games shifted so radically that it created an entirely new franchise (and one I prefer overall).
I love P2 myself (hence the funny option for it) and it's easily my second favorite in the series. I don't necessarily agree that they feel more like MegaTen games but maybe that is because it was my first Persona game and thus P3 and P4 (P4 moreso) feel more out of sync with the franchise for me.
Persona 3 is my favorite, largely because it has one element than none of the other entries possess: Being User-Friendly. The game has lots of anti-frustration factors built in and I feel every element really blends in with each other. I don't even like RGDs (Randomly Generated Dungeons), but P3 does a beautiful job of making Tartarus less of a chore. Unlike NeoCracker who has trust issues, I appreciate the features that allow my party to attack enemies without me or explore the dungeon separately because it makes the whole experience less of a hassle and makes grinding for levels or quick trips to the next check point an utter walk in the park.
The Persona series has never been good at dungeon design, the only game that is good about it was the first one and even that is largely because the dungeons involve a few more puzzle elements besides "wander around until you find the exit/boss" which is the design of P2-4. The mainline MegaTen games tend to be better at it as this graph shows.
Attachment 52946
I mean the themed dungeons of P4 are novel idea but quickly lose their luster once you reach the second floor and the lack of the frustration reducing options and the introduction of some other poor design decisions makes exploring P4's dungeons a chore, especially when grinding or going for the bonus bosses.
I like P3's Social Links better as well, largely because I always felt the party member ones from P4 were redundant since they were basically just talking out what we supposedly resolved in the plot and also because most of P3's social links start off somewhat mundane and then get progressively more weird and interesting as you level them up. I felt P4's were largely the opposite where they start off really intriguing and then get progressively more mundane the farther you get in. Not to mention P4 is a bit lazy and decided to change the Velvet Room side quests into two different social links that have little story. With all that said, I will concede that Dojima and Nanako are probably the two best written social links in the series, but I still find the P3 SL's to be more memorable.
Battle system-wise, I've always been a bit disappointed that P3 featured a watered down version of SMTIII/DDS' Press Turn system because it largely lobotomizes the defensive game. P4's new "stagger status" largely puts a bullet in it and leaves it dead. Why must I hit the enemy twice now to knock them out and make them lose a turn? I mean how is that useful? I'm just wasting more SP on a game that makes restoring it even more difficult and I lose all of my defensive options on lucky critical hits landed on bosses with no real weakness. It just seems like with each new installment we fall farther away from the Press Turn systems excellence. :cry:
The other issue is that reducing all physical attacks to one element largely short changes the versatility of the cast. One of the beauties of P3's cast is that they are all designed in a way where they can be useful in most circumstances, especially when you place the Melee element in there. P4's downsizing and some of it's wonky character builds leave characters like Chie and Naoto in strange no-man's lands cause Naoto is largely useless in a boss fight due to her reliance on instant death magic and expensive Almighty spells, while Chie is a bit of dead weight in a dungeon cause most of her skills are melee and single target. In P4, I largely ended up using the same team throughout the game, maybe switching Yukiko for Teddie, and leaving Chie and Naoto on the sideline. In P3, I'm usually basing my team build on the enemies I'm facing or even who needs to be leveled and it's all set up in a way where no character is completely useless. Hell I've beaten the game half a dozen times and I've never used the same party. Granted, I understand that P4 Golden remedies this issue a bit by allowing you further customize the party but honestly, this should have been there from the get go people.
The biggest gripe I do hold against P4 is its awful economy system. Shadows drop pitiful amounts of yen, jobs give pitiful amounts of yen, and loot only gives good amounts if you grind to high heavens for it. Chests no longer give yen unless you get a certain arcana card and so ultimately you never have enough play money to do some serious fun in the Velvet Room or keep the whole team well equipped, not without sacrificing valuable social link time to do another money grind. It's bearable in the beginning but gets significantly worse as the game progresses. I'm still disappointed in having a pitiful Compendium completion for this game 60-70% whereas other MegaTen games including P3, I average 85-95% completion.
While I love both casts of characters and both stories I still prefer P3s because I feel they had to deal with some serious trout whereas P4's cast is largely happy-go-lucky about everything. This becomes incredibly obvious in P4 Arena as the P4 cast spends most of their time goofing off and wondering why the "power of friendship" is being challenged. P3's characters? Spend the whole game acing like that guy you see in bars who just stares off in the distance and mutters to himself "I've seen trout ". The happy cast of P4 and their heavier sugar-coated mantra of friendship largely undermines the seriousness of the plot of P4 for me. I mean it's hard to tell it's a story about kids stopping a serial killer who uses a portal to have people murdered by their dark side from a slice of life anime series. P3 on the other hand has a more interesting party dynamic, they don't necessarily trust each other at first, they turn on each other, and they all bear witness to serious betrayals, party member deaths and death of loved ones. The team is scarred by the end but soldering on and they have a bond that I feel is a bit more realistic than the cool kid clique of P4. It's not that I don't like P4's cast or story, I just like how P3 handled it's themes better and it's story had a more profound affect on me.
The Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series was started as an exploration of psychology. This is why it was called Persona, after the mental mask people wear as theorized by Carl Jung. The first few games, however, didn't really stand apart in this area. Certainly, they dealt with some psychology, but except for the world lore, I felt it never really grappled with psychological issues. The events and powers may have a new name, a new mask, but they are still the same sorts of things that would happen and occur in the standard series. We face Philemon and Nylarthotep, but we don't really get a grasp on the true nature of their conflict.
Persona 3 shattered this, utterly. It is a psychological thriller almost all the way through. The Social Links, mechanics largely cannibalized from dating sims, were used to allow for relationship and psychological exploration with each character. Personas are summoned by placing a gun to one's head. The standard zombies and demons were replaced with Shadows, another term stolen from Jung's psychology, and the shapes and forms of the Shadows were imbued with incredible meaning and symbology.
Perhaps more importantly, the entire central conflict of the game takes a massive shift towards psychological exploration. From the opening minutes of the game, we are given the core of the work.
Memento Mori
Remember that you are mortal, and that you will die. This theme resonates throughout all of Persona 3. Every character in your party is touched by death. Yukari's father. Ken's mother. Junpei and Chidori. Shinjiro and Akihiko (or Akihiko and Miki, take your pick). Mitsuru's father. Koromaru's owner. Aegis and Minato's parents. Every character has to work through it and come to terms with it. The psychological question of how to accept death as a natural part of life is the very core of the game. From the opening words to the final, drifting departure of Minato, death is everywhere in this game.
This game was a radical shift from Persona 2, and not just in terms of the Social Links and gameplay. This was when Persona actually came into its own and became a series about psychology, which is what it was always meant to be. We finally see just what the conflict between Nylarthotep and Philemon really is, when we see aspects oh humanity's collective psyche taking form and fighting itself.
Persona 4 continued this. The theme is, again, given to us in the opening.
I reach out to the truth.
This game is full of the psychological questions of understanding oneself. My biggest problem with the title is that the main plot doesn't actively address this question until the very end.
Yet that is, in a way, oddly fitting. The entire game is a study of not accepting things at face value, of not taking the easy way out. To look past the mist of lies and see what is really there. Why then would the question of the plot be easy to see?
It is undoubtedly there. This game deals with it in nearly every Social Link, and every dungeon. The entire way a Persona is awakened in this game is by accepting what is truly there, what one truly is.
Persona, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. They are fantastic games, no doubt. But they never really fulfilled the goal the games had from the beginning of being a study of psychology. There wasn't enough there to differentiate them from Devil Survivor, Digital Devil Saga, or any of the other spinoffs. It wasn't until Persona 3 that I feel the series became its own series, rather than a spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on most of this, technically I would argue that P3 has the least to do with human psychology of the series.Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyblade
Persona 1, the SEBEC story arc deals with a machine powered by a forsaken child that has allowed her splintered consciousness to create a parallel world that is a mismach of her ideal version of reality and some of her darker wish fullfillments. Hell the demons in the story are simply manifestations of her mind and not true demons like MegaTen, the party seeks to help their friend Maki's whose consciousness has split into the Freudian psychological trinity of Ego (Ideal Maki), Super Ego (Mai), and her Id (Aki) of whom the party must face and eventually get them all back into the real Maki so she be healed and accept her fate.
In the Snow Queen Arc of the game, the school is transformed into three towers where the student body is allowed to let their unconscious desires run free as we watch bullies get tortured and other inhuman acts of depravity.
An underlying theme throughout P1 is the cast dealing with change from being a student and becoming an adult. Maki's illness makes her fearful for the future, Nanjo worries about being a worthy successor to his family company and his own guilt of admiring Kandori, Reiji deals with his own identity issues as he has a bad rep that is made worse by the actions of his brother.
Persona 2, the game completely revolves around the two groups dealing with both the "Masks" society has placed on them, and their own dark sides. I mean the Shadow selves debuted in P2. JOKER in both incarnations is a being that grants hidden desires and the whole mess with rumors was caused by Nyarlathotep betting that humanities own self-destructive desires would be it's downfall and surprisingly this has been the main theme of the series in relation to the supernatural threat that appears.
Tatsuya deals with his resentment with his father, his fear of the future, and later on, his guilt for his failure to save his reality.
Maya deals with her own father issues, the trauma of being nearly killed, and forgiving the people who hurt her out of love.
Lisa deals with her isolation due to her non-Japanese heritage, the stigma it gives her in society, and the fear that her feelings for Tatsuya is a coping mechanism for all of this. Not to mention we once again have resentment issues against her father.
Eikichi deals with his body image issues, hides his true self and his less than desirable past behind a fake personality of absolute confidence and badassness, his fear of his father and the fact he has to hide his true dreams from him, and his own insecurities created from years of being picked on as the "fat kid".
Jun has to deal with both his parents being messed up and the resentment it caused, his trauma of being bullied by the other kids and thinking his weakness caused the death of his "Big Sis" and the betrayal he felt from all of this.
Yuki still has to deal with her confidence issues in relation to what she wants out of life. She's in love but can't bring herself until it's too late to really act on those feelings.
Katsuya deals with both his sense of justice in the face of a world that doesn't gel well with it as well as his estranged relationship with his brother Tatsuya as well as his own dealing with their disgraced father and the stain it left on the family name.
Ulala deals with her own self image issues, her bad relationships, and her jealousy of Maya who is the less than ideal woman but still gets guys flocking to her.
Baofu is dealing with his past and the death of his partner. He's almost hit bottom due to his obsession for revenge and has lost most of his shred of morality to achieve his goals.
Hell even Nanjo and Eriko are still dealing with coming to terms with Kandori and the P1 MC by P2's time. Not to mention their own insecurities about being a worthy heir to the Nanjo group or dealing with the pit-falls of being a celebrity.
The original Masked Circle was created by a group of kids trying to use their playtime to run away from their problems and it all goes out of control from a supernatural phenomena. The rumors given life in IS are more silly and fanciful because they stem from what adolescents and teenagers want, while the rumors from EP deal with more adult fears.
I mean half these character arcs are pretty much re-used for P4 and a few for P3.
Eternal Punishment explains the real conflict of Philemon and Nyarlathotep to the player, the tow of them are "gods" created from the collective unconsciousness of man one representing mankind's positive elements and the other it's negative qualities and their conflict is simply trying to prove which side of human nature is the strongest. I mean the whole game is one giant character analysis of both it's cast and the human spirit. I can't think of a game that does a better job of really getting into everyone's head.
P3 certainly deals with death but it's theme in my mind is really more about the choices we make in being aware of our mortality and realizing we can't take them back once they are made, which is beautifully portrayed by the game's calendar system. Death is a catalyst for the choices some characters make but in truth it's now how the characters handle the death that is the problem as it was losing their reason to fight or shaking up the issues of it. P3 does a great job but I feel it was more subtle than it's companions in really exploring it's psychological themes whereas the rest of the series is not.
For me, the issue I do have with P3 and especially P4 is that I feel the games have made the series much too soft in comparison to their predecessors. The games spend too much time in the light of the social masks that people wear whereas the earlier games were more about making the uglier side of humanity a physical thing that has to be dealt with, and then showing that the fight is an eternal one. This is partly why I do like The Answer for instance cause I felt it really brought P3 full circle inline with P2's themes. P4, as I said, has just become too soft, I prefer the series to stick to it's darker roots, it's why I prefer the more melancholic P3 to the overly idealistic P4.
So, because it's about analyzing people's choices and coping mechanisms with death, it's less psychological? I'm not sure that argument really makes sense. It's a psychological exploration because it's about how the characters cope with death and mortality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno
It may be more "subtle" in its psychological exploration, but I also feel it is far more thorough. Yes, it is more "subtle", if that's how you like to term it. I prefer to think of it as grounding the setting a bit more in reality. You don't get a sudden cataclysmic shift to the entire world (again, a standard SMT trope, probably one of the single defining traits of the series). Instead, we catch sight of a war that has been going on for the duration of human existence. The characters are stepping into worlds that run parallel to ours, but are apart. We see them coping with an expanded view of reality, rather than a complete reshaping of it.
I think that the later games did a better job of embodying the negativity of humanity, and portraying the psychological powers at work. While there is still a supernatural element, almost everything is expressed in terms of the psyche. The realms of human thought and emotion, bleeding into our own. Rather than monsters overrunning and ravaging the world, we see Shadows, our own negativity, and how that literally tears humanity apart from within. It doesn't destroy the world around us, it eats away at us, at our minds and souls. Persona 3 does, I think, the best job of expressing this with the way Tatsumi Port Island is consumed by the Lost and gives in to despair as the game progresses further along, or how the Lost ebb and flow as you fight the Shadows. It's not humanity's negativity destroying the world with magic, it's humanity's negativity consuming that which makes us human. The fight between Philemon and Nylarthotep isn't some cosmic wager between gods (which is what I feel you get from Persona 2), it is a literal manifestation of the psychological struggle between two disparate halves of human nature. The positive and negative aspects of our souls at constant war with each other, merely by nature of their own existence.Quote:
For me, the issue I do have with P3 and especially P4 is that I feel the games have made the series much too soft in comparison to their predecessors. The games spend too much time in the light of the social masks that people wear whereas the earlier games were more about making the uglier side of humanity a physical thing that has to be dealt with, and then showing that the fight is an eternal one. This is partly why I do like The Answer for instance cause I felt it really brought P3 full circle inline with P2's themes. P4, as I said, has just become too soft, I prefer the series to stick to it's darker roots, it's why I prefer the more melancholic P3 to the overly idealistic P4.
Yes, it's a more "subtle" analysis, because it's actually an exploration of the psychology of the situation. It's a study in how characters act and react, how opinions change and how emotions drive and shape us. How we cope with death, how we change and relate to it when we see it. When we face it, and how we hide from it. When we explore the Midnight Channel, we're exploring the layers of the human psyche. When we fight the Shadows, we're facing off against the negative aspects of humanity. Just from the shapes and names of Shadows and Personas, you can perform a character analysis of the individuals who bear them. Every Social Link, every character interaction, carries weight and looks at the themes in different ways. It's a far more complete look at the human psyche.
Persona and Persona 2 were great, but I still feel like they were just more Shin Megami Tensei games with a new name. Most of the SMT series dealt with exactly the same sort of questions as they did. The plot may have a new cause, be driven by a new force, but that's about it. You can find psychological statements and points to analyze everywhere in any of the SMT games. ATLUS has never shied away from addressing such things. But I feel that it isn't until Persona 3 that the game does a good job of making that the core of the experience.
To elaborate, the issue here is that with the exception of Akihiko or Ken (concerning his mother) the times the characters deal with death is usually resolved by the characters realizing they have bigger fish to fry. Psychology is not interested in the choices you make as much as it's interested in why you make your choices. The issue with P3 is that while I will certainly agree it shows some powerful moments of characters making well thought reasons for their choices, it just as equally chooses to hand wave it as something silly as "saving the world".Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyblade
I disagree about P3 doing this completely different, the war itself has only been fought for a little while but also that the struggle with both the Dark Hour and TV World are both still an outside force that is having a terrible affect on humanity and leading to it's soon to be annihilation. P3 does eventually devolve into the usual "oh my god this feels like the end of the world" and I would argue even before NYX arrives. Likewise, I feel that the "coping with an expanded view of reality" is kind of stretching it. Both P3 and P4 flip out initially but by the time the first set of new characters roll into the plot (Yukiko and Fuuka respectively) the cast and more importantly the new characters are not quite as fazed by things like I felt they should be. I mean the P3 cast does a better job of keeping the flow going since their goal was to end the Dark Hour but I was always a bit disappointed that their investigations rarely led anywhere until all hell breaks loose in the final few months. I was more disappointed by the P4 cast who spent very little time really discussing the TV world despite the fact that it was about 100x more bizarre than the Dark Hour, instead they dealt with the murders and only stumbled upon the truth in the poorly attached True Ending path.Quote:
It may be more "subtle" in its psychological exploration, but I also feel it is far more thorough. Yes, it is more "subtle", if that's how you like to term it. I prefer to think of it as grounding the setting a bit more in reality. You don't get a sudden cataclysmic shift to the entire world (again, a standard SMT trope, probably one of the single defining traits of the series). Instead, we catch sight of a war that has been going on for the duration of human existence. The characters are stepping into worlds that run parallel to ours, but are apart. We see them coping with an expanded view of reality, rather than a complete reshaping of it.
I still disagree with this, while you may have a point with the first Persona, P2 once again doesn't work out quite like that. Instead we watch how humans destroy the world through the power of making rumors come true and it's actually a slow process. Demons appear, but only because people believe they are real and unlike most SMT games, no one reacts to except the party members and even then it's gone as soon as it's mentioned. Instead we watch the slow build up of minor rumors building up to full blown conspiracy theories coming to life in Innocent Sin, even more amusing when the big twist in the plot is the revelation that everything going on in the game can be traced back to a bunch of kids playing at the shrine a few years ago. In Eternal Punishment, it really feels more like a thriller picture as the story begins with the trail of a serial killer and leads into a conspiracy involving a local politician and his involvement in a secret cult which is being manipulated by the physical manifestation of mankind's own collective shadow. In both sides of P2, the world actually crumbles piece by piece with people worried about they perceive as real world threats (a terrorist cult, a serial killer, a populist political movement) until much later does it finally erupt into a full blown Armageddon.Quote:
I think that the later games did a better job of embodying the negativity of humanity, and portraying the psychological powers at work. While there is still a supernatural element, almost everything is expressed in terms of the psyche. The realms of human thought and emotion, bleeding into our own. Rather than monsters overrunning and ravaging the world, we see Shadows, our own negativity, and how that literally tears humanity apart from within. It doesn't destroy the world around us, it eats away at us, at our minds and souls. Persona 3 does, I think, the best job of expressing this with the way Tatsumi Port Island is consumed by the Lost and gives in to despair as the game progresses further along, or how the Lost ebb and flow as you fight the Shadows. It's not humanity's negativity destroying the world with magic, it's humanity's negativity consuming that which makes us human. The fight between Philemon and Nylarthotep isn't some cosmic wager between gods (which is what I feel you get from Persona 2), it is a literal manifestation of the psychological struggle between two disparate halves of human nature. The positive and negative aspects of our souls at constant war with each other, merely by nature of their own existence.
In P1 we watch the party react to the suffering of a girl who both wants what is best for the world but is also secretly jealous and vindictive to those who can live a normal life. The characters react to her suffering brought forth by the supernatural incident but it's still them reacting to a situation and coping with it. In P2, the characters are watching as the human need for something interesting to happen manifests in the worse possible way and not only do we watch them cope with watching these horrors unfold, but watch them coping with the revelations of their own hand in making it happen. We watch how the supernatural muck has made their own inner thoughts manifest into an ugly reality they don't want to face. The difference between the Shadow selves of P2 and P4 is that P4's are too simple, they simply represent one thing that bothers these people whereas the Shadow selves of the P2 cast tend to be the whole shebang, Lisa's Shadow isn't just about her father issues, or her feelings of isolation due to her heritage, or the fact that her feelings for Tatsuya are just a coping mechanism for her, they represent all of the above. The P4 ones are just more memorable cause they present themselves as over-the-top caricatures.Quote:
Yes, it's a more "subtle" analysis, because it's actually an exploration of the psychology of the situation. It's a study in how characters act and react, how opinions change and how emotions drive and shape us. How we cope with death, how we change and relate to it when we see it. When we face it, and how we hide from it. When we explore the Midnight Channel, we're exploring the layers of the human psyche. When we fight the Shadows, we're facing off against the negative aspects of humanity. Just from the shapes and names of Shadows and Personas, you can perform a character analysis of the individuals who bear them. Every Social Link, every character interaction, carries weight and looks at the themes in different ways. It's a far more complete look at the human psyche.
I disagree, the Persona games, any of them, don't deal with the same issues as the main line SMT series. SMT has always been an exploration in moral choice and defining humanity by making them deal with our different aspects of Law (Social Order) and Chaos (Natural Order). The drawing point of the series is about how we the player carve out our own path with the situations presented to us even when often our choices amount to "do you want to be blind or deaf? One of the other". In truth the true joy is being placed into desperate situations and making those tough choices because it says more about who we are than the world or the characters. Yes they certainly follow a formula and I feel that is what bothers you because P1 certainly re-uses it and P2-4 play with it, but that's not what MegaTen is about. It's formula is simply an easy means to get to the heart of the story which is survival and choosing the future of humanity based on ones own convictions for better or for worse. In all of the Persona series, mankind has the power to change their future and restore the status quo, in MegaTen, mankind is simply the third power in an eternal war in a broken multiverse.Quote:
Persona and Persona 2 were great, but I still feel like they were just more Shin Megami Tensei games with a new name.
Most of the SMT series dealt with exactly the same sort of questions as they did. The plot may have a new cause, be driven by a new force, but that's about it.
This to me feels like a cop out answer because I laid out several examples of how the previous Persona games utilize psychological concepts very well for their stories and characters and you're trying to tell me that you can do the same with the SMT games? Have you really played them? I mean the SMT series is not really known for their gripping characters because it's not important. Most of the cast are either single minded gods and demons or human expy's for one of the factions. The game don't really use psychological elements like the Persona games do in any capacity they deal with bringing to life different folklore and religious figures but they are rarely used as a means for character analysis or evaluation. I mean when the world comes to an end in the original SMT1, the three main heroes are just kind of like "well this is terrible" and then proceed to get pulled to one for the games factions before they face-heel turn and you choose to either join them or murder them. Persona, since the beginning has always been a character driven series, whereas the majority of SMT is about you the player making choices and exploring the world.Quote:
You can find psychological statements and points to analyze everywhere in any of the SMT games. ATLUS has never shied away from addressing such things. But I feel that it isn't until Persona 3 that the game does a good job of making that the core of the experience.
You trying to say P1 and P2 is the same as SMTI-IV or Devil Summoner franchise is like Bolivar trying to convince me that the SNES era of Final Fantasy is the same as the NES era and that the series didn't start proper until FFVII.
This kind of bothered me too. P4 Arena had me very interested in how the Kirijo group would react to the discovery of the TV World.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno