Normally, I post Backlogged posts on Sundays. You want to know why I didn’t this week? Social links. That’s right. I came home from work Sunday evening, and I looked at my TV, and I thought, “Maybe just one more boss….”. That never works, as you well know. Four hours later, I had had an extraordinarily productive evening, having raised my Academics, Charm, and Courage all to their next tiers, bumped up several of my social links, and made it to the next gate in Tartarus. I did not, however, write anything. I’m sorry, friends. Let me make it up to you.
Elaine has been very enthusiastic about her enjoyment of Persona 4 (and her hatred of me for introducing her to it), which made me really want to go back to my Persona 3 save; I was about 30 hours in when I drifted away (I forget to what), and while I didn’t really want to start a new game and lose all that time, I did want to play again. Was I going to be able to remember where my social links stood? What Personas (Personae?) I was carrying around with me, and how they all functioned? How combat worked? Which Japanese schoolgirl’s pants I was currently trying to get into? Yes, as it turns out. All of that came flooding back in about the first fifteen minutes I played, subsuquently making me nearly miss work that day.
The story so far is this (spoilers a’coming, probably): bad shit is happening, and you can shoot yourself in the head and save everyone! You and your buddies are equipped with these nifty little gun-but-not-really-a-gun-gee-I-wonder-why-this-is-an-M-rated-game things called Evokers, which you use in battle to shoot yourself in the head and bring out your Persona. Everyone else has a set Persona, which is sort of their inner self and allows them to cast magic and use special abilities, but you, as the unnamed protagonist (in my case, he’s Yuri Hyuga…. bonus Leah points if you can tell me where I got that name, and yes, using Google is cheating) can call upon a seemingly infinite number of Personae (yeah, I think I like that better), which you can either obtain through the dungeons themselves or by fusing pre-existing ones together to bring out something new. At the moment, I can carry an even dozen of them around with me, but I think my Persona-bank has…. well, I don’t even know. Probably verging on a hundred, if I had to guess. And I can always make more.
Anyway, there’s an hour called the Dark Hour between midnight and 12:01 every night during which only you and your friends are functional. Everyone else is enclosed in coffins during that time, right where they stand, or sleep, or whatever. Creepy, huh? They don’t have any knowledge or memory of it, but that’s when the Shadows come out to play, and also when your school turns into Tartarus, a massively multi-floor dungeon that houses the worst of the baddies. The game basically consists of balancing the clearing of shadows with building social links (these also give your Personae extra power, depending on their alignment), macking on chicks (Yuko totally wants up on this), and of course, keeping track of your class work. You are in high school, after all.
Have I confused anyone yet? I think I’ve confused myself. But you can see where that would become immersive and addictive, right? Good. Let’s talk about something a little less complicated, and I’m sure I’ll return to gush about Persona more next week. I finished both halves of Chronicles of Riddick this week, Escape From Butcher Bay as well as Assault on Dark Athena, even without the aid of a usable map. I feel this is something of a step forward for me, really. In what is sure to be an unpopular choice, I’m going to go ahead and say that I think I liked Dark Athena more than Butcher Bay, although I really enjoyed both of them. I think my preference really stems from the type of player that I am rather than the overall quality of the games, though; Dark Athena seemed to be better at guiding me where I needed to be without getting me thoroughly lost (and also, I just liked the setting better). I got, as is evident in last week’s column, very very VERY angry when I would become lost or stuck in Butcher Bay, which seemed to happen pretty often, but in Dark Athena, even though there were a few puzzlers, I was able to flow through the story and concentrate on blowing shit up rather than worrying about why that stupid wall really wasn’t there ten minutes ago (THEY MOVE!). Fuck spider turrets, though. Seriously.
I also started playing Rhythm Heaven this week; I’ve heard from many people that it’s really hard, but actually, I seem to be pretty damn good at it. (The music teacher’s daughter has rhythm? Who knew?) I haven’t gotten to any of the later levels yet though, so when it gets more difficult I may yet crumble. I’ll keep you updated on that as well. I just…. I find it hard to look past the social linking right now…. *twitch*
Recap:
Current backlog total: 115
Now playing: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (PS2); Rhythm Heaven (DS)
New games added: Puzzle Kingdoms (DS)
Games completed: Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (PS3)
