Persona 4 Coming to PS2
 
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I wonder what direction they will take with this installment. Will it remain a dungeon crawler or will it go back to becoming a traditional RPG?
 
Personally I liked the Dungeon crawling with the high school atmosphere, it fit quite well and get them a lot of room to flesh out the characters and give the usual silent main character a way of not seeming so one dimensional.

Quote from Kitsune on 01/13/08 at 07:52:56:

 
 
Even though the first Persona didn't have random dungeons they were very long and complicated and I like that Persona 3 reminds me a lot of that.  Even the big evil corporation kind thing was in both stories.
 
I wouldn't mind if it were like Persona 3.  I'd say the biggest thing I would like different would be to have more control over all the other characters.  The AI was pretty good in this game but still sometimes I wanted more control.

i swear to freaking god persona 4 better have baofu or nate and not be a crappy dating sim

Although I'd prefer it if Persona 4 was like Persona 3, I wouldn't mind a change in story as long as it's interesting.
I should also add at this point that Persona 4 being on the PS 2 made my day.

Well, if you turned on the TV in the dorm a lot of the time they did refer back to Persona 1 & 2 characters and what they are currently doing at that point in time.  So apparently P3 takes place in the same universe, but at a later point in time, and yet another a different city.  It's also mentioned that Kirijo is some branch of the Nanjou family.

That is something I have missed in DDS and Persona 3.  Though I don't think it bothered me as much in Persona 3.  DDS it seems they could have worked in the demon talking system in many cool ways but it was to much effort to do.

I hope it really does end up on PS2, I don't have any plans to get a PS3 any time soon.  Looking forward to it.

This is some pretty cool informatzione.

Personally I like the new conversation system where different people will affect how your fusions will turn out. The EXP boost helps. All in all I really don't have any complaints about P3. I mean as long as I scan my enemies and then tell my team mates what to do, I never have any problem with anything. Plus they are not very stupid unless you never scan your enemies or they are new enemies.  
 
The Dating sim was fun to be honest, it gave a nice distraction and really helped the story along just for the hell of it. Introducing some of the older characters would be nice but their storyline is mostly over.

It would be pretty boring if they just kept bringing him back all the time.

YHVH was not in Nocturne, unless you went for the true demon ending. Same enemies is one thing but I would personally get bored having to chase after Nyar especially since technically he can't be killed off so there really is no point to fighting him.

Personally, I found Persona 3 to be hollow compared to what it potentially promised.  While Persona 2 didn't exactly do a great job borrowing from the Jungian philosophy the sub-series gets its name from, it did a far better job providing a partially thought provoking game.  I found the threat of the "shadows" to be entirely stupid and vapid.  Mitsuru's mid game explanation for their existence was pretty moronic, and the simulation aspects of Persona 3 became much more important than anything that traditionally fueled the gaming experience.  The shadow versions of the protagonists found in Innocent Sin is a much more accurate use of the duality between Shadow and Persona.  Using the name shadow to describe creepy crawlies of the night that prey on one's fears and insecurities, mmmm, not as good.
 
Role playing through the lens of how "other high schoolers perceive me" is definitely not as fun or fulfilling as role playing in a world, damaged so much by the collective negativity of humanity, that rumors can become reality.  Yes, the Persona is a mask. No, I don't see how my popularity on the swim team taps into my ability to identify and draw power from classical archetypes.  
 
I honestly hope that for Persona 4's success it doesn't abandon the new mechanics that have been introduced to the series, but I really want to play a game that isn't driven by a school calendar.  Atlus could also be more thoughtful in its selection of mythologies.  Some characters' Personae were more or less minor entities (ex. Ken using kala nemi) and drawing from castor and pollux made (at least for me) an incredibly easy prediction as to Shinjiro's ultimate fate.  
 
Obviously the game has worked out very well--it's probably the most popular SMT title that's reached stateside to date?  I think that it did a lot of good things, but wish that in doing them, it hadn't made it so hard for sequels to reach out to older players without abandoning those who just got acquainted to SMT with Persona 3.  I mean... I found the game very easy compared to Nocturne and even DDS.  A lot of first comers think it's very difficult.  I just don't want to see Persona 4 become a game that exists just to please a surprisingly receptive market.  
 
Also, wouldn't it be hilarious if one of the driving reasons to release this game on PS2 was so that the developers could recycle the same demon graphics we've been seeing since Nocturne?  I can honestly see it happening.

Yeah, it is a stretch for Star Lucifer to work.  Of course, I am not as upset by the arbitrary Tarot classifications because the arcana simply function as a means of organization and are just kind of a dumb bit of "game mechanics."  There's, to my knowledge, zero connection between that aspect of the game and the connections to Jungian philosophy, where the archetyping gets its most strength.  I also forgot to mention in my above post, what happened to playing with the idea of the collective unconscious?  I mean seriously, that's game fodder right there--want a strong glue to bind and rehabilitate bs rpg cliches, collective unconscious, you're my bff.  For serious. It's from the collective unconscious that we get our archetypal heroes that span cross-cultural barriers.  The whole card aspect of the game I am pretty indifferent to.  I think it organizes the game nicely, but is generally fluffy and unnecessary.  The exclusivity of persona to characters was a nice change in Persona 3, because it allowed for those characters to have a more important connection to their personae, but that was ultimately ruined by the thoughtless connections between character and persona.  Junpei and Hermes? Mmm, don't get it?  Maybe I can see Yukari's connection, since she felt bonded to fate, blah blah.  If each character were to be exclusively bound to a Persona, I could see the card system going out the door.  Of course, that could eliminate an entire aspect of "monster collecting" from the game, but there's no reason the Velvet Room couldn't function in other ways.  If the evoker were to return, why couldn't the monster collecting system revolve around that?  Monsters could perhaps be classified like they were in Nocturne.   Or if the Tarot system is to stay in tact, then I would prefer to see certain arcana reacting better to certain personalities like in Persona 2.  It could get really elaborate, with the social link system getting combined with the Velvet Room system of the older incarnations of the series.

Yeah, P3's interface would've been cool (maybe) if it were some trendy touch screen action on the DS.  Not the case.  I am amused by how it enamored itself with so many reviewers.  I mean, it's pretty--pretty superfluous.   I always felt like the item organization was cumbersome.  Hell, even Pokemon does a better job organizing the player's inventory.

Quote from OneWingedSin on 02/19/08 at 12:05:43:

 
>> Lucifer, Lightbringer, Morningstar whose "sin" was Pride, being the best of all angels God created.