#and Naoto/Kanji/Rise finally score

[siderealscribblings]

The Thieves Den Mementos, the Metaverse

“What happened?” 

“Based on a thorough examination of our systems…everything blew up.” 

“Everything being-” 

“Ev. Er. Y. Thing,” Futaba said, shaking a burnt out old computer next to her ear before chucking it out the window in disgust. “Every wire and board I had hooked up to a magatsuhi battery discharged so fast the copper melted. Thank God, I haven't hooked the vehicles up yet…" 

"What has God done for us lately that deserves our thanks?" Ren sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Ryuji, how much juice do we have left?" 

"Well somehow we lost half the fuckin' pool!'" Ryuji growled, carrying bottles of magatsuhi in his arms as he emerged from the pool room. "The weird spinny machine thing that makes magatsuhi out of internet rumors is still working, but that stockpile we were sitting on is looking a little dry." 

"So not a total wash," Makoto said, biting off the last of her fingernails. "We can eat at least; the rest of the city doesn't look so lucky." 

Outside the window, Mementos was only barely coming back on. Magatsuhi flowed back into light fixtures here and there but huge swathes of the city were dark, making the twisting spires and shadowy caverns between buildings seem all the more sinister. 

"Keep the outer lights off; don't let anyone know we still have magatsuhi," Ren said, watching Futaba stick her hand into a monitor and wiggle her fingers around the insides a bit. Makoto and Ann could heal bodies; Futaba had an uncanny knack of making (or breaking) machines with a simple touch. Sure enough, the monitor fizzled on after a moment, bringing up a feed of social media links and news broadcasts from around Tokyo. 

"You think this is S.E.E.S' doing?" Makoto asked, scanning the screen thoughtfully. "Yoshizawa said they declared war on us; maybe this is an opening salvo?" 

"If they had some kind of magatsuhi draining weapon, wouldn't they have used it before now?" Yusuke mused. "Seems to be a powerful tool that could have saved their agents' lives." 

"You're asking why S.E.E.S. isn't doing more to save human lives?" Futaba sniffed, scanning the monitors with a glare. "Wait…what's that?" 

Futaba snapped her fingers, enlarging the smaller screen to fill the monitor. A tired newswoman was standing outside what appeared to be a jail, the words "KANESHIRO & SEVEN OTHERS ESCAPED" flashing on the screen as rescue workers carried people on stretchers out of the shattered remnants of the front door. 

"That's…bad," Ann said, leaning over Ren's shoulder to get a better look. "You're telling me that little bug is scurrying around Tokyo somewhere?" 

"All the better for us to squash ," Makoto said, glaring at the picture of Kaneshiro on screen. "We might not get a better chance; you know S.E.E.S. is going to be after him. It's the middle of the night ; we might be able to take care of this before even Goro or Yoshizawa know what happened." 

"Of course, that brings us right back to being thought of as monsters," Haru chimed in. 

"They're going to think that if they catch Kaneshiro anyway…" Ren growled, tugging at the back of his hair. "Do we have enough juice to jump?" 

"We're going now ?" Yusuke asked. 

"Why, are you washing your tail or something?" 

"Is it wise to leave our base unguarded when half the city wants what little magatsuhi we have?" Yusuke asked. 

"Not really, but when have we ever made a choice that has zero downsides?" Ren countered. "Yes, leaving the base unguarded is a risk, but so is letting Kaneshiro scurry around where he might be caught and forced to squawk about us. And I'll be more damned than I already am if S.E.E.S. isn't already in pursuit, ready to bring him in." 

Yusuke's lips twisted, but he said nothing as Ren turned back to Futaba. "Well? Can we make a jump?" 

"Probably," Futaba said, tapping some buttons and flicking off the overhead lights. "...maybe. Guess there's one way to find out. We might be able to trigger the earring and buy us some time to keep S.E.E.S off our backs too." 

"I thought you said that was a risk," Ren said. 

"Well, yeah, but-" Futaba shrugged. "Isn't everything these days? I could maybe get into S.E.E.S.' comms systems; figure out where Kaneshiro's gonna be. Maybe cause some havoc before bailing and cleaning up after myself?" 

Ren seemed to weigh this. "...how long can you stay connected to their system before you have to escape?" 

"Fifteen minutes, but by then it'll be too late," Futaba said, her usual confidence slightly shaky, but otherwise intact. "Can't promise they won't kick my gremlins out but-" 

"Nothing is without risk," Makoto muttered, nodding at Ren. "Time to roll the dice, I guess." 

"So we drop in, find Kaneshiro, and take him out before S.E.E.S. can mobilize enough to stop us," Ren said, clapping his hands together. "Agreed?" 

A murmur of assent rippled through the group. "Good…let's suit up and be ready to go in ten. Bring ammo, guns…anything you think Kaneshiro might not like." 

Ren snapped his fingers, heart skipping a beat as it always did when he donned Joker's mask and coat. Feeling his hands clench in infernal leather gloves made them feel stronger, if only because his fingers no longer shook. And from behind Joker's mask, the prospect of harming a fellow human wasn't quite so daunting. 

Ann lingered behind even as Makoto ran off to make her final preparations, disconcertingly waiting until they were alone before speaking. "What happens if we run into Goro?" 

Ren said as casually as he could. "...hope he makes the right choice, I guess." 

"Is that why you were talking to him when I came to find you?" Ann asked, sharp feline eyes scouring his face. "You had Futaba's phone upstairs…who else would you be talking to if not-" 

"Yeah, okay, it was him," Joker said, his voice tight and strained as he avoided her gaze. "Just…trying to give him an out before something bad happens. I figure…I figure we owe him that, don't we?" 

"Sure," Ann said, her warm hand tilting his jaw towards her so she could properly look at him. "As long as you make the right choice as well." 

Her warm lips pressed against his cheek, a tangible reminder of what Ren already had with the Phantom Thieves. He should have been happy; most people in their position would have died a million times over and if Ren had survived, it would be as something heinous without his lovers keeping him human. Most people would have counted their wins and walked away from the table; most people weren't as greedy as a master thief though. And to Ren, any win less than a jackpot was just leaving money on the table. 

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Start from the beginning

[sage-nebula]

I finished Persona 4 Golden last night, so like I did with Persona 3 before it, here are my overall thoughts on the game now that it's over. (And yes, I did go through Marie's dungeon, so I did get the full and complete True Ending.)

Overall Score: 6.5/10

The Pros:

— The gameplay was good, which isn't a surprise since it's the improvements in P4 that translated over to P3P. Unlike with P3, I had the option to control my party members on from the get-go, and I also enjoyed how Rise's scans became increasingly more OP the more you completed her social link / leveled her up. It's nice to not have to play a guessing game with enemies to figure out what their weaknesses are. Although all the yellow on the UI hurt my eyes, the menus were still easy to navigate and weren't too busy, something that I unfortunately can't say for the sequel yet. — As far as the murder mystery element goes, they did a good job not making the actual culprit too obvious, while also sprinkling in some red herrings here or there. That's not to say the murder mystery element was handled perfectly (it really wasn't), but they did well not making the real culprit too obvious from the outset, which was one of the flaws that P3 had. (Although, P3 wasn't trying to be a mystery, so there is that to consider.) — The characters that were good were really good. I enjoyed Naoto and Kanji the most, but Yukiko, Rise, and Nanako were also really good characters. Even Chie grew on me, even with Erin Fitzgerald's tendency to hurt my ears with all her screaming. — Being able to work on schoolmate social links outside of school was a huge improvement over P3. I had a very hard time both finishing the SEES social links and also having stuff to do near the end of the game because of how schoolmate social links couldn't be worked on during off days. That not being an issue in P4 was a huge improvement. — At first I didn't like that we were staying with family instead of in a dorm, but the Dojima family really grew on me and I enjoyed their social links. I managed to max both Dojima and Nanako's social links before shit in the fan later in the game, and it made everything have a heavier impact. — It's cool that the party members you don't bring with you can come in as calvary units sometimes. It makes sense that they would, since they're ostensibly all going on the missions with you even though you can only have four party members at a time. — Being able to change costumes without having it affect armor is another improvement over P3. Sometimes I want to look cool without having to sacrifice defense for it, ok. Lemme be fashionable. You can't save the world if you aren't cute etc. — I did enjoy the visual novel style of P3P, but also I liked being able to see the characters actually interact with each other in the real world too (which I knew FES had, so it's not as if that was never a thing for P3; it was just P3P). Maybe someday we can get a version of P3P that fully utilizes the updated hardware it's ported to. — Some of the music was really catchy. — I loved being able to visit Tatsumi Port Island and Gekkoukan High again . . . just like I love how Inaba itself is a place that we visited briefly in P3, and Yukiko is a character we'd met previously when she was in junior high. I LOVE continuity like that, it makes my heart so happy.

The Neutrals:

— My feelings on Marie are really mixed. On the one hand, it's interesting to have a character that is a through-line for the plot; she's the third person that Yuu meets upon arriving in Inaba (because she picks up that paper he dropped and gives it back to him), she's almost constantly in the Velvet Room, and ultimately she's kind of the final boss, in a way. Like she's a part of the final boss. Her theme music is also pretty and some of her interactions were fun.

On the other hand, it's 2023, so tsundere characters aren't really appealing to me at this point in my life and it was aggravating as hell to go into the Velvet Room and have to button mash through another stupid poem when all I wanted to do was fuse some Personas so I could get on with the dungeon. Marie getting upset ten times in a row because I was forced to read her stupid poetry did not endear me to her character. Ultimately I don't hate Marie, but I think that she could have been better implemented, and her shtick of being tsundere hasn't aged very well. — Similarly, Yosuke was really hit or miss. For a lot of the story he worked well as The Leader Who Could Talk since Yuu is basically a silent protagonist. He kept the group focused and on target of solving the mystery, and had a personal stake in it from the get-go given his crush on Saki. But on the other, his homophobia toward Kanji was fucking rank, as was his perversion toward the girls, particularly the scene where he tries to guilt-trip them into changing into the bathing suits he bought them. Ultimately Yosuke is not one of my favorite characters in the game, but I don't hate him, either. There's worse characters in the game that save him from the scrappy heap. — I understand that this is a game series made by a corporation, and so it makes sense that it's not going to go gung-ho against the anti-capitalist message, but it still is disappointing that the very realistic plot of "big box store comes to small town and ruins their small businesses / gentrifies the area" was not only never followed through on, but also had its teeth completely ripped out in the ending scenes where Junes is playing nice with the small businesses by allowing them to set up shop in the building. Again, I understand that this isn't Night in the Woods, the anti-capitalism / anti-gentrification message isn't the point, and so it's not the biggest deal in the world. But it still was a little disappointing. — This game suffers from something a lot of JPRGs suffer from, and that something is The Illusion of Choice. It's something where you're given multiple dialogue options to choose from, but no matter what you choose the end result—sometimes right down to the dialogue—is the same.

Again, this is a standard of the genre; JRPGs by and large don't have multiple endings (or at least not ones that are determined by your response), so The Illusion of Choice is something to expect when picking one up. But still, something that would be fun for Atlus to consider in the future would be something akin to what you see in WRPGs, which is a party member approval system. If I act like a jackass to my party members, they should treat me accordingly. The social links I build (or don't) should have at least a minor effect on the plot (like Dojima's treatment of Yuu after the warning note should differ depending on whether you bonded with him or not). Again, it's not a make-or-break thing, it's expected in the genre, but it still is a little disappointing. — The whole sequence with identifying the target —> asking around for info about the target —> go into a reskinned dungeon to find the target felt very repetitive after a while. As did hearing the "oh noes don't say it!!" re: the "you're not me" scenes, which felt forced at times. This is a minor nitpick, because it wasn't a huge detriment to the game or anything, but it was just a little repetitive is all. — I have complicated feelings on how Naoto's story played out. She's one of my favorite characters in the game, easily. But everything about how her Shadow was presented made it seem as if she was actually a transboy, only for the game to play it as "she's not trans, she just has internalized misogyny." Which, okay . . . but even later in her social link she's saying again that she wishes she could have been born a boy? Only to walk that back again? But she also has no issues with she/her pronouns and dresses more femininely in the epilogue. I don't know. I don't want to misgender her, which is why I use she/her pronouns since that's what she uses in the game after the gender reveal, but it's just a very weird and complicated situation, particularly since it was written with a Japanese audience in mind rather than an American one. I don't know where I stand on it.

The Cons:

— The anti-queer bigotry in this game is . . . immense. From the stereotyped way that Kanji's Shadow behaved, to Yosuke's homophobic treatment of Kanji (right down to lowkey accusing him of being a rapist during the camping trip), to the transphobia surrounding the drag show (both in how everyone reacted to the male characters dressed in drag, to how the male characters acted toward having to do it) . . . it was bad. I've seen some things that say that P4 was progressive for its time in letting Kanji be a main party member, and I can acknowledge that perhaps that's true. But it didn't make it any easier for me, a queer woman, to sit through in 2023. It was super gross and severely lessened my enjoyment of the game. — There's also a lot of fatphobia and . . . uglyphobia? . . . I don't know what to call it. But like, Kubo was creepy looking, and he turns out to be a murderer. Morooka-sensei is a horrible teacher and person, and he was designed with massive buckteeth and bad hair. Hanako is cartoonishly obese and an awful person, and her weight is turned into a joke when she breaks Yosuke's scooter by just sitting on it, and so on and so forth. The game basically holds the idea that, "If you are ugly and/or fat, you're a bad person," which again, is not funny nor good, and I don't think is even a "fair for its day" thing. It's just really distasteful, especially since there are scenes with these characters that you can't avoid. — I really hated a lot of the sexualization when it comes to the female party members. The biggest offender here is Rise's Shadow. The whole strip club thing was bad enough, but you could try to argue that, hey, Kanji's was a bathhouse, so it's fair play. But during the battle against Shadow Rise, when she uses her ultimate attack, her Shadow literally humps the stripper pole and lets out a loud, sexual moan. That's vile. Rise is a sixteen-year-old girl, and even though that was her Shadow instead of her . . . the Shadow is part of her, and the Shadow is meant to be like, sixteen-year-old girl but monster. I understand these games are made with a teenage audience in mind, but it's still super gross and I was disgusted and super uncomfortable by it. — In addition to Shadow Rise, there were multiple strip tease shots of the girls in bathhouses; female characters who were introduced by the camera panning up their legs and over their bodies; many, many, MANY jokes made about Teddie and Yosuke trying to peep on the girls, etc. These "jokes" would also go on for unbearably long at times, be in animated cutscenes, etc. It's not funny. The humor didn't land. I didn't enjoy it.

— Speaking of Teddie! I fucking despise him! I hate literally everything about this stupid fucking bear. I hate his voice. I hate how perverted he is, and how it's played for laughs or played as charming. I fucking despise how often he flirts with / talks about hitting on Nanako (like when he wanted to greet her with a kiss when she came home from the hospital? Nanako is SIX YEARS OLD you filthy fucking creep, stay away from her!!). His scenes are not funny. His character is not cute. "I was a Shadow that somehow gained sentience" isn't a plot thread that was handled in a remotely interesting way, especially with everything else going on; it just felt distracting and pointless, since I hated Teddie so much by that point that the only reason I maxed his social link is because the game gave me no other choice. I was so excited when it looked like he died and so disappointed when he was brought back. I hate him more than I hate the main villains of the game. If I could light his stupid bear costume on fire, I would. Worst character by far, bar none, this is a Teddie Hate Blog. — Speaking of plot lines being handled poorly: while I'm glad that ultimately she didn't die, Nanako being temporarily fridged for the drama is not something that I appreciated or liked, especially since how she came back to life was never explained and made no sense. I mean, she was dead for a while. Her brain was without oxygen for a long time. As someone whose mother died from her brain being without oxygen for too long, it's just not realistic nor possible for Nanako to have come back from that without severe brain damage. I get that there are a lot of unrealistic things in this fantasy game, but still. Made no sense, was done for cheap drama, and ultimately shouldn't have been. Either stick to your guns and actually kill the child, or just don't have that enter the equation at all. — I also feel that there was just too much of a Guide Dang It element to getting to the True Ending. Like I was reasonably suspicious of Adachi by that point in the game, but I still needed to look things up beforehand to know that not following through on the revenge impulse against Namatame was necessary in order to avoid the Bad Ending, and I feel like a lot of players would believe the game telling them "yeah Namatame did it, he confessed to doing it, he's not sorry for doing it" and be tricked into the bad ending therefore. Then there's everything with Marie, and hunting down Izanami . . . I had to look up how to trigger the real ending by going to Junes a second time since there was nothing in the game telling me to do that. Kind of frustrating how missable things like that are, and not the best game design. — I know they couldn't exactly repeat the whole thing with Tartarus and the Dark Hour (or at least they wouldn't be able to without some serious plot explanations of Persona 3 and why what was done at the end of that game was undone or whatever), but I was never able to take the "we went into the TV!!" thing seriously. It sounded stupid from beginning to end. And while I understand wanting to have this game accessible to people who didn't play the third one (like how the third one was accessible without having played the first two) . . . I kept trying to rationalize this "TV world" with Tartarus and the Dark Hour and I was never able to connect the dots to make it seem like cohesive worldbuilding. It's like they took the worldbuilding from the first game and just chucked it out the window. Which would be fine if this was a different universe, but with characters like Yukiko being in it, it's very clearly not. It kept taking me out of the game over and over again and I wish they had built the story of Persona 4 to better mesh with what was set in Persona 3.

— Lastly, I think they tried to cram multiple plots at once into this game, and it just did not work. If the game focused solely on the murder mystery—nothing about Teddie being a Shadow, Marie being a fragment of a goddess, the goddess herself having beef because her ex-husband was a jackass—then they could have really beefed up the murder mystery and made the whole plot feel more cohesive and grounded, even with the lunacy of traveling into another world via TV sets. As it stands though? The goddess plot felt wholly separated from the murder mystery plot, and as a result felt a lot like a "plot twist" that was tacked on at the end just to pad out the game and make it longer. Yes, Edogawa-sensei told us the story of Izanami and Izanagi when we were at Gekkoukan High; but I got rid of Yuu's original persona so early that I forgot his persona was even called Izanami to begin with, so again, it felt out of left field to me. They just tried to do too many things with this game, and as a result ended up making all of them pretty lukewarm. In the end, this game was okay. I will probably never play it again, because I think P3P was much better and I would rather replay that one if I was going to replay a Persona game. But it wasn't completely awful, either.

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Nearly done with Persona 4!

All the scenes in the hospital were outstanding.

Some of the fanservice is really getting on my nerves... girls NEVER compare boob sizes. Not any girls I’ve met at least. Perhaps things are different in Japan but I can’t expect a bunch of straight male hornyposting writers to know!!!

All the girls are ALSO really good though (apart from Rise who is 50% great and 50% kind of terrible... never a dull moment).

A discussion on the cast below the cut and why I think they feel different from P5:

[[MORE]]

I had Yu romance Yukiko because I thought it’d be nice, even though we all know Yukiko is married to Chie... my logic was Yukiko’s kind of bland and shy and she has a bad experience with boys, so pairing her with the shy bland protagonist would be positive for them both. Also I find her laughing adorable and hilarious. Reminds me of the squad days in high school. So she’s like a normal teenager.

Chie and Naoto are my fave in the cast. Chie has no brain cells, god bless, but she has a heart and is ready to throw down with anyone who hurts her friends or even that random jerk middle school ex friend. I liked her confidant and she was only removed from my team for two post dungeon bosses; her endgame moves are consistently doing more damage than my protagonist, even on foes that resist physical.

Sadly I only got halfway through Naoto’s social link before I had my free will removed (and I started after the new year event!) She’s the only one in the party I didn’t max out with (...a massive improvement on how i only maxed 2 optional links in p5). The bar is too high and I was already invested in completing some other lonks by the time i got that Courage stat up. However even though we only know her for a bit, as a character Naoto is way cooler than Akechi, and I found it unique that her shadow acted like a child with interests in goofy stuff. Then what little I saw of her confidant had her grandad playing a detective game with her using childhood mementos. It was fun. Anyway, Naoto has been a party stable due to that diverse moveset and those super effective insta kill moves.

Rise is nice when she’s being a navigator. She’s OP but not as broken as Futaba was (getting ambushed and immediately turning it into a Hold Up is too much power). She sometimes acts mature for her age, but she can be judgemental and childish. A good example is at the end of Kanji’s route where he says Rise thought him making dolls was creepy and he had to take time to get her to understand that it wasn’t. Rise made me laugh many times, even in her unlikable moments, so I was happy to max her out. I got her to max JUST in time for her to be able to get the Third persona. I liked her route, better than Ann’s in the next game, but other fans are mixed on it.

The boys are, in fact, alright in this game. Yosuke has the same problem as Rise where sometimes he acts like a turd, but despite his loserness and rampant homophobia (why atlus?) i find him a good friend character who thinks about the situation thoroughly, is usually borrowing the one brain cell Naoto hasn’t hoarded, and who has well written emotions in a lot of cutscenes. I think he is better written than Ryuji in p5, who - while being great at first - ultimately had less chemistry with the other characters and probably deserved to be booted from the team once or twice.

Kanji is best boy! He does nothing wrong, except for calling his mother names, which is pretty wrong. Kanji, stop that. I used him alongside Chie for that sexy physical damage at first, but sadly he became redundant as soon as Chie got more OP and I added Naoto to the team. Kanji’s constantly bullied by his teammates over his shadow self’s bicurious appearance, which is a major negative on the game actually. I maxed out his confidant JUST before free will was removed, but it was too late for him to have the 3rd persona conversation (at least a week later). Not that he’ll see any use.

And at last Teddie. Many people loathe him. In fact, he goes way too far in his newfound goal of “scoring with girls”. I found him adorable though, especially after he turned into a boy. I’m a sucker for those characters who know nothing about the world but are super enthusiastic to explore it. Despite being what Morgana (my avatar) would be based on, Teddie feels more likable, probably because he never picks fights with the other members and he doesn’t have a cocky attitude, but he still has plenty of flaws. I enjoyed how Teddie was accepted and embraced by Inaga as this weird but adorable kid.

On the other social links: Compared to P5 they are useless. I didnt max out anything in P5 apart from Ann and Ryuji’s, so I’m not sure if they all got great at the end. However the non-party SLs are useful in P5 for added perks like massages, dungeon alertness, sp adhesives... Unfortunately the side effect is the game throws sidequest roadblocks at you.

P5 has a formulaic progression where most confidants will have a problem caused by someone else, or occasionally themselves, and a change of heart is needed. I tired of this formula quickly. But it was more involved witg the core gameplay, whereas p4’s confidants - while each unique - only has fusion benefits.

I need to complete Marie’s dungeon and the final area. Wish me luck!