Gaming Persona

[Omar Harris]

Has anyone played any of the Persona games, preferably 2, since I just recently purchased it. I love Persona 2 so far. i've beaten the first boss. Without placing spoilers, what is the rest of the game like?

[Semjaza]

Heh, another RPG that I doubt there will be much response to :).

Persona was the first PSX RPG I ever bought. I personally loved it, although other people insisted that it sucked. The game had a heavy Japanese side to it, but I loved it for that reason. The story was different from most, the characters were developed decently and the monster designs were great. The only thing that hurt it was the first person dungeon segments.

So of course, I paid a lot of attention to the Persona 2 games. There were two of them... Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. Only Eternal Punishment was brought over. When you get far enough in the game, you will see that the game somewhat vaguley mentions things that happened in Innocent Sin... But it's not like you need to have played that game to understand them.

Honestly, Persona 2 is my favorite PSX RPG. It adds onto the original in every possible way. GRaphics are way more detailed, the sound is way better, the translation is a little better and they made the dugeons 3rd person. They also ditched that lame town map, where you actually had to fight monsters while traveling on it.

I forget who the first boss is... But really, the rest of the game is awesome. The whole Joker thing gets added on to, and a lot of weird supermatural things start to happen. It is [i]really[/i] hard to talk about most of the story without spoiling anything, but I can assure you it gets better and better. A lot of really unexpected things happen, and the game is good at telling you just enough about something that you want to keep playing and find out what really happened.

[Charles]

It's been quite a while since I played the first Persona title, but Semjaza pretty much summed it up nicely.

The first person dungeon sequences simply ruined the game for me, probably more so for me than him. In fact, they're what stopped me from actually purchasing the game.

The interface was really clunky and slow paced. Plus, walking around sterile, lifeless corridors that resembled Kileak: The DNA Imperitive in visual splendor, just wasn't a good time.

I did like the battle system though. Being able to bargain with monsters and the entire card concept was played off well. Shockingly, the game even featured voice sequences that didn't make my ears bleed, lol.

It's a shame that I didn't take to this game. Persona has a more mature theme than most games in the genre and a nice twist. In that way, it was ahead of its time.

I doubt that I'll ever check out the sequel, because of my disdain for its predecessor's dungeon crawling interface.

[Semjaza]

I did honestly have quite a few problems with the original... Like CWB and I both said, the dungeons simply sucked. They were really just boring mazes. However, the 2nd one does fix this problem. The dungeon areas are still incredibly large, but their layouts make far more sense. There was only one area so far that I felt was annoying in terms of how it was made. I wouldn't dismiss Persona 2 over what Persona failed to do well... I feel that it kills the original in this department, but that's me lol.

The demon conversations have been added upon heavily, and there are far more reasons to speak to them than before. The only think that returns from Persona that I would like to be worked upon is some of the menus. There are just far too many, but at least Persona 2's are FAR more organized. I got annoyed everytime I had to look at my status in the original since the menus were so messed up.