Aaaaaand I finished it. Interestingly enough, the GLaBRYS scene stopped happening after I had typed that.
I'm not sure what to say. The story itself was very interesting, but the execution of telling that story... eugh. While it was pretty funny to see some of the scenes retold from different perspectives (the beginning of Yu's, Yosuke's, Chie's, and Yukiko's stories for example), I think having them tell 10 (13 minus Shabrys, Labrys, and Elizabeth) separate but ultimately the same stories was a gigantic misstep. It probably would've made much more sense to tell one giant interweaving story using all the characters, than 10 slightly different ones (I never finished it, but I think MK9's story mode did something like that). It's made super apparent by the gigantic reuse of lines at most of the endings (I will never get Aigis's pronunciation of the word "facility" out of my head, nor Shabrys' smartassed "We're in a SCHOOL, holding a FIGHTING TOURNAMENT," nor MOTHERFUCKING GLaBRYS SHUT UP ALREADY). If they were telling 10 completely different stories, then it would make more sense, but I don't think they could've with the source material. Also, leaving everyone on a cliffhanger ending until you finish everyone's "Act 1," including Labrys', then resuming was a bit jarring, since I didn't exactly remember at what point each given character left off on (Except for Kanji. You just don't ever forget Shadow Kanji.).
It also didn't help that the scene time : fight time ratio was a bit... well... 10-30 minutes for each scene to 30 seconds of fighting. Combine that with ending scenes that mostly repeat and ugh... it's actually kind of a wonder I finished.
***ENDING DISCUSSION***
As far as the story itself... well... it'll make you think about what they're gonna do with Persona 5. I don't actually want them to make Persona 5 a Persona 4-2(3?) just following the same characters as they fight this new threat, but I do think it would be interesting to have a new set of characters pulled into this, with some of the P3/4 characters having some significance. Heck, it'll give them a chance to fix Kanji's new hair (the rest of his new look can stay) and Necksuke's neck from the P4G epilogue.
I'm not entirely convinced on a P5 where Elizabeth is the protagonist either. That was actually a pretty cool ending to her chapter, but I'm not sure an RPG where she is the main protagonist is the best way to explore the continuation.***END SPOILERS***
The fighting though, the fighting is really really fun. All of the characters play really differently, and I like that. I'll probably never understand how to play anyone other than Yukiko and possibly Chie or Kanji (I relied HEAVILY on autocombo for everyone else during the story, while I could mix it up with at least those three), but I have fun with them. And the mechanics are easy to learn, with some surprising depth to master, unlike the seemingly now popular fighting game design theory of hard to learn, ridiculous to master (I'M LOOKING AT YOU SFXT AND MVC3).
by Kerreth » Sat Aug 18, 2012 1:49 am 
