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thetruejerrycan · 1 year

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I know it's really annoying to see people shitting on games they haven't played, especially when it's newer fighting games designed to appeal to newcomers, but holy shit I feel like BBTAG tries to suck. I mean how the fuck do you take Azrael and make him this uninteresting. As an outsider, you might look at this character and think “oh you just like hitting buttons and doing big damage”, and you’re right, but there’s more to Azrael than just his low execution barrier and his damage output.

His drive, The Terror, is more or less what really defines this character. Without just infodumping on you because Dustloop exists, in BBCF basically Azrael’s D buttons will all leave a high or low weakpoint on hit so that if he hits them with another D button, that gives Azrael new combos. And there’s a lot of reasons why The Terror is a cool drive. For starters, Azrael has to choose between more damaging combo enders and exposing a weakpoint unless he’s in overdrive, which may not seem like that big of a deal considering everything he does deals so much damage but it’s a lot more important than you’d think. Secondly, when he leaves a weakpoint, both Azrael and his opponent can see it. This weakpoint lingers for a long time before it dissipates and so it’s always on the forefront of both fighters’ minds because they both know Azrael gets heavily rewarded for hitting that weakpoint again. It’s terrorizing so the name The Terror fits.

Enter The Terror in BBTAG. There is no drive button in this game, so all of Azrael’s D buttons have been mapped to all different kinds of things. That’s not so bad, it’s just a sacrifice you have to make when converting a character to a different control scheme. But on top of this, not only are Azrael’s combos just so stupidly simple compared to before, they changed how The Terror works altogether. Instead of certain attacks leaving a weakpoint and having to hit the opponent again with certain attacks to get nuttier combos, now all Azrael has to do is hit the opponent with certain attacks and time a button press with just frame timing to get the same reward, no overdrive necessary.

This is a complete bastardization of The Terror. I don’t think this sounds like a bad mechanic, I like little execution checks like this that reward the player for succeeding in them. But this sounds like a gimmick that belongs to a different character altogether and only partially visually resembles the original gimmick in question. Gone is the interesting decision-making between damage upfront and the potential for more damage later on, gone is the looming fear of being hit by weakpoints since there are no weakpoints anymore, and gone is the effort Azrael needed to put in to get to this point in the first place. The fact that you have to work towards leaving weakpoints with awkward movement and slow buttons and capitalizing on them with mixups that are difficult to force is what makes Azrael in BBCF fun. By trying to give the player instant gratification, you remove the identity of the mechanic and you really harm what made that character so interesting to begin with. Without proper commitment and buildup, The Terror does not exist.

Now you might say “well if Azrael is getting all these weakpoint combos for free then that makes him scarier to fight”. And I think artistically there is a difference between something that is scary and something that is terrifying. A scare is a moment, albeit an unpleasant one, but it is effectively a moment that usually has some kind of build up. Once something scary shows up, that’s kind of it, the moment has passed and it’s not scary anymore, if anything it becomes more frustrating. A terror is something that you’re more afraid of because of the threat of it. It’s a chronic, lingering thing that you may be able to stave off but ultimately cannot prevent. It’s terrifying because you know it’s coming but it’s inevitable, bad things are going to happen if you are not trying your absolute hardest to stop it, and even that might only get you so far.

In other words, the difference between Azrael BBCF and Azrael BBTAG is like the difference between atmospheric psychological horror and a jumpscare.

I do not know much else about BBTAG because at no point was I ever interested in this game but seeing how badly they fucked up one of the only BlazBlue characters I give a shit about only further disinterests me. It takes skill to take a character like Azrael and completely miss the point of why people like playing him.

Also this character select is garbage. Smash for 3DS had it better than this

#bbtag #bbcf #blazblue #azrael #fighting games #game design #i'm talking about azrael a lot lately #really it's because i'm having a lot of fun with him and bbcf #that sounds like material for another post however

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succ-princess · 7 months

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Name: Jung-Hwa (정화) Surname-May-Vary •Goes By: Jun (順)

Nationality: Half S. Korean, Half Swedish

Gender: Full Package Futanari •Position - Submissive

Occupation: Final Year Highschool (Cosplayer, Streamer, etc)

Eye Color: Silver Hair Color: Silk Raven Black Hair Style: Long, even cut bangs (these vary wildly when cosplaying)

Measurements: Height - 155cm (5'1") Bust - 153cm (60) •O Cup Waist - 58cm (23) Hips - 90cm (35) Cock length: 12" (grows with each edged load) Ball Size: Orange+ (grows with edged loads) Cum amount: 2+ cups minimal

Personality: Jun is generally a helpful, kind, and honestly very naive person. As her story progresses she'll also assuredly be corrupted much more into a truly lewd plaything, until then however. . Just hiding how nerdy she can be.

Background: Jun is an above average sized Streamer (especially because when she games the only thing she plays is fighting games), much more popular Cosplayer, and all around well liked content creator. She happily goes by e-girl despite not having very many e-girl qualities, her cosplays can be revealing but she also loves every character she cosplays, has watched the anime, played the game, and enjoys getting to dress up like them. She's a member of the FGC (fighting game community) and has been playing them since she was 6, taught by her late father. Her Morrigan Aensland cosplay was done out of love for the name Aensland, and her adoration of the Vampire series (she main'd Lilith though, shh). Waaiit. . Jun hadn't done these things. Her online handle NEPHiLiM had. In fact, her 'normal' life and creator life were completely separated from one another, and for many reasons, mostly ones that she still kept behind yet another layer of secrecy.

Jun's favorite things:

Jun's favorite bands/music?

A few of Jun's favorite Anime/Manga?

Chainsaw Man (literal favorite piece of fiction) Steins;Gate (was my favorite anime for a long long time, Okaba is one of the best MCs) D.Grey-Man Hunter x Hunter A few of the many FGs you can play with her: BlazBlue Central Fiction (i don't think i'll ever enjoy any other game as much as i do BBCF, BB is 'Gimmick Character ; The Game!' so every character feels like they're from a different game almost, it's incredibly fun, but learning every matchup is a pain in the butt) Tekken 7 (have a long story here but damn. . . played Tekken the first time in 2023, and it's easily the game i play the most) Guilty Gear -strive- (sorry everyone i am dissapointed to report i had to secondary Jack-O', after spending so much time away from the game because of the bad man (in case your confused: Happy Chaos), i decided to finally learn Ram, and I've been crushing it.) Street Fighter 6 (i actually wasn't playing this very much despite it being the new big thing, and i mean it's been breaking records for number of people playing at tournaments, but. . A.K.I. just released, and guess what. . my character crises is over. will still probably switch to Ibuki when she's release, or just dual main, but yeah. . found a main <3)

May add to any of this at some point if needed.

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thegame-r-boy · 4 years

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We wish you a very Makkon (2019)! (3x times) And a happy 2020!

There are some conventions, that you just love. Or hate. Or both. And Makkon is one of those last. But nevertheless, this year, it is the only convention where I didn’t spend a dime on anything. At best, I profited on cash! With this convention, I had just good, fond memories of it. It started out in 2017, when I wrote the organizers an e-mail about how I would like to share my passion for gaming and Nintendo related consoles with other. So I gave them a supplication that I would bring with me my Switch console. And they said “sure, why not”. I also got to meet my GF @aquamoon33 on that event the same year. In 2018, we had a bigger tournament, in the newly arrived game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (SSBU). We had a bigger screen, many attendee came around, and there was quite much fun.

Last year’s stand But this year, there were some (technical) problems. Let’s start from the beginning. I woke up at 7.30 a.m. and went to the capitol at 8.20 a.m, so I came there at about 9.20 a.m. For this year's offer, I gave the crowd Ring Fit Adventure (RFA) to use, then we had a SSBU for 16 and a BlazBluE: Central Fiction (BBCF) tournament for 8 people. But as soon as I got into the room, problems arose. The TV I got was really huge and the organizers also put my stand in the far left corner, in the gaming floor, which is much better than all those years before, when I was at the centre of (attention?) a hallway. It got quite crowded over time. And I also got two tables this year for my stand.

Where my stand was this year.

And how it looked like, together with my girlfriend.

But the TV was also the main problem - we just couldn’t fit the plastic legs on it. So we used duck tape to stabilize it. There was also a problem with the remote control, because at some point, nobody was playing and the TV went in standby mode by itself. It just shut itself off. And don’t get me started with the finals! Those were a huge problem, because we did not have an HDMI output, which was not working at all, so we used two VGA’s. The picture on the projector was crystal clean - but there was no sound at all... Thought in retrospect, it was better to have no sound, because of the unfamiliar circumstances, it would be too funny - but more on that, later. So those were the bad things - now to the good things. As I said, this convention in the most “comfortable” for me, because I’m part of it since 2017. Me and my girlfriend @aquamoon33 managed to put RFA up and on display. I managed to sell also two Game Boy copies and half a Switch game.

Working out on a Ring Fit Adventure!

And ... oh ... my ... god! I got an original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from a random guy (but the guy isn’t from) the year 1990! I was soo surprised by that console! One that is almost (or even more!) as old as I am! And best of all - I got a Super Mario Bros. 3 game!!! And it didn’t cost my anything! Wow, that is something that I’ll sure to make a Tumblr post one day, in the near future.

All of them things - even with the box - are now mine!!!

And I got an original Super Mario Bros. 3 game copy as well!

I went between 1.30 p.m. and 2.00 p.m to lunch and the food there was quite tasty. So let’s talk a bit about the SSBU tournament. At first, I had planned to have an 16 players tournament in this game. Turns out that it’s quite popular in my country. In less than 50 minutes, all free spaces were signed up! That was just crazy! And because of that, my colleague, who granted me access his Gamecube (GC) controllers, could not sign up. Because I wanted those GC controllers, I made a deal - we extended this tournament to a whooping 24 attendances, where in the last round, we played a “free4all match”, from which the winner gets a 2nd chance to play with the finalists. And it went quite for a long time... A whooping 2 hours and 30 minutes marathon! Some battles were really fierce, and the crowd gave some gasps for some unique finishing moves. So finally, just 30 minutes before 5 p.m. (our second tournament was BBCF) we got our finalists.

Sooo many people gathered around!

The crowd was playing.

The BBCF tournament went quite well. We just managed to get 8 people attending this event, that my girlfriend had over. Though the most common technique was to just “button mash”, you still had to have some really good reflexes in that game. And also two girls attended it, which is quite cool! Just like for the SSBU tournament. So after about a jolly 1 hour of playtime, we got our finalists. And the best part: after we cleaned and polished everything up, a young guy came to me and said if I would be interested in having such an event on their convention. For real a payment! And I said yes, I would be VERY interested in such an event! Wohoo, finally, somebody will pay me for organizing such a tournament! Cool! Then, at 6.45 p.m., I had to go to the main lecture room, where the finals were held at 7.00 p.m.

The BBCF Tournament went not that long on.

As said before, because the HDMI cables didn’t work at all, we only could look at the picture, while two finalists were battling against each other. The first battle we had between a boy named Žan and a girl named Lara. The match was nothing special. Still, Žan won 1st place. Congrats, mate! Though the second final was a bit on the funny side. It was really ironical, that the final two attendees in SSBU had the same name (Robert) AND the SAME CHARACTER (Terry)! And if this wasn’t funny enough, then the fact that the second round they played in, they played in the stage, where the music is the song from Butter Bridge from Super Mario World! Everbody would have laughed at this situation! Because of the banjoo in the music and those muscular guys fighting with each other, everybody would have though that there were two rednecks fighting against each other! See for yourself! :D

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After Robert S. last year’s champion defeated Robert P., we had at 7.45 p.m the every year’s award on the convention. Overall, this was the best Slovenian convention of the year! A true marvel of dedication, helping and kindness. If it weren’t for the technical difficulties, I would give it an outstanding 10! But because of it, I give it a solid 9.5/10. The sheer amount of people, coming together, talking about their favourite animes/games/books, no matter how old they are - that is the thing that a convention really needs. And Makkon has this thing! Good job & see you next year! ;) 9.5/10 The Good side: - Lots of parking spaces + big TV. - Many stands (from gaming to manga’s). - Really outgoing, kind and nice people. - A big Nintendo (Gaming) community. - Great food. - Everything went as planned. - No big time delays. The Bad side: - Some major and minor technical difficulties.

#makkon #makkon2019 #super smash ultimate #blazblue central fiction #tournament #nintendo #switch #nintendo switch #convention #slovenian #2019 #thegamerboysays

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gear-project · 5 years

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There a reason why Dragon Ball FighterZ's fighting mechanics are much easier and simplistic compared to Blazblue and Guilty Gear's own? Not that I dislike it, its an awesome game, just kinda curious.

A huge chunk of what defines a game's mechanics is the game's lore itself.

Dragonball FighterZ examplifies exactly what Dragonball Z is intended to be... martial arts, punching violence, ki waves/ki attacks, transformations, charging up energy, destruction and so on.

This, combined with the fact it's a 3-on-3 style tag battle game makes it have it's own style of mashup gameplay.

It's often been established that tag battles tend to be more about switching between characters and using their abilities on the fly rather than focus on entirely technical aspects of the individual characters themselves.

By simplifying one character individually, you make it so that the focus is on characters relying on one another as a team. This is true of King of Fighters games as well.

So when you examine the complexity of individual characters in a 1-on-1 fighting game, there's more nuances to explore to the character, and their matchups are inherently different as a result.

Take BlazBlue Central Fiction's version of Ragna=the=Bloodedge versus his Crosstag Battle incarnation...

Much of the gameplay in BBCF for him lends to the idea that's important for him to get his health back when he takes damage and thus spend more time using Drive attacks that restore his HP... he also gets more damage as a result.

He's meant to be a fearsome aggressive-yet-balanced character. When controlled with the right hands (or joystick) he's unstoppable. In BBCF his mixup game is actually stronger compared to how he plays in BBTag.

BBTag puts more emphasis on relying on other allies to win while still giving Ragna all the tools he needs to win at his disposal without feeling too technical to use.

Ragna alone might have a hard time on his hands against someone like Vatista, but with a friend in the back like Hyde or even Merkava... he'll be able to pressure the opponent even more in unique ways with their help than if he was going it alone.

The main idea is to make it so that the characters "feel the same" yet are easier to work with when it comes to teamwork without being too complex compared to other characters.

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dlamp-dictator · 6 years

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Allen’s Rambling: Playing a Fighting Game for Story (Under Night In-Birth)

Recently, I got my hands on Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st], or UNIEST for short, a fighting game I’ve been looking forward to playing for almost half a year now. I know Dragonball Fighter Z is the fighting game that everyone cares about at the moment, but this is a game I’ve been wanting a little more... and DBFZ has too many problems with its... everything as a fighting game (a lacking tutorial, a tragically basic challenge mode, not explaining tools for high-level play within the game, etc.). So, I feel like talking about UNIEST for a bit while I’m taking a break from its Chronicle Mode, give my first impressions and all that now that I’ve only got about 7 prologues left to get through. Hopefully I won’t Ramble on about this, but... we’ll see. Yeah too late, I rambled, as usual... jeez, saying that phrase tends screws me over way to much and gives me a butt load of editing to do. But anyway, here goes.

Expanding and Explain the Lore

I like how Chronicle Mode gives us much more context to the arcade mode. It’s sort of the reverse of how Guilty Gear Xrd did it’s arcade and story modes. Rather than the Arcade mode being the prologue to the story mode, the story mode explains what is going on in everyone’s arcade mode, with each new prologue giving more and more context to each character and the setting overall. Every character has their own little prologue selection that goes on for about 3 to 4 chapters that explains their motives and past, with each prologue in itself being about 1 to 2 hours long depending on your reading speed. The only exception at this point seems to be Vatista, who is moreso giving exposition to the lore of the world in her prologue chapters. That’s harmless overall given her role in the story is more of an observer than an actual character moving the plot, and her own Arcade mode being her finally going out and observing things.

While the game was coming out I often found myself jokingly thinking that the world of UNIEST was going to be some extension of the Nasuverse given the inclusion of Sion as a character. Though I was joking at the time it really feels like Nasu had his hand in this series in terms of writing, as I see some of the same issues I had when playing Fate/Extella.

I have two major issues with the game as far as its story mode and writing is concerned: the pacing, and the localization.

Pacing

This is where most of the Nasuverse comparisons come from. Now to be fair to UNIEST, “bad pacing” is kind of a subjective critique nowadays due to it being thrown out far too much for its own good (my own posts and critiques not helping), so I’ll say that the pacing just feels slow to me personally. I feel like there’s too much idle chatter going on with people talking about things that aren’t important to the plot. For an example, in Orie’s prologue she’s talking to her friend/partner Lex about moving to Kanzakai, the location of the game. They discuss a bit about the mission, Orie goes into thought about her opinions of it, we learn a lot about Orie’s personality and nature when she isn’t in Licht Kreis Mode and slaying Voids, and so on. This is fine, but sometimes it felt like their friendly conversations about sweets, fashion, what restaurant to eat at, and adjusting to Japanese customs felt more like padding at times than characterization. This is all fine on paper, as it expands on both Orie and Lex’s personality, and it does lead to some interested interactions with Wagner when she appears, but for me it just feel like it drags. The main takeaways from Orie’s prologue is that she’s going to Kanzakai on an undercover/infiltration mission to learn about Amnesia and Paradox, work as something close to Wagner’s probation officer and make sure she doesn’t go to wild, and show off her personality when she isn’t in Licht Kreis Mode. The extra bits just feel unneeded to an extent. You could just skip to the restaurant scene after Orie and Lex get to Kanzakai, cut out half the dialogue about cakes and uniforms, and things would flow a little better. Though... that’s just my own opinion.

I think a better prologue that did this sort of small talk/tangent thing well was Yuzuriha’s and Wagner’s. In Yurzuriha’s prologue we learn that she’s reluctantly the In-Birth Guardian of Kanzakai due to her older sister losing her powers on her first day of the job, and that while she knows that big things are going down in the city and is knowledgeable the Hallow Night, she’d rather just do nothing to draw attention to herself and keeps the peace by slowly crushing any rising powers making a ruckus. We also learn about the formation of Bankikai and #BestBoy Ogre. The writing goes into its usual smaller conversations and small talk, but it works a lot better in this case. Yuzuriha going on and explaining the Hallow Night in depth to Ogre makes since due to her wanting to make sure he understands that forming organizations will only worsen the situation as rising powers clash and only give rise to more Voids and more In-Births to create an endless cycle. It also shows that as knowledgeable as she is about it, Yuzuriha doesn’t give a damn about what goes on in the Hallow Night outside of keeping the peace and is only explaining things to Ogre because she doesn’t want to deal with him later... and she only had a broom to fight with at the time. On Ogre’s end, he was the type of character to make small talk, flirt, and go on long, hammy spiels about his goals, which constantly annoyed Yuzuriha, but it played well with the tone of the scenes and honestly made Ogre very endearing.

Speaking of endearing characters, the writing style of the prologues also helped Wagner’s character well too. She’s the newest playable character that I was personally interested in learning about. Wagner’s name actually came up several times in the the arcade modes of the previous game. From what we knew she was a mix of a merciless Templar that slaughtered anyone and everyone under the name of Licht Kreis, a wildcard that was Licht Kreis’s ace in the hole, and someone that Orie either feared, despised, or saw as a rival of some kind. The main takeaways from her prologue is that she is on probation after “overdoing it” in a past mission and has to live in Japan to cool her head with two attendants managing/confiscating her sword and shield, and while she personally views Orie as a rival Orie herself just sees her as a dangerous person that’s a pain to deal with. Those were the takeways, but the prologue does a lot to humanize Wagner and make her an interesting character. When not in Licht Kreis Mode she’s actually very endearing, being someone that knows little about society outside of battle. She struggles with academics due to her not liking the structure of Japanese schools, but slowly loving the more social aspect of it. She has a slight dependence on her attendants for more social activities. She’s a horrible actor to the point that her undercover backstory was that of being a shelter rich girl so she didn’t have to force herself to act in anyway and blow her cover. It’s all humanizing stuff from someone that was hyped up as a fiery, brutal killer of Voids throughout the series. She’s just... a socially awkward rich girl outside of battle, and it’s pretty enduring.

And just before I move on to talk about the localization I’ll just say that Carmine and Enkidu’s prologues could had easily been two chapters instead of three. The long conversations and small talk were just... out of character for those two, Carmine especially, though he is a lot more likable to me now, and Enkidu might just be my favorite character story-wise for his simplicity and how he bounces off Chaos and Hilda in Amnesia.

Now then...

The Localization

The localization... is terrible.

No, I’m not kidding, this is some godawful localizing. Spell check apparently didn’t even exist when translating this script. Seriously, take a shot everytime you see a spelling or grammar error. Actually, don’t do that, you’ll die before you finish the first prologue. I mean... jeez, I know mistakes happen, and my own writings tend to be riddled with grammar issues here and there, but the amount I’m seeing here is just inexcusable. The misspellings especially. Serious, was spell check a thing when they translated this? Especially since there’s no dub every moment of grammar errors and misspellings seems more egregious. Reading these cutscenes and visual novel moments are a pain when I have to figure out what a character is actually saying. Which brings me to another issue.

There’s no dub, and that rustles my jimmies something fierce.

I don’t care how controversial it is for me to talk about this anymore. I don’t care how little the FGC cares for dubs and stories in fighting games. I don’t care about EVO, NorCal, SoCal, or anything other bull excuse used for a proper lacking localization. I kept my mouth shut about this when it came to Blazblue and Guilty Gear outside of some grumbles and general reactive whining, but now I’m actually pissed. There was no excuse this time for lacking a dub here, especially with the large window of time between the JP and NA release dates.

For those that are curious, it was about 6 months. I remember Arc System saying something to the effect of having to delay Blazblue Central Fiction by about 6 month if they were to dub it. Six months... and this game has much less story stuff going on than in Blazblue. I remember people saying that BBCF needed to come out sooner so people outside of Japan could train for EVO. Folks, anyone that gives a damn about fighting games on a competitive level will import unless the time gap is a week’s difference or less. Period. Everyone else will either just do local tournaments, or is playing casually by extension of the more series side of the FGC. And frankly, EVO tends to be dominated by Japanese players anyway, so... I’m narrowing my eyes when I hear things like that. When this game had such a large time gap I think most of us figured it was for a dub, especially with Dragonball Fighter Z coming out just barely a month beforehand. However... no such luck, this game was basically delayed, had a poor release time, and I’m willing to bet money it was so this game could flop and they’d have an excuse to probably not dub Cross Tag Battle due to low interest in what would be one fourth of that game’s rooster (technically one eighth, but that’s a Rambling for another day).

Ugh, but I won’t whine about that any further, continuing to type this is only making me angrier... moving on.

Themes of Under Night

Now what kind of writer would I be if I didn’t at least try to talk about the narrative themes of UNIEST’s story? I’ll be honest. I’m having a hard time thinking of its themes. Not that it doesn’t have any mind you, but... I can’t really place my finger on it yet. Maybe it’s because I haven’t completed Chronicle Mode yet, but there is a theme in this game’s story.

And it’s probably something really Japanese.

I’m not just saying that because this is a Japanese Anime Fighting Game, but... the story is constantly drilling in how peaceful Japan is despite how combative the Hallow Night is by nature. Wald and Enkidu are constantly going on about how they feel out of play being warriors in such peaceful times. Carmine talks about how hard it is to be a street punk picking fights in modern times. Orie and Wagner are bring up how peaceful and different Japan is compared to the warzones they’ve been in while in Licht Kreis. The list goes on, but the fact that this story takes place in a peaceful country like Japan is drilled into you. I still have quite a few characters to finish in terms of prologues, but... there’s something, some kind of commentary on peace and violence. Chaos heavily stresses that Amnesia never goes too far to kill people in these modern times in Enkidu’s prologue, Gordeu remarks how fights aren’t to the death despite the tension between warring groups.

There’s... something here, but I can’t put my finger on it, probably due to my Western origins and beliefs. I’m sure if I talked about this with my Xenny might be able to piece together something since he’s learning the language and I get the feeling the theme might be lost in translation somewhere, but... for now, it’s all speculation until I finish the prologues.

As a game overall, this is a huge improvement to the original Under Night. There’s an in depth tutorial mode, there’s a Mission Mode to learn combos, there’s an network mode that’s leagues better than DBFZ at this point in terms of structure and netcode. If anyone in the FGC felt a little burnt by how Dragonball Fighter Z handled things like the tutorial and challenge mode and just generally not providing things for high-level play, I highly recommend giving UNIEST a shot, especially if you’re interested in Blazblue Cross Tag Battle.

Lastly, I would a moment of silence for Ogre, who has a great character design, interesting personality, had the coolest name for a special ability (Gate of Hades), but will never be playable due to... plot reasons. Farewell playboy fedora man, I would had definitely subbed you if you were playable.

#under night in birth #your dictator is speaking

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dlamp-dictator · 7 years

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Allen Rambles About Persona 5

AKA Allen’s Ramblings XVI, but... well, you guys know by now how I do things when tagging fandoms and everything. Anyway, I’ve played about 30 hours of Persona 5 and wanted to give my thoughts so far.

Now, I have been waiting to get my hands on Persona 5 for years. This game was suppose to come out years ago and we in the States finally have it. I gotta’ say, I was salivating when my preorder came in on time for once. The artbook, the CD, the Morgana Plushie, it just felt so unreal to have it all in my hands... but enough gushing and onto my thoughts. I’ll try to keep spoilers vague, but keep in might I’m at the third main dungeon by now. I know the Persona series is really big on not spoiling story-related matters, so I’ll be polite and tried my best to keep things general. Like when I talked about Tales of Berseria I’ll be breaking this down into the good points and not so good points, but first I need to talk about...

The Aesthetics

Oh Lord the aesthetics of this game. The cell-shaping, the red motif, the slickness of movement, the music. Everything just feels so smooth. Hell, this is gonna’ be a new tag for the blog now these are aesthetics are so good. I can’t just stick this one category and call it done, I need give this its own header to break down all I love about how this game looks and feels.

Relateable Topics

I have to say, I’m surprise how much I connected with a lot of the events happening in the game. This isn’t a story about accepting death, this isn’t a story about solving a murder, this is a story about kids trying to fix what they believe is a broken, corrupt world, and dammit you can just relate to that. Before you even begin the game it tells you none of the events in it are related to real life or real people, but Atlus is lying through their goddamn teeth if they think I couldn’t see this stuff happening for real if it hasn’t already. I won’t say what exactly happens, but every scandal that’s uncovered, every problem that’s seen, every case that’s been discussed in this game you can actually see happening in real life. Hell, I’m sure you could look online and see some articles talking about this stuff even here in the US. I won’t spoil anything yet, but... just trust me on this on.

Character Designs

The character designs look fantastic. I love everyone so far in both casual and Phantom Thief attire, with Ryuji and Morgana having my favorite designs. And I have to say, I’m rather surprised how much I like these two specifically, but I’ll get more into that later. Despite having a large amount of black for most characters, the designs really pop out. I’d say that’s due to a lot of the backgrounds being brightly colored, but still. I can’t wait to see other party members and how they look in game. The art book only does so much.

The Artbook

Not much to say here save for making a pun. The Aesthetics art book is... just a really good artbook with a lot of sketches, concept designs, and references in it. It’ll totally help for if I want to do fan art of these characters. And unlike SOME GAMES *cough*trailsofsteel*cough* this game doesn’t have blatant spoilers in their artbook and interviews. So yeah, points for the artbook, real nice.

THE MUSIC

I. Love. This. Soundtrack. I’m not music elitist, but the one thing that just makes me go nuts for any song is solid, audible bass, jazz, and brass. It’s why Persona has always had good music to me, and this entire soundtrack just hits every note in just the right way. This soundtrack is so good I could just... just... [RETRACTED] all over these songs. My favorites so far as Last Surprise, Layer Cake, and Rivers in the Desert... not that I’m far enough in the game to hear that last one, but... y’know.

Okay, so that’s it for the aesthetic, now onto the good points about the game as a whole.

The Good

The Intro

Thankfully, the intro of this game is not hours of hand-holding like in Persona 4. You are right into the action, and even after the intro stuff you still get a bit of freedom to move a little. I think only after a second play-through will tell how long your hand is held and how much freedom you truly have in the beginning, but for now I say this is leagues better than P4.

The Voice Cast

I haven’t heard the Japanese dub since I’ve always been dubs-over-subs, but the voice cast in English sounds great so far. My favorite so far has actually been Morgana and Ryuji, characters I didn’t think I’d like as much as I do right now. Ryuji is just the right mix punk kid and emotional softy that makes me really warm up to him, and Morgana’s cute, but confident sounding voice goes well with her personality. Major props to Cassandra Morris for voicing her. Wait a second... didn’t she do Asahina in Dangan Ronpa? No wonder I like her performance. And special shout out to Jamieson Price as Sojiro. I may not have gotten to hear him as Tager in BBCF, but at least I have hear him in this game. And while I’m talking about the voice cast I must admit that I have mixed feelings about Igor’s voice actor, I know why his voice was changed, but... I still prefer Dan Woren. Hopefully I’ll just get use to it.

Smoother/Faster Combat

The combat has definitely improved in both animations and overall feel. On the fly Persona swapping, lightning-fast menus, flashy as hell attack animations, this game has really improved in terms of quality with it’s combat. As someone playing this game since P3, the combat in that game was fine for turn based, but with this game I’m going to have some higher exceptions for future Turn Based RPG games, and the next SMT game especially in terms how combat feels.

Improved Social Links

The Confidant system is sooo much better than the other two games. Non-Party member social links finally have a higher purpose than just giving you better Personas during fusions. It feels so good to know that my allies don’t just help me with my fusions, but in the actual story as well. From selling you health items and weapons, increasing non-active party members EXP growth, improving the Phantom Thieves PR (and making dungeons easier to traverse through), and so on. It really feels like every person gives me an edge as a rebel of society. And the stories they’re telling so far have me interested. Again, spoilers, so I won’t go into detail, but just trust me on this one.

The Not So Good

Like with my Tales of Beresia Rambling, there are still some issues/critiques I have of this game as a fan. Again, I’ve played Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 4 Arena, Ultimax, and small handful of SMT games outside of the Persona series so these might just be nitpicks, but I still think they’re worth saying. And for the folks that have seen my Berseria rambling, these points are going to be much longer and more in depth by comparison. So... let’s get started with that.

Demon conversations are still hit-or-miss with me. I like the idea of convince my enemies to my side, when it comes to fusing and hunting for the right Persona in those dungeons it can be a huge pain.

Money management is still balls hard in this game. I’d recommend demanding money every chance it comes along if you already have that particular persona and you don’t need the extra EXP. Trust me, it’ll disappear in a flash.

The early game is brutal. Story dungeon take longer that in past games, and with the small SP pool you have it’s gonna’ take several days to beat it. If you’re struggling through the first non-scripted major boss and even the boss of the dungeon, that’s normal as far as I’m concerned.

Social stats are back and they’re as annoying as ever. It was fine in P3 because their were just three and only effect you near mid/late-game. It was annoying in Persona 4 because they controlled not only social links, but better paying jobs as well (and again, money management is balls hard), as well as prevent certain dialogue options (which SUCKED). And again in this game certain dialogue options can’t be chosen if you don’t have the right stat level. This starts happening in the early game when all your stats are low, practically taunting you about your low level. That’s drives me up a goddamn wall. It doesn’t help that it took me until the second dungeon fully grasp which places upped which state and how. It took 15 hours to realize this shit... goddamn...

After playing Devil Survivor 2, seeing physical attacks that cast from HP for you not apply to your opponent annoys me to no end. This makes physical enemies very unfair and it’s part of what makes the early game so hellish. Those guys take out half your health and are still good to spam that crap.

The dungeons are a daytime option only, and that’s something that’s annoyed me since playing Persona 4. Persona 3 had this done best by having the dungeons at nighttime access, making balancing social life, grinding social stats, and grinding levels so much easier. I was hoping that’d be the case in P5 since “student by day, thief by night” was the tagline, but apparent it should be changed to “student by day, thief by the afternoon, too tired to grind social stats by night.”

As of the third dungeon, I feel like the game is really pushing me to clear the Palaces when I’m not prepared to. All my party members keep pushing me to hurry and clear them, and while that makes since in the story, it makes doing the actual prep work really hard. Also, the third dungeon/arc feels really hand-holding until the dungeon unlocked, which annoyed me a little.

Though not directly effecting the game, the whole Atlus-Streaming thing just... leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s a shame that those without access to the right system can’t enjoy the game with their favorite streamers/let’s players.

Yusuke’s inclusion and joining the party could had been written better, and that’s all I’ll say on the matter since I’m trying not to spoil the game past the first dungeon. Message me if you want the details.

The localization is... not good. I’m seeing a lot of “Mr., Mrs., and Miss” thrown in along with Japanese honorifics and it’s a bit emersion-breaking. A lot of the pronunciations could had been done better too. I still stand by the voice acting being good, but the directing and instructions feel a little... off. Maybe that’s because the game is based in Tokyo, which might be a little more culturally mixed, but compared to the other two games this feels messy.

A real minor nitpick, but I still have mixed feelings about the dungeon lair/prison theme of the new Velvet Room. I mean I get it, but it feels a little forced and heavy-handed to me.

So yeah, a few nitpicks aside, I’ve really been enjoying this game. If anyone has any advice for getting through the rest of the game or just some tips in general that don’t spoil the game too much please reblog and add them here. Personally, I’d wait for a guide to social linking and stat grinding before getting this game, but as a Persona fan, I say this game is good so far. Hopefully it gets better as I continue to play it.

#persona 5 #your dictator is speaking

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