Persona 4 Coming to the US this Winter

It's official! According to Siliconera, who attended Anime Expo this past weekend, Atlus will release the latest game in the Shin Megami Tensei series, Persona 4, this holiday season. As frequent readers of this blog will know, I'm infatuated with Persona 3 and FES and have made a couple of posts detailing my progress in the game. Given my recent gaming habits though, I wasn't sure that I would be buying Persona 4; that was until I found out that Chihiro (one of the side characters in P3) would be making an appearance in the game. It seems that the P4 characters take a trip to Gekkoukan two years after the events of P3, so who knows what other cameos we may see.

On a related note, the opening movie is very cool: perhaps better than the movie from Persona 3.

My Life @ Gekkokan: A Coincidence?

I'm about a month further along in Persona 3 FES and it's finals time. The funny thing is that it's finals time for me as well. I'm going to be spending the rest of the week studying and taking tests, so I likely won't be able to play FES until next week sometime (T-T). Oh well: it can't be helped.

My Life @ Gekkokan: Diving into Persona 3 FES

Last summer, I bought an RPG buy the name of Persona 3. I may have even blogged about it at the time, but I don't remember. I played the Playstation 2 title quite a bit that August, but once school started back up, I fell out of habit and never could quite pick the game back up. Plus, there was always the possibility that Atlus (the developer) would release P3 FES: an upgraded version of the original game. Well, last month they did, and in the last few weeks I've been playing it a considerable amount. This won't be a review (I'll like write one later), but more like thoughts I had while playing the game.

The Three Month Mark

Last time, I only played about 3 months worth of the game (Persona 3 takes place over a 12-month school year), so my first goal was to reach my old point in the game. Tonight I reached this goal.

• FES lets you import some of the data from the original game when you start, including your Persona compendium and personal stats like Charm, Courage, and Academics. I was over half way leveled with these three skills in Persona 3, so as a result I've managed to max out two of them already.
• Leveling up your social links is different the second time through. I've been playing much more efficiently. I'm likely going to have one of my relationahips maxed-out by the end of the month (in the game).
• I love the dating aspect of the game. Currently, I'm dating the School Treasurer, but I've also got the Track Team coach fawning over me. I understand that there's a funny event later in the game if you level up multiple relationships with girls, so I'm working hard to earn it.
• Atlus (the developer) nerfed a couple aspects of the game that irritated me at first. For example, you can no longer power-level in the main dungeon the night before the full moon. (Typically, you are forced to quit because your party gets fatigued; in P3, this didn't happen the night before a full moon.) Also, There's less insentive to level up academics by donating to the local shinto shrine. These haven't proved too detrimental however.
• Being told that I needed to be a badass (see image above) was one of the funniest things I've seen in a game (note: "Badass" is the highest rank for the Courage stat).
  
• The music is still AWESOME!
• Similarly, Bebe - a French exchange student who speaks with an accent (e.g., the = "ze") and randomly speaks Japanese - is still one of my favorite characters.
• I sometimes wish I wasn't playing an RPG and that instead the social aspect of Persona 3 was the entire game. It's very addictive.

I'll update more after I delve further into the game.

King of Fighters XI is on the Way!

You've all heard my rave about King of Fighters XI before and how much I went through to play it. Well, now SNK has released the title in America for a mere fraction (see: $15) of what I paid originally. Oh but that's not all: sucker that I am, I've ordered this version off of Amazon and it is in the mail as we speak. It should arrive sometime this week. Why would I buy a videogame I already own simply because it's now in English? Well (1) it's in English, (2) the Developer SNK needs to know they have fans and support in the States, and (3) I am that effing HARDCORE!

In Addition:

Capcom is releasing a version of Okami on the Wii. I own it for the PS2, but I'll be getting this version too. I don't even own a Wii yet!

Persona 3 FES is rumored to be coming Stateside. I haven't even finished the regular, vanilla version of Persona 3, but I'm grabbing FES for sure.

What's the plural of "Persona"?

I came for the teenage-suicide mechanic, but stayed for the dating simulator...

The above words could not describe my feelings about the Playstation 2 "Persona 3" any better. When the game was originally announced for Japan over a year ago, I was more than intrigued by the game's battle system; specifically, the method in which you summon your Personae (creatures that act as the game's magic system), i.e. shooting themselves in the head with a gun. Sure, they call it an "evoker" and it doesn't actually fire any ammunition; however, when the damn thing looks like a gun and all the characters (all teenagers, I might add) are pointing the muzzle against their temple/mouth/between the eyes, it's hard not to suspect that a little controversy is bound to follow this game to America. After a good 17 hours of play, I'm finding so much more to enjoy about this game.

There are many things that keep me playing Persona 3, but the biggest reason is what has been dubbed by some as the "dating-sim" portion. Essentially, when you're not fighting through the game's main dungeon, you attend school and form relationships with other people, including trying to score yourself a girlfriend. Right now I'm working on winning over the bookish Chihiro. What can I say? Guys make passes at girls who wear glasses :P

I should also note that the music is FANTASTIC! I got a copy of the soundtrack (part of it anyway) just for buying the game, and I'm so glad I did. This is the type of stuff I want on my iPod, and it's a relief to to have to look for a copy online.

Updates to follow in the coming days/weeks.

Ja ne!