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Tuesday 15 January, 2008
GAMEPLAY(2)
Starting off with how the story develops, it certainly starts hitting that high-caliber epic quality of good RPGs after a while. After the first full-moon battle, there are little lead-up developments to the next dispersed in daily happenings. Your main allies develop very well just through the basic plot, and some just become very real feeling - you know, their own history, problems, secrets and motivations for being in the group. Best of all is the little personality traits that make them more realistic; for instance this one guy(Junpei) is such a love/hate character for me - he is a hilarious comic-relief at times, yet is a horrible team player on missions, but he has insecurities behind his uncooperative actions. I could go on about my faves too, but all the main characters are likable in some way, and dislikable in other ways-just not as extreme as Junpei-which makes them well-developed for me. New obstacles soon arise, and little scenes of character or story development just keeps you hyped up for the next full-moon; it's like mini story arcs with climaxes etc. at times.
A good in-between-character-development-and-game-systems aspect to talk about is the "Social Links" with NPCs (eventually these include some of your main allies). I had not mentioned previously that this game has many references to tarot, not just half-assed mentions of the Death card or Tower either. It is intertwined with the gameplay and, from what I can tell, the story. Anyway, each social link corresponds with one of the major arcana (usually with a good reason for which one it is) and increasing that social link through interactions with that character through some personal side-story gives extra levels to persona you create in the same arcana category. Also, completely finishing the NPC's story and "maxing" the social link gives access to creating the most powerful persona in that arcana, usually powerful and full of rare abilities - more on that later. The true beauty of the social links is how rewarding some of them are without the levels and persona and whatnot; some of the NPCs develop almost as well as your main allies through these "side-stories". Granted, the NPCs are usually more one-dimensional, but it is surprising how much color is given to the game world from these optional undertakings. After a while, one works out how to increase social links efficiently by learning NPC's schedules while doing the aforementioned stat increasing during times when there are no social links to be done.
Lastly, although battles and climbing through Tartarus don't change much, some things spice it up. First of all, higher levels=longer time before getting tired=better tower runs. Also, a certain NPC will begin giving you sidequests, arguably more like challenges, to do after the first full-moon for usually quite nifty rewards. Also, after certain boss battles, you get new tactics (AI Patterns) for teammates and some of these come at just the right time (right before you really need them). Of course, there is also the occasional new teammate; there is also quite a bit of flexibility in which teammates you want to level up at what time, due to the tried-and-true lower level members get more experience scheme. The real deal here however, is after the compendium opens up after the first full moon, you can recall personas you have used in fusing new personas. Also, higher levels and social links open up more possibilities all the time. Fiddling around with creating custom personas is a huge reason to continue the tower crawling. This aspect may be better for discussion in...
DESIGN
One of the best aspects of the game, and certainly a big part of that emerging complexity, is the persona fusing system. I can see why series fans so highly praise this part of the game. One way to put it is: It came before Pokemon, and it is way better. Granted, it does not have the social factor of trading and battling with friends that made Pokemon so successful (and possibly cuteness, especially compared to the personas, which are mostly references to mythology), but it makes up for it in having a system that, from what I have heard, started out better than what Pokemon has become over time. It's all there: elemental properties, passive skills, skill inheritance manipulating/rules, double-team attacks and moreso in other games in the series, multiple combatants. And the Persona 3 system is even considered "dumbed-down" by some hardcore series' fans. Suffice to say, you can spend hours upon hours making your perfect team of persona and mastering the skill inheritance system.
Unfortunately, it seems most other design aspects I have covered in my gameplay sections. Excuse my bad planning, but I'll summarize or point out some aspects here: The most innovative part was likely the social links, few other games have such great development of NPCs through side-stories, and with a gameplay reward for the players who need more than just the added interaction as incentive. The level design is hit-or-miss depending on if you like randomly generated floors with infrequent changes in visual design; the non-random parts are average I'd say. The usual RPG conventions are present in challenge (harder enemies, objectives), conflict(through the story and character interactions), and interest(new possibilities, story developments, getting stronger). One thing I would like to note is that people these days complain too much about repetition in games; the way I see it, all games have a hella lot of repetition in some form, the important thing is if the game can make it fun each time. This game does that quite well I think, which is important for an RPG. This also contributes to a tone that this game pulls off pretty well - a tone of everyday life, including how repetitive it can be, yet how great it can be. To reference a great little thought by Sayuri, about a song whose melody repeats itself over and over - but each time the tune gets just a little bit more rich, a little bit more beautiful as little layers are added each time...we should strive to make our lives the same.
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