PS2 RPG Project: Game 2- Persona 4 (Golden) Review

Note:  I thought it would be pointless to play this game twice, and I already own a copy of Persona 4 Golden on the Playstation Vita, so that's the one I'm actually reviewing here.  It's the same game, it just has more in it. 
How far did you get?  1 completion, true ending.  Pretty sure I missed a dungeon though...
How many hours did you put into it?  51

Persona 4 Golden is basically a handheld port of the Playstation 2 JRPG Persona 4, but with lots of fun extras.  Since I'll be reviewing the game as though the reader has never played either version, I will be talking about the game itself, and not just the bonus features. 

Persona 4, like it's predecessor Persona 3, are a very different style of JRPG, particularly if most of your JRPG experience comes from games like Final Fantasy.  It's still high school aged people fighting bad guys, but the game takes place in a modern Japan.  The sim aspects are what really set it apart, though.  You're not just a high school student running around dungeons and killing bad guys.  You actually get to go to high school, do extracurricular activities, and hang out with your friends. 

It's not without purpose.  The dungeon section of the game takes place in a strange world that you enter by jumping into a television.  There, you are able to unlock your "potential", which is referred to as a persona.  By hanging out with your friends and becoming closer to them, you upgrade a social link with that character, which is then used to level up your personas faster when fusing them. 

There are a ton of different menus and options in Persona 4, and to talk about them all would be a lot like trying to type out an instruction manual so I'm not going to do that.  However, it is surprisingly easy to get into considering how in depth the game is.  It's a very smart game in many places as well.  The game actually comes packaged with a lecture about Jungian philosophy, which better explains the ideas of personas and shadows.

The game is also laugh out loud hilarious at times.  Many times when I was crawling through dungeons leveling up and killing shadows, I wished I was back in the real world engaging my peers for the inevitable funny thing they would say or do.  If it wasn't something funny, it was something very sad, or very meaningful.  I've never seen a game do character development quite the way this game does.

Despite it's cartoon like appearance, this game is absolutely not for children.  For instance, one of the dungeons is bath house, and exists from the mind of one of your peers who is a bit confused about his sexuality.  Another is set in a strip club.  The game seems to try to keep things lighthearted, but things do get a bit heavy while in the dungeon areas. 

Persona 4 is also a Shin Megami Tensei title through and through.  Your persona are generally mythical creatures from several different religions, from Norse to Judeo Christianity.  If you decide to play through to the true ending, you'll also encounter a couple of characters from the very beginnings of the Shin Megami Tensei series, or more specifically, from the book that spawned it.  If you're into Shin Megami Tensei lore, you'll no doubt giggle with glee when you encounter these characters. 

The battle system is similar to other SMT titles as well.  The main goal is to exploit weaknesses so you gain extra turns in battle.  It's worked in every other SMT game, and it works here.  The battles are as fast paced as you want them to be, and you can manually set whether you want to control your other party members or not. 

Personas are used to boost your battle capability and to use abilities and spells.  You collect them from a card shuffling game after battles in which you do well in.  It's not all the different than Pokemon when it comes to collecting them.  You can fuse them together to make new, stronger personas as well.  Your supporting members all have one single persona, and their stats are based solely on that single Persona.  It makes managing your party a lot easier, and managing yourself in this game can be stressful enough. 

The only thing I really don't like about Persona 4 is that some of the dialog can get a bit cheesy.  I've never played any game as far rooted into Japanese culture as Persona 4 is, and that's great for the most part.  However, you do deal with some boring teenage drama on occasion, and it can be annoying when they start talking about a food type you've never heard of.   

As for the bonuses in the Golden version, you get television stations you can flip though that feature live performances of Persona 4's music, quizzes, and many other neat little features.  The game itself includes a new social link, new personas, and a longer endgame. 

Persona 4 (Golden) is easily one of the top 5 JRPG ever to grace to Playstation 2, and is currently the best one of the Playstation Vita.  It's deep, user friendly, and a blast to play.  If you've never played it, I can't recommend it enough.  If you don't have a Vita, this game is the best reason to get one. 

Rating:  97/100

Review! Resident Evil 6

System:  Playstation 3 (also available on Xbox 360, on PC in 2013)
How far did you get:  Finished all 4 campaigns

Few games are more frustrating than those that have potential, and Resident Evil 6 is one of those games.  This game is almost good.  It isn't good, but thanks to some broken camera controls, character controls, and some really batty design choices, this game doesn't quite reach the level of it's predecessors, or a good game for that matter.

Let's start with the presentation.  The first thing you're going to want to do when starting up Resident Evil 6 is completely ignore it's recommendations regarding lighting.  If you decide to follow the games directions instead of turning them all the way up, you're going to spend a good portion of 2 of the campaigns running around in a world you can't see.  Not only will you die a lot by enemies you didn't even know were there, you won't be able to admire the fact that the visuals in this game are actually top notch.  Resident Evil 6 is incredibly nice to look at, and easily one of the best looking games of 2012, or even this console generation.

While cranking up the lighting helps, it doesn't fix all of the visual issues.  In one campaign, you'll spend your time running around in a blizzard.  For seconds at a time, the snow will start blowing really badly and you can't see anything.  When this happens, you're not supposed to be able to see, and I get that.  However, when it's not happening, you still can't see.  I spent a couple of hours in this area trying to figure out where to go, and it was not fun.

Things get shaken up a bit when it comes to gameplay, as each campaign in slightly different, so I'll talk about each one separately.

Leon's campaign is best described as the classic Resident Evil campaign.  The majority of the enemies you'll fight are run of the mill zombies, and variations of those zombies.  The problem with Leon's campaign is that most of it takes place in underground passages and water areas.  It's dark everywhere, and due to their not being much room to move around, the poor camera controls pretty much ruin the entire experience.  If something gets behind you, prepare to spend about 10 seconds getting turned around and getting your gun aimed in the right place.  Several of the more useful abilities your character has require you to do some finger yoga with your controller.  With the exception of several instant death quick time events, Leon's campaign was painfully easy despite it's broken mechanics, and overall was absolutely zero fun to play.

Chris' campaign made a little more sense regarding the controls.  The game itself plays like a broken 3rd person shooter, and Chris' campaign at least feels more like a 3rd person shooter.  You'll fight an enemy type called the J'Avo in this campaign.  They're gun toting infected people who have much smarter AI than what you were dealing with in Leon's campaign.  Unfortunately, much like Leon's campaign, you don't really go anywhere terribly interesting and controls still suck the fun right out of the experience.

The third campaign, starring Jake Muller, is actually much more interesting in terms of locations.  You get a real variety here, and Jake is much more well rounded than Leon or Chris are.  You'll likely never have any ammo issues with Jake, as you can use his fists as an actual weapon.  Other characters can use melee attacks as well, but Jake can do it without using your stamina bar.  He also has a decent collection of guns to grab.  As with the other campaigns, control issues run rampant.  The camera becomes your worst enemy with this melee bruiser, as it tends to jump all over the place while your trying to beat down your enemies.  It takes an otherwise interesting campaign and makes you wonder why you're still playing this complete lack of fun.

Fortunately, the fourth campaign not only manages to be the best of them all, but may have actually made for a pretty good overall experience had it been the only campaign.  Here you play as Ada Wong, a person you'll be familiar with if you've played the other 3 campaigns, or other Resident Evil games.  Her story trumps the other campaigns by a pretty large margin.  Ada's campaign is more of a personal nature than the others, and it makes you feel a bit more for your character.  In addition, it manages to turn these broken mechanics into something that actually works.  She uses a hook shot type gun to fly all over the map, and strangely I still never felt lost.  She occasionally even uses it in battle, and it actually adds to the experience.  It's a blast when an infected chainsaw wielding creature comes at you, only for you to hook onto a nearby building and end up on the other side of him.  It's kind of a "ha ha, you can't catch me" kind of moment.

Probably the biggest highlight of Resident Evil 6 is the boss fights.  Every one of them is extraordinarily epic.  It was a bit disappointing that Ada ends up fighting alongside Leon to attack the same final boss you fight in Leon's campaign, but it was still nice to get a different perspective on the fight.    Each fight has particular game mechanics you need to take advantage of, and if you don't figure them out fast enough, you're dead.  I took these as learning experiences and didn't find it to take away from fights.  Autosave spots are very frequent in this game, so you never have to play through too much of the game multiple times due to unfair deaths.

Overall, I'd only recommend this to hardcore fans of the series.  For the most part, it's a broken 3rd person shooter that isn't even sure it wants to be one.  It's far too long for a game that is rarely fun, and no amount of gorgeous visuals and epic set pieces is going to change that.

Rating:  41/100

PS2 RPG Project: Game 1- Final Fantasy X Review

Did you complete the game?  Yes
Did you do any of the side missions?  I got all of the celestial weapons (I DESERVE PRAISE FOR THIS) and defeated Omega. 
How many hours did you put into it?  83

On December 20, 2001, Square unleashed the first Final Fantasy entry for the Playstation 2.  When it was first released, it received almost universal positive critical reactions and fan reactions alike.  As time passed and more Final Fantasy games were released, the series seemed to be in a hard spot, and many fans and critics sited Final Fantasy X as the starting point for the decline.  Does that mean that if you were to play it now, you wouldn't have a good time?  Was it not as good as we remember it being?  Was it really responsible for the decline in the quality of the series?

No, yes, and maybe.

My current experience was Final Fantasy X may have actually been better than the first time I played it.  I'm thinking the reason for this may be that the newer games in the series have been so lackluster, that it was nice to play one when the series was in it's prime.

Things were changed up a bit from it's predecessors, though.  You don't have a numbered level in FFX.  It chose to try something different with it's sphere grid system, and this may be one of the few times Square tried something different with Final Fantasy and it actually worked very well.  It worked so well, in fact, that some games even stole the idea (here's looking at you, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga).  Rather than leveling up once every 10 to 50 fights or so like in most JRPGs, your characters would receive a sphere level every 2 fights or so.  Each sphere only increases one stat, but it made it feel like you were improving on a more regular basis than most games in the genre.  Later in the game, it also gives you some control, as you can split into other characters sphere grids and learn their abilities.  This came with a downside, too.  If you decide to level up high enough to fight some of the high end monsters in the monster arena, some of the characters inherent abilities seem a bit useless.  For instance, if you were to run someone through Tidus' sphere grid, which is high in agility, they'll be able to hit fast enemies just as well as Tidus can.  However, if you run someone through Lulu's sphere, they still don't seem to hit the damage marks that Lulu's magic does.

The side quests come with a downside, too.  They aren't introduced until the very end of the game, when you acquire the airship.  If you get all of the celestial weapons and don't flee from battles, you'll be leveled up enough that you'll likely be able to kill the final boss with one overdrive attack.  You'll still have problems with the monster arena (at 83 hours into the game there were still several I could not take down), but being able to take down the final boss in one hit shows some major balancing issues.

Speaking of side quests, getting the celestial weapons, crests, and sigils was unseasonably hard in some instances, more specifically the sigils.  To get the sigil for Tidus, you have to play a chocobo racing mini game, but you have to play it pretty much perfectly.  It took me several days of playing to master it, and the mini game isn't even fun.  A couple of the others were just as frustrating, possibly even worse.  Let's just say you will play a LOT of blitzball.

Fortunately, blitzball is actually kind of fun once you start getting good at it.  In fact, I began to think it was kind of neat that it came packaged in this game, as it is surprisingly in depth to be a mini game.  Though it probably would have been poorly received, Square probably could have gotten away with selling it as a full fledged sports game and charging full price for it.

In regards to it's influence to the future games in the franchise, I found that the game was pretty linear, and designed a lot like Final Fantasy XIII.  Given, Square took everything about Final Fantasy X that made it great completely out of FFXIII, but I can see why people would site FFX as a blueprint.

Visually, the game actually stands up pretty well.  I noticed a few graphical glitches here and there, but this was a time when your system didn't connect online and force you to download patches for your game.  None of it was game breaking, and considering the scale of the world of Spira, that's a pretty decent accomplishment in my book.  It looks a lot better than most of the JRPGs that came out after it on the PS2, and the cinematics look legitimately awesome, even now.  The mouth animations are a little funky when the characters are talking, but it's forgivable considering the hardware limitations.

The audio is sort of a mixed bag.  The music is mostly great.  The voice acting is where things get a little weird.  American voice actors have never been a strong suit for Square, and this is no different.  Most of the side cast is voiced well enough, like Auron, Rikku, Lulu, and Wakka.  I have some issues with Tidus and Yuna, though.  Tidus' laugh is not only grating, but placed in some very odd places.  It could have been an easy fix had the voice actor just laughed a few seconds less, but instead of doing that they just let him sound awkward.  Yuna was similar in that regard, and the way she said "ok" drove me nuts.  It just sounded off, and the voice actor didn't seem like she was putting much effort into it.

I really like story in Final Fantasy X.  It's not as in depth as Final Fantasy VI, VII, or VIII, but it's much easier to comprehend.  There's a lot of emotion and tragedy, and it's fun to keep up with as you play the game.  The side cast all have very interesting stories and it's fun to unravel all of their secrets.  Tidus, however, sucks.  His backstory and story in general is fine, but he's one of my least favorite lead characters in a Final Fantasy game simply from the way he acts.  He's childish and kind of a moron, and while you watch Yuna mature and become a more interesting person, Tidus just keeps being an idiot.  

The battle system is probably the thing that has changed the least in this entry.  It's actually much easier than in the previous games, as it lets go of the ATB bar and just lets you take turns normally.  If you just sit there, the enemy isn't going to attack you.  Considering you need to think about who you're going to use and who you might switch out to better benefit the battle, this style of battle system is very convenient.

Overall, I'd say playing Final Fantasy X again (or for the first time) is a safe bet if you're looking for one of better PS2 rpgs.  It's not the best one in my opinion, but it is a blast to play and tells a story very much worth telling.

8/10