I love Toronto.

Because whenever we have bad weather, it always shifts down south to New York and ends up in New Jersey.  I mean, how awesome is that?  I can indirectly torture Mach and Len.

Hmm… Let’s see… I’m um…. Dr4G0nZ on Backloggery, and, well, this post is just basically here to say “I live” or “I exist” or “Len and Mach told me to post here (well, not really..)”.  Maybe I can put something interesting here.  I’ll put something interesting here.   …okay, fine, I’ll put something interesting in here.

Well well… I just got back into Final Fantasy IV DS.  Just got to the moon.  Nice, fun, relaxing RPG with an overstated difficulty (I mean, come on guys, how is this as hard as it gets?), and well, I’ve got one thing to say… The moon sucks. I mean, come on.  You can walk in a crater, but you can’t land your ship in a crater?  It’s something so trivial, and it makes sense if you actually attempt to finish the moon, but having to land on mountains just to go down these “stairs” on the moon?  Seriously.  You have to go through a network of tunnels on the world map to reach a certain point. I honestly would have preferred a single dungeon with one savepoint over a network of tunnels requiring you to go over the world map.  Before you guys draw to the conclusion “this guy is a hater”, or something like that, Final Fantasy IV DS is an excellent game.  It’s fun, the cast is nice, the music is beautiful, and the story is charming.  But the moon almost made me lose all the motivation I had to finish the game.  I’m still not finished this game, so I guess you guys will probably hear me ranting about this game summoar later.

Over the summer, I’ve played, and finished a couple of games.  First, I’ll go about talking about Metal Gear Solid for the PS1.

Metal Gear Solid

Oh, Metal Gear Solid 1. How I love this game.  I don’t even know why I like this game.  Perhaps it’s the cheesy-yet-touching script.  Perhaps it’s the gameplay.  Perhaps it’s its length.  Perhaps it’s Hayter’s voice acting.  In short, it’s an amazing game for it’s time.  Stunning visuals… for it’s time, fantastic soundtrack, and deep gameplay.  The story is epic, but can be shrugged off as plain goofy sometimes.  The characters are interesting, and the game leaves you wanting more.  In my opinion, this is Kojima’s masterpiece.  The gameplay can turn up as dry, and cutscenes can be long-winded and tedious, but at the end of the day, Metal Gear Solid is a fun game.  Anyone who has a PS1 or a PS2, or a PS3 should give this a shot.

tl;dr – LOTS OF FUN!

Review of the Post… huh? (After the jump)

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
(Note: THIS IS NOT A COMPARISON BETWEEN PERSONA 3 AND PERSONA 3 FES)

Persona 3 is absolutely stunning.  The best game I’ve played this year.  What is there, really, to like about Persona 3? The battles?  The story?  The dating-sim aspect?  For me, the answer is… well… everything.  Well, except the menus.  The menus suck.  Buying armor sucks.  The circular menu in battle sucks… but it’s not like you can’t overlook that stuff in turn-based role-playing games…  Now, if the menus were like this in Final Fantasy XII, or in fact, any ATB Final Fantasy… *shudders*

Graphics – ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (8/10)
Graphics, as most people say, =/= the most important part of the game.  This holds true to most games, including Persona 3.  The art style is fantastic.  The character portraits are detailed, and memorable.  The cutscenes are beautifully animated.  The environments are nice and varied… but the character models… are… not so nice.  most people will bite back, saying that the character models were the limits of previous-gen hardware of the PS2.  I would show them Tales of the Abyss.  That said, the characters, especially the girls, look like horrible little dress-up dolls, with the exception of the main character, who has facial expressions, sometimes.  Overall, the game is a pretty game.  The enemies look daunting, and the world looks charming, and the Personas are nice and pretty.  Of course, some of the enemy models are reused too often with a different pallete.

Sound – ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (8/10)

Overall, the soundtrack is a mixed bag. Sometimes, you’ll think to yourself “this soundtrack is awesome!“. However, some songs get quite repetitive.  I personally loved most of the soundtrack. There’s this one boss battle theme that really brings you into the game.  The voice acting isn’t good, but it isn’t bad.  It’s decent.  I can’t say that the voice acting doesn’t have a huge impact on the game, but some voices just feel out-of-place.  (Also, note to the voice actors; if you’re going to do Japanese honoraries, at least pronounce them right)

Gameplay – ★★★★★★★★★☆ (9/10)

Gameplay, ah, gameplay.  In my opinion, the best part of the game.  Persona 3 is a fun game that stays fun (something that most games still have to do).  I’ll split this section up into two parts.

Dungeon Crawling
Dungeon crawling in Persona 3 is fun.  Sometimes, it can be a little tedious.  Hell, most of the time, it can be unbalanced and unfair.  Boss fights feel more like slugfests.  Enemies can kill you in one turn, which makes it annoying if you get surprised.  The dungeon feels repetitive.  But all in all, it’s fun.  You hear that, Final Fantasy XII?  Oblivion?

FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNN

It might be unbalanced, but battles come off as fun and interesting.  Enemies have weakpoints, which you can nail with your Persona’s skills.  This can knock the enemies over, “disabling” them for one turn.  Later in the game, enemies might have no weaknesses whatsoever, and you’ll end up relying on your skill to stay alive.  Dungeons are fairly standard.  Throughout the entire game, you visit one single dungeon with many floors; Tartartus.  Every now and then, you can go to another area in Tartartus.  Different sections of Tartartus are unlocked as the story progresses.  Here, we delve into another part of the gameplay; Personas.  Personas are, basically, “monsters” you summon.  They grant you special powers, and to me, came off as Dragon Warrior Monsters (fantastic game, by the way) monsters.   Each persona belongs to one of the several major arcanas.  I won’t really go deep into that…  Hard to explain, and you’ll understand it when you play the game anyway.. These personas can be fused by means of a mysterious room called the “Velvet Room”.  There are two “people” in the Velvet Room named Igor and Elizabeth.  There is absoutely no way I can delve into them right now without revealing key points in the story, so I won’t do that.  In short, dunegon crawling is interesting, and will keep you interested throughout the game.

School/Personal Life
This part of the game can also be called the “dating sim” segment of the game. School makes a game fun.  “Wait, what?  School; making a game fun?!  THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!!!”  If you were one of the gamers who thought that, Persona 3 would like to prove you wrong.  Persona 3 expands on school life by means of an interesting gameplay element called the “social link”.   Social links are, basically, friendships.  As you progress through the game, you’ll meet new, and interesting characters in school.  You’ll meet a variety of nice characters.  In fact, I was suprised at how much social links were able to bring me into the game.  It’s just the thing with seeing characters develop as you move through the story.  Most of these characters are extremely realistic and likable.  It’s nice seeing these characters grow up as you progress through the game, as it feels like you really get to understand the characters better.  Later, you get to form social links with party members, but I definitely won’t delve much into that.  There are three stats you can develop; Academics, Charm, and Courage.  As these stats develop, the main character’s ability to form social links increases, ultimately increasing the amount of sidestory found in the game.  However, social links aren’t only for sidestory.  As you develop social links, your affinity with personas of the arcana the social link belongs to increases.  Let’s say you form a Fool social link.  The next time you fuse a persona belonging to to the Fool arcana, the persona gains an experience boost.  But yeah, this is all I have to say about Social Links.

Conclusion

So yeah, Persona 3 is divided into two parts; The Answer, and The Journey.  This review was pretty much talking about The Journey, and only The Journey.  If you want something to do with Answer, think “dry dungeon crawling + compelling storyline“.  That said, I didn’t go much into the storyline, but I can guarantee you that the storytelling is top notch.    But all in all, I believe Persona 3 is an amazing game that deserves a…

★★★★★★★★★☆☆ (8.5/10)

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Well, that’s it for the review, and my introduction blog post!  Make sure you read A Step Into Tales #5 – A Symbolic Symphony by Len, and have fun everyone!  *phew, end of 2 hour blogging*