Persona 3: FES Undub

Spoilers!

So, just finished the awesome and wonderful game that is Persona 3, and I can say that it is truly epic. Few games have made me feel so many emotions in one story. Took me around 200 hours to get through The Journey combined with The Answer and I’m really glad I did.

I have to say that this was one of the best console games I’ve ever played, and it was really unique. I played the unofficial “undubbed” version, which is the english version but with the original japanese voices. That’s because, usually with these kinds of games that have lots and lots of voiceovers, the english dub is horrible! And I checked youtube after I finished the game, and Persona 3 was no exception. So I’m very glad I played the undubbed version, and I recommend that everyone does that. Bad voicing can really ruin a game like this, when it contains like 90% talking.

I almost always play the undub version for any game, if they exist, but it was a little hard to find a good one for this game, so if you are looking for it, ask me because I know which one works.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering what FES stands for, it stands for Festival and is an official expansion for Persona 3 that was released after the original game, with lots of added stuff to do. Most importantly, the FES version contains the final chapter of the game. The conclusion of the story. It’s fittingly called “The Answer”. It’s separate from the main game, and also plays out really different. So I’ll write about them separately too.

The Journey:

You take the role of a blue haired guy who recently joins a new school. In my case this was Kira, the cool kid that were friends with everyone, anything and loved by all. The game starts with Kira, entering his new dorm and is met by a mysterious boy who gets him to sign a contract of sorts and who knew then what that would get him into later on?

It’s so hard to put this game into words as I think it should just be played, not read about to get your own feelings about it. All the little details and subtle moves made this game a true masterpiece in my eyes.
All the social links, the events and after school activities and the fact that you even sat down to take tests to advance in school meanwhile you tried to figure out how to finish the night off. Going to Tartarus, staying in to study or hanging with your girlfriend(s)/best friends.
Of course I tried to finish all social links but didn’t micromanage too much and ended up getting all but four of them. The links have really nice stories and I loved each one I did get to know.

Tartarus is a dungeon filled with shadows that you have to kill and grind on to get leveled up enough for the coming midnight bosses each month, as well as get items, weapons and clothes. The fun part was that, I hated to go in there, I just wanted to continue with the social links, and the characters in the game didn’t want to go in either so it felt like I could connect with them more in that way.

The game overall is thick with story, perfect memorable characters and awesome music.

The people in the game that stood out the most to me were Yukari, Mitsuru and Junpei in the team. There couldn’t have been better characters. I liked them all and their stories and personalities really made the game as epic as it is.

The first part, The Journey, took me around 170 hours to finish and all those events that happened throughout the game left me wanting for more.

The fighting system can be somewhat frustrating at times. This is one of the few turn based games where you can’t manually control your party members. It’s also one of those games where one bad move, by anyone in your party, can change the fate of the entire battle. And they do make plenty of bad moves, sadly. When they act like you would want them to, it feels really awesome and it gives even more of a feel that they are real characters instead of just pawns to control in battle. But when they screw up 30 minutes into a big boss battle, and you get killed for the 5th time, it gets really annoying. This is especially annoying in The Answer.
I would have wished for manual handling there as they have in Persona 4, but at the end of the day, it worked out great anyhow.

The midnight bosses are really creative and fun to play, but sadly I overleveled for the last boss so the fight didn’t get as epic as it could have been. Even though the last one were awesome with changing arcanas and all its attacks. My party always included Yukari for healing and Jumpei a whole lot for defence. Akihiko and Mitsuru rotated as well in there.

“Strength of heart, when united, is barred by no door…”

Extreme spoiler below!

The Answer:

The journey continues after unfortunate events due to the big battle. No real reason have been given to why it happened and we are met by a video showing the group fighting, each other.

The Answer is a true dungeon crawler in my head, with hardly any story (if you compare it to its first part) and boss after boss after boss in giant dungeons. The bosses aren’t that creative either sadly and I ended up beating bosses looking like the ones I just grinded on to level up. The enemies was way harder, as the difficulty has been raised a lot. I think this game is one of the hardest games I’ve ever played, difficulty wise, and it gave me a good sense of achieving something great.

The story that existed though, was intriguing and well worth the time spent and gave me a perfect ending to a perfect game.

I finally got to know what happened to Kira after he passed away mysteriously in the ending of the Journey, and he didn’t truly die, he saved them all in a truly selfless way.

As I said before but can’t say it enough, a perfect ending to a perfect game.

“You know… I think you can spread the message now… Not with words alone… but with everyone’s passion and strength… If you could do that… He wouldn’t have to bear the burden all alone, would he…?”

Kingdom Hearts

Spoilers!

So, last week I finished up Kingdom Hearts for the second time, I did not remember much from the first playthrough so I thought that I would do another run, and I am glad that I did, as the second run was so much better. I understood the story more, loved the worlds and the graphics. Sora, Kairi and Riku are really cool characters, and I never thought that I would come to love Goofy and Donald the way I did.

I did not complete the game, 100% but I tried to, now after I beat the final boss, who was rather easy compared to other game bosses, I will go back sometime to collect and synthesize as much as I can.

It all started with Sora, Kairi and Riku wanting to get of the paradise island that they live on to see other worlds, they build a raft to explore and that is where it all began.

On the night of their departure there was a terrible “storm”, it later revealed to be a heartless attack. Kairi disappeared and Riku went into darkness, leaving Sora to fight for himself against heartless that he had never seen before, taking him to a different world, all alone.

The first world, Traverse Town, was a fun looking town, that made me go crazy, trying to get through. Heartless around every corner and sometimes the camera was not my friend at all. The first time I met Riku as well, after they all got separated.

The second world, Wonderland (Alice in Wonderland), was a rather familiar one, with the “Drink me” potions and the running bunny. Other than that is was a really strange world.

The third world, Olympus Coliseum (Hercules), now this world was not like the others. There was no actual word to run around in here, just a competition, earning me a reward as I finished them all throughout the game.

The fourth world, Deep Jungle (Tarzan), the monkeys were the cutest heartless of them all, but they drove me to insanity. Especially the yellow ones, stealing all my hard earned munnys. Tarzan was one of the characters that made me want to watch “Tarzan” again, he was really a lot like in the movie.

The fifth world, Agrabah (Aladdin), was one of the most fun worlds as it was a lot of jumping around and puzzles, though I could not believe that such a small world could make me so confused.

The sixth world, Monstro (Pinoccio), was not a world I was planing on going to but he ate my badass gummi ship up and I had to find Pinocchio in there and met Riku for the second time.

The seventh world, Atlantica (The Little Mermaid), was a bit more difficult, as swimming was, at it seems, not my strong side, Ariel and every character in that world really looked and made me feel like I was actually swimming around in Atlantica.. It was funny as I thought that flying/gliding was the most fun.

The eight world, Halloween Town (A Nightmare Before Christmas), was the most unexpected of them all as I did not see it as a Disney movie, but I stood corrected. It was a fun and quirky town with lots of doors to go through.

The ninth world, Neverland (Peter Pan), was the most fun world I played through, flying and pirates goes well together and the comedy of Captain Hook and the crocodile was just hilarious.

The “last” world was, Hollow Bastion, the home of the heartless, the place where they had taken all princesses from the other worlds I had been to, the “Seven Princesses of Heart”. As the story had told me, they needed the princesses to open the final door, the door to “the end of the world”. To Kingdom Hearts.

In there I got to kick Rikus ass for being such a damned idiot the whole time, but it was not over, he had been possessed by Ansem, a guy looking for the ultimate darkness and he almost got away with it, had not Sora been the awesome character that he is.

In “The end of the world” I got to beat Ansem and save the whole universe, restoring it to its former glory. The boss fight was rather easy enough, with some close calls on dying, but the last stage was a bit more tricky. It was easy and a lot of fun, but the ending broke my heart, I cried, I admit it. The song and the story just got to me.

I can truly recommend this game to anyone, as the mixture between Disney and Square Enix is really great, towards the ending, I did not really see it as Disney worlds, just fun places to explore that I had nostalgia from. And Squaresoft with the awesome characters like Cloud, Squall and more was really integrated.

“One who knows nothing, can understand nothing.” – Ansem.

Primal

Spoilers!

A little while back I finished Primal. A really cool game that were rather unique, at least to me.

The game is about Jen, an ordinary girl that goes out with a rock star from a metal band or so we think…

She ends up in a coma due to an attack outside of a club where her boyfriend, Lewis, has just finished a metal concert. Outside they meet a giant demon that attacks them and then he takes off with her boyfriend to who knows where and poor Jen is left for dead.

As we see Jen at the hospital, lying there, we soon meet Scree. A wonderful little stone figure who “wakes” Jen up from her coma and urges her to follow him. Leaving her body behind and enter oblivion with him.
She isn’t exactly up for it but she really want to get her boyfriend back and Scree says that he knows how to find him.

Here the game really starts and Jen will make her way through four worlds to save them from chaos, one really different from the other with puzzles, combat and interesting characters. Before she starts she learns that she is a shape-shifting demon herself and in each world she gets a new shape. In one she can swim, in another she gets super strength and speed. All forms have their unique way of battling and blending in to the worlds.

You can always change between Jen and Scree as they are capable of doing different things. Where Jen can’t go, Scree takes over and the other way around. Most of the game time is spent thinking out paths to take you over obstacles and past puzzles and knowing where to go next.

The puzzles are rather easy once you get into them and the combat can be a bit frustrating but the battling parts are rather few and you can replenish life while in demon form from Scree, if you lose any. The story is the best in this game as it is interesting and makes me curious to see what happens next in the story and between Jen and Scree.

The whole game makes me even more curious at the console itself as I mostly have been playing PC games, it’s a truly good looking game and the areas where you run around are amazing and creative.

I must also mention the music in Primal as it really catch my attention. It is mostly made by 16volt and makes the game even more awesome in my ears as the battles seems more dynamic and heavy and the exploring part as kind of on the more adventurous and eerie side.

You should really try it out on Ps2, as it is a good game. It also seems that Primal were recently re-released to Ps3 this year, so play it!

Okami

May be spoilers!

So, I’ve recently tried Okami for PlayStation 2 and I really liked the artsy style of it all (called Sumi-e I think), though the game is a little repetitive, the overall weirdness is more than enough to make up for it.

Amaterasu, is a female main character (for once) and a kick ass one. She is the goddess of the sun and everything but seems to have suffered from amnesia.

As the game progresses, Ammy, as Issun (her little annoying companion) calls her, learns about new painting techniques with her Celestial Brush, thanks to other gods that are hiding in the stars, and waiting for Ammy to come, that helps her to fix the world again and rid it of demons and corruption that has befallen the lands.

Ammy is snow white with red marks, a wolf and is hardly taken seriously by anyone, but people still ask for her help due to the fact that she looks a lot like Shiranui, the wolf who with the help of Nagi, to seal the demon Orochi away.

100 years has past after the story about Shiranui and the demon, and again the demon roam the lands, thanks to some idiot that broke the seal, and it is up to Ammy to stop it.

The voices in the game are creeping me out though, I’ve read that the voices are real, just scrambled and fixed to sound like they do…Pretty bizarre in my opinion.
I’m not that used to play with a controller so honestly, I had a bit of a problem to get the brush techniques right but after a short while, I sort of got a hang of it.

The game it self is pretty easy and it is easy to get around as well as fight. The characters are hilarious and I can’t help but laugh at their silliness often. Poor Ammy seems to be the only one that is sane but she doesn’t say much.

So I think that you should definitely try it if you haven’t already. It’s cute, fun and most of all really spectacular and different, at least from what I usually play.

Bully

There are spoilers in here!

So, I just started up my Playstation 2, two days ago and felt like I truly needed to play something, as my computer is still broken, I haven’t been playing in ages! I could feel the need for games eat me up inside.
So I plopped in the first cd I could find and it turned out to be Bully.

When I first tried Bully, a year ago or so, I thought it were an awful game, how could schools even be like that!? I stopped playing after a little while, though not because of the horror, but because of me being a really bad loser. Bully makes you do a lot of things at least twice.

So as I said two days ago I started it up again and played it all the way through and I have to say that it wasn’t all that bad. The events were fun and it had that Rockstar feel to it that only Rockstar games have.
The game felt a lot like a mix between Grand Theft Auto and Harvest Moon/Persona 4. GTA cause of the gang fights, bike races and overall nastiness of the place and Harvest Moon/Persona 4 cause of the school feel, getting grades, getting reputation and taking girls out on dates, as well as fixing houses to sleep in and mowing lawns.

My favorite part of the whole game were the nerds, these truly over the top stereotypical nerds that ran around school, playing Grottos and Gremlins, coming up with badass weaponry that kick ass and greeting me as Sir or calling me knight. I would have loved to join their society and play with them but alas I was a bully, and a boy at that.

The thing I would have loved to see in the game were the choice of being male or female, but I haven’t seen a lot of console games that has that choice yet, though I haven’t been looking all that hard. Though the choice of girls to get involved with weren’t that large or even that I had anything to say about them, but i truly liked the last girl, Zoe and Yay! She became my girlfriend as well!

I really liked the game, it is really addictive and it seems to be never ending. I finished the game yesterday but I haven’t finished playing it yet. I’ve gone into, what it seems to be a sandbox mode where I can finish all my grades if I haven’t done that yet and remaining quests. And I really liked the concept art of the game as well, The characters and the world, It feels so easily painted and yet it tells so many things.

So if you like either GTA, Harvest Moon or Persona 4, you should try it out but if you are a bit on the sensitive side about school bullying and other bad things maybe you should try Harvest Moon or Persona instead.