| Title | 4 years in Persona 4: Persona 4 ever and ever, 'til death torn apart |
| Author | Aaron Vaughn |
| Posted in | Game diaries |
| When | April 16, 2014 |
It took 93 hours for me to realize that I'd been tricked in thinking I was capable of completing Persona 4. Where I was once unable to settle into the game, it had recently made a home upon me, as does a cat who's decided to nap..
Read the full articleUgh. Nanako.
She's like the makers saw that everyone hated Ken from P3 and decided to come up with an even more annoying little kid character.
Because teenagers are just dying to spend a ton of time with and dote on their friend's toddler sister.
You made it farther than I did. I fizzled at the start of the secret final dungeon. I ground through The Answer and afterwards regretted not just watching the cutscenes on Youtube (Tartarus was the weakest part of P3, and The Answer was nothing but). I vowed "never again" for epilogues.
I feel bad for people who beat the game and never looked it up to see that there was a "true" final boss and ending. It's VERY easy to miss, to the point that I don't think anyone would find it without a FAQ. To them, you just fight some lame ill-defined thing for a lame ending.
It starts becoming ludicrous just how many red herrings the game throws at you. Whenever you think you've caught the killer, you haven't. Creepy stalker guy trying to get close to Rise? Not the killer! Guy who confesses to it? Not the killer! Guy caught with a list of victims and who threw Nanako and half the victims in the TV? Not the killer! Guy who confesses to throwing the first victims in and wanting to kill them?...still not the killer! Silly, it was the pagan god disguised as a featured extra disguised as a gas station worker! Because!
To this day I still have no clue what you were supposed to be fighting against. It was simple in Persona 3; you were fighting death. In Persona 4 you fight...social expectation? Cognitive dissonance? Public image? Escapism? All or none of the above wrapped up in an omnipotent gas station worker?
Seriously? Nanako wasn't annoying at all.
....
Only the creepy stalker photographer was a red herring. The point of the case was that there were ultimately three seperate killers/would be killers. Mitsuo, the copycat killer of the teacher. Namatame, the unwitting stooge. Adachi who did the initial murders and manipulated Namatame. Izanami was the ultimate mastermind, who didn't do any killing herself but produced the situation. None of these were 'red herrings'.
What were you fighting? Well, the theme of the game is *self-deception*. The cops who jump on the first possible suspect (when it doesn't make any sense for it to be him) is an aspect of that. The initial rejection of the party members of the parts of themselves they want to hide is another aspect of that. The way your uncle pretends he's hunting for his wife's killer when he's just running away from his responsibilities as father is another aspect. The way the game throws you multiple opportunities to say, okay, that's enough, that's the answer, and give up on pursuing the final truth - that's all part of the theme. The game is saying, if you don't look for the truth, really look for it, despite what you want to believe, or fear that it'd hurt you, then you cannot resolve the ultimate problem. That's kinda what happens in the majority of the social links.
The point of the game is that the main character, as the Seeker of Truth, eventually penetrates all the convenient illusions, faces the manifestation of mankind's propensity to believe what he wishes instead of what is reality, shreds the illusion that protects that, and destroys it.
In Persona 3, you weren't fighting death. Otherwise, how the heck could you win? You were instead fighting mankind's *desire* for death, which is kinda confusing, of course, because you win by sacrificing your life.
in a way i'm really lucky to have used a guide in the last third of the game. i wanted to fulfill s-links without wasting time poking around to see who was available when, and felt the same abuot boss battles. i'm not afraid to play a game of trial-and-error, but after 60-ought hours logged in dungeons, i'm fine with referring to information i was going to conclude on my own in time
persona 3 did have a more straightforward narrative, though. persona 4's felt a lot looser, which was fine, since the story is supposed to be about forming bonds. shame it forgot about the serial killer thing for so long. persona 3 had a lot to say about bonding with people, as well, since i believe it introduced the whole s-link idea, but the main cast took a backseat to fighting death and those cult guys
i still with persona 4's soundtrack was as strong as persona 3, or at least in the same vein. if you didn't finish it, though, that's too bad. they saved the best dungeon music for the secret one at the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
that said, the ending still fizzles and doesn't have the weight of Persona 3's. maybe that's how they wanted it to be. persona 4 arena picks up a month or so after persona 4 and is similarly lighthearted
to this day, i'm still not sure what fascinates me about these games except that they become a second world to live in. maybe i just like simulation games and this one has a nice, strong rpg behind it. sometimes the music is really good, and i like how they tie in the day-to-day stuff with the actual gameplay. how many rpgs or jrpgs can say that?
used strikethrough on some big spoilers here to obfuscate them. if anyone has a better solution let me know
her voice actor was really grating to me, even more so if i was playing with company in the same room. what actually annoyed me about nanako was in the third act where...
they didn't have the balls to let her die and stay dead. you could almost see it coming a mile away that things would turn out okay
... otherwise she was an okay character. more a foil than anything, but i liked coming home to find out she bought groceries. things like that were really comforting touches sprinkled throughout persona 4
Just the way it forced her on you by making her part of the main story, and having half the group activities involve her, because teenagers love nothing better than hanging out with preschool siblings. They had already done her character in Persona 3 (Hanged Man social link) but at least she was optional there. I'm playing Persona to imagine I'm the most popular kid in high school (which is pretty much every console RPG when you boil it down), not babysit darnit!
It was eerie how the Hiimdaisy comic made the exact same calls I did. No way was I joining band or those sports clubs.
It's worth mentioning again how AWESOME the mystery was to start. *spoilers*
The body tied to the telephone pole emerging from the fog? Nice! First entering that noose room in the TV world? Holy shit that's creepy!
Oh wait now I have to hang out with my baby cousin, attend a cross dressing talent show run by my pervert pedophile teacher, and listen to Yukiko go into laughing fits over nothing. The creepy mystery was put on hold for 30 hours so you could just bounce around collecting more party members. Would have been better if the party filled out earlier on and the rest of the game focused on logically investigating clues instead of the player screaming at the characters not figuring out the obvious.
"7 of 9". Heh heh.
Thanks for the write up! It was a wild ride, and it's got me thinking about Xenoblade, an RPG I often think about finishing. I look forward to your Persona 5 articles!
Corrections:
"who only saw forecast [sic] my being doomed"
"It’s also just a game." (need another newline before this sentence?)
"there’s solvency [in] my completing"
"to look forward, to as well"
"in the security [o]f steady work"
"The sense of finality in Persona [4] wasn't present"
I am joining the discussion here late. I must have missed this awesome tale of real life and persona 3 and 4 when it first came out on qt3. I saw it on the sidebar. I just wanted to say I really enjoyed this series. The elements of real life you were going through in tandem with the game really made it stand out. Good luck with Persona 5 and job hunting!
