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« on: December 23, 2008, 12:51:55 AM »
Just an update since we are all Persona fans here: today after 6 months of off-and-on play, I finally finished the Journey. Because I took down the Reaper fairly early in January, I had the whole last month to utterly abuse Monad to level-grind out any remaining difficulty the game had, and the final boss was a complete pushover against my level 99 party (MC, Yukari, Junpei, Akihiko), Hell, just for grins and to give the game the middle finger for all the cheap moves various bosses had used on me the entire game, I pulled out the Armageddon Fusion Skill against the final boss's final form even though I didn't need it. I spent a great deal of time that final month getting things set up for a New Game + if I ever chose to pursue it, maing out cash; buying bonus sets of equipment for all my characters; maxing out as many remaining social links as I could; and fusing as many of the higher level Personas as I could while I still had social link bonuses.
Overall, I really enjoyed the Journey, although I feel that the game is too restricting when it comes to the Social Links: you have to follow a very specific path through the game if you want to max them all out, and towards the end of the game all the micro-management I was doing (though not following said path) was really taking its toll and getting tedious. The whole game in general relies too much on repetition and cheap spells/Tartarus boss encounters to hinder your progress, though that's greatly mitigated in the game's final 3rd when YOU are the ones wielding the cheap spells. The monthly boss battles, though, where very enjoyable, creative, and suitably epic. And the soundtrack kicks ass, although I wish there was more musical variety (which would be corrected in Persona 4) and that new music was more frequently introduced to old areas to minimize repetition. I also wonder just what possessed the folks at Atlus to make the "ending" the Journey has. It's not an "ending" at all, but a glorified "To be Continued" for the Answer (which in the original Persona 3 release didn't exist), and a drawn-out and tedious affair at that. When I beat the final boss, I'm ready for the game to end. So when the game DOESN'T end when I beat the final boss, I start getting irritated. I also feel that the game's relatively low budget really shows in the game's last 3rd, as aside from the animated FMVs (which have varying animation quality) there really isn't anything particularly interesting or spectacular happening on-screen, which is a problem when we're talking about Armaggedon.
Anyway, I've already started up a new game on the Answer, and although I don't care for the constant dungeon crawling it is kind of nice not to have the micromanagement of the Social Links (they are what made the Journey so interesting, but it is a nice change to not have to worry about them). It's hard to come from the Journey to the Answer and see your characters suck as much as they do in the Answer at the beginning, though. My characters have missed more than they've hit so far, and getting new Personas is really a chore.
I think when I've finished the Answer, I'm going to put off starting a Persona 4 game aside (my save game is only a few hours in) for a long while just to get the Persona fatigue out of my system.
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