They tought that the burning museum episode was great, apparently, so you have to do it again. Yes, PSX version also has the heatwave effect, although it’s not that good. Don’t know if they made it easier, or I simply knew the trick, but I did manage to complete this without a problem in 10 minutes instead of 30.
The game makes very little sense without Innocent Sin, as at one point Maya asks if anyone could hear a girl: as she rescued the Cosplayer in the Other World there. And then Tatsuya flies the zeppelin, saying “he seen how it’s done once”. It’s Maya from the Other World that showed him.
Category: Sony
This game takes place in an alternative version of the world known as The Other Side, and the main protagonist is now Maya. In this world Jun’s father is alive, so Jun is not the Joker, and Joker is much simpler – just killing the people you wish would be dead.
Contact system was slightly reworked, now each character has just one phrase, so there’s less guesswork. But the PSX version doesn’t have the mood tracker PSP version had, so you have to remember how many times the persona has already reacted.
Another thing PSX version doesn’t have is the persona compatibility indicator, so you have to remember how many MP persona usually costs, and how many MP is required when you equip it on a character.
In this world, King Leo is not just an arsonist, but a serial murderer. He’s also the son of a minister, so he’s admitted to an asylum, until becoming Joker and getting superpowers.
Completed Persona 2 Innocent Sin.
I haven’t mentioned the dungeons in Persona 2, and that’s because they are horrible. They are ugly mazes that lack any logic and made to be annoying with invisible traps that often impossible to avoid. Xibalba, the final dungeon / alien spaceship, is the epytomy of everything wrong with them. It’s 8 floors of annoyance.
Storywise, it’s a fun concept, though, were all the fears come true. So when one character says that there might be laser traps, and another is afraid to be locked in an oven room: both things happen. And Michele has to face metalic version of his father, because that’s what he’s afraid of.
I managed to beat the final boss with the default personas, and my characters were only around level 57 or so. So I honestly thought there will be another dungeon after that.
The ending is disappointing, and it feels to me that they just decided to split the game in two. After beating Niarhalotep, Crazy Teacher appears and stabs Maya with Longinus spear, so she cannot be healed. Nia says something along the lines, “what did you expect, to beat a god and defy a profecy?” and Philimone offers to “try another time”. This is a common theme in Shin Megami Tensei games, where at the end heroes are offered to either forget everything or continue suffering: Persona 3 and Devil Summoner 2 are two examples I remember, and I didn’t play that many games in the series.
I went to the Aquarius temple first, so I didn’t understand why Longinus said to Jun “you don’t know who this seat is intended for”. The second temple I did was Scorpio, and its boss is Shadow Michele. Turns out Persona 4 just repeats the concept of shadows from Persona 2.
Michele’s plotline is quite touching, though, albeit simple: he was a fat kid, so he liked the only girl that threated him well.
When they grew up, he became fit, and she got fat, so she hid her identity (they are all using nicknames anyway, Michele is Ekichi’s nickname), then sold her soul to Joker in order to be beautiful.
Because the rumors are coming true, we meet the ghost of Maia in the temple, despite her never dying there.
After Nazis appear and all characters (except Yukki, because she’s from the previous game) get upgraded personas, there’s a difficulty spike. But nothing that can’t be resolved by grinding. Tatsuya’s Vulcanus Prime also gets an amazing Fiery Fury skill. As I mentioned, skills in Persona 2 have three target types: single, group and “all”, with “all” being the best. Why wouldn’t you like to hit all your enemies after all? Well, one reason is that some enemies are resistant to fire attacks. But here the second part of this skill comes into play: it doubles as physical attack as well. So it’s basically effective against everything.
Yukki gets a new persona too, but only for a short while, as she leaves the party after her boyfriend is killed by the Nazis. We manage to rescue Jun/Joker from Niarlotep (never expected so much Lovecraft influence). Turns out it’s Jun’s father who has been leading the Masked Circle, not Jun. Jun replaces Yukki as a party member, and all the party members get new personas once again. This time really new, instead of adding “Prime” to the name of the persona.
Now party need to beat 4 temples, one for each element. At the end of the first temple Jun gets persona mutation, first time in the game.
I think this game is easier than most other games in the series, because money solves everything. Items are cheap and you can stock tons of them, so you never run out of SP. And your SP also recovers with every step. Compare that to the stingy mechanics from Persona 4, where SP regen was one of the later skills, and SP recovery items were limited.
It is surprisingly easy to paint yourself into a corner in this game, since you can switch personas for all characters, not just the protagonist, you can end up with no healing personas at all. And you can switch personas back only in Velvet Room outside of the dungeon.
In the Aerospace museum, there’s an interesting heatwave effect from all the fire in the building. Other than that, though, it’s an annoying dungeon with a real-time timer and a goal to find kids in a maze, interrupted by fights. I’m just glad it’s over.
Before the museum, you need to guess 2 out of 4 buildings Leo planted bombs in. If you guess wrong, there’s a video showing a building being blown, but you can still continue the game, unlike of the timer in the museum runs out. I was wondering how they would reconcile that. Turns out, Leo just blows the buildings still, just later.
After the museum, the game dumps a lot of story on you. Tatsuya, Ekichi and Lisa all played together as kids, but they never seen each other faces, because they were wearing Power Rangers bird masks. They called themselves Masked Circle, same as the terrorist organisation, and the fourth kid is the leader of that organisation. They also met Maia while they were playing, although she is a few years their senior. Maia is the one that thaight them the Persona game, and that’s why all four can use personas.
When Maia told them she has to leave with her family, the kids locked her up in a temple for a night, hoping that she would stay. Tatsuya got locked up as well for objecting the plan. But at night, King Leo stabbed Tatsuya and burned the temple. Kids assumed that Maia died in the fire, and that’s the eponimial Innocent Sin the game refers to.
It might be that I played Innocent Sin and not Eternal Punishment all those years ago. Hard to remember after 15 years, and it doesn’t really matter.
The plot of both Innocent Sin revolves around rumors coming true. A topic Persona 4 will go back to with the Midnight Channel. “If you dial your own number, a Joker will appear”. Only the Joker that indeed appears to Tatsuya attempts to exact revenge on him. Frustrated that Tatsuya has no idea revenge for what, Joker disappears.
It’s interesting how battle system has devolved in later games. In Persona 2, there are attacks that are both physical and elemental. Also, Water and Earth elements were removed from later games. And some spells instead of targeting all enemies, only target enemies of the same kind.
The dialogue system is a bit wonky. The way it works is that you can speak to your team members in any order, but sometimes their reply will be to something someone else says later on.
Being an RPG from PSX era, you really need to read into what people tell you if you’re playing without a guide. There are no quest markers there.
As I mentioned, I’m not a big fan of the dialogue system in Persona games. Each character has 4 lines, that work differently for different personas. Yukki has “reason” line, so she can make “wise” persona “eager” to give you cards, with which you purchase more personas. “Foolish” persona reacts the same to Tatauya’s “Dead stare”. If it was only matter of memory, though. Personas can ask you nonsensical questions, like “is school fun?”, and the answer should also depend on the persona type. That’s where I draw the line. Luckily, the old good grind still works
Ravenswatch and No Rest for the Wicked are two games I confuse a lot. Ravenswatch is sometimes presented as an ARPG, but it’s more like Hades: generated dungeons, clear weapon telegraphs and danger zones, low character health, cooldown on dodge, direct and AoE attack, you name it. Oh, and three perks with rarities to pick from every level. The only significant difference is that instead of picking different weapons, we pick different fairytale characters.
Also, Hades had an optional timed mode. Here, it’s one of the main features. You have just 15 minutes to clear the map before unavoidable boss fight occurs. You also have limited number of revives. Yeah, just like in Hades.
One interesting mechanic is related to Scarlet, or in other words Red Riding Hood. Every night she turns into a wolf, and every day turns back, repeating this cicle 3 times over a run. I bet that’s the first mechanic they came up with, and then they build the rest of the game around it.
After playing with other characters, though, I feel like it’s a disservice to the players that she’s made the default character, as she’s probably the most difficult to start with. Pied Piper is more of a necromancer, with ranged attacks and swarms of rats that are summoned automatically.
And Beowulf is a two-handed “barbarian”, with some nice fire AoE damage.
In the meantime, I unlocked two additional characters, Guipetto and Mnemosyne. Guipetto is also a summoner, but his summons are slower and hit harder. Kind of like skeletons Vs golems in Diablo 2, or maybe the Engineer from Torchlight 2. I would be all for it, if not for the fact that the runs are time bound.
In fact, and it took me some time to realize, there is a way to turn the time limit off. But I’m not sure if there are any implications except score penalty.
Completed Persona 4. For good, this time.
Getting True Ending is not as much pain-in-the-ass, as it’s not obvious at all. On the last day you need to visit a few locations without any good reason or hints in a particular order.
The final plot twists is good, though, I admit. Speaking of “playing the long game”. The real villain is the guy at the fuel station, the one you meet on your first minute of the game and shake hands with. By shaking hands he grants you the power to enter TVs. Only that’s not a “he”, but a “she”, death goddess Izumi. Yeah, the same death goddess you’ve been told about somewhere mid-game during a school trip to the school from Persona 3.
The final fight resembles Persona 3 a lot. Same grotesque female shape, same theme of unbeatable foe that falls to the Power of Friendship. I liked how the music themes are mixed to sound more epic.
I don’t like the Fusion mechanics much, but I still fused Belzebub for the final battle, one of the Personas that require 6 personas to fuse, and it’s epic:
As a visual novel, the plot has to many holes. As a dating sim, the sudden time skips are annoying and prevent enjoying it without a guide. And as a dungeon crawler, the fights are too tedious, with some enemies having no weaknesses or constantly healing, and the boss battles too unpredictable, and beatable only if you died multiple times and have memorized the phases.
But with all those flaws, it’s still a great game. Kind of what it tries to teach you: that you need to bridge the gaps to build something great.
I’ve played Persona 2 Eternal Punishment, which uses the same engine and shares some of the characters, but not the original, probably because PSX version wasn’t officially translated. Luckily the PSP version is.
I decided to compare both versions, and it’s interesting that in order to accomodate PSP wider screen they distanced the camera a little. No 4:3 black borders, but the character sprites look a bit muddier, because the scale is not as precise.
A year later, and Playstation 4 can be jailbroken up to version 11. If I sat on my PS4 Pro for a year, I could jailbreak it now, but I didn’t, opting to play Diablo 4 on it instead. I regret nothing.
The Magatsu dungeon is just tiring. Full of enemies that have no weaknesses and tons of HP.
You can never clear a floor in Persona 4, new Shadows will continue to spawn. But this is where it gets ugly.
It’s also annoying how the game skips a couple of weeks after Ameno-sagiri fight. Because half of the game is basically a dating sim, and you have two actions each day, you miss a lot of interactions that way without being warned.
I also missed Marie dungeon, because my social link was 9 out of 10 😬
But I’ve read that it’s annoying as hell anyway.
Completed Maverick Hunter X.
They changed the locations of all body parts. So now you get the Legs upgrade on Flame Mammoth stage where you previously got Arms in that insanely difficult jump. Now it’s easy. Head is in Chill Pinguin stage in a new tiny room. And where head previously been it’s now Armor. So you get Armor before getting the Arms, which are the ones guarded by the boss now.
With Dash and Armor Eagle is doable. And I’ve got Mammoth even without Eagle’s weapon. Chameleon is also doable without the Boomerang now, I think his attacks are slower and spikes are more predictable. Armadillo is a bit harder than before, as you can’t stick to walls, he has a new rolling attack against that. With that, my two last bosses where Octopus and Kuwanger.
Octopus is easy now, as his fish fly in an arc pattern, giving an opportunity to dodge.
One interesting bit is that in Sigma’s Fortress, when you meet Launch Octopus, the first of the returning bosses, again, he speaks like a zombie, and X comments that Sigma brought them “back to life”. In the original game, there was no explanation given why you have to fight the bosses again after killing them once.
Also, the design of the location is more immersive, I would say.
It’s the first time I understood that you don’t just jump on handing platforms, those are stairwells that collapsed during Zero’s assault.
The only returning boss that isn’t a pushover is Armadillo. That “Sonic roll” is still an immense pain. The unique bosses are much easier, though. Especially notable on the spider: it’s slower, and the paths aren’t as favorable as in the original.
Sigma is also much slower now, making it for a fight that even a normal person could enjoy. And the final Wolf form, while still punishing, has saner hitboxes.
Despite the slightly more difficult start due to lack of Dash and new attacks for some bosses, Maverick Hunter X is a welcome remake, that enraged me far less than the original. What really makes this game outstanding in my eyes, though, is the voice acting. It’s great, a really brings the characters to life.
This is a remake of Mega Man X, and probably one of the most impressive remakes I’ve seen. They got the designs, and the tone exactly right. So it’s sad that it was only ever released for PSP.
One thing that is “rigth but wrong” with transition to 3D, though, is X turning. With 2D model it was just the flipping of a sprite, the speed they kept with 3D, but now it looks strange.
Interestingly they changed the bosses quite significantly. It’s well known that the fight with Vile can’t be won on SNES. Here, you actually expected to beat him before he grabs you and Zero intervenes.
Another example is Storm Eagle. I mentioned that in the original game it’s quite harmless. Not anymore! Not only it can flow you off the ship easier to instadeath, but it now also throws homing pigeons at you as well rams you horizontally.
The upgrades were changed a bit as well. You don’t get Dash on Chill Penguin stage for free anymore.
After harder Eagle, I didn’t expect Mandril to be so easy. The original Mandril had invincibility after you froze him twice. So you had to dodge his dash attack. Not anymore. You can freeze the poor monkey to death now.
Since Zero playthrough went so well, I decided to give X a try, although I always found him more difficult. Maybe I was wrong. What you do need, though, is to remap your controls: I put dash on left bumper, regular attack on right trigge and special attack on right bumper. Because you need them all at the same time. How people play with default mapping is beyond me.
X’s regular attack is basically a peashooter, but his fully charged attack is quite good. And since his attacks are ranged, the bosses I struggled with as Zero, such as Spider and Stringray, are much more manageable. You still need to master the evade for the Spider, though.
The playthrough this time was Dragon, because always start with Dragon, then Walrus, as he’s still vulnerable to fire, unlike Peacock, then Spider, then Stingray, which is easy with Walrus’ weapon.
Colonel is still vulnerable to Ice, for some reason, just like with Zero.
Then both Mushroom is vulnerable to Spider’s web, and Lion to Stingrays. And Owl fight with Peacock’s weapon is laughable.
Overall, I feel like X gameplay is much easier than Zero, because his weapons realy exploit their weaknesses. During the General fight, which I found to be thoughtest with Zero, I literally took no damage with X.
First two phases of Sigma are also easy. Third one is just… long. Unlike the first two phases, this one doesn’t seem to have any weaknesses. So you just go through the annoying phases over and over until it dies.
It is more than 5 minutes of real time. I know, because I recorded only last 5 minutes of it.
I had to pause the game to give my fingers a rest at one point.
But now, I can say I’ve done it. Finished Mega Man X4, 28 years later 😆
Completed Mega Man X4 with Zero, fulfilling my childhood dream, one might say.
While Colonel is manageable, Zero against the General is another story. His only vulnerable part is the head, but touching it, or any other part of the body hurts Zero. I had to backtrack to get the second energy tank, and refill it in the Walrus stage, and beat Iris again just to be ready for this fight.
Then you need to beat the 8 animal bosses again. This sounds terrifying, but there are a few caveats to that challenge. You do get to replenish some life between the fights, and if you die, you don’t need to repeat the gauntlet all over, the killed bosses stay dead.
The final boss is all-in-all not that hard. First phase is extremely predictable. Second phase requires some well timed wall jumps, but still doable. The only challenge is to have enough life for the third phase. And the third phase is total random. I got lucky with the “alien” shooting above Zero’s head over and over.
I remember I’ve seen Bouncer in one of the gaming mags around 2000, and was wowed by the screenshots and the art. It might have even been a preview, and the screenshots fake, but still.
Many years later, it seems I haven’t missed much by not playing it.
The only interesting bit is that I was created by the guy behind first Tekkens, so the movesets of some characters are taken directly from there.
I might still play it at some point, as I adore PS2 aesthetics. But feels I didn’t miss it for nothing.
I always had a special relationship with Mega Man X4. It was the first Mega Man game I’ve seen, because for a strange reason, it was ported to PC. But also, many years later, while trying Mega Man X3 and Mega Man X5 I understood that it hit the sweet spot of looking amazing, unlike X3 which still had SNES era visuals, but still having solid core gameplay, unlike X5.
What I didn’t understand as a kid is that Dragoon literally screams “hadouken” and “shouryuken”, because his moveset is basically Ryu/Ken from Street Fighter.
For some strange reason, Mega Man X Legacy Collection on Switch doesn’t have save states. I rarely use them nowadays, but Mega Man without them is still brutal.
My path is Dragon, which can be beaten with exosuit, and I think that’s the easy choice. Then Peacock, turned out to be easy as well with the fire sword. Then Walrus, for obvious reasons.
Then Lion, you just need to dodge the stomps. And Stingray, despite being weak to the Walrus weapon, can also be taked out with a saber, you can jump safely underneath.
The most trouble, I had with the spider. You need to dash-jump to avoid the homing webs, and even then, I feel that sometimes it’s very hard to do, as his position is quite random.
With Spider weapon, Mushroom is easy. And I left Owl for the last, although with Peacock’s weapon, I could have done it much sooner.
By December things get dramatic. Nanako, the protagonist 7 years old niece, gets kidnapped. Her father and protagonist’s uncle gets badly injured chasing the suspect. Fog descends on the town. After being rescued, Nanako dies in the hospital.
Unfortunately, that’s where the game starts to get annoying too. In order to get the true ending, you need to pick not obvious dialogue lines, such as “I don’t know about that”, while the gang discusses if they should lynch Nanako’s kidnapper by throwing him into the TV World.
Teddy disappears, but Nanako recovers. Turns out that the first two victims where kidnapped by someone else. And Nanatame, the suspect, was throwing people into the TV World because he believed they’d be safe there from the real killer.
The problem with those investigation mechanics is that there are long dialogs preceding them. And if you fail, you get one of the bad endings, and endless credits, so I just end up restarting the game every time that happens. And I don’t remember 20 characters by their Japanese names, so that did happen.
I don’t mind school kids fighting demons inside the TV. But a schoolkid detective helping the police is a bit too much for me. Although that’s as a staple as a TV idol coming to a small town and falling for the protagonist. Detective Conan and all that. Although people tend to forget that Detective Conan was an adult trapped in kid’s body.
But I must admit, the plot twist that Naoto is actually a girl dressing like a boy because otherwise people wouldn’t take her seriously is a good one. And they even managed to tell that story convincingly, instead of going for “you just need gender surgery!”