After comparing Dreamcast version with all enhancements RetroTink 4K can offer with RetroArch/SwanStation, I must admit that playing on a physical console doesn’t worth it at all.
While colors might be attributed to how my capture card processes HDR signal, it’s undeniable that models and textures rendered in x5 resolution look significantly better.
The most important parameter to get this quality of picture is PGXP CPU Mode. It is supposed to be slow, but very accurate way to represent 3D models. Something that PSX was never good at. Interestingly enough, Dreamcast has some new textures, for some reason (notice the plaque has moved a bit):
Back to the game, it is interesting how you meet Carlos at different points in the game, depending on which location you visit first. On Dreamcast, I’ve met him in the restaurant. But on my PSX playthrough, I wanted to avoid Nemesis and went to the newsroom first. And here Carlos was waiting for me again, with a different cutscene.
Speaking of cutscenes, the game has QTE events, even before Shenmue! Sometimes when Nemesis appears, you are given a choice, between fighting, running away or hiding.
After success with Ace Combat 4, I decided to check the very first installment in the series, originally called Air Combat . It is still surprisingly playable. The planes are recognizable, and fly well enough. Even the control scheme stayed the same. And you also get to buy new planes between missions.
The differences are that 3rd person view in the first game is mostly useless, while on PS2 I would use it most of the time. This is because it has no information about your speed, for example. To the point I thought my gamepad was misbehaving, as you don’t really see your plane speeding up.
The main tradeoff is the viewing distance. You can’t see shit, basically, enemy planes appear only when they are about 2km away. So you have to navigate by radar most of the time, until you are almost on them.
One notable change I have to talk about is the color palette of the planes. I’m not sure if it’s arcade legacy, or 95 style, or just an attempt for the planes not to mix up with the surroundings, but… red, purple and white? Really?! There’s a real-world term “Flying Circus” coming to mind.
Of course I had to check if this also applies to F117 Nighthawk… and yes, it does.
Wingmen are an interesting concept. Before a mission you can decide if you want to spend a significant sum to have a friendly jet. And you also can choose which jet it will be, which is of course affects the price. You also set the strategy for them: defend you, or try to complete the mission.
Some missions are also quite ambitious. There’s a night bombing run, and a mission where you have to follow pipelines in the desert to locate enemy oil refineries.
You also get to choose which missions to do. And of course there is a ravine mission. The saddest ravine mission ever, I must say, as the hardware was nowhere near. But they tried nevertheless. Actually, there are two ravine missions, although second is more of a tunnel or a cave.
The game is rather short, with 17 missions in total, but because there are some branching paths you have to complete around 14 to beat the game. But it is ambitious. At one point you have to bomb a suspension bridge, and they animated parts of the bridge crashing down into the water.
And the final boss is this flying fortress with four engines that you have to chase, and each engine falls apart separately, and then the fortress begins to tilt and raise smoke. 10 years later, they would repeat this mission in full force, but the fact they already imagined that back in ’95 is impressive.
The only bit I didn’t appreciate is the “Bingo!” exclamation every time you land a hit. Guess this is from the arcade days.
Completed Ace Combat 4.
The game is short. 18 missions and about 2 hours of actual gameplay.
The problem with the game is the rather tedious mission structure. You’re often just given 15 minutes to score enough points in any way you see fit. And while the idea of picking your targets in any order is interesting, nothing is more frustrating than running out of time.
The contrast is most obvious between Mission 10, where you have to try to hit an enemy submarine dock, and Mission 11, where you escort friendly transport planes.
New planes become available as the game progresses, and you’re supposed to buy them with the money you earn from completing missions. But after you get the EF-2000 midway through the game, there’s not much point in buying anything else.
Also, maybe because of the point system, but friendly units don’t actually shoot anything, as far as I can tell.
You get some cool jets at the end: the F-22, F-15 ACTIVE, and for the final mission, the Su-47.
It’s impossible to call Thirteen a nemesis, because Mobius 1, the protagonist, is ever silent, and they meet only twice throughout the game. The first time, you just need to escape; the second time, you shoot him down.
Of course, the final mission has you flying through multiple corridors. But either because I was playing with an analog controller, or because I was prepared, or maybe simply because it’s easier than later installments, I managed it on the first try.
The hardest part was figuring out what the game wanted from you, because the two corridors you have to fly through are parallel, but the third one is perpendicular to the first two, so you have to circle the island to find the entrance.
Still, it’s a cool mission, with cruise missiles launching and lasers sweeping the sky.
Ace Combat is one of my all time favorite series. Enough to say that I got myself a PS2 only to play that game, because emulators, despite all their advantages, can’t deal with its analog controls properly.
But I also have to admit that Ace Combat 4, Ace Combat 5 and Zero are kind of the same game. You fly the same jets, you have just a couple of weapons, and you mostly just shoot missiles at everything.
What varries is how the story is presented. Ace Combat 4 uses anime stills. And the story is not about you, but about your adversary, called Yellow 13. He is viewed through the eyes of a boy, whom he orphaned by accident. The boy works in a pub where the occupier pilots gather. Bartender and his dauther are part of the Resistance, though, and wait for the occupation to end. Despite the dauther being secretly in love with Yellow 13. It is a nice way to tell a story. Contrast this with “in your face” storytelling of Assault Horizon.
One problem I have with the game, though, is that a lot of mission are “earn X points before time ends”. Which means that instead of engaging with mission objectives, you are just caught up in an endless foxfight. That also means you have to resupply once or even twice through the mission.
There are some signature missions, though. When I saw a ravine in Mission 7, I imediattely knew where this was going. And right on queue, and orbital cannon starts to fire at you, and the only way to dodge it is of course to navigate through the ravine.
One of my best purchases ever was Playstation 2 with an Infinity chip that allowed to play burned games. But burning is a hassle, despite the fact I still have a DVD burner and some blank DVDs.
So when I heard that now you can run games directly from a memory card I had to try it. Turns out this isn’t such a new thing. You could run games from memory card for a few years, using MX4SIO. But the newer cards combine both functions of memory card, storing saves, and DVD emulator.
I got the Bitfunx card which is readily available from AliExpress.
It boots fine into Free McBoot. But would get stuck while trying to boot into OPL MMCE, which is how you run games from the SD card.
After some trial and error, I figured out that I need to actually disabled my Infinite chip (hold Start while booting, then restart once).
As I wrote at least once already, Saturn version of Virtua Figher 2 was inferior to the arcade original. And that’s the version that was ported to PS2 as part of Sega Ages Collection series.
But from this video I discovered that PS3 and Xbox360 actually had a proper arcade version. I don’t own Xbox360 anymore, but still have PS3, so I gave it a try. And they aren’t wrong. It is indeed the arcade version, with bridges in Shun’s stage and all that.
Interestingly, PC version, which was the first I played, is a mix of the stages from the Saturn version and models from the arcade version. So I was right to remember that PC version somehow looked better.
The main benefit of that version is that there’s a movelist in the pause menu.
Of course there is another Xibalba golden temple, called here Torifune. I’m not sure if it’s more annoying than the one in Innocent Sin or slightly less. There are unavoidable traps, which I consider a bad design choice, but the dungeon is slightly shorter.
The nice thing about Eternal Punishment is there are some unique abilities to the character-specific personas, with dedicated animations, that makes them feel special, and really burn through enemies.
There is a system of registering and duplicating spell cards in this game. In later games, this will be replaced with registering and resummoning personas.
Despite beating the final boss on my second try, I still consider it quite ridiculous. I had to resurect characters 40 times, as he continuously smashes all characters for 3/4 of their life.
But hey, my characters were level 69-71, while a guide I read later suggest them to be 80-90 😆
Overall, I think it’s a shame they decided to split the game into two parts. Innocent Sin had a compeling story that ended with a cliffhanger, but the sequel is mostly the same ideas, with more dungeon grinding on top.
The game tries very hard to tie-in the first Persona, something Innocent Sin never attempted to do. I never played Persona 1, so all those Guido and The Boy With an Earing don’t mean anything to me.
After the Underwater Temple, Ellen leaves the party (no big loss, although that could be said about most characters in this game), and Tatsuya joins. Now we have Katsuya and Tatsuya, great! Tatsuya explains that he’s the conciense of Tatsuya from The Other Side in a body of Tatsuya from This Side. Although technically This Side is the Other Side 😆
At least he arrives leveled enough, while all my other characters seem to be constantly underleveled, as no matter how much I grind, it still doesn’t seem to be enough.
Finally discovered what the different metals are for: summoning unique personas. And those are used automatically, when you reach around level 50.
The Sea Cruiser and Underwater Temple sequence is… punishing. I’m glad Innocent Sin taught me to always stock on HP and MP items to the max. Still, the Underwater Temple is full of trapped floors that make you repeat the same sequence over and over again. And unlike trapped floors in Innocent Sin, those are only visible on the minimap.
During fight with Chizuru in the temple, I simply got lucky. Persona 2 loves the “shell game” mechanic. Boss summons 4 clones, then swaps places with one. Clones have some reflective properties, either a particular element or like in this case all of them. You need to guess which is the real one, and once you do, clones disappear, then the process repeats itself. Chizuru also casts Rage, which doubles the physical damage, but makes character attack at random. Which is usually deadly, as 4 out of 5 enemies would reflect the double damage right back. But this time, it simply worked in my favour, finishing the boss off.
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.
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.
Interestingly enough, Dreamcast has some new textures, for some reason (notice the plaque has moved a bit):
