For me, completing Persona 4 Golden was akin to the loss of a relationship with a close friend or loved one. One day it was there, a seemingly never-ending activity to fall back on whenever I didn't know what to do with myself, the next it was gone. After I had seen those credits roll, I knew there was a part of me missing. A void in my heart that I never knew existed, but now craved to be filled. After a few days of wallowing in my own misery (over something which, to be perfectly honest shouldn’t be that important), I decided it was time to take action. Although a great man (or woman, I really don’t know who) once said, “Time heals all wounds”, this was not advice which I could take to heart. In my mind, simply doing nothing would only cause my state to worsen, so I decided to go on a journey of knowledge and self-discovery (to put it dramatically). If I was going to find true happiness again, then I would have to take a deep dive into the Persona series.
My first stop on this journey was an unexpected one. The first game which I played following P4G was actually one of the least similar to it in the entire series, even though it had actually been developed by Atlus’ core Persona team. I’m of course speaking of Catherine, which was released for the PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2011 (about a year or so before P4G even launched). This was mainly because I had already acquired the game for free several months back through PlayStation Plus so I didn’t have to mess around with buying new games or having to wait for deliveries to arrive. The story follows a 30-something man named Vincient who begins to experience deadly nightmares after he cheats on his girlfriend, Katherine with a K (a relatively proper and controlling women) with a free-loving, sex maniac (I guess is the right way to put it), Catherine with a C. Like Persona, the game is split into two main sections. In the real world Vincient hangs out at his favourite bar where you can talk to the regular patrons, text people from your phone, drink as well as play an arcade machine which helps you in the other main part of the game. In comparison to Persona, the is obviously much smaller scale as you cannot leave the confines of the bar. Despite this the creators still managed to pack the bar full of interesting people and sub-plots. The second section, which is far more substantial than the bar, is during Vincient’s nightmares. Here you must scale ginormous towers of blocks, by a combination of pushing and pulling in order to create paths up the tower. Along the way you will have to compete against other ‘sheep’ (don’t ask, it’s a nightmare thing) as well as bosses which slowly destroy the tower and add on extra pressure as Vincient must puzzle his way up to the top. Although it is obviously much different from Persona, which is a turn-based JRPG, these block puzzles in Catherine are immensely satisfying and I have a feeling they will have me coming back to the game a lot in the future. The one negative, I would bring up is that the story in Catherine does go a bit off the rails at points, to be fair P4G had similar moments but they felt much less frequent. I suppose it just comes with the territory though, when your dealing with demons and nightmares and people turning into sheep it’s pretty hard to stay grounded. Outside of some of those aforementioned moments, Catherine does have a relatively compelling story. It is all based around a morality system and raises some genuinely interesting moral dilemmas and questions surrounding relationships which I feel have managed to help me better understand myself as a person. Overall Catherine did manage to continue my Persona fix, the Persona team manages to bring their trademark style to the characters and story making my time spent away from Inaba (the setting in a P4G) a little more easy to stomach. Catherine was a great experience, that had managed to give me that feeling of being back in a world akin to P4G, but it was time for something more substantial and familiar. It was time to get back into the core Persona series. After scrolling through many blog posts and forums I decided that I would give the orginal Persona a miss. It was available to me, as the original PS1 game had received a remake on the PSP, but through my research I discovered that although it did still have the same turn-based combat it was lacking a large feature the later games had introduced. Both Persona 1 and 2 did not contain the Social Link system which I still believe was one of the main reasons I loved P4G so much. To me, it simply wouldn’t feel like the same experience without it. Although I will include the caveat that once I am all caught up on the series more recent instalments I may very well go back to Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment as there stories do seem incredibly interesting. From this point, the most logical step was to jump into Persona 3: FES (which is just the orginal Persona 3 with some added story and gameplay improvements). Persona 3 is incredibly similar to the orginal Persona 4 on the PS2 (which is in turn incredibly similar to P4G which was essentially just an expanded version of the original Persona 4 for the PS Vita). They look almost identical in both the way they play and how their story is told. It also was the first game to include the Social Link feature which I had sorely-missed by this point. Persona 3 follows a group of teenagers, who have the Potential, this means they have the power to use Personas. Essentially there is an extra amount of time during the night known as the Dark Hour, during this time shadows appear and the local school turns into a large, seemingly never-ending tower called Tartarus. Those with the Potential are the only ones who can stay awake (or even have memory of the Dark Hour) during this time, so they must take it upon themselves to fight the shadows and discover the true cause behind Tartarus and the whole Dark Hour. At this point I have played about 40 hours of Persona 3 and I’m happy to say that it has recaptured that feeling I got playing P4G about a month ago. Like P4G it’s cast of characters is fanatastic, with some of them such as Yukari (probably my love interest) and Akihiko (another silent badass) rivalling (although never surpassing) the likes of Noato and Kanji in my memory. The fact that they managed to replicate such a fantastic cast of characters across different games is amazing to me, and makes me even more hyped for when I eventually get round to Persona 5. Overall I think I am enjoying Persona 3’s story even more than P4G, I guess the science-gone wrong angle is more interesting to me than the murder mystery one. Jumping into another game with such a great story and cast of memorable characters has really taught me a valuable lesson in a way. About a month ago I thought I’d never be able to move on from the P4G characters, but once you actually take the plunge and try something different it becomes so much clearer. Moving on is an essential part of life. Life is transitory, always changing and evolving in new and frightening ways. If you don’t learn to move on and try to get on with your life then you’ll be stuck in that rut forever. If I hadn’t went out of my way to try the likes of Catherine and Persona 3 during my brief post-P4G depression then that could have lasted far longer than I was comfortable with. So yes, I believe that Persona is a new addiction in my life, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. At first I thought it was maybe just a phase, but now I think it might be a new part of me. I’ll probably play the Persona 4 spin-offs, fighting games, dancing games, maybe I’ll even give the anime another go. Now I’ll probably even be able to appreciate them even more as they include characters from Persona 3 who I have now also formed a deep connection with. After that there’s Persona 5, which will most likely be another transformative experience for me (in the same way that P4G and Persona 3 have been). The only reason for me not jumping into this straight after Persona 3 is really just that the price hasn’t gone down by much since its original launch. In trying to wrap this all into a nice little conclusion, I keep coming to the same problem. What happens when I run out? What about after Persona 5? What about after the hundereds of eventual spin-offs of that?. They’ve already announced two new dancing games: Persona 5: Dancing Star Night (which I’ll definetly be playing after that game) and Persona 3: Dancing Moon Night. This will reunite me with the Persona 3 characters and will hopefully serve as a fitting send off for the P3 cast in the same way that Persona 4: Dancing All Night allowed me to say goodbye to that cast. So back to answering that question. I think I’ve came to an interesting realisation. Even after I’m completely caught up, the Persona series will not be done. It’s still in its infancy when compared to other long running series. There will be a Persona 6 and hopefully several more to come after that. Although this experience has been an emotional and saddening journey at points, the series has also brought some much needed joy and excitement into my life. And for that I will always have a place in my heart for Persona: the series that taught me that it’s ok to move on, even when the future seems uncertain.
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One of the film scenes I always seemed to find myself watching over and over again growing up was Renton’s withdrawl scene in the original Trainspotting. No I’m not talking about the dead upside down baby with the backwards head, but the scene earlier in the film where he has to lock himself in his room with several different combinations of food, drink, medication and *ahem* pornography in order to successfully stay off of heroin for several days. Although this is essentially a pointless tangent to serve as an introduction, it always really put me off of taking drugs (I know, well done me). The whole idea of addiction, something that you just had to keep doing and that your body basically ceases to function without always deeply troubled me. However, I believe I recently experienced this first-hand when I finally completed my hundredth hour of Persona 4 Golden.
Now I know this is a huge over exaggeration (it’s mainly just for comic effect), but I decided to write this in order to try and convey a feeling that I’ve never felt in my life. Now for those who don’t know, Persona is a Japanese role playing series that started in the PS1 era. It is the most popular spin-off of another long-running JRPG series, Shin Megami Tensei. In the most recent games, gameplay is essentially split into two different sections. The first is the real world where you usually take the role of a high schooler where you must manage your time between spending time with your friends (these are known as Social Links, improving them allows you to craft more powerful Persona’s) and improving your own stats (e.g knowledge, courage). The second section is spent in dungeons, here you and your party of fellow high schoolers run about fighting Demons or Shadows with the power of your Persona, essentially a magical power that is specific to each individuals own personality. These take different forms in each of the games from multiple different dungeons based on each persons insecurities to a never-ending tower which reaches into the sky called Tartarus. Anyway apart from that simple synopsis, another key aspect of the Persona games (especially the newer ones) is that they are incredibly long. By the time I got to the end of my playthrough of Persona 4 Golden (P4G) I was clocking in at almost exactly 100 hours. This is an insane amount of time to spend in one world with one set of characters. Over the course of my many, many hours spent with this game I formed a very deep connection with the games cast of likeable characters. I went from finding Yosuke and Chie (your first two companions) a little grating to forming a genuine friendship with them both. Then there’s Teddy, a talking bear who loves puns and lives inside a world inside a TV, he’s got a surprising amount of character development considering he’s basically just supposed to be a cute sidekick. Next is Kanji, the punk with a heart of gold, needless to say he’s definetly my favourite male character (i.e I’d definetly date him if that was possible). This is mainly due to Troy Baker’s silky, smooth vocals, which I am a massive fan of. Finally onto one of the main attractions of Persona for many people, the romantic relationships. I guess I had three different partners over the course of the story. First was Yukiko who I kind of grew to loath by the end of the game. She was an interesting character but she does become quite bland in contrast to the others by the end. Next was Rise, who was a very enjoyable character, seeing both sides of her persona: being the always energetic idol and her more relatable normal self made her far more three dimensional than her type of character would be in another game. Although it was not meant to be. Above all, the person I finally decided to settle down with was Noato. She was smart, attractive and definetly the least annoying out of the any of the characters. I felt a genuine connection with her, and although I still find it kind of creepy I understand how people could begin to grow so attached to these fictional characters that they become attracted to them. With the likes of Noato and Kanji, I felt genuinely upset when I finally had to let them go, after the hours and months I had spent with them. I can only point to one other time in my life when I felt a similar (although much less impactlful) set of emotions. When I finished the fifth( and at the time), final season of Community. I had spent a good month or so binging each episode and I was having a blast. It seemed like there was no end in sight. But you know as they say, time flies when your having fun and everything’s eventual (well that’s kind of a mix of two sayings). Once I had finally finished the show I felt that there was a space in my heart that nothing else could fill, for a few days I sulked around in my free time with nothing else to do. I missed the characters and the setting so much that I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself, but eventually that passed. I moved onto the next game or film or TV show and the ‘loss’ of Community completely passed me by. I assumed the same thing would happen once I had finished Persona. It didn’t. I couldn’t get this feeling to go away. For the next week or two I spent the majority of my free time reading wikis, blog posts and articles about the Persona, and larger Shin Megami Tensei series. Unlike Community, Persona 4 did have several spin-offs and tie-in games which I could play/watch after I had completed the main game. However these didn’t satiate me long. Out of these there was an Anime, two fighting games (Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4 Arena: Ultimax) and a rhyme game (Persona 4: Dancing All Night). The problem for me was that, besides the first fighting game, all of these spin-offs had a largely different cast of voice actors who I don’t think brought the same realism to the characters. Some of my favourite characters like Kanji (Troy Baker was gone and replaced with someone much worse) and Naoto (who was replaced with a far less interesting voice actor) were gone. This was further hightened by the fact that no one actually knows who Noato’s original voice actress was, unlike Troy Baker who I could simply follow into his next Naughty Dog gig or at this point, basically any game under the sun, that character was gone. As I mentioned, Noato was the character I felt most connected to, so to essentially lose them and having no idea where I could follow this person’s work in the future was quite difficult. The Anime was probably the worst culprit, as it had the same voice cast (minus Noato :( ) for the first half or so and then suddenly decided to replace them all half way through. Needless to say, when I talk about this as a sort of ‘withdrawal’ from the lack of Persona in my life, it wasn’t the gameplay, or the grinding or really even the game itself that I missed so much, it was those characters who had been a large part of my life for several months that I missed. Although, the title of this does include “Renewal” after all. This story has to have a happy ending at some point. Although the whole process took much longer than my brief spat of post-Community depression, I did eventually manage to “shovel myself out of the shit” as Dr Jacoby would say. However real and important it felt to me, this was simply a game and these people were simply characters created by a team of developers and writers who have worked on several other games. Although it may not have been the most healthy choice, sometimes you just have to give in and feed the addiction. Sometimes the best way of moving on is to find something else to cling onto. Something new and different, yet still similar and welcoming. Persona is a series after all... |
authorSo this is weird. I’ve made a website, I’m not expecting anyone to read it (actually I’d rather they didn’t.) Basically I’ve been struggling to write creative things recently, every idea I come up with, no matter how much I think I believe in it, leads me nowhere. I guess you could call it writer’s block, but it’s more so that I tend to overthink and second-guess myself down to the smallest details, this means it takes me forever to make anything and once I have I’m incredibly demotivated to continue it. So, after being inspired by an Australian writer, Gabriel Bergmoser, who’s blog and podcasts I’ve been reading and listening to for the past few years I decided this would be an interesting experiment to try out. Basically I have no idea what I’m going to write, it’s unlikely to be creative or short stories, more-so this kind of string-of-consciousness opinion piece based on the things I’m thinking about at the moment. From films to television or maybe books and music. Anyway I hope you find some of this stuff interesting. Let’s hope I don’t say anything too incriminating considering my name is plastered all over this. Granted, this is something I will probably only update about four times in my life, unless I really enjoy it. It’s more so to help me be more creative and actually produce something for once.
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January 2021
CategoriesNot really sure? Opinions on the blog, mainly about entertainment. I'll also be posting some fiction or short stories eventually for your feedback and enjoyment.
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