Paranoid android

Day 415

The cell phone store I work for is releasing the iPhone 6 tomorrow and for many of the inhabitants of my sleepy town it'll be their first change to get their hands on it. AT&T and other major providers have had the 6 for a week now, but their coverage in this area is spotty at best. I predict our stock will be gone within a few hours and I can't imagine we won't be very busy. I have the option of going in at 8 AM and staying until close--and I'm understandably hesitant to do so. I don't want to come off as lazy or anything, but I've already met my numbers for the month. It's extremely unlikely I'll hit my renewal quota regardless of what I do so coming in early would only marginally increase the number of hours I have for the week. Either way you look at it, it results in a larger paycheck for me, but I feel like I'd rather just get home earlier.

Anyway, I've beaten the main story mode of Persona 4 Arena, although I still have a lot more individual character story modes to finish. The credits rolled though, so that's good enough for me. I'm not necessarily shooting for 100% completion, although I probably will try to go through and finish the other story modes--unless I decide I'm just not feeling up to it or I'm feeling desperate to play a different game. Torchlight 2 should be finished in just a few days, so that just leaves Theatrhythm and Lufia 2 to contend with .I've read the credits roll for Theatrhythm as soon as you hit 20,000 Ryhthmia so that's what I'm going to try to work on next.

I like a lot of the story elements in Persona 4 Arena but I don't necessarily agree with the way they were presented. Maybe it's just because I tend to play through games in marathon sessions, but playing the different characters' story modes back to back is highly repetitive because things play out roughly identically each time with only the primary character of interest changing each time. Sure, there are different conversations and interactions, but the general events don't change. Particularly after you unlock the final scenes of each character's story in which you'll find yourself repeating the same ending sequence ten or eleven times in a row if you played through the characters in the order I did.

I don't have much in the way of suggestions as far as how to better handle this in a game like Arena. The characters in question all know each other and for the most part hang out with each other more than anyone else. Their backstories are all inextricably tied together due to attending the same high school--except of course for the Persona 3 characters on the roster. Unlike Dissidia, it is difficult to focus on what makes each character different. Their personalities and backstories were all fairly well established in Persona 4--and in many ways their personal conflicts were resolved. Arena attempts to dredge up old conflicts in. For this reason, much of the story mode feels a little played out. The most interesting part of it involves Labrys, the new character introduced just for the game. Unfortunately, since the game centers around her, it's not difficult to become tired of seeing her pop up in every single scene.

The gameplay itself seems a little shallow as well--although I'm definitely not an expert on fighting games. It's possible it's less shallow than I imagine, but it's certainly much easier to exploit that I realized initially. It's possible to pull off very serviceable combos just by mashing Square over and over. I tested once whether or not I could defeat the AI by pressing nothing but Square--and much to my dismay I was able to do so easily. I'd prefer not to game the system like this--and I usually don't because the AI is not particularly challenging in the first place--but it's troubling that it's so easy to do.