February 2017 Catchup

At the forefront of my thoughts during February was that I really wanted to make sure I finished the rest of my Persona marathon before P5's impending release date. I know it ended up coming out in early April, but I'm not sure at what point I learned that it was going to be delayed. I'm sure I must have known by this point, because if I'm not mistaken it was originally projected to come out that very month! I tend to play through games quickly, but even I wouldn't have been prepared to replay both Persona 3 and Persona 4 in just a few weeks. These are ridiculously long games, after all.

I ended up finishing my playthrough of Persona 3 Portable right at the beginning of February. I had previously played Persona 3 FES on PS2 several years back. It was my introduction to the series and still probably my favorite entry overall. It was just so different from anything else I'd played in that genre. I know it has its debts to other games both within its own overarching series and from other games as well, but there is something uniquely interesting about Persona that few other games duplicate for me. It is a nexus of slice-of-life, dungeon crawling, tough turn-based combat, and ludicrously catchy tunes that really make it memorable for me.

P3P fixed the primary issue I had with the original version of the game which always struck me as a pretty glaring oversight in the first place. For whatever reason, party members in the original P3 (and in FES) are entirely controlled by AI. This is the default setting for all Persona titles but starting from P4 it became fairly trivial to disable the setting. P3P mercifully implements this massive quality of life improvement and therefore makes the game a lot more fun to play and honestly less difficult overall since you have so much more control over how your characters participate in combat. I think this, combined with my familiarity with the game is what shaved about 20 hours off my playtime compared to my first time through.

Not all the changes to Portable are for the better, though. The ability to roam freely through the town in between story scenes and dungeon crawling was completely removed, replaced with a visual novel-style point-and-click interface to travel from place to place. I can't say this was a change that really bothered me that much at the end of the day especially since so much of the game is about creating a routine of visiting various different places on different days over and over. The act of physically walking to these areas was never a satisfying component of the gameplay in the first place. There were also some animated cutscenes removed from this PSP release, which is a bummer, but again, not crucial to the overall experience. I still definitely prefer this version of the game due to gameplay improvements and the wider variety of social links.

The next game I finished in February was Freedom Planet, a cute little game one might be quick to dismiss as a straight-up Sonic clone. Yes, it does borrow heavily from that series, but I do feel it has its own identity, particularly with its cast of anthropomorphic playable characters. Each of these three have their own distinct gameplay styles and conquer the variety of different levels in different ways. I wouldn't mind revisiting this one because it was a fun take on the classic Sonic formula and I didn't spend enough time with it for it to really stick in my mind. This might be another game that I try out again on PS4 or Switch, assuming it's available on those platforms.

As it turns out, those two were the only games I finished in February! I tend to chew through games pretty quickly, so it's surprising I only managed to get through two in one month. Looking ahead a bit, though, it really starts to make sense. I had moved on to Persona 4 Golden right after finishing P3P, which of course is an astoundingly long game. Simultaneously, I was playing the recently released Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4, on which I also spent a considerable amount of time. I imagine I'll be discussing those quite soon.