VideoGame An enjoyable follow-up to Persona Q
While the 3DS is near the end of its life cycle, that doesn't mean that there aren't any new games to play. Persona Q2, one of the last games for the console, is one last worthy addition to an RPG fan's library.
Like the previous game, the story involves the casts of Persona games being summoned to a location(in this case, a cinema with labyrinths for each movie) and being forced to work together, but this time, the cast of Persona 5 and the female protagonist of Persona 3 Portable come along, too. Each labyrinth has a fairly engaging story, but the overall story, particularly newcomer Hikari's character arc, is less interesting than the first game's. Without spoiling anything, one reason Hikari isn't as compelling is that she doesn't spend as much time around the party as Rei did, since she mostly stays out of the labyrinths, resulting in her having little presence during the early story. That said, it does effectively tie into Persona 5's major themes, much like the previous game's story combined Persona 3 and 4's themes.
As in the previous games, the interactions between the characters of different games is one of the main draws, particularly when very similar (or different) members of separate games' casts bond by going on sidequests together. Said sidequests are generally more enjoyable and less obtuse than those in the previous game, since they have fewer onerous conditions attached(such as requiring a certain party member that you might not use, or forcing you to defeat Shadows in a specific way). One part that's a bit of a letdown, though, is that there aren't any Strolls that let you see optional dialogue scenes between party members, which can be funny, insightful, touching, or all of the above.
The combat is basically similar to the previous game, but it features some noticeable improvements. Magic is more viable, since running out of SP is less of a worry. All-Out Attacks happen once all foes are knocked down, rather than randomly based on how many characters are boosted. Your characters' health and SP are restored for free upon leaving the labyrinth, cutting down on your overhead. These features remove some of the more tedious and frustrating parts of the game, without detracting from the challenge.
While dungeon exploration and normal battles are significantly easier, the bosses in this game are significantly more elaborate and challenging, often featuring multiple phases or special mechanics. As a result, they're also significantly more fun, although I found that this game's Final Boss was significantly easier than the first game's.
One unfortunate part is that this game does not have an English dub. Since I enjoyed the English performances in the previous Persona games, this is quite disappointing.
For the most part, though, Persona Q2 improves on the first game in many regards. All in all, if you still have your 3DS and enjoyed the first game, I'd recommend Persona Q2.
VideoGame Here's a follow up to the review above.
CHECK BOTH THIS REVIEW AND THE REPLY BELOW. THIS ALONE IS NOT THE FULL REVIEW.
While this game is certainly fit to be a black horse game, there are issues and advantages that the author above does not tell you. It's also quite spoiler heavy so watch at your own risk.
At first, the better sides.
- One of the biggest issues of Rei's arc is that the game literally tells you close to nothing about it, there's seemingly no warning, all of the bad stuff just pops up for approximately ten minutes and everything just goes downhill. Hikari's arc is a bit more obvious since the game goes all out of the way to foreshadow the movies and Hikari are related. If you paid attention, they also go out of the way to warn you that Nagi is the Big Bad.
- While Hikari's arc is nowhere, and i mean...nowhere near as tragic as Rei (It should also be noteworthy that The Reveal of this game is the aftermath and not the beginning of a tragedy), it sure appears to be relatable and a lot more human than how most JRPG characters are written even for Persona standards, which inversely makes the whole thing a lot more disturbing than it appears to be. Just compare it with Adachi's writing for reference since they are the most similar. Making a tragic character/psychopath having a human motive and background doesn't exactly make them really tragic or impactful, but it makes them more fucked up and chilling.
- The other one is that the characters are less flanderized than what they are in Q1. There are severe ones every now and then such as the onmipresent Akihiko "protein" and Yusuke being literally "hungry" (He's actually starving for artistic inspiration, not literally food) but the rest are fine.
- The game gives you an appropriate merit to attack the Big Bad. This is a step up from Q1 since in Q1 you have no reason to take the Big Bad down at all and The Velvet Attendants even tell you to leave.
(Sorry Tropes doesn't let me upload more than 3000 chars so...)
VideoGame A marked improvement on the prequel.
I've played the previous game and had a few issues with how it handled fusions and its Boost system. When I saw it would be making a return I was not enthused. I'm glad I was proven wrong.
What I didn't like about Boost in the previous game was how high skill costs have been jacked up to encourage its use. This creates problems with your casters when you consume a non-trivial amount of SP for each attack you do that isn't hitting a weakness. This also creates problems when useful support skills like Power Charge are needlessly expensive for low-SP physical attackers. They've significantly reduced skill costs and improved everyone's base HP and SP so running dry is not as big of an issue. Also you have Invigorate passives to let your casters function in a long battle.
To reduce the power discrepancy between physical and magic attackers they've given nearly every enemy a weakness. To compensate, several enemies can defend themselves against an All-Out Attack while others can't be knocked down at all. It's a happy medium that maintains the threat level of stronger enemies without forcing them to be without weakness. The Baton Pass mechanic is a neat little addition that lets you shuffle Boosts around, creating devastating setups or pulling your party out of a pickle.
The revised skill sets to the Main Personas is also much appreciated, as you get to now pick and choose which skill they discard in favor of an incoming one. This also means that everyone playable can learn a lot more skills over a longer time so you don't feel that sense of stagnation when everyone's peaked at level 50 or so.
Skill Cards now let you also transfer skills from Sub-Persona to Sub-Persona as opposed to Sub- to Main only. Lots more skills can be inherited through fusion as well so you can, say, spread that All Guard + Immunity Buffer combo around as you see fit. The inclusion of Psy/Nuke/Kou/Ei lines makes it difficult to squeeze every element into the total six skill slots and makes you think about what you have on hand before fusing and assigning Sub-Personas.
The cast is immense! This makes for many more character interactions which would be the main draw of a crossover game like this. The Flanderization like Chie's meat and Akihiko's protein obsession is still present, but downplayed due to many more other permutations of character interactions competing for the spotlight. I do like how some interactions pave the way for sidequests which develop into a unison attack on completion as a new bond is forged.
There's only so much I can talk about within the character limit. Overall, I enjoyed it, and would recommend if you're familiar with the casts of 3, 4 and 5 so you don't miss out too much on their call-backs.