| Welcome to Fire Emblem Fusion. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Video Game Review Club | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Aug 6 2008, 06:54 PM (1,007 Views) | |
| Laharl | Aug 21 2008, 10:31 PM Post #61 |
Narcissistic Bastard With A Hint Of Mental Insanity Or Mentally Insane With A Hint Of Narcissism
|
Title:Persona 3:FES Genre:RPG Platform:Playstation2 Story You play the role of a highschool student attending Gekkoukan High. Shortly arriving, however, you are attacked my mysterious creatures known as Shadows which only appear during a time known as the Dark Hour. This event causes the MC(you may name him yourself) to awaken to his Persona, a special power only a select few can use. Using his persona, he is able to defeat the Shadows. As a twist of fate, the other students in the dorm are also Persona users. They can use this unique power via a instrument known as an Evoker. It takes the form of a gun, but is actually used to summon the powers of their Persona, which is a second soul dwelling deep inside an individual. After the attack, you are asked to join SEES, a team devoted to destroying the Shadows. Soon thereafter, you are introduced to the Tartarus. This also only reveals itself during the Dark Hour. The Dark Hour is a time between 12:00 AM and 1:00 AM that only Persona-users can experience. It occurs each night at midnight and lasts for one hour. Normal people are turned into coffins through a process called Transmogrication. While in this form, they are completly oblivious to the Dark Hour. It is the job of the members os SEES to explore Tartarus and rid humanity of the Shadow menace. Gameplay The gameplay in Persona 3 is unique, in that its a RPG with Sim elements. I have heard that some people don't like this and actually stop playing this great game because of it. Their loss. This actually fits into the story quite well. You spend your time following a predertimined schedule which goes like this: Early Morning ---> Morning ---> Daytime(only days you don't have school) --> Lunchtime --> After school --> Evening --> Dark Hour(if you choose to go to Tartarus and on certin events)/Late Night(only if you don't go to Tartarus or fight a boss) --> Early Morning It then repeats this loop through out the game. Some do not like it, but as mentioned earlier, it compliments the story well. During these periods of time, you can do pretty much whatever you want. You can play arcade games, eat at a local resturant, or develop your Social Links, or S.Links for short. These S.Links are an important part of the game. Each S.Link is tied to a person(s) and a corresponding Arcana. To strengthen these S.Links you must spend time with the person associated with the S.Link. This takes up time, which means moving through the various phases of the day so planning is required to finish them in one playthrough.. S.Links increase by leveling them up, to a maxium of 10. There are several benifits to having a maxed S.Link. Say you have the Lovers Arcana at lvl10. When you fuse a Persona with that Arcana, it will recieve a huge experience boost. The second goodie it that upon maxing out a S.Link, you also recieve an item which lets you fuse a strong Persona. The Persona you can fuse from a maxed S.Link is the strongest Persona of that Arcana. However, you can't develop these S.Links whenever you want. On perdertimed times, you will be unable to increase certin S.Links like during exams or such. When your not spending time working on your S.Links, you usally will be in the Tartarus. This is the only dungeon in the game, which sort of sucks, but also fits well within the story of the game. Tartarus consists of various floors which you and a team of up to four can explore. Most of the time you are allowed to choose who goes with you, but some characters are out of action for a while. Taratrus is also where most the fighting and fun come from. Enemies appear on screen like you do. You can attack them first to gain an advantage in battle. During a fight, you have several options which are your basic attack, item & run. I'm not going to go into detail about this. Its pretty self explanatory. While you have full control over the MC, your allies are controlled through the games AI. You can give them orders, though. Some complain about the AI, but I saw no problem with it. They do what you tell them well. If you can defeat the enemy, you are awarded with standard RPG experience. You can also recieve other bonuses by a card shuffling mechanic. You are shown four different cards for a few seconds. These are then shuffled and you may randomly pick one. The awards you get from these cards can be anything to extra experience to a new Persona. As you advance in Tartarus, the shuffling methods become more complex such as the cards moving faster. However, the bonuses you get from them increase to compensate. On certin floors, you are faced with a boss fight. Before each fight you can return to the entrance to save and such. Some bosses are eeasy while others are downright impossible. And just like bosses, on certin floors there is a gate blocking your path upwords. These blocks can only be removed by going through the story. Once they are, you will recieve a notice. This is to stop people from reaching the top too soon. Besides the battles & S.Links, you can also fuse Personas to create stronger ones and take quests. To do this, you must go to the Velvet Room. There you can make powerful Personas. At first you can only fuse 2 - 3 Personas, but at a certin point in the game, you will be able to fuse up to six. Fusing Personas is the key to getting stronger, besides leveling and getting new equipment. You can also take requests from Elizabeth. These requests have you doing various things like killing enemies to get an item or fusing Personas with a certin skill. The awards you get are pretty good. Some have a deadline that if you fail to meet, will result in that request being removed for the rest of the game. Thankfully they are not hard to meet and the prizes you get from them are nothing to worry about if you miss them. Graphics The graphics in Persona 3 are decent. They're not terrible, but at the same time not incredible. There are anime cutscens at important parts of the story, but after playing Tales of... games, these don't really impress me anymore. The Persona desings are good though. I like the style of whoever drew them. Sadly, they look better drawn then they do in-game. The animations are also okay. Nothing like FF though. No needlessly long animations here. But I did wish they put effort into this. Sound/Music Oh, boy. This is where Persona 3 fails. The music in this game had me listening to something else. Out of all the music, only a few I thought were good, and the best you can't hear till the last month of the game. In Tartarus, you are given the option to change the music after getting Fukka. Its a shame you can only listenin to it here, as its not bad. Its the music that you hear during day thats terrible. You constantly hear the same repeated track over and over. The worst one rears its ugly head after summer break. I HATE this song. And the one in the dorm isin't much better. I don't know if its rap or not. Like the graphics, Atlus could have done better, but at least the graphics don't make my ears bleed. --Overall Rating-- Story: 10/10 Gameplay:10/10 Graphics:5/10 Music:3/10 Despite the flaws in the music & graphics, I highly suggest you get this game. Try to get FES as it has things the regular P3 dosen't. The story is good & the gameplay isin't bad either. FINAL GRADE:A- P.S. The only reason the last category isin't a '0' is because of the few good tracks this game has. |
 | |
 |
 
|
| Feez | Aug 21 2008, 10:53 PM Post #62 |
|
Ebullient Future
|
LOL I think you're the only person in the universe who thinks P3's music sucks. |
|
|
| Kovu | Aug 22 2008, 12:15 AM Post #63 |
Judge/Veteran/One of oldest members/Never been a global mod cause staff is racist against furries
|
He gave gameplay a 10/10 and for an RPG that's more than enough in my book. ~ Kovu |
|
|
|
| PhantomZero | Aug 22 2008, 03:44 AM Post #64 |
|
Swarley
|
ROFL @ YOUR MUSIC RATING. P3's music raped |
|
A NEW WORLD ORDER ~Known as PhantomZero, Mr. Noogen, Yosuke Hanamura | |
|
|
|
| LadyArienne | Aug 22 2008, 06:33 AM Post #65 |
JUNPEI++
|
Actually, most of my friends have told me that I'm banned from playing Persona 3 while they're over because the music is so bland and repetitive and they can't stand hearing it any more. Walk into any of the shops in the mall and see if the music doesn't set your teeth on edge after a minute or two. The trouble with the music in Persona 3 isn't that the soundtrack is bad; it's that certain tracks get repeated to hell and back (due to the repetitive nature of the game) while a good half or so of the soundtrack gets played once or twice. This gives the player the impression that the soundtrack only has about 10 tracks as opposed to the 2 cd joy that it is and can slowly drive people up the wall. |
| |
|
|
|
| PhantomZero | Aug 22 2008, 06:53 AM Post #66 |
|
Swarley
|
I guess you have a point; i never had that problem due to me sneaking the game during night often and thus no volume. |
|
A NEW WORLD ORDER ~Known as PhantomZero, Mr. Noogen, Yosuke Hanamura | |
|
|
|
| Quote | Sep 19 2008, 04:22 AM Post #67 |
|
I never understood this, why would you waste that brain power to write up something any self respecting customer could discern from wikipedia or youtube. What is the point of parroting something gamespot/ign/your favorite shlock of a magazine has said anyway? Most things in general don't deserve more than a paragraph or two of writing anyway, they simply aren't good enough to warrant that kind of discussion--whats the point of putting in needless words? Here's my persona 3 review: There comes a time in every young person's life where something as stupid and ill-handled as Neon Genesis Evangelion comes off as profound and meaningful. Persona 3 (P3) is the latest game to prey on this teenage existential, featuring a cast of just about every anime trope I can think of. As a result there's plenty of mindless chatter, pontificating on seemingly 'deep' issues (just what is our purpose in life anyways, maaaan?), and an insulting use of imagery juxtaposed with obligatory fanservice. Much like any other recent cRPG, the game is about 50 hours too long, full of dumb filler (hot springs scene, school fair, school field trip, after school adventures--if you've seen any anime in the vein Kare Kano, you know what to expect) and plenty of downtime where you usually end up doing things like fetch quests and running around in a circle watching big numbers get bigger. This veneer of a story hides the mediocre dungeon crawler underneath. Like it's forefather SMT: Nocturne, P3's battle system is succinct in its simplicity; however, P3's randomly generated dungeon floors simply cannot compare to Nocturne's well-designed dungeons, and generally stupid, rock-paper-scissor fights mask whatever form of ludic pleasure one can gain from this. Since major fights occur once in a month, it's pretty easy to climb to the top of the Tartarus tower in the first few days and then sit around and and talk to your anime-tropes for friends for the rest of the month. The most interesting and well-developed part of the game lies within it's Demon Fusion system (copyright), but a lack of challenges and the ability to grind away all strategy makes it moot to understand its idiosyncrasies. This being said, P3 still incorporates the sharp aesthetics and clean user interface of all megaten games post-Nocturne, and the emphasis on establishing social relationships to further demon fusion is compelling and well-integrated. The bottom line is P3 is pretty much like a Tales game--a mishmash of a bunch of mediocre games from multiple genres, with a stupid story slapped on top. Verdict: Not worth your time, not even worth my time to write more than 2 small paragraphs. |
 //I hate the art of fighting, but I want to be the king of fighters! | |
|
|
|
| PhantomZero | Sep 20 2008, 03:33 PM Post #68 |
|
Swarley
|
Well if that was the case all we have to do is link to said page. If you're going to write some kind of review you might as well write a review instead of listing a hundred links. |
|
A NEW WORLD ORDER ~Known as PhantomZero, Mr. Noogen, Yosuke Hanamura | |
|
|
|
| -HJ- | Sep 20 2008, 03:53 PM Post #69 |
I've failed to come up with something witty, so I hope you will enjoy this filler text instead.
|
We're not writing reviews for work here, we're just doing it as a way to voice our opinion to others in a more elaborate manner than usual. Plus, we enjoy it. Much like you seem to enjoy defying ''popular opinion'' and voicing your own opinion about certain things, even though any self respecting person could figure it out on their own right? |
| |
|
|
|
| Quote | Sep 23 2008, 07:53 AM Post #70 |
|
Wow this is so crazy, I don't even remember typing this. But uhm, what I think I meant to say was why would you spend 6 paragraphs describing the story when you could just link to wikipedia, the important part of a review is the review part, not the part where you talk about the shower scene in persona 3. Obviously if there is a need to establish context then you can be free to do so, but if so many people have already written plenty of story synopsis/gameplay descriptions of a game, it would make more sense just to say what works and what doesn't, and link to a previous work to establish context. Think of it this way--what if everytime you had to work a math exercise, you had to show everything, even the most primary steps, eg. that adding two odd numbers gave you an even number. Such a thing would be absurd--in the same way, restating that which is assumed a priori seems like a waste of brain power. |
|
//I hate the art of fighting, but I want to be the king of fighters! | |
|
|
|
| Kovu | Sep 23 2008, 09:12 AM Post #71 |
|
Judge/Veteran/One of oldest members/Never been a global mod cause staff is racist against furries
|
You don't have to. Heck, this entire forum could be considered a waste of time. We don't need FEFF to survive, do we? This is merely here for enjoyment and ammusment (referring to this topic). Which is why I haven't tried to debate many of the reviews I happen to personally disagree with. However, if you happen to agree with something that has already been said, linking to it is less time consuming than typing it all out yourself, I guess. Plus it's interesting to see different reviews of the same game, to get a different idea of how people see said game's strengths and weaknesses. What's trash to one person might be gold to another. ~ Kovu |
|
|
|
| Askio | Sep 29 2008, 01:25 PM Post #72 |
Crit McGee on Speed
|
Game: Armored Core for Answer Platform: PS3 and Xbox 360 Genre: Mech, Action (maybe even adventure) The armored core series is back at it again. And thankfully, its in North America has gotten it as well, thanks to Ubisoft taking up the mantle after Sega's horrible botching of the release for Armored Core 4, for many reasons. Going off of that, what exactly has Ubisoft done and not done to botch the game, and what have the people of Software done with the armored core mech series now? Well first off, the quick paced gameplay from Armored Core 4 is back, and retuned for easier play in some ways, and at the same time, making it not nearly as easy for certain weapons, which were useful in the story mode and abusive in online play, making things more balanced. This jump that was made in AC4 from the original intuitive yet somewhat clumsy at times gameplay in earlier generations has done the series great justice, seeing how in the story, a great deal of time has passed. Which is something that must be brought to attention. ARMORED CORE FOR ANSWER ACTUALLY HAS A DAMN STORY!!!OMG!! I'm sorry, but I can't help but leap for joy at this fact as a fan of the series. While Sega is great and all, rather than focusing on making robot girlfriends for lonely individuals, they should focus on not botching a games story. In Armored Core 4, the story was so scattered and so confusing in the cuts the releases outside of japan that were made, that a story basically didn't exist. It randomly took a jumble of ideas and threw them together, overall making the game seem less fulfulling and confusing. Not only have the creators made the story deeper and better, but Ubisoft actually stayed away from cutting the story for the most part, and brought in good voice actors to fill in the numerous roles in the game, making a much more pleasing experience. But where is the story at? Here is a brief run down of it. The game takes place around 10 years after AC4. There are numerous corporations that more or less rule the world. After the war that took place in AC4, the Lynx war, the corporations gained more power. However, numerous years of abuse to the planet by the coroporations production of weapons and other industries have led the surface of Earth to become polluted, for many, to fatal extremes. While still liveable, it is not easy. Rather than try to fix the problem on the surface, the corporations build giant flying sanctuaries, known as the Cradles. Millions live in these flying homes, under rule of the corporations. However, the Lynx pilots were left behind on the surface, as many executive leaders realized after the actions of a certain Lynx (you the pilot in AC4), that they were to unpredictable and to powerful. As a result of the war, the corporations joined together to form a group known as "The League." They used their power to create weapons they could control, rather than rely on the Lynx pilots all the time. Needless to say, they still need them. Which is where you come in. You are a new Next (mech) pilot, fresh and eager to earn a name for yourself. Like in AC4, your character does not have any cutscense, nor does he/she speak at all. Rather, your 'answers' are decided through your actions. Which brings in the main feature of the games story, that being there are three possible endings, each unique for which side you choose. Will you aid the League? Or will you side with the Reactionary army of ORCA, trying to open up humanity's future through extreme action? Or will you side with the independent states on the surface? Through which missions you choose in each chapter, and in some of them, who you let live and die, or make die and let live rather, will decide which path the game will end. After you complete one ending, you get to start over with all your money, equipment, ranks, etc. too, so its not like going from scratch. But one big difference is in the gameplay. It's not just the revamped speedy fun combat, but some of the new enemies, in particular, Arms Forts. Now, most people have played or heard of shadow of the colossus, a unique game pitting a lone warrior, his blade, bow, and trusty horse against giants, basically resulting in a major boss fight being the only fights. Take that concept, make it into a mech game where your super powered Next , maybe 50 or 60 feet tall, against some smaller ones that are about the sizes of a mansion, to giants that carry enough firepower to level cities, and carry enough troops to cover the ground and sky in black dots, (or red on your radar) and you have to crush them all. NOt only that, but how you deal with each one is unique not only on the type of Arms Fort, but the type of next you build. Which comes to the most known feature of the game. The mech building. There are 400-500 parts in the game, the exact number is hard to say. Needless, just on basic mech building, for anyone that wants to try having 20+ slots with over 400 parts you could combine together. Thousands of combinations are possible. Whats really nice is that rather than getting a lot more complex, in some ways, the process is simpler. The garage and shop can be accessed next to each other, but are seperate, making building less confusing than AC4. Not only that, but the decal, emblem, and various other options allow a true feeling of being able to make whatever you want. Wanna be a giant tank typle mech with a lot of Armor Points, and enough power and guns to make Sylvester and Arnold crap their pants? Go ahead. Want it to be bright pink with flowers on it? You can do that too. Or you can make a sniper, that can fly almost indefinately, with an effective booster system, picking off poor targets. Or you could load up a light mobile type with the enhanced back and quick boost parts, throw on some laser blades, and just cut everything. The graphics and music have also recieved quite the overhaul as well. Taking the sleek look of AC4, its been overhauled, making mech fans drool over the sleek look of their mechs even more. Not only that, the soundtrack has been vamped up. With tracks like "The Bloody Honey Never Stops", "The Answer", "Today", "I See All", and more, the soundtrack that ACfA has is impressive. The only real problem with it is that sometimes during the game, there seems to be a lack of variety of the great tracks at times, but often, its not an issue, making the battles epic. Another intersting note about graphics that makes the game epic. It takes "Totally destructible enviroments", those nice looking graphics you could stare and look at all day, and makes sure if you want to, you can blast them. Shoot a missle in a desert and it hits the ground, there will be a giant smoldering crater. Shoot a skyscraper or ruined building enough times, its going to collapse into rubble, or explode, depending on how you do it. Shoot a boar in the ocean, its not going to float there, its going to actually sink and say hello to Davy Jones. Overall, the only real problem with the game is the daunting task of catching up. If you have never played an Armored Core game before, hit up the web or go play the older games in the series to get a better understanding of some of what is going on, even the botched story of AC4. Also, even though it is simpler than some previous titles, the process of making a good mech that goes well to your style of gameplay may be challenging for newbies. But there are tutorials before anything begins, and now even better premade mech designs, more of which can be unlocked later on. Over all, ACfA is what AC4 should have or could have been, in almost every way, especially for release outside of Japan. All in all, a great addition to the series, and an interesting piece for groundwork to continue the series on, especially with the multiple endings. Story 8/10 Gameplay 9/10 Graphics 9/10 Soundtrack 9/10 Overall grade 9/10 or A- to A |
 Fire Emblem Online Askio: 9-1-1 | |
|
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · Groups/Clubs · Next Topic » |
1:22 PM Nov 8
