I was expecting freakin' greatness. Mang, Persona 3 is my favorite game in existence, and I will probably love it until the day I die.
Persona 4 is... mixed. There are some things I like, I suppose, but there's really a lot that I don't like.
Let's start with what I don't like, because quite frankly I like to complain.
1. CAMERA FREAKING ANGLES. In Persona 3, there was no camera angle problem. It was always just a moderately far-out shot of Main Character running around. In P4, the camera now seems to get stuck on walls, like it does in Kingdom Hearts. Also, sometimes it randomly zooms in and out. The old one was fine! Why did they change it!?!?! In the 6 hours we spent playing the game today, there were several times when I was trying to get the advantage on an enemy and ended up hitting it blind because I was getting some weird close-up of a wall!
2. Igor. So far, he seems to be the only character that has come over from P3. That would be fine with me, except that I swear some of his lines are reused. Even if they're not the exact same clips, they sure as hell sound almost exactly like all the stuff he told us in the beginning of P3.
3. The absence of Elizabeth. She's been replaced with Margaret, who looks slightly different, but somehow has a voice even more annoying than Elizabeth's. And she pronounces her s's weird on the phone. At one point, when she was explaining her existence to us, Mexwing was like "Shut up already! I'll do you at the end of the game!" (those weren't her exact words, but it was something like that).
4. The repetition and summarization of information. Everything you learn through dialogue in the game is repeated to you by other people, little summaries after each conversation, and usually notifications when you go places or do certain things. It's really irritating! By the time you've heard about the love triangle for what seems to be the fiftieth time, you're like, "Enough already!!!". P3 did a little bit of that, but not to an extreme. P4 takes it too far.
5. Initiative. In P3, it was pretty easy to get the advantage. In P4, it seems to be much harder to aim your sword and takes longer to recover from a swing, so you end up looking like a fool swinging the wrong way and the enemy gets the advantage (which means that all the enemy units get to go first, which can be devastating).
6. Cards. Before, in P3, it was pretty easy to tell their pattern and pretty easy to choose, because you moved the selector around. Now, in P4, the cards move around like electrons around an atom- sort of randomly, and really fast. You have to press X at the right time to select the card on top. It's pretty finicky.
7. So far, there haven't been any return points in the levels. That said, we've only made it to the fifth level of a castle, so that's not too different. I have a feeling it won't be like Tartarus, where it was one big-ass tower with floor bosses and return points. But it was really darn annoying to have to go back down all the stairs instead of being given an access point to return.
All of this said, there are some things I like about this game.
1. Some of the Personas I really liked (such as Angel) have been moved to P4 from P3. Pixie (generally one I never used because I thought she was useless) has even been upgraded, and can now use Zio (lightning) as well as healing. There are also some pretty cool new Personas. I'm interested to see just how many were moved over and how many were newly created as I progress through the game.
2. The battle system. It's got the same basic choices and things as P3's did, but it's better because you can control the actions of each character in your party. Also, it no longer takes a full turn for someone to stand up after it has been knocked down, so you don't get stuck with one character who's weak and always down. This is taking some getting used to for me, though- I used to knock and enemy down and make it take a turn to get up instead of attacking me.
3. The voices are pretty good, even though Vic doesn't have a part. When I was playing P3, I would always let Junpei talk even though I didn't always like what he was saying, just because it was Vic Mignogna's awesome voice! (I always clicked through Yukari's parts, though. Freakin' annoying pink-shirted chick.)
4. The graphics and areas are pretty nice, despite the camera angles.
5. Instead of giving you a difficult-to-see bubble over your character's head when he can look at something or talk to someone, a nice big message that says "X: CHECK" appears.
6. The characters are pretty good. You can see that some of them were drawn in the same style as the characters from P3, and some personality traits carry over, but the characters are mostly different and not direct ripoffs. Also, the main girl character, Chie, is not nearly as annoying as Yukari was in P3. While she does some whining, she also likes kung fu movies, kicks enemies to death, and has a pretty strong Persona (of the Chariot arcana, not the obvious Lovers).
7. All the little things. As in P3, there are lots of random little jokes and things (like being able to eat whatever food is in the fridge, and having the option to say things like "I think I'm about to cry" at totally inappropriate times) that make the game pretty enjoyable and exciting.
Finally, there are some things that mystify me.
1. There's one really really weird character: The Mysterious Bear, aka Teddie. He's this plush guy who performs the same function as Mitsuru (and then Fuuka) did in P3, but he makes weird puns and jokes, and he sometimes says bizarre things. He tends to make weird sound effects, like "*snrk*", and he is easily frightened.
All told, this game is pretty addictive, and a fairly good sequel to my beloved Persona 3. We played for 6 hours yesterday (I started this post yesterday and finished it today), and as soon as my dear Mexwing awakens, I'm going over to her place to play some more. We need to fuse our personas soon. Woo!
I'll update with more things I love and hate, and I'll write an overall review when I finish.
~Pigeonmeister
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