Reviews

I've reached the credits and dumped more than three dozen hours into this game, so I'm considering it completed. I know there's an epilogue that I'll get to sooner rather than later, but I do want to move onto other games to some degree.

A lot has been said about this game and it's all been said before. The reactiveness of the characters is mind-blowing, the story is more a story than a narrative but fits not only the style of game but the medium of video games perfectly. It avoids the common roguelike problem where you just kinda... stop when you're done with the game by giving you specific gameplay goals and narrative justifications to continue. Tons of hashtag #content but, rather than just filling up time, they all have little sidestories and lore attached that you can actually view without reading a wiki like in Pyre and Transistor - two of the biggest failings of those games IMO.

Really this feels like the culmination of everything Supergiant has done so far, to the point where each previous game was like a "test" of how to put this all together. The ensemble cast and character portraits of Pyre, the reactive story of Pyre, the weapons and combat or Bastion, the music stems changing on the fly like Transistor, the style of lore and setting of Transistor - yeah it's not the same setting but it does the same thing where it's a unique spin of a common setting. It even continues the themes that I think Supergiant has been so good at tackling so far - using the video game medium to tell stories of cycles of pain. Zagreus is just as stubborn and withdrawn as Hades and it affects both of them. The gods constantly stab each other in the back and then pretend everything is ok at the drop of a hat, Hades and Persephone included even though they pretend to be above it. You actually get more out of the narrative from replaying it, since continued replays reinforce the narrative theme in interesting ways.

The only thing that doesn't excite me too much is the soundtrack. It's solid, but Bastion and Transistor are some of my favorites ever, even if I wasn't as keen on Transistor's gameplay as Bastion or Hades. This just kind of ends at "solid." Even the use of changing around stems on the fly was much more impressive in Transistor, both thematically and technically speaking.

Honestly, short and sweet does the job for this review: if you haven't played Persona 3 and Persona 4, this game is just not worth it. Now, I'll get in depth. It constantly references both of those games in a way which makes it feel almost vital to understand the backstories and motivations of these characters. The game confuses difficulty for tedium, with just increasing enemy HP and increasing their attack power every time you go up one difficulty level. Characters are way too easy to build into overpowered units, which is brought by the use of items that come from chests that take 100% of the map to be explored to be able to access. In a way, that game shoots itself in the foot constantly. You're not rewarded with items that you feel as if you earned for exploring every area and defeating every mini-boss, you're rewarded with items that make you feel as if you barely have to think and strategize your way through battles. Not that the game should be played for the story either, since barely any aspect of the story that's trying to be told is intriguing enough to bog through the extremely repetitive gameplay. Ironically, the game gives you 20 characters to choose from for your party, which consists of 5, but, in reality, it consists of 3-4 characters, since the two characters created specifically for the story of this game take up one slot, and I wasn't going to play the game without using the two characters that were just introduced that have an insanely good move pool, and of course you should choose one of the two leaders the game presents you with. Enough rambling; if you want to get Persona Q because you've played every other mainline game and you just want your fix, go for it. But if you're looking to get into the series through this game, like I did, don't get it. The music, if that's what you're into, is available through streaming, which is worth checking out because it's phenomenal, and the high quality design and motion graphics work of this game is present and better implemented in other titles. PS: There's no reason this should be on the 3DS other than its mapmaking mechanic that gets pretty stale pretty quick, the game lowers in framerate drastically when you turn 3D on.