What JRPG has the best story?

[Michael-5]

UltimateUnknown said:

Michael-5 said:

UltimateUnknown said:

Michael-5 said:

I think the biggest problem with Persona for me was that I don't like Dungeon Crawlers, and given the opportunity to push forward and really challenge myself I will. So with Persona, I can't go up 5 levels and not reach a checkpoint, I hate replaying levels (i.e. grinding) so I'm the type of person who gets to the end of the allowed stage.

This causes a problem for the game because not only are the AI annoying when they keep telling me to go to the tower (even though I'm not allowed to advance), but the fact that I can't skip the whole high school sim part is really annoying.

I also really hate the high school sim part, a lot of the design choices I just don't agree with, and I find it repetative. Like why is there no social benefit gained by slacking off in class? Why can't I make my character a whore (PSP version I played)? Why can't I make rude comments, etc.

So, while the gameplay itself is fun, the genre (Dungeon Crawler and High School Sim) really kill it for me. I wouldn't have minded it if I could just fly up the tower (I played on Hard, which still feels too easy), and skip repetative, uneventful days, but I can't.....

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I'm more into traditional JRPG's I find, that or WRPG's which emphasis lots of choice. In general, I don't find that I enjoy what I call "Modern" JRPG's like Persona and The World Ends With You. However, it's like you said different strokes for different blokes.

I feel 8 hours was enough to judge weather or not I like the gameplay mechanics in this game, maybe it gets better after 10-15 or 30 hours, but it's still a Dungeon Crawler/High School Dating game. I do have to give it credit for great voice acting and animations, it really makes me want to like this game.

Yeah if you don't like dungeon crawlers and grinding, then Persona isn't for you. That's the essence of Persona.

It is unfortunate though that you didn't like the social sim aspect of it because the games are best known for that unique blend. I can definitely see why you thought the game was boring though because the point is that you are meant to balance going up the tower with your character's stat and relationship build up in real life. If you do one or the other exclusively, you are not only going to find it boring, but also run into trouble later on in the game. Personally I thought almost every character you could have a social link with had something very interesting to share and taught you some kind of real world moral. By the end of all of their segments, you overcame some kind of hurdle and really got to know and learn from them. This led me to have almost the opposite effect to what you had where I felt like I wanted to keep doing more social links (or build my character's stats to access more social links) and started ignoring the tower climbing. It was once I played the game a bit more that I realised the balance that you need to overcome the challenge later on.

You see, if you wanted to, you can actually skip the days, ignore the social links and move forward to the end of the month in 10-15 minutes time if you wanted to. That would allow you to push the story forward as well as unlock newer floors of the tower. All you have to do is just return straight home after school and just go to sleep in your room, which essentially skips the day. Although this doesn't affect you in the beginning of the game, later on you wouldn't be able to keep up with the increased challenge in Tartarus, which has a steep increase. This is because your persona level up more the higher the corresponding social link level is. So if you have really low social link levels, your fused persona levels will be extremely low, leading to you being destroyed in battle, or alternatively requiring you to do an inhumane amount of grinding.

So yeah, all in all, I don't think Persona is the type of game that'll suit you. It turns into very much like a Pokemon game where you are trying to get the best critter (Persona) ombination and give them the best moves strategically possible. So yeah, I think I've ranted way too much. Funny enough, I loved TWEWY as well. Another amazing game. Both games to me were breaths of fresh air. While I love the classic JRPG formula, these changed things up quite a bit.

The Social Sim part of Persona has it's flaws, but I won't deny it being well made. It's actually because of Persona that I'm interested in Atlus's other projects (stuff like Catherine). In Catherine, I loved the dating sim aspect of the game, and it's one of my favorite games because of it. The decisions you made were still very black & white (cheat or not), but either way, the voice acting, art style, and events that are out of your control still made the game very interesting.

Atlus is an interesting developer, I'll give them that. So outside of Persona, and SMT (also in general dungeon crawlers) I will pay attention to what they make next. As for Persona, I don't want to just go home every day in Persona, I know I need to build stats, and that's a big flaw in the game IMO. I feel like if I did this, I would skip out on a lot of the game, it feels half-assed if I did this.

To each their own, right? I know a lot of JRPG's repeat the same formula, but when I'm bored of the classic JRPG's, I'd much rather play Catherine, or a WRPG like Fallout.