| darkknightkryta said: I was refering to it taking place in school plus demons. I mean, strip the love simulator stuff out of Persona 4 and the games are similar. Especially the beginning of Persona 4 and the more errie aspects. Though Persona was made at a time of hardware, and skill limitations. Even compared to other 2D RPGs Persona's pretty rough. I think that lends to a more errie style. Cause with the jpop, it's like a modern Persona despite it originally being more "occult". I guess what I'm getting at is they could leave Person 1 as is, add in a dating simulator aspect and you'd get Persona 4 minus the jpop. |
There's definitely something inherently unsettling about lo-fi games. Modern survival horror has nothing on Silent Hill or Clock Tower in terms of creep factor. The refinements in terms of writing contribute, too, I think. Persona is a little more reminiscent of Deadly Premonition in that the town and the weirdness around it are the real characters while the kids themselves are just kind of... there vs. Persona 4's well defined protagonists and strong narrative drive which are more like a typical JRPG.
Besides that I think Persona 4 is aesthetically and tonally a pretty big departure. The enemies are just silly looking shadows instead of zombies and demons and stuff, and there's very little disturbing imagery or taboo behavior like the occult seeming "persona" game and bargaining with demons like in Persona 1, or Hitler from Innocent Sin, or a bunch of kids appearing to blow their brains out with the evokers in Persona 3. The murders and the Midnight Channel had some potential, but the presentation really stripped away any sense of forboding pretty quickly I found.
I mean, they're not totally different obviously. It's easy to see how they got from Point A to Point B. But they've really developed a template for what a Persona game is by now, and it's no coincidence that they've dropped the Shin Megami Tensei brand from Persona while SMT still feels like the original Persona did.
