Tickity Tack

I haven't played anything from the Persona line before so some aspects surprised me. When I first scoped the box and some of the manual (I'm not into reading manuals unless I'm stuck on something stupid), I thought I would get confused with the timeline aspect. I got used to that pretty quickly. Student by day, monster hunter at midnight. Scenes play during the day that will hold relevance like questions for the exams, afternoons open for school clubs and hanging out in town, then midnight rolls around for some good ol' dungeon-style monster hunting. The time line pushes the story along instead of that free time in other RPGs where the play can spend all the time they want leveling up.

It has a very human aspect to the game. Time management is needed so to be sure your character develops enough for the next events. Developments could be anything from taking time to study for school, to hanging out with friends about the town. The choices made in the daytime affect the character's ability to fight well at night and the type of Personae they can summon.

Now the summoning must have been the biggest shocker for me. I'm still trying to get used to these teenagers using Evokers to summon their Personae. An Evoker looks like a gun that the user has to point to their head and pull the trigger. Not the best message to give kids. I normally couldn't bat an eye to video game violence, but this gave me a pause. Just a pause though. I still can't put the game down but I'm sure I'm only 15% of the way through the first story.

As for The World Ends With You, I've only scraped the surface of that one too. The hip hop, modern style pops out the most. And when I say 'style', I don't mean just the pictures. I mean that thing in real life that I lack: the ability to recognizewhat clothing labels are the hot things to wear in that area of Shibuya (or any location in my case). The right styles can boost a player while wearing what is so five minutes ago will hurt their ability. And no outfit would be complete without pins with super power abilities. Good thing that their cell phones can help them keep all this and much more in order. Take that iPhone!

The combat is still kind of confusing for me. I'm pretty much a one-button masher for the main character's partner. I'm concentrating more on the stylus in my other hand controlling the main character's pin abilities and only mashing the partner's buttons when 'puck' is passed to them for the attack multiplier.

I haven't gotten much into the story line yet since I've been taking my time with leveling up which actually surprises me as something I can do. The characters are being timed on completing the tasks given to them but it has no bearing on real time. Granted, real time hasn't been a factor in console RPGs normally, but this game does get affected by real time. There's even a clock on the screen for real time and still doesn't hold bearing on the character time for the tasks. So far, I've found that real time affects things like pin points given for up to seven days the game is not being played.

I still have more ground to cover since I've barely seen what the character is able to do. I haven't even gotten to the pins that are controlled by microphone. Looks like I need to dedicate some more time. At least I get to sleep in two hours tomorrow but I'm going to be itching for a game to play as I sit there and babysit jewelry. I might die of boredom before I get to fight another monster. Ooops, main character wangst getting to me.