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 SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: PERSONA 4 Platform: PlayStation 2 Publisher: Atlus Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 may be the last important PlayStation 2 release in the United States. It might not. I would have said the same thing about its immediate predecessor, Persona 3 FES, and that was out half a year earlier. Atlus has been importing quality games lately. Persona 4 is great. What I’ve played of it is superlative. As of this writing I haven’t finished it, because it can be 70 hours long, but I have friends who’ve gotten through it and none say its quality nose-dives later. This doesn’t mean you’ll like it. It’s a first-rate example of games of its type, but it’s a Japanese console role-playing-game/relationship-simulator hybrid: dialogue trees, inventory and time management, turn-based combat, and a railroad plot. It doesn’t break molds—even the modern setting, unusual for people used to Final Fantasy, is normal for MegaTen games. The story involves a student who, sent to live with his uncle, gets involved with a murder spree in his new town. In this town, it seems that certain people can turn television screens into portals leading into a strange, foggy television world filled with monsters formed from the human unconsciousness. Someone is using this as a murder weapon, throwing people into televisions—they can’t escape on their own and soon enough the monsters kill them. That sort of crime is hard for police to solve. Fortunately, the protagonist discovers he has this power, too, as well as the power of persona—the ability to summon one’s unconscious Jungian shadow in the form of an archetypal god or monster. Personas are powerful, sorcerous combatants. As he makes friends in the town, some of them awaken to the power of persona as well. Together they set out to solve the crimes. The main character’s personas gain power from his connections to other people. During the day, the game is a relationship sim: move around the town, forming or deepening relationships (most are friendships, some can become romances), and studying or doing after-school jobs to raise the statistics you’ll need to qualify for certain S. Links. In the afternoons he can gather his group of fellow persona-users together and venture into TV land, at which point the game becomes a more traditional dungeon-exploration thing. The characters are well drawn. The dialogue is well written, well delivered, and often funny. The story is smart. The graphics are polished if not cutting-edge. If you have a PS2 kicking around and any of the above sounds at all interesting, I urge you to check it out. It’s the product of skilled and enthusiastic craftspeople. It also has replay value—you can use your save data from a finished game to begin again, starting with many of the traits you already got from your last playthrough. The game style isn’t for everyone, but for those who like it, compared with the normal ten-hour blockbusters, Persona 4 is a feast. And while you’re at it, check out Persona 3 FES, too, because it’s comparable. Be sure to grab the FES version, though—it’s a bit of a director’s cut, with a cheaper retail price and more game content than the original Persona 3 release.  PRINCE OF PERSIA Platform: Xbox 360 Publisher: Ubisoft The latest Prince of Persia is beautiful and a bit shallow. But while it’s not my favorite game ever, I enjoyed it while it lasted and I’m looking forward to the sequel its ending sets up. The plot is this: The titular prince, this time a homeless wandering adventurer for some reason, comes across a princess named Elika running from her father’s soldiers. Her family guards the prison of the dark god Ahriman, but her father is intent on freeing said dark god. Soon the prison is cracked and the pair depart to free the land from Ahriman’s corruption. The gameplay is acrobatic platforming with two characters who play like one character split across two bodies, removing the irritation that often occurs in games where you have to escort a nonplayer character. The last Prince of Persia series had a time-rewinding gimmick. Here, there’s no time rewind, but the Prince’s death is completely impossible—Elika uses her magic powers to rescue him whenever he’s close to death. This removes all illusion of challenge from the game… but of course, illusion is all it removes. If it had a conventional die/reload mechanic with infinite reloads as is standard for games today, it’d play about the same. Look, I dunno. I used to play a lot of video games for fun, and now I play even more because I’m paid to. I’m pretty good at video games. Maybe I’m jaded and need more challenge than I’m being given here. Somebody who’s satisfied with navigating beautiful, complex environments (and they are stunning) and listening to the Prince and Elika banter while occasionally stringing together absurdly long combos while dueling well-rendered monsters will get more out of this game than I did. It’s pretty and good at what it does. It’s just not deep. See all articles by this contributor
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