I've been telling myself since last August when Persona 3 came out, "IT'S THE SAME, IT REALLY IS." But it's not. It's almost taken me a year to fully ADMIT AND ACCEPT IT. But it's not. Especially since I've been replaying the first game for the GVGH '08. :(
Now I love me some Persona 3, but every time I play it I get bitter that Kazuma Kaneko didn't do the character/persona/demon design for it. D: His style and his designs make me absolutely giddy and the lack of them makes Persona 3 just
not Persona to me. When I played the first two (oh man, and Digital Devil Saga, Nocturne and Devil Summoner) I was like, "HAH OMG THESE CHARACTERS ARE SO SLICK I WANT TO BE THEIR FRIENDS" (Reiji/Chris, Eriko/Ellen, Masao/Mark, Hidehiko/Brad, Eikichi, Katsuya, Ulala, Argilla, Heat, Cielo, Narumi, Chiaki, Isamu -- also, plz to be giving me Nanjou/Nate's
TO THE #1 jacket, thx. XD) and then in Persona 3 it was, "LOL they're kind of cute." (Mitsuru, Akihiko and Junpei... and Koromaru, the dog.)
I know Persona 3 got a whole bunch of new fans on the bandwagon, which is good, of course. But said fans will never play the other games because they're way too hard to find now. They're also not like Persona 3, and therefore won't be enjoyed by new fans (unless those new fans are super cool and all that).
Looking on the completed listing for
Persona on ebay... there is a copy of
Revelations: Persona that just went for
$107.50 (sweet shit, another one went for
$160.00) and
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, for
$79.99.
Blockbuster was where I first heard about Persona, in like 1999, and that was because I saw an ad for it on the back of the box of another game (I think it was Kartia). It was bascially like, "LOL CONTACT DEMONS, SUMMON SHIT FROM YOUR BLACK, BLACK SOUL. YAY!" And it had a couple of the characters on it. That was what caught my eye. The character design. I hunted for that game for-freakin'-ever. I found it at
a flea market in Florida. I started playing it and I couldn't stop. The characters were seriously amusing, the music was awesome and the storyline was effing crazy, just like I like it. The game was also really time-consuming and addictive. When I beat it I was all, "THAT WAS SO KICKASS." And I took the plastic cup I was drinking from and wrote the date and "PERSONA CUP!" on it.
With Persona 3 I'm just like, "Hehe, that's pretty cool."
In the other Persona games there was no:
-- LOL SHOOT YOURSELF
-- YOU CAN ONLY FIGHT AT MIDNIGHT IN THIS TOWER OVER RIGHT HERE, YES RIGHT HERE. THAT'S IT.
-- YOU CAN ONLY CHANGE YOUR OWN PERSONA, EVERYONE ELSE CAN DO WHAT THEY WANT.
-- WE'RE DIVERSE, WE FIGHT WITH A KID
AND A DOG
AND A ROBOT.
But it had what I loved, which was:
-- MY BROTHER IS AN ASSHOLE (aka SARDINIA-CEST)
-- ZOMBIES ATE MY BUTLER
-- SHIT THERE IS A THING COMING OUT OF ME AND KILLING THINGS.
-- WAIT I CAN CHANGE THIS THING COMING OUT OF ME TO A DIFFERENT THING. OH AND I CHANGE YOURS TOO, PARTY.
-- CREEPY LITTLE TWIN GIRLS, MY
FRIEND CRUSH FRIEND MARY IS A BASKETCASE and BRAD'S IN JAIL
AGAIN.
-- WHY DOES THAT GUY HAVE AN X ON HIS HEAD?
-- Also, WHERE THE FUCK DID MARK GET A BATTLEAXE?
-- THAT DOG THAT WOULDN'T SHUT HIS YAPPER ON THE WORLD MAP.
-- FIGHTS EVERYWHERE IN THE MALL AND THE SCHOOL AND YOUR MOM GET THAT DAMN BUTTERFLY OFF OF MY HEAD.
-- THAT DEMON LOOKS... LOOKS LIKE A PEEN.
And that's only the
first Persona game. o_o
(If I had a dollar for every time a demon got pissed at me cause I let Mark dance, I would be RICH, BITCH.)
Persona 3 = me also missing the ability to contact demons. :| AND OH MY GOD THE PHARMACY SONG. I MISS YOU.
Sure,
Revelations: Persona isn't as fancy-schmancy and OH WOW VOICE ACTING and all that. But to me it's
Persona. Is this what old school Final Fantasy fans feel like? :O
(VALERIE. I FOUND THE
PHARMACY FLASH! "Don't you know that I used to know karate, I'll punch you in your pee-pee, or I could just CALL. THE. COPS.")