Persona 3. I'm around 8 hours and 20 floors in.
-Intro took way too long. Fuck all these five-second cutscenes! X X X X X X X X X X X X X X.... Pretty much everything in this game takes way too long, really.
-Obviously a personal gripe, but the "world" is too small. I want to explore stuff goddamnit
-Battles are okay. No DEEP mechanics, mostly just standard JRPG fare rock-paper-scissors combat, but that's okay. What aggravates me the most is having no direct control over my dumbass party members. There have already been soooooo many times where an NPC party member could end the fight in ten seconds by chain-casting X elemental weakness and stunning all enemies for an all-out attack, but instead they do something stupid like heal and waste their turn, and then I almost get wiped out by multi-target casts from the enemies because Junpei is vulnerable to Y elemental and the enemies repeat turns. At best it's a waste of fucking time and at worst (twice today) I get game-overed from 100% HP.
-I'm torn on the social linking system. My first thought was I like how it works as a diversion when you get bored of dungeon crawling. I'm already starting to get sick of this shit, though. It's like the lowest form of stat grinding imaginable. Grind courage, charm, and academics so you can make social links -> grind social link levels so you can fuse persona of X arcana up to X level -> fuse persona -> repeat entire process an hour later to replace persona because the enemies ten floors up are casting spells of an affinity which your persona is vulnerable to. The way social linking and persona fusion are intertwined almost gives the impression that the system was designed with the assumption that players would use a guide. Otherwise it seems too time-consuming to figure out what strengths/weaknesses you're in need of, then check your fusions to see what personas you have available, then wander around "socializing" for an in-game week until you find the arcana you need. I guess it won't be as bad once I've established all the social links and only have to level them.
-The dungeon crawling is okay -- not good, not bad. Some additional variance in design, maybe every 5-10 floors instead of 15-20, would have been nice. Needs more loot too. The fatigue mechanic is annoying and seems redundant considering all the other limitations (level, SP, amount of items, equipment quality, available personas) that already cap how far you can progress in Tartarus in a single sitting.
-Seems like the music mostly sucks. Great in some areas (Tartarus, Velvet Room), horrible in others (School, Mall). I could at least tolerate the upbeat Japacrap if it were not the same 5 songs over and over and over and over. Oh and the standard battle theme is complete shit. What's with the hilariously bad pseudo-rap? Is this a series staple?
The nicest thing I can say at this point is this: for someone like me who has never played any Persona or SMT games, nor played many PS2 JRPGs in general, it's a refreshing experience. Having said that, I probably would have already dropped this if not for the novelty value. And really, if it takes as long to complete as people say, I don't think I'll finish it.
Batman: Arkham City. Less than 5 hours in.
Liking this a lot. Not much to say. I love gliding and grapple-hooking all over the place (grapple-hooking helicopters F YEAH), love the fluid combat, love the freedom. Everything in the city looks a bit too samey to me (grey, decrepit, and grey) and I would have some serious trouble navigating without a map. I suppose that's par for the course in open world games these days, though. There are side activities and collectible shit everywhere, but I usually save this kind of stuff for a second play-through. Right now I'm just focusing on the main story, fuckin up some bad guys along the way. Arkham Asylum probably has the "tighter" story.
So far the only thing I really miss from the original is Scarecrow and his psychedelic platforming nightmares.
I'll probably finish this this weekend.
man i love that titan quest. Finally got done with Parnassus. Im getting kinda tired of greece. Cant believe i got like a jajillion more hours left in this fucking game.
How is TQ vs Torchlight vs Torchlight 2 vs Diablo 3? I have all of em but haven't played any for more than 2-3 hours. I need an exploration-and-loot-oriented game to be the methadone to my WoW addiction, and I'm kinda leaning towards Titan Quest because of the ancient world setting.