2015 Year in Review: Anime

Resident Evil: Damnation

My rating: 7.75

Persona 3: The Movie – #1: Spring of Birth


My rating: 7

Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine

My rating: 8.25

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders – Battle in Egypt

My rating: 9.75

Mobile Suit Victory Gundam

My rating: 8.5

Gaming Update: Of Squid Kids and Space Hauntings

Hot off the heels of the latest Nintendo Direct, I figure it an appropriate time to provide a rundown of some of the games on my radar this year. The games here are listed in what is more-or-less the chronological order of their release, with some variation, as we do not yet have accurate release dates for all of the games I will be talking about. The first two I am almost certain to purchase sooner rather than later are Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. and Resident Evil: Revelations 2. The demo released a month or so ago for Code Name S.T.E.A.M. left me really impressed, and I’d love to give the full retail release a playthrough. Meanwhile, while I was skeptical of the sequel to Resident Evil: Revelations maybe not living up to its 3DS predecessor, the early gameplay segments I have seen of it have largely put my worries to rest. While I’m still disappointed that Capcom decided not to release Revelations 2 on the 3DS, I’ll still pick up a copy for my Xbox 360.

While I am pleased to see Nintendo has released the other N64 Zelda title on the 3DS in an updated form, it hasn’t been all that long since I last played Majora’s Mask, so I’ll likely wait a while before I make the journey back to Termina – in all likelihood, I’d be looking at getting Majora’s Mask 3D sometime later this Summer or Fall. The late Spring months into early Summer will likely be spent with Splatoon, which continues to impress me more and more with each chunk of gameplay footage that Nintendo reveals. I’m really digging the art style, as it falls somewhere in the territory of Jet Set Radio and No More Heroes, while the team-based gameplay looks like some sort of fever dream hybrid of DeBlob and Team Fortress 2. It’s a weird melting pot of ideas, to be sure, but one that looks like it could be a thoroughly satisfying online multiplayer frenzy.

While there is no definitive release date yet marked for Ghost Song: A Journey of Hope, it is a Metroidvania title that I’ve already put my money down for, and am very much looking forward to playing by year’s end. I’m pleased to see someone working to fill that niche genre, as their hasn’t been word on a new Metroid title since the Wii release of Other M. I’ll also probably pick up The Next Penelope: Race to Odysseyus, another indie game which, coincidentally, seeks to fill yet another niche genre that I am a big fan of, falling into the territory of F-Zero’s high-speed and intense racing design. While this latest Nintendo Direct only revealed so much about the long-awaited Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem project, I will admit that it looks absolutely gorgeous, and my feelings toward it are more positive than I initially expected due to the gameplay aligning more closely with the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona games. The character designs are a bit of a mixed bag – I love Fire Emblem armor and beasts, but the real-world SMT characters bear overly-anime stylized designs that I’m not so keen on.

On the topic of games I have already started playing but have yet to complete, I’ve powered through the first fifteen hours or so of Persona 3 FES, which is currently on loan to me from a friend. I intend to pick up my own copy of it sometime later this year, but wanted to get an early start, as my feelings toward both Persona 4 and Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth were overwhelmingly positive. I’m also more than halfway through the Wii port of the Gamecube remake of the original Resident Evil, which I’ve been tackling in short bursts. I’d also like to see if I can’t complete my virtual console copy of Paper Mario, the Zone of the Enders HD Collection, and the 3DS eShop release of Moon Chronicles by year’s end. While I did sink about ten or eleven hours into Watch Dogs, it may be a while before I pick that back up, as the load times are downright atrocious, and some of the core gameplay elements less polished than I had hoped.

Anime review: Persona 3: The Movie - #1: Spring of Birth

Following the release of the anime adaptation of Atlus’ well-received Persona 4, film trilogy was announced adapt the story of its predecessor, Persona 3. The first of these films, titled Spring of Birth, serves primarily to set the stage for all that is to come, introducing some of the major characters, teasing the eventual inclusion of others, and familiarizing viewers with the concept of the Dark Hour and Tartarus. While it may cut out a great deal of the content that falls between major plot points, this first installment in the movie trilogy does a solid job at hitting all of the important notes, though its pacing is admittedly a bit odd.

The story begins much like its video game counterpart, with the mostly-silent protagonist (given the name of Makoto Yuuki for the purpose that other characters will constantly be engaging in conversations with or about him) moving into co-ed dorms near Gekkoukan High and experiencing some strange phenomenon. Every night at midnight, clocks, vehicles, and all manner of machinery stop and most people are sealed away in coffins, entering a sort of stasis during a period known as the Dark Hour. The Dark Hour is effectively an hour-long span of time that is only perceived by those with special potential, namely individuals who can all upon Personas to aid them in battle against otherworldly monsters known as Shadows.

On the night of a full moon, these Shadows become notably stronger and more aggressive than usual, breaking out of their natural territory within the fortress of Tartarus, and taking to the streets of the outside world. It is upon one such night that protagonist Makoto Yuuki finds himself in the company of his peers and classmates Mitsuru Kiriho, Akihiko Sanada, and Yukari Takeba, as the Shadows are bearing down upon their dormitory building. Not fully understanding the nature of these Shadow monsters or his schoolmate’s operations with the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S.E.E.S. for short), Makoto almost instinctively reaches for an Evoker, a gun-shaped device that the S.E.E.S. members rely on, and uses it to summon his first Persona.

What follows, naturally, is an action-packed beat down of the Shadows by Makoto’s Persona, dubbed Orpheus. But there is seemingly something sinister that lurks within his Persona, as – shortly before Makoto passes out from exhaustion – it transforms into a menacing creature that appears to bear some sort of skeletal face and spreads its coffin-shaped wings. Not long after, Makoto recovers and is formerly inducted into S.E.E.S. His peers make a point to bring up that relying too heavily on one’s Persona can be problematic, yet Makoto’s visits to the ethereal Velvet Room make it apparent that his ability to summon multiple Personas makes him an anomaly among Persona users.

From there, the movie takes on two very different approaches to crafting the world and characters or Persona 3 – when highlighting new party members like Fuuka and Junpei, the story’s pacing slows significantly to explain their importance to the operations of S.E.E.S., as well as give viewers a strong impression of their character traits and personal values. This makes their inclusion all the more meaningful, and is one of the film’s greatest strengths, and should provide some relief for any Persona fans who were concerned that this three-film adaptation might attempt to do too much in too brief a time span. Even Shinjiro sees some inclusion in the film, helping to solidify his inevitable recruitment to the S.E.E.S. cause in the second film, while Koromaru and Ken both make brief cameos during the opening credits.

On the other hand, the film barrels past the everyday school studies, athletics and club activities, and time spent out on the town. The anime adaptation of Persona 4 similarly kept its focus on the major story points, but still slowed down every once in a while to explore the Inaba locals and the small yet personal rewards Yu Narukami and his teenage crew of investigators earned as a result of their setting aside time to tackle minor requests. In this first Persona 3 film, the most direct involvement with teachers, classmates, and non-S.E.E.S. peers comes in the form of brief montages. While these sequences do show Makoto taking part in some school activities and even meeting up with Junpei for an afternoon at the arcade, it doesn’t offer as solid an immersion in Gekkoukan High or its surrounding locales.

The animation is solid throughout – arguably better than the Persona 4 anime, in most cases. Character renders have seen significant updates in terms of their level of detail and fluid motions from the cutscenes that played out during the original Persona 3 video game. The splotchy dark watercolor look of the invading Dark Hour on previously-established environments does a great job of presenting these areas as both familiar and alien. Meanwhile the few portions of Tartarus that are shown present it as a labyrinth fortress, with elegant floors, arched windows, and dull lighting emanating from wall-mounted candles. The soundtrack brings back a number of the video games’ upbeat and peppy tunes, as well as some of the more dire, heavy rock-influenced songs, with remixes sprinkled throughout (some significantly altered, others with more subtle tweaks).

Spring of Birth is not a perfect adaptation of the Persona 3 story, and its hour-and-a-half runtime begs the question as to how successful the two following films will adapt the later legs of the video game source material. The material that the film does cut out may not have left a major impact on the core plot of Persona 3, but it does rob the film of some of the video game’s unique quirks, as well as any connections between the S.E.E.S. members and their non-Persona-adept classmates. The major points that it does focus on, however, are handled quite well, and go a long way in establishing connections between the S.E.E.S. members, as well as painting the Shadows of Tartarus as an ever-looming threat, even if one scene late in the film is drawn out to an agonizing length and almost laughably bad presentation.

My rating: 7 (out of 10)

3DS review: Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

The first game from the Persona series to be released on Nintendo’s 3DS is an odd summation of Atlus’ works, to say the very least. All of the useable party members from Persona 3 and Persona 4 are drawn together in a school that seemingly exists outside of normal time and space – the Persona 3 heroes and heroines hailing from the year 2009, while the Persona 4 cast arriving from some point in 2011, which is as simple and convenient an explanation as is need for why the characters look exactly the same as they did during their respective major adventures as any. Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth adopts a chibi art style that translates surprisingly well to the slightly altered gameplay of this spinoff title, while the dungeon crawling elements are ripped directly from the Etrian Odyssey series of RPGs.

It’s a curious amalgam, no doubt, but one that works wonders for this surprisingly fully-realized sidestory. Regardless of whether you play the story from the perspective of the Persona 3 cast or the Persona 4 cast, the premise and major story points play out in effectively the same manner, albeit with greater input from the respective cast members on one side or the other. All of the party members find themselves pulled into the Velvet Room, face-to-face with either Elizabeth or Margaret, who explains that the threads of fate are working in ways they cannot explain, yet they know what lies ahead is important to the protagonists’ personal journeys. Upon arriving in an alternate version of Yasogami High School, the P3 and P4 cast members are introduced to Zen and Rei, two amnesiacs who are apparently the only individuals they can interact with outside of their Velvet Room associates. When the party realizes they cannot leave the school due to two doors leading to their respective eras within the Velvet Room being locked, they begin to investigate the first of the school’s festival exhibits, which turns out to be a winding and multi-level labyrinth. Zen and Rei seem quite familiar with the behavior of the Shadows that lie in wait within the labyrinth, despite not having any Personas to call their own, and thus accompany the party on their first exploration of this new realm.

Combat carries over some key elements from the core Persona games, but swaps out others. Instead of earning an immediate second strike on an enemy after exposing which magical element it is weak to, party members are instead treated to a boosted state, wherein they will be allowed to move faster the following turn as well as utilize magic and specialized physical attacks at no cost from their SP or HP meters. The same goes for landing critical strikes. Many of the enemy types will prove familiar to Persona veterans, so those who have previously experienced Persona 3 or Persona 4 may find the variety of run-of-the-mill enemies less trifling early in the game. Capitalizing on this strategy can lead to a higher chance of being offered the Persona series’ signature cartoonish ‘pile-on’ all-out-attacks, and chaining these in successive turns can result in significantly faster victories, as well as experience point reward bonuses and new Personas.

With sixteen playable characters to choose from, there is a lot of freedom offered to how you organize your party. While you are required to keep at least one of the protagonists in the mix at all times, the other four spots can be split between the front and back rows, with three open spaces per row. Should you prefer to place your heavy hitters on the frontline, this can lead to enemies taking greater damage from bash and cut attacks, but will simultaneously place those heroes more directly in harm’s way, as they will generally be the first to take the brunt of an attack. The back row, meanwhile, is ideal for support members, as well as ranged attackers. Some players may prefer three in the back and two in the front, while others prefer the opposite – it’s all a matter of personal preference, though careful strategy and management are just as important as ever, as Persona Q’s difficulty factor increases a bit more frequently than that of Persona 4.

Each labyrinth plays host to a strikingly different thematic, including the fantasy realm of Alice in Wonderland and a haunted school exhibit based off classic Japanese horror tropes. Each is introduced as being exhibits put on as part of the school fair, yet behind their innocent exterior lies a complicated series of hallways and multiple floors, each ending with boss fights that appropriately match the tone of each labyrinth. Entertaining as their brief moments in the spotlight are, the bosses do not play nearly as an integral role in the development of the story and characters – quite unlike the bosses encountered in Persona 4’s Midnight Channel, which served as the darkest parts of the P4 party members’ psyches and self-images, allowing them in turn to grow as individuals once they had learned to accept these imperfections.

Navigating the labyrinths can take a brief while to grow accustomed to, as filling in shortcuts, points of interest, and locations of stairwells is up to the player. This is where the touch screen and stylus come to play an integral role, as any errors in the labyrinth’s layout displayed on the mini-map or missteps in navigation are the player’s responsibility. Knowing where shortcuts are located is key for solving some of the game’s more involved puzzles, and can also provide a quick escape from a pursuing FOE, which effectively serve as the closest thing Person Q has to offer for miniboss battles. Treasure chests can reward players with new armor, weapons, and accessories, while larger chests often house rare and more powerful items, but can only be opened once a floor’s map has been filled in to one-hundred percent completion. Power spots offer up rare materials, typically with one or two being located on any given floor on a labyrinth.

FOEs are incredibly powerful, and though some of the game’s ‘request’ sidequests ask that your party take them on to reap tempting rewards, it is typically best to wait until your party is decently leveled up from their exploration of the following labyrinth before returning to face these beasts in familiar territory. Each FOE sports a unique visual style and behavioral pattern that, much like the game’s bosses, match their respective environments – The card soldiers in the Alice in Wonderland labyrinth patrol set paths, while sometimes directing their attention to tending to bouquets of flowers. Other FOEs will attempt to draw you in from a distance, while others still will adjust their speed and behavior based on whether or not you are in possession of a particular item specific to that labyrinth.

While social links have been entirely removed from the experience, the aforementioned requests can still be accepted the school’s Nurse’s Office. Some of these have a time limit, and these ones typically yield greater payoff, both in terms of physical items and experience points. Some requests can only be activated by visiting specific areas of the game’s labyrinths, while others require use of specific party members. Thankfully, these never result in tying your hands too much with regards to how you can or cannot carry tasks out, and the requests are divided quite evenly between combat-focused treks back into familiar labyrinths and dialogue selection options among your friends and allies related to the school’s fair activities.

Visiting the Velvet Room is, once again, the means through which you can fuse Personas to gain more desirable abilities. Whereas in previous Persona titles the protagonist was privy to use of as many Personas as he/she could carry at a time, Persona Q restricts the P3 and P4 protagonists to use of their iconic main Personas and one other interchangeable Persona. However, the tradeoff to this restrictive measure is that every one of your party members – with the exception of Zen and Rei – can also utilize a secondary Persona alongside their primary canon Persona. This rule also applies to Rise and Fukka, the game’s labyrinth navigation specialists – while they do not join combat directly, their Personas can make use of abilities specific to their roles, offering up offense and accuracy buffs based on the fullness of the P3 or P4 protagonist’s ‘leader skill’ meter, as well as passive ones, like a wider range for detective shortcuts within a labyrinth or a higher rate of cancelling out preemptive strikes from enemies.

There is a limit of sixty individual items to you party’s inventory, which may seem like plenty of storage space early on, but can lead to many trips back and forth from labyrinths later in the game. Any materials recovered that are not specific to a certain sidequest can be sold to Theodore, the youngest sibling of Margaret and Elizabeth, who can craft new weapons, armor, and equipable items from them. Theodore also offers up occasional tidbits of information on particular enemies and sections of the labyrinths as they relate to specific sidequests, making his role in the game a bit more than simple shopkeeper.

The tone of Persona Q is not unlike its predecessor Persona 4 - dark and tense at times, with an overall sense of free-spirited adventure that is a successful match to the teenage heroes and heroines it revolves around. With the social links and larger world absent, Persona Q does not boast as fully-realized or complex a narrative as the core numbered entries, but it is a surprisingly meaty experience for a spinoff. While interacting with your friends in the halls of this phantom Yasogami High does not actually play into the endgame result, the dialogue flows very naturally and shows that a great deal of care went into preserving these characters and their mannerisms. While greater depth to character interactions during these periods of downtime would have been appreciated, the illusions Persona Q relies on to cover this gap are moderately successful, and - if nothing else - maintain the game’s atmosphere well enough.

The soundtrack is jazzy and upbeat, incorporating some hip-hop flair and hard rock vibes into vocal tracks. Other tunes are remixes of tracks that debuted in previous games, but they mesh quite nicely with Persona Q’s new audio offerings. On the whole, the sound design of Persona Q is among the best the 3DS has seen yet, with endearing performances from series veterans and the couple of newcomers alike. Persona Q could have easily been a quick, one-and-done, bare-bones spinoff, but instead it offers up an energetic and intriguing story. The main story will likely last players sixty hours or more, and the bonus ‘new game plus’ allows both money and the compendium completion to be carried over into higher difficulty settings and the opportunity to try out new party configurations. While it may not have all the makings of a proper numbered entry in the Persona series, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is nonetheless a labor of love, filled with references to previous games and fluid gameplay that offers an incredibly rewarding experience for fans of either Persona 3, Persona 4, or both.

My rating: 9 (out of 10)