[Guest]

It's worth noting that, at least in my copy, the two different videos that play if you do nothing on the title screen are still completely in Japanese. So you can get some of an idea of how that sounds.

I sold my Japanese copy a long while back (before I even scanned anything in, which I stupidly realized the next day), but I do have video of the first hour or so of it. I can cut that down to the same game play span as this one, if anyone really cares to see such a direct comparison.

Just let me know.

I'm not sure whether they'll come out with the Append or the Independant version, but I strongly believe that FES will come out. In fact, I think it will.

Proof: http://www.atlus.com/persona3/

Why is the right side of the web page empty? :3

The odd thing is that the page did not used to be like that from what I remember... but looking at the source I don't really get the impression it's on purpose. There's some coding errors, for example.

Also, Atlus Express sucks. The old Megaten Portal was a lot more useful and better laid out. I can't find anything on that new site.

We know so little about it that it's hard for me to be exited or unexcited. As it stands, it doesn't seem particularly interesting... but I did see a quote where they said they don't want this to be  viewed as a FF spin-off (obviously not content wise, but in terms of general approach), which I appreciate if nothing else.

We'll see.

The guys doing Contra IV also did Shantae, so I'm giving them the benefit of a doubt. The videos for it look pretty hot, at least.

been hyped up to hell (New Super Mario Bros for example) it was simply disappointing.

Well, I'm glad someone agrees with me on that one. It's decent, but man. It saddens me that it's sold so much more than far better entries in the series. Stupid new power ups, poor level layouts, way too many lives. I don't like it much.

I think the main idea is that most people are simply not going to get much out of a language they don't understand. The average American person does not get much out of Japanese inflection, nor do they understand the language enough to want to pay attention or even know if the voice actors are doing a good job. There are people who do like to just pay attention to the voices when it's available as well and it certainly can add more to the scene. This doesn't mean they're disinterested in Japanese culture or whatever else.

I mean, really, there are RPGs in Japan that take place in areas like France. Yet, magically, the dialog isn't in French. It's in Japanese. This isn't a concept that's unique to this area. Persona 3 takes place in Japan, but not a single character even looks Japanese.

At the same time, not being able to fit Japanese and English on a single DVD (which was probably the main issue), I would imagine any company localizing something would go with the latter... regardless of where the game took place. I think going from using full Japanese is a bit more extreme than trying to keep the rest of the game "authentic" in terms of interaction and locale (I mean, even "senpai" is not translated well and would probably require some pretty heavy sentence restructure to give the same idea in totally different situations).

It's just weird to me because despite every thing that has been done in this game, there's still this sense of "It's not Japanese enough!", but on the flip side I've read reviews were people seriously complained that they wished it was even more Americanized, including even the player names. I'm kind of happy Atlus didn't go into that extreme. It's funny because usually people are upset that localized Japanese RPGs are not as literal as possible lol.

As for the voice over stuff, yeah, there's some familiar people in there lol. I don't really mind, honestly, as long as it's done relatively well (I've not heard Ash Ketchum voice guy yet, thank god... but there's someone in there that sure seems to be Cam Clark -- if I spelled that right). I think in this case it is, although there's a handful of voices I've not been very big on. If you've heard the Japanese voices, though, I think they did a pretty good job of matching them... the Mysterious Boy, for example, has a similar sound going on.

Anyway, that's just my opinion on the matter. If it really bothers anyone, the voices can be turned off entirely.

I don't know, I think the DS has more worthwhile games for that. Honestly, a lot of the "best" PSP games I give up on pretty soon after getting them. I really don't think stuff like Loco Roco, Gurumin, Gunpey or Tokobot are must owns, personally.

I decided to tackle the first dungeon today... and died. Standing back in front of the pedestal tried to reenter and received a message. Confused I clicked again, and again, and again. Which leads me to the question: After my miserable death how do I enter the dungeon once more?

Don't you need to buy another tablet?

The animation in Oblivion for your main character is just plain awful. The rest of the game is decent, even if the main quest is pretty lackluster. I enjoyed my time with it. Bethesda is also working on Fallout 3, which I'm very much looking forward to.

Personally, I love my 360, but if you're looking for turnbased RPGs of any sort none of the newer systems are worthwhile yet. The oddest thing is that by the end of this year the 360 will have more Japanese-style RPGs here than the other two (Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Lost Odyssey).

I got my 360 back in yesterday and had a chance to play the Blue Dragon demo. I thought it was pretty good. The areas were a bit wide open, which kind of made them seem somewhat barren, but there were also tighter areas with more scenery that I felt came off well.

It's pretty clear that the demo is just a way to thrust all of its ideas at you at once. You're already like level 20, you seem to have moves you'd normally not even have at that level and you have tons of field skills. I can't see characters normally having all of this stuff because it essentially makes the battles incredibly easy. I think they just wanted people to mess around and try every thing out.

Seems like it'll be a pretty straightforward RPG, but considering the system only has one of those, I don't think it's a terrible thing.

The battles are very entertaining though. The use of camera angles and such is pretty much perfected there.

With the translated versions, it's one of a handful of games that works very differently depending on the emulator. ZSNES seems to hate it and doesn't display half of the menus correctly. There are other emulators out there that seem to run it fine, however.

Unfortunately, I don't have any bonus characters. I didn't even knew that you can recruit them. I must admit that I don't like P1 too much - I'm playing this game only because I want to complete all Persona games. So it's a speed run out of a necessity...

Seriously, sometimes I think having a Gameshark would be worthwhile . I finished that one way back (I actually got it used at Blockbuster a bit after it came out, of all places), but I'd have a really hard time plowing through it again.

It's something to do with the Devil Summoner series, but beyond that I'm not sure.

I believe there was some software for computers that basically acted as a demon encylopedia. Had art and other such things from the games about enemies.

There looks to be some neat stuff in there, either way. Not 100 something dollars worth of neat stuff, though.

A long while back Play-Asia had the PSP version for $10. I almost imported, but didn't bother. It goes for kind of average prices on eBay. The Saturn version is basically cheap as it gets... I'd suggest searching for "devil sammoner"... seems to be a super common mistranslation.

I believe Aeon Genesis was doing a Devil Summoner translation (or maybe it was Soul Hackers?), but last I saw it didn't get very far.

There aren't really any translation guides, but GameFAQs does have some smaller guides out there that can help you understand how to play the game. Obviously you won't get terribly much out of it because of that, but you can make some progress if you're really interested.

I've only seen them on eBay myself and they're rather uncommon. There is a fan translation for both SMT and SMT2 on the SNES, but it's not been applied to the various other versions (SMT is on Turbo CD, Sega CD, SNES, GBA and PSX lol). I think you're out of luck there.

Something else I want to mention about that which I don't quite understand in the game yet.

[SPOILER]
Say you have a Magician Arcana Persona in your group currently and you talk to the person with that Social Link. The game will say something like "You have such and such Persona of the Magician Arcana. You will get along well with this person". The game seems to imply that these links help even your existing Personae, but in which ways I have NO idea. I've not been able to figure it out yet.[/SPOILER]

Thanks Tony! But i have one more question...(May contain spoilers!)

[spoiler]When I dont get a certain level of teh commu I also cant summon that arcana personas?[/spoiler]

[SPOILER]When you get a Social Link it's automatically Level 1. If you don't have it, it won't appear on your Social Link list in the status menu. HOWEVER, you can still summon any Persona you are capable of. Doesn't matter what Arcana it is. Social Links just make them stronger.

There are Personae you cannot summon without special items, spreads and so forth, however.[/SPOILER]