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| God that title is so stupidly hysterical. |
...A pity I won't be able to play it for a while. My PS3 is still many hours and gallons of gas away from me. Even though I preordered it over the summer, I will have to wait for at least another month or so before I can possibly pop the baby in and play it to my hearts content. I remember Persona 4 Arena was rather entertaining and fun. Fighting games were never my forte or preference, but P4A was friendly enough for me to complete the story campaign, which was shockingly decent, without resorting to seppuku. Usual moi, I avoided multiplayer because online people will serve me my own ass.
Since I have no proper ability to judge a fighting game on any merits, I don't think I'll ever formally review the Arena games. Likely I'll judge them as legitimate sequels to the Persona 3 and Persona 4 canon. One of my friends laughed at the notion, as fighting games aren't meant to have good stories anyway. Considering both Arena games are indeed canon AND legitimate sequels to P3 and P4, some kind of storytelling standards cannot be outright ignored by a relatively flimsy excuse. Will it plummet the game's quality down the toilet? No, it shouldn't. But a bad story can make what is otherwise a beautiful, flawlessly technical game earn an "okay" or "good" score, no matter how avoidable the unpleasant features are.
Which is why I'm glad I'm not playing Ultimax yet.
I'm worried. Deathly worried.
...
...
I may need to amend my review score for Persona 4. I'm sorry. I didn't know, guys. I didn't know things would get this stupid... Reading the spoilers thus far made me realize Empty Spiral, my sleazy excuse of Persona 3 fanfiction for shipping fanservice, is probably better written than Ultimax. Shadow the Hedgehog is a classic Shakespearian character next to Sho Minazuki.
So much potential... obliterated before my eyes.
... Please let this just be a false knee-jerk reaction. Please let this just be Fangirl's overblown knee-jerk reaction. PLEASE.
5 comments:
Fighting games aren't supposed to have good stories? Seems like your friend has never heard of Melty Blood.
You should worry more about Persona Q. Shinji may have been revived, somehow
@Anonymous
Huh. Never heard of it, but I'll take your word for it. Maybe my friend meant that most fighters aren't about the story, and thus no emphasis is placed on them? Makes me wonder...
But I'm sure to an extent that fighting games matter more for their combat/gameplay mechanics and balance than narrative cohesion. It makes sense in, say, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and the Marvel vs Capcom series. At least they don't have a legacy of story-driven role playing games to bear on their shoulders. They're meant to be fun, skillful games for players to beat each other up.
Ultimax is playing with that, but they're adding narrative justification as a backdrop. It's in an odd place that should not be left unscrutinized.
@RPGHeater
Oddly enough, Persona Q doesn't seem to bother me much. Sure, the events are left in a pocket dimension, never to resurface again, but at least it can be seen as a goofy side story. Ultimax is a full-blown, no-joking-around sequel to follow up the legacy of Persona 3 and Persona 4 and Persona 4 Arena.
Who knows, maybe Persona Q is even worse plot-wise than Ultimax. But so far, Q's spoilers - unlike Ultimax's - haven't made me wish to fly my computer, consoles, and myself off from the top of the Empire State Building.
So I guess it depends on how you look at it. :|
I got a chance to sit down with Ultimax, and mess around with it a bit. In a nutshell? It’s just as good as the last game, and maybe even more fun than before. Adding new characters and mixing up the old ones seriously does wonders for a fighter.
I might do a quick post on it sometime soon. I've got plenty of impressions on a number of fighters, even if it's just at a glance. (You have NO IDEA how much fun it is to play as Rise. Seriously, she's great.) I haven't gotten around to the story yet, but I want to at least give it a shot. I have...issues with stories that bank so heavily on some mystery or secret -- because sometimes, the answers viewers come up with are more interesting than the story's actual answers -- but I'm curious as to why there are two Shos on the roster. I'm just hoping that I'm not too badly disappointed.
In summation, you should consider grabbing Guilty Gear Xrd as soon as it's on store shelves. Because...well, it's by the same company. And it's really cool-looking.
Oh, and it'll probably have a Story Mode too. But it's just so cool-looking!
@Voltech:
Blazblue supposedly has a larger story focus than Guilty Gear and the gameplay is probably closer to P4A than Guilty Gear. Not that GG is bad, and the graphics are pretty neat.
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