I love this game. The story made me cry at the end. The gameplay is great, and i think the boost system is way better than the 1 more from the mainline persona games. This has to be one of my favorite games of all time
Though there were points when its puzzles completely stumped me, and the combat’s steep difficulty, made me want to launch my 3DS into orbit a few times, the enjoyable battle system, deep exploration, and generous dollops of fanservice made it worth the effort.
Persona Q doesn’t quite hit the peaks that Persona and Etrian Odyssey do on their own. It does, however, take some of the best elements of each game, blending them together into an immensely satisfying and lengthy RPG. Persona Q is proof that this series has the power to delight, surprise, and engage, no matter the form it takes.
Although Persona Q doesn't satisfy those willing to play a complete Persona or Etrian Odyssey, the title is good enough to be a unique experience which can please those who like a good story and characters and those who like to explore and battle.
do you like RPGs - do you like Jrpg? anime? well this is a mash up of all of that- watching persona 3 or 4 anime is a huge plus for this game as the translation of the characters personalities is great as well so knowing some back story will seriously add to the enjoyment of this game!
must buy just do it !
The game is good but it has the difficulty of the classic Shin Megami Tensei games, Revelations Persona and Persona 2, the design is good, but it is one of the games that I play more or less since first this game is not canonical since It is a mere crossover of Persona 3 and Persona 4 that they will not "remember" later, but as a fan of this series I give it a 3.5/5 approval.
Persona Q is honestly an interesting mix. It blends the universe of Persona with the gameplay of Etrian Journey and combat of SMT together. Overall it's a game with adorable visuals, a decent story, and addictive gameplay.
Does it work? Yes. Is it any better at what it does than the aforementioned games? No. But that doesn't really matter. While Persona Q doesn't excel at anything comparing to other Atlus games, it manages to create an interesting journey with the legacy of 3 different series.
A spin off nobody asked for.
The gameplay isn't for everyone and is grating if you were looking for the more streamlined playstyle of the other modern persona games. It isn't bad, but is clunky and takes getting used too and the mapping is less than fun.
The plot, however, is boring. The new characters are flat and not memorable at all, the characters are dumbed down flanderizations that get old fast and tries way to hard to be funny.
It feels more like a parody of persona game than an official game.
So here's the final word about Persona Q: it's boring.
I've been annoyed a bit, had a bit of fun, it had some touching moments and lots of uninteresting pointless moments. And the final word is that it's boring. Genuinely boring. I finished the game and was glad to be out of the chore.
To understand why it's so boring, let's make two reviews: one for a Persona game, and one for a game.
As a Persona game, PQ is a complete failure. Persona, for good or bad, is characterised by very deep, very well-written characters and individual storylines. It's the complexity of their personalities that makes the series one of the best ever.
In PQ, every single character is dumbed down almost to their simplest expression. And that's a killer for a Persona game. Thought Yukari's conflicting emotions about not wanting to be clinging to men like her mother made her kind of annoying but endearing? Well here, she's just annoying. Akihiko is just a meathead obsessed with protein, Kanji is a creepy moron, Mitsuru is cold and sometimes girlish, but if their original personality was at 100%, then the Q version is at 30%.
Now my guess is that they thought that they had already spent their entire characters on Persona 3 and 4, and didn't want to add content to characters already fully portrayed in other games, and instead decided to focus on them all meeting each other and having fun times and growing into each other(I mean the P3 and P4 casts growing into each other).
It's a fine idea.
Too bad that doesn't excuse the dumbed down personalities AT ALL. You could have the same characters be just as serious or realistic and yet be put in a situation where there's fun to be had. At the very least, if they didn't want to expand on the characters, they could just have them meet new faces and find affinities. Instead they just sort of have pointless, not particularly fun talks for the entirety of the game, minus a few good moments.
That's for Persona Q, now let's just talk Q.
Q's fighting does better than all the Persona games before, which is still a far cry from the far superior 2003 SMT Nocturne.
And the whole labyrinth mechanic from Etrian Odyssey ****'s say an original touch, if kinda badly made.
But here's the deal. This game is:
-A few pointless talks with dumbed down characters
-A few laughs
-A few really good scenes about the two characters from PQ, Zen and Rei(that only happen after the 4th dungeon ends, so wow good job having nothing engaging for 4/5ths of the game).
What I just listed is 5% of the time spent in PQ.
The other 95% are dungeon crawling. Yes, 95% of the game is spent playing, searching, exploring, selling what you looted, healing and the doing it again. And again. And again. And again until you're just about entirely spent and bored.
There is no one killer element to PQ but the reason why it's so boring is in the COMPLETELY IDIOTIC refusal of the game to separate labyrinth exploration and fights.
Example: let's say I have to explore a new level in any of the labyrinths, that contains roughly 200 steps to go from the entrance to the next level. If I count the backtracking due to FOEs blocking your path or chasing you, the 200 jump easily to 250-270. If I want the (precious) bonus for stepping on every tile of the map, that jumps to 400. Now out of these 400, I'll really be walking 1000. Why? Because the game DOES NOT offer a way to avoid random encounters. Or rather it does, midway through the last dungeon, aka way too late nope never happening nope nope nope. Because the game offers a system between magic points and inventory that encourages going in, searching a bit, looting a bit, then coming back to heal and go again, the amount of backtracking, reloading, and exploring through tiny increments is absolutely ridiculous. I do not exaggerate when I say that 200 steps will cost me the time for 1000. Because if I wanted to just explore the level quickly without being constantly interrupted by fights which provide loot to sell, it would take me roughly an hour, tops, for most levels of the game. There are roughly (some are big some are small) 16 levels in this game. So 16 hours.
I completed Persona Q in over 80 hours.
Yes. 80.
Around the end of the game, the characters had a scene where they said they were tired of being in this game, which implied that they had been here less than a day(at least hadn't slept since they got there).
From this scene and my playthrough, I can only come to the conclusion that PQ was a game meant to be played in 20 hours tops. And that all the rest is a horrible padding to stretch the game. Endless random encounters. Tons of time spent just walking on every last tile. Hours wasted just going back, selling, then walking back to where you were. Without this padding Q would be a solid 7 to 8, but with it, it's just an extremely long, and tiring, borefest. The gameplay improvements have made me optimistic about Persona 5, but the designed padding of PQ ruins it entirely.
SummaryPersona Q is the inaugural Persona game for 3DS. The game takes the characters from Persona 3 and Persona 4, puts them into an all new adventure. The game is in the style of Etrian Odyssey, where teams of five will navigate dungeons in a first-person view. New characters, enemies, the presence of Etrian Odyssey's F.O.Es will provide pla...