"Persona Gold Edition" (hereinafter referred to as "P4G") is a Combination of Campus Life, Love Ingredients, Detective Suspense, Labyrinth Exploration, and Superpower Combat Japanese Role-Playing Game, "P4G" was first released in 2012 on the PSVita handheld platform, this game has been widely praised by the media and players since its release, and even by most players agree that it is the last value of buying PSVita, in other words, The game development team ATLUS's act of porting this game to a PC platform is undoubtedly a death sentence for PSVita, where the once-popular PSVita is lit with three incense sticks.
Transplanted to the PC platform of "P4G" supports the high quality of Full HD, the character modeling part also has to be anti-aliased, really let people feel that ATLUS this platform porting is very careful, but there are rumors that some players will have the problem of screen stuttering when enjoying the cutscenes, the author personally has not had such problems, the overall playing process is very smooth, from the beginning of the game to the level of play has not touched any stuttering or flashback and other game errors, players interested in buying this game can play with confidence.
The player's role in "P4G" is a transfer student who was forced to transfer to Hachishijin High School because his parents went abroad to work, and what is more special is that the name of the protagonist of the game is the player's own name, while the protagonist of the anime version has the formula name "Narumi Yu". The town he moved to is called "Hachishi Inaba Town", and he will borrow his uncle's home on Dojima Island for a year, thinking that he will spend a year in the country town, but unexpectedly there is a bizarre serial murder case.
The victims were found to have died hanging upside down on a telephone pole in a strange posture, they were all reported by the TV media for different reasons before they died, and after in-depth investigation, it was found that the local urban legend [Late Night TV] would broadcast the posture of the next victim, awakening the "Personality Mask" for unknown reasons, in order to save the victim trapped in the TV world, he would form a special search team with other companions with the same personality mask, vowing to track down the culprit who caused a series of incidents.
Travel to the world of television to overcome all odds with your companions in search of the truth hidden by the fog
The main plot of "P4G" follows the traditional JRPG method, the player will first experience a plot, understand the ins and outs of the event, and then go to the Junis Food Street with his companions to enter the world on the other side of the TV, explore the maze and attack the boss at the end of the level, and then continue the next main plot. It should be noted that the time of each maze is limited, if the raider is not completed by a certain date, the system will force the game to end, and the player can only re-read the file to attack the maze again.
From today's point of view, this game adopts a relatively conservative design in terms of labyrinth exploration and plot advancement, after all, "P4" was originally a JRPG released on the PS2 platform in 2008, if it is used as a basis for criticism, it is too unkind, on the other hand, there are few works on the market that retain the traditional gameplay of JRPG, which makes "P4G" have an alternative market advantage.
When the player enters the TV world, we can form up to three other characters including Yu as a team, and the characters who have not played will not gain experience points, and in order to develop the average strength of the whole team, it is necessary to change the team members from time to time, so as to achieve the ideal state of equal combat strength. Next is the maze design part, the appearance of the maze is related to the inner world of the victim, what we have to do is to find the stairs to the next level of the maze, after successfully reaching the last maze, the battle with the boss is won, even if the raider is completed, the maze that exists in the TV world at first glance looks like random generation.
After actually walking around a few rounds, you will find that there are several established mods in reuse, you can understand the structure of them a few more walks, the shadow enemies encountered will vary according to the number of exploration layers, the elements generated completely randomly are the treasure chests scattered around the maze, the contents to the placement are all randomly determined, when the same maze is opened too many treasure chests, there is a chance to challenge the hidden boss, overall, the maze design of "P4G" does not have much highlights, which is a flaw in the ointment.
"Shuffle Time" is the more interesting design of "P4G", in addition to the boss battle, when our team gives the enemy the last blow, there is a chance to appear shuffle Time word before the checkout screen appears, the system will provide a variety of card effects for players to choose, including: increase experience points, increase gold coins, randomly obtain skill cards, obtain personality masks, restore team members' physical strength and other effects, to the late game there are many powerful personality masks can be obtained through shuffle time.
Not only that, the system will occasionally assign us additional special cards, such as reducing the number of times we have obtained experience points to get two draws, converting all card effects, strengthening the basic ability of the personality mask, unconditionally ending the shuffle time, etc. If you are lucky and get all the rewards in one go, then you can directly and unconditionally get three chances to draw cards directly and unconditionally at the next shuffle time, in other words, you have a better chance to draw all the rewards and get more advantages when exploring the maze.
I am Ru, Ru is me, and the attributes of personality masks are compulsory courses
Personality mask attributes of the symbiotic phase is one of the most important elements of the "P4G" battle system, first from the attribute type to introduce, the game's skill attributes are divided into physics, fire, ice, wind, thunder, light, dark and all-round attributes, each personality mask has patience and weakness, for example, if there is a personality mask on the state of the thunder attribute is [resistant] or [anti], it means that the personality mask can be perfectly defended against the thunder attribute skill; and so on, if the personality mask is [weak], Then the Fire Attribute skill can successfully deliver a fatal blow to the personality mask, leaving it in a [knocked down] state.
Here it is necessary to mention the "True Goddess Rebirth" series inherited from the "Persona" series of "Turn Press" battle system, for the opponent's weakness attributes to attack, successful knocking down the opponent can provide additional number of actions for the attacker, if the player successfully uses the weakness attribute to knock down all enemies, then you can use the [All Attack] command, although the damage caused by the total attack is Pupu, but the attack attribute is an all-round attribute, for the enemy with high patience of each attribute, The Almighty Attribute is the killer skill that quickly ends them.
The companions of the team members have their own personality masks, taking the early joining of Yosuke Hanamura as an example, the personality mask he held at the beginning [Shiraiya], which is the speed type personality mask of strong wind and weak thunder, which can also cause weakness damage to enemies with weak winds, but is afraid of thunder attribute attacks, according to this logic, if you want to form a perfect team, then you must have another companion to strengthen the thunder attribute enemies that can not cope with the coming, at this time you can add the bear to the team, his personality mask [Golden Boy] It is a personality mask specialized by ice attributes, which can quickly destroy weak ice thunder attribute enemies.
If you still feel that you are struggling with the shadows of certain attributes, then leave it to Yu, who has the ability to "unruly Wild"! When you reach a certain level, you can even hold as many as twelve different personality masks at the same time, and with so many personality masks to help you fight, I believe that any difficulty will not overwhelm you.
If you are a player who has experienced the "True Goddess Rebirth" series of consistent super high game difficulty baptism, you may feel that the overall difficulty of "P4G" is a pediatric level, but the vast majority of players should not have the opportunity to enter the "True Goddess Rebirth" pit, after all, all the "True Goddess Rebirth" works are released on the host platform and have not been new works for many years, for novice players who are new to the [Turn Press] combat system and personality mask integration function for the first time. It is indeed difficult to understand the essence of the combat system in a short period of time, and it may be extremely frustrating in the first and middle of the game, and then lose interest in the game itself.
No matter how good the plot is, if the player does not continue to play, then it is as if it does not exist, fortunately the development team ATLUS has set five difficulties in the game, the low difficulty setting allows players who want to experience the story to play easily all the way to the level, the high difficulty setting allows players who want to challenge themselves to get a sense of achievement in defeating strong enemies, and the better news is that the game difficulty can be switched at any time, and there is no achievement project that can be unlocked by playing high difficulty.
Based on the community system, we will reconstruct the bridge between each other's emotions
The community system is one of the most important elements of "P4G", each community symbolizes your interpersonal relationship with other characters, players can form a community with many people in the game, the longer you spend together, the more intimate your relationship with the character will be, when the system shows that you can further enhance your relationship with the other party, spend time with each other again, you can trigger a character-exclusive plot, and the community level will increase until the highest level of ten.
"There are many factors that affect interpersonal relationships, including the mutuality of feelings and the complementarity of needs", almost all communities are built by feelings and needs, and it is very coincidental that except for the companions of the special search team, the rest of the non-combat character communities will throw out a trouble for Yu to solve, such as the Moon Community's Ebara Love Crush on someone, the Righteous Community's Dojima Naiko does not understand the difficulties of the father, and the young stepmother of the temperance community wants to get along with the children, these problems will be solved one by one with the development of the community Players can also feel the satisfaction of helping others fulfill their wishes.
To experience a fulfilling daily routine, the first prerequisite is to learn time management
We can use three parts to summarize the daily system experienced by players in "P4G", the first part is school life, as a high school student with good character, You has never been absent from class, and almost every day is on time to report to school, so except for holidays, morning time is usually study time. Players will encounter teachers with very different personalities in school, they will ask players by name some knowledge that you may not use in a lifetime, but those inexplicable knowledge will be out of the mid-term final exam questions, in order to achieve good results, we still have to use Baidu to find the right answer, after all, good results can be more quickly improved in the school community level, want to get a week to achieve the whole community level MAX absolutely can not mess up in academics.
"P4G" presents the ideal high school life in everyone's mind, go to the school roof to share lunch with classmates, swim on the beach with female classmates during the summer vacation, apply for a driver's license to ride a small motorcycle to the city center to watch a movie, play at the end of the game will not help but sigh, how the school life of the game characters will be a hundred times more exciting than real life, the author also wants to play wind instruments with the students in the empty club classroom after school! Cough, back to the point, in fact, in the late game, the function and importance provided by the school is not as good as in the early stage, and even after you have fully satisfied the school community, there is no need to go to school, and the final exam wants to skip class.
The second part is the after-school activities, players can spend time to go to [Aijia Restaurant] to taste Chinese cuisine, when some of the abilities reach the level of part-time work requirements, you can also use the spare time to undertake a variety of part-time work content, of which three kinds of communities need to be unlocked through part-time work. In some ways, the importance of part-time work is much higher than going to school, if you want to see the whole community MAX in a week, you must not miss any part-time opportunity, otherwise it is easy to miss the time of part-time work, resulting in irreparable regret.
In particular, I would like to mention the shortcomings that I think P4G has slightly affected the game experience, and some interactive options will skip the entire time period directly. For example, if you open the refrigerator and see food, the system will prompt you to eat him, and at the same time you decide to go to the hospital this evening to work, so as to promote the demon community. But I didn't expect that your curiosity ate the food in the refrigerator, the system shows that your stomach is uncomfortable and needs to rest, the night time of the day is skipped, the timing of this part-time work is directly skipped, perhaps the system notes a sentence "Eating will consume time" when asking you if you want to eat, you can avoid regrets.
The third part is the special event, as the story progresses, the feelings of the members of the special search team will be more solid, then special events will be triggered, such as Yosuke will propose to apply for a motorcycle driver's license, when the player takes the driver's license, you can unlock the summer party to go to the beach to play in the water, and the winter there is a plot of everyone going skiing together, but it is recommended that Mary, who symbolizes the eternal robbery community, be raised to level ten as soon as possible, so as not to lose the opportunity to challenge the additional maze challenge of the golden version. In addition, many major festivals such as Christmas, New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, etc., we can also invite good feelings to spend together.
If you are a man with a deep sin and become a lover with a bunch of female characters, then on Valentine's Day, or can only choose to spend the holiday with one of the women, you will see the women you refused to invite show a heartbroken expression, forced to hold back tears to watch you leave, the author is a bad man who plays with the feelings of a girl, can you promise me in front of the screen, don't be a scumbag?
Life will play God's work, and I wish you to harvest unforgettable precious memories
For players with obsessive-compulsive disorder, it is impossible to get all the collecting elements in a week, but you can still reach the MAX progress of the whole community with the guide instructions. Some people may take objections to the act of watching the raiders, but for people with limited free time, "P4G" has too many events that cannot be triggered without watching the raiders, and the author has also undergone multiple considerations to play the game while reading the raiders when the raiders are halfway through.
I didn't expect to see the raiders, but I found that I missed a lot of community upgrade opportunities, and even the two new communities added to the golden version did not reach half of the recommended level of the raiders. In order to pursue the true ending of the week, and do not want to miss the new maze added to the golden version, I have to endure the pain of replaying from the archive of five hours ago, and watch the raiders without spoilers in advance, I think it is a way to increase the playing experience, after all, no one wants to find that the object of the lover wants to disappear forever after fifty hours of struggle, right?
Unlike role-playing games that focus on substantive gameplay, P4G is a drama-focused work, more like AN AVG than a JRPG, why is it described like this? Because this work is relatively simple in the battle and maze exploration part, let's start with the maze exploration part, most of the mazes are set to take a straight line to the destination, although a few mazes have exploration puzzle components, but the complexity is too small, resulting in the training process appears boring, easy to make people feel a strong sense of work.
Then there is the combat system, although in the personality mask cultivation and collocation need to use the brain to think, the challenge leader also needs to cooperate with the strategy to attack, but the performance in the combat is too mediocre, it is difficult to make people interested in the long-term spawn, fortunately, the above two shortcomings in the sequel "Persona 5" has a breakthrough performance, only hope that one day ATULS can transplant "P5" to the PC platform.