Recent reviews by haloopdy

i love this game. beyond the obvious allure of "you get to play as a cat", this game is dripping with passion. and even better: it doesn't force you to experience it all. too many times i've played games with a lot of love where the developers seem worried you might not experience or notice all the little bits they put in, so they shove it under your nose every chance they get. no such issue here: you can take the game as fast or as slow as you want.

on a related note, it's really refreshing to play a game i can sit down and enjoy for just the right amount of time. it didn't overstay its welcome, it never felt padded out, and yet none of it felt too short either. very fulfilling. play this if you want to get lost in another world for a while without having to strap in for 40-60 hours.

just some random thoughts:
- the gameplay is fun, but takes a backseat compared to the fantastic environment. if you don't like immersing yourself in the environment, you're probably looking at a short, shallow experience
- all the achievements are obtainable in a day, if you're into that sort of thing
- the game goes back and forth between chill, contemplative sections and more action-packed sections. the game DOES NOT put collectibles in the action sections (thankfully)
- the game takes itself kinda seriously, though there's a little room for lighthearted play. it strikes a nice balance i think, though i think you'll get more out of it if you approach it a bit more seriously.
- there are light puzzle elements but i never once felt stumped
- there are light action sequences but i only had to redo two of them and it was mostly because i was impatient
- don't think too hard about the story, it kinda falls apart when inspected

This is a decent JRPG that held my attention for over 100 hours. I enjoyed the game, and plan on doing NG+ and going for most of the achievements. And while I might recommend this game to some people (with caveats) as an interesting historical and cultural lens, I can't recommend it to most.

This review is super long, so real quick: there are some problematic gameplay elements that could be chalked up to "it's an old game and doesn't care about your free time". Seriously, this is an 80+ hour game where small mistakes with vague or unsaid requirements can lock you out of the last 1/4 of the game, potentially requiring you do a full playthrough again. It also heavily rewards grinding while actively punishing "playing with skill", so... either give in and do the grinding and enjoy being showered in meaningful rewards, or be ready for 20-30 minute boss battles that could end with a single bad RNG. I learned after the fact that this is common for Shin Megami Tensei games, so... IDK, make of that what you will.

My true gripes with Persona 4 though are the messages it conveys through its story and characters. Without any spoilers, I found myself dealing with hours and hours of anti-gay and anti-trans story arcs. This is well beyond the simple (but still offensive) jokes you often find like this in other JRPGs, where it's some 10 minute gag. These are whole stories, and pivotal to the overarching narrative. I understand that this is an older game from a country with differing values to my own, but I still think these points should be brought up for those who care. One narrative is, "being gay is an extreme reaction to enjoying non-manly things, you should choose not to be gay so you'll fit in and be happier". The other is "wanting to be a man is an extreme reaction to being a woman in a male dominated workforce, you're a beautiful woman and you definitely don't want to be a man, also you just physically can't be". With the way the story eventually plays out, the message seems to be "happiness is found by being accepted by others", which is problematic because the friends DON'T accept the gay or trans aspects of these characters, so they're forced to "drop the traits" and conform. All the friends are disgusted at the gayness of that character, with one constantly berating him for it throughout the entire story. And, these same friends gaslight the trans character, saying things like "you don't really want to be a man, right?" and not giving him a chance to get a word in before they all start to call him "she". If these things don't bother you, that's fine, you can just focus on the gameplay problems I brought up in the previous paragraph. But let me put it this way: this is precisely the kind of media and mindset that was prevalent when I was a kid, and probably the reason why it took so long for me to accept I was gay. These messages are damaging; you have these confusing thoughts in middle/high school, because you don't like girls, and you don't really know how to feel about it. But then you play games like this with characters just like you, and the resolution for them is that it might just be your girly hobbies and you can choose not to be gay? And then you connect with the gay character's pain and frustration as you see the friends all gang up on and make fun of him repeatedly throughout most of the story. And you see that at the end, the character is happy not being gay, and nobody makes fun of him anymore, all with the narrative that this is "the truth", this is reality, and you're better off accepting it and being happy than "submitting" to your gay thoughts. After seeing all that, what else are you supposed to think other than "oh, maybe I shouldn't be gay...". And same for the trans character, they're miserable and cold at the start as a man, but once everyone knows "they're a girl", they become happier and warm up, and at the very end they're shown as a beautiful girl all on display, no men's clothes. You too can be a beautiful girl, you don't want to be a miserable man!

I don't want these kinds of messages being spread, especially in a game so greatly loved. And again, if you either don't care or agree that you can choose to be gay or choose to be trans, then you can happily enjoy this game carefree. But please, recognize that messages like this actively hurt those who are miserable their whole lives because they can't express themselves, who live with games and media like this that gaslight them into believing that there's something wrong with them. And to have the game be so universally loved... it just makes it harder to resist accepting these messages as fact. I'm not saying everyone should hate this game or feel guilty if they like it, I just want to add my voice and say I don't recommend it because I find the messages harmful.


Thanks for reading all that, if you did. Tl;dr: I didn't like the homophobic and transphobic story arcs, each of which lasted several hours. There are gameplay aspects I didn't like either, but they're common in JRPGs. If you are sensitive to those kinds of things, you may find a large section of this game distasteful, as I did.

It's hard to be disappointed in a game that excels in everything it does. Story, challenge, art, music, replayability, characters, heart; this is a labor of love and it's fun to the very end. I didn't even like previous Supergiant games, yet this is one of my favorite games of all time. Play it