Still hoping for a sequel or remake.
Me too. Loved Eternal Darkness quite a bit. Still a bit disappointed that we never got that sequel that was in the works.
Out of curiosity, why not Persona 4?
Also, Skies of Arcadia still needs a sequel. With a lower incidence of battles and faster battles and bigger everything else, and it'll be basically perfect.
And Majora's Mask is the best Zelda; all other Zeldas [that I've played] are pale shadows of the cynosure of Zeldadom.
I liked some of what was going for it, particularly the dungeon design and the concept behind it, but found some of the dungeon concepts, like Kanji's and Naoto's problematic. I also really really hated Yosuke as a character and he was at the forefront for a lot of the game. He literally never changes and is just really misogynistic and homophobic. It makes for a weak character archetype when Persona games have had "the bro" character before (Junpei in P3, Eikichi in P2:IS, Ulala in P2:EP, not sure who that would be in P1, own P1, need to play it still) and past Bro characters have actually had arcs and depth to them. Yosuke does not. Junpei is actually similar to Yosuke in many regards, especially regarding the sexism thing with FeMC, but unlike Yosuke, Junpei actually develops beyond that. He ends up having one of the bigger arcs in P3, really.
A lot of P4 in general relies on these stereotypes without expanding on them much. It feels like there's less depth than what could be there. I can see what it's going for but generally speaking most of the marks miss or feel like the threads aren't as developed as they could be. The writing is one of P4s biggest downfalls for me which kills an rpg. It's just overall much much weaker than the P2 games as far as writing goes. The P2 games also handled LGBT representation beautifully, at least in Innocent Sin as there were a few trans npcs who weren't a cheap joke and a bi/homosexual thing in regards to two of the protags and their love is generally accepted.
So that's one thing I noticed regarding the shift in writing with the series. But I guess that's not surprising since the teams pretty much wholly changed. That's not even addressing how you can't be friends with any women in at least P3. You have to date them as the male protag. Basically, the newer Atlus seems to have issues with women and the lgbt community. Slightly off of Persona but as a transwoman, the shift in how trans characters are treated hurts even more considering how they treat a specific character in Catherine in the artbook and in the game itself.
That it's length makes it feel padded out and like there's lots of filler doesn't help either. P4 is way longer than it needs to be and it really makes the game a slog to go through. This is something P3 suffers from as well but P3 handles it better due to the quality of the writing itself, mostly in regards to what I'll mention a bit down below.
The general gameplay execution in P4 also felt a bit weak to me and a lot less complex/rewarding than the older Persona titles but I didn't really start to become aware of that comparison til I played Innocent Sin recently. Starting Eternal Punishment currently and also quite love it. (For the record, P4 was my first Persona, then P3P, then P2:IS and now P2:EP). I made
a post actually discussing in-depth why I like the P2 games so much gameplay wise in comparison to the newer ones. This doesn't address my views on writing/story much but I pretty much already covered that here.. Some of that post will repeat what I state here but it covers the gameplay of what I'm discussing succinctly. I'm aware that I'm a minority on that front but I much prefer the older Persona gameplay. : p Don't mind the new system but the execution has been hit and miss for me.
I also only include Persona 3 Portable because of FeMC. She elevates that game so well and makes the overall game fun to play. I was much less bothered by the filler-esque aspects of waiting for the plot to advance in P3P because FeMC was a blast to play as. I really couldn't appreciate P3 til she came about because I didn't really like the protagonist and how he was written at all. It's amazing how much my general outlook on the game changed with a different protagonist. Of course she was written with a lot more emotional complexity and could choose to date people or not based on how she talked with them and actually had a relationship with everyone in SEES and etc. etc. so that certainly helped. I genuinely like P3P a lot but I can't see myself liking any other version of P3 unless it were to include FeMC. Still salty about her not being canon. : p But Theo, Saori and Rio more or less are since they at least cameo in things (Theo admittedly far more than the other two)! Everything about FeMC is canon except FeMC. : /
Agreed on a SoA sequel! I still get chills with the Dark Rift and Lower Sky to this day. < . > A HD re-make/sequel to SoA is like my Shenmue 3. <3
Agreed too on Majora's Mask! It felt the most ambitious to me and it engaged me way more than Ocarina of Time did.
