Another thing about the Persona games. Noticed how I mainly talked about 3 & 4 -- Well, it's not that I wanna ignore the first two games. It's just that Persona 1 wasn't very good from my experience and Persona 2 is a completely different game from 3 & 4. It plays very differently, and more akin to that of the main series that is Shin Megami Tensei. It has turn-based party combat, and it's still got Personas and the occasional Jungian stuff like the blue butterfly Philemon (Refers to a wise-spirit guide fro mthe Red Book written by Jung), acting as a guide to the Persona users. It's combat is outdated though, and high school aspect only serves as a jumping point for the story, as opposed to being a vehicle that drives it. There's plenty of Lovecraftian allusions in it though and as a traditional JRPG story I'd say it does what it does well.
The characters are still as solid as the later games and the ending is tragically quaint.
I think Astus made a great point above me. If you're a BioWare fan, and you love banter and chemistry between the game's characters then you'll love Persona just the same. It's easier to love Persona if you've played BioWare games as there is a similarity between the games stronger points.
I'd like to add a little bit more to my previous post, in regards to why I think Persona 4 is great, more of the symbolism, the effects of the social link, and the combat etc.
I'll start with what I didn't talk too much about earlier -- Namely, the combat. I said earlier that it plays sort of like Pokemon, in the sense that you have to exploit your enemy's weakness while also trying to cover up your own. Unlike your party members you have the advantage of wielding multiple Personas at once, so you can switch between Personas with different strengths, weaknesses etc.
In combat, you'll have one character who'll serve as the navigator, the person whose role involves helping you exploiting the weaknesses of your opponents. You have to remember to constantly keep your Personas up to date and strong. This is mainly done by fusing them into new Personas. Your true strength is not derived from your levels, but more along the levels of your Personas, another gameplay that compliments the plot.
You see, the game's story sets things up in traditional RPG fashion, where you as the protagonist is special in some way. In this case, you are the Wild Card, one who has accepted a contract and most take responsibilities for all of his actions. In some ways, you could say that Persona 3 & 4, since they both involve signing a contract, also relates to the concept of Free Will. This Wild Card grants the protagonist the power to wield multiple Personas at once from every Arcana. This calls back to the meaning behind the Arcana. The Fool itself is empty, but as a result it is also a source of endless possibilities, and The Fool's Journey starts exactly there and ends at Death. So, from that understanding, we consider the protagonist special because he's signed on a contract, he's on his way on a journey, and on that way he gains access to endless roads of possibilities and hope.
“Well, if you put it that way, it’s an old problem,” said Leibniz. “Descartes saw straight away that Mechanical Philosophy might spell trouble for free will, in that it led to a new sort of predestinationism – not rooted in theology, like that of the Calvinists, but rather growing out of the simple fact that matter obeys predictable laws.”
-Neal Stephenson, The System of the World
Descartes becomes somewhat relevant to Persona 3 as well -- He spent a lot of time focusing on “dualism,” which is to say the mind-body problem. Although, back then it was relatively thought by many that mind and soul resided in, or were connected to the body through, the pineal gland. But the fact that he understood that there was a problem with greater understanding of mechanical processes, and how this would affect “the free will problem,” is pretty significant for a game like Persona 3.
The way that Persona 3 goes at free will is as much about a player who understands the mechanical processes of playing a game as it is about the teenage heroes of the game’s narrative, who largely face their own conflicts with the nature of free will. The fact that they do not know that they are in a machine designed to test them, but the player does, is what creates the tension.
It brings us back to the contract too. What is this contract exactly?
“I chooseth this fate of my own free will.” -The Contract, Persona 3
If we were to interpret the character of Igor (who serves as a guide to the player in 3 & 4)'s words, then I suppose you could think of the contract as an affirmation to yourself. It's about accepting the will to choose for yourself, which evidently is what the games are about.
It's all about choices, the choice to spend time with your buddies, or a particular social link, to attend class, to go to Tartarus, or spend the day doing part-time work -- It's very essense of the journey that is Life.
As the game finally relinquishes virtually all of its overt control to the player, you’ve been left with multiple reminders that your actions will carry consequences, and to carry the knowledge of those consequences with you as you progress. This is something that counts for both games. It's important to note that the choices don't specifically refer to actual game changing choices, but it refers to how you choose to play the game, it's more drenched in symbolic importance but at the time -- You deciding to spend a day dungeon crawling is a choice along of itself and will come with the consequence of what you didn't do and could have done instead. This is also what a Shadow represents in Jungian psychology, it represents the other side of us who made the other choice, the things we didn't choose at the time. Everyone who makes a choice during the time when you cannot – There are certain party members, who already comes face to face with the consequences of those decisions early. By entering your name at the game’s opening, you are signing a contract that you will similarly deal with the consequences of those actions.
The opening of Persona 3 Portable shoves in plenty of words, synonyms, terms and phrases like, Man believe what he wants to believe in the way he wants, Living is not breathing but doing. or Man was born free and everywhere else he is in chains -- It also refers to things like Chaos Theory and the Buttefly Effects. It calls back to the ideas of free will, and the determination of man's tendency to always take things for granted. The Butterfly Effect and Chaos Theory being somewhat exclusive to each other -- Evidently, the butterfly seems symbolic quiant in this case, given that in technical terms it refers to a small dependency on initial conditions, going through a small change at one place, which from a linear standpoint, can result in a larger change somewhere else. " A little butterfly basking its wings will cause a great change/gust at the other side of the world". It's back to the choices and consequences, and how it affects the people we meet and leave behind when we die, or when we have to leave to someplace far-away.
I could go honestly go on for a while yet but I like to move on to Persona 4 then some more about the combat. But this is one of many things I like about the games -- They leave plenty food for thought, things to interpretations, but also subtle implemented symbolism in their narrative. Nothing is meaningless, everything is connected.
Persona 4's approach is somewhat less dark and depressing to a large extent for certain. Although the opening of Persona 4 has its own meaning while being somewhat more upbeat about it. There are references to the Information Age that we live in today.
"We are living our lives
Abound with so much information
Come on, let go of the remote
Don't you know you're letting all the junk flood in
Try to stop the flow, double-clicking on the go
But it's no use, hey I'm being consumed
Loading... Loading... Loading...
Quickly reaching maximum capacity
Warning... Warning... Warning...
Gonna short-circuit my identity (ahh)
Get up on your feet, tear down the walls
Catch a glimpse of the hollow world
Snooping 'round town will get you nowhere
You're locked up in your mind
We're all trapped in a maze of relationships
Life goes on with or without you
I swim in the sea of the unconscious
I search for your heart, pursuing my true self" ~ Pursuing My True Self - Persona 4 Opening
The song actually refers to what is incidentally the overarching theme of Persona 4. It's about coming to terms with yourself as a person, what makes you, you, accepting your weakness because only then you'll find yourself. If you choose to embrace ignorance, instead of standing up and make something out of yourself, or refuse to stand by your own vindication of honesty to yourself, then you'll ultimately "let all the junk flood in". You'll become hollow, trapped and held hostage by your own Shadow/weakness, and you'll never truly live.
As opposed to the previous game, the protagonist is less of a blank slate this time. He actually seemingly has a backstory, and hwile the P3 protagonist had something too, it wasn't as elaborate as this one. The dialogue itself can somewhat give us an inner understanding of how to role-play him. It's arguably fitting to the tone of the game, whereas the P3 protagonist would seemingly fit Persona 3. That's up to one self to decide though. The portable version has the option of a female protagonist in Persona 3, who brings in a lot of personality through her dialogue.
In some ways, Persona 4's cast serves as a necessity to the protagonist's strength and how he will succeed in overcoming the obstacle of that game -- Replace them with in-animated objects, or trivial things, and it would have undermined its own plot whereas the Persona 3 protagonist is presented as a city-boy, whose disposition is entirely aloof, stoic and passive outside of the combat which the films, based on the game, conveys quite strongly as well. He interacts with his fellow team members of SEES, who later grow into friends, less as a savior than an enabler. He is a listener the cast can spill out their hearts to, a supporter that simply by his presence allows them to confront their secrets and accept themselves, by themselves. In other words -- P3 is more grounded in his story and his circumstances
As I've mentioned -- 4 is very much about coming to terms with yourself as a person. The dungeon crawling reflects the inner psyche of the people who are trapped there. In Persona 4, the dungeons exist within a TV World, which is elaborated in the game as a world that reflects the inner thoughts other people -- Without spoiling too much, you could say it's like the saying of viewing The True Self, like how one would looking at a mirror. So from that understanding, the dungeons are all associated with the Shadow Self of the person who has stepped inside the TV. It changes shape accordingly. And that's all I can say about that. The Personas are utilized and portrayed in a somewhat closer reminiscent way to that of Jung. Acquiring it is but the first step on the road to self-awareness, simply a promise to start dealing with the issues that led to those dungeons and boss fights in the first place. And the player is never, ever left alone over the course of the game.
As mentioned before it is about the search for truth, one's unobstructed, complete identity. TV world dungeons are exaggerations, manifestations of that insecurity and self-deception, twisted by the fog. People only gain power and resolve after recognizing that they cannot be complete without accepting their shadow selves as part of the equation, taking the bad along with the good, ultimately forming that more perfect union.
Coincidentally, Persona 4 is also more grounded in Jungian psychology than that of Persona 3 which I noted above. The concepts of Personas and Shadows are closer to what he theorized. They are also implemented in such a fashion in accordance with the game's plot which felt closer to what he was talking about. The terms of Personas and Shadows are what he referred to as 'archetypes'.
The Shadow existing as part of the unconscious mind and is composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts and shortcomings. It would , as we know, often be associated with the darker side of the psyche, representing wildness, chaos and the unknown. This is something we'll find in all humans. Jung also believed that some people would deny this in themselves and as a consequence project this denial onto others. That can essentially refer to the TV world in the game as a side note.
He believed the Shadow can appear in dreams or visions and may take a variety of forms. It might appear as a snake, a monster, a demon, a dragon or some other dark, wild or exotic figure.
The Persona refers to how we present ourselves to the world. The word itself is derived from the Latin word that literally means "mask." It is not meant as a literal physical mask, but rather a metaphorical one which invokes the fact of how we change our disposition towards the people we meet. How we act towards friends is not necessarily how we'll act towards our parents. The persona represents all of these different social masks that we wear among different groups and situations. It acts to shield the ego from negative images. According to Jung, the persona may appear in dreams and take a number of different forms like Myths or folklore's in a similar fashion to that of the Shadow.
Finally there is the Self -- The self is an archetype that represents the unification of the unconsciousness and consciousness of an individual. The creation of the self occurs through a process known as individuation, which is meant to be understood as a process of which the various aspects of the self's personality are integrated. Jung often represented the self as a circle, square or mandala as shown above.
There's more to it than all of this, obviously. There are many archetypes, but I'd refer to Mr. Edogawa's TV Class Room, which ships along with Persona 4 Golden to get an even deeper insight into Jung's stuff and the relations to Persona 4.
I'll probably write a bit more later or tomorrow -- Explaining the Social Link aspect and a bit more of the gameplay without having it solely become a thematic analysis.
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