Persona 4 may not actually be out, but I'm still making an effort to actively avoid it. This is more than a little depressing, because I'm sure it's a fantastic RPG, and, quite possibly, the last good Playstation 2 release--unless the series decides to stay on Sony's eight year-old console. I'm not one to have a restraining order on good JRPGs, as they are kind of rare these days, but playing Persona 4 could be very hazardous to my health. It's not all of the demons and Satanic imagery that has me scared; it's the fact that this game could very well take over my upcoming (and desperately-needed) break from work, school, and life.
Typically, it's extremely rare for me to play a game for me than 100 hours--and hell, most games don't have that much content to spread around. But the last Persona game, Persona 3: FES, can be found in the handful of games where I've actually spent hours in the triple digits. Before you think that I'm a loser with too much time on my hands, please let me explain: Persona 3: FES was released at a time that I could take advantage of the most: the end of a long, tortuous semester, with 12 weeks of absolute freedom in front of me. Grad school doesn't give you much to do in the way of jobs or work during the summer.
Essentially, I had a Summer of George. And Persona 3 was the catalyst that kicked it off.
In retrospect, I can't actually be sure if FES was actually a good game; it was hella repetitive (moreso than most JRPGs), looked like a Dreamcast game, and had an irritating, repetitive soundtrack. Yet I could not stop playing. This game consumed the first half of my summer in a way that I hadn't seen since the original Tales of Symphonia; in fact, my daily ritual started with playing a solid three hours of FES every morning while trying to forget about how many new experiences I could have if not for investing so many damn hours into the game. And, even after all of these marathon sessions, the bonus content of the game is calling to me from a little, black memory card. But I must stay strong.
This post is by no means an attack on the quality of the Persona series--it's an attack on my obsessive nature, if anything. But Persona is something I'm not going to be able to go back to until there's a major overhaul of the franchise; at this point in my life, I really can't justify sinking 100 hours into what seems to be a nearly-identical experience. Still, it would be fun.
No. No. Must stay strong.
Related Links:
And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Love: Atlus Reprints Persona 2
Yeah, But Is It Art?: Persona 3 FES
The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial, Part 3