Last Thoughts: Persona 4 Golden

Wow.  I mean, I'll probably have NG+ thoughts & stuff too.  I wrote this a bit ago and didn't post it, I think because I was trying to think more about it and have a more well-rounded view of the game.  But it's been a while since I finished, so it wouldn't exactly work for a 'last thoughts' thing.  (I also didn't write about Marie.  Hmm.)  Plus, my reaction to the whole Persona 4 thing is pretty different after P4D.  I'm so much happier with everything P4 than before.  Which I finished the Story Mode of, so maybe I'll do a Last Thoughts on that tomorrow, or something?  Oh, wait, I should probably post the notes I took at the time first.  Then I'll Last Thoughts it.  It still suffered a bit of the post-Vanilla 'writing for parts of the fandom/writing own interpretations in', but on the whole it was a lot better than most of the other tie-in merchandise AND THE LEVELS OF LOVECRAFTIAN ARE REAL.  JUST SAYIN.
~Dreamer~

Last thoughts: Persona 4 Golden

>Teddie’s new VA, while not Teddie’s old VA (may that “noooo” forever live in fame), is acceptable.

>Chie’s new VA, on the other hand, is not.  She’s just annoying.  I’m okay with her, but…I honestly might not go for her SL next time with NG+.

>I like Persona 4.  Persona 3’s group is a motley group of associated people with a common goal.  Persona 4’s group, when they’re not being stupid or arguing, actually is a party.  And Persona 2.

>“Persona 4, now brought to you with 10% more stereotyping!”

>I do like hanging out with people more, and seeing more of their characters because that’s cool, but some of the stuff just didn’t…ring right.

>NANAKO + GARDENING FOR THE WIN!

>For instance, Rise.  She was a little pushy, but not that bad in P4 Vanilla.  If I had that game (well, to be more precise, if I had the money for that system) I would be hanging out with her a lot more, rather than, y’know, not finishing her SL.  I think that they probably didn’t change the SL much, so I wouldn’t have to worry that much, but her clingy stalkerish moments in the main storyline did not endear her.  (So much so that I went back to rewatch the P4 Vanilla Let’s Play by NakaTeleeli and Elemental Ogre just to figure out if she was this bad in Vanilla and I just have a really bad memory.)  When someone’s creeping you out on a near daily basis when you barely see them, why would you sign up for more time with them? (unless you’re a masochist.  You could be a masochist.)

Given my initial comparison of P4 vs Death Note, they added in just a little more Misa.  I like Misa, sometimes, but sometimes she’s just the creepy yandere fangirl that will love you to death, whether or not you’re actually on board with that plan, and…that just really creeps me out.  I know some people love the trope.  I actually have a friend who is really attracted to the yandere type.  Personal preference, yo!  Nothing’s right or wrong, but personally I just didn’t care for it.

>Yosuke.  Much more of a balance in Vanilla between his mature moments and his immature moments.  Here he was played for the comedic idiot more.  Less of the time, you’re going ‘this is a bro that’s got my back’ and more just facepalming or yelling at him to not involve you because he’s being an idiot and would you please stop?  There were some sweet moments with him, but overall, going from that to Arena doesn’t seem to make much sense.  It’s not continuous.

>What’s up with this ‘Moronji’ thing, anyway?  There’s only a couple of times that Kanji said something that I thought was a stupid remark.  For the most part he seemed to be the guy that said the obvious thing.  Let me tell you about people who say the obvious thing.  If you’re in a room of English Majors, they’ll always come up with the most complicated way of thinking about something possible.  That’s not to say it’s wrong, but sometimes it’s nice to have someone who’ll point out the obvious thing because it’s not something the rest of you will think of in a million years.  Kanji struck me as that person.  Plus, I liked that he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind.  The rest of the IT would be dancing around a subject because nobody had the guts to actually say it, and he’d just walk right in and say it.  Uncomfortable truths are no less true because they’re uncomfortable (take Shadows, or at least some of what Shadows say), and sometimes they really need to be said.  Plus, if I remember correctly, Rise was the one who started it.  That’s not cute, that’s just catty.  I mean, she is an idol, so I get why some of the team picked it up, but everybody?  STOP PICKING ON KANJI, PEOPLE!

>I dunno if it’s true, but I heard the f-steak was a reference to Hiimdaisy’s comic.  No, I haven’t seen it.  I tend to be pretty picky when it comes to comedy, plus I like having a different point of view to things than most people.  It honestly kind of feels like this is the ‘fanservice edition’, but they picked and chose which parts of the fandom to entertain.  I’m sure a lot of people enjoyed it.  I’m sure some, like me, were ticked off with some of it.  The thing is, with stuff like that, I dunno.  I kind of feel like it should be in optional stuff, or they should just go with more of the original, not try to please some parts of the fandom.  And hinting and stuff is fine, but, do you have to say it right out?  Really?  It’s like they’re trying to legitimize…something.  Or tell others that they’re stupid for reading things a different way, when, honestly, everyone’s going to have a slightly different take on things and it’s just as valid as everyone else’s.  Well.  Some valid views of the world might have other, real-world consequences (mr cabbage fiend is an example), but that’s not generally at stake when dealing with literary characters.

I don’t know.  It’s like you’re supposed to be in on a joke and laughing at it, but only a certain percent of your audience finds it funny.  (On that note, if they’d included the thing they were thinking about with the romantic possibility with Yosuke, given the audio files that were found, including it in Golden would be one thing.  As fun as it’d be, I wouldn’t want it included in Golden as things are, because that would alienate some of the audience and not fit the original.  I don’t want them changing or ‘clarifying’ things just because a portion of their audience disgusts them for legitimate lifestyles that don’t hurt others.  If that makes sense.  I’m probably rambling again.)

>I disliked the ‘punishing members of the IT for their choices’ thing in the original, and it seems more so in Golden.  Now I kind of understand why Yukiko had to end up staying in Inaba instead (well, sort of, since the ‘running from her choices’ is a kind of literary parallel with Amaterasu, and I think they were actually playing with that) but it’s like Kanji kind of forgot about his Shadow again.  It’s not ‘Oh, actually, I just want someone to accept me, and I might not actually care about gender when I’m looking for a date after all’, it’s ‘Naoto, please let me force you into a more feminine role so I can feel comfortable in my heterosexuality again’.  (Well, to be fair, this whole Pageant disaster was in Vanilla too.  But like with the other things, it feels like this was something else they emphasized more in Golden.)  On that note, the romantic SL with Naoto, involving forcing Naoto-kun into women’s clothes which CLEARLY MAKES HIM UNCOMFORTABLE.  I didn’t actually go through that SL, and it also was in Vanilla, but I think even Naka & Ogre commented on it.  There was more of this, too.  Like ‘we don’t care about your preferences.  The fact that you’re wishy-washy (i.e. are a teenager and HAVEN’T FIGURED YOURSELF OUT YET) proves that you actually just wanted to be a girl all along.  Let’s force you into a role you’re uncomfortable with’.  I may get ranty with examples from Golden the NG+ playthrough.

They could’ve been cool and left it vague, but no.  It’s hard to say that they just fixed everything in their lives after the Shadows in less than a year.  They’re going to still be working stuff out.  Let them do that!  Nope, not going to even show that they’re still unsure but working on it, still trying to figure themselves out, because human beings are always works in progress and we’re still trying to figure out stuff in our lives.

>If I sound ranty, it’s because I love Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden, and things that I just outright hate I don’t really spend much time getting angry about because there’s no potential there, nothing to save.  If it’s awesome and there’s potential and they messed it up, that’s when I get angry.

>I guess I can talk about some of the stuff from Vanilla, since it is also Persona 4 and I haven’t played it (watched about a million Let’s Plays and the Anime, played it no).

>I got the ‘vanilla’ thing from Dresden Files, by the way.

>COSTUMES!  I love costumes!  And joke weapons.  I should never have sold that cleaning mop, one because I needed it for that quest and why wouldn’t you use a mop to fight Shadows, I mean really.  It’s just common sense.  (On that note, Halloween.  But why wouldn’t Souji be a magician, rather than a vampire?  I mean, he knows magic tricks, for goodness’ sake.  He can pull it off!)

>Souji with 10% more dork and ALL THE CATS YEAAAAAH!  Dojima-san, I really hope you’re not allergic because all the strays have made the Dojima Residence their home for forever.

>MAN TALKING TO PEOPLE AT NIGHT OH MAN I’LL JUST IGNORE ALL MY RESPONSIBILITIES TO TALK TO PEOPLE MORE BECAUSE SO MUCH STUFF PUT IN I CAN LEARN MORE ABOUT CHARACTERS IT’S REALLY COOL.

>That’s one thing that Persona 3 was doing a better job of, particularly when compared to Golden.  Junpei might’ve been a jealous, perverted ass at the beginning, but then he became interested in Chidori and realized he was okay with working with the MC, and it really did better at showing character arcs and development.  I guess part of the dissonance comes because the writers actually wrote development into the main story (which takes up more of the time) rather than just trying to show it in the SL and forgetting about it in the main story.  Not that it was forgotten, but.  I sure would’ve liked to see more of it.  Part of the reason I’m writing Unbreakable Ties, I guess, is that I’m trying to resolve this inconsistency.

>Also, haha, reading back through my notes playing Golden I totally sound sadistic for wanting to hit people all the time.  Maybe if there was a dialogue option to call them out for being stupid I wouldn’t be wanting to do this literally all the time.  Come on, ‘silent protag’ does not have to mean ‘completely unwilling to call people out for their bull’.  Once he actually gets comfortable and starts, y’know, actually talking to people, he should have the option because I see Souji/Yu as the type of friend who would tell you when you’re being stupid because someone’s got to save you from your idiocy, and your enemies certainly aren’t going to do it.  Just because he accepts that everyone has their flaws/dark sides doesn’t mean he’s going to let them get away with ‘oh, okay, I have a dark side but I’m not going to do anything about it’.

>Also with 20% more girls vs guys because they can’t just be friends normally and it’s got to always be girls versus guys, right?  I liked it when it almost seemed like the snowball fight was going to be in 3 groups of 3 and a good mixture of guys and girls on each team.  Except that’s not what happened, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.

>Some things are clearly the boys’ fault, and yeah, they should be punished for it.  Walking into the bathhouse and accidentally seeing the girls because the girls were lazy and forgot to check the time?  I’m sorry, I’m just about that shy with people seeing me to the point I didn’t want to undress in front of the others in the locker rooms for PE.  Yeah, I get that’s weird for a guy, I’ve been told.  But to that point, I probably would’ve checked the schedules and the bath times about a million times and would’ve been well out of there before the changeover.  If they’re pulling stupidity like Junpei with the screen (and that last scene with them perving on Marie and the others and the only good part was the point where the game actually acknowledged that Souji/Yu might not want to be involved and was like ‘you guys are being stupid’ and I am so glad that in Unbreakable Ties Yosuke and Souji will be dating by then, because Souji ends up disappointed in everybody sooo often), that’s one thing, but a simple mistake that wasn’t even on their end?

And the game assumes that you either think it’s hilarious or agree with the girls that punishment is a thing that should happen.  You don’t get a chance to contradict it.  See, that’s a thing.  Yosuke (and Teddie, let’s not forget!) are being stupid, and should be called out for it, but it’s clear that kicks from Chie aren’t getting through to his brain.  Physical violence isn’t doing the job, so why keep doing that?  (Which is why, I say again, there should be options for protag to call them out on it, because if there’s anyone they’d listen to, it’d be the protag.)

>I’ve also created a Yu Narukami save file.  I’m going to go with a romance with Yukiko, probably.  I see Yu as a different character than Souji, partly this really cool description of the difference between the two: http://toguchin.tumblr.com/post/30155827030/seta-souji-v-narukami-yu-the-difference-in
...hopefully that's the full link, if not I'm sure you can figure it out.

>…Okay, de-stress time.  Cat pictures.  Protag + cat pictures.

>Also, as a final note: Yosuke and Xander, take a chill pill and stop spawning more universes for me to write.  It’s getting out of hand, and I only have so much time in the world.