Since February 1 I've been playing practically just
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES for the PS2 (other than when I quickly played and finished some
Mega Man 10). It really looks likely that I'll finally get to finish this 160-hour game tonight!
As I alluded to earlier, my friend who gave me a PS2 last year lent me this game on January 31, 2010. If you know the story of this game, you know that is an incredible coincidence, as in the main story of the game, that day is "The Promised Day" (ie. the day you fight the final boss). (Another coincidence: the game starts on April 7, 2009, which was my 29th birthday.) He did not specifically mean to lend it to me on that day, which is what really makes it freaky/neat. Anyway, I hadn't considered playing this game, it was not on my queue of to-play PS2 games (of which I have a dozen I got for cheap, most of which I still haven't touched), and I was already behind on my Wii games as it was at the time. But I didn't want to be rude when he lent it to me out of the blue like that, so I started playing it, not knowing it would take me 160 hours (so far) over the span of three and a half months. I'm really behind now, but I am enjoying Persona 3.
I'm fairly certain I'll be finishing it tonight. The in-game date is January 28, 2010. All my characters are at Level 99, and two of my Personas (Ose and Messiah) have maxed-out stats, while Messiah is also at Level 99. I've created all the Personas I possibly can, except for some of those who required max Social Links.
If I had known earlier that pretty much the only way to maximize the Social Links given the limited amount of time you can do things, I would've followed the GameFAQs "Social Links" walkthrough a lot earlier. You can only Fuse Orpheus Telos (the "ultimate" Persona, a palette swap of the original Persona, Orpheus) by maximizing ALL Social Links in a single play-through, which is pretty tough to do without following such a guide to a T. In that sense, it's a little ridiculous. I am happy to have Fused the six Personas needed to Fuse Orpheus Telos, even if I can't make that final step. Regarding Orpheus, here's another coincidence: the "can-can" song in the credits for
Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars originally comes from the operetta "Orpheus In The Underworld", and Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom was the last game I finished before taking on Persona 3. :O
I've also done all of Elizabeth's requests (side-quests)...at least all that I can. I can't do those that required some of the Personas I ultimately can't create now, and I missed a couple of the fetch-an-item-on-this-particular-day-or-else quests (I apparently didn't save when I fulfilled one of those, and I didn't notice until after I'd loaded and then saved after the due date). Also, because characters get "tired", essentially making grinding difficult, I had to take every opportunity to grind when I could, which is what really ballooned this to 160 hours. I managed to watch a number of movies using the split-screen function of my TV while doing this, at least. They weren't kidding when this game ended up on the GameFAQs "Top Ten" list of "Most Grinding".
Though I didn't finish it yesterday, there would've been two more incredible coincidences with this game: the name of the main 262-floor tower in the game is "Tartarus", a name I'd only heard outside of this game's context at church yesterday (even if it was a very, very brief reference), and when I was putting up the "Kyouryuu Sentai Juuranger (J)" map by Gennadiy_Master yesterday, I accidentally loaded up a Super NES game that also began with "Ky". It turned out to be a Megami Tensei game as well, which I also figured out when I started the game (despite not understanding Japanese) and seeing a tower with a full moon, and when you start the game, you're in a tower, with the phase of the moon very clearly indicated. I'm guessing a tower and moon phases are important in other games in the Megami Tensei series, but it was freaky that when I'd planned to finish it yesterday is the day I'd learn that by chance. Five coincidences in all...whoa! :O
Anyway, barring unforeseen circumstances I can put all this behind me tonight...well, at least the main story, "The Journey". This FES version includes the epilogue "The Journey", which I hope is short...I hope my schedule is clear for when
Super Mario Galaxy 2 comes out later this month.
Wow, this post turned out longer than I expected. Just like this game...zing!
I'm really behind on my games again, and this year it wasn't because of an April Fools' joke. Once Persona 3 FES is done, "The Answer" included or otherwise, it's time to move on. Other than
Super Mario Galaxy 2, which will be top-priority, I still have a lot of other Wii games to get through, most of them M-rated for some reason. These include
Dead Space: Extraction,
MadWorld,
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle,
Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, and
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Other than M-rated games there are some others like
Red Steel 2 and
Monster Hunter 3 Tri which I should consider making time for. And on the PS2 front, there's also
Final Fantasy X-2, which my friend was trying to tell me is crap (which might have led him to lend me Persona 3 FES in the first place), as well as the decade-old
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X which I should play before tackling the PC version of
Resident Evil 5 (and maybe I'll do the Ada Wong stuff in
Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, another M-rated Wii game, but I'll probably download a save to not have to do the main game again). And a bunch of PS2 games are collecting dust, too. After playing a 160+ hour game, it's going to feel weird playing 5-hour games...
EDIT: Bwahahaha! I finished it! Coincidentally, just in time for Chuck. Coincidentally, the credits were rolling as the final episode of Season 3 of ReBoot is wrapping up, too.
EDIT: I put down my pre-order deposit for Super Mario Galaxy 2! And how did I forget that I still have
Pokémon: SoulSilver Version sitting around?
