WHAT IF

ETRIAN ODYSSEY

BUT BAD

Persona Q is very much a mixed bag for me, I don’t really have many strong feelings on it, but it does do some stuff that I like, along with crap I dislike.

There’s some pretty easy pros and cons that can be drawn here, for example the music is mostly really good, and the artstyle is cute, but then a lot of characters get butchered pretty badly and come off as flat. This is definitely worse for some characters than others,but it’s still prevalent.

The gameplay is an aspect I knew was divisive going in, and unfortunately I wasn’t much of a fan, felt the dungeons were too big and complex for their own good, and running away from FOEs got real old real quick, which is a shame because there are some genuinely cool ideas here, but they just tend to overstay their welcome, and trying to solve puzzles while dealing with random encounters is just annoying.

The game’s story is kinda just a worse version of Persona 1 funnily enough, although it does have some good stuff in it. While I don’t care for Rei much, I can’t deny that her VA did a really great job, and while this is an idea that’s been done before, it’s still pretty effective I feel. There’s dumb stuff like how Zen making an exception for Rei is pretty unbelievable considering he would’ve already farried millions of people to the afterlife, but eh I don’t care much.

Overall, you know it’s fine, like a very flat 5 out of 10, I don’t regret going through it, but also I don’t think I’ll ever do so again.

Hooh boy… There’s honestly a lot to be said about Persona Q.

First off - for those who have yet to play the game, PQ switches up the Persona combat formula quite a lot. Demon fusions are still a thing although now every character gets to equip a sub persona on top of their normal persona. The MCs also have to do this and cannot swap freely between personas. Teams fight enemies in a front and back row formation with attacks having various ranges based on this. There’s also no “one more” mechanic. If you hit an enemies weakness or get a crit you’re rewarded with 0 HP or SP cost for your move next turn, which given the cost of moves in this game is VERY helpful.

In terms of exploration it’s a classic first person dungeon crawler like the original Persona or early SMT games. Your location in the dungeon appears on the lower screen of the 3DS, and Persona Q strongly recommends that you use the stylus to update and draw a map there as you navigate (this is basically required given how complex the dungeons get).

Outside of dungeons you have a hub world screen where you can select options to get healed, buy equipment, visit the velvet room, talk to companions, and initiate side quests.

That’s pretty much everything. On to the review.

This game is a mixed bag. The main draw for most Persona fans will likely be getting to see the casts of P3 and P4 interact and just generally getting to see more of their favorite characters. PQ definitely delivers on this and there’s a huge amount of optional conversations, scenes, and side quests where the characters interact. This is done pretty well. Some characters, typically the more serious ones like Yu, Makoto, Naoto, Shinjiro, and Ken are done really well. Unfortunately some of the more comedic or off the walls characters are pretty much only given lines that boil down to one note jokes about their personalities. I don’t think Chie had any lines in this game that weren’t about eating meat. Teddy is given this same simplifying treatment and it causes him to be unBEARable in this game. There are however a lot of really nice and touching character interactions, particularly with Ken, and the good generally outweighed the bad for me in this regard.

The main story is decent but scenes and dialogue that progress the plot are pretty sparse. This is mostly because the actual plot of PQ is rather simple and doesn’t need a lot of explaining. There are some nice and genuinely touching moments regarding the main plot, and I definitely enjoyed its themes and the way it concluded.

Onto gameplay. PQ is shockingly difficult in just about every way. On normal difficulty this is the hardest Persona game by a pretty wide mile. It’s probably harder than some of the easier mainline SMT games. In terms of combat, the added difficulty of the battles is actually a really nice change. You actually have to think about what you’re doing when fighting random mobs. In terms of party and supply management the difficulty is abysmal. Your party will run out of SP very quickly causing them to be severely handicapped in fights. When this happens you have to go all the way back to the hub world to heal and it gets really annoying after a while. The same thing is the case with resources you gather from defeated enemies, which are necessary for side quests and buying upgraded gear. Your party has limited inventory space, so you’ll be walking back to the hub world to off load this pretty regularly.

The dungeon layouts and their gimmicks can be quite convoluted and generally very challenging as well. There’s a nice balance in regards to this for most of the dungeons. To progress you’ll be made to backtrack several times through the dungeons - hitting switches and writing down codes to solve puzzles and also gathering items for quests. What I mean to say is - there’s a lot of walking. This would be fine but the limited resources of your party in combination with the games VERY high encounter rate causes you to move through dungeons at a glacial pace. This game is almost all dungeon crawling, and it can easily take around 100 hours to beat on your first run if you’re trying to do all the side quests and see all the related scenes of dialogue.

So the dungeons have a lot of problems but they can still be somewhat enjoyable. That is, excluding the 4th dungeon, which is probably one of the worst dungeons I’ve ever played in a MegaTen game. The puzzles in this dungeon are incredibly complicated and require an ungodly amount of backtracking. If the pace of the other dungeons felt glacial this one feels positively sisyphean. If you look on forums you’ll see countless people talking about how despite already being 60 hours into PQ they dropped the game at this dungeon because it was just that painful. The only MegaTen dungeons that compare in terms of pure frustration and boredom are probably the world of sloth from SMT IF and the bonus dungeon from Strange Journey Redux.

As a big persona fan this game definitely charmed me, which was enough for me to forgive the immense amount of BS it throws at the player. Not everyone will be like this though, so this is a hard game to recommend. I would only recommend it if you’re a die hard persona fan that has a lot of patience, a big fan of complicated and lengthy dungeon crawling, or a combination of the two. For everyone else I’d recommend you stay away. Don’t be fooled by the chibi art style - Persona Q will kick your shit in if you’re not prepared.

Addendum: If you’re trying to decide whether to play this or Persona Q2, they’re mechanically very similar. PQ2 however, eliminates a lot of the bullshit from PQ. Resource management is easier and there’s less backtracking, which makes the game feel a lot less tedious than PQ. Character interactions in both games are enjoyable IMO. PQ2 is definitely the better game, but I find all the bullshit present in PQ kind of charming for some reason. So if you’re a normal well-adjusted person I’d definitely recommend choosing PQ2 over this. If you’re a bit of a gaming masochist like me and you actually kind of enjoy having to struggle against a game’s design to get through it PQ offers a memorable and at times interestingly weird experience.

Cultural Impact:

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  Kanji in Persona Q saying      The rest of the game
                     "I have the most girl
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This is a weird one to rate because on the one hand, 3/4s of the game is repetitive dungeon crawling with mid battling and little to no story. However, I played the P3 route, in this route the P3 gang get way more development as a group, not only this but the last 1/4 of the game actually has a mindblowing twist and hits very hard personally. Also the voice acting, music and graphics (for the 3DS) is pretty superb, and Zen and Rei are some of my favourite Persona characters. So despite these issues, I'm still really happy I played this to be honest, it's inconsistency reminds me of Persona 3 giving it a lob sided feel to the game, but like Persona 3 the last bit of the game does justify the game for me.

It’s fine. It drags, and a lot of the characterization is so bad that it ruins the whole hook regarding the P3 and P4 characters interacting, but it’s fine. I like the gameplay loop. I think that drawing out the maps was fun. I remember really liking the final boss, as gimmicky as it was and as much of a chore the boss that precedes it is. Otherwise, I don’t have a whole lot to say besides that it’s as tasteless as Persona usually is and that the original characters/story are unsurprisingly underwhelming.