I am currently somewhere between a third and halfway through Tales of Graces f and I am getting pretty frustrated with it. It really isn’t due to any fault in the game, it is just not the game I wanted it to be when I started playing. My growing dislike of Tales of Graces f is really not fair to the game, which isn’t really that bad.

JRPGs are kind of my thing. That is my go to genre; JRPGs are my comfort food. Especially games on the SNES and PS1. That is not to say that I like all of them or that I don’t like any from earlier or later console generations. There is just something soothing about the often cliché stories and exploring the worlds of those games. For the last few months, I really haven’t played any of those kinds of games. The closest I’ve dug into is Persona Q which, while enjoyable, is really not the same thing. The thing is, as much as I wanted it to be, Tales of Graces f really isn’t either. What I really wanted was a game with a big world map to explore, something to give a real sense of another world. I want to explore, or at least to appear to explore, some fantasy world. Tales of Graces f doesn’t provide that in any meaningful way.

Wanting that from the game is not outrageous; it is something that all the other Tales of games that I have played have provided. The first I played was Tales of Symphonia, which is exactly the sort of game I was looking for. It has a massive over world to mess around in and one of the most pleasant, dopiest stories I can recall seeing in a game. The next two games in the series I played, Tales of the Abyss and Tales of Legendia, flubbed at least one of those things, but how much I enjoyed Symphonia made me eager to give the series yet another shot.

At first, Tales of Graces f seemed to be all that I wanted. The party the game shoves at the player are a largely enjoyable arrangement of anime tropes and the first glimpses of the world have the comfortable familiarity of well-worn fantasy tropes. It soon became apparent that the game wasn’t really what I wanted. Tales of Graces follows the Final Fantasy X school of game design. There is no big world to explore; it is all corridor-like paths leading from town to town. You follow those paths and go through the game’s story. While eventually you can go pretty much wherever you want, the game never really stops funneling the player down those paths. It is a style of game that can work. I really like FFX. But it isn’t really what I wanted. In older games the ability to explore is mostly an illusion. While the player can theoretically go anywhere, the world map tends to restrain the player into the places it wants them to be. However, that illusion is important. The second layer of abstraction, the different scale used for the world map than the towns, can make the world feel less real, but making it all one scale but hemming in the player everywhere makes it feel small. (Some games, like Dragon Quest 8 and Final Fantasy XII manage to have both) Without that exploring, the game becomes just story and battles. Tales of Graces’ story is not strong enough to hold my interest on its own and the battle system, at least so far, has not really required any mastery.

The battle system is the game’s strongest feature. They are fast and action while still allowing the player to do a lot of strategizing. The problem with it, so far at least, is that it tends to be really easy. Most battles are over in a matter of seconds and the biggest worry is using specific skills to unlock new titles, which is how this game manages customization. The game hasn’t really required me to really care how it works. It isn’t helped by the story bogging the game down early. The player spends most of their time running back and forth through the same paths, fighting the same enemies. While the player gets stronger, the enemies don’t, meaning that the already brainless battles become even easier.

Honestly, though, the game’s biggest problem is that I am not 14 anymore. When I was a youngster, playing through games like FFVI, Chrono Trigger and Skies of Arcadia, among many others, were brand new experiences. Each game brought something new to the table. The clichés didn’t seem as clichéd to me, having not experienced them as often. What was once enjoyable goofy to me now just seems dumb. I think even then I might have rolled my eyes at basing a large part of the plot on a “friendship pact” or taking 5 minutes to painstakingly explain the concept of amnesia, but I find that barely tolerable these days. Of course, it is incredibly unfair of me to hold that against the game. Recognizing that doesn’t make me like the game any more than I do, unfortunately.

I found Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate to be something of a revelation. The series had intrigued me, but I had never encountered it on the right system so I had never played it. I let myself be talked, thanks to word of mouth and a nice deal Capcom set up, into buying both the 3DS and WiiU versions of the game. (Actually, I did pick it up for Wii as Monster Hunter Tri just a few weeks before the 3DS and WiiU versions were announced, so I’ve never actually played that version) As much as I ended up enjoying MH3U, my save file has somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 hours on it, I wasn’t too happy with that choice. Almost all of my time with the game was spent with the WiiU version, the one with online multiplayer and able to be played on the big screen so as to enjoy the spectacle of the monsters. The 3DS version simply felt cramped in all respects.

Thanks to my experiences with that game I was a little hesitant about jumping on Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. It looked good, but I really didn’t enjoy my previous 3DS monster hunting. Now I’ve had MH4U for the better part of a month and I am very happy with my purchase. MH3U is the rough draft of a great game; MH4U is the final draft of that great game. It is a masterpiece. There are tons of ways it is a better game. Part of it is because I am now playing this on a 3DS XL. It is likely even better on the NEW 3DS XL, but I am not in a position to drop the money on that. Another reason is that this game is designed from the ground up for the 3DS. MH3U was a Wii game crammed onto inferior hardware. The 3DS is capable of ports from that system, but not without compromises. The upcoming Xenoblade port requires the extra processing power of the NEW 3DS. While the game played alright, it wasn’t quite right. While MH4U isn’t a big leap in graphical quality, being designed for the system it does more with the power that the 3DS has to offer. It is not a great a change, but a noticeable one. Also, this game adds online on the 3DS.

The one biggest way that the game improves on all versions of its predecessor is that it gets rid of swimming. Swimming was a decent idea and does have some fun battles that make use of it. I do find that I miss the Lagiacrus. However, the controls in the water, especially on the 3DS without a second stick, are frustrating. It made an already cumbersome game downright unwieldy. Honestly, even on the WiiU I found myself putting off missions with swimming as long as possible. Without the swimming, MH4U becomes all the more playable. It’s disappearance from this game is no loss.

Despite losing those aquatic monsters, MH4U has a much better and more varied stable of monsters to hunt. It is not just dragons and dinosaurs; MH4U also has giant bugs, massive apes and even a monstrous hermit crab. On top of the variety being better, there are also simply more monsters, jumping from somewhere around 75 to closer to 90. Not all of them are great, but there are tons of fun fights to be had. Since 3 was the only game in the series I’ve played to this point, I don’t know which monsters a new and which ones just missed the last game.

The quest structure is also improved, with fewer required trivial missions, like tracking down mushrooms or gathering honey. They are still there, but they are mostly optional. It also does a better job of doling out new monsters to fight. More beasts are available in Low Rank, though plenty are still held out until the player reaches High. Rare is the time that the game doesn’t have a new monster available to fight. It also adds some mission to help people trying to grind drops from specific monsters with Hunt-a-thon quest, where the player hunts one monster over and over until time runs out. It is also quicker to give mix and match quests to hunt two different monsters. In all, the quests are just much better balanced.

Monster Hunter is an odd duck of a series. It has an odd mix of realism and video game logic. The quests and areas are all very video game like, but it also makes the player hunt down ingredients and cook their own food. The way it makes players track how they are wearing down the monsters during a fight, watching for signs of tiredness or rage, seems kind of realistic, but the carving and building armor is very video game. It is an action RPG that is simultaneously all about getting better stats and being very skilled at playing the game. It has a little bit of everything.

The cherry on top of the delicious sundae that is Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is how charming the localization is. This game puts the player with a caravan traveling across the world, in each stop the monsters the player hunts helps improve the caravan’s services and mode of transportation. Sometimes new characters join up until you finally reach your destination. The player’s fellow caravaneers are a lively bunch. Watch any of the games enjoyable but highly unnecessary CGI movies will help set the tone. The Guildmarm, the woman who tracks the player’s quests, is delightfully daffy. The blacksmith, named simply The Man, is great in his quiet competence, as is the cook with his incompetence. It is just a fun crew that makes great use of the little dialogue there is to be enjoyable.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is just an excellent game. The joys of fighting and crafting just never end. This game keeps trickling out the rewards and new experiences over what will surely be hundreds of hours.

I finished up a few short games in February, and one big one. Most of my gaming time was spent with Mario and Luigi Dream Team right up until I got Monster Hunter 4, then that was all I had time for.

Beaten

Gunman Clive 2 – The first Gunman Clive was an amazing surprise. It had a really low price point, but it played like a love letter to NES action game, like Mega Man with a muted color palate. This game expands everything, especially the colors. There are some rough spots, like the flying and horse riding portions, but for the most part it is just more of the same goodness from the first one. This is just a really great little action game. It doesn’t try to do too much or go on too long, it is just a perfectly sized romp. Buy it if you have a 3DS.

Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty – This is a pretty DLC campaign for Ratchet and Clank. It is just a small version of the real games. Everything you want from the series is here, but there is just very little of it. Only a few areas and a small handful of weapons. Still, it is a lot of fun. There really isn’t a lot here, but is perfectly fun. The biggest change with it is that Clank doesn’t appear until the very end to set up R&C A Crack in Time.

Star Fox 64 3D – Thank you Club Nintendo for handing me this remake of a classic. It is slightly improved from the 64 version and now portable. I don’t know that I would pay full price for it, but if you can get it cheap, or free, it is completely worth it. It has gotten me somewhat excited for the upcoming WiiU game. I remember why, at one point, I was really excited for new Star Fox games. Of course, three straight disappointing games kind of killed that. But maybe, if it can be a little more like this I can love the series again.

Chariot – When I first started this game, I was delighted. It is a simple physics based platformer about a princess pulling her father’s coffin through the Royal Sepulcher to find the perfect resting place, being hounded constantly by her father’s ghost. For the most part it is wonderful. You push and pull the coffin through twisting caverns, using a rope to pull it places you couldn’t normally get it. After a few stages the troubles start to show. One big trouble really. Each world gives a new challenge, from icy platforms to pools of lava to ghostly barriers that won’t let the coffin through. Each of these are nice twists on the initial obstacles. The trouble comes from the sheer length of the stages. Each stage takes 25 to 40 minutes to complete. It is simply too long; by the time you reach the end of a stage the game has worn down all the joy anyone might have found in it. I almost had to take a day off or so in between each stage to cool down. Shorten each of those stages by about 25% and the game would be about twice as good. I still really liked it, the game itself is good, but those really long stages are just killers.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword – see here.

Dragon Age 2 – see here.

Ongoing

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate – The changes from Monster Hunter 3 to Monster Hunter 4 aren’t that great, but they make the experience just a little smoother. I’ve already had more fun with the 3DS version of this game than I did with the previous one. The biggest change is getting rid of swimming and there is no downside to that. Swimming sucked and was the worst part of the previous game.

Mario and Luigi: Dream Team – As much as I like this game, it seems like I play it forever and never make any progress. I am almost 30 hours into this game and would guess that I am somewhere between halfway and two thirds the way through. Mario RPGs tend to work best when clocking in somewhere between 20-25 hours. This game is already past that and doesn’t seem like it is coming to an end anytime soon. It feels like too much of a good thing.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment – This has been some really slow going. I like the game, but Monster Hunter 4 stole most of my portable gaming time and I’ve kind of lost my place here. In a couple of weeks I’ll get frustrated with MH4U and this is what I’ll turn to.

HarmoKnight – I don’t have rhythm, which makes playing rhythm games rather frustrating. This game is super charming, but I am terrible at it.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis – I’m still not sure that I’m a fan of adventure games. I never seem to have as much fun playing them as I remember the games being once I’m finished. There always seems to be a disconnect between what I want the game to do and what I am actually telling it to do. For example, there is a point early on when Indy has to melt a wax statue in a furnace. I figured out what I needed to do quickly, but it took me a long time to realize I missed a step. I couldn’t but the statue in the furnace because I hadn’t opened the furnace. Indy was just sitting there jamming the statue into the furnace door.

Upcoming

Ratchet and Clank: Into the Nexus – Quest for Booty was just a tantalizing taste of the full course of a R&C game. Into the Nexus is that last one I have left to play and it feels like time to finally get to it.

Mario vs Donkey Kong – I’ll likely pick this up for the WiiU when it finally releases. The Mario vs Donkey Kong games have the problem of not actually being much like Donkey Kong ’94, despite kind of looking like it. Still, once that disappointment is gotten over, the games are generally pretty fun. I am trying to keep to a fairly restrictive gaming budget this year, so I am having to ration my purchases pretty tightly. So no Majora’s Mask and maybe no Codename STEAM. But this likely budget priced game is right up my alley.

Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic – I guess I’m playing all of Bioware’s games this year. I’ve played through Baldur’s Gate, then instead of taking a break from them like I intended, I sort of randomly picked up and started playing Dragon Age 2.

Possibly the third worst problem with video games, besides the vile adherents to a certain hashtag and the constant shuttering of mid-range developers, is the constant cycle to hype, blacklash and disappearance that games go through. Before they are released, most games are hyped to all hell, even those that have no business generating such excitement. It is expertly manufactured, but false anyway. After their release, games tend to be broke down. Maybe they didn’t live up to that prerelease hype; that certainly happens. Just as often, the tearing down is done by the developers themselves once they start the process of hyping their next game. A couple of years after their release most games then lie forgotten, never entering into current discussions. A select few retain some mind share, the rare few the combination of popular, profitable and good enough to leave their mark on the landscape, are constant used as benchmarks to compare everything else to. It is strange. I can’t think if any books being sold by putting down the ones that came before it. Movies sometimes pride themselves on being bigger and better than the previous one, but usually tacitly selling the notion that the previous film was already very good. Only video games try to show their worth by detailing how their predecessors were crap. It boils down to the video game industry’s focus on the now, or maybe on the near future. No one seems interested in what came before, only in what is coming next.

I am increasingly less concerned with what is coming next, because so little of what gets covered interests me at all. What are the big games expected this fall? The only ones I know of are Legend of Zelda for WiiU and I have an outside hope of seeing Persona 5, both of which I wouldn’t be surprised to see slip into next year. There are other games, yes, but I have yet to see a game that makes me want to drop any amount of money on a PS4 or XBone and it seems more likely every day that there won’t be any. (I’ll want to play FFXV eventually) And every day I am more okay with that. Despite lackluster sales, the WiiU is kicking a whole lot of ass in terms of games. Anything else I could theoretically get on my PC. When nothing being hyped is at all interesting to me it becomes all the easier to just check out. Honestly, this isn’t a new thing for me. I was pretty current for a lot of the PS2 generation, but the most recent generation was too expensive for me to hop on right away. I was still at least somewhat checked in at that point; I actually did want the games coming out. I looked with longing with at pictures of The Last Remnant, Valkyria Chronicles or Metal Gear Solid 4, but satisfied myself with Mario Galaxy and Etrian Odyssey.

Now that I am playing a lot of PS3 games, I am finding that my experience with them does not match their reputation. Disconnected from the hype that preceded their release, I’m not comparing the game to what was promised before it came out. There is just the game. Did Final Fantasy XIII have a highly trouble development cycle and come out as something of a mess? Yes, yes it did. But playing it years later I wasn’t judging it against what I expected it to be. I find I have a lot better experience with games without expectations.

Recently, I’ve been playing Dragon Age 2. I had planned to take a break from Bioware games after finishing Baldur’s Gate, but when I fired up my PS3, for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to start back with Yakuza 4. Instead, I pulled DA2 off the shelf, actually thinking it was the first but not realizing my brother had taken it. It is certainly a Bioware game. My first thoughts were that games have come a long way aurally and visually since Bladur’s Gate, but they haven’t done much on the gameplay side. Look at how far we’ve stayed. The more I played, the more the game’s specific faults and strengths were apparent.

Dragon Age 2 is a small game. There is no getting around that. It isn’t short; I’m nearing the end and likely nearing thirty hours played. It would take at least one more play through to see the bulk of what the game has to offer. But it is small, just one not especially large town and a handful of repeated dungeons to quest in. It is also a good looking game. That likely has to do with how small it is. The game can look good when it only has to render so much.

The game’s biggest problem is that every quest essentially ends the same way. The player can make decisions, but the end result is the same: a fight. Nine times out of ten, no matter what choices you make during a quest you are still going to have to fight the same battle at the end of it. The big conflict in Kirkwall is the tension between the Templars and the Mages. The game is constantly coming back to that conflict and forcing the player to choose a side, but in the short term the choice don’t matter, because the quests tend to play out the same whether you back the Templars or the Mages. Really, the gameplay is mostly just a simplified version of what was found in Baldur’s Gate. There is a clear line from that first game, to Knights of the Old Republic to this. This plays like Baldur’s Gate designed to be played with a controller instead of a keyboard. In practice, it works out like a slightly inferior version of what was found in Final Fantasy XII.

Really, it does a lot of good things on the story telling side, ludonarrative dissonance aside. It sets up a take within a tale, removing the player another step back from the action. You are not necessarily playing the through the events of the game, you are playing though dwarven rascal Varric’s version of what happened. The player makes the choices, but there is another level of separation between the player and the protagonist. It is not the protagonist telling their own story. This is all second hand. Honestly, while there are some foibles, the story is rock solid, one extraordinary individual’s rise from disaster to greatness. Sure, the limpness of The Champion’s family members is a disappointment, but the character the game lets you build and his or her companions are quite good. My character, a female rouge, sided strongly with the Mages, backing her sister at every opportunity. She forged a strong connection with the wayward young elf mage Merrill, especially after her sister was taken to join the circle, fell in love with fellow rogue Isabel and even formed a mutual respect Aveline, the straight-laced guard captain.

Dragon Age 2 is an interesting game. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, because its reputation is that it was something of a mess. It isn’t as epic as other Bioware games, but in place of that epicness the game has an intimacy. This is a small story, and it mostly makes good use of it limited scope.  The only big fly in the ointment there is that movement through the town is not seemless, instead kicking the player back out to a map, making the already small world seem less real. The meta-fictional aspect of it all being Varric’s tale he is telling is really neat in theory, but I don’t think it is used as well as it could be. The game doesn’t make quite enough use of the unreliable narrator. Honestly, I liked the how small the game was, it really kept things focused. It isn’t the bloated mess that many western RPGs turn out to be.  My opinion seems to be opposed to many people who played the game when it was new, when its size was in direct contrast to its more loved predecessor. Removed from prerelease expectation, I have found it to be a fun experience.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword currently holds that place in the series of disappointing recent game. Every game that has come out since Ocarina of Time has been there at one point or another and the only one likely to avoid it is A Link Between Worlds, unless there is a sudden flood of backlash for it being too like A Link to the Past, a truly crazy complaint. Playing it recently and thinking about in the context of the rest of the series, maybe Skyward Sword does deserve to be where it is. Wind Waker didn’t when it was hated for its beautiful cartoony graphics. Twilight Princess didn’t when it was hated for being too like Ocarina and having half-baked Wii remote waggle features. But Skyward Sword kind of does. That is not to say that I think Skyward Sword is a bad game, though I know many who would make that argument. I actually enjoy it more than the majority of the series 3D entries and more than all but one of the handheld games. However, looking strictly at how Skyward Sword plays it is hard to get around that fact that while it may be a very good game, it is not a very good Zelda game.

Skyward Sword undoubtedly does some things badly or perhaps more accurately doesn’t do them at all. Unlike most of the rest of the series, Skyward Sword’s world is not connected. There is the Sky, where Link lives. It covers the whole of the area, but it is also completely separate from the rest of the game. Then there are the three areas beneath the clouds, which are again completely separate zones. In practice, this isn’t much different from most of the 3D Zeldas. Most of those games’ areas are discreet from each other as well. They, though, have the illusion of being connected. The hub of Hyrule field in Ocarina of Time really helps make the rest of the world feel as though it is all one place, but really it is not much more connected than Skyward’s Sword over world. That illusion, though, matters. That the world of Ocarina feels whole matters, as does the fact that Skyward Sword’s doesn’t.

It is also stiflingly linear. It is a timid game, afraid that the player will go the wrong way or get lost and is absolutely desperate to prevent that. That is how the game ends up with Fi, a good idea of a character that is completely tiresome in practice. She constantly interrupts play to remind players of every simple thing. Constant, unhelpful interruptions. The one time that the game allows the player to choose their path it is hampered by the only game breaking bug in a Nintendo game that I can recall. Linearity is not itself a bad thing, but it flies in the face of pretty much every other game in the series.

Those are problems, especially for a Zelda game. Fortunately, the game does pretty much everything else excellently. Skyloft, Link and Zelda’s floating home, is the most alive Zelda town in the series to date. It is not a particularly big town, but the characters are all pretty well drawn. Zelda side characters vary from fun but underutilized to horrifying monstrosities, but the residents of Skyloft manage to avoid those pitfalls. They can certainly be weird, it wouldn’t be Zelda if they weren’t, but almost all of them have little quests that fill out their characters. The supporting character highlight is Groose, the single best such character in the series. Yes, better than Midna or Impa or King of Red Lions. Groose is amazing. NAd while he initially feels like a villain, he actually goes through some true character growth by the end of the game. All around, Skyward Sword has the best storytelling in the series. Maybe it is because Twilight Princess, which also had a cinematic feel, hewed so closely to Zelda traditions while Skyward Sword is something more original. While it feels less real than most worlds in the series, Skyloft does feel more alive; it is a strange combination.

The dungeons are excellent as well. That is the part of the game where Fi actually shuts up, not constantly reminding players of their goals or repeating instructions on how to use the delving skill. The dungeons are both inventive and really well designed. They are generally challenging, even the first one is no cakewalk. What really adds to the great dungeons are the dense outside areas. The almost feel like dungeons themselves. Of course, that creates its own problem. It all the areas are like dungeons then the whole game is work. There are no cushy areas to just charge through, ignoring your surroundings. Every step through the world is a fight. It is often fun, but it can be tiresome. It throws off the rhythm of the game. Instead of more adventurey areas followed by intense dungeons, it is all intensity. The outside areas are more adventurey, but they are still difficult. I can’t say any part of the game is a breeze.

The biggest reason for that is the game’s crowning, though often derided, achievement: the sword fighting. It is not quite perfect; there are some kinks in the system. For the most part, however, it works wonderfully if the player takes the time to learn how it works. Flailing quickly and wildly about the screen is not the answer. The combat is more deliberately paced. You must read the opponents cues, much like something out of Punch Out!!, and attack at the open areas. Every enemy is now an obstacle, not something that a quick flick of Link’s sword can eliminate. Again, it makes even the easier areas a bit of a chore at times, but the when facing one of the more in depth fights, like those with Ghirahim, the sword fighting absolutely sings. It makes the game.

I haven’t yet mentioned the graphics and sound, which are amazing. There are lots of alternate uses for items, including fun stuff like bomb bowling. The upgrade system is not exactly an achievement, but it is inessential and harmless. The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword does a lot of things well, but those are not things that the series traditionally focuses on. It is just a kind of weird game. The freedom of exploration or at least the illusion of freedom, which best games in the series excel at, is not a part of this game. It is a fairly linear string of puzzles and dungeons to clear. Skyward Sword is a great game; I can say that without reservation. But it really isn’t a good Zelda game. It feels like a strange offshoot, not a main entry. Maybe it is a misstep for the series, but it is still an excellent game in its own right.

I played a lot of Smash Brothers and a lot of Persona Q during December and that is about it.  I did get a couple of game for Christmas, and there are several on my backlog that I am going to get to in the new year.

Beaten

Smash Bros WiiU – still great fun, still can’t stop playing it.

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker –

wrote about it here.  Really, really great game.

Ongoing

Okami HD –

I didn’t make as much progress on this as I’d hoped; I only played it for a few hours.  I’ve really just opened up Shinshu field.  I love this game so much.  It is absolutely a favorite of mine.

Stealth Inc 2 – I downloaded this on a whim and in a desire to get to my next bonus with Nintendo’s Digital Deluxe promotion.  The first half is a pretty delightful puzzle platformer.

Suikoden – another game I didn’t play quite as much as I intended to.  I played through until I got my castle, but I was sidetracked by Persona Q.  This is a small, simple game, but it has so much charm that it is easy to love.

Theatrhythm Curtain Call –

a Christmas gift from my cousin.  I’ve only played through a small selection of songs, but it is more of everything I loved about the first game.  Once I finish Persona Q I’ll dig back into this.

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth – a pretty excellent melding of Etrian Odyssey and Persona, but I don’t think it works quite as well as either of the parent series.  Still, it is a near thing.  I’ve put 60 plus hours into this and enjoyed nearly all of them.

Upcoming

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax – I got this for Christmas, but haven’t had the chance to crack it open.  I will soon.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword – I finally rescued this from my brother and can get to finishing up my Zelda series replay.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment – One of my goals for this year is to get to all of the various Shin Megami Tensei game’s I’ve bought and haven’t beaten.  After how much I loved Innocent Sin, I but this one first on the list.