I give up on Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

I give up on Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth because I can’t get into it. I’ve been struggling for months, but it’s such a chore. The game itself isn’t that hard, but mentally it’s a chore and a burden.

1. Too much talking. I fast-forwarded like 15 minutes of talking and cutscenes before they even let me play. Because there are so many characters, every scene must have everyone chipping in a couple of lines, then more lines, then even more lines.

Not to mention, a lot of the conversation is about nonconsequential “comedic” stuff that I really don’t need to see when I’m trying to get my bearings in a dungeon. Like they will interrupt critical progress with a scene of someone eating cardboard. Seriously, cardboard. Like it’s supposed to be funny. And it didn’t end there but the scene dragged on even further with Akihiko and Shinji arguing about protein bars for like 5 minutes, blah blah blah “Apologize to the food!” blah blah. No Atlus, apologize to me for making such a game. I quit after that scene. I could see the writing on the wall.

2. Not only is there too much talking but also a lot of it is out of character. I really don’t remember Akihiko being such a dumb musclehead or Junpei being so childish in Persona 3, though it has been years since I last played it. All their tiny character quirks are being played up to the max so it’s more like a parody than a spin-off game. Which is okay if that’s what you were looking for, but for me it was too much “wacky anime hijinks” for my liking – and I say that as someone who likes wacky anime hijinks in moderation.

3. I was playing Shadow of the Labyrinth partly to see the P3 characters again but mostly to see if I could get into Etrian Odyssey gameplay at last. Alas, I don’t think the series is for me. The walking is slow, mapping is tedious even with the paths drawn for you, dodging F.O.E.S. is tedious and it feels like it takes forever to traverse a single floor.

4. I’m not in the mood to fiddle with personas right now. Yeah yeah I know, why play a Persona game when you don’t want to deal with personas? Well I thought I would be okay, but I’ve realized that I don’t have any energy for complicated systems these days. When you have personas, you have to get them, fuse them, level them, switch them out when they’re obsolete, carry over abilities, etc etc. It’s way too much work for me right now.

Honestly it’s not just Persona Q. I don’t think I’ll be able to play a “proper” RPG for a while. They’re all either too talky, too slow or too fiddly. I freely confess: my attention span is 0 now. All I want are quick thrills, pretty graphics and non-frustrating gameplay. I thought I could get that from action RPGs, but even stuff like the Ys games and God Eater Burst force you to spend the first hour roaming around town, talking to people, watching cutscenes. I don’t wannaaaaa.

All this to say, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is probably not a bad game. I’m just not in the mood to appreciate a game with a fiddly system and a lot of talking right now. I’ve been trying to play it for months now, but making only tiny bits of progress. It’s time to give up and move on.

Granblue Fantasy at level 180 – Still playing, but not really

The one that got away

It’s been 9 months since I did my level 175 post. Initially I was doing these update posts mainly to track my progress, but also encourage myself about how far I’d come and remind myself how far I had to go. On some level, I guess I’m also trying to leave a record for myself when Granblue Fantasy eventually goes down.

For the first two points, they don’t really apply any more because I think I’ve come far enough. There’s still a ton of things I can do to improve my grids, but as I mentioned before, as you go along, it takes more and more effort to make a small blip in your strength levels. For example my Earth party is definitely not crap any more, but it’s taken months and years of trading prestige pendants and beating Alexiel (who never, I repeat, never gave me an axe) to get to that point.

And after all the time I spent sparking and grinding up my Varuna grid, I recently learned that the Varuna meta is no longer Fimbuls but rather some other weapon I hadn’t thought about. Doesn’t matter, my current grid is good enough. And in fact, all my current grids are good enough. I don’t intend to put much effort into improving them from now on, so there’s no need to post grid updates either.

Does that mean I’m stopping Granblue Fantasy? Of course not. And I’ll thank you kindly not to bring up my dark history of trying and failing to quit this game in the past. It just means I’m going into coasting mode – in fact I’ve already been in coasting mode since the year started – where I focus on doing events as best as I can but don’t grind or actively try to get stronger. I’m also super-idly working on FLBing the eternals and unlocking new classes, but veeeery idly because I’m not going to do anything with them. Still I’m leaving the door open for Cygames to bring out some wonderful new content that sends me running back to computer day and night etc etc not holding my breath etc etc. You never know.

Achievements since my last post

-FLB’d Eahta. I mentioned I was working on Niyon earlier, but my Earth party needed more help at the time. Through the triple combo of FLB Eahta, Mahira and a better grid, I can finally do good damage to Europa and other useless Water enemies of her sort. Let’s see if I can OHKO Leviathan Omega at strike time before I brag… eh, can’t be bothered to check. Just take my word for it.

I’m working on getting Seofon as well. Wind has fallen behind a bit in my party rankings… but that’s not the reason why I want him. The real reason is because he’s my first Eternal and I’m actually very fond of him. FLB’ing Eternals is a tedious process so I might as well do it for a character I care about.

-Unlocked the Doctor and Soldier class. And maybe some other classes, but I can’t remember them. Maybe Monk? I should really level them up for the mastery bonuses but I’ll save that for the next magnafest, which should be around the corner now that Summer characters are starting to appear.

Actually, come to think of it, I have so many elixirs and berries that I don’t need to wait for magfest to grind anything. But somehow grinding at full cost feels like a rip off, and besides my mind is already attuned to playing seriously during magfest so… yeah.

-Raised total number of level 100 characters to 29. Black Knight, idolmaster water girls, Rackham, Ayer, Percival, Zeta, Tiamat, Lennah, Eahta, Io, Katalina, Mahira, De la Fille and Anila are all between 91 and 99.

-Uncapped all Seraphic weapons like I said I would. I can’t even remember if they made any difference to my strength, but I guess more stats are always welcome.

…That’s it. I may have done some other stuff but I don’t remember so that’s okay. I still need to unlock the Lumberjack, Cavalier, Monk, Nekomancer, Tormentor and Rising Force classes, but I’m too lazy to rack up Prestige pendants these days. Next magnafest, maybe. As for Arcarum, it’s too much work lately so I’ve been sitting on a full 90 tickets for a while. Meh.

Grids, grids~ Get your grids here!

Earth

It’s peforming much better now that I’ve replaced some Yggdrasil swords with Alexiel’s axes. I believe I’m also supposed to add some Alexiel swords to the mix at some point, but no rush.

Trying to get some cuties up to level 100. They have good skills…? I think? Most of the time I just auto-away.

I only recently found out that the Xeno harp can go up to level 200. That means I missed out on getting the fire Xeno scythe to level 200 as well? It looks like lv. 150 is becoming the new standard, 100 is obsolete and 200 should be aspired to.

Wind

Same as last year. I haven’t used this year’s Anniversary Ticket yet, so I idly considered getting a second Grimnir harp. Still idly considering it, maybe I will, maybe I won’t.

Still testing out different party combinations and trying to get everyone’s levels maxed out for the lulz. I have so many characters, I don’t even remember their skillsets half the time.

Bullying Vohu Manah out of revenge for all the times she bullied me. But not really because I don’t really care.

Fire

FLB’d the Ancient Ecke Sachs but haven’t gotten them up to level 150 yet. What is that gun supposed to be? Huh, I don’t remember getting that… let me check… [Beast Weapon] Summer’s Mirage? Umm, can’t remember where I got that from but it has to be good because I put it in my grid. Yeah.

Raising characters to level 100 and I believe I have Magisa for the veil? And the blind debuff, yeah. She’s a handy gS

Same old summons as always. Both Lucifer and Bahamut are almost level 200 but not quite.

Water

Old Faithful. Now with more plus marks! I do at least one 10-roll every time there’s an “all plus marks” banner. It’s an easy way of adding more stats to your party. Eventually I might start to add them to my characters as well.

No need to show my frontline party because it hasn’t changed in ages. Same with the summons.

Dark

I think I said something about changing my main weapon? Never got round to it, but I did FLB a Hermanubis for Berserker shenanigans which I also haven’t gotten round to.

The mouse, the knight and the armpit.

Light

Same as last time. I don’t have any intentions of changing it either.

My latest pulls.

They get the job done. What more do you want?

Summary

Yeah, I’m pretty done with Granblue Fantasy. But not done done, just done. I’ve accomplished enough, now it’s time to just coast and enjoy what I’ve achieved.

Other games?

As I explained in the post before this one, I’m still playing games very actively. It’s just that they’re all mobile or casual games, so I don’t have much to say about them. I have a lot of “proper” games I want to play as well – for example I recently pulled Suelle in Atelier Online and she’s cute, so I kinda want to play Atelier Lydie & Suelle – but I’m really lazy. I need to force myself to just start something, but the will is not there. So if this blog is silent, it’s for lack of new games to play, not because I’ve gone anywhere.

I’m gaming a lot lately, but…

…but they’re all browser or mobile games which I don’t have much to say about. I did start Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth and play for about an hour. It was fun enough, though I skipped about 15 minutes of talking at the start so I can’t 100% say I know what’s going on. But once that hour-long session was over, I didn’t feel like going back for more. That said, it was starting to feel pretty good around the point I quit so I’d like to finish one or two dungeons and give it a proper review in a few days’/weeks’ time.

Other stuff I’m playing:

Atelier Online: Yeah, you know it. For all my complaints, I’m still going strong. Getting an emulator was a game-changer, I tell you. I’m currently level 73, on chapter 38 out of 39 of the main story. Naturally I’m being stonewalled by yet another unfair boss who OHKOs my troops and gets three turns to every one of mine. Thus my mission now is to grind up to level 80 and strengthen my party by feeding them lots of food. I might as well do a few sidequests while I’m at it too.

Candy Crush Soda Saga: Mentioning it here because I said I would write about it when I reached level 2000, but I forgot and I’m already at 2240-ish. The update is postponed to level 2500, then.

Rakuen Seikatsu Hitsuji Mura: I posted when I started it five years ago, now I’m a few EXP away from level 50 so I’ll do a proper review on it and how it deliberately breaks the hearts of F2P players one of these days. Why do I love games that don’t love me back?

Granblue Fantasy: IIRC I said I would do the usual “state of the grid” post when I reached level 180, and that was a while ago. No rush though, because I’m going to be 180 for a while longer. I’m on a login bonus-only routine until the next magfest when I can continue FLBing Niyon and Seofon… but why? Like, what for? Honestly I’m a bit over GBF, but maybe there’s an exciting update around the corner, so you never know.

Aight, that’s what’s going on with me. See you when I see you.

Yup, power of friendship strikes again!

I mentioned in the comments on my last post that I don’t bother with JRPG stories these days because they’re all “power of friendship will save the day” or “mankind needs no gods!” in the end. Barely a day after I made that comment, Atelier Online (the useless game I said I would drop but haven’t yet) proved me right again with the usual friendship song-and-dance.

First Sorrel said “We beat you because we’re not alone!” but I didn’t get a screenshot of that.

Then Anise-Hyssop put the screws in with the classic “We have friends and you don’t!” Nyaa nyaa~

This is pretty much the same way we taunted the last boss in Tales of the Tempest, so it was really nostalgic. Teasing someone about being a friendless loser is supposed to be the reserve of the jerk jock in American teenage movies, but it’s okay when we do it, because we’re the good guys. Nyaa nyaa~

And no JRPG would be complete without the gang letting pathetic mid-bosses escape so they can come bother us again and again. Gacha games are especially cowardly because they don’t want to be too dark or controversial, plus if they manage to successfully redeem the bad guy they’ll be able to release them as a gacha character. For all those reasons and more, I didn’t take the whole “Calendula is going to kill us all” saga seriously. Even the supposed massive horde of monsters he released (or so the story tells us but we never saw them) was dealt with without anyone being seriously injured. What a sissy game.

So anyway, after we taunted him, Calendula ran away. But if/when he comes back, we shall taunt him a second time! we’ll be ready to beat him again because we still have friends and he doesn’t. I didn’t say that, Angelica did:

I’ve actually fought plenty of mid-bosses who came as a team, or who were the head of an army, or of an evil gang, etc etc. Point is, good guys aren’t the only ones that can have friends, or comrades, or companions, There are bad guys out there who have friends, but hey, maybe they aren’t relying on their friends, or trusting each other, or their bonds are weak, or maybe they’re not doing it quite right. Either way it never helps them when push comes to shove, because we’re the good guys and they’re not. Nyaa nyaa~

Starting Persona Q in the next five minutes, let’s see how long it takes them to trot out the usual cliches. Look forward to it!

Nothing to update for now

There have been no updates because I am still struggling with that garbage Atelier Online game that I dropped but soon picked up again. I never knew I was such a glutton for punishment… But I have already determined not to write about it any more, so no further comments.

I will probably start Persona Q this weekend and then give my comments. I thought for sure that an SMT coating on the standard Etrian Odyssey shell would be enough to tempt me to play the series, but the more I think about it, the more reluctant I get. I don’t wanna navigate around any FOEs… <_< I’m already farming items in AO, I don’t want to forage any more…

Yah anyway, blog isn’t dead, gaming isn’t dead, I isn’t dead yet. I will post again when I have something to post again.