WhooooPersona!!!ooooo!

Spoilers through the end of July!

So last week I finally decided "screw it, who needs a car", and walked down to my local Gamestop to purchase a used PS 2 and a copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. I then carried it home in my backpack and spent a while trying to find a working TV to set up in my room to play this, as it is something I do want to play alone, without interruptions, and in my room.

And it's just as fucking awesome as I had hoped. I mean, dude, it's awesome. I've logged more than 30 hours on it in one week, and I'm worried that I'm burning through it too fast. The dungeons all seem a bit too short for my liking considering how few of them there seem to be. (You can cover one floor in a little over five minutes, and with ten floors in a dungeon, that's an hour plus the boss.) The dungeons themselves are pretty cool- Yukiko's Castle has some awesome music, as does the Bad, Bad Bathhouse (Kanji's), and Rise's is a freakin' strip joint for crying out loud! But the best has got to be the one I...was in last night....alright, I did something incredibly retarted when I was playing last night. My only excuse was it was around 2 A.M. So around 10 I sit down and start playing- I had just beaten Rise's dungeon last night (It wasn't hard when Shadow Teddie gives you that much warning on his attacks and only casts Mabufu occasionally- I was all set up with an ice-draining persona, too- gotta love a ridiculously high Priestess link, but more on that later. Should've substituted Kanji for Chie, but I like the original gang too much.), and played straight through all the stuff that happens between that and the next dungeon- finals, social links, and the ridiculous amount of stuff you have to do to find enough info for Rise on Mitsuo (creepy bastard). So I finally get into his dungeon, and it's ten kinds of awesome- it's modeled after an old 8-bit RPG! I felt like I was going on some kind of real D&D dungeon crawl, or playing Final Fantasy or something. And I get to the second floor, and let an enemy get the advantage on me. Stupidly, I had switched to a Persona weak to lighting. Mazionga. Teddie and I go down. Mazionga. Now we're dizzy. Enemy turn. Mazionga. I'm dead. And I had just switched off an item I had that would have let me survive (wasn't really thinking, there.) OK, no problem. You saved before you entered, right Rogue? Nope. I didn't. In fact, I hadn't saved once that entire session. Yeah.

But anyways, the game is still awesome. I maxed Yukiko's social link around the beginning of July. And remember how I said that I thought she looked very cute when I first mentioned the game?* Well, that stuck. It's full-blown Perverse Sexual Lust, now, and I don't find myself particularly ashamed. A girl with long, black hair and a very nice figure (OK, now I feel slightly ashamed), who is also smart, very nice, caring, and has a...well, I won't say she has an awesome sense of humor (my taste runs more towards the sarcastic), but she's not afraid to laugh. So yeah, I'd fall for her in real life in a heartbeat. The max scene features you two hanging out in your room. While the scene goes black, I don't think I succeeded in getting laid, especially considering how short a time we'd been going out (It's rank 9 in the link, 1 below max, IIRC.). Just lots of cuddling and makeouts, I suspect. But earlier you were presented with three options. Yukiko had been scrounging for conversation and the scene was getting a little awkward. Your choices: "Is the Futon good with you?" "Is the sofa good with you?" "Is the floor good with you?". Yeah. I literally sat there for a minute or two just staring at the screen saying "really? Is there any option there that wasn't made by my...0ther...head?" and dreading which one I'd actually have to pick, because dude! My character isn't like that! I went with the sofa option, hoping she'd interpret it innocently, and thank god, she did. If I was playing this for shits and giggles, I probably would have gone with one of the other two, but I'm not, so I didn't. Anyways, yeah, not going to do the dating thing with any of the other girls, since even though you can't hang out with her, you still interact a ton with Yukiko. So I'll roleplay it like she's my girlfriend (I'm particularly looking forward to the confrontation with Mitsuo, seeing as how you met him when he was asking Yukiko out out of the blue. My girlfriend! Mine!

The battle system is fun, I find, even if it's turn-based and can get a bit repetitive. And fusing personas is awesome. I just fused Yamato-no-Orochi, this giant, 8-headed snake, just because I could. Hmm. Maybe I should actually start the Moon social link even though I find Ai to be a total bitch.
*Crap, I just lost the game.