Why is Persona so overrated

I'm not referring to one specific game. I'm just interested in why the series as a whole is so overrated.

I recently played through a bunch of PS1 era RPGs again, and it reminded me of just how bad Persona games were by comparison. Character development wise, story-wise, in terms of world-building and mechanics too.

I have no idea why these games get so much unadulterated praise. Especially for narrative and characters. The character development is generic and boring, it's gamified in a really clumsy way, the character arcs are completely predictable. There's nothing in them that makes you truly empathize with your party in the same way, say, Barrett or Cid's backstories made you sympathize with them in FF7.

It's annoying because the weebsphere never tires of shitting on Final Fantasy, but even the best Persona games can't hold a candle to FF6 through to 10.

So why the overrating? My feeling is that a lot of it is down to ironic female weebs with no taste.

Why

do

you

write

like

this,

user?

They're not bad games to be honest. Their worth is just inflated because they appeal to a particular target market among people into Japanese media that has arisen over the past 10 years. The same people who love spending tons of money and time on those mobile games primarily.

And yeah. I got more into the world of Tales of Vesperia, which I played recently, than I ever did persona.

Probably because character development is basically forced and part of the story in most older JRPGs while in something like Persona it's essentially optional. And because it's optional Atlus has struggled with integrating the development those characters go through into the main story. Something even fans have been complaining about for a couple games now. Also, you only spoke about characters. The gameplay even in modern Persona isn't nearly as brain dead as it typically is in final fantasy. And I say that even with how easy 5 is on average.

Vesperia has a sense of really being on an adventure not many other JRPGs even come close to.

Real world settings are boring in general to me as I get older. I have the same feeling with GTA5. I can appreciate it is detailed as fuck and mechanically really cool, but the world itself is just one giant parody of our own, I can't take it seriously and emotionally invest myself in it as a result.

What I like about FF and other JRPGs in the same vein (think Xenoblade 1 and 2) is that they're truly fantastical and imaginative. By contrast Megaten stuff isn't really. It's just the real world with occult stuff slapped on.

kys underage undereducated piece of shit. do you even know what paragraphing for readability is?

>So why the overrating? My feeling is that a lot of it is down to ironic female weebs with no taste.
There aren't many big JRPGs anymore on home consoles so it stands out against all the Uncharteds and Call of Dutys

he is probably from reddit.

Note: Honorable exception for Digital Devil Saga, which is the only game in the megaten franchise that drew me in, in the same way FF games have drawn me in over the years.

Sonybois pretended to like it for obvious reasons, of course in reality it's shit.

>And because it's optional Atlus has struggled with integrating the development those characters go through into the main story.

I think this is a massive problem though. Gamifying the arcs of characters supposedly integral to the story is just bizarre. It comes across as incredibly stilted and meaningless, it's just broken up into these 10 neat chunks, and because they're neat they feel artificial. And to top it off, these segments of character development aren't really well written. There's very little that ever surprises you about someone, or makes you think more deeply about them, or makes you truly empathize with them.

I cared more about FF15's characters, and FF15 was a bad Final Fantasy game. That tells you something.

I love Fuuka!

This is the depth of the average Purse Owner fan, gentlemen.

this

No one plays JRPGs for gameplay. No one. And if you do you're a retard, end of discussion. JRPGs have always been played for wish fulfillment and escapism above all other reasons. The gameplay is designed to be "satisfying", not challenging in the same way a real action/adventure game is.

no one really cared about persona before p4, so you can't really say the entire series is overrated

>No one plays JRPGs for gameplay. No one
Can I quote you in the next SMT thread?

>So why the overrating? My feeling is that a lot of it is down to ironic female weebs with no taste.

Bingo. If you look it up on twitter, most of the hardcore Persona fans are girls who are desperately trying to ingratiate themselves through irony into various weeb subcultures. These people are massive hipsters too. If you look at the rest of their feed in general, they'll be the sort of person who hates anything new/western/non-niche.

Weeb girls are absolute cancer because they never grow up for some reason. They're like this well into their 20s and even 30s. Whereas most weeb guys at least get thrust head-first into reality in their 20s and have to adapt accordingly.

I attribute this to a few of them being cute enough to get away with being insufferable morons with arrested development.

>So why the overrating?
waifufags

>final fantasy
>good

SMT mainline is just as shit as Purse Owner. Deal with it. Nocturne doesn't have good gameplay.

Persona 5 has shit characters in general and the optional development just makes it worse. I’d say Persona 3 has the best characters and story out of nuPersona but someone is gonna shit on me for saying this.

Persona characters are stock anime characters (hot blooded delinquent etc), that's not necessarily a bad thing. But because they force you to work your way through the development of these fairly generic arcs, it makes it tedious. It would be like actually having to expend serious effort and concentration to watch an SoL anime. That's how it feels.

that's just Nocturne. but 4:A tho

Videogames are inherently mediocre. You just accept that part and try to find enjoyment out of the little things in life. You'll always be disappointed so either you move on to another mediocre thing or accept it for what it is.

You're really blaming them for writing teen shit? Do you not understand how the market works?

>I recently played through a bunch of PS1 era RPGs again, and it reminded me of just how bad Persona games were by comparison
Did you also play the actual good Persona games, Persona 1 and 2? Because they're world better than the modern trio. Especially Persona 2

Video games do indeed have bad writing, even when compared to airport-tier lit like Kevin Kwan. But within that spectrum Persona is certainly worse than most of the decent narrative-heavy games I've played over the past 10 years. I mean it literally feels like playing through a Scooby Doo plot. Not even joking.

I like the games for the music, and time limit. Most of it is brainless waifufaggotry though. That dancing shit is just embarrassing.

Uncharted games have better plots than Persona games though.

>comparing it to other video game writing
You lost me.

>You lost me

I'm comparing things within a particular medium. You must be pretty fucking stupid.

You are indeed. You just arbitrarily decided to place it in a box.

they haven't played a REAL shen megoomy game

>Video games
>Arbitrary

Come again?

>I'm comparing things within a box
Yes, you already told me.

What's uh.. what's goin on here?

I prefer Persona`s story and complete package but SMT has better gameplay and themes.

I recognize that the stories and characters in persona games are weaker than in other jrpgs
However at least for me, I really enjoy the daily life rpg/vn format and in P3 and P4 I cried at end because I legitimately felt intimacy with the characters.

>SMT has better gameplay
This is the most important thing in a video game. Gameplay.

Who the fuck gave a shit about cid?
I don't know anything about him except that he wants to build a rocket or whatever

loli time

I disagree. I've read garbage romance shlock and there's quite a lot of video game written better. Persona would be one of them if there was less dialogues about nothing.

I think SMT has the better story although I didn't play the 3 first one.

The characters are just as basic but when they start talking it's usually more important than what the characters in persona says. Characters in SMT serves the plot and the atmospheres, anf that's pretty well done.

Persona also has nothing on the sick demon banters in 4 and 4A

When will this meme end? JRPGs have NEVER had good writing. Even western RPGs, where story is often a completely afterthought, completely shit on them in terms of narrative.

Persona isn't even that popular, the best selling one only reached 2 million sales

I don't really think it's that overrated. In a world with increasingly linear JRPGs, it's nice to have games where you can pick and choose what you do with your time. Even if your choices don't change anything in the grand scheme of the game, you at least get some feeling of having control over who the protagonist is.

No, the plot isn't the greatest, and the characters aren't anything amazing, but I like them enough to enjoy the game as a whole. I do think I may have preferred 4's characters/plot to 5, but not sure if that's nostalgia talking.

>>I don't really think it's that overrated. In a world with increasingly linear JRPGs, it's nice to have games where you can pick and choose what you do with your time. Even if your choices don't change anything in the grand scheme of the game, you at least get some feeling of having control over who the protagonist is.

Wat the fuck did I just read? A game with 50+ hours of cutscenes, where you're constantly cockblocked by a cat from doing anything, is a game where you have freedom? Are you kidding me?

People keep saying this about the gameplay, but the SMTs I played are equally mediocre in dungeon design, use the same fusion system for character building, are still turn based - but with rounds instead of fixed order, which isn't an objective improvement, and 90% the same ability stockpile. You stack buffs, I guess. Big deal.

>Hurr why only compare movies to other movies, and games to other games

Yes, I already said you were a retard

>Persona
>not linear
You don't even get proper multiple endings like SMT
all of the bad endings you can get are simply determined by the choice you make in the cutscene directly before it and nothing else

Other mainstream JRPGs don't let people pretend they have friends to the same degree.

I'm convinced the silent protagonist thing is something you'd find far more support for among autists if you actually did a poll.

Give me Yuri from ToV over any of P3/P4/P5's literal faggot protagonists.

It's just a meme. Mainline SMT is just as shit.

>>You don't even get proper multiple endings like SMT

I have never understood this argument. Multiple endings don't add replayability to a game. How does a different 5 minute cutscene at the end of a 50-100+ hour game add replayability?

A game has replayability when instead of just getting a different ending, you can play the game in a different way. The original Fallout is a good example of a replyable RPG: every location in the game is accessible from the start and you can tackle everything in the game (including the final boss) with combat, stealth or diplomacy, or a combination of these. Something similar applies to the original Deus Ex, although it has a linear mission structure, its missions can be tackled in many different ways).

JRPGs virtually never have true replayability.

SMT is generally just more challenging, though Persona 3 has some of those bosses you get really fucked if you don't use specific strategies.

As for themes though it boils down to rebelling against the avatar of god it usually has more morality choices for endings which is more interesting than just bad end, good end, true end.

>don't add replayability
We're talking about linearity though
>different 5 minute cutscene at the end
That is not what SMT does with its routes

>>That is not what SMT does with its routes

Changing the endgame a bit, like having a different final boss battle, I would also count as not a particularly meaningful incentive for replayability.

>That is not what SMT does with its routes
this. it had route-exclusive side quests
aside from final bosses being different but also mid-game/climax part story objectives are vastly different too

my personal issue with it was the death status and loss of several hours of progress. I guess there's a reason people started preferring persona over smt

The strawman is strong with this one.

It's true, there's not much objectively better about mainline SMT. But I prefer the presentation much more in SMT games. The themes, pacing, aesthetics, music etc. just appeal to me more. I'm not interested in endless cutscenes with characters that dn't interest, and in fact that sort of thing is an active detriment. Just drop me in a dungeon and let me fight demons.
I think there is a gap in terms of gameplay but it's not as wide as SMTfags would like.

I guess there's no running away from the 'Save Anywhere' now that Strange Journey remake also has it

In general I agree with you.

SMT though quite often has a maingame plus endgame and your decisions then change the endgame, which can be quite a lot longer depending on what you pick because some of them are basically 'hardmode' ends with a lot of content. In so far as it works, it works because you can NG+ through the maingame fast.

>seperate paths in midgame based on choices+alignment
>route exclusive sidequests
>route exclusive dungeons containing multiple different bosses
>route exclusive demon unlocks
And this is just SMT4, I've been told 1&2 go further with this but I haven't looked into it
>replayability
I'm not talking about replayability, I'm talking about linearity

Speed-toggle and save anywhere are fine. It's just a bandaid for an actual problem though that comes from poor game design. Also I don't want to get bored. I find running around empty hallways fighting the same 10 reskins honest to fucking god insulting and a waste of time. FF7 at least had intresting design, camera-angles, graphics and enough characters to keep you interested.

>Talks about a series being overrated.
>Brings up FF7
KYS

>losing progress because you die is bad game design
ebin

What attracted me to JRPGs was the amazing locations you visit. This is something I rarely see mentioned in threads, though I do think this what people mean when they say "sense of adventure." The amount of fantastical, weird and cool variety of set pieces, cities, dungeons,etc you can go through in a single jrpg can be quite the ride.

In the Persona series, and SMT in general, there are none. Just school and a crap dungeon. SMT dungeons are just hallways, like rpg maker in 3D.

Plotwise yes it's still linear. I meant games being linear in a sense that you can't really explore or interact with the world around you as you choose to do. You're not really thrust from point A to B in Persona. There is a point B you need to get to, but you can do so whenever you feel like within like 20 days. And yes, there are far too many times where you should be able to go out but can't, and I felt they went overboard with cutscenes, but still there were a lot of times I had 15-20 days of freetime after a palace, which felt like plenty.

It's not a perfect game by any means. But it still gives you far more freedom than final fantasy X (which is mentioned in OP's post) did. I think it's on par with a lot of ps1 era jrpgs. But it's a completely different experience that just isn't for everyone.

FF7 blows any SMT and Persona game out of the water. Don't be a contrarian.

I sure do love waiting a fortnight for the game to let me continue playing it.

I disagree, the occult stuff SMT slap on is more than enough for the game to feel weird and unique.

Persona is just average super powered highschool anime.

Another strawman. Is this what you do with your free time? Just pretend?

FF7 at least innovates. I know this is a hard concept for you. But at the end of the day I prefer innovation over shallow commercial trash.

m8 take off those rose tinted glasses. FF7 can't even beat Persona 3 let alone other Megaten games like Strange Journey and Nocturne.

(continued)
An easy example of this is Xenoblade Chronicles X. Just look at it. But even jrpgs considered to be bad by Sup Forums such as Final Fantasy 8 has AMAZING locations. Just remember the places you travel to; A prison inside a giant drill, missile launch base, flying schools at war with eachother, futuristic city, OUTER SPACE, spooky castle at the end of time and so on.

Persona 3 has school, the mall, a dorm, velvet room and a tower with 250 floors that all look the same.

Bang on user.

Midgar in FF7.
Discovering Esther in FF8.
Lindblum in FF9.
Any number of locations from Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2.
The cities from Ni No Kuni.
Leaving your town in Grandia I.
The underworld in Tales of the Abyss.

etc.

Persona is garbage.

>it's another squeenix vs. fatlus episode

I felt that way with the SMT postapocalypse because they just don't integrate the cool idea into the dungeons enough. With Personas I do actually like the town stuff and getting to know a setting and NPCs over the long term. It's not fantastical, but it feels like exploring something in a sort of weeabo cultural voyeurism way

midgar in ff7 is trash

Back to the twitter "anisphere" with you, shitposting "femanon".

You weren't even alive when FF7 came out.

My nigga.

Glad to see someone else gets it.

All locations in Persona games are trash.

no argument here

Is this worth getting? The locations look more interesting than Chronicles 2.

There was no argument in the first place. If you're a post 2008 weeb who has an ironic twitter account, you'll think Persona is better than FF7. If you have taste and don't go to anime cons or cosplay, then you'll prefer FF7 (the superior game).

Deal w/ it.

imo the thing that distinguishes a great JRPG setting [FF] from a bad one [Tales] is just how many of those places you explore are the dungeons. When every battle is a step further into an exciting environment and not just lol shrine of magic gems, cave of whatever.

Neither is there an argument in calling something trash with zero elaboration on why. That's just lazy shitposting.

All the Xenoblades are worth playing. I think chance of Switch port is high.

Yeah, FF settings definitely > Tales settings. I'd agree with that. Although there are some decent Tales settings.

Shows how much of JRPG game design comes down to good art I guess.

tfw I know somebody who is exactly like this but I'm afraid to post their twitter.

>X is best girl xD
>sempai!!!!!
>lewd!!!!!

I'm saying I don't disagree. FF7 is a better game than any persona. But Midgar sucks as a tech demo.
Everything is grimy and offputting, too dark to make out any detail. The prerendered backgrounds are more appealing when you leave the city and peak at the city of the ancients.

>My feeling is that a lot of it is down to ironic female weebs with no taste.

Persona does seem to have a massive female fanbase. I know there used to be female fans of FF but they seem to have mostly evaporated, at least in the west, these days.

>there are people who think the Persona series has a good soundtrack
>there are people who think the Persona series has a better soundtrack than FF games do

They are not overrated. They deserve their popularity. P1-2 are as bad as the rest of the RPGs of that era and thus forgotten for a good reason. 3 and 5 are decent, although not comparable to the best games in the genre. 4 is a legit 8/10 game.

extreme shitposting

extreme

Again. Ironic weebs liking what they perceive as avant garde music to seem different. That's literally all it is. Meguro is a hack.

I had more fun with #FE than Persona.

The only good FF soundtracks are XII and XIII

I'd listen to "Last Surprise" 100 times before I'd listen to "Otherworld" once.

>Midgar sucks

Really? Midgar is gold, climbing the pipe, train graveyard, reactor cores. Temple of the Ancients is just some bricks and a clock.

no you didn't

Garbage. Not programmatic, not thematic, not emotional, not appropriate, inspires no feeling whatsoever. It's useless as a media composition, and mediocre in and of itself.

Nice trolling kid, but back to twitter. Don't you have a "best girl xD" post to make? Or a "sempai" t-shirt to show off?

Yeah I know, otherworld is complete and utter garbage, thanks for agreeing.

You're too familiar with Twitter culture. I suppose that's where you belong.