Pie Response

Alrighty then… No idea how long this will be, so here goes.

I’m glad you enjoyed the game. I think there’s a certain lethargy that goes from feeling like you’re playing a game because of an obligation or blind devotion to a series or franchise and being shocked at how much you enjoyed it (Had this exact experience twice this year with Breath of the Wild and Tales of Berseria. Both games I absolutely adore now after feeling completely turned off by everything I’d heard on them before actually getting to play them on release.)

I’ll state for the record that I can’t call Persona 4 or any Persona game my favorite of all time, which might be shocking to a lot of people. I think the series’ structure leads to very unbalanced pacing, even in a casual setting, where it genuinely feels like you’re playing one game for 5 hours (social elements) and another for 2-3 (dungeon crawling), and optimally played, they mix so little that if you really wanted to see one or the other more often, you’re kinda SOL until the next opportunity to mix it up. There’s also game design decisions that I don’t necessarily like (weapons strength level, exp scaling in every non Persona 4 Golden game… etc).

I will say that, unironically, Persona 4 has been probably the single most influential video game I’ve ever played. Discovering Persona 4 a long time ago through a lets play (that I only watched through the first dungeon) led to playing Persona 3 Portable. Which led to Catherine. Which led to Persona 4 Arena, which led to playing Smash 4 at a decently solid level. I can probably continue if I wanted to but I think this gets the point across. Persona 4 has led to something of an identity online, has led to meeting dozens of amazing friends. It’s sparked passions that I wouldn’t have otherwise and I’m extremely grateful I had a chance to play it.

Reading your pastebin has reminded me of a lot of thoughts I had while playing Persona 5 and how I constantly felt while playing through it that it had a message for me in particular and that I should act on it. I’ve taken risks since and even though I’ve hit some setbacks, it’s good to see that someone felt similarly inspired by a game in a series I love this much and it genuinely gives me a lot of encouragement and faith that I can keep working at this, bit by bit.

Anyway I’m rambling and probably talked about myself more than you cared for. As little as I knew you before (I think a like… 2 minute conversation at SGDQ 2016 was about as much interaction as we had had), seeing you happy at SGDQ was awesome and I hope to see that continue well into the future.