Pre-Winter Brawl + Persona 4

Still need to learn combos nuoooooooo

So, I've been lazy with my blog and missed another week =__=  Maybe one day I can actually update my blog on a regular basis like I say I will rather than just haphazardly updating when I feel like it.  So there's now only a couple days before Winter Brawl.  Unfortunately for me, I haven't got as much practice in any of the games that I want to play.  With Blazblue CS2 Extend out now, Bang has a few combos to learn along which I unfortunately haven't gotten enough time in training mode.  While we're at it, Melty Blood is another game that I didn't get to practice as much as I wanted to.  My Satsuki is not up to par yet.  I can do combos, but my post-knockdown mixup is really bad right now.  So, there's issues that I wish I had time to iron out, but couldn't really do them due to homework and tests which is always fun.

Another thing related to Winter Brawl is that my friend and I are going to be recording matches.  This'll be the first time that we record for something actually serious so that should be pretty interesting and hopefully a good experience.

キングだ

A game that I have been playing quite a bit though is Persona 4.  Being my first game in the Megaten series, I didn't have any previous experience before going in.  I'm currently about 40 hours into it and playing hard mode.  The social link system is pretty interesting I think and forces you to try and budget your time accordingly  in order to max all your social links while increasing your stats.  The ideal way to do this would to plan it out, but I'm too lazy to do that and I kinda just go with whoever I needed to increase social links with.   Another gameplay mechanic that's unique is the knock down system.  If an enemy is hit by an element they are weak to, then you're given another turn with that character, and the enemy is knocked down.  Knocked down enemies take extra damage, and when all enemies are knocked down, you're able to perform an "All Out Attack" which you get to hit the enemies for a bunch of damage.  Unfortunately this also goes for you as well.  If an enemy hits a weakness, they are able to go once again.  This is quite unforgiving on hard mode because this can allow protagonist to die which causes a game over.  It's an interesting concept, but it's pretty annoying especially when used against you.  It aids in battle amazingly well since it can end a battle much more quickly, but it's pretty frustrating when used against you at least in hard mode. 

I really like the music of Persona 4.  It's really catchy and quite unique especially for a JRPG.  It doesn't have the epic orchestral music like Final Fantasy series or more of a classical feel of music.  I'm not too sure how to describe it, but it has much more personality to it rather than the generic score of most games.  The battle themes, both regular and boss have yet to get really annoying to me after 40 hours of gameplay.  I know for Final Fantasy games, I tend to enjoy the battle themes at first, but after listening them for the 100th time, I get annoyed by them.  

One more.

The story of Persona 4 hasn't been amazing, but at the same time, it isn't terrible.  I feel that the social links are much more interesting at least for now.  They cause character development with you as a catalyst through presenting alot of different types of problems that people have in their life.  How the characters deal with their problems and how you try and help them is the most interesting part of the story so far.  I feel I haven't gotten to the real meat of the story so far since I'm only just about to finish recruiting all my party members.  After that, I'll see how the story plays out and finalize my thoughts on Persona 4.