For one, it's quite bright and flashy with that "pop culture" feel to it. The music of SMT games have always been good. This is no different. Lot's of "pop" songs, probably translated from the Japanese versions. I'd prefer if they had left the songs alone and just translated the dialogues though.
It uses mainly bright colours for most of the menu stuff and doesn't have the gloom that seems to be a trademark of SMT games. I'm not sure if it's a specialty of the Persona spinoffs, but it doesn't make it look bad at all.
The monsters are different too. Instead of recruiting monsters or turning into them, Persona 4 turns the concept of the player's monsters into masks, aka "Personas". Every character has his own Persona except the protagonist who can change his Personas. Each persona has different stats and abilities which they use to fight monsters.
Monsters are separate creatures from the Personas. Personas are mostly recycled monsters from other SMT games (all SMT share a large "core" group of monsters) while the monsters they fight in P4 are new ones.
Also reused is the idea of having an extra turn when I hit the monster with an an attack that it is weak at. The monsters also get an extra turn when they exploit my weakness, but they don't have the intelligence to keep spamming attacks that my Personas are weak at. This does add an extra bit of strategy in the gameplay.
This isn't all though. This game is more than just level up and fight monsters and watch the story unfold. Social life is an important aspect of the game. Each friend you make with add a Social Link to this type of Persona he/she is. This is basically a bond of friendship, so the friendlier you are to the person, the higher the level of Social Link to that type of Persona.
Each level of SL gives you an additional exp bonus when you create a Persona of that type. However, it will take time to build a strong bond or have many friends. In addition, time is limited. To build bonds, the player has to go out with friends, join school clubs and join their practices and say the right things during conversations.
There are many other details but I'll just summarize that the game is a hybrid of the Japanese standard RPG and the Sims. And also has many anime CG movies so the game is pretty much an interactive anime movie.
Lastly, I'm playing on Expert mode, the hardest difficulty available. I had no idea it would be this hard. I died more over 6 times in just 6 hours of gameplay. Mostly because I underestimated the monsters/bosses.
The high difficulty is a slight turnoff (my fault :P) but the game itself is very good.
Greece, a boring land with an exciting history, now turned exciting again. Anarchy is rampant, with mad riots sparked by the death of a boy at the hands of a police officer. Though it wasn't the main cause of this chaos, it was the last straw that broke the camel's back. Poor economy and stuff has had the people frustrated a long time, kept bottled up until something dramatic happened. Now it has, so voila!
I'm beginning to see a pattern. People start out in an anarchic state, then saw the power of unity and all that they can achieve with that power. So they come together under one authority and become one for a while. Then the people at the top saw that certain things have to be suppressed to maintain the order. Enforced peace.
People chafe under the enforcement. After some time, they forget what it was like to live in anarchy, what they had become united for. All they can see is the surpression and what freedom they had lost. So they get angry. The unhappy sentiments build up. Sometimes it gets relieved, sometimes not. Until one day when it reaches a certain level and everything explodes like a champagne bottle shaken really hard.
Pop!
Watched V for Vendetta, the movie. It did try to follow most of the major plot elements but the end was a slight disappointment. I expected to see the train decorate beautifully like the one in the comic. I also wanted to see Natalie Portman becoming the new V and speaking to the masses.
Unfortunately, all these was cut from the script. Instead, V dies and it ended that way. I was glad that at least they didn't reveal V's face. That would have been a major turnoff.
All in all, it was a pretty nice movie if you had read the comic. Else many things may not make sense. Also, the atmosphere is very different in the movie. Not as dark and evil as the comic.
Just found a picture of how they eat fetuses in China. This picture shows a bowl of dark (likely herbal) soup with the fetus floating on it. Wondering if I should post it in my blog. On one hand, it's pretty enlightening; on the other hand, it may make you puke. On an unrelated note, here's the creepiest Spongebob I've ever seen.
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