Princess Resurrection – Vol. 3

Once again it’s time for monster versus monster action in form of Princess Resurrection. Like previous volumes, this book contains several “stand alone”-ish chapters where Hime and comp. fight different monsters from an army of mummies to the headless rider. In the end of the book, Emil, one of Hime’s elder brothers, makes his first appearance. How this will affect the lives of the characters is yet to be seen.

The 3rd volume of Princess Resurrection is solid action manga featuring monsters from classic horror novels and movies, just like previous volumes. With the growing cast, this books suffers a little from not having enough pages for all the characters. While all the characters are featured at least once or twice, certain characters, or more specifically Reiri and Flandre, don’t have enough attention in this volume. Then again, any manga or anime with lots of characters is bound to have this very same problem and it can’t be helped. However, the preview for the 4th volume shows a scene of Riza and Reiri handcuffed to each other and fighting a cyclops-like monster, meaning that the fans of Reiri are going to get their share next time. Meanwhile, fans of Sheerwood will certainly enjoy Princess Monochrome, the 13th chapter, which focuses on the little princess and introduces her first blood warrior Ryu-ryu the panda.

Also, the way canine ears appear on Riza’s head whenever she’s listening to something closely is lovely!

Bamboo Blade – Moe Kendo?

Due to reasons I can’t fully remember anymore, I dropped Bamboo Blade after the first episode, although it seemed pretty good. Now I finally had time to watch it.

The funny thing about Bamboo Blade is that it looks like a moe anime although it really isn’t. Of course all the characters are more or less moe in their own ways, but the focus isn’t on the moe-ness of the characters but kendo. This was a good choice because, frankly, it’s really difficult to come up with an 26 episode anime with only moe.

While some would consider focusing on kendo a good thing, there are those as well who were disappointed of the lack of focus on moe. Personally, I do love moe, but only as side dish. Moe alone is no good. There are millions of different aspects of moe and trying to cater all tastes in single anime simply doesn’t work. Since I like the “silent and reserved girl”-moe I liked Tamaki a lot, but I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone couldn’t find a character to like in Bamboo Blade because there is only a handful of characters. However, I think it’s better to focus on few characters and make clear difference between main and supporting characters.

Another thing that really caught me off guard was realizing that there is no fanservice in Bamboo Blade. Yes, I mean that literally, there was no fanservice at all. No beach episodes, no hot springs episodes, no panty shots, no nothing. However I think this was another good thing. A lot of animes have tons of fanservice that is only there to catch watchers’ attention and prevent them from realizing how bad the shows really are.

So, Bamboo Blade does not focus on moe and it has zero fanservice. Is it still worth watching for the kendo alone? Yes, it is. At first I was really skeptic because I usally don’t like tournament animes (animes where the characters practice some sport or martial art and fight each other, this is not an official term), but Bamboo Blade has proved me that such animes can be made without all the bullshit. Since I still don’t know much about kendo, I can’t really say wheter the kendo in this anime is authentic or not, but I do can say that the characters didn’t use any “fancy techniques” that look outright unrealistic. The battles were exciting and looked good, which is certainly a good thing.

The plot of Bamboo Blade was fairly cliched and you could usually guess what was going to happen. Well, I’m not going take points away because of that since pretty much all the tournament animes are rather predictable. There could’ve also been more character development, but there was enough to satisfy me, but I’m still sorry that Kirino, Sayako and Satori had virtually no character development expect for their introduction.

I also must point out that the animation in Bamboo Blade was really good. Although a lot of scenes, mainly those related to kendo, are re-used many times, the quality of animation stays good through the entire series. On the other hand the animation is quite plain with no creative use of different animation styles or special techniques.

The bottom line is that if you want some moe and/or fanservice, Bamboo Blade is most definitely not the anime you’re looking for. But if you want to see a good tournament anime, the Bamboo Blade is exactly what you’re looking for.

Persona 3

It’s been a while since last time I’ve played a RPG this intensively. Persona 3 is certainly an addictive game to say the least. After playing it for some 70 hours in roughly four weeks, I have finally completed it and now’s the time for a “little” review.

The story of Persona 3 begins when the main character, whose name the player must decide, returns to a city called Port Island, where he lived ten years ago. Upon his return, he experiences a strange period of time, the Dark Hour. During the Dark Hour, most of people turn into coffins, but those with “the potential” keep their original forms. The people who aren’t turned into coffins are preyed on by creatures known as shadows.

Soon after the main character has settled down at a dorm for the students of the local high school, Gekkoukan High School, he and the people at the dorm are attacked by a shadow. In the midst of the battle, he awakes his Persona, a physical manifestation of his psyche. After recovering from the battle, he joins SEES, the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, a group that exists to fight the shadows and investigate the Dark Hour and Tartarus, a huge tower that only appears at the Dark Hour.

That’s enough of the story for now, let’s take a look at the gameplay: First of all, Persona 3 is significantly different from the majority of Japanese RPGs. Usually, the player’s mission is to advance from point A to point B, fight enemies and watch along as the story unfolds. You could say that Persona 3 uses this scheme as well, but reinvents some of “JRPG-standards”. Instead of travelling from town to town or from dungeon to dungeon, all the events of Persona 3 take place in Port Island. Also, while it is possible for the player to advance and affect certain events in the game, most of the story advances on it’s own as time passes. These two elements make Persona 3 to stand out from majority of JRPGs.

While exploring large worlds filled with cities, monsters and dungeons is entertaining in it’s own way, settling down in a single city can be just as interesting. There are various different shops, restaurants and such to spend your time and money at. And as time marches on, the seasons change and new places in Port Island become accessible. Since the main character is a student, it’s obvious that he has to attend to school as well.

Now, attending to school and exploring Port Island aren’t just optional additions to everything else. At the school and the city you can meet people and form Social Links with them. These Social Links give you the ability to create stronger Personas, that are used to fight shadows. Every person you can form a Social Link with has his or her own little subplot and I must say that most of these subplots have been very interesting to follow. The characters are well written and its genuinely interesting to see what happens to them. You can also spend time at cafes, fast food restaurants and such to improve your stats, which are mostly needed for meeting new people and various side quests. You could compare this to the gameplay of dating simulators.

Usually the story of a RPG is advanced by completing set tasks, but in Persona 3, the story advances even without the player doing anything. The player is given free hands to choose however to spend one’s time in the game. You can spend time with people you have formed a Social Link with, improve your stats at various activities or explore Tartarus. Exploring Tartarus is probably the most time consuming thing in the game, but it’s worth it if you wish to stand chance against the bosses.

You can do a lot in a single day in the game, but the time you have is still finite. If you haven’t spent enough time at Tartarus to level up your characters, you’ll be sorry when it’s time to fight a boss and your characters aren’t strong enough. On the other hand, if you spend all your time at Tartarus, you won’t have time for improving your stats, which means you won’t do well at school, can’t access some of the Social Links and some side quests can’t be completed. Increasing your Social Links gives you access to stronger Personas and completing side quests is often rewarded with items and equipments. Thus both of these options help you fight the shadows and shouldn’t be overlooked.

I haven’t ever played other Shin Megami Tensei games so I won’t be comparing the battle system in Persona 3 to any other system I’ve played before. The battles are turn based and the characters and the enemies can attack with various physical attacks and spells. What makes fighting in Persona 3 interesting is the strength/weakness-system. If you use an attack the enemy is weak against, you’ll deal more damage, the enemy is knocked down and must skip it’s next, turn unless it’s attacked again, and you get to act again. If you knock all the enemies down, your party can perform an All-Out Attack that hurts the enemies a lot. However, the enemies can do the same to you, so you must be cautious.

Keeping your strengths and weaknesses in mind is very important because being struck by an attack you’re weak against is often deadly. Unlike other characters, the main characters has multiple Personas. By changing your equiped Persona, you can change your strengths and weaknesses during the battle. That way you can prevent the enemies from abusing your weakness. However, as you change your Persona, the skills you can use are changed as well. Every Persona has its own set of skills and you can only use the skills of the Persona that you’ve equiped.

In order to create stronger Personas, your Personas must be fused. This is where the Social Links come in. Every Persona is associated to one of 21 arcanas (Fool, Magician, Priestess and so on) and there is a Social Link for each arcana as well. Whenever you create a Persona, it is given some additional power from the corresponding Social Link. And as you fuse you your old Personas into new ones, the Personas you’ve created inherit some skills from the Personas you used in the fusion. This way you can create Personas with skills that they wouldn’t otherwise have. You might find yourself spending a lot of time in Velvet Room, a place where Personas are fused, experimenting various fusions and researching how to make the strongest possible Personas.

The graphics of Persona 3 are sort of mediocre. While they don’t make you go “Wow, this is amazing!” they don’t really make you scream “Oh my eyes! Kill me right now!” either. They’re also quite minimalistic as well. Instead of having tons of detailed cut scenes, Persona 3 uses simple graphics accompanied with detailed illustrations of the characters. Think of the cut scenes in TRPGs, such as Disgaea for example, and you’ll know what I mean. There’s also some of cut scenes in anime-style, but there’s not too many of them and they’re used only in the most important parts of the game. The music of Persona 3 is, at least for me, different from the music you usually hear in JRPGs. It’s kinda hard to explain since I’m not familiar with such music, but it fits the mood of the game really well.

Some of the features mentioned above make Persona 3 different from the vast majority of JRPGs. While it is one of the JRPGs I’ve liked the most so far, it has several faults. The first thing that comes to my mind is exploring Tartarus. I bet everyone reviewing Persona 3 has already said this, but I’ll say it again: Tartarus is really repetitive. First you fight monsters and then you advance to the next floor once you find the stairs. This is repeated in every floor with the exception of boss floors, that give you the chance to teleport back the base of Tartarus to save your game before the battle, and obstacle floors, where you’re simply told that you can’t advance any further right now and you must return later to see if the obstacle has disappeared. Exploring Tartarus is rather linear and the side quests that you’re offered usually make you find special or rare enemies or items hidden in the floors, which is usually really time consuming but not very interesting. At times, exploring Tartarus might feel like a chore unless you’re really into repetitive dungeon-crawling.

Another fault, though lesser than the repetitiveness of Tartarus, is the way some events are summarized up. Mostly you see this while building you Social Links. You’ll often get messages like “you spend time with this or that person and your relationship could become stronger soon”. I do understand that the creators didn’t want to come up with dozens of events for every Social Link, but at times this solution feels like cutting the corners.

Some, mostly people more familiar with SMT-games than me, have complained how easy Persona 3 can be. Although, the enemies can be ruthless and kill your main character, which cause the game over, before you even realize what’s going on, most of the time you can make sure that the enemies won’t hurt you much by equiping the correct Persona. Especially later in the game, you can create Personas that have several strengths but virtually no weaknesses. Being able to change your Persona during the battle makes controlling your weaknesses, while having the access to the skills the enemies are weak against, really easy and gives you a huge advantage over the enemies. Though there are times when it’s hard to find a way to strike the enemy’s weakness without exposing your own, with some planning and proper use of Personas, you can turn almost any disadvantageos fight to your advantage. Most of the time, the enemies won’t even have the change to fight back.

This is a double-edged sword; while some people find it fun that Persona 3 rewards tactical fighting, the others find this a kill-joy as coming up with the proper strategies for totally owning your enemies isn’t really that difficult. Balancing the difficulty to make sure the game can be enjoyed by the majority of players, but at the same time have the same game offer the more devoted players challenges, is very, very tough. I do have to admit that I was a little disappointed about how easy completing Persona 3 was.

Although there is still room for improvement, which could probably be said about everything, Persona 3 is a game no fan of JRPGs should miss. It makes up for it’s faults with its most prominent strengths. While the battles aren’t too difficult, they still require the player to think more than JRPGs usually demand. Figuring out how to beat seemingly unbeatable enemies with your brains alone is really rewarding. The core story isn’t particularly different from the usual JRPG stories, but the detailed subplots made at least me play the game so I could follow the interesting stories of the characters. And while fusing Personas isn’t the most complex system for building your character, it has enough depth and yet it’s simple enough to provide fun for all kinds of players from those who just want strong enough Personas to survive the game to those who are ready to spend hours experimenting different fusions for the best results.

You could say Persona 3 is one of the JRPGs that are most obviously aimed at the masses instead of hardcore gamers and I’d agree. However, that doesn’t mean Persona 3 would be any worse than its counterparts that are aimed for the hardcore gamers. Sure it’s a bit easier than JRPGs usually are and it doesn’t have any insanely complex systems that’d let you control the development of your characters stats completely, but Persona 3 offers you something else, something better: a JPRG that is genuinely fun to play and that’s what makes a good game in my books.