It’s been forever and an age since I posted anything significant, and that’s because my gaming world seems to have exploded. I’ve got so much stuff to play I don’t even know where to start writing about it all – and so I’ve decided to post a written thumbnail gallery of what I’m going through right now.

Games I’m Still Playing

Star Ocean: The Last Hope, XBox 360

A Kingdom for Keflings, XBox 360 Live

Games I’m Playing But Haven’t (Yet) Written About

Fantastic Contraption, http://www.fantasticcontraption.com

Amazing little web physics game along the lines of The Incredible Machine. You must get an object from one place to another by building fantastic contraptions out of various types of wheels and rods. Free to play with extra content if you’re willing to pay a little. It’s well worth it.

Little Big Planet, PS3.

I haven’t dug too much into this one yet; I just picked it up a couple of days ago. I’m late to join this party and it’s a shame, it’s a pretty mind-blowing gaming experience. At it’s core, LBP is a fairly typical platform game, but they expose that core in an unprecedented way by giving you all the tools you need to create a rediculous variety of worlds of your own to play in, alone or with friends.

Persona 4, PS2

I caved into temptation and started playing Persona 4, and was hugely impressed. As fantastic as Persona 3 is, Persona 4 takes a small step beyond it in nearly every respect. The steps may be small but the number of them adds up to a great difference; Persona 4 is one of the best RPGs I’ve played, so far. I’ll be writing it up soon.

Valkyria Chronicles, PS3

This game really blew my mind, even more so than Little Big Planet. When I got myself a PS3, I got it for two reasons – it was the cheapest BluRay player available on the market at the time, and because I want to get Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3 when it’s released. If I’d known about it, Valkyria Chronicles would have been more than enough justification. It’s a strategy roleplaying game, not a genre I’ve ever tried before, but now I think I’ve been missing out. I’m not going to rave about this one too much, it’s my #1 priority for an Impression post; I’ll save it for that, coming up soon.

Pain, PS3 Store

This is a pretty small game I was introduced to just last week. The idea is to flick a living crash test dummy of a character around a scene, causing as much destruction as you can. It sounds kind of brainless and silly, which it is, but it’s amazingly addictive and satisfying to play. The base game comes with one scene and a couple of characters to throw around. Two additional scenes and a large number of extra characters are available for purchase on the Sony Online Store.

Games I Am No Longer Playing

Persona 3 FES, PS2.

• I’m still sucked in by the story on this one, but sadly I reached a point where I could not defeat a boss encounter and don’t have enough saved games to go back and level up to try again. I will start a new game in the future, manage the early game days better, and possibly play at Easy level just so I can get through the story more effectively.

Harvest Moon – Tree of Tranquility, Wii.

• A good game, one I enjoy, but I’m too far off the target audience for it to hold my attention against the likes of Star Ocean, Persona 4 and Valkyria Chronicles.

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A quick note to begin with. This blog documents my impressions of Persona 3 FES, as opposed to Persona 3. The two are not entirely the same game;  Persona 3 FES contains extra content not available in the original Persona 3. However, for the sake of my aching fingers, I’m going to just call it Persona 3 or even P3.

Yes, the name of the game really is Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 FES. What a mouth full! With a name like that, you just have to guess that it’s a  Japanese role playing game, and you’d be very correct. This is no Final Fantasy though, and that’s a good thing.

I love the Final Fantasy series, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes I need a break from that style of play, and Persona 3 has given it to me. This is not  a game of physical exploration, wandering from place to place in a vast fantasy/sci-if environment, meeting strange creatures and killing them.

No, this is a game that takes place largely within a few specific locations in one small town. The physical exploration takes place within a vast secret tower in the town, while the bulk of the exploration is more social – exploring relationships between your protagonist and the various friends you make in  and out of school during the course of a full calendar year.

You do your explorations in the role of the Main Character, or MC as he’s often referred to online. In the game, he’s referred to by whatever name you  choose to give him.

MC is a fairly typical high school student, or at least he seems to be at first. His life can take any number of turns depending on how you play the  game. Is he going to be a straight-A student with incomparable academics? A social butterfly that can charm the socks off the ladies? Maybe someone very brave in the face of danger and dating? Manage your time well and you can make him any or all of these, or not, as you prefer.

It all depends on how you want to play him, and the game as a whole. Your socialization with other characters and groups that you meet will have a strong effect on your combat performance in the dungeon parts of the game, thanks to an interesting experience system based on the concept of “Social Links” that power the various personas you control. The stronger your social ties, the more experience a related persona gains when you create it.

Social links are only one method of improvement, however. The charm, academics and courage stats that I alluded to earlier are another form of social advance; your progress on those three stats determines how strong your relationships can get with three particular characters that are of critical importance to your game, and may have other effects as well. I’m not quite at the halfway point in the game yet, so I can’t really say authoritatively what those possible other effects would be.

Like most RPGs, your main character has hitpoints and spirit (magic) points, but lacks most other common stat types; strength, endurance, magical potency and the other “vital” stats are not associated with MC himself. Instead, they are associated with the various personas MC can make use of. This means switching personas in the middle of a battle has a much greater impact that just changing your selection of special abilities; the fundamental traits of your character change as well. You might switch from an exceptionally high strength with one persona to one that’s very physically weak, and find yourself doing far less melee damage as a result. The tradeoff may be that your magic potential is hugely boosted. This is a pretty fascinating system that makes the choice of personas all the more strategically important.

Not having finished the game yet, this isn’t a full review, but just an impression. I’ll leave off at this before I get into anything too spoilerish, but I’ll invite anyone who’s interested to comment or write to me with questions. If I can answer them, I certainly will.

My impression so far: This is a beautiful gem of a game, not to be missed if you can handle going back to the last generation of console games and picking up something for the PS2 ninstead of the shiny and new PS3.

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