Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

The using too many waifu female characters with seductive looking on anime and or games are really disturbing me.

😁

It's funny, I played Persona 5 first and loved the characters but within a few hours of starting Persona 4 I knew that their cast was a lot better in that game. I dunno what it is about the P4 cast that makes them so endearing (maybe it's the small town-ness or the way they play off each other so well) but it elevated the entire game.

Doesn't hurt that the English VO for Persona 4 is absolutely fantastic too. The actors sounded like they were having so much fun, and the anime's focus on comedy let them shine through even more.

@TheJGG I totally agree with you, the characters in P4 are singlehandedly what shot it up to be my favorite game of all time. P5 has a great cast too and still has my all time favorite Persona character with Sumi and third semester is probably the series' peak arc, but it feels like half the time Joker is the ultimate mutual friend which sucks. You never see Sumi interact with any of the Thieves other than Akechi and it's criminal. I don't think it helps that each arc minus endgame mostly focuses on the villain instead of the new party member and you mostly need to do the character's Confidant for their arc.
P4 though, every character of the Investigation Team interacts with every other character and it's incredible. You'd never expect, say, Rise and Kanji to get along, and they might not get along really, but they at least talk to each other. They feel like a smaller and tighter-knit group which fits with the small-town vibe of the whole game. P4 was the only game in the series to actually make me cry and it was thanks to the Golden ending's epilogue and seeing all the group interact with each other and just being genuinely great friends. I'd love to go into more detail and look at P3 as well, but this thread's probably not the best place for it considering it's not a Persona thread.
One last bit though, will absolutely echo the praise for the cast. Each VA fits perfectly and most of the substitute choices in spin-offs are solid as well with some being on par with the originals like Matthew Mercer as Kanji in Arena Ultimax and Dancing. Really the only cast I had actual problems with was 3's (I have a lot of hot takes about P3 for that matter), but 4 has a near-perfect cast.

@Slim_in_Blue
I have yet to play P4 or P5 but I’d just add in short that good characters cannot do without a good story sometimes, and that ‘good characters’ seems to be a much more subjective thing than when people mention a ‘good story’. I know somebody who stopped playing Persona 4 over its characters, and though it hasn’t stopped me from wanting to play it, relatability is usually something very personal. The amount you’ll connect with a character does not come down to just good writing, though it certainly helps, and sometimes just how a character has been written can get on somebody’s nerves while somebody else loves it. In the same way, I could stick with just a bunch of decent characters if the story is amazing because of wanting to see where it ends up next, where the mystery ends up and such. Horribly written characters hurt but a horribly thought out story does too.

Now, my main point is more so that characters can probably not shine as bright if the story they’re in doesn’t give them the opportunity to. If you create a lovely character but then barely use them story-wise in any major way, well, that kind of wastes their character. If you fail to think up fitting opponents or just some force that the characters move against, if they face no adversity or just get handed their wins on a sliver platter, be it in feats of strength or philosophy, that really cuts down on the value that might have had as a character moment. Good characters and good story go hand-in-hand oftentimes, and though one can be better than the other, as could be the case in P4, I’d not say either is more important. It would be missing the point that both are essentially an act of writing, and that characters fitting into a larger whole, inhabiting a world that was also written in service of plot opportunities, means it’s often more about how the two work together. For example, if a story makes it possible for a character to have some amazing moments that strengthen your view on that character, is that because they’re a good character, or because there’s a good story supporting that character so it turns out good? Like in persona 5, you’ve said Sumi gets little interaction with the other thieves, that would be where they didn’t write a story-scenario for this character to shine in interaction with other characters. Her character could’ve shone more if she got the opportunity, it doesn’t make her character inherently worse but it does take away opportunities for her to grow or show new sides of herself that could have been written if the story-scenario allowed it, be it main plot or not. I have a lot more examples from other games but I’d potentially spoil stuff and can’t have that.
It’s a complex thing, and as a writer myself, I hope I can get it down someday to have good character moments inside an interesting plot. Leaving aside a character-driven narrative versus a story-driven one, there’s just a lot of stuff that feels like characters and ‘story’ are more close to each other than two different parts that have their strengths separately.

Now, to end my lil wall of text, P4 is an interesting one simply because you literally have your real life, character-focused part and your ‘labyrinths’ where the story seems to progress. Having played P3 these two overlap sometimes in cutscenes but gameplay-wise they’re very split, and there I’m pretty sure you could have a point that one part just shines more than the other.
… thank you for coming to my own TED talk this time, hehe. Went a little overboard, but it is an interesting topic.

@Takoda Thanks for the input! I can't say I'm a writer at all and the last time I wrote anything fiction myself was in like 6th grade which was several years ago, so it's nice having input from someone who knows the ins and outs of writing. It's definitely a tricky thing and story and characters are much more intertwined than I made it seem in the original comment, but a lot of people seem to kinda separate characters from story as individual aspects and then when talking about it as a whole call it the plot. I admit that's not a great way to go about critiquing a storyline, but it's kinda tough when it's something of a norm for non-writers and when it's even tricky for a writer like yourself to balance character moments and story moments. It definitely comes down some to personal preference, this is the unpopular opinion thread for a reason, and some people do prioritize storyline over characters. If you take good characters and put them in a bad plot, if the pacing prevents the characters from, well, being actual characters, then everything will suck as a result. In my opinion, since the characters are what generally drive the plot forward, I'd rather the characters be better than the story if one had to be worse than the other. The characters are the emotional core of the overall plot and if someone finds a set of characters they like and relate to, I assume they'd get more out of the story as a result. I can also understand why someone would prefer the story itself since it's the actual makeup of the plot. As important as characters are, characters without a conflict or goal are completely useless so having a good conflict and/or goal is incredibly important. A writer would (and honestly should) go for the best of both sides since characters and storyline are both so crucially important to any piece of media, but that's nearly impossible since it's probably impossible to make a truly perfect story, and as a result the reader/player/viewer would likely prioritize one or the other just based on personal preference. I'd love to go into more detail on this but I know I'd make myself sound silly if I tried to go further since this was already pretty tricky to write as it is.
I will note on the Persona example, P4 is HEAVILY character driven plot-wise, more than P5 and especially P3. In P3 the party members just kinda unlock spontaneously throughout the first few months and their development is almost entirely outside of Tartarus. In P4, trying my best to not spoil anything from either game, every party member is like that one party member you get in P3 where they get lost inside Tartarus and you have to rescue them, resulting in the awakening of their Persona. Although unlike P3, each of P4's dungeons not only features a trapped party member, it is a representation of their "dark side" which is personified in their Shadow self. The character has to accept their Shadow as a part of themself and that's how they awaken to their Persona, and that character development travels into the social sim aspects as each party member's Social Link is pretty much the second half of their arc as a whole. I realize now that all this probably means P4 isn't the greatest example even in regards to the spin-offs, but it was the game that brought this topic to my mind to begin with, and the spin-offs completely cut out Social Links so it still feels like the spin-offs specifically work as decent examples.

@Aioniomios pyra is still top five though in my heart though!

@Slim_in_Blue Characters really do make a story, a story isn’t a story if it doesn’t have good characters to revolve around, luckily most good story’s include well written characters, but when that’s not the case, the good story they set up just ends up being ruined by poorly written character and dialogue.

@Slim_in_Blue Good point, it is true that people do kind of spontaneously split it into characters and story separately. I think a lot of writers would do that too, so your point made perfect sense. When a character clicks with someone, it can REALLY click, but a story is a lot less of a personal thing usually so I think in that way, characters can really lay at the heart of something while a plot/story isn’t often something anyone deeply relates to or loves in that same way. I assume that’s kind of what you meant?

Looking forward to giving P4 another spin now that I’ve read the praise here, I’ll see what I end up thinking of it. Thanks for the food for thought, haha.

@Takoda Yep! You nailed it on the head. Characters are the most easily relatable aspect of a story, so if someone's looking for something that resonates with them instead of "just" being peak fiction, they'd probably prefer good characters and a weaker plot than a good plot with weaker characters. It's not really an unpopular opinion as much as it is a debate topic, but it's not something I see discussed often so that's why I put it here first. Glad to see it's provided some good discussion!
Have fun with P4 as well! I'm admittedly biased since it left a huge impact on me and was almost instantly my favorite game ever the moment I finished it, but most people agree that every Persona game is good at a minimum and the modern games (3-5) are mostly up to personal preference on which is your favorite. If you liked P3's gameplay, you'll like P4 since it's largely an improvement in most aspects. If you don't like murder mysteries you might not be the biggest fan of the plot, but I hope you enjoy it nevertheless!

I don't like the notion that console generations are dead, and I'm not a fan of how Microsoft and Sony kind of pioneered it. This generation has been one of the weaker ones in a while, mainly because a lot of the games are hindered by the anchors that are the last gen consoles. Consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One. I get why they keep releasing their new stuff on the older gen consoles, because for a while it was hard to keep the production of this gen, and thus the games wouldn't sell if they were just confined to current gen. However, I feel like it's become more of a hinderance than anything else on the experiences of these consoles. Instead of getting proper current generation games which make use of the consoles functionality and actual power, for the most part we're getting games which have to run on 7+ year old systems, which begs the question of why should we even really own the newer consoles, aside from maybe better performance. It isn't like the features of the controllers are being actively used.

I genuinely hope that the next generation for Nintendo doesn't end up falling into this pitfall of releasing dual releases for both the Switch and the next gen console. Sure, again you have the one benefit of people still being able to play the game on the older system without having to purchase a new one, but at the same time, you come with the issue that the new games made for the new system won't be able to actually reach their full potential. I like having more unique ways to play games, and see what sort of innovations can be made on how games are handled, and so I feel like this is going to only be more of a hinderance.

Another thing I don't get about this generation is how Microsoft is trying to coin exclusive games as being "bad", when exclusives are genuinely needed in order to actually get people to purchase other consoles. Otherwise, if you could play every game on every system, why even buy the other consoles, when you could just purchase one singular one? It would sink brands which rely on being different in order to keep competing with one another. To some, I feel like this would be a dream, but I don't really want to welcome the monopolistic nightmare that'll be induced by it.

@VoidofLight I mean, 90% of Switch games could have run on Wii U hardware, either because they are literally ports of older games or just because they don't really need the power of the Switch (a lot of eShop games don't even need Wii U levels of power). It takes a lot of effort to make a game which truly requires a lot of power and most games simply don't need that. If a game doesn't need the extra power, it makes sense to cross-release at least until enough people have bought the new console. We'll see what Nintendo does, but third party games at minimum will almost certainly often keep coming out for both Switch and Switch 2 for awhile.

But games which really need power? You don't see Final Fantasy 16 or Baldur's Gate 3 coming out for PS4 and Switch 2 will similarly be exclusive for games which actually need it.

I never fully got people being butthurt about games being exclusive. There's a billion quality games on every system nowadays, are you really mad one more won't be on it? ESPECIALLY as a Nintendo fan, where outside of Gamecube it was an entirely separate world from the competition the vast majority of the time until the Switch (and not even because of the PS4 era Switch ports, but more because most popular games aren't actually even remotely AAA anymore), it feels ludicrous to complain about it now.

I always remember when that was the rumor for the sequel to the Tomb Raider reboot, that it was gonna be Xbox exclusive and everyone was so mad. Why? It's just another Uncharted now, Sony will get actual Uncharted...and a billion other games, who cares?

@kkslider5552000 I feel like most people are just greedy and want all the games. 😝 I certainly don't think it's unfair when a game is exclusively on a different system, but that doesn't stop me from shaking my fist at the world for denying me a chance to play that game.

@kkslider5552000 I hope Nintendo fanboys aren’t the one getting mad about that, Nintendo has a boat load of first party’s and exclusives. Also if they didn’t it would be stupid, litrally what reason would there be to get any other consoles, it would ruin the fun.

@kkslider5552000 The only thing I can get is if a game goes from being a long time exclusive on one console to hopping over to another, with the gameplay being something not offered on other consoles. It kind of screws people over who wish to play it, because they don't want to buy a singular console for one game. Like, (This isn't the case and we know it now) Persona 3 Reload being advertised for Xbox first, which made people feel upset that it might've been an Xbox Exclusive title, as the original Persona 3 was a PS game, and the series itself is pretty unique. Some people bought a playstation for future Persona games as well.

That’s it. The small town vibe really sells this cast because there’s a lot more character moments. The town of Inaba is meant to be a very boring and monotonous location, so more emphasis is placed on characters interacting with each other instead of interacting with certain locations (of which there’s like five in Persona 4 lol). You’re also right about the villains, they were meant to be symbols for the seven sins of humanity in Persona 5 and ended up taking some shine away from the characters (only presenting Kamoshida and Ann as foils for lust, and Yusuke and Madarame as foils for vanity, etc) and more their relationships with the villains. In Persona 4 the villains are the characters’ shadow selves, so there’s a lot less “ooooh look this villain is super duper bad!” and more “oh, I never knew that about this new character,”. Same applies to the dungeons too, they’re projections of the characters, not the villains. You could say P5’s tomb palace is well executed in the story because the palace ruler and the character recruited are the same.

What I do appreciate about Persona 5’s Royal content is how little it feels tacked on. There’s hints here and there about the upcoming third semester and we meet the new characters very early on to establish a rapport, in addition to all the new events to give them time to shine. And they do shine, Kasumi’s a top three character in the game even on a bad day. With Persona 4 Golden we just meet Marie once, get introduced to her, and then after the end of the main story we pick up with the new stuff.

My feeling about 5 is that the base game peaks during Kamoshida's palace, while Royal peaks at the Royal content. It feels like the game has way too many villains, to the point where not many actually get to showcase why you should despise them. For example, Shido. Shido is meant to be this big bad that the entire game builds up, but he only really ever has one interaction with Joker during the events of the game before his actual arc, so you're pretty much left with a subpar villain character for most of the game who doesn't really even show his face often. Compare this to a character like Kamoshida, who is constantly around, making you feel an oppressive feeling the entirety of the time you go through that whole thing. He stops you every time you walk past him, only to berate you and treat you like trash, with you being unable to really do a thing about it due to his authority. You grow to genuinely despise him and his presence, especially for the things which he does and basically gets away with at the time, so when you end up taking him down in game, it feels like genuine catharsis.

Speaking of P5, I said it before somewhere but the “dating” part of the game where Joker dates the other girls is so bad. You basically lend them an ear and they fall in love in you. I honestly do not see why some people think it’s great.

Also Anns theme is sexual abuse/being sexualised but she herself, ironically, is sexualised by the devs itself whilst being only 16. 16 year olds barely have breasts her size but even if she were the outlier that by-the-power-of-the-designers-hand has big oppai (breasts) she still does not to stand so bend over showing her curves/cleavage. Look up her ps4 theme and tell me she is not sexualized.

@TheJGG The fact that the desert/tomb Palace and the third semester Palace are two of my favorites in the whole game I think proves how well P4's character-driven structure works. In the case of the desert Palace, it's a full HALF of the character's Confidant and is a pretty great arc on its own before accounting for one of the more memorable party member Confidants and one of the better Confidants overall. Seeing how more than half of P4's dungeons follow that template, it makes sense that if you like that Palace you'd like P4. As for third semester, the fact that it's foreshadowed so much in the base game and both Kasumi and the antagonist are the main focus (and how the antagonist presents a choice you might actually have to think about) means it also falls heavily into that party member-driven style. It definitely does help that Kasumi is more fleshed out than Marie (and that I just like her character better, both arc and personality I think she's a more interesting character), but if someone doesn't like Kasumi it could really mess up third semester. But it seems like most people are at a bare minimum ok with Kasumi so most people agree third semester is great.
@VoidofLight I think the villain that definitely feels most disconnected from the main story is Kaneshiro. Shido at least with most of the Thieves has some connection to them and generally does, meaning that at least in the context of the characters they have a reason to fight him other than "corrupt politician". With Kaneshiro, Makoto just sees that students are getting taken by the mafia and then blackmails the Thieves into dealing with him because she has evidence of them being the Thieves. Even once Makoto joins the team it still feels like you're just fighting Kaneshiro out of obligation, even though Makoto kinda has to drop the blackmail now since she's part of the Thieves.
@BrintaPap Me personally, the main appeal of Confidants isn't really the whole aspect of dating your favorite character as much as it is seeing them get more character development. Haru's arc in the main game isn't that good and she gets heavily sidelined thanks to a certain cat, but her Confidant is actually really good and does a lot to help her character. The whole idea of romancing one of them is just a little extra thing for whichever character is my favorite. You think it's bad in P5, if you play P3 as the male protagonist you're FORCED into dating every female Confidant/Social Link!
As for what you said about Ann... yeah I'll agree with you there. Atlus is a very Japanese company and they make stories very grounded in anime tropes, and having one "fan-service" character like that is pretty standard for anime, at least from what I've seen since I'm the only Persona fan to ever claim to "not be a huge anime guy". I love Persona, but this stuff is just bad and hopefully Atlus gets their game together with P6.