We Are All Witness. Unfortunately.

Playing:
Shin Megami Tensei
Persona 4
(PS2)

I was in the midst of a fairly rigorous Persona session on Saturday morning when my doorbell rang. Now, I usually don’t get a whole lot of unexpected visitors, but the optimist in me assumed that it was the delivery guy with a package. I made the mistake of opening the door without looking through the peephole, and was greeted by a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses as a reward for my stupidity. They proceeded to hook me up with the latest issue of “Awake!” and ask me if I had ever wondered why I was here (on Earth), but the only question running through my mind was why they were here (in Japan). I thought that moving to Japan would mean getting away from telemarketers and Jehovah’s Witnesses, but to my disappointment, it turns out that they’ve got both of those here. The two men were actually quite pleasant and spoke English really well, but I simply wasn’t in the mood to be entertaining visitors, regardless of whether or not they were spreading JC’s word. What’s funny is that I have this sign on my door:



"Earrings off, asshole!!!" The sign is essentially the last thing I see before leaving for work in the morning, and it’s so far served as an effective reminder for me to take off my earrings (asshole). My new friends and I had our conversation with the door wide open, which resulted in several awkward glances - from all three of us - at my little notice. I was hoping that my somewhat peculiar sign might scare them off, but they instead expressed interest in coming to chat about life with me at the same time on a future date. Ah well, I guess I just have another reason to sleep in on Saturday mornings.

As far as Persona 4 goes, I’m about 20 hours into the game and thoroughly enjoying it. It still feels very much like the third installment of the series, although the storyline, at least so far, is somewhat scaled back and not the epic, apocalyptic ride that Persona 3 was. Building social links and fusing personas, the bread and butter of P3, remains the preeminent part of P4, and as a result, the game feels almost like Persona 3.5 rather than Persona 4. That being said, the gameplay of P3 was bordering on perfect, so a new backdrop is really all that fans of the third installment were likely asking for. Gamers who played P3 will likely find the battles somewhat easy and, dare I say, boring, but the real draw of P4 is still the whole social networking and calendar management aspect of the game. Throw in an engaging murder mystery storyline and a cast of likable, albeit familiar characters, and you've got a first-rate package that rivals Persona 3.