I experienced a brief burst of pleasure at the lack of an attributed author at the top of the article, and then I hit the bottom. I love Leigh Alexander's articles, but the tendency of commenters to wax personal, when they're given a persona (ha ha...) to wax at, tends to curdle my tongue. All this first-name, so-how's-your-kid-and-your-hamster, oh-right-and-how're-the-hemorrhoids? stuff seems horrendously misplaced to me. Blog-status obviously grants you a certain amount of information on the writer(s), but to sashay around spewing personal details as if you actually knew said person and liked them--moreover, that they actually knew who you were and could stand you--seems a bit...vain? Forward? Creepy, when taken to its limits.

And then of course there are the gratuitous remarks that will no doubt rain down when people find out the writer's a girl and/or a Mets fan and/or likes striped cats better than stripeless ones.

I don't want to see the comments on this one. But I really enjoyed the article.

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I just finished P4 a few days ago, and the branching endings were easily the best aspect of the game, given how well they meshed with it thematically.

That said, I felt like P3 mattered more; I don't revel in gloom-and-doom games, but that really wasn't what P3 was about, but the bitterness of the ending (and I did prefer the "bad" one; it struck me as more poignant, more human) was what made the rest of the game matter. It conferred a certain emotive punch to both the main story arc and the social link sub-plots that made P4 feel rather flat and lifeless by comparison. Realizing that I was running out of time to complete certain social links that I was heavily invested/interest in was distressing, and yet fit perfectly with the entire message of the game--really, playing through December and January constituted my favorite gaming experience, ever. Sad, and yet beautiful at the same time.

I hope the series continues on and continues to evolve the way 1 did to 2 and 2 did to 3. While 4 did not evolve any, story wise and gameplay wise it did but not mechanicall or visually. I hope part 5 is another great departure and another classic story arch in the Shin Megami Persona relm. :-)

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