#beware I'm yapping and going on tangents

[cyanrendipity]

I finished the first (second?) full moon in P3RE and I have thoughts about the game so far.

(read more cause I'm suddenly being shy about ranting)

First thought: I don't like this new version of deep breath deep breath 😔 the new ost in general throws me off cause have listened to the original ost SO MUCH I keep expecting it to be the versions I remember and then it isn't and it takes me out. Deep breath deep breath was the first one that got me to physically recoil from the difference tho (I am very dramatic, it's not even bad, but it's not my beloved)

But thinking about the positives man this game looks good, the 3d visuals are all really nice and tartarus actually feels like what it's supposed to be, I really like that there's more exploration rewards with the crystalized shadows and even outside of tartarus with the twilight fragments you find around the town!

Speaking of outside of tartarus, man I LOVE the school and the town, it should be a given but I'm so glad all the random npcs are there, and now with the perk of being able to tell when they have new dialog or not, I remember going around the city speaking with everyone just to make sure they didn't have something new to say (still doing that but now I can tell at a glance)

Also I was kinda expecting to dislike the UI cause my first impression is that it was too harsh/had too much blue but honestly with the whole vibe of the game it fits very well

Now for the negative cause I'm a persona 3 fan I gotta complain

I don't like the new portraits at all.... I'm TRYING but man.... the original artworks had so much more personality, it's so sad I can only find them with abysmal resolution but the new ones are so generic. Like I KNOW the old art wasn't super quality (some of them almost look like sketches) but at least they were unique, and honestly their mouths moving is weird, when Bunkichi speaks and his mustache doesn't move along with his mouth I get so distracted. Also they did Mitsuko dirty she's so strange looking in the new art (she was kinda strange looking before too I guess)

Bebe is a downgrade too, is this just nostalgia clouding my judgement?

Anyway the biggest improvement was Yuko 😬 the other ones I'm between "it's okay" and "it's bad" so far

But now! For more positives!!!! I'm really glad the translation is about the same from when I first played in english, and being able to listen to the japanese voice acting while reading the english subtitles is giving me much joy <3

For example I always wondered how Bebe spoke in the original, since in the english subtitles he would speak japanese words along with the english and I always thought "I wonder what he's saying in japanese, is it french?" TURNS OUT, HES SPEAKING LIKE AN OLD TIMEY SAMURAI, IT'S SO CUTE!!!!!!!!!

In this case the dialog was translated like "Au revoir and sayonara!" but in japanese he said "au revoir... de gozaru!" shaking and crying I love him so much. (I do think the adaptation was good, I doubt many people would have gotten the old timey japanese so the random normal japanese works to convey he's a little too enthusiastic about japan)

So far the story is pretty much exactly the same as I remember when I replayed persona 3 portable last year (some lines seem to have be added for clarity but I can't tell if I just didn't remember them) lots of the game mechanics seem to be copying the portable version rather than FES too (which makes sense I guess) so I can't wait when I get to the new stuff that was added to this one (I avoided spoilers so i don't even know what that is other than it seems like we get to hang out with our teammates more)

ANYWAY VERY HAPPY WITH THIS GAME EVEN THO I COMPLAIN A LOT I'M HAVING SO MUCH FUN

[crocswithoutsocks]

High Roller First Impressions

Just finished my first High Roller fight so I'm going to ramble about it for those who want to listen. If you want to go in completely blind like I did then, BEWARE! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Just for a little bit of context so you can understand where I'm coming from, I'm a puny little 59 laff toon at the beginning of the Mezzo Melodyland taskline, and the only kudos manager I've fought so far is Brian. I haven't seen footage of any fights I haven't fought/naturally encountered yet (I like going into things blind) but I know of and about all of the other managers from art, memes and fanfiction. With that out of the way, let's begin the ramble of a lifetime! I'm going to yap a lot here and also probably go off on a cople tangents, so be warned.

First off, my toon's big head was in the way for half of the low ballers' introduction, so I missed like half of it (caught up through chat though, horray for chat!). I love how you can't refuse the invitation to join the high roller fan club, that's very silly and goofy and seems totally in character for these silly little ducks. I'm usually not keen on games forcing your hand regarding choices, UNLESS it's for the bit, which this totally qualifies as! Anything with comedic value automatically gets a big thumbs up from me. (As a sidenote, I also like when games manipulate the availability of free choice for the bit. Like, in super paper mario where the game straight uo just kills you if you agree to join the bad guys. I didn't think it would let me, and then it did, and then I died and the outcome made me laugh.) Also! I like that in the chat instead of being classified as "toon" or "cog", the low ballers are "silly". They're silly little guys! Upon teleporting to Dave's theare, I was met with a massive group of people (as expected given the game had only gone back up about 10 minutes prior) which provided an excellent atmosphere for the fight. I flung myself at those cog sigls, not caring who else I was going into that fight with as we all shared the same goal: Defeat the stupid gameshow duck. (As another sidenote, any time I call anything stupid, silly, goofy, wacky or anything else similar, I mean them with the utmost respect and praise! They are all positive and affectionate!)

Incidentally, no one on the team I went into the fight with had ever fought High Roller before, which i think probably added to the chaos and overall experience of the fight. No one had any idea what they were doing.

As previously mentioned, this was my first time seeing Dave in game. I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR HOW HIS VOICE SOUNDS. ITS LITERALLY JUST PIANO KEYS SMASHING TOGETHER THATS SO FUNNY. As usual, I couldn't understand a word he said (the fact that I have the reading level of a middle schooler combined with the fact that I'm a slow reader made it very hard to keep up) BUT THEN BUCK SHOWED UP AND STOLE THE SHOW! I may be incredibly biased towards Buck due to the fact he's my (current, subject to change) favourite manager, but he is literally the epitome of silly and goofy during this cutscene. The fact that he enters by dropping from the ceiling, fumbles his introduction, runs in front of the stage like a gremlin only to somehow get himself on top of a giant anvil (I love the comedy anvil), spawns next to dave and randomly rotates for a few seconds to funky music before doing a full on FUSION DANCE with Dave to form high roller. What more could you want from a guy? The toons walking in on the wall instead of the floor was funny too (I assume that's meant to happen and not a bug lol) AND I would like to give a special shoutout to the audience as well! It was nice seeing all of the other managers all together, some of them sat together (Flint and Graham, of course, Chip and Spruce, Bell and Ben the gossip girls, Cosmo and the satelites, the ENTIRE litigation team etc.) Poor Misty is sat by herself, and Mary seems to be swimming in her seat rather than actually sitting in it. It was also cool to see Count Erclaim (and (presumbly) Count Erfit hiding in the back), since I've never seen them in game before. Big mention of course also goes to William and Rain sat together at the front. Gotta wonder how that happened, but either way it's really nice to see! This is all probably old news to anyone who knows the fight, but it brought me a lot of joy! Also, the fact that there was a big sign saying the entire event was non-canon made it even funnier.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING TOONTOWN! - High Roller is LOUD, and I cacked at the absolute cacophony of duck and piano noises that came out of this guy's mouth. He's hot shit, and he knows it. (I am assuming here that the phrase 'hot shit' is positive and not negative, please assume so as well.) The fact that he's level 100 as well??? If he ever decided to quit his career of being silly and goofy and also a gameshow host, he could probably win the war for the cogs single handedly. And also maybe if he existed outside of april and was also a canon entity. His animations are also so fun and expressive, like, this thing does not walk anywhere. He either slides with no expression on his face or he FROLIKS. The silly hat with the ducks too, I like that a lot!

Okay, now onto the actual fight. Finally. It took me and my team about an hour and 10 minutes to beat it. I'm assuming that's not the length of time an average high roller fight takes, and I'm also assuming that it took that long due to the fact that none of us knew what we were doing. I really liked the trivia questions, those were a lot of fun! It made me feel like knowing all of the lore that's been eating my brain for the last month was totally worth it, even if I only knew the answer to one out of the two questions asked. I didn't really get the puzzle bit at first, and then I figured out how to actually look at the board and then I did get it and it was okay. I probably would have liked it more if I'd gotten to do more of them after I got the hang of it, given I only got to do the one puzzle. I liked shuffle as well, that was a nice break from all the thinking in the fight. The actual fighting part was pretty stressful, and I think that's the most I've ever had to think in a toontown battle. I'm assuming that most of the kudos managers are like that though (requiring more thinking, I mean) and that its more a me having not progressed that far through the game thing and less a this is a particulary brain-useage heavy fight. Also, can we talk about how if you haven't defeated all of the cogs at the end of the fighting portion, HR just snaps his fingers and disintegrates them??? Like, as if they were hit by a strong zap gag disintegrated. Did he kill them? Are they dead? Have we just witnessed multiple cog-v-cog murders????? I know high roller isn't technically canon, but it's interesting to think about. My only small gripe about phase one of the fight was that it could have been a little longer. We only got to spin on the roulette wheel like four times, and in my head that was one of the main gimmicks of the fight that I didn't get to see very much of. On the other hand though, the fight did take like a whole hour, so it really probably doesn't need to be any longer. I'm sure I'll be very greatful for the shortness of the first phase when I'm grinding for the low baller sticker later.

I don't really have much to say about the second phase. It felt quite like an interlude between the first and third phases, which I think worked quite well. Just a classic battle, no chaos, (relatively) no gimmicks, just me, Mr Hollywood and the piano that I'm about to drop on his head. Another thing I did really like about this fight was the fact that I, a relatively low level toon with no drop track, got to drop pianos on people and pelt them with wedding cakes. That made me feel very powerful, especially when I was taking down level 25 cogs. Another really small detail but something I really liked in this fight, when you use the stagelight zap gag the lights above the Mr Hollywood you're aiming for go out, like the stagelight actually fell on them. Thats super duper neat and I love it a lot. One of the people in my party also said that the music for this section uses a theme from Dave's fight, so I'm going to have to trust them on that! If so though, that's really neat, and makes sense given this bit in particular is an omage to Dave's fight. I love leitmotifs very very much. I also found it very funny how HR introduced the Mr Hollywoods as the Dave Brubot Quartet, and then only three of them showed up. That ain't a quartet buddy. I've realised now that it's because Dave himself is in the quartet, and thus missing from it, but it's still funny to me.

And then the third stage of the fight is CARNAGE. ABSOLUTE CHAOS. High Roller's cool-pose-into-hollograms-quick-change-into-a-different-colour-suit move was only the beginning of the massacre about to happen (and was really cool). This part of the fight made my game lag, but thats probably because a. my computer is a potato and b. I was screen-recording the fight. The atmosphere in this section went crazy though, with the darkness and the coloured lights totally making the hollograms and HR look way more awesome. AND THE MUSIC!!! THE MUSIC GOES CRAZY HERE!!! THE GUITAR AND THE CHIMES AND THE SYNTH AND JUST WOOOOOOW. It captures the absolute carnage and chaos of the third phase in a way so perfect that words cannot properly describe. It was like WOWOWOWOWOW and made my brain go like bzzwzzbzzzwowowo and AAAHHHHHHHH. And then the guitar leaves and the music calms down and goes back to going bwow bwow and it feels like you can finally breathe again. This was also the part of the fight that absoluelty fried my brain. Having to think about which gags to use, whether or not to use my pip dice, keeping track of my pips (although I never really ran out) and then the different effects of all the holograms? Madness. We ran out of time a lot, used the wrong gags a lot and took a lot of unnecessary damage in return. Wanna trap the yellow hologram? Can't do that, the red one will damage you if there's trap gags on the field at the end of the turn. Oh, that's fine, we'll just lure the yellow one, activate the trap and it'll be fine. Sorry, the green one just gave the yellow one lure resistance and now there's still a trap on the field. That's a bar on the head for you, loser. And also high roller is going to drop a cruise ship on your head (I think the free cruise attack is really funny, by the way. It's like a twist on classic gameshow stuff, which I know is the point but it's still awesome). That's one of the reasons why I felt like playing with a group who had never fought high roller before was better, because no one could really get mad at anyone else for doing the wrong thing, given we were all doing the wrong thing all the time. They were also just nice people, which helped. When we finally got rid of all the holograms, it was such a relief and we were all raring to go and finally go all out on HR. So we did that. AND THEN THE HOLOGRAMS CAME BACK. WE THOUGHT WE WERE WINNING! So we took down the holograms again. We were only a couple HP off killing the red one, which then accidentally killed itself with a bar which was pretty funny. Then HR also dropped a dice on his own head which added to it. The Ace in the hole attack was absoluetly a shock. I wan't paying proper attention, so suddenly there was just this GIANT High Roller head that looked like it was going to eat me and I've been crushed by a giant card and I've no idea whats going on. Going thorugh my head mostly was: " WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT? ????????? SIR????? HELLO???? WHAT ARE YOU DOING??? WHAT IS HAPPENING???". A lot of that, and then he's back to throwing dice and cruise ships at us. We're finally got our act together by now so after two more rounds of holograms High Roller FINALLY goes down at the hand of the almighty final blow dealing cupcake.

He got right up in my space and said I was "top banana", which I'm assuming was a complement but also maybe just because I was a yellow, vaugely banana shaped gator. The credits came out of nowhere and made me laugh, because that's so stupid and in character. Shoutout to the last remaining con artist with a job (being Foley Artist, I don't know what that is) and Flundger the "Drip Meister". I aspire to one day have a title as cool as that. Also to the pencil pusher who won 500 high roller sticky notes :) good job buddy! ALSO THE END NOTE AT THE END OF THAT FIRST CREDITS SECTION?? AS MANY FLUNKIES AS POSSIBLE WERE HARMED DURING THE PRODUCTION OF THIS EPISODE??????? WHERE ARE THE FLUNKY RIGHTS?????? And then High Roller gets hit by a cruise ship and honestly, thats what they get for dropping like 17 of them on me. Deserved. One of my party was stuck saying "YES!" during this section which made it look like they were cheeing for Roller's demise which was particularly amusing. I got crushed by the comedy anvil, it all went very well.

So overall, my thoughts on this fight were that it was INCREDIBLE! I think everyone should play it, or at least give it a try. One of the things I really, really like about it is that its accessible to everyone, no matter how good/bad/new at the game you are. It means that I can at least try to convince my non-toontown friends to play it with me. Out of the tutorial, into the high roller fight, baby! This especially, since HR is only avaibable once a year and unlike FTF (I don't see myself being strong enough to play that one before the end of april) I actually get to play it and enjoy it, with everyone else. I also got to try out some new gags that I wouldn't really see myself getting to use otherwise (piano), and that was a lot of fun! Overall, very very fun, very silly, very goofy, 10/10 would fight again, will probablu fight at least 11 more times because I want that sticker. I'll have to see if my opinion changes after that. Hopefully they won't all take me an hour.

Anyway! That was. A lot of words. If you made it all the way down here, thank you very much for listening to my spiel! It means a lot! Have a virual cookie, or something to that extent. Maybe a duck? Either way, I really need to go to bed. I'm sleep deprived and very very tired. This is Sir Biscuit Weaselchomp, Curious Creature, signing off! Happy April Toons!