Zakness

I've got a few hours into RE6 now. I started with the Leon/Helena campaign since it's supposed to be the best one out of the four stories. I really liked how it started because the atmosphere was excellent. But once you get through the first part, it's just waves of zombies swarming you... constantly. To give you an idea, I just cleared the first chapter, and the stats showed I had killed over 240 zombies. I'll say it again... TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY... in the first chapter.

When the pace is slow, like at the beginning, the game is awesome. But when the constant waves of zombies are dumped on you every step you take, it just becomes mindless. And what pisses me off is the camera and character movement. Especially when you're swarmed by a dozen zombies.

I expect the game to get better, and I'll probably get used to the jerky character controls... but I'm glad I didn't pay full price for the game.

I just got Resident Evil 6. I think you had mentioned before that you have it, or was going to get it. Either way, let me know and we can do some co op.

I started the Leon/Helena campaign and some guy joined my game. He had already played the game, so he was always running ahead to the next area. I like to take my time and look around, so I decided to only play solo, or else with someone else that's playing the game for the first time as well.

The women you max out doesn't affect the story. It's basically all just for leveling up purposes. But the feeling of importance in your decisions is high because everything you do is on a schedule. There's also a feeling of satisfaction when you successfully max out the links of multiple women and have each one of them confess. But it's not all about building up your harem. The variety of social links is amazing, and you'll find yourself eager to build them all up. It might be as simple as helping an elderly couple that owns a bookstore in town that's dealing with the death of their grandson... or a young man you can find at the park on Sundays who is dying from a disease and is writing a book to deal with his agony.

You'll just have to play the game to really understand how everything works. But the social links are an amazing part to the P3 and P4.

It only sounds like a chore because, well, that's what it'd be in real life. But it's pure gaming bliss. You'll find yourself trying to maximize each day... and you'll love every minute of it. Also, I left out the fact that this all is driven forward by an amazing story.

You can't ruin any social links by romancing a different girl. What happens though, is you have to spend precious days to fix the relationship rather than spending that time raising the social link level. It's not really that big of an issue though. Plus, once you max out a social link with a girl and make it "official," you're free to whore around with other women since a maxed out link stays that way.

Thank you, O staunch one!

You also can enter the Dark Hour or TV World to grind and level up your characters, but that also uses up a third of your day. And grinding can only take you levels to whatever your strongest Personas are. This is why you build up social links with as many characters as you can. Each new social link you unlock opens up a new class of Persona. And the higher you build a social link, the more powerful Persona you can fuse. And you have to raise your MC's traits in order to be able to initiate conversations with new characters. And everything you do occupies 1/3 of your day. And you only have around one month to prepare for each dungeon and boss battle.

In a nutshell: you can kiss your real life goodbye.

Now, part of what makes P3 and P4 so ADDICTING, is that each time you begin a social link event, it uses up one part of your day, and each day consists of three parts- morning, afternoon, and evening. The story is based on a specific day on your calendar, which generally means you have to go into the "Dark Hour" in P3, or the "TV World" in P4. What that means is you spend around a month preparing for that event. You build up social links, you raise you MC's traits (such as knowledge, courage, charisma) by doing chores, studying, working, and even eating... and countless other things. Virtually every action you do will raise your MC's traits or build up social links.

Certain characters can't be approached until a specific trait for your MC is at a high enough level. See that hot girl in school always hanging out by the lockers? Unless your courage is at a high enough level, you can't talk to her, which will unlock a new social link.

Every female party member and schoolmate is a possible love interest (and certain other females). You're always giving options when you initiate a social link event with a character, and depending on your choices you'll get points. Obviously the best answers results in the most points, thus increasing the social link faster.

Males characters become inseparable friends, and females can be romanced. Regarding the females, the social links are essentially like a dating sim. Not only do you have to make the right choices, but once you start romancing one girl, she'll get pissed and quit talking to you if you start romancing another girl. Then you have to mend the relationship before you can build up that specific social link again. Oddly, if was fun juggling your time between the girls and figuring out how to max out the social links. Inevitably, you will set your sights on one girl and romance her.

The social links are a big part of what makes P3 and P4 so awesome. It's not until you play the game and understand how to handle each day (the game progesses daily, with three parts to each day) before you realize the greatness of building relationships with all the characters. You build social links with your party members, schoolmates, citizens around town, and even at work. Not only does building up your social links allow you to fuse more powerful personas to summon during battles, you also gain new abilities for your party members. A quick example is once you reach a certain social link level with certain female party members, they'll run over and slap you when you get inflicted with confusion during battle.

The MC's in P3 and P4 are the answers for anyone sick of the pansy MCs in the majority of jrpgs. Sure, they're the silent types (Link-esque) but not only do they both develop into badasses (especially P3) but they work their asses off in the daily grind of school and work, take care of family (P4), help citizens around town (thus increasing their social links, thus allowing you to fuse stronger Personas) and romance all the ladies. There's no harem cliches like in anime... you mack on all the women.

Also, the bug in Okami is a little annoying at first, but he calms down and chatters less as the game goes on, and only speaks up to point out things of importance. In a sense, he's required since Amaterasu doesn't talk. So all the interactions with other characters are spoken through the bug.