Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Imagine Online

[Mori]

Okay, I started the Mabinogi thread before and that seemed to take off rather nicely.  Hopefully this game will share similar popularity in time. 

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Imagine Online.  It's another free to play MMO, and it's based on the Persona series of games, which are in turn a combination of sim-life and rpg games. 

Most of the combat revolves around you using both yourself, armed with some form of weaponry, fighting alongside various familiars known as demons (Basically Personas from the other games).  An easy comparison to make would be that it's similar to pokemon, except your character actually participates in battle too.  In combat, you and your enemies can attack, guard, counter and smash much like in Mabinogi, but it still has its own unique flair.  The best thing I can really say to understand the combat mechanics would be to look up videos of Persona 3 or 4, and then imagine that in real time instead of turn based. 

I've only honestly been playing it for about half an hour so far, but it seems promising.  In the Persona games that came before it, combat was only one facet of the game.  For example, any 2 to about 6 demons (personas) could be combined into a single new one, and then that one could be used in further combinations.  Personas usually spanned across various religions and mythologies (You could have, say, Anubis, Loki, or Ares fighting by your side). 

Unlike Mabinogi, special abilities don't consume stamina, but instead consume either Hit Points or Mana Points.  In fact, most physical skills directly subtract from your health, much like Windmill does in Mabinogi, which helps to create an extra layer of strategy during combat.

I'll continue to edit/post as I play, since I've yet to see the extent of things like character customization, and I wouldn't want to judge it prematurely.  I just thought I'd post to see if anyone else had heard of it/played it yet. 

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Edit: One thing I did notice right away is that the game's "dungeon" setup is awfully similar to Mabinogi's.  I'm curious as to how far these parallels go...

[L0lz]

I watched my sister play this. It looked boring. XD I'm not up all in these asian mmos anymore. Maybe Aion just because of the hype its getting. xD

[Mori]

I'd definitely agree that the beginning is boring.  That's pretty much the generic setup for all of the Shin Megami Tensei games: absurdly long boring intros. 

But, on the other hand, Persona 3: FES is one of my favorite games of all time.  Incredible story, smoothly integrating a relationship system into the rest of the game without it feeling tacked on, less moral choices and more "real world" ones, and a fairly unique combat system. So by association, this game might still have potential. 

Edit:

Okay, I love the combat system.  I like the demons/persona.  But two fairly small problems irritated me to the point of logging off.

1) Really bad lag/latency issues

2) No easy way to select/attack moving enemies (mostly due to problem 1)

Balancing is great, art is pretty nice, but the fact that an enemy much weaker than me kills me because of no ctrl-click option like in Mabinogi pretty much made me ragequit.  The game could be awesome if those two problems were ironed out.