I’ve been playing Persona 4 for the past month and the gameplay itself has been what I wanted: a solid refinement on the concepts from the third game. The smaller scale of the dungeons and the busier world were solid improvements.
Unfortunately as I near the end of the game I have hit the revelation of the identity of the murderer who is at the center of the plot. The game makes you pick from a list of every possible person in the game to select them based on clues that no one on the list fits. If you get it wrong then it’s game over and you repeat a big pile of stuff to get the chance to guess again.
The “answer” however makes absolutely no sense. The killer had no connection to the first victim that the player would know about and only the most tenuous of connection to the second victim. He lacked any motive which would be central to working out a mystery; the game gives him a ludicrous one in a confrontation about half an hour later into the game which is filled with “information” that contradicts both things presented earlier in the game and explanations given only a few lines of dialog earlier. The big clue used later on that the killer knew something that they shouldn’t have is explained because the player told them all about the events less than fifteen minutes before they made their “slip up”. You could have thrown a dart at a wall filled with names and any one of them that you hit would have made just as much sense.
And getting into spoilers with the complaints but…
the justification after you select the person on the list is even worse. By the reasoning given there any police officer should be the prime suspect in a crime.
I get the impression that they decided “We’re nearing the end so we need a big twist!” and logic be damned. I know jRPG’s don’t have anything resembling coherent plots but a “mystery” has to have one. And punishing the player for not guessing their dart throw is just salt in the wound. It mars an otherwise fine game (okay, the three to four hours before you get any control at the beginning was kind of bad too).
That’s odd. I haven’t /beaten/ the game yet, but I have found the killer and I’m about to head into that final dungeon(I’m in December now), and I suspected that person waaaay back in May. Maybe you missed something? Admittedly, there was enough doubt in my mind that I wasn’t certain… but after the same idea popped up with every incident, I thought I might be on to something.
I agree that it might not be obvious, but when picking the list of suspects… process of elimination should get rid of most. Over half the list are your party members, who are even less likely.
Not completely on topic re: the plot twist, but just something that you might want to know, in order to get the complete P4 experience, considering you’re nearing the end of the year. I’m not going to reveal any specific plot-based spoilers, but in some sense it’s a spoiler about the way the game is structured. If you want to figure absolutely everything out yourself, then don’t read this, but this particular thing is so non-obvious that basically nobody on the P4 boards claims to have figured it out themselves.
On March 20th, go to gamefaqs and look at a walkthrough in order to follow the correct steps to get the true ending (rather than the “normal” ending). Basically you have to:
[ol]
[li]Find and talk to all your maxed S. links[/li][li]Do NOT choose to go home when prompted[/li][li]Go to Junes and examine the elevator twice[/li][/ol]
Hey, Persona 4 discussion. Huzzah. Time for possibly necessary spoiler boxes and rambling type thoughts.
I’ve just reached the December dungeon too and I’ve got some thoughts on the culprit.
I really wasn’t very pleased with Adachi being the culprit. I had hoped he’d be another red herring like video game boy or Namatame. It kind of makes sense since he was always deflecting Dojima when he questioned the silent protagonist about involvement with the case, or how he always showed up at just the right time to give the characters a hint they needed to keep going. I had just hoped a better reason for his actions than just him being bored and crazy.
I had a thought about Nanako too that involves December spoilery type things. Did anyone else think that the group brought back Nanako’s shadow and that’s why she wasn’t getting any better? I know everyone passes out after their ordeals inside the TV world, and Nanako is younger than the rest, but hospitalization seemed a bit much for someone whose shadow didn’t even come out. I’ve gotten the normal ending, so I know that that isn’t the case. I was just curious.
And just because my mind is wandering, I’ve got a question about the Void Quest.
Any idea what happened to Mitsuo when his shadow disappeared? Everyone else accepts that they have a dark side and gets a persona. Up until then it had seemed that if someone didn’t accept their shadow, it would become a monster and try to kill them again. But his just sort of went “poof.” Any thoughts?