No, this isn't about motion control, but I intend to write about that very topic eventually.

Giant Bomb's Endurance Run series of videos have been running 80 episodes strong so far. Jeff and Vinny have been playing Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 for a total of 16 weeks, or four straight months, with a total of 40-some hours played under their belt. They're almost halfway through the game, assuming they can achieve the game's real ending, although most people believe they haven't that capability.

Like a lot of the dorks* voraciously consuming this content, a full repertoire of new-found inside jokes under their belts, I went and found myself a copy of Persona 3: FES. I've played Digital Devil Saga 2 (which is not a great game) in the past, and, of course, the concept of Evokers was mind-blowing, so I had always been interested in playing this game. However, its hard M-rating impeded my ability to purchase it. Lucky for me, I held off long enough that I could get the updated FES version, which allegedly improves the main game and adds a new epilogue.

I suppose at some point I will try to review Persona 3: FES, but something has gotten in the way, and hindered my ability to enjoy the game to an extent. If I had played this game when it was released in 2006, I would have thought it a novel concept that needed further refinement of mechanics, especially on the high school sim side. Having experienced Persona 4, at least, I can see what the future held for this series, and it was an assuredly brighter one. The story is better, the Social Link system is more-refined and more-forgiving, not to mention more flexible; the character interaction is better and more absurd; there are more events along the lines of the school camping trip (P3 has two of those, neither of which are too exciting); you can actually control your party members; the list goes on and on.

I could nitpick things I think make Persona 3 better - giving one of your party members debuffs, or having getting up use a turn - but there's no doubt that Persona 4 is a better game than it's predecessor. Now, Persona 3 is a great game by all means. The concept is a novel one, and for a first go it was great. The problem is, I can see all the improvements that were made on both sides of the coin. This may have only been a problem starting out. I definetly got into this game, having played 60 hours in the span of a month. There hasn't been a game I played this much and was this into since World of Warcraft, and before that, Final Fantasy X, which I played for 40 hours until my progress was halted by the second-to-last boss. That seemed like a long time to play one game (that isn't an MMO), but I'm still not tired of Persona 3, even if it doesn't have a lot of the same narrative hooks its successor does. Actually, I would appreciate more in-game time to play the game; I don't think I can finish every Social Link in time, and I'm not entirely sold on the concept of playing this game again in "New Game +" mode.

The internet working the way it does, the world is my oyster in terms of what I can write about this game. It's a game I'm very interested in talking and writing about, and I'm not obligated to write a review in the formal sense, although I suppose I'd be interested in evaluating this game's quality. Granted, my audience is a small one, and I'm not sold on the concept of throwing another User Review into the mix, this being a small-fish-in-a-big-pond kind of situation.

But, if were to, say, evaluate the quality of Persona 3: FES in some capacity, what is the most fair way to approach it? Having seen what Persona 4 is, and having seen how it is in many ways a better game than Persona 3, I can't help but have my own experience with the latter be marred. Like I said, it didn't prevent me from enjoying this game, because I think it's fantastic** in many ways.

Let's get to the point, because it's taken me four paragraphs to do so. Would it be at all fair to reference Persona 4 when talking about Persona 3? Granted, because I'm not someone paid to play games and write about them, I don't really have any rules to follow when it comes to what I write about and how I choose to approach it. But, my circumstances are also different. Most "professional" game reviews are written for the window during which they're released. We all know games don't exist in a vacuum, so comparisons to similar games are logical, but in this case, I'm comparing P3 to it's successor, released two years afterwards. It may not seem fair, but at the same time, I can't just ignore it, because it did color my experience with the game.

Ahh, it probably won't hurt anyone. I would definitely recommend one play this game first, before Persona 4, so you can appreciate P3 for its firsts, what it did for the genre, and to see the progression of the arcane "high school sim/dungeon-crawler" genre.

* Within the group of people who enjoy the ER and think its funny, is the subset people who obsess over it, repeating funny things said in the day's video, followed by "LOL", in the comments, and think wearing one of these jokes on their own bodies would be a novel experience and one worth spending money on. Nothing against you guys! Well, maybe something.

** Note the jump in word-usage from "great" in Paragraph 4 to "fantastic" in Paragraph 6.