Persona 2 in pSX
I'm a huge fan of the megami tensei (女神転生) series by ATLUS (and formerly Namco), not only because of its exceptionally eerie atmosphere but also because of the great soundtrack and unmatched NPC interaction. With interaction I don't mean a simple four-way dialogs as you find it in the Elder Scroll based on a like-dislike-meter. In Persona, for example, you'll have to find out the personality which can be one of cheerful, timid, gloomy, bluff, temperant, arrogant, wise and fool or a combination of up to three. Depending on the (mix of) personalities, the demons react differently to interaction with either fear, anger, happiness or interest or a logical mix of two. To make things more complicated there are countless (well, in fact only 57) ways to interact with a demon which depends on which character or combination of characters of your party you use. Interactions thus range from reading horoscopes and giving advices to interrogations and passionate gazes. I didn't yet mention that talking is not always an option, especially if a previous action made the demon hate or fear you. Anyway, successfully negotiating with demons is important because they might present you items or join your cause.
Unfortunately, the current shin megami tensei titles such as Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga don't feature such complex interactions, but therefore other great ideas.
Well, as I lost my saves of Persona and bought an import copy of Persona 2 I decided to give it a spin. My PS2 is quite loud though and I'm obviously too lazy to clean its fans so I decided to make ePSXe run my gentoo system. Portage told me that epsxe was masked so I looked around a bit more and finally found pSX, though not in portage. After manually adding some missing ia32 libraries it was all set up - no need to download and configure plugins for each and every vital part of a PSX emulator as in ePSXe. It just workd out of the box, even with real optical drives. OK, I prefer using an image after all:
Using a normal (read cheap, without support for dual-shock) PS2-controller to USB adapter works fine after:
See for yourself:
Unfortunately, the current shin megami tensei titles such as Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga don't feature such complex interactions, but therefore other great ideas.
Well, as I lost my saves of Persona and bought an import copy of Persona 2 I decided to give it a spin. My PS2 is quite loud though and I'm obviously too lazy to clean its fans so I decided to make ePSXe run my gentoo system. Portage told me that epsxe was masked so I looked around a bit more and finally found pSX, though not in portage. After manually adding some missing ia32 libraries it was all set up - no need to download and configure plugins for each and every vital part of a PSX emulator as in ePSXe. It just workd out of the box, even with real optical drives. OK, I prefer using an image after all:
# cdrdao read-cd --read-raw --datafile persona2.bin --device 3,0,0 --driver generic-mmc-raw persona2.toc
Using a normal (read cheap, without support for dual-shock) PS2-controller to USB adapter works fine after:
# modprobe joydev
See for yourself:
#
posted by Falko at 3:56 AM
2 Comments:
Persona 3 is already out, you should give it a try! ;-)
I did - thanks to a certain someone :)
But the OST is not as good as in the previous parts...
Post a Comment