That's just a surface assessment. It's got some neat game concepts in it and the characters actually develop some personality.
Persona 3 was voted one of the best PS2 RPGs ever. That says a lot for a system that's had 10 years worth of games. It was so popular they did a rerelease with over 40% more stuff, called FES. P4 was released more recently, which is a seperate game altogether.
The games themselves indeed have some good concepts, and the characters aren't flat. The ending for FES is quite good, too, if you ever get that far. In the end, it's not much different from most JRPGS, but this one is also a life simulator in that you not only build your stats in a dungeon, but also out of one too.
Persona 4 is the new one that was released a few months ago. It was rated just as high as FES. It takes everything that people had gripes in FES and redoes the game, this time with another story and an alternative universe. It's just as good, if not better, though those creepy japs do make creepy games. This is a murder mystery, kind of like P1 and P2, but it's pretty well done in the end.
Both games happen to look cheesy, but they are quite dark (as all Shin Megami Tensei games are) and actually tackle different problems seen in Japan today. Suicide is a growing problem in Japan, so I guess they are combining the Shin Megami Tensei demon and apocolypse themes with the typical high school life sim shctick, so you don't just dungeon crawl all day and get bored. P4 deals with media culture and its effect on society, something I would see in a sociology or anthropology class. Pretty deep, right?
Granted, Yahtzee and his gang of cohorts will always find flaws in ANY game. These games were great, though. Definitely top notch through and through, even though people may disagree. Even Yahtzee could find huge flaws in a game like Shadow of the Colossus, or make fun of the ending in Star Ocean: Til the Ends of Time (I liked it )
Oh well. Yahtzee doesn't really review old PS2 games anyways. He's missing out
This post has been edited by razym: 05 May 2009 - 12:11 AM