LogFAQs > #878681557

wwinterj25 posted...

knivesX2004 posted...

Your main problem is you haven't beaten it.
It won't redeem the game pacing for you (since you already played it) but the last 10 or so hours of the game REALLY kick ass and it makes the rest of the game make sense.

I'm currently a bit through palace 7 and I have to say this is the worse palace in the game. Story wise? Nothing at all surprising yet. I'll wait until I've completed the game before I judge it though.

That argument sort of reminds me of this:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/04/14

I'm sorry, but even if the last 10% of a story is brilliant and amazing, if the 90% preceding it is a painful slog, it is NOT a good experience. Nor should anyone feel "obligated" to stick it out to the end, or feel bad for not being able to get through the dull parts. If something is so poorly structured that large chunks of it are unbearable torment you have to suffer through to experience the actual worthwhile parts, it's a piss-poor game/book/show/etc.

It's the flip-side of the argument people like to use about how "THE ENDING DOESN'T MATTER" or "IT'S THE JOURNEY THAT MATTERS, NOT THE DESTINATION!" (especially people trying to defend Mass Effect 3). No, I'm sorry, but the ending DOES matter - a strong ending is a keystone holding up the arch of quality storytelling, while a terrible ending is like sticking a lump of warm buttery shit into the top of the arch and then acting surprised when the whole thing falls down.

Beginning, middle, and end all matter, and any one of the being weak can easily ruin the other two (and the overall whole). But the reverse isn't really true - one of them being utterly brilliant really can't compensate for the other two being extremely weak. A good story has to succeed in countless different ways. A bad story only has to fail in one.

That being said, a strong, fun experience can still be had if a game has "grindy" parts (or a book has filler, etc), and some unevenness can balance out, but if part of the experience feels like a painful slog, that's absolutely dragging the whole thing down.

Not that I have any opinions about Persona 5 specifically - it is very, very clearly a game which was never made for ME, anyone like me, and the odds of it ever being anything I was ever going to like were pretty much doomed from the beginning. So I've avoided it online (though what I have heard/seen just sort of reinforces the initial assumption). But I always have a bit of a pet-peeve when someone is basically saying "Well, 3/4ths of this thing is shit, but you should force yourself to try it anyway because the other 1/4th is pretty good!" There is FAR too much quality media in our world (more than any single human could ever hope to experience even in a lifetime three times as long) to force yourself to suffer for a moment of brilliance when you could just as easily watch/read/play something that is more like 90%+ great.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family