P4A: My Personal Tribulations and Highlights So Far

My first blog post attached to a Giant Bomb wiki page.

Persona 4 Arena has been my most played game since it's release back in early August. I was going to pass it over on the sole reason that I have not played Persona 4 at all (I own the game, but did not have a functional Playstation 2 to play it) and heard that the game was going to serve as the game's aftermath to the events from the original game. However, just weeks before its release, a few of my fighting game friends convinced me and by luck with good timing, placed my pre-order of the game at Newegg at their promotional pre-order price of $48. Thank goodness that my friends convinced me into getting this game, because the game is very fun and I have made some awesome social links with a bunch of fellow Giant Bombers here.

My copy arrived in the mail on the date of the retail release date, which surprised me as I didn't expect it to arrive on day one. I put my name out on the P4A social links thread and with barely any training under my belt, found a few bombers to play with and had much fun, disregarding my concern for rest that night. I followed up the subsequent nights playing against other bombers and enjoying myself. Unfortunately, I couldn't enter the first Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena Tournament due to work on that Friday. However, further playing with fellow bombers and racking up the losses shook my confidence and after watching a fabulous finals to that tournament, I decided to put the game away, not sure if I wanted to go back to it.

I did go back to it after two(?) weeks later with a bit of a clearer mind and this time I stuck with it. I trained a bit more, did as much challenges as I could, dabbled with score attack mode, and most importantly, not to get deterred on how bad I was playing. There was something about fighting games that always ticked me off because I played so poorly against my friends and my few ventures online as well as not really getting into the games as much as I had hoped. But P4A clicked with me. I guess it's the simplified inputs for specials, easy to link combos, fast-paced gameplay with some neat tools to add some flavor to the battle (burst, one more cancel, furious action, etc.). I shook off my fear and decided to hit the ranked matches. I was doing okay, eventually ranking myself up to a D with a 40% win rate.

FluxWaveZ announced the second Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena tournament and decided to go into ranked hard as well as play some casuals with some fellow bombers. Soki was rounding up folks to play some casuals in preparations and though I had fun, I did express my frustrations at my play since I was getting beat pretty handily in each causal meetup we had, probably only winning a few matches. I had some early success back in ranked, getting up to C- before I hit a severe wall and started to take in a lot of losses, slowly lowering my win rate to the lower 30s. The day of the second tournament was coming close, I was excited as I didn't compete in the first one, but there were parts of me that was dreading the day. I was getting nervous. Would I make a fool out of myself? How bad was I gonna get pounded?

I put up a status on my Giant Bomb profile stating that I hit a wall in my P4A play and Soki came in with some words of wisdom on my wall that I took to heart. It relaxed me a bit and also made me change up my play a bit. He did point out that I was way too reliant on using Chie's FA to counteract pressure from Soki's Yu and Servantey's Chie and being way too reckless, whether it's going in to attack or not blocking properly and completely making all the wrong reads. It calmed me down a little heading into the tournament. I did well by my own standards. After getting sent to losers by MDYu, I beat ESREVER and Phatmac in losers before succumbing to Brodehouse. Playing almost an entire day with tournament and casual fighting did have a severe side effect, extreme exhaustion which has affected my work productivity after the tournament ended. I decided to take a slight break from the game to try to recover as best as I can.

I went back to the game after I recovered and decided to go back into the labyrinths of ranked matches. The frustrations grew back a bit as I struggled to reach that elusive C grade. One night, I finally got into a little bit of a roll and achieved that C grade, an achievement I never thought I would ever achieve from the game's launch. I think getting to that point finally let whatever I was worried about playing P4A out of my body. It was like a baptism. From then on, I could care less on how bad I got beat. I continued on with ranked and even though I was raking up the losses (my current ranked win rate stands at 25%), I was at peace for once. I defeated a couple of B graders and an A grade Yukiko, my personal ranked match highlights. I also learned and adjusted my game slightly after getting matched up with the same S ranked Naoto and Yu player a bunch of times, probably due to my fast connections limit option I select in ranked matches. [Next time, I'll remove the limit to make myself open to others.]

Flux announced the third Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena Tournament and this time I strictly stuck with casual matches with fellow bombers. I sparred a bunch with Brodehouse and TheFakePsychic during the weeknights and with a bunch of other fellows over the weekends. Some fellow bombers think my game has improved, which I appreciate since I don't think I play that great of a game at all. I didn't advance far in the third tournament, but I put up a good fight against Grim-2-, taking a match from him and against Messenko. Messenko complimented my defense and not falling for a bait that he was doing when he had his Akihiko pinned against me in the corner. My main highlight of this recent tournament is actually beating Soki in the second match of the first round of the team tournament. I couldn't believe it myself when I actually got the win and I'll admit, had a pretty big grin on my face as I haven't beaten him much at all, even in casual play. I was promptly crushed by FluxWaveZ afterwards and our team got eliminated, but I was still happy nonetheless. I had much fun playing casuals in between tournament matches with some other bombers I haven't met before, such as LiquidRob, DiscoViking, and YI-Orange, who was my team partner for the team tournament.

Whether or not I can continue to play my game or even improve upon it is a question, as I plan to be off from the game again for a bit. As much fun as I am having now, all the casual sparring going toward midnight on weeknights and far into the morning on weekends has messed up my sleep quality. I'll get in a little bit of action sometime, strictly on Friday or Saturday nights so as I don't get too rusty with my play. I know Chie's supposed be a in-your-face rushdown character, but I'm comfortable with the style I play. I'm also starting to feel comfortable playing with Naoto, who's my main sub and warmed up to Yukiko recently. I still feel bad since my style of play tends to DRAG MATCHES, even leading to numerous time outs, but I guess getting a round to time out means something.

In the end, I feel like I'm mostly at peace with P4A. I may never reach up to the fighting levels of FluxWaveZ, aznjon, MDYu, yuu, Soki, and other top GB fighters, but if I feel like I gave my opponent a decent fight, mission accomplished. A win is icing in the cake for me. Yes, there are still times where I may lapse and be frustrated at the game due the competitive nature of the fighting game genre, but I know better that it's only a video game, and there are much more pressing matters in life that are more worthy to be concerned with.