The “Q” in Persona Q stands for “Etrian Odyssey IV”

I can’t recall the last time I really anticipated the release of a new video game. Sure, there was The Last of Us, and GTA V, but who wasn’t terribly excited by the prospect of playing those gems? Seriously, my dog was stoked to lick the sweat off my arms and face after I’d play those games.

With that in mind, I was really excited to sink my teeth into Persona Q, a 3DS title released on November 28^th, 2014 here in North America. At least, I thought I was. Once it came time to pick the game up and actually play it, I no longer felt the desire to take the plunge.

After sitting and thinking about several reasons why this could be the case, I came to the conclusion that I’ve simply been purchasing too many games without playing them. Case in point: I purchased Etrian Odyssey IV (EO IV) a year or so back, and never got around to even unwrapping it.

So here was lonely EO IV, a game whose similarities to Persona Q outweigh its differences, unplayed and unexperienced. It was simply too much for me to bear.

A younger me would abandon EO IV. It’s arguably archaic gameplay design has never been kind to my modern sensibilities. Mapping out dungeon layouts was novel for all of one hour. First-person combat is about as fun as it sounds. What’s present of the game’s story is barely expressed to the player in any overt manner.

Persona Q is in many ways a concession to these dated design mechanics: combat incorporates a third-person aspect and looks to be more dynamic, the game is teeming with conversations between the game’s cast, etc. And yet, now that I’m older, I finally appreciate the quiet brilliance of the EO series.

When I first played the original EO, I knew immediately that it wasn’t a series for me. It was too minimal. I was given too much agency to craft my characters. In the early goings, my party managed to keep their own in fights. But they gradually became less and less effective. I spread each character’s skills too thinly.

When I got around to playing EO II, I fared better. From what I recall, I actually enjoyed myself for a little while. But there was something at the back of my mind, tugging me away from enjoying the game too much. The game still felt too daunting. It felt too focused on min-maxing characters and meticulously levelling characters into übermenschen; on weighing party strengths to offset individual characters. It was smarter than I was, and I knew it.

EO IV and I have been brought together under unusual circumstances. I unwrapped it with an apprehensive heart. After committing near 10 hours to it, I can say that EO IV is a great game. It may even be a fun game. It certainly isn’t Persona Q, and it still fails to capture what I most look for in RPGs (namely strong storytelling and likeable characters). Like its predecessors, EO IV is lean, opting to focus its recourses on challenging gameplay and meaningful levelling. But unlike its predecessors, who I played during a time when I obviously failed to appreciate these traits, I came across EO IV when I wanted something else, but realized that what I wanted in Persona Q I managed to find in EO IV: a friend.

But really, I found a strong portable RPG that treats me like an adult, while managing to streamline its class system to the point where I can create more traditional classes more efficiently. Meaning, that I can (and have) poorly built my characters. I can (and have) died and lost an hour’s worth of my time, much like previous games. But now, I feel like I am making progress with a party of explorers whose core function is known to me. So EO IV will never be fun. But it can be more than that. It can be the game that I needed, but not the one I wanted.