Reason Number 1:

Me? I'm not a big RPG person. I used to be, but I find that they are far too time consuming and tend not to hold my interest. (I'm also not really a big blogger, so me coming out of hibernation for this contest means a lot.) This game though, sparked quite an interest in me, mostly for one reason that is really fucking hard for me to admit on a public blog that I will probably get flamed for, but I am pretty emo.


I don't look like this anymore and I no longer like to take pictures of myself in the dark.

Srsly. Look at that shit. I am turned on by boys who can be mistaken as girls and have done terrible things to my hair, one of them being dying it three different colors (at the same time) and cutting only the back off. I enjoy music that consist of incoherent screaming and any reference to putting guns to your head. I've slightly grown out of this phase, but I still fap to the phrase "pull the trigger" and I like to dye my hair silly colors when I can afford it.

The second I heard about a game that involved high schoolers shooting themselves in the head, I immediately cocked my head in interest (ha, I used the word cock). Now I like to play things very nonchalantly for absolutely not reason, so one day I was talking to my boyfriend and said something along the lines of, "So... What's up with that Persona 3 game? You like shoot yourself in the head to attack or something?"

Being a very straight forward person he responded, "You'd like it."

I immediately developed an obsession. After watching video after video of game play, I decided that I needed to play this myself. Something that is actually a lot more difficult than it should be for one reason:

Reason Number 2:

I am a dirt poor college student. When I want a game, I sell half my library. I am down to about five games. Two of them were gifts that I figured that I should play before I sell at least and the other three are my favorite games ever that I refuse to sell (the Fatal Frame series). I even sold my friend's copy of Smash Brothers Melee without telling him (it's okay, he only plays his PS3 now). I've never owned a new game in my life. I simply can't afford it and my family does not support my gaming habits. (That's why I can't tell them that I'm actually going to school to be a developer.) Screw the idea of next gen. I've been saving up for a 360 for over a year and still probably won't have enough after this Christmas and when I do, I'll probably live off of downloadable content. When I want to play a game badly enough, I find a person with that system and I rent the game and befriend them. So I rented it.

A little while back, I decided that I wanted to get into modding. Now I love my PS2. And I love free stuff. So it only seemed logical to mod it and put a 8 GB hard drive into it, and my PS2, which I had affectionately referred to as "my baby" was now known as the Abomination. It became bulky and made angry wurring noises and there was a mysterious flashing orange light inside that reminded me of the fires of hell coming forth to forever remind me of this sin against God that I had created.

The first thing I did was put Persona 3 in. I ripped it and thought nothing more of it.

I turned the game on. And I saw this:



I was in awe. In fact, I watched it about 50 more times. I just sat there and watched the intro and the trailer over and over again, for about 2 hours before I finally started the game up. Every time I watched the part where the clock ticked down and he shot himself and fell apart into what looked like butterflies, I just died a little inside (in a good way). I was in love with the song. I downloaded the soundtrack. It was amazing.

I played the game for about two more hours that night, and I was completely enamored. I was in love with the characters, especially Junpei, whose voice sounded oddly familiar, which brings me to my next reason:

Reason Number 3:

I like anime. Now I'm not going to admit that I *love* it, because honestly, I haven't seen as much as most people, although I do go to anime conventions and cosplay every chance for an excuse I get. (I might just cosplay as the main character, if that doesn't show love enough. That's fucking cross dressing and shit! The last time I did that at a con, I had crazy fan girls touching me all over, which is really awkward and scary, especially when it's your first convention and no one is around to protect you because they're at the imported video game table... >_>)


I'm not that into anime. I swear...

Now I knew Junpei was from some show that I didn't watch avidly, but I had seen it enough to recognize it. I did some serious matlocking (I looked it up on Wikipedia...) and found out that it was Edward Alrich from Fullmetal Alchemist. Good show. A little depressing. Quit watching it half way through but yea, Junpei had a recognizable voice actor. In fact, I looked up all the voice actors, and they had done some notable VAing before that. One thing that took me by surprise was this: ya know Akihiko? Illidan Stormrange, from World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade. What the hell. That's fucking awesome. (I no longer play WoW after an extensive rehab program called unemployment.)


Akihiko in his past life. (God, his name is fucking fun to say!)


So yea. I love anime cutscenes. The last RPG I played was Lunar: SSSC, and ya know what? That had fucking amazing anime cutscenes as well! I was so happy... There was actually a time while playing it during a rather epic cutscene (when you do your first summon and fight your first monster) where I just wanted it to keep going and watch what happened. It felt more like a really good anime than a game.

Reason Number 4:

Honor. This may sound strange but I will explain. Now before, I spoke of the creation of the Abomination and how I had ripped this game with no thought, but after playing it for awhile, I felt extremely guilty. This game was amazing! It was so beautiful and had actually inspired me to play an RPG again. I had to share it with the world (which to me, consist of about two other people) so I coerced my boyfriend to play it and I took it to my best friends house and let him play it. By the time I got it back, it was time to send it on its way. At least I had gotten those few amazing hours alone with it and had been able to share its amazingness with others. But what of the ripped copy?

...I couldn't do it. I booted it up once and it didn't feel right. When I download music, I feel pretty okay about it. Everyone does it. But when it's one of my favorite bands, I go out and buy the CD to support them. Now this was a game that I truly loved. I wanted to support the wonderful people who had made it. I refused to play it. I yearned for many times, but I refused to play my pirated copy. It was the greatest thing I had been exposed to for the longest time but I wanted to respect it. So I deleted it.


Oh yea. I totally orgasmed the first time I summoned Orpheus.

I thought about it for a long time and decided that I really wanted to buy this game, which is a really big commitment for a person like me, something similar to buying a new baby or having a car. I had heard of FES being in Japan. I read up on it and it sounded fucking epic. If I was going to put any money into this game, it was going to be on a special edition. This was all before it was confirmed that this was coming to the US, so I waited and hoped that one day, I would hear the glorious news of its arrival.

Time passed and I went away to college, where I became even poorer and lived off of rentals that I could barely afford and the whole friend system of borrowing. I even used a creepy stalker guy to play Bioshock, Portal, and No More Heroes. Finally I caught word of it. FES was coming to the US! I did a little happy dance and I squealed and I watched the video of the intro about 80 more times and then I realized that I had no money.

So here I am now. I've waited all this time to play this game that I love so much. I have no talents to offer you. Only sincere devotion to this game. So much devotion that I could not play a ripped copy, even on those cold lonely friendless college Saturday nights when I yearned for a good game. So please, I beg of you, consider my entry. And here is my last reason:

Reason Number 5:

Right now it is 1 am. I had to make this post now so that I wouldn't forget about it. I never enter contest because I am lazy and/or forget about them. I have to wake up in a few hours and write two papers and take a final. I am sacrificing much needed sleep just for a chance to play this game again. I'm going to want to shoot myself in the morning for not going to bed when I should have and for procrastinating so much on my work. But I took the time out of my insanely busy schedule just to enter this contest in hope that maybe, just maybe, for the first time in my life, I might just win something.

(I'd also like to add that I accidentally deleted about half of this then published it, reread it, and had to write it all over again so it's actually more like 2 am now... >_> This made me very sad because I wrote very witty things that the world will never see and I will never remember, because it is far too late. That just shows even more devotion.)