[As a gamer, I've recently been guilty of not taking the time to completely enjoy my games. We are all guilty of this sometimes, but let me tell the story. You never know, your gaming life may improve after reading this, I know my gaming life has certainly improved, so I thought I'd share this]

[A while back, I bought Persona 4, a turn based RPG with a mature rating and some slick ass story hooks. Great game. The problem was that as I was playing it, I was already contemplating my purchase of another Persona title. I was obsessed. After all, I was enjoying Persona 4 A LOT. Well, when you finish the game, it allows you to carry some stuff over on a replay file, which keeps everything fresh and lets you accomplish more. You can do this as many times as you want, and this allows you to get full completion, and allow you to enjoy all the elements of the game to its' fullest. Well, A few hours into my new game+ file, I got Persona 3 FES; it had finally arrived in the mail]

[I shouldn't have played it, but I did. I put down Persona 4, saying fuck it, I already got a new one. I started hacking away and was having a blast. Persona 3 proved to be very good as well, but once again, I found myself contemplating a purchase of yet another SMT game. After a while, I got my hands on a copy of SMT, DS 2. I picked it up and loved it. Problem was, I wasn't even through with Persona 3. Not even close! I still had the rest of 'the journey' story to finish, and hadn't even touched 'The Answer' part of the game. What was I doing?]

[I kept playing DS 2 for a while, and had lots of fun. But I played it even less. About ten or more hours into the game, I stopped playing RPGs alltogether. I realized I had no spirit for the games, that my fun was just gone. What was going on? After much thought and deliberation, I decided that I should go back to Persona 4, where it all started, and finish the replay file. And this is where I am now. I am loving Persona 4 every bit as much as I was a few months ago, and I suddenly have my RPG spirit back. I've learned something from this whole experience. Every time I jump ship from one game to the next without enjoying it to the fullest, I'm killing the fun of gaming entirely. Games are designed to give you the fullest experience possible, and when you cut that up into pieces by playing too many games at the same time, or skipping it for several weeks, you are cheating yourself from the full game experience you could be having]

[I am ashamed at myself for commiting such an atrocity against Persona 4 and RPGs in general. I hope that my games can forgive me, in time, for these gaming sins I've commited. When I put down Persona 4 just to play 3, I still had HOURS of gameplay left on 4. HOURS. I have optional bosses left unchallenged, quests left untouched, dialogue unheard and new areas of excitement unexplored. Putting down a game unfinished in place of another one is like traveling hundreds of miles to visit someone you haven't seen in years, only to stay for a few hours because you got a call saying you can visit someone else hundreds of miles away that you haven't seen in quite a while either. Once you get there, you get another call and leave again, and the cycle keeps repeating. At the end of that cycle, have you really, truly connected to those people you visited? Or did you get to say hello, good evening, nice weather and goodbye? I think the answer to that question is very vivid] -[AT9]