everything rad is good for you: a persona/shin megami thread

okay so i think czn is playing persona 3 aka one of the best games ever and i'm playing through P4 right now and i'd like to talk to you dudes about this a^+ series of JAPENESE VIDEO CONSOLE GAME EXPERIENCES

so let's talk then

so i think so far persona 4 has the best story/structure/mechanic of all the games. its kinda like DQ8 where something crystallized for the developers and all the things that make a series unique and "important" if that isnt too too are honed to a killing sharpness

theres a weird cult around the early PS games imo - they kind of suck! they try to accomplish too many things it wasnt unitl P3 that i think the dungeon crawl/RPG/dating sim/game as narrative thing really clicked and P4 improves the formula just a little with a truly compelling murder mystery storyline

c'mon some of you dudes must be playing this!!!!!

the last two persona games have looked so amazing:

i'm playing P3 and can't stop but have reached the point where i just want to fast forward to the boss battles now. the repetitions getting to me. its too long!

stop fighting and start picking up chix

they never want the presents i give them
whatz a bluehaired emoboy gotta do to get some action, huh :/

psyched for this that I only just learned about

P3 is straight up one of the best looking games ever; the localisation is really sharp too, the writing is GBA fire emblem quality (clean, right amount of goofyness, funny and serious in the right places)

I'm still really early on tho (got into a bit of a mad PS2 game glut), how many floors are there to tartarus?

Kids, shoot yourself in the head and gain super powers! The SMT / Megaten / Persona thread... now I'm that guy :(

as much of a shocking anamoly it is to have duplicate threads on ILG y tf dont u talk about how INSANE and AWESOME theez games are p.s. that other thread kind of sucked

opinions like boss battles should be challenging. P3 is maybe the ultimate in grinding as meditative experience imo alto P4 seems to have cut down on that a little

also: kind of think the stripped down awful-on-purpose battle modes in persona make it one if the most challenging JRPGs to grind since you cant just run a two button script on that ish

i need to get a new ps2 before i can keep playing these games :(

but really people bitch about "grinding" in these games, then they turn around and play fable ii. which i played last night for like 2 hours and got NOWHERE. there's no "grinding" per se but there's a lot of EXCRUCIATINGLY BORING foot travel punctuated by menus that take >30secs to LOAD and a dog occasionally barking and a thought bubble popping up over his head saying there is a treasure or something is buried (meaning you have to go about 15 feet off the beaten path, watch an awful animation, get an item which takes 3 seconds to load, and go back to the trail, making you wonder why they even bother making you leave the beaten path becuase it's not like you get in a fight-- it's just a massive waste of time. why not make the dog bark and then I HAVE THE ITEM? it's the same fucking thing) and then a shitload of people start following you around with hearst over their heads because once you tohught it'd be a good idea to do "victory arm pump" in this city 15 times, and they're all talking, and talking, and talking, and saying the same things, then to escape them you get behind the counter at a bar and for the next 10m you start earning money and you WANNA STOP because it's so boring but you CAN'T because this is the first time in a while you've earned money and you LOSE YOUR MULTIPLIER IF YOU STOP but you have to deal with repetitive button-pressing and EVEN worse repetitive people saying "you're good at pouring beer" or whatever they say and fuck that game fuck that game fuck that game.

♥♥♥♥♥♥ hahahaha ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

srlsy man fuk a fable II it suuuuuxxxx

ok so this game is SO GOOD

finally got time to have a nice sit down with it, my save is at 2hrs11 so far and I've only just got back to tartarus (up to level 3) for the second time -> this game must be massive. but it's gorgeous. so I don't care.

I totally get this btw: "P3 is maybe the ultimate in grinding as meditative experience"

played the jap version of devil survivor v. much looking forward to the eng release... lol not having to check/reset every time u fuse a persona cuts down on the play time by like a third

can u smash maya the mmorpg chick cos I'm working on it

devil survivor is rad btw fuiud

~~▪~~~strange journey~~▪~~~~

shin megami evangelion

stupid cover art general video game burnout made this seem like a pass but idk reviews/1st impressions/utbue vidz making me want this. has any1 (coz) copped this????

doesn't seem to be on the r4 gravytrain iirc
still finishing devil survivor, might buy this later

still early on in strange journey but I'm getting deep into fusing demons now. pretty sure I'm going to sink a disgusting amount of hours into this.

diggin the sci-fi/horror hybrid vibe pretty hard

yah i have so many ~deep thoughts~ about this game i just kinda cant help myself & this is the sort of game that gives u that space u sink into it but freely. the demon interactions are still its weakest part (or least the weakest part that isnt part of the c/d of rpgs) theyre inconsistent & frustrating & shallow

agreed on the demon interactions. v. annoying when the same type of demon reacts to an identical response differently!

have to say, I know you gotta keep fusing to stay competitive, but I will be missing some of my demon bros.

as a metal dude, I can't not love this guy:

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/3/31815/1223514-morax_large.jpg

awesome.

i know i'm late on this but what does the title of this thread refer to, anyway (rad?)

its a play on the title of the book "everything bad is good for you"

have to say, I know you gotta keep fusing to stay competitive, but I will be missing some of my demon bros.

yah you really have no chance but to fuse as much and as quickly as possible in order to finish the later dungeons. im kinda used to being a little lazy about demon mgmt - hanging on to dudes with one skill i really liked or just needed for s.link (obv not a factor) or wanting to avoid paying to resummon them for future fusions but you really need a full component in this game

a little bit stalled btw school and some other things but still hype 4 this

i actually have heard of that book but i thought there was some kind of SMT-related punning going on

yah i think i had some convoluted deep meaning in mind when i started this thread but that was kinda @ the height of my obsession. dont remember what i was referring to lol

most o_O thing for 2day: eo3 is out in jpn

ebigfy opening para has sibling synchronicity w/P3 iirc tho it's a while since I read it

are any of the 8/16-bit shin megami whatever games worth emulating while i look for a copy of strange journey

i am oddly fascinated by this blog: http://whatyuwannaknow.tumblr.com/

what a great idea!

http://asktheinvestigationteam.tumblr.com/

is this, like, a thing

lots of SMT & related news recently
PS1/Saturn game Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers is being remade for 3DS
P3:FES is up for download on the PS3 in US, both Digital Devil Saga games coming next month to EU PS3
Ghostlight are localising Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked 3DS and its DS sequel Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 in EU

where will i find the time/when will Atlus stop with ports and make a new game dammit

oooh Shin Megami Tensei 4 announced for 3DS
playing thru Strange Journey atm, the demon conversations can get pretty funny

is something weird going on with experience distribution in strange journey or am i missing something

I'm playing through P3P on vita, yes I am

this game has the biggest disconnect between theme and mechanics of anything i've played since left 4 dead afaict

thomp did you ever emulate any of the old-school SMT games? i fucked around with the fan translations of the first few but never made any real progress.

nah i just decided to order a copy of strange journey. apparently they're a lot more annoying/arbitrary? i feel like the more user-friendly version of this experience is probably all i need for the moment, especially given the more user-friendly version still means running into enemies with a one-hit instant kill game over for a couple of hours before you can do anything to avoid it

avoiding the majority of random encounters by talking to demons is a pretty good mechanic

dark rooms you can't automap is kind of an annoying one

"Yes, the Shibboleth ...
You pronounce it well, Zelenin."

rmde

i gave my dude a polack name in this and have found myself getting more and more resentful of how the fn WASPs on board the red stripe keep expecting the ethnic minorities to do all the work

Buncha these are on sale for 3ds. I'm just wondering if the Soul Hackers or DDS Overclocked are actually worth picking up thru the 3ds

new Persona 5 trailer, looking and sounding good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc_9r4wifFc

came here to post this too haha

the angles/etc during many of the scenes are very Catherine

no surprise that P5 has been delayed, now coming out "Summer 2016" ... maybe.
new trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvpOwQaqRXA

I was getting frustrated 50 hours into P2: Innocent Sin when I was in what was clearly the final dungeon for forever and the difficulty suddenly jumped into the stratosphere and I was randomly encountering one-hit-killers like 2/3 of the time and using up all of my unreplenishable items, and I was seriously about to pack it in but I stuck it out until the end and I'm glad I did because the penultimate boss was (spoilerz) Hitler. Sorry, 'Fuhrer'. But seriously: Hitler. Followed by Nyarlathotep. So that was dece.

I think I'm going to take a break before hitting the second P2 though.

the difficulty suddenly jumped into the stratosphere and I was randomly encountering one-hit-killers like 2/3 of the time

yeah that's the point where I tapped out of P4.

gotta admit i am super fucking psyched for persona 5

yeah! for whatever reason i thought it was delayed until september

94 on metacritic is currently enough to make it the highest rated non-remake in ps4 history

i should get off my ass and go pick it up before t he store closes

Played the first couple of hours, strong start and super stylish. Already fighting the urge to play all night!

2.5 hours in and i am bored as fuck tbh

feels slow and clunky and talky after nier: automata

did you like p3 and p4?

the pacing so far is pretty much exactly that, slo to start but ramps up into itself after a while. i'm enjoying it!

Oh, huh, I blasted through the first two and guess I got distracted like an hour into 2b. Maybe I should just jump ahead to 3 so I can get caught up and play 5 in like 2021.

P5 otm
http://i.imgur.com/EOVY0WO.jpg

Do I have to play any of the first 4 because I'm only just hearing about this

You can start wherever, they aren't really linked (apart from the two P2 games obv)
Into the second dungeon, this game has really got its hooks into me now. Appreciate the minor SMT tweaks added to the battle system. Soundtrack is incredible.

P5 is probably the best place to start due to all the quality of life improvements in the menus and such, no more 5 minute long re-rolls of fusion results to get the right skillset inherited.

it's a paradox. all can be played separately. P5 is probably the best. (i'm not done yet but i already like it more in every conceivable way.) however P3 and P4 I also LOVE and they'd be hard to go back to. but i'm not gonna sit here and tell you to get a SP and PS Vita to play the essential versions of those two sooooo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUWQFnC2zqU

also lmao

i have been playing this fucking compulsively for the past week. being unemployed + this existing = uh oh

per my post 2 above, this may be my fave entry into one of my fave series OAT. wow wow wow

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-16-atlus-has-released-a-nifty-free-shin-megami-tensei-metroidvania
https://www.atlus.co.jp/news/5854/

surprisingly long for a gag game. i got to the second teleporter and had to take a break.

holy shit @ this game

i don't really play rpgs ever, but... dang dog

this game is going to take over my life, isn't it

i keep reading about "time management" and choices i get to make about down-time but so far there hasn't been any. i keep getting hustled to the next bit and then told to go to bed. don't get me wrong, the game is amazing (if a bit disturbing tbh) but i do feel a bit pushed around like it's on rails

i forgot how much fun turn-based battles can be. still trying to work out how confidantes' abilities map into this, how to "fuse" persona, wth arcana are, etc

the game does take a while before it opens up, the 'hustling' in this one definitely felt more obnoxious than in P4. You should be able to fuse by talking too the twins but basically you can make new persona by combining two or more other ones and it will let you choose certain abilities to gift to them based on the persona you are fusing. the game will also allow you to go back and buy persona you've fused at the level you last had them so there's no need to worry about losing certain persona.

each confidante represents an arcana and the higher yr social link with that character the more bonus xp you'll get when you fuse a persona of that arcana. Also if you currently have a persona of a certain arcana in yr 'deck' your relationship with the corresponding character will grow faster when you hang out with them. which are good reasons to be fusing persona.

sorry if that made no sense

lol it totally makes sense now, feels funny that i ever had to wonder about it

question though: how do you get the background music out of your head??????? this is a major problem with videogames with this many hours of play built in imo!!

I realized that I'm never going to actually push through with Persona 2B (which, I gather, is just a variation on the first version of Persona 2) so I jumped ahead to Persona 3. I don't know how I feel about the PSP version so far, since it does that thing that way too many Japanese Vita/PSP games do where they reduce the gameplay to not much more than clicking buttons amidst static images of talking heads (just watched some PS2 clips to confirm that the portable version strips away all of the cutscenes and character animation). Maybe the actual battles will make this feel like less of a (yaaaaaaawn) visual novel? Everyone seems to agree that it's actually better than the PS2 version so I'm hanging in there. I'm probably just spoiled by the fact that the PSP ports of the first two games are newer and more polished than P3.

This post has been sponsored by the year 2006.

the psp version is far superior in that you actually get to control your whole party, iirc. in the original i think you just set their "AI" and only had direct control of your own character. plus they added some stuff like the other gender main character. enjoy it! that game gets buckwild in the best way.

Persona 5 (PS3) is finally a reasonable price on the PS store so here I go

:D

I've never played any of these before; just getting started on this one. Music's cool, dialogue is... functional

This thing is 80-100 hrs long?!

depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go (secret boss is ng+ only, for starters) but i don't think you can beat it in less than 40 or so unless you're speedrunning it.

I've never played any JRPG stuff before so the fun part for me is catching little bits of Japanese culture amidst the Westernized dialogue, like when a character moans about conveyor belt sushi or letting a man take up his passenger seat(!)

is P5 on sale for PS4 too?

not booted PS4 up in a while but now this and horizon are reasonable prices......

You'd have to check but I assume so.

hope I get to play p4g and p5 someday but I refuse to buy a console just for one game let alone 2 consoles for 2 games. hoping sega moving in on PC and switch ports this year will filter down to atlus eventually

i got involved in something else and stalled on this. it is incredibly addictive but i wound up getting impatient.. i would blitz through the combat in order to get to the story.. then blitz through the story in order to get to the combat :(

hoping sega moving in on PC and switch ports this year will filter down to atlus eventually

smt v is switch exclusive so far so there's that

smt is usually on nintendo consoles yeah but it's a p different vibe. atlus doesn't ignore Nintendo they just don't make their games for more than one platform at a time

not reading the thread yet because spoilers but i got Persona 5 last Tuesday and have put in 60+ hours in the last week and am now forcing myself to take breaks.

I quit before I even got to the second proper dungeon. The time management shit was just stressing me out.

got a bit niggled by that at times when you go a couple of days and you have no freedom to roam but a lot of the time management is more apparent than real i think, once you work it out

god that was good

Short version of why I should get P5 while it's $35?

epic storyline, emotional and smart; brilliant merger of Visual Novel, JRPG and life sim; complex dense combat mechanics that i felt like i was barely beginning to get good at after one play thru; it looks beautiful

main caveat would be if you don't like VNs or looooong cut scenes (depending on your point of view) this mightn't be for you. also it's just eaten 3 weeks of my (admittedly unemployed) life

The life sim aspect gives me pause...

it's not the main game but there's an important time management element that alters your powers and relationships with other characters as well as opening a bunch of mini story-arcs

I watched some gameplay and the colors do look pretty as all get out.

with maybe MGS games aside it’s the most completely designed game i’ve ever played, from menus to loading to various gameplay modes. it’s a GESAMTKUNSTWERK

I've spent the evening trying not to just start it over again.

who did u date

Makoto. I realised I could date multiple people, but I felt guilty so I stayed faithful.

It's a really long game to contemplate going thru every possible storyline but what the hell

i never made it the dating stage of this

i gave a gift to the doctor but she didn’t want it :o

The randomness of the gifts is a bit of a pain - there are 3 or 4 obvious ones, but most of the time you're just guessing, or looking up a guess paper on the internet. Tae was the first character I cd've dated, but I gave the wrong answer when she asked me.

atlus has only made 2 console rpgs this decade and they're both visually insane in different ways

Persona 3 is on the PS Store and I'm probably getting that next but somebody upthread said the PSP/Vita version is better? Such a pain trying to track down old console games

makoto's a cop, designer drug doctor all the way

the thing that's stayed with me the most about this game is how beautifully the menu/ui moves

3 and 4 both have significantly improved versions on vita by my understanding

im probably gonna pick up a cheap pstv later this year to play 4 which has been my white whale game for a decade now

if you are going back from 5 then yeh the PSP version of 3 is probably the best move with all its QOL improvements, although I'd rather play FES since it was the first Persona game I played. I kinda want to play it now dammit.
haven't played the vita version of 4 cos I'd played the PS2 version twice and was burnt out on that, but heard they added a lot of content
really hoping for a Q2 localization announcement at some point, but they only just announced the last Etrian game for the West so it may be some time yet
crazy that I'm still going to be buying new 3DS games in 2019 but then P4 came out 2 years after the PS3 did, Atlus gonna Atlus

here's the Q2 trailer btw, love the weird Bomberman Aegis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RICSmSbPzVs

yeah and persona 5 was their ps3 game. atlus works slowly

times like this that the difficulty of being easily able to get hold of and play all these games is agony. you rarely have this issue with books or movies.

I started P5 last night! The most notable thing I did was to close up the shop we're I'm staying at -- I assume things will be more fun "tomorrow" when I go to school?

The game is so pretty to look at, at the very least.

It's a little slow getting in but it will open up

atlus has only made 2 console rpgs this decade

woah. wait. what?

P5 and Tokyo Mirage Sessions? Both incredible games, the latter enhanced if you like the music/get all the J-Pop references (Yatsufusa Hatanaka lol)

yeah they've mostly been making 3ds games since the ps2 era ended

tokyo mirage sessions is the sort of game that 10 years later you'll describe and people will think you're bullshitting them that it exists. bonus points for being an exclusive on a console no one bought

> I started P5 last night! The most notable thing I did was to close up the shop we're I'm staying at -- I assume things will be more fun "tomorrow" when I go to school?

IIRC my favourite bit of the whole game happens tomorrow but it's a one off, not representative of the rest of the game or anything you'll ever do again

Finished the first palace -- it was hard! I think the biggest difficulty I had was getting used to the sneaking system and how limited the camera became when I was in cover, which resulted in me alerting guards etc.

HUEG regrets on not naming my team The Groop mere minutes after I set what I chose in stone. I would pay much Yen to change it again.

The sheer amount of stuff outside of dungeon-dives is a little overwhelming, especially with the nagging sense that I ought to min-max the stat-building stuff.

Definitely not a casual game that I can pick up on a random weeknight!

OK so I just unlocked Mementos and puttering around in a Catbus makes my life complete.

I saw an article that complained about the wonky US localization, and I kind of wonder if P5's translation issues were by design to maintain the JRPG flavor?

i feel like there might be some puns that aren't fully translatable, at least

people complain about the translation for literally every JRPG ever released in the West. the only exception i can think of is the Trails series and for those people complain about how long it takes for them to get localized instead

I've had the theme song stuck in my head, from what I remember the lyrics go something like this:

Who am I?
Like Johnny 5,
I am a-live,
I am... PERSONA 5!

i googled the Japanese criminal conviction rate today and no fucken way

I finished the second palace yesterday, and I was surprised how much the story has grabbed and moved me! Likewise with Yusuke, the big weirdo.

One thing I wish was different is the quintessentially Japanese pervertedness, eg Morgana randomly telling Panther that she's gorgeous, and the fact that your home room teacher is a romance option.

Oh and the life simulator parts of the game are wonderful! I fully expected to hate it.

Yeah, everything weird and off is part of the magic, the script's effort to engage with cultural sexism even as it enacts it etc

NG+ is almost wholly about exploring the life sim stuff tbh

it's a fucking great story, basicslly

I'm guessing that players generally use SP attacks more often than melee attacks?

SP run out, is the thing, so you'll want to balance magic attacks with physical attacks

At least so far, my party doesn't seem to be capable of doing enough physical damage in a single round to kill the enemy/enemies, who when given the chance can wipe me out pretty quickly (I've been one-shotted more than once). So instead, I've been using SP to weaken them first for hold-ups.

On my ng+ I've got a stack of sp refill items and it ceases to be an issue, harder on a first play thru tho but doable

Different enemies are held up by sp or HP attacks, again eventually it becomes more possible to work out which

For Justine/Christine's fusion list, is there an in-game way to check to see which Persona with which skill I'm supposed to create? I always forget after they mention it the first time.

In the cell if you step slightly to the left you can speak to Justine instead of Igor.

I have to say I don't really have a strategy with my confidants. I say yes to anybody who asks and then decline if it says "I don't think my bond will deepen". Is there any point in hanging out if your bond's not going to deepen?

short anwser, yes.

long answer: it depends. at the simplest level, social link (confidant) rank ups are point based, you need a certain amount to proceed to the next level. if you overshoot it, the excess goes to waste, i think. good answers give more points, as does having a persona in your roster of the same arcana of the link you want to level up. of course there are a few other systems in place, some links are gated by your skills, or main plot, or by reaching a certain rank in other links.

i don't want to say much more because i'd certainly spout some outright falsehood (maybe i already did) but mostly because you shouldn't overthink it, it's very unlikely you'll max everything in a blind playthrough without any guidance

sometimes iirc you might need to have more than one meeting with a confidant to get them to the next level - there are definitely special circumstances where this is the case but you always get a clue that this might happen. i'm pretty sure that the meetings/dates that don't raise your level sometimes provide the chance to get room decorations (which don't do anything but improve the look of your room, but that's good enough for me)

also there is a degree of optimizing within the order - increasing your relationship with a particular confidant can help you to speed up your relationship-building with everybody else.

AND at least one confidant has a time limit to reach max, which is a pain

AND at least one confidant won't progress until certain in-game events have transpired

Thanks Noodle!

Occasionally when the game starts to drag, it turns on its head-turning charm and you go awww.

Ok the game's charm is officially suave, Futaba's socialization has been tremendous fun and Yusuke continues to be hilarious.

Strangely, I've found the dungeon/palace crawling to be real stressful and unfun, because of the constant fear of getting ambushed, of getting one shot killed, or of running out of SP. I've bought a couple SP Adhesive 3's so that hopefully alleviates the last concern (having 4 seems overkill, especially since I'm still money limited and I can just swap them around my party), and now that I'm cultivating more confidants and leveling up, maybe that takes care of the first two.

Ryuji really got on my tits at times tho

i still have no idea how to use blank cards

have you started a confidant relationship with Yusuke?

yep! i hung out w him once and he offered to do something w blank cards but i was like *geh* and left

I've never needed them tbh

I've read some people complaining about the Instant Kill ability for your party members -- is it bad enough to gimp them deliberately?

what does that mean

i have a few spells that offer the chance of instakill but frankly some of the shadows have instakill too so it only seems fair

I guess only Ryuji has an instakill ability, which kicks in when you try to ambush lower level enemies, but doesn't give XP or money.

Possibly minor spoilers in here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/835628-persona-5/75389564

i don't like it cos i like to grind but it kicks in v rarely, also i guess you can just keep Ryuji out of the starting line-up?

Good call there re: Ryuji.

I'm up to the fifth palace but apparently I have yet to master the art of figuring out the attack types of the strongest enemies and equipping a persona that mitigates that type of damage (I wiped last night and lost an hour of crawling).

lol i went down a level too far in Mementos two days ago and got my ass HANDED to me.

omg the casino music is so good.

Just finished the 6th palace and dang the narrative wrinkle manages to be pretty awesome when it could've been contrived.

trying to get all the trophies now but there are 2, maybe 3, that are stupidly difficult to the point of maybe not bothering

For real!?

Tracer, how far into the game are you?

lol @ "for real"

I'm in the outer space palace now, the one belonging to the trumpian burger lord

i just bought SP adhesive 3 and am romancing both the doctor and the shogi player (naughty!)

In one session I've got 2 of those trophies but the last one is going to drive me nuts because it comes down to a broken, stupid button combo.

I romanced all the romanceable characters on my last game. Felt guilty, but then I feel guilty when I tell them we're just friends too.

I'm in the outer space palace now, the one belonging to the trumpian burger lord

i just bought SP adhesive 3 and am romancing both the doctor and the shogi player (naughty!)

lol "Burger Lord." I like that palace mostly for its Daleks.

SP Adhesives are game changers. (I did end up buying 4 because I didn't like having to equip/unequip all the time.)

Kaneshiro's the closest to Trump imo

Personally, I thought Bezos was a closer analogue to Okumura.

Seems reasonable. Shido isn't Trumplike at all, apart from being a nazi.

Just passed 100 hours. Feels like half of that came from the 7th palace.

Hooboy, the last mini-boss (who isn't really a mini-boss) in said palace... I kept forgetting to heal/restore SP between fights when I had the chance, so I needed 3 tries to beat that part.

I'm crawling through Mementos for end-game prep and read up on the Reaper farming trick, which seems to break the game. The only reason I might keep doing it is to create an untouchable Persona for the NG+ optional boss, but I wonder if that's even worth it?

i used it on my third go thru, partly because beating the Reaper is one of the achievements and it's the only way to do it, partly because i wanted to beat the NG+ boss(es). you can do it to the degree of moderation you want, it's probably the best way to be able to fuse some of the rarer high level personae too.

my first go of P3 feels considerably harder than P5 in some ways, not least the dungeons

Yoshitsune is probably enough for the secret boss, you don't need a 100% invulnerable persona. i did abuse the reaper trick in ng+ but that was because i wanted to 100% the compendium (and don't recall if i actually did it or not)

i'm no smt expert but of the few i've played p5 seemed the most forgiving

OK I'm about to start finals and, as I understand it, after that I can finally fuse Yoshitsune. I've managed to max all my social stats, I've maxed 2/3s of my confidants (or will once the I reach the date for the story ones), I'll have 300K-400K yen, and I've managed to fuse Trumpeter, Throne, and Black Frost, plus I've got a Siegfried with Null (or Evade) Nuke (I keep wanting to put a magic skill on him but I don't have any appealing skill cards).

When this game is good, it is rad.

Having maxed Ryuji and then Reaper farming to level 77, I can say now that his instakill ability is totally annoying. If I have open persona slots, then I automatically get that persona, whether or not they're in my compendium, but when I'm full up, the game just sez that I can't recruit that persona and doesn't even give me the option to choose a persona to set free.

Anyway, I fused Yoshi, and also Satan even though his elemental resistances are kind of underwhelming.

hassou tobi your way to victory

Beat it last night! Felt bad (really bad) standing up Hifumi on Valentine's, but Mako-chan seems like the game's canonical romance.

Can't wait to start NG+!

Hah and I wasn't able to level Yoshi enough to get Hassou Tobi. 😐

if they're not going to give us P5 on switch, can they at least give us P4 golden and P3 FES ?

lol the dog

I started NG+ (main goal is to max all confidants this time), but dang @ how long the game takes to let go of your hand is maddening. Otoh murdering Palace 1 enemies with Yoshi is very satisfying.

I also have been eyeing P4, $10 on PS3 seems worthwhile.

Not available in the UK :(

Only 120 hours into P3 tho so no rush

Finished the main game. Damn these people know how to push my emo buttons.

i'm finally playing persona 4

it's cool how unlike anything else this still is despite a decade of being an Influential Game

are these games a fixed length in in game days or will doing the cases sooner than i have to cause me to miss out on free time?

No, it just frees you up to work on your stats, social links etc

ok that's what i figured just wanted to make sure since my inclination is to rush the first case so i have a full party

iirc the december one should be delayed as much as possible because unlike the previous cases you do miss out on free time. for all others it's better to rush asap because s-links will refuse to hang out when close to the deadline

Ladies, if he:

-Never texts you first
-Never uses his real name
-Claims a house cat "insists" he sleep after a single task
-Hardly says two words at a time

He's not your man. He's Joker and is probs dating all your friends too and you should all attack him on Valentine's Day

— Erika Harlacher (@ErikaHarlacher) November 26, 2018

finished the first case, the boss took 3 tries bc the second time i played it perfectly until the last couple rounds where i tried to swap out to a weaker persona for one turn to use its cure spell and the MC immediately got one-shot due to the lower stats. pretty dumb

the dungeons are definitely the weakest link here, i know attritiony dungeon crawlers are atlus's thing and they need to be long enough that they become an element of the time management game rather than being clearable in a day but still. theyre real long for how featureless they are.

the soul is both infinite and monotonous

yeah at the same time i can't imagine how i'd change them in keeping with the game

i cant remember much about the P4 dungeons which sort of makes your point for you. the dungeon stuff is definitely less evocative than tartarus was in P3 but i do remember thinking some of the visual stuff was interesting. idk

the fan-made edit of P3FES posted on youtube thats just all the anime cutscenes is the best anime ever made imo

i'll play 3 at some point. my only real exposure to persona before this was watching my college roommate play 3 when it first came out, i don't really remember much about it though other than that it had roughly the same presentation as this

ok i spent an entire play session grinding last night so i think they've finally got me

i beat what seemed to be the final boss but its still going so i guess theres a postgame

postgame bonus dungeon seems obnoxious but i guess i'll do it since i've come this far

finished the game w/ the true ending. enjoyed it overall but its exhaustingly long and kinda drags in bits especially the summer months. i could imagine this being my favorite rpg if i had played it 10 years ago but today it just lands at pretty good. will def play 3 and 5 at some point but not right away

https://personacentral.com/persona-5-the-royal-revealed/

yeah it's a similar upgrade to p4 golden as expected. the additions in golden other than quality of life tweaks mostly kinda sucked though

Knew i'd have to get a PS4 eventually

Mildly annoyed that this looks like it's a separate purchase.

yeah it's a new version of the game, not an expansion. the original was a ps3 game that was released on ps4 out of necessity because it was so late, this is the ps4 "remaster"

they did a same gen update of p3 too though that was the pre-DLC era

persona 5 S turned out to be persona 5 scramble, a musou game. ps4/switch, no release date.

So i had a little disposable income for the first time in a while and i'm now the excitable owner of a Playstation TV which is downloading P4 Golden as i type. FASTER YOU FUCKER, FASTER

i finally got persona 5! about 10 hours in, about to take care of the gym coach, who will hopefully be fired and go to jail, or just die.

i have never played a persona game, and i am really loving it so far - more enthusiastic about it than any rpg i've played in years!

it's completely insane in the best way. i love the absurd leaps of dream-logic the characters make, all of which turn out to be absolutely accurate.

5 so far has managed to sidestep the thing from 4 where they ran not very funny by-the-book versions of every standard high school comedy bit

just got P5 on sale. my gosh this game is great so far.

did spend the entire evening just clicking x though.

There are sections of that in all of them but it's usually fun/bearable/worth it

Finished P4 Golden at the weekend. Feels the weakest of the last 3 to me, the balance is off and some of the just clicking x sections felt ridiculously long. Still amazing, obv. Started straight back into NG+. Think the balance issues are probly mostly to do with the added missions, haven't played the PS2 version tho.

beyond QoL improvements the added stuff is mostly just marie and her social link and postgame dungeon. plus some of the shitty 'comedy' scenes with the fat girl

i think there might be some changes to persona fusion that make the game easier too actually yeah

The fusion in 4 is great tbh, the comedy is bad, the game hangs around way too long between the original bad guy and Marie and her dungeons' SP mechanic is a pain.

Idk i feel like without Marie the game is a lot shorter and easier than 3 and 4 but maybe i missed a boss first time round or more likely i just know how to smash the dungeons now.

3 and 5 i mean

it's definitely the shortest of the three, golden or original

I'm unhealthily obsessed with the series at this point tbh :D so there is never enough of it to spend time in

yeah there's really only the 3 games with that formula, i'm sure we'll get a p6 in another 4 years or something though

The redux of P5 is gonna be the thing that makes me finally get a PS4 next year i'm sure. The thought of how far off P6 is is just depressing.

Didn't they just do a P5 redux?

they announced it, it's not out in english until next year

Cautiously good news: https://kotaku.com/persona-5-royal-is-editing-two-homophobic-scenes-1841751118

its just the english localization team changing it as far as i can tell, atlus/hashino still don't care

i like persona 5 now. the black and red plaid punkish aesthetic really turned me off at first, strong early 00s mall punk sum 41 vibes, but i have come to terms w it.

5 makes a lot of the social mechanics more explicit which takes away some of the immersiveness of 3 (the best game of the entire megaten series imo, followed by nocturne) but also makes it less stressful, wondering if i was totally blowing the late game by eating the wrong ramen or whatever. music is also not as good as 3 or 4 but there are def some tunes.

it's a good game, though i did stop.

the dating stuff gave me massive anxiety. what if i gave the wrong gift and didn't get to fuck the one i wanted to fuck????

there was also a serious difficulty spike in mementos which scared me

3, 4 and 5 are all near-perfect no back answers

no i agree - i feel that i failed it, rather than the other way around

tbf i've NG+ed all of them 3 or 4 times, it gets a lot easier

https://kotaku.com/persona-2-guide-written-in-2011-gets-one-hell-of-an-u-1843430262

hey Persona 4 Golden is out on Steam, only $20/£16 too
hope they port P3 next

Here I am, 12 years late to the party, playing P4 for the first time, having never played a Persona before. I like pretty much everything about it except for the bland randomized dungeons. The soundtrack is having a Major Effect on me, let me tell you.

it's a shame it's a straight port otherwise i'd've bought the fucker again

the dungeons are one of the weaker elements until 5 tbf

Ugh I am so tempted to rebuy it and play it again but I have enough to play

i bought a PS TV just so i could play the Golden so i'm not gonna get the PC version

I’ve been thinking of getting P4G because it looks like the kind of game I’d like (turn-based RPG, colourful visuals, weird as hell), but i fear it might be too dense for me since I’m not much of a gamer.. should I just say fuck it and go for it anyways?

yeah, it's very user friendly and the learning curve is gentle

P5R is on sale and I'm trying to be smart and resist buying it as I played the base game already. Maybe if it ever goes under $20, I'll give it a try.

Lol that didn't last long! Bought it just now anyway.

i'm tempted to give it another try, i own the base game but fell off it 25-30 hours in and there being a Better version makes me less inclined to resume

Apparently Royal has quality of life improvements too.

i've put 400+ hours into P5 and i'm getting Royal as soon as i've got a machine to play it on, worth every penny

i should play TMS first though since i already own that one

actually P5R is half price on the PS Store over here, very tempted to buy it now so it's ready for when PS5's are available next summer

been playing a lot of persona 3 lately. I haven't played any other games in the series yet so I don't know how it stands up against the others, but the world it creates is just so perfect. and the characters! and dialogue! I'm far from even being halfway through the game, but I already feel so attached to the characters and story

the summer vacation beach scene -- where junpei drags akihiko and the protagonist into trying to pick up girls at the beach before they meet aigis -- is such a good portrayal of adolescent male awkwardness and arrogance (except for that one part where it gets weirdly transphobic. that part has not aged well!)

sadly you get those little moments of stupid unpleasantness in the series but yeah otm, the Persona games have become the most emotionally affecting games I've ever played and I'm fairly obsessed.

(not obsessed enough to take a chance on Strikers yet tho. has anybody played that?)

those atlus writers are really queer-phobic. look up the scenes they added in catherine full body if you want to be disgusted.

Finally finished P3:FES (The Journey) after 4 months and 100 hours of gameplay. Man, what an absolutely incredible — and just downright heartbreaking — ending. I know 4 and 5 get more acclaim (probably because 3 does have some gameplay flaws), but I’ll be amazed if either of them can pull off a better finale than that.

3 is the best ending

it's out

this went well pic.twitter.com/nbIwkih86B

— ella (@Ninto55) November 20, 2021

yep it's been kicking my ass too haha

Soul Hackers 2 for every platform except Switch, Aug 25th 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emsm8wfo_MQ

rip all my jokes about how atlus's ps4 game will come out in 2025

if they are willing to make a Soul Hackers 2 this means that Digital Devil Saga 3 can't be far off ... right?

define "far"

anyway finally something i might want to buy for PS5

So I've beaten Persona 4 Golden now... the (true) ending was kinda underwhelming? Like most stories have a trajectory where they build up to a thrilling climax and then there's a denouement and conclusion.. but in P4G it hits a massive climax in december, then there's a period where not much happens, then suddenly there's another big confrontation at the end that happens so suddenly the payoff doesn't feel too large?

Of course it's still an incredible near-perfect game with characters i love to death, but P3 had such a more satisfying ending! and (slight spoiler!) i may have shed a tear when all your maxed-out social links visit you during the last battle

over time i've come to appreciate the relatively downbeat P4G - there's a lot going on with rurality and mythology and connection to place. 3, 4 and 5 all have very distinct moods

xp isnt that because the stuff after december is all after-the-fact additions in Golden?

P3 has always been considered the one with the good story. 4 was a hit due to the cast and setting, 5 due to style

Finally time to play the other ones?

https://www.polygon.com/23165846/persona-5-royal-4-golden-3-portable-ps5-steam-nintendo-xbox-release-date

Just noticed that the URL is misleading:

There’s no mention of the Persona games coming to Nintendo Switch

oh good i can buy Golden again, probably Portable too but i hope they buff the mechanics

v disappointed that P3 is a port of the PSP game and not a remaster of FES
learnt the other day that there's a fan hack of FES that lets you control all the characters, but it's very unstable

And 3-5 are coming to Switch now: https://kotaku.com/persona-5-royal-4-golden-3-portable-switch-release-jrpg-1849118719

aaaaand now i'm making my way through Persona 5 Royal. And it's just as amazing as everyone said it is. the writing, characters, dialogue, combat... it really feels like the peak of entertainment

it's also been super fulfilling playing them in order from 3 to 5 and watching the series grow and get better. 3 blew me away (even without directly controlling party members!), but it feels like an atari game in comparison to 5's maximalism!

5 Royal is the best

for all their talk about making a fantasy rpg as a break from persona games, they sure made a game that looks exactly like persona

finally got around to playing Metaphor (preorders being absolutely fucked in the UK due to undershipping sure didn't help!)
feels like this could be my breaking point where the Atlus overstyling of menus etc is getting in the way of the actual game, tho that might wear off by the 40th hour lol
feels more like a SMT spinoff than a Persona spinoff so far. also a hard mode that's actually challenging thank god, don't get that much in jprgs these days

Too tight to pay full price for it yet but it's sitting on my wishlist waiting for the moment