• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Persona Community Thread |OT9| SPOILER TAGS OR DIE

Mediking

Member
I made a rough flowchart of the relationship between the various aspects of Personas and Shadows. Major spoilers for every installment on here, but especially for Persona 3 and Persona 5

Flowchart

I may expand upon this later. EDIT: I expanded upon it, now contains more stuff from Persona 5 on there.


This is very helpful.

All we need is Persona characters smiling and winking on it now. Lol
 

asagami_

Banned
It's not that hard really. Most videogames have models with much higher quality than what the hardware supports.

It's like Pokémon, since the XY games the Poké models are future-proofed and it's theorized the battles run like shit thanks to that. I would say the fact the 3DS isn't good hardware would explain the situation, too xD
 

Lynx_7

Member
Persona 4 Golden on Very Hard can be so goddamn infuriating. I was 8 or 9 floors high on my 2nd run of
Rise's dungeon
on my way to fight the optional boss, doing fairly well for myself, only to open some randon chest with one of those Knight enemies, who attacked my MC (AT FULL HP!) before anyone could move and there goes more than an hour of progress. Then on my reattempt I lost again on the 3rd floor. I was so angry at that point I don't even remember what went down. Probably the most frustrated I've ever been playing a videogame. MC death or one-shot kills, choose one Persona. You can't fucking have both.

It's sad because outside of those bullshit circumstances when the game just decides to take a piss on you, the difficulty is actually fairly good and all 3 boss fights so far were pretty challenging, specially
Shadow Teddie
. I miss party members dying for you on their first Social Link rank. Sure would've saved me a few hours!
 

Nictel

Member
Persona 4 Golden on Very Hard can be so goddamn infuriating. I was 8 or 9 floors high on my 2nd run of
Rise's dungeon
on my way to fight the optional boss, doing fairly well for myself, only to open some randon chest with one of those Knight enemies, who attacked my MC (AT FULL HP!) before anyone could move and there goes more than an hour of progress. Then on my reattempt I lost again on the 3rd floor. I was so angry at that point I don't even remember what went down. Probably the most frustrated I've ever been playing a videogame. MC death or one-shot kills, choose one Persona. You can't fucking have both.

It's sad because outside of those bullshit circumstances when the game just decides to take a piss on you, the difficulty is actually fairly good and all 3 boss fights so far were pretty challenging, specially
Shadow Teddie
. I miss party members dying for you on their first Social Link rank. Sure would've saved me a few hours!
NULL bless/curse is a must for MC. It can be frustrating, like I said before it also makes the game revolve around keeping the MC alive. Does a member have 5hp but the MC has 100 and the enemy can crit higher than that? Heal MC!
 

Lynx_7

Member
NULL bless/curse is a must for MC. It can be frustrating, like I said before it also makes the game revolve around keeping the MC alive. Does a member have 5hp but the MC has 100 and the enemy can crit higher than that? Heal MC!
It wasn't a Hama/Mudo kill, it was a normal physical attack from one of those knight shadows lol
It's usually not an issue because I frequently go first and just use some status effects to neutralize him and other potentially troublesome threats, but that's not possible when he comes out of a chest swinging attacks at the MC before anyone else gets to do something. Protagonist has 300 hp, enemy does around 450 damage without crits or buffs which is funny because these random enemies hit way harder than any of the bosses. I'm pretty well equipped too.

Anyway, it's
Void Quest
time. Gonna be fun figuring out a strategy that doesn't involve nuking him with Black Frost as I doubt I'll be at a high enough level to fuse him.
 
Yo pals. I just got somewhat spoiled that Persona 4 has
a bunch of endings.

I just beat the
Void Quest dungeon. Should I be concerned about the endings and missing large amounts of content in the late game. Are they doing endings in the Persona 5 way, or like Persona 1?

I don't want to know much about the endings and I really don't want to direct my playthrough towards an ending or whatever, but I also don't want to have to replay this game to get a proper/fulfilling ending right now.
 
Yo pals. I just got somewhat spoiled that Persona 4 has
a bunch of endings.

I just beat the
Void Quest dungeon. Should I be concerned about the endings and missing large amounts of content in the late game. Are they doing endings in the Persona 5 way, or like Persona 1?

I don't want to know much about the endings and I really don't want to direct my playthrough towards an ending or whatever, but I also don't want to have to replay this game to get the proper ending right now.

Persona 5 way in that all the non-true endings are just more abrupt finishes. The way to get the good and true endings is much easier to miss than in 5, but it's impossible to save after getting locked into one, so you can always reload without having to replay from the start. Unless you're playing Golden, in which case you miss a dungeon if you don't max Marie's social link by a certain date.
 

Nictel

Member
It wasn't a Hama/Mudo kill, it was a normal physical attack from one of those knight shadows lol
It's usually not an issue because I frequently go first and just use some status effects to neutralize him and other potentially troublesome threats, but that's not possible when he comes out of a chest swinging attacks at the MC before anyone else gets to do something. Protagonist has 300 hp, enemy does around 450 damage without crits or buffs which is funny because these random enemies hit way harder than any of the bosses. I'm pretty well equipped too.

Anyway, it's
Void Quest
time. Gonna be fun figuring out a strategy that doesn't involve nuking him with Black Frost as I doubt I'll be at a high enough level to fuse him.

That sucks, I have the same problem currently at P5 hard. I can defeat the enemies easily if I get a surprise attack. If not the fight becomes a lot harder. The insane difficulty will probably be even worse at that.

Time to grind to infinity
 
Persona 5 way in that all the non-true endings are just more abrupt finishes. The way to get the good and true endings is much easier to miss than in 5, but it's impossible to save after getting locked into one, so you can always reload without having to replay from the start. Unless you're playing Golden, in which case you miss a dungeon if you don't max Marie's social link by a certain date.

Thank you
 

testtrack321

Neo Member
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxHm0xxrsGk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9VYDLIv6Ck

Some actual beta areas from the development of Persona 5. The first is testing having the crowds be grey, suggesting that was how the protagonist sees them, although it wasn't used in the final game. The second is a test for when the protagonist was to be living in Sae's house, using Katherine as a placeholder for Sae.

This is awesome. I remember P Studio said the protagonist first lived in the same high rise as Sae, not in the same apartment. And I thought living with Sojiro and that revelations story ark was tense.
 
Cross Tag Battle Stats.

Yosuke-BB-TAG-Stats.jpg

 

Makio

Member
Everyone from the Investigation Team ending up in that game is not surprise , there still characters of p4 i doubt if they gonna make it or not like Rise , Redacted or Margaret. (There always DLC hope tho)

Plus need to see which ones of the Shadow Ops will make it too , i will say Aigis / Labrys or Mitsuru / Akihiko.
 

kromeo

Member
The combat in Innocent Sin feels very sluggish and tedious even compared to P1... there's like a 3 second delay before every ability animation
 

PK Gaming

Member
Cross Tag Battle Stats.

Quiet Howling God having above average luck (especially in comparison to Ragna) got a quite a chuckle out of me. These stats are probably total nonsense though; Yu's never merely been just been "all-around." It's doubtful that Yosuke will be that fast either.
 
Quiet Howling God having above average luck (especially in comparison to Ragna) got a quite a chuckle out of me. These stats are probably total nonsense though; Yu's never merely been just been "all-around." It's doubtful that Yosuke will be that fast either.

I just assume it's meant to be about gameplay and not necessarily canon power. Minus the jokey stuff like luck or Ruby having a Kawaii stat.
 

PK Gaming

Member
I just assume it's meant to be about gameplay and not necessarily canon power. Minus the jokey stuff like luck or Ruby having a Kawaii stat.

But does Luck really tie into gameplay? Ragna having 1 luck is a definite reference to his awful luck in-story, in addition to Yosuke's poor luck. I think it's a mix of both, tbh. You'll be able to get a general idea of what the character is like with these stats, but not the full picture.
 
But does Luck really tie into gameplay? Ragna having 1 luck is a definite reference to his awful luck in-story, in addition to Yosuke's poor luck. I think it's a mix of both, tbh. You'll be able to get a general idea of what the character is like with these stats, but not the full picture.

That's why I said minus the jokey stuff.

I know most are speculating that casual is how easy they are to play.
 

kromeo

Member
I'm about 8 hours into 3 FES on hard and I;m still thinking I'm going to end up regretting it, I remember some of the full moon bosses being quite tough on normal.

I do have a lot more experience with the series since then though..
 

Lynx_7

Member
I'm about 8 hours into 3 FES on hard and I;m still thinking I'm going to end up regretting it, I remember some of the full moon bosses being quite tough on normal.

I do have a lot more experience with the series since then though..
Tartarus usually has more actually challenging bosses than full moon events. The biggest problem with the latter is that you need play through the entire day again if you do happen to lose.
My younger brother just finished his P3FES playthrough yesterday. Said he couldn't decide which one he liked better, (P5 and 3 ENDING spoilers)
Joker shooting Yaldabaoth in the face or Minato doing the hand gesture for the Great Seal lol
As seems to be tradition (which I somehow avoided!), he lost once to Nyx's Night Queen shenanigans. MC was enraged and Nyx followed it up with an Almighty Attack, killing him on the spot just as he was one or two turns away from victory. Glory be to Night Queen!

And by god, does P3 have a spectacular final act. I only caught glimpses of it as I'm busy with my own P4G playthrough, but at times I just stopped to watch videos of it on youtube and listen to Memories of You. It just feels appropriately melancholic, grand and climatic, and the game does a great job building up to it.
Nyx
was one of the most memorable final boss fights I've had, and the whole
"the arcana is the means by which all is revealed"
, as much of a meme as it has become, genuinely feels like the culmination of the entire franchise in a way. Genuinely one of my favorite last stretches and endings in a game alongside MGS 2 and perhaps Undertale.
 
currently playing P3P (the plan is to get all social stats up as Male and then try to complete all S Links as Female)

Don't really mind the presentation so far (tho P3MC's summoning in the FES version is waaaay better). Kinda cool how Dancing Hand teaches you not to spam All-Out Attacks when you have the chance.

edit: nvmd
 

Lynx_7

Member
I wonder if people who say they prefer 4's dungeons to 5's palaces remember what it was actually like to play through them. Taking your time to go from one side of the floor to the other because movement is kinda slow (at least compared to P5), cramped corridors everywhere and you're mostly forced to fight and/or wait for the shadows to slooooooooooooowly turn around so you can either catch them by surprise or try to run past them (which usually ends badly when you find another shadow in a cramped corridor and have to fight both of them), the droning repetition of corridors followed by corridors and squares, very little actually happening inside dungeons (before the boss fight) since "dialogue" is mostly relegated to a few brief lines at the start of each floor, and having to go through each dungeon twice if you want to fight optional bosses and complete side-quests. I'd take a game of 7
cruise ships and space stations
dungeons over a single
Naoto
's Lab.

I think the closest the game ever gets to a genuinely good dungeon is
Void's Quest
. That was a freaking odyssey on Very Hard, took me the better part of a day to clear it. Between rainy samurais (I always go on rainy days otherwise I feel like I'm not making the most out of the trip) who could one-shot my party, some little gimmicks and a cool visual style, it's actually fairly tough and surprisingly solid. I also leveled up a lot due to my Samael Megidoing Golden Hands left and right so I was able to fuse Black Frost after all, and thank god I did. I really don't see how that boss would've been possible with a lesser party. Said boss fight also really showed me just how much I appreciate P5's party member balance, because I felt like Yu was kind of the only one pulling his weight between all the buffing, debuffing and damage dealing he had to do all by himself. Teddie had Mediarama going for him but the other 2 just kinda occasionally fullfiled some support role. Sure would've been useful to have an Ann with Tarunda or something. It's getting better as I level them up and their options expand (slowly, because inactive party members not leveling up is a great idea all around, specially in a mode with reduced exp), but it sure was rough for that one arguably most difficult fight in the game. I was genuinely tense and afraid he was going to restore his armor again towards the end lol
There's a lot of good in it, and in some aspects 4 still outdoes the other entries, but it also has plenty of flaws of its own. The more I play it, the more I find myself missing some stuff from 5, more than I thought I would.
 

Sophia

Member
I have little love for P4's dungeons from a gameplay standpoint. They're interesting to look at, and the variety of locations is nice, but Persona 3 did the randomized gameplay way better. Tartarus is a few steps away from a roguelike/Diablo like dungeon crawler, and that makes it more fascinating. They dialed all of that back in Persona 4, in exchange for a few pre-designed floors here and there.

Persona 5's dungeons are fantastic, save for a few minor issues like
Okumura's Palace being tedious to navigate.
 

PK Gaming

Member
I wonder if people who say they prefer 4's dungeons to 5's palaces remember what it was actually like to play through them. Taking your time to go from one side of the floor to the other because movement is kinda slow (at least compared to P5), cramped corridors everywhere and you're mostly forced to fight and/or wait for the shadows to slooooooooooooowly turn around so you can either catch them by surprise or try to run past them (which usually ends badly when you find another shadow in a cramped corridor and have to fight both of them), the droning repetition of corridors followed by corridors and squares, very little actually happening inside dungeons (before the boss fight) since "dialogue" is mostly relegated to a few brief lines at the start of each floor, and having to go through each dungeon twice if you want to fight optional bosses and complete side-quests. I'd take a game of 7
cruise ships and space stations
dungeons over a single
Naoto
's Lab.

I think the closest the game ever gets to a genuinely good dungeon is
Void's Quest
. That was a freaking odyssey on Very Hard, took me the better part of a day to clear it. Between rainy samurais (I always go on rainy days otherwise I feel like I'm not making the most out of the trip) who could one-shot my party, some little gimmicks and a cool visual style, it's actually fairly tough and surprisingly solid. I also leveled up a lot due to my Samael Megidoing Golden Hands left and right so I was able to fuse Black Frost after all, and thank god I did. I really don't see how that boss would've been possible with a lesser party. Said boss fight also really showed me just how much I appreciate P5's party member balance, because I felt like Yu was kind of the only one pulling his weight between all the buffing, debuffing and damage dealing he had to do all by himself. Teddie had Mediarama going for him but the other 2 just kinda occasionally fullfiled some support role. Sure would've been useful to have an Ann with Tarunda or something. It's getting better as I level them up and their options expand (slowly, because inactive party members not leveling up is a great idea all around, specially in a mode with reduced exp), but it sure was rough for that one arguably most difficult fight in the game. I was genuinely tense and afraid he was going to restore his armor again towards the end lol
There's a lot of good in it, and in some aspects 4 still outdoes the other entries, but it also has plenty of flaws of its own. The more I play it, the more I find myself missing some stuff from 5, more than I thought I would.

Nostalgia and an unwillingness to engage with the dungeons, I think. That isn't to say that P5's dungeons were flawless, but they were actually designed compared to P4, which was super incredibly barebones. And i'd much rather be frustrated by P5's lows than go through P4's unambitious highs.

And yeah, your party members in P5 were absolute asskickers, though P4's cast still strong. I'm guessing Very Hard Mode changes the play-style quite a bit!
 

Lynx_7

Member
I have little love for P4's dungeons from a gameplay standpoint. They're interesting to look at, and the variety of locations is nice, but Persona 3 did the randomized gameplay way better. Tartarus is a few steps away from a roguelike/Diablo like dungeon crawler, and that makes it more fascinating. They dialed all of that back in Persona 4, in exchange for a few pre-designed floors here and there.

Persona 5's dungeons are fantastic, save for a few minor issues like
Okumura's Palace being tedious to navigate.

That's something I noticed as well when I was watching my brother's playthrough, but much like the fatigue system, I'm not sure if P3's light dungeon crawling aspects hold up the further you get in the game. At least I don't remember taking advantage of them past the first few blocks of tartarus, and they can actually be detrimental when you're trying to run past an enemy and one of your party member gets stuck in a fight, so you have to go and save them by fighting the shadow you were trying to avoid. Pound for pound, I find P4's approach with the whole SP management aspect to be slightly better. The dungeons having better music also helps, though now that I'm going through them again I noticed I prefer P5's themes. Price and The Days When My Mother Was There are top tier, Sweatshop is really good, and even the slower themes like A Woman and King, Queen and Slave have a cool groove. Yukiko's Castle is fine but I was never a big fan of the track and Sauna/Striptease kind of blend together for me. Game is pretty fun though, and Secret Base is when the dungeon tracks really start to pick up imo. Heaven and Long Way are great, but I might prefer The Whims of Fate and Ark respectively. Corridor and the Depths themes are equally good and fitting.

[...]
And yeah, your party members in P5 were absolute asskickers, though P4's cast still strong. I'm guessing Very Hard Mode changes the play-style quite a bit!

They're still strong, it was just that fight in particular that really made me wish for more support abilities like Tarunda, Rakunda or Sukunda. Kanji has Rakukaja and Masukunda now but I don't think he had them when I fought
Shadow Mitsuo
, Teddie still didn't have Matarukaja, and Yosuke's Sukukaja is generally useless unless I'm trying to kill Gold Hands, so Yu basically had to do everything by himself, and considering he has 3 turns to work with, setting up Mind Charges while keeping everyone alive wasn't easy. At least Chie's Tarukaja was useful.
 

Makio

Member
We can expect anything Persona related in this TGS or nah ...

Mobile SMT looks great , but I doubt it make it out of Japan or my phone can run it haha
 

FluxWaveZ

Member
I just started thinking about how the Persona series seems to have a problem with making female (human) characters actual villains.

Persona 5:
While it can be easily argued that the male targets are bad guys, the hearts of the only two female targets aren't changed because of any villainous nature, and they both end up becoming Phantom Thief allies.

Of course, the traitor and big bad end up being male, too.

Persona 4:
The 3 main, human bad guys faced are all male. 1 of them is a tragic figure, but the other 2 are messed up with no real redeeming argument for what they did.

The big bad ends up being female but, again, I'm talking about an actual human.

Persona 3:
Again, all of the human antagonists faced here are male, with the exception of one member of Strega. As it turns out, she's the only antagonist who defects and becomes an ally.

I've never done the SQQ in P1, so I dunno what's up with that, but the only character who I feel qualifies in the series is [Persona 2: Innocent Sin spoilers]
Maya Okamura. Even Junko Kurosu and Ixquic are turned into sympathetic figures, in the end. At least they're antagonists for the most part, though.

So... more would be cool. I always have this thought of what a Persona 6 set in an all-girls school would look like.
 

Sophia

Member
I've never done the SQQ in P1, so I dunno what's up with that, but the only character who I feel qualifies in the series is [Persona 2: Innocent Sin spoilers]
Maya Okamura. Even Junko Kurosu and Ixquic are turned into sympathetic figures, in the end. At least they're antagonists for the most part, though.

Snow Queen Quest major spoilers:
All five antagonists are female, three of them have heel-face turns after they're defeated, and one of them is Nyx. Michiko Matsudaira (the second of five antagonists) is pretty scummy and antagonistic, what with torturing your classmates, but nowhere near to the level of Okamura.

But yeah on the whole Females Are More Innocent is firmly in play for all the Hashino-developed Persona games.
 

PK Gaming

Member
I just started thinking about how the Persona series seems to have a problem with making female (human) characters actual villains.

Persona 5:
While it can be easily argued that the male targets are bad guys, the hearts of the only two female targets aren't changed because of any villainous nature, and they both end up becoming Phantom Thief allies.

Of course, the traitor and big bad end up being male, too.

Persona 4:
The 3 main, human bad guys faced are all male. 1 of them is a tragic figure, but the other 2 are messed up with no real redeeming argument for what they did.

The big bad ends up being female but, again, I'm talking about an actual human.

Persona 3:
Again, all of the human antagonists faced here are male, with the exception of one member of Strega. As it turns out, she's the only antagonist who defects and becomes an ally.

I've never done the SQQ in P1, so I dunno what's up with that, but the only character who I feel qualifies in the series is [Persona 2: Innocent Sin spoilers]
Maya Okamura. Even Junko Kurosu and Ixquic are turned into sympathetic figures, in the end. At least they're antagonists for the most part, though.

Yeah, this isn't too shocking in a series that veers towards playing it safe despite appearing subversive. I think it's a combination of the females are more innocent trope + the major players (including villains) generally being men.

So... more would be cool. I always have this thought of what a Persona 6 set in an all-girls school would look like.

Awesome but sadly fanfiction at best. They're too concerned with pandering to the lcd.
 
Top Bottom