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Lost progress woes (in Persona 5)

Q

QuantumSquid

Member
Please tag all spoilers, I'm not done with the game yet.

I just had about 45 minutes of my time wasted because after I had been exploring a dungeon for a while, I got into a fight with a Shadow and it got a lucky critical hit on me and I died.

So, you watch a cutscene saying you fucked up, which thankfully you can skip, and then you can choose to either return to the previous safe room or go to the main menu.

Why does the game lie to you like this?

It doesn't JUST return you to the previous safe room, it rolls back EVERYTHING you did since you left that safe room. All those Personas you collected? Gone. All those Shadows you killed? Back to life, and they're exactly the same formations too. All the chests/objects you broke open? Get ready to collect the same shit from all of them AGAIN.

I love everything about Persona 5 except for this shit. I'm playing on Normal difficulty, and my understanding is that the sort of person who would be okay with having to redo areas they've already done multiple times because they got unlucky in a fight isn't the same sort of person who would play on Normal difficulty - maybe Hard, or higher.

I feel like this sort of time-wasting bullshit is one of the only things that can genuinely make me mad at a videogame. I don't get angry and throw my controller in shooters when I keep dying or anything like that; I'm not that kind of person at all.

But when a game so flagrantly disrespects the player's time like Persona 5 just did to me, it puts me in a bad mood almost immediately. The Persona games are massive JRPGs that already demand a huge amount of your time if you want to complete them, and they can't even be bothered to keep the chests opened, Shadows defeated and collectable objects collected to save you some time if an enemy gets lucky and kills you.

For those interested in the area where this happened (major spoilers from around 70 hours into the game):
It was in the House of Darkness in Niijima's Palace. I navigated the dark part, got to the section where the guy closes the gate on you and you have to go around, and I bumped into a Shadow because I somehow missed it with my attack even though it was inches away from me and reached me a millisecond after I missed. It got a critical hit which let it go again, and it targeted me with its 1-more move and I died.

TL;DR: Losing progress is the shittiest feeling, especially in a game with as many dialogue interruptions as Persona 5 has. Sitting through the characters' reactions to every little thing in new areas that aren't actually new because you just spent the better part of an hour exploring them is soul-crushing.
 
D

DriftingSpirit

Member
I don't care for it either. It is pretty annoying. Saving often doesn't help when you have rather lengthy stretches between one safe room and another.
 
Z

Zeel

Member
Yea it happened to me a few times as well during the 130 hours I spent with the game, I just learned to save whenever I can and to not be too greedy/ be careful as the first poster said.

EDIT: +1 regarding Nocturne
 
A

AnkiRendan

Member
I feel you, man.

Same thing happened to me in Palace 7, which really seems to lack safe rooms. After playing for quite a while, leveling up a few levels and getting some new Personas, I seemed to finally be reaching the end of the stupid maze and then I got killed.

It's been about a week and a half and I'm still salty about the idea of picking it up again. -_-
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
I can understand your frustration.

But honestly I kinda like it. It adds tension to the palaces and gives them a sort of high risk high reward feeling. Do you keep exploring and reach as far as possible or do you play it safe but take longer to reach the trwasure?
 
C

Canucked

Member
Yeah it bites in persona because a lame enemy can wipe you through bad luck. Battles in the game are either the easiest because you just go first and just use weaknesses or they are irritating. There was one dungeon with an enemy that has no weakness and it was annoying.
 
P

Primpompano

Member
Persona 5's only time-disrespecting is death, I feel. The game lets you skip to selecting the best skill, skips the all-out animation if you want, etc. But you'll also save time by going deeper into the confidant system and preparing throughly. While bad luck is a staple in the series, there are definitely ways around an instant death (at the point in the game you're at). I think expecting the game to let you slide like that is disrespecting the design and difficulty of the game.

(And I had the same thing happen to me in the same spot!)
 
F

Flame Lord

Member
I think this is just a problem people who have been away from games with save points for awhile have, because there were safe spots only minutes away in nearly every dungeon, except maybe the last two. I don't think I ever lost any more than ten minutes of my time.
 
P

Pancho

Qurupancho
Complaints like this always makes me scratch my head. There's so many safe rooms in every dungeon that you shouldn't run into such a problem. Whenever I died I had saved recently, maybe I was just lucky.
 
M

Marcel

Member
CannonFodder52 said:
I was expecting a game wipe.
Yea I mean it's annoying, but I I can't imagine if dying had no consequence and you just kept all your stuff.
Click to expand...

Yeah I was expecting like maybe hours of lost progress due to a system level error or something.

OP is spoiled by Persona 5. 45 minutes is nothing where actual SMT is concerned :p
 
Q

QuantumSquid

Member
Pancho said:
Complaints like this always makes me scratch my head. There's so many safe rooms in every dungeon that you shouldn't run into such a problem. Whenever I died I had saved recently, maybe I was just lucky.
Click to expand...

I don't know, man. This is the first time this has happened to me in P5, and I assure you there was no safe room nearby other than the one that's all the way at the start of the area.
 
F

FRS1987

Member
A simple solution is to study your enemies more. If they are constantly using instant death spells, switch your MC's Persona. If they cast rage or reflect physical damage, equip a Persona that nulls or repels physical.
The area in which you're in not only gives you a Persona that reflects physical but can also be used to steam roll through that area.
 
J

Jimm

Member
It is annoying dying from random criticals and insta kill moves.
That's why I frequently run back to a safe room just to save and be cautious.
I've probably lost collectively 2-3 hours progress because of the MC dying which I think is dumb you should be able to revive him, Mona has Recarm. No clue why anyone would defend that. Anyway. I'm only 55h in, looks like it gets worse but damn I adore the game.
 
C

CannonFodder52

Member
Marcel said:
Yeah I was expecting like maybe hours of lost progress due to a system level error or something.

OP is spoiled by Persona 5. 45 minutes is nothing where actual SMT is concerned :p
Click to expand...

Persona 5 was my first smt actually.
Currently playing P3, it beat the hell out of me at the start.
 
P

Pancho

Qurupancho
QuantumSquid said:
I don't know, man. This is the first time this has happened to me in P5, and I assure you there was no safe room nearby other than the one that's all the way at the start of the area.
Click to expand...

Im trying to place the moment in my head and I recall there being a safe room nearby? I don't know. Either way, I hope you don't get disheartened, great moments are coming your way, don't give up!
 
H

Human Trashcan

Banned
It's bullshit. The MC death = game over rule and instakill spells on enemies are terrible, awful design decisions.

Canucked said:
Yeah it bites in persona because a lame enemy can wipe you through bad luck. Battles in the game are either the easiest because you just go first and just use weaknesses or they are irritating. There was one dungeon with an enemy that has no weakness and it was annoying.
Click to expand...

That's exactly it. You can die due to a freak turn of events, one bad roll of the dice. That's the kind of frustrating death that's useless because you didn't learn anything. You didn't do anything wrong. You just got hit with a bad crit or an instakill spell and RIP. But 99% of battles are just R1>X ad nauseum. Combat in this game kinda sucks outside of boss battles.
 
M

Marcel

Member
Anytime you feel mad at Persona 5 you should imagine losing progress in here

bG1zq68.jpg
 
Q

QuantumSquid

Member
FRS1987 said:
A simple solution is to study your enemies more. If they are constantly using instant death spells, switch your MC's Persona. If they cast rage or reflect physical damage, equip a Persona that nulls or repels physical.
The area in which you're in not only gives you a Persona that reflects physical but can also be used to steam roll through that area.
Click to expand...

I think I saw that Persona when I was fusing in the Velvet Room earlier, but I never ended up making it. Can you tell me the name of it in spoiler tags?
 
E

E-flux

Member
I mean persona 5 has save rooms sprinkled in everywhere, you can barely go 20 minutes without stumbling into a new one. I get that it's frustrating to die from a crit but it was your fault, those fights that don't let you redo it if you die you should win it the first round anyway..
 
R

RiderKairuu

Member
I imagine that's a shitty feeling, Persona has taught me to save habitually after even the smallest of progress. The most I've lost is maybe 10 minutes due to being ambushed and exploited.
 
The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune

Member
That happened to me in the first palace (lost like 15 minutes of progress), and I remembered that getting greedy in these games is a grave mistake. Sometimes, you may barely survive a battle, go back to the overworld and before you can get your shit together, you get attacked again and die because of something stupid. Which is dumb, I guess... though I can't help but feel like that's part of the game itself, dying to crits or small mistakes feels like shit.

I understand, though, because I just had a pretty BS moment with this game, too:
I learned that leveling up the Moon confidant too quickly, like I did, makes the game skip a text message that provides you with a sidequest in Mementos. Which is bullshit, because I'm going for the platinum and now I have to play the whole game again in NG+ (instead of just a small part of it) to get the sidequests trophy if I still want to 100% it. I wish I was one of those people who don't care about trophies, but this is important to me and now it kind of sucks to play through the rest of the game knowing that I will have to do it all over again.
 
S

Stereogatari

Banned
FRS1987 said:
A simple solution is to study your enemies more. If they are constantly using instant death spells, switch your MC's Persona. If they cast rage or reflect physical damage, equip a Persona that nulls or repels physical.
The area in which you're in not only gives you a Persona that reflects physical but can also be used to steam roll through that area.
Click to expand...

Based Grimikhela.
 
T

toddhunter

Member
If you are going 45 minutes between saving you are doing it wrong.

Stop playing with a guide that gives you one visit to get through a whole dungeon. Instead start thinking about what enemies you are facing and what persona you should have equipped just in case.

If you fail, learn. Be happy that you get to play another 45 minutes of a great game. If you are not actually enjoying it? Stop.
 
F

FRS1987

Member
QuantumSquid said:
I think I saw that Persona when I was fusing in the Velvet Room earlier, but I never ended up making it. Can you tell me the name of it in spoiler tags?
Click to expand...

Rangda, It's the witch looking thing that floats around. Using one on your MC makes that area significally easier considering a lot of enemies like to use rage.You just have to be careful about a sole demon who tries to cast fear ailment that can lead to instant death
 
jwillenn

jwillenn

Member
*what was said in the first post*


Anytime you feel you've gained something (exp, items, personas, etc.) that you wouldn't want to lose to a battle, save it. Yeah, it's tedious and I would have liked being able to just save at anytime to avoid the backtracking, but that's the way to avoid your situation.
 
T

The Xtortionist

Member
Human Trashcan said:
It's bullshit. The MC death = game over rule and instakill spells on enemies are terrible, awful design decisions.
Click to expand...

If you're afraid of instakill spells then you should lead with a persona that resists curse/bless.

But the game gives you a lot of outs, especially later in the game. Joker can switch personas to effectively negate whatever the enemy has, and teammates will even take the killing blow once their confidant ranks are high enough. The worst situation to be in is an ambush, but even then it's unlikely that on normal difficulty Joker will go down in one round before you can stabilize or smoke bomb to escape.
 
N

Not Spaceghost

Spaceghost
The only time this hit me was in the 2nd palace. I found 3 gem shadows, I already had one in my compendium so i just killed them for a shit ton of XP, recruited two awesome personas and then I walked into a laser beam, aggroed an enemy pack of 5, got a series of criticals on my team which lead to a very quick game over.

Naturally on my 2nd go around I found 0 gem shadows, and because i didn't have that extra XP I wasn't the right level to recruit 1 of the two persona's I got.

I didn't really lose time as much as I lost out on a ridiculous amount of luck.
 
J

JarlRaven

Member
Playing on Hard Mode for my first playthrough I encountered this quite a bit
during the Barracks where you had to eavesdrop on the shadows in Okumura's palace and lengthy rat puzzle sections of Shido's palace.
Definitely stung and felt like it could have been avoided with one or two well-placed safe rooms in those sections but didn't impact my experience too much personally.
 
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