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[Zakalwe]

You're getting semantic, but I'll rephrase it for you:



Happy?

If they get to attack, they have a chance to cast an instant death spell. That hits your MC? GG. Even if the rest of your party is alive and healthy.

Nope, because you can also up your defences and grind it out.

And killing and knocking down/negotiating are two very different strategies to aim for.

And the characters with insta-death skills are actually rare in the total amount of encounters you come across in game, so your entire argument is a little pointless.

 

[toddhunter]

Again, stop comparing solo games with rpgs where you have a dman party people that make no sense... That's just show how much you know nothing about rpgs! Even in the damn glorified Baldur's gate you don't have a game over when Mc and it was super brutal game.

Baldurs Gate? That is a spectacularly bad example to use. Somewhere in your vast RPG education you must have skipped a few pages in the spell books... or just played the enhanced editions in the last year.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Even if they target the MC the odds of a low level Mudo hitting is super low. I mean, yeah it's possible, but the odds make it an insignificant worry.

And that's what I'm getting at?

It's just an RNG throw to see if you get killed. And I was just using that as an example, there are a variety of ways you can get killed in a single enemy turn.

Which is fine, except that if the victim is the MC it's an instant game over.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Its a lame mechanic but team members can sacrifice themselves, you can spec for immunities on insta kill... you're a killing machine. The game would've been too easy without it, my party was never wiped I think.

There are some issues I have with the game though. Restart boss battle doesn't let you configure your party or heal up first. Its pointless when you're really underleveled.

 

[DVCY201]

They added a ton lot of savestate in the dungeon.
They added Level Design in those dungeon.
They made a lot of convenient stuff like being able to swap character during a battle.
Coming back to the entrance to change Persona and stuff is super easy now.

I think those point (and ESEPIALLY the Level Design one) show that Atlus i ready to take those big gameplay change you talk about. I think the fact that the MC is the only one that "matter" for a Game Over is just a characteristic that need you to make ajustement in your strategy.

.... And if you train yourself for 3 hours just STOP and GO SAVE every 30 minutes, why is it so hard ? I like that a potential defeat mean a lot to me personally...

I just wanna point out that some of those stuff are not immediately available, or take effort to discover later on. I got the ability to swap characters during MC's turn at like 30 hours in the game. Is it a pleasant surprise? Yea, but it's not like everyone has that immediately available. Also, some palaces are severely lacking in safe rooms, or in Mementos, there's like 1 per area halfway through

There is another issue I have with P5. Why can't I swap party members in safe rooms as well? They're all gathered there, might as well save me some loading screens...

 

[Sgt. Kabukiman]

It doesn't bother me that much but I'm not a fan of it either. At least, it doesn't happen as often in P5 as it did in the previous games. But I wish the Homonculus item (that prevents insta-kills) was easier to get. It's expensive as fuck this time around.

Be it FF or Persona or any other RPG, the MC is just another party member for me, he shouldn't get any special treatment. Dragon Quest has the right idea.

 

[Zakalwe]

And that's what I'm getting at?

It's just an RNG throw to see if you get killed. And I was just using that as an example, there are a variety of ways you can get killed in a single enemy turn.

Which is fine, except that if the victim is the MC it's an instant game over.

Except you can manage your resistances to save MC from the vast majority of insta-kills.

And you can do this consistently.

 

[Eumi]

I just wanna point out that some of those stuff are not immediately available, or take effort to discover later on. I got the ability to swap characters during MC's turn at like 30 hours in the game. Is it a pleasant surprise? Yea, but it's not like everyone has that immediately available.

There is another issue I have with P5. Why can't I swap party members in safe rooms as well? They're all gathered there, might as well save me some loading screens...

Err, you can swap party members from the pause menu at any time. in the status screen you just press square.

 

[Ragnar Blackmane]

Because the mc can change their stats around to whatever the situation needs so having you need to keep them alive balances that?

This. You can become entirely immune to many bosses for christ's sake if one of your Personas has immunity or reflect against their attacks while also being able to fill out every single role in the party and often better than everyone else, the death of the leader character ending the game balances that out. Your player character is literally the Queen and King from chess combined.

It also seems to me that the thread is turning into a "should you be able to be insta-killed by spells like Hama/Mudo even if you have a whole set of tools to negate them" discussion rather than what the thread is about (death of MC in any situation resulting in a game over being bad).

Also for the people wanting an instant respawn right in front of any normal fight that basically negates any sort of challenge for the dungeon crawling, there is a setting just for you: safety mode. It does just that. If you then argue that that "makes the game too easy", I have to frankly say that you are not looking to be challenged, you want the illusion of being challenged because instant re-spawn in front of non-boss fights means that death no longer has any consequence for normal fights that are over in 1-2 minutes anyway, it's borderline godmode.

 

[SkylineRKR]

I just wanna point out that some of those stuff are not immediately available, or take effort to discover later on. I got the ability to swap characters during MC's turn at like 30 hours in the game. Is it a pleasant surprise? Yea, but it's not like everyone has that immediately available. Also, some palaces are severely lacking in safe rooms, or in Mementos, there's like 1 per area halfway through

There is another issue I have with P5. Why can't I swap party members in safe rooms as well? They're all gathered there, might as well save me some loading screens...

You can swap anywhere you want. Its perhaps a bit overlooked.

 

[Qurupeke]

To be honest, at one point it certainly annoyed me. I got a game over because of despair, because of Mudo and Hama, even because I neglected healing the MC and the enemy got "1 more" on the next turn. I lost quite the progress every time, which really is frustrating when the Palaces' Safe Rooms aren't close. However, I really love how these failures had me to basically reorganize my entire strategy around the MC rather than the team. You're supposed to build your team around the MC. Joker can essentially equip numerous different attributes, buff spells and weaknesses/resistances that can change at the start of the battle and can even change the team's composition during the battle. As I see it, you're not supposed to die on enemies you know.

New enemies are the main problem with this mechanic, but I feel like the "Take your time" motto is apt in this case. Scouting for enemy weaknesses, while protecting the MC, seems essential. Trying to beat a Palace in 1 day means you have to face about 10 different new foes and I'm sure some of them will have an annoying trait that can potentially chain the MC to death. After knowing your enemies, which may take a couple of battles or more, it's extremely easy to trigger a Hold Up, which basically means you have a high chance to 1hko the entire enemy team.

Also, save all the time. I think it's preferable to do some back tracking in a section you cleared, facing beaten enemies again at worst, rather than trying to advance without knowing when you'll find the next safe room.

 

[DVCY201]

Err, you can swap party members from the pause menu at any time. in the status screen you just press square.

Damn, I've been teleporting back to the entrance to swap. I will try this next time.

 

[Augemitbutter]

i think the mechanic is fine and you'll learn to deal with it after a while.

the game is too easy otherwise. i'm playing on hard and the game got kinda easy here too after 10 hours of progress.

you can prepare for most incoming damage and get multiple safety nets later. game is still in favor of you winning, if that's not enough drop the diffiiculty down to bottom.

 

[duckroll]

You can swap anywhere you want. Its perhaps a bit overlooked.

Err, you can swap party members from the pause menu at any time. in the status screen you just press square.

Lol wut. I feel stoopid!

 

[LurkerPrime]

Save every 30 mins ?
Are you kidding me ? Did you play the damn game ?!
You can't teleport to safety rooms whenever you want, dude.
And Safety rooms are not that often, that you encounter one every 30 mins.
Seriously did you played the game ??! Safety rooms are more than hours appart of gameplay in general, you can taste that in the 3rd dungeon.

Holy shit people get a grip and stop sprouting nonsense because you lack of rpg culture and experience.

To be clear, in P5 you can make emergency exit items that teleport you to, I think, a safe zone or the entrance. It's called Goho-M, craftable with other infiltration tools. They're not unlimited, but for the absolutely dire, do-or-die-I-have-nothing-this-is-it situations, Goho-M is there if you need it.

Damn, I've been teleporting back to the entrance to swap. I will try this next time.

It's crazy that P5 doesn't tutorialise party swapping like it does literally every other feature in the game.

Also, previous games didn't have this quick-swap, which is probably what's throwing so many people off. (e.g. I only stumbled upon it myself!)

 

[DVCY201]

Lol wut. I feel stoopid!

Seriously. Is this ever mentioned? Make a PSA lol

 

[black070]

How are people losing hours of progress from dying ? :/ You get the opportunity to save before entering a dungeon, and they're always pretty generous with their safe rooms - I can understand not wanting to repeat a certain segment of a dungeon, but losing days/weeks of in-game progress ? That's your own damn fault.

 

[Zakalwe]

Seriously. Is this ever mentioned? Make a PSA lol

The game is very obtuse about a lot of its systems. I'm pretty sure most people will run through the entire thing without realising some of them even exist.

 

[Eumi]

Seriously. Is this ever mentioned? Make a PSA lol

The tutorial for it comes up same as any other game mechanic.

 

[Zakalwe]

The tutorial for it comes up same as any other game mechanic.

Not everything is explained like this.

For instance: demon negotiation has a tutorial, but it's hidden in the menus and not ever presented directly to the player.

 

[THEaaron]

I like that mechanic because it adds a bit more dynamic to the fights. Which means, that you have to protect the MC and can't go all out with him.

It's pretty good.

 

[Eumi]

Not everything is explained like this.

For instance: demon negotiation has a tutorial, but it's hidden in the menus and not ever presented directly to the player.

Yeah this one's dumb.

 

[duckroll]

Who needs a tutorial for demon negotiation tho. It's like dating. YOLO.

 

[DVCY201]

The tutorial for it comes up same as any other game mechanic.

Probably overlooked it then. Whew, this'll be a nice QOL change for me.

 

[Murkas]

Things you can do to help prevent the MC from dying:
-Decrease enemy attack/defence/evasion and increasing yours (works for 99% of battles!)
-Have MC equip a hyper team of Personas that cover all weakness types or equip a persona that has no weaknesses
-Increase party members confidant ranks so they can
oLift the MC when he's been knocked down
oSlap the status ailment out of him
oTake a mortal blow
-Use an item to protect/reflect physical/magical/OHKO attacks
-Guarding
-Equip accessories
-Escape a battle
-Increase confidant ranks in general so you can fuse personas higher than your current level (according to the touchpad results screen, I'm always underleveled compared to the average player level, yet I've never struggled due to high confidant ranks giving me powerful personas)


The game is pretty easy as is on Normal. Like are you guys not casting Tarunda lol, it makes me wonder if this is someone's first Persona game and doesn't bother debuffing monsters or guarding because that never works in other JRPGs so they assume it's the same in this.

I like MC dying=game over because it's more challenging and something I have to constantly worry about which is welcome in this age of piss easy games.

Switch to Safety or accept it. Not every game needs to be like every other game.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Things you can do to help prevent the MC from dying:
-Decrease enemy attack/defence/evasion and increasing yours (works for 99% of battles!)
-Have MC equip a hyper team of Personas that cover all weakness types or equip a persona that has no weaknesses
-Increase party members confidant ranks so they can
oLift the MC when he's been knocked down
oSlap the status ailment out of him
oTake a mortal blow
-Use an item to protect/reflect physical/magical/OHKO attacks
-Equip accessories
-Escape a battle
-Increase confidant ranks in general so you can fuse personas higher than your current level (according to the touchpad results screen, I'm always underleveled compared to the average player level, yet I've never struggled due to high confidant ranks giving me powerful personas)


The game is pretty easy as is on Normal. Like are you guys not casting Tarunda lol, it makes me wonder if this is someone's first Persona game and doesn't bother debuffing monsters because that never works in other JRPGs so they assume it's the same in this.

I like MC dying=game over because it's more challenging and something I have to constantly worry about which is welcome in this age of piss easy games.

Switch to Safety or accept it. Not every game needs to be like every other game.

Defending is also an option too! It will prevent a party member from getting knocked down by crits or weakness hits.


Also some forum magic: use double

• tags to make sublists cleanly:
  e.g.
  • 1
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    • I
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    • III
  • 3

 

[Zakalwe]

Who needs a tutorial for demon negotiation tho. It's like dating. YOLO.

I suppose it sometimes being needlessly obtuse and annoying fits perfectly, then.

 

[shmoglish]

Who needs a tutorial for demon negotiation tho. It's like dating. YOLO.

Right. Thats why I got only one Persona 🤗🤗

 

[Murkas]

Defending is also an option too! It will prevent a party member from getting knocked down by crits or weakness hits.


Also some forum magic: use double

• tags to make sublists cleanly:
  e.g.
  • 1
  • 2
    • I
    • II
    • III
  • 3

• 
  
  Yeah I remembered about guarding 2 seconds after I posted it and fake edited in lol.
  
  And I'm too lazy to double list tags my post

 

[Zakalwe]

Right. Thats why I got only one Persona 🤗🤗

Forever Arsene.

 

[Ragnar Blackmane]

The game is pretty easy as is on Normal. Like are you guys not casting Tarunda lol, it makes me wonder if this is someone's first Persona game and doesn't bother debuffing monsters or guarding because that never works in other JRPGs so they assume it's the same in this.

I like MC dying=game over because it's more challenging and something I have to constantly worry about which is welcome in this age of piss easy games.
Switch to Safety or accept it. Not every game needs to be like every other game.

Agreed on both.

As said the importance of buffs and debuffs can not be stressed enough, both are very powerful and debuffs work on EVERY SINGLE BOSS. Considering that almost all bosses consist of a single character/entity that gets one, maybe two attacks for every four actions you get (not counting 1MOREs), lowering the bosses defense against all attacks or power of all its attacks by 30-40% for several rounds with one action goes a long way, not to mention making it missing half its attacks at times thanks to Sukukaja/Masukukaja.

Also status effects are very effective in normal fights, particularly casting silence or Marin Karin on a bigger group of enemies almost always works and effectively neutralizes those enemies hit by it, especially useful when you encounter new random mobs and need to probe for their weaknesses.

 

[AlucardGV]

Forever Arsene.

well at least no mudo sudden death.

 

[Jakartalado]

The main character is telling you the story from his perspective. At least where I am. If he's dead or unconscious there's no way he could tell that part.

DON'T DIE.

 

[evilsin]

Things you can do to help prevent the MC from dying:
-Decrease enemy attack/defence/evasion and increasing yours (works for 99% of battles!)
-Have MC equip a hyper team of Personas that cover all weakness types or equip a persona that has no weaknesses
-Increase party members confidant ranks so they can
oLift the MC when he's been knocked down
oSlap the status ailment out of him
oTake a mortal blow
-Use an item to protect/reflect physical/magical/OHKO attacks
-Guarding
-Equip accessories
-Escape a battle
-Increase confidant ranks in general so you can fuse personas higher than your current level (according to the touchpad results screen, I'm always underleveled compared to the average player level, yet I've never struggled due to high confidant ranks giving me powerful personas)


The game is pretty easy as is on Normal. Like are you guys not casting Tarunda lol, it makes me wonder if this is someone's first Persona game and doesn't bother debuffing monsters or guarding because that never works in other JRPGs so they assume it's the same in this.

I like MC dying=game over because it's more challenging and something I have to constantly worry about which is welcome in this age of piss easy games.

Switch to Safety or accept it. Not every game needs to be like every other game.

Pretty much all of these.

 

[Trigonometrize.]

The main character is telling you the story from his perspective. At least where I am. If he's dead or unconscious there's no way he could tell that part.

DON'T DIE.

"And then I casted Agi on the demon with the moon face, and then the one with the lance critted me and I went unconscious...you getting all this Niijima?...oh but shit, what if the

Spoiler

traitor revealed himself

in the ten seconds I was out cold! I've gotta rethink this to be sure. How about I start back at the previous safe room and make sure I got all this right..."

It's a bit of a flimsy/silly story reason if you ask me.

 

[FusedAtoms]

I think it's kind of cool how some enemies can kill you as fast as you can to them, like it sucks to lose progress but it just makes me want to try harder.

 

[UltimateUnknown]

Again, that's like half the challenge of the game - not to find yourself in a situation where the enemy can exploit your weakness. That's what makes it fun and gives you a sense of tension while playing through the dungeons. But there are many things you can do to avoid your MC getting merked:
-Don't get ambushed. Ambush the enemy instead to get a massive advantage.
-Your MC has a buckton of persona, use them to cover your weaknesses.
-Heck they even added a lockdown feature in the Velvet room that you can use to make your persona learn skills which allows to to evade and later on outright take no damage from your elemental weaknesses.
-Abuse skills like matarunda to lower the enemies' attack.
-Most importantly, do the social links for your party members. Eventually they all get an ability where they will save your MC from a critical death dealing blow. And if you have that for all 3 of your active party members, you will almost never get taken out.

This issue people are mentioning is really a non-issue. If you take advantage of the many mechanics set in place, it is very easily avoidable. I guess if you don't know them if this is your first time playing a persona game, then it might be somewhat understandable, but there is nothing unfair about the game as it gives you ample options to overcome them. Persona even in normal difficulty will kick your ass, I learned that the hard way in Persona 3, my first persona game and played it on easy back then to enjoy the story and learn the mechanics before moving to normal/hard. There is nothing wrong with doing that. Unfortunately most modern games have created a situation where there are no consequences to screwing up and the games pretty much hold your hands through the entire experience. It is nice to see a game where there are actual consequences (losing progress) to not covering your weaknesses and exploring to find saferooms.

 

[Wolf Akela]

-Escape a battle

I think this needs to be highlighted. You CAN make an item that lets you immediately escape battles. You can also make an item that stops shadows from chasing you. There's no reason to fight a battle you feel that you're going to lose.

I mean just a few days ago I posted about the crappy situation I got myself into. I was going to lose a fair amount of progress. I met an an enemy I could barely deal with in groups of 2. This encounter had 4-5 of them, and I didn't get the Ambush advantage It was a guaranteed loss if I tried to beat them, so I tried to come up with an escape strategy.
- First character uses my only item that can instant kill an enemy with Bless (which they were weak against)
- Have MC switch to a Physical resistant Persona (because there were 4 Phys Shadows), then guard
- Have next character cast Sukukaja on MC (+Evd) if Ryuji takes next turn, otherwise start running
- Have Ryuji guard..

I escaped and took the chest, which made the shadow respawn. I just avoided the encounter altogether on the way out. The great thing about stealth in P5 is that enemies will never ever see you as long as you're in "stealth mode" on a wall. They won't see you even if you're right in front of them.

 

[Zakalwe]

The great thing about stealth in P5 is that enemies will never ever see you as long as you're in "stealth mode" on a wall. They won't see you even if you're right in front of them.

Didn't know this, thanks a lot!

 

[BiggNife]

The game is pretty easy as is on Normal. Like are you guys not casting Tarunda lol, it makes me wonder if this is someone's first Persona game and doesn't bother debuffing monsters or guarding because that never works in other JRPGs so they assume it's the same in this.

I like MC dying=game over because it's more challenging and something I have to constantly worry about which is welcome in this age of piss easy games.

Switch to Safety or accept it. Not every game needs to be like every other game.

Hey, guess what

For a lot of people this IS their first Persona game

I'm not quite sure why you're being a condescending piece of shit about it

 

[Unaha-Closp]

On the one hand I made it to the top of

Spoiler

Futaba's Palace

in one SP trip. On the other I learned a very valuable lesson about Despair and how not to leave it be. The back tracking was tedious but it would be super duper OP if it saved after every fight. The relief when finding a safe room with about 7 SP left is real. It's a little archaic I guess - I roll with little Neko Shogun right now who has auto evade for party and hope I don't mess up the stealth attack and get surrounded. That little bit of strategy is just right for me. I wish there was an auto equip this persona option - having to manually do it after every fight if I've needed to swap is tedious. I thought the same in Persona 4 too.

 

[Scrooge McDuck]

The main character is telling you the story from his perspective. At least where I am. If he's dead or unconscious there's no way he could tell that part.

That can't be true because there are actually scenes without the MC's involvement or presence.

 

[SkylineRKR]

I said it somewhere else, but: Smoke bombs are seriously underrated. Try them out and watch.

For escape and more options in general, rank that Star confidant ASAP. It increases the fun tenfold anyway. This one should've been shoved in your face, its a game changer.

 

[extralite]

Exactly. Punishment for losing one battle in god knows how many is to retread the last hour or so. The only 'challenge' there is overcoming the frustration.

Look, you're feeling a real emotion there. The game achieved something.

How else can a game make you scared if not by confronting you with actual consequences? Forcing you to use what is at your disposal? The real problem is when you do use everything at your disposal it gets easy and boring again, lol.

 

[Sylas]

And that's what I'm getting at?

It's just an RNG throw to see if you get killed. And I was just using that as an example, there are a variety of ways you can get killed in a single enemy turn.

Which is fine, except that if the victim is the MC it's an instant game over.

To achieve the same effect, most other RPGs would just make whatever killed the MC into a party-wide TPK. The game is balanced around the possibility of a sudden game over. If you get rid of the MC death = game over mechanic, then you neuter Hama/Mudo's power. Hell, you wind up neutering the entire game's system because there's no fear behind hot-swapping Personas(personae?) nor behind tinkering with your team to have good resistances.

 

[ElFly]

even when you guard against everything there's still some really dumb stuff, like getting critical'd when your MC has a guard against the element

like in the first forced fight a dungeon, my party faced three guys who hit physical really hard. I diminished their Str quickly, but my party still bit it cause the multiple phys attacks would critical and stun them....including my MC who resisted phys

in the end I survived cause Ann casted a reduce Attack spell on the last guy with her dying breath and my MC could nuke them...but it came p damn close

but since I survived....maybe git gud, guys?

 

[EscapeArtist]

The only time I have a problem with it is when an enemy uses an instant kill spell (Mudo or Hama) on MC and then they die and it's game over. Super frustrating.

 

[Kalentan]

I sympathize with the frustration but am glad y'all don't make games.

This is laughable, no you don't. If you sympathized you wouldn't then responded with an asshole remark. "am glad y'all don't make games"?

Get out of here with that shit. Unless you consider Persona the literal only way to make games without any faults, then that should never be said to anyone. And even then, you shouldn't be saying that to anyone.

Seriously what is wrong with you?

 

[Curufinwe]

If it was doing this right, I wouldn't honestly have considered dropping the game entirely multiple times for this one reason. And I felt the same way about 3 FES and 4.

Costing someone tons of progress because they forgot to save, especially when EVERY game autosaves now, is not satisfying. It's frustrating. All they need to do is autosave when you go to bed. That's the only change that needs to happen to not make this brutal.



Except you have to fish for weaknesses a lot of the time and it's possible to be status'd out on turn 1.

Just because you're bad at the game and a quitter, doesn't mean it's a bad mechanic.

 

[Rad Shadow]

It's annoying, but just make sure you save at every safe room.

You die a lot less as you get better personas, and higher level/hp.