Does anyone else feel like combat in this game just sucks? I loved this game, its story, its characters. But I couldn't get behind combat system and dungeons themselves.
At first I thought it was kind of nice, but with each dungeon it just kept getting dumber and dumber. It's very much a combat system based on extremes. Much like in Pokémon's, you counter certain monsters with certain elements. But unlike in Pokémon you never know what element to use. I love this game's monster design, I think it's unique and fantastic. But at the same time there are only so many of them and they're not specific to each dungeon which ultimately makes all dungeons feel the same.
And I get that JRPGs do that, they reuse enemies' models and just paint them differently. And I think it's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. But in this case it makes it that much annoying when you think you remember what spell to use to counter this enemy, but no. It's not the same anymore, instead of ice you have to use fire.
Assuming you even remember which enemy is weak to which spell. Well, at least I couldn't, I had to click analyze every time I tried to remember. Which in the end also gets annoying, especially with supporting characters constantly yelling at you!
And don't even get me started on how spells are named. I never figured it out. There's some pattern to it, but I don't know. I think I'm slow. And even then they don't follow through with it to the end, because spell that deals severe fire damage was just called Ragnarok, thus making the entire spell naming convention endeavor pointless. And I understand that Final Fantasy series started doing that too, but there I can at least understand and remember what I'm about to use without having to check spells' tool-tips constantly (And I still hate it anyway. It's a fire spell, just call it fire :c)
And then the dungeons themselves. Again, I love how they look, how they're designed with specific characters thoughts and concerns in mind. But they all feel the same. Just flat labyrinth full of shadows and chests with shadows in them. And they're so damn long. I guess they want me to run through a couple of floors, leave, get rest, come back the next day or two days later. But I never did that because that means I'll waste my precious time that I'd rather be spending on maximizing my social links, getting to know people, doing the in game stuff that is actually pleasant and interesting!
Going back to combat (yes, this is a rant, I'm just jumping back and forth, I apologize to whoever might still be reading this), I have some other major issues with it. Shadow and light spells in particular. They have the ability to one-shot kill monsters. Which is fine, I understand that spells like these are popular in JRPGs (at least they were present in the ones I've played, I don't claim to be some kind of JRPG expert here). But man, in this game success rate on these things is insane! Which I can't complain when it comes to me using them, with combat system like this I was glad to have some way of cheesing through some of the dungeons. But once the enemies started using it...
It basically forces you to have some kind of defense against these in your Persona. If you don't you're risking dying and, depending on your difficulty, starting all over again. Which is BS, because if your protagonist dies it's game over. When one of your team member dies it's fine, they get to be resurrected. But for whatever reason, you have to keep your character alive, there are no second chances.
I had at least a couple more points to raise against this atrocious combat system, but it's late and it's already a wall of page so I'll just end it now.
The thing I hate the most about this game though is that when you're fusing Personas Igor can just randomly screw up and MESS UP YOUR FUSION AND GIVE YOU SOME OTHER RANDOM PERSONA AND IT'S JUST SO ANNOYING!
