Lord Scrambles
Member
I fully object to all of it, but I like what they did with incorporating they're respective uniforms; its pretty cool. Although...no Naoto hat=no buy...
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Persona Community Thread |OT4| The Golden Number
- Thread starter Dantis
- Start date
I fully object to all of it, but I like what they did with incorporating they're respective uniforms; its pretty cool. Although...no Naoto hat=no buy...
That's not official art.
Immaculate
Banned
even after still getting spoiled about teddie it still made me go wtf ahahaha
I love the single pants leg on Naoto. Funky.
SloaneRisette
Member
I wouldn't even go for that, and I'm on Japan prices!
Lord Scrambles
Member
haha obviously, I'm just sayin' she better have a hat, man
I also honestly think the costumes are going to be more varied than that.
weirdo. Chie>Rise>erryone else
TurnipFritters
Member
Naoto of the Solid Gold Dancers needs to either commit to pants or to shorts, don't do that halfway
Phantasmal Repose
Member
It's obviously
Rise>Chie>Naoto>Yukiko
Rise>Chie>Naoto>Yukiko
BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
How would you guys feel about P5 ditching demon fusion/Demon collecting/non Soejima persona designs and coming up with some sort of elaborate skill system for the main Persona's instead? It's definitely something that wouldn't surprise me if it happened. This hypothetical new system would still be tied to social links of course.
Lord Scrambles
Member
I'd feel fine and dandy with a spritz of sadness in there somewhere :/
I'd be okay with it but it's not preferred. The fusion system is fine in P4G though so I wouldn't care much if they just kept that.
I think it would be harder to make slinks matter if there was only one Persona though.
this!!!
I wouldn't mind it. It's always kind of bothered me that a chunk of the main protagonists' Persona selection are just reused demon designs, and honestly I prefer using their signature personae anyway.
I would be sad. Demon collection and fusing is one of my favorite parts of SMT games.
I like Fusion. Really wouldn't want them to take that away and I think it would really detract from the experience for me. I love playing these games to fuse new combinations and move sets. Doesn't make sense to take a step back by removing that. It would feel way more generic JRPG IMO.
I wouldn't mind them going back to being able to change Personas on all characters rather than just the MC though. It doesn't make too much of a difference though, I like the way the wild card thing was handled in 3/4.
BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
I was thinking about P5's budget and if they had to cut corners somewhere, it would be in the demons. They aren't really a central theme in Persona and they could easily be replaced with some elaborate leveling system and save a FUCK ton of money.
Phantasmal Repose
Member
It could work, but I doubt it would play better than the system they have now.
BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
It wouldn't, it would however save money and solve the art consistency issue.
I could get down with that. (And considering that it's an HD game, not modeling the ancillary persona would free up a lot of work.)
EDIT: Smacked down by the Great Father.
I dont like it, because skill sistem will remove Personas strength/weaknesses against elements and I dont see how it can be represented by armor system and because of that combat will loose a lot IMO
BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
They could have some sort of class system with each class having different strengths/weaknesses
edit:and tbh I don't like it either, I would rather they keep say same system they have now.
This is what they did with DDS and it was bad. Or at least, not something I really liked. Demon fusion is one of the best parts of the series and getting rid of that in Persona (or any Megaten subseries) would automatically make it worse.
BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
I agree but if they had to cut corners somewhere, it would be in the demons. They could have a different class(with each class being a different arcana) and each class having various "branches" that you could follow. Which branch you could follow and how far you could go depends on the social link the class(arcana) is tied to. They wouldn't have to do 100+ demon designs and would save costs tremendously.
SloaneRisette
Member
So far PK has the best taste (aside from me of course) out of all you heathens.
Edit: I want them to bring back random skill inheritance in fusion because P4G is just boring that I get to pick the best skills.
Edit: I want them to bring back random skill inheritance in fusion because P4G is just boring that I get to pick the best skills.
ScraftyDevil
Banned
Goodbye, Realpic January.
Hellooooo, Risepic February!
Hellooooo, Risepic February!
Phantasmal Repose
Member
What's wrong with my list?
SloaneRisette
Member
You had Naoto higher than Yukiko.
I don't give a damn about cutting costs lol. They shouldn't be this lazy with their flagship series.
Even assuming every aspect of the game was top notch, even if it happened to be better than P3/P4, it wouldn't be as good as it could've been without fusion.
Phantasmal Repose
Member
I don't see the issue.
SloaneRisette
Member
You guys are really tempting me to change my avatar for Risepic February >.>
That's on you then.
That's on you then.
BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
In your (and mine) opinion, 99% of the fanbase wouldn't give a damn and it wouldn't hurt review scores at all.
SloaneRisette
Member
I'll do it tomorrow so long as someone gives me a link to the icons that haven't been used yet!
Lord Scrambles
Member
that's correct though
Phantasmal Repose
Member
This guy gets it.
99%? I'm not sure about that. I imagine most people would get over it but it'd still be dumb. And review scores don't really matter.
No demon fusion is an interesting experiment they did in DDS but not one I hope returns.
Now that's just not true at all.
Lord Scrambles
Member
They did say 5 was gonna mean drastic change for the series, and to be honest, I don't think the fusion is the most likely thing to go. I'm looking at the battle system as the most likely culprit.
I'm still holding on to the foolish hope that Soejima's been drawing up new concepts for every Persona in the game, though.
I'd be up for a revamped battle system as long as it stays turn-based. Nothing against real-time, but it's kind of depressing that turn-based RPGs are getting rarer and rarer. Hold out! It would be cool to see a system with more complexity than One More though.
Every Persona as in all of them? Uhh...no thanks. You can't beat Kaneko's original designs.
Lord Scrambles
Member
Soejima can do anything non-believer
Soejima should just stick to human characters. That's his strength. His Personas just barely lick the heels of Kaneko's demons.
Redrawing all of them would be too massive of an undertaking too, and a complete waste of time.
Finally finished Golden with 77 hours clocked. Long-ass impressions follow:
Liked
Characters and Story
I'm going to echo literally every other person to have ever played this game and say that the characters were a huge part of the fun. Though some of the personalities seemed to be dialed up to eleven sometimes (Chie and Yosuke constantly having raging arguments, all the weird teasing surround Kanji's preferences, Teddie sexually harassing... well, everyone), for the most part they were all fun and interesting to be around in their own ways.
I really dug the story here too. I'm not sure what I expected going in, but I found the odd mix of murder-mystery, high-school drama and supernatural alternate-dimension shenanigans to be super-compelling. The various plot-twists and reveals all felt natural and logical too, which is hard enough to find in TV and film, let alone games.
Music and Sound
You'd think that even the best soundtrack would get tedious over the space of a 70-hour playthrough, but for the most part that wasn't the case, and I enjoyed the music here a lot more than I thought I would. A few of the more gentle tracks became a bit tired by the end, but I never got sick of many of the others, especially the energetic action theme played during combat.
The voice talent were all on great form too. I'm not an anime guy, so the over-the-top nature of the performances took some getting used to, but everyone came across as distinct and enthusiastic with not a dud amongst them.
Art
The cover art for Golden pretty much sums up what I loved about P4G's art style. I'm not really sure how to describe it exactly; it's a little bit punk and a little bit alternative, full of energy and imagination. It puts aside the worst excesses of the genre in the real world (impossible hair, too many belts, over-accessorisation) giving the characters simple, iconic looks, and instead letting loose with wild and crazy designs in the TV world. Unique and creative without being stupid, really.
Combat
If even I can grasp it, you've probably done it right. Simple and elegant, but with plenty of depth and room to move. In addition to the basics (attacking with weapons, using different personas, elemental weaknesses and strengths) there were lots of really cool things I wasn't expecting, including the all-out-attacks (which I freakin' love), the backup moves (like Chie's Galactic Punt), the follow-up moves, Rise's assists from the outside, etc. The dungeon crawling might get a bit predictable, but stuff like this kept the combat fresh and exciting for me.
Didn't Like
Mary-Yu
I really wish the characters in the game would quit fawning over the MC all the time. For a game so fixated on the idea of working as a team and having friends around to support you, it also spends a surprising amount of time kissing the player's ass. I want to be treated like an equal, not a superior.
Romance
I had a few issues with this, mostly little things. One of the ones that most bothered me was the way the game classifies platonic vs romantic interactions. For example, there's a scene during one of Rise's S-Link sequences where she gets upset and starts to cry. As the player I'm then offered two choices; the romantic or the platonic - sounds fine, right? Only trouble is that the romantic option is to hug the girl, while the platonic is to stand around like a goon doing nothing. I'm already in a relationship with Chie, so if I want to do the non-heartless-asshole thing and comfort her I'm apparently two-timing Chie.
This problem manifests itself during a bunch of the romantic-path sequences, where the option that sidesteps romance involves doing things that seem insensitive at best. Some tweaks to the writing to make the platonic options less cold and weird would've been great.
Fan-service
So, is it just me who feels weird about the game repeatedly putting the girls into compromising positions? From the multiple
maybe it's just me, but those parts always made me feel like the game was winking at me and saying "Hey buddy, here's the stuff you've been waiting for!"
Maybe it wouldn't be such a problem if the girls weren't constantly outraged about it, and maybe it's just an East vs West thing, but those scenes always stood out as being artificial to me. There's absolutely room for that kind of silly/risque stuff, but I'd like to see it more naturally integrated into the game, rather than "school, school, battle, battle, SEXY BATHHOUSE SCENE, school, battle", etc.
A Little Long
This might be my fault for pursuing the True Ending, but going straight from
was just plain depressing. In the end the game took me nearly 80 hours to complete, which I feel could've been reduced by about 10 hours of samey dungeon-crawling without being to the game's detriment.
Other Thoughts
Personapedia
While the game does a good job of tutorialising the basics, it really starts to skimp on telling you anything later on in the game. Adding a self-populating encyclopedia of important information about items, places and characters would be a huge help, and might alleviate the need for me to be constantly googling things while playing.
City Planning
I found the layout and design of the real world areas to be kinda... I dunno, arbitrary? The flood zone area for example; why have that one, long street and then the actual riverbank as an entirely separate room? Likewise the shopping district, why split it up into weird little chunks like that? Not exactly bad things, but strange choices that made getting around perhaps a little more tedious than it needed to be. I don't know what it is, but I'm sure there's a better way to do it than this.
Progressive?
I'd like to see the writers take a more progressive and less stereotype-heavy approach to some of the characters in the future of the series. There were a few things that leapt out at me as a little unfair, notably the
(Incidentally, if anyone can explain to me what was supposed to be going on with Kanji, I'd love to hear it.)
TLDR
I had a great time with Persona 4 Golden, and as my introduction to the JRPG genre I think it worked exceptionally well. As a primarily western gamer I still struggle a little with how "other" some aspects of the game feel, and indeed even after nearly 80 hours of play I still feel a little like I've been trespassing in someone elses' hobby.
All of that aside though, I'd say I'm sold on this franchise. If 5 can offer some similarly great characters and storytelling with the kick-ass art, sound-design and dual-world gameplay of Golden, I'm there on day 1.
Liked
Characters and Story
I'm going to echo literally every other person to have ever played this game and say that the characters were a huge part of the fun. Though some of the personalities seemed to be dialed up to eleven sometimes (Chie and Yosuke constantly having raging arguments, all the weird teasing surround Kanji's preferences, Teddie sexually harassing... well, everyone), for the most part they were all fun and interesting to be around in their own ways.
I really dug the story here too. I'm not sure what I expected going in, but I found the odd mix of murder-mystery, high-school drama and supernatural alternate-dimension shenanigans to be super-compelling. The various plot-twists and reveals all felt natural and logical too, which is hard enough to find in TV and film, let alone games.
Music and Sound
You'd think that even the best soundtrack would get tedious over the space of a 70-hour playthrough, but for the most part that wasn't the case, and I enjoyed the music here a lot more than I thought I would. A few of the more gentle tracks became a bit tired by the end, but I never got sick of many of the others, especially the energetic action theme played during combat.
The voice talent were all on great form too. I'm not an anime guy, so the over-the-top nature of the performances took some getting used to, but everyone came across as distinct and enthusiastic with not a dud amongst them.
Art
The cover art for Golden pretty much sums up what I loved about P4G's art style. I'm not really sure how to describe it exactly; it's a little bit punk and a little bit alternative, full of energy and imagination. It puts aside the worst excesses of the genre in the real world (impossible hair, too many belts, over-accessorisation) giving the characters simple, iconic looks, and instead letting loose with wild and crazy designs in the TV world. Unique and creative without being stupid, really.
Combat
If even I can grasp it, you've probably done it right. Simple and elegant, but with plenty of depth and room to move. In addition to the basics (attacking with weapons, using different personas, elemental weaknesses and strengths) there were lots of really cool things I wasn't expecting, including the all-out-attacks (which I freakin' love), the backup moves (like Chie's Galactic Punt), the follow-up moves, Rise's assists from the outside, etc. The dungeon crawling might get a bit predictable, but stuff like this kept the combat fresh and exciting for me.
Didn't Like
Mary-Yu
I really wish the characters in the game would quit fawning over the MC all the time. For a game so fixated on the idea of working as a team and having friends around to support you, it also spends a surprising amount of time kissing the player's ass. I want to be treated like an equal, not a superior.
Romance
I had a few issues with this, mostly little things. One of the ones that most bothered me was the way the game classifies platonic vs romantic interactions. For example, there's a scene during one of Rise's S-Link sequences where she gets upset and starts to cry. As the player I'm then offered two choices; the romantic or the platonic - sounds fine, right? Only trouble is that the romantic option is to hug the girl, while the platonic is to stand around like a goon doing nothing. I'm already in a relationship with Chie, so if I want to do the non-heartless-asshole thing and comfort her I'm apparently two-timing Chie.
This problem manifests itself during a bunch of the romantic-path sequences, where the option that sidesteps romance involves doing things that seem insensitive at best. Some tweaks to the writing to make the platonic options less cold and weird would've been great.
Fan-service
So, is it just me who feels weird about the game repeatedly putting the girls into compromising positions? From the multiple
swimsuit scenes to the bathhouse stuff, to the sharing tents/co-ed rooms stuff...
Maybe it wouldn't be such a problem if the girls weren't constantly outraged about it, and maybe it's just an East vs West thing, but those scenes always stood out as being artificial to me. There's absolutely room for that kind of silly/risque stuff, but I'd like to see it more naturally integrated into the game, rather than "school, school, battle, battle, SEXY BATHHOUSE SCENE, school, battle", etc.
A Little Long
This might be my fault for pursuing the True Ending, but going straight from
Hollow Forest into another dungeon with another two-part Boss Fight
Other Thoughts
Personapedia
While the game does a good job of tutorialising the basics, it really starts to skimp on telling you anything later on in the game. Adding a self-populating encyclopedia of important information about items, places and characters would be a huge help, and might alleviate the need for me to be constantly googling things while playing.
City Planning
I found the layout and design of the real world areas to be kinda... I dunno, arbitrary? The flood zone area for example; why have that one, long street and then the actual riverbank as an entirely separate room? Likewise the shopping district, why split it up into weird little chunks like that? Not exactly bad things, but strange choices that made getting around perhaps a little more tedious than it needed to be. I don't know what it is, but I'm sure there's a better way to do it than this.
Progressive?
I'd like to see the writers take a more progressive and less stereotype-heavy approach to some of the characters in the future of the series. There were a few things that leapt out at me as a little unfair, notably the
bizarre treatment of Kanji as a result of his sexuality (whatever that happens to be, the game is pretty unclear about it), and the portrayal of the overweight girl as clueless, arrogant and entirely lacking in self-awareness.
(Incidentally, if anyone can explain to me what was supposed to be going on with Kanji, I'd love to hear it.)
TLDR
I had a great time with Persona 4 Golden, and as my introduction to the JRPG genre I think it worked exceptionally well. As a primarily western gamer I still struggle a little with how "other" some aspects of the game feel, and indeed even after nearly 80 hours of play I still feel a little like I've been trespassing in someone elses' hobby.
All of that aside though, I'd say I'm sold on this franchise. If 5 can offer some similarly great characters and storytelling with the kick-ass art, sound-design and dual-world gameplay of Golden, I'm there on day 1.
BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO
Junior Member
hell nah, his non human designs(outside of shadow chie, which is probably his best work in general. fucking fantastic design) are pretty bad. It would be worse than putting Doi on SMT IV.