YMMV / Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

• Annoying Video Game Helper:
  • If your party members are afflicted with a status ailment or low on HP or SP, you will be reminded of it very frequently, in battle and out of it. It's doubly annoying in battle, as your navigator will say something like "So-and-so's been afflicted!" which is immediately followed by someone in your party remarking about their condition.
  • Outside of battle, party members will always remark on the presence of a FOE, Power Spot, event, etc... even when it's in plain sight.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • A two-on-one boss fight against Margaret with only the main characters in your team should be quite hard and exciting, right? Well, some poison and binds ensure that she dies after about half a dozen turns without any opportunity to hurt them. Justified, as she was being Willfully Weak.
  • The second boss normally tries to limit your actions... however, taking poison damage is never considered to be breaking a vow. With how good the rates of poisoning an enemy are, the boss is made into a joke. It's also easy to take advantage of its vulnerability to Electricity, making it easy to start and maintain Boost status (by comparison, Persona 3 and 4 bosses generally do not have elemental weaknesses).
  • The boss of the third Labyrinth, Kind Doctor, has some powerful spread attacks and two nurses, who constantly heal him and give him stat boosts. But they're also weak to status effects such as paralysis and sleep, making it possible to finish the fight without ever being attacked. The nurses don't even have that much HP, and if you defeat them the main boss has no gimmicks to make the fight more interesting, other than just attacking till you win.
• Awesome: Video Game Levels: The Group Date Cafe Labyrinth, due to the excessive shipping the Heroes can get into with just about anyone. It has some drawbacks with the kinds of mechanics and FOEs used, however, but it's definitely worth navigating through just to find your "destined partner", all ending with the hammiest preacher you'll ever see, complete with a fairly interesting fight gimmick. The best part? You can redo the scenario again.
• Base-Breaking Character: Certain returning characters (namely Akihiko, Chie, Junpei, Yukari, and Teddie) are quite the topic for fans to debate over. Some fans think they are hit with horrible Flanderization, while others argue that it makes sense since all of these quirks occurred before they had their Character Development^note Though some of their personalities are completely unlike what they were back in their original game, such as Elizabeth being a troll instead of innocent, and the game takes place before the events that have the greatest impact on the plot, as well as on them.
• Breather Level: The first few floors of final dungeon are fairly short and simple compared to the very long last floor of the previous dungeon, which had a lengthy puzzle that required you to go to all four parts of the room in one trip. It doesn't last, though.
• Broken Base:
  • After Atlus spent several weeks teasing a Persona-related announcement, fans were not happy that this was the announcement and not Persona 5, accusing Atlus of trolling… for a few minutes, before they realized it was merely the first announcement being made and Persona 5 was announced anyway. Whilst the fans calmed down, several new arguments arose in its place.
  • Being another crossover between Persona 3 and Persona 4 with no sign of the casts of Persona and the Persona 2 duology, even though they have the perfect excuse. Though, this probably did not come as a surprise to anyone aware that the lead writer of Persona 1 and 2 had left Atlus several years ago, meaning that there is nobody with experience in writing these games' characters on the current Persona development team.
  • Being the first Persona game to not see a release on a PlayStation console. Branching out into a favorable new direction, or abandoning the consoles that brought them success in the first place?^note Way before the older Persona games would get ported to a variety of Platforms
  • The change in art style. Some think the chibi-fied art is great and the redrawn Personas excellent, others hate the new style.
  • Being another spin-off of Persona 4 which ignores the fact it is also a Persona 3 spin-off.
  • Some 3DS owners aren't happy that the much requested Persona 3DS is a chibified crossover and not an Updated Re-release of one of the existing games. Others are happier with a new story and gameplay, rather than a rehash of a game they've already played several times.
  • The game's canon status:
    • Before it was revealed to be canon, the subject of if the game's story is canon, and if it should be came up frequently.
    • The reveal that this game's story is canon to the rest of the series has only worsened this. Though, considering that Persona 4: Dancing All Night of all things is also canon, many people see it as a non-issue.
  • The Persona 3 cast not having the option of the Female Protagonist from Persona 3 Portable. She's managed to become as popular as the male protagonist, and having a female Leader would have been a nice contrast to the Persona 4 hero. On the other hand, some fans don't mind as she's confirmed to not be canon (that was, until she unexpectedly appeared in the sequel).
  • The map drawing feature from the Etrian Odyssey series being used in this game. Some people bemoan this news, while others see it as a reason to buy a game they were previously lukewarm on.
  • The Velvet Room siblings taking Igor's place for Persona fusions. Some fans accept it as a case of Real Life Writes the Plot with Igor's Japanese actor's passing and are glad they haven't Other Darrined him, others are unhappy with the siblings running the show.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • F.O.E.s, as usual. The one encountered in episode 3 of Persona Stalker Club, for example, took the show's hosts fifty minutes to defeat.
    • Special mention goes to the Old Doll (see That One Boss) and the Fast Guy, which really fast and so is really hard to run from if you get into a fight with one, and tends to get the first strike on you even without an Enemy Advantage. It loves to spend its first turn casting multiple buffs on itself, making it hit insanely hard while you're attempting (and likely failing) to run.
  • The later floors of the dungeons also have large shadows that, while faced alone, are tough and can act twice a turn. These shadows can also appear as P-Spot ambushes in the lowest floors of the dungeons. Golden versions of these act as the Superbosses of their respective dungeons.
  • Special mention to the Phantom Mage of the 3rd dungeon, as its Wind Corrosion skill will make every party members weak to wind. If not dealt with quickly, he'll cast Magarula, which will, at best, knock down your entire party, but can easily wipe out the party in a single turn. While there are other enemies in the dungeon with similar strategies, the Phantom Mages are infamous as they are the first variant the player encounters, and can appear in a P-Spot ambush in pairs. Wind Corrosion, Magarula, game over.
  • The Turret enemies in the final dungeon are brutal, as they use both powerful magical and physical attacks, meaning one type of Bind won't neutralise them. Their physical attack, Charge Shot, is incredibly strong, being classed as a "severe" attack (i.e. the kind usually reserved for end-game physical Personas) and piercing to the back row, likely hitting your vulnerable healers. All this wouldn't be so bad if they didn't have a very high chance of attacking twice per turn. And showing up in groups of two. Four Charge Shots can very easily be a Total Party Kill.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: While the story was highly praised, the gameplay was less so, from the way the battle system was set up to the single step, tile-based movement in the labyrinths (which inevitably turns it into a boring slog). It doesn't help that its sequel is generally agreed to have improved upon these issues.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Merciful Clergyman is easily the most popular Guardian among the fans despite his small role. Probably has something to do with his hilariously Large Ham dialogue, plus the fact that he comes right at the end of the Group Cafe. Helps that people like to do it over and over again to pair up with everybody.
• Fridge Brilliance: Aside from the stoic Zen, Aigis isn't smiling when she sees Teddie in the intro is because she has not gone through her character development yet since the P3 cast came from well before November, before gaining her memories of why she was attached to the P3 Hero in the first place. And also losing her robotic characteristics due to being broken by Ryoji.
  • As excited as shadow fans are to see Ryoji and Teddie interact Ryoji is not yet born due to the team not having defeated the arcana shadows yet.
• Game-Breaker: See here for details.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Fate Seeker in the later stages of the Evil Spirit Club. Unlike some other Demonic Spiders on the stage, he's not likely to get a TPK. However, with two moves a turn, Bestial Roar, and Megido hitting every character it's very unlikely the player will be able to take him out without using at least some MP that won't be recovered after the fight. And they're common enough to genuinely slow down dungeon crawling, not to mention often getting the first strike if they appear at a Power Spot.
  • Anything with Bestial Roar, by extention. This causes the enemy to always attack first, which means before Boost. If they hit a Boosted character, they lose their Boost status before they're able to take advantage of it, meaning they're forced to use whatever skill they selected that turn and pay the full HP or SP cost. Given that you likely chose a high-cost skill to take advantage of it being free, this can be extremely annoying. The only way to get around this is through Dekaja, and enemies start using these skills before that is readily available in either skill or item form. At the very least, Kanji starts out with it, and it can be passed on, hopefully to slower party members such as Shinjiro and the aforementioned Kanji.
• Harsher in Hindsight: After you learn the truth behind it, it's very hard to find Rei's eating habits funny on a subsequent playthrough.
  • On account of this game's events being Doomed by Canon, given that its events are never referenced in either game, this leads to a lot of moments that are not too easy to take in, most particularly from the Persona 3 side.
  • Everyone seems happy, including the Persona 3 protagonist, Mitsuru, Ken, and Shinjiro. That doesn't last too long.
  • Kanji and Ken discuss the possibility of the serial killer in Inaba not being such a bad person. Not only is that absolutely not the case, their second suspect, Namatame, was just trying to do the right thing, and the Investigation Team nearly kills him while incorrectly blaming him for things that the actual murderer has done.
  • Both protagonists bid farewell to each other at the end of the game, promising to see each other again some day. The Persona 3 protagonist's demise ensures that this meeting will not happen.
  • The "Destined Partner" segment of the Group Date Cafe is just rife with this when it comes to the Persona 3 protagonist. He is fated to die and will never end up married. Yukari becomes more abrasive in The Answer and it's implied that it was done out of feelings for him, Aigis loses her most precious person and is subject to what happens in The Answer, while Elizabeth still continues to find a way to bring the protagonist back somehow.
  • In the Persona 3 route, in the last dungeon, Ken reconsiders getting revenge on Shinjiro, and similarly, the P4 side ends with him preparing to go back home with a similar change of heart being implied. But with this game's events being forgotten, players of Persona 3 will know that this is rendered moot.
  • When it comes to this game itself, you have Rei's line in the first dungeon. "Rabbits are our friends!" Which takes a darker turn considering the boss of the fourth dungeon.
  • In the third dungeon, Rei tries to reassure herself that ghosts aren't real. She herself is dead, and is in denial that she is. She's very much a ghost herself.
  • Rei's obsession with food is played for laughs and can be somewhat annoying to the player. Then comes The Reveal that she's dead and that all the eating was to provide herself the illusion of being feel alive.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: At the end of Side P3, the P3 Hero returns to the dorm, telling his friends that he is home, a reference to his possible revival after his eventual sacrifice.
• He Really Can Act: Ashly Burch manages to put on a terrific performance as Rei. What really takes the cake is the scene where Rei's past is revealed, making it one of the most emotional moments in the game.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Strain42, the author of Persona 3 FTW and Persona 4TW, stated in the description of this comic that it'd be the closest we get to the protagonists of Persona 3 and Persona 4 speaking with each other. This comic was, of course, before this game was announced.
  • This fanfic manages to accurately depict what happens in the 4th dungeon of the P4 path.
  • At the beginning of the P4 route, Margaret tells the group that she'll charge them to use the nurse's office, and Kanji complains that she doesn't even have "the sense of your average housewife". Kanji and Margaret's voice actors, Matthew Mercer and Marisha Ray, would get married years after the game was released.
  • The Investigation Team all strike JoJo poses when being introduced on the Persona 3 side. The plot of Persona 4 itself has at least enough similarities to Part 4 of the series, given that it is also about a murder mystery in a small Japanese town and a lot of characters fight alongside beings that are the manifestation of psychological strength, ie. like a Persona.
    • On a similar note, the P4 protagonist doing the pose of Jonathan Joestar is humorously prophetic after Johnny Yong Bosch became the voice of Jonathan in the English dub of the anime.
  • In the English dub, Teddie falling in love with Akihiko after imbibing a love potion. Not only are their respective voice actors Heterosexual Life-Partners who joke about being each other's man-wife, but Campaign 1 of Critical Role saw Liam's character prank Sam's character with a love potion.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • The story is often lambasted because it at times seems like a retelling of Persona 4 Arena: The casts of Persona 3 and Persona 4 explore a nightmarish version of Yasogami High, which turns out to be accidentally caused by the girl in a Yasogami High uniform who joined the party and, wanting to be normal, forgets her past. Her Shadow is the Disc-One Final Boss before the true culprit is revealed.
  • It also takes maybe a bit too much from Persona in regards to Rei. To the point that she almost comes off as a carbon-copy of Maki.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Now it's a lot more prevalent with the Heroes towards everyone in the cast, all thanks to the Group Date Cafe Labyrinth.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Due to SP being difficult to heal, magic-heavy Persona users will be mostly phased out in favor of physical specialists further into the game. The only magic that remains practicality are the instant-kill Dark and Light spells and status effects. As both are affected by Luck, magic-heavy Persona users with a high Luck score, like Ken, Naoto, and P3 MC, can retain their usability with a Sub-Persona that can cast either Light or Dark Magic or status effects. Although Yukari has multiple healing skills, her low Agility makes her a poor healer. Her Luck is also among the lowest in the party, which makes it difficult to salvage her other stats; Mitsuru is affected similarly, though despite having good Luck and a phenomenal skill in Tentarafoo, she has the misfortune of being somewhat slow, and having a borderline-useless unique move (Punishment, which relies on her low physical power, and requires binds that the move removes.).
  • Due to movesets now largely being based on Sub-Personas, Teddie was stripped of the majority of his healing spells and all his buffs, which leaves him with horrible Defense and Speed and seemingly nothing to make up for it, causing a lot of players to ignore him when putting together their party. Some players, however, realize that the fact that his low Speed and high luck can exploit the Sleep Status effect. He will almost always move last, which will mean that enemies will almost always be asleep by the start of the next turn (due to his high luck). This will give teammates the opportunity to set up devastating strategies.
  • Unlike the party's other Fragile Speedsters, Yosuke doesn't have much going for him aside from speed. He lacks Ken and Koromaru's One-Hit Kill specialty, his Magic is decent but not the best, and his strength is somewhat low. Like Teddie, he's lost his more varied skills from his home game, including his healing and buffs, and only gained Wind-element physical attacks, which he isn't great with due to his mediocre Strength. The worst part is his extremely low Luck, which seriously hampers his ability to act as fast status or Hama/Mudo support with Sub-Personas. That said, he can be salvaged with the stat swap accessory. By swapping his dismal Luck with Magic (a stat he doesn't need to use) Yosuke turns into one of the most devastating Status Effect users in the game. He even naturally learns Tentarafoo, a very strong skill that is made all the more potent with the skill swap accessory. It's also worth noting that his Speed makes him one of the best Teardrop users in the game.
  • The P3 Hero is this compared to the P4 Hero, since Orpheus is weak against Electricity and Dark skills, and has no resistances to compensate for that. Even Messiah, despite being immune to Light and resisting all other elements, retains this weakness. Having a greater chance of being hit by one of the two One-Hit Kill elements makes the P3 Hero a liability on Risky, since his death will result in a Game Over.
• Memetic Mutation: Even in my Persona games, F.O.E.!
• Moe: Already the characters are usually this since their first appearances, but this time it's pretty much everybody.
  • Special mention to Ken's and Kanji's interaction, which is generally agreed to be adorable.
  • Rei is so cute that she's considered this in-universe too.
• Never Live It Down: The Flanderization that the characters ended up receiving can be viewed as one with there even being fans speculating about how The Phantom Thieves of Hearts will be flanderized in the game's sequel. However, after its release, it's generally agreed upon that this fortunately was not the case, as many have praised the writing for Q2 as being an improvement.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • The Merciful Clergyman makes an intimidating appearance. Which gets mitigated by the hammy delivery of his lines.
  • The Fate Seeker, the giant enemy of the 3rd dungeon. Conceptually, it's pretty disturbing: a giant head that's usually invisible apart from its eyes, with three extra eyes carried by ravens. But this gets mitigated by its incredibly goofy and cartoonish reactions to getting hit and knocked down, to the point where it might qualify as Ugly Cute to some. It helps that it's actually not very threatening in battle compared to the previous two giant enemy types, in fact, given the sheer abundance of Demonic Spiders in the Evil Spirit Club, its appearance is generally a relief.
  • Later in the Evil Spirit Club, there's an In-Universe example when Zen tells Rei to think of the Creepy Doll F.O.Es as Takoyaki to make them less scary, and so we get lines like "A scary takoyaki popped out in front of me."
• One-Scene Wonder: The Merciful Clergyman only appears in one scene in the entire game, but during that one scene, he managed to become an Ensemble Dark Horse. Many fans hoped that he along with his wedding gimmick makes a return to Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, but this did not happen.
• Player Punch: After completing the game for the P3 team, you get the dialogue options to say you feel tired, and that you just want to go home and sleep.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Players tend to refer to Zen and Rei as ReiZen/Reisen/Raisin.
• Questionable Casting:
  • In Persona 3 Portable, Theodore was voiced by Travis Willingham, who is known for his Baritone of Strength voice, which suitably fits his gentleman-like character. Q replaces Willingham, with Theodore now being voiced by Bryce Papenbrook. Papenbrook's interpretation is seen as ill-fitting, due to Theodore now sounding so soft-spoken and boyish by comparison.
  • Some fans wish that Mary Elizabeth McGlynn had been brought back from The Animation to voice Naoto Shirogane if they needed a new English VA for her going forward, instead of Valerie Arem. While Arem's take has her fans, replicating what Anna Graves sounded like in the original game, some found her initial take as Naoto in Q a bit lacking.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Ken and Naoto. In their original games, both had One-Hit KO skills as specialties, while their other aspects lagged behind, making them their respective game's Low-Tier Letdown. However, because Hama and Mudo hit rates have been increased to Game-Breaker status, they become MUCH more useful. Naoto is elevated to Game-Breaker status with this and her other aspects (see above) and Ken is now a Fragile Speedster rather than a Master of None, who also makes as a decent support character with his luck; from a character standpoint, the latter has good interactions with other characters (mainly Kanji, a major Ensemble Dark Horse), and unlike the original game, he shows that he is willing to reconsider revenge.
  • To a lesser extent, Shinjiro, seeing as he was technically just a Guest-Star Party Member last time, but now he's fully playable all game. The game gives him a more straightforward Mighty Glacier and Stone Wall build in contrast to Kanji's mix of a Mighty Glacier and Magic Knight set up. Adding to that, he's also more social and prominent.
  • Fuuka as well. From a gameplay standpoint, she now learns a lot of genuinely useful healing support skills, as opposed to one healing skill that had a chance of backfiring and taking your HP to One. Character-wise, she has a far less annoying voice and her Annoying Video Game Helper tendencies and Captain Obvious tendencies have been toned down significantly.
• The Scrappy: Teddie has been less liked in this game, mainly due to him acting even more full of himself and desperate for female attention than in other recent portrayals and being a Low-Tier Letdown. The former may have to do with this game being set Mid-October for the Persona 4 gang, which was when Teddie was at his peak of being drunk on the material pleasures of the human world, just before his inevitable mental breakdown upon witnessing Nanako's apparent death, but that doesn't help newcomers to the character or those who had tried to eliminate Teddie's most bratty phase from their memories in first place. And while he's also a Lethal Joke Character with the strategy stated on the main page, a somewhat comparable result can be reached with a well-leveled Ken, who also comes with a better speed stat.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The big one: Boost. In a vacuum, it makes a kind of sense, at once allowing anyone who successfully scores a Critical or hits an elemental weakness to go first next round and use a skill without spending any resources. In practice, it is very difficult for any characters with high speed to make proper use of it, since taking damage knocks them out of Boost, and, worse, every skill in the game had its SP price hiked to high heaven to force players to make use of the mechanic at gunpoint. Few reviews fail to complain about the clumsy, ham-handed way it was implemented or the glaring problems with how it tries, and fails, to fuse the Press Turn/One More system with Etrian Odyssey gameplay.
  • The one-two punch of the tiles that drain SP and the fact that, to get the treasure on each floor players need to not just find, but step on every single tile. The tiles are particularly cruel, as the cutscene introducing them (in which the party automatically steps on one as a demonstration) has Junpei think they'll drain HP, which would have been much more convenient.
  • Unlike Persona 4, you don't get to choose your allies' skills as they learn them - a higher-tier skill automatically replaces a lower-tier skill when possible. Unfortunately, the higher-tier skills cost far more than their lower-tier counterparts - for example, Agilao costs 28 SP while Agi costs only 8 SP. This makes skills that were once nice for getting quick boosts into something impractical when they "upgrade". Sub-personas and skill cards can mitigate this a bit, but it's still annoying nonetheless.
  • For people who like to fuse as many personas as possible (both to make sure that their Persona stock are high level, and to add more variety to better complete the compendium), the fact that multiple characters use compendium personas (and that the game's balanced with everyone using one in mind) can be annoying.
• Squick: In the "Trade Showdown" between Zen and Teddie, the latter offers Rei a large tuft of cotton candy, which she proceeds to eat. Except it's not cotton candy, he actually made it from his own bear suit's fur rather than bother trading with anyone.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Possibly as a response to her Base-Breaking Character status, in this game Marie is teased and dismissed by Elizabeth and Margaret. In the "categories game," the loser is forced to read one of her poems as a punishment.
  • The same whenever Teddie is ignored or punished for his lecherous behavior or his mistreatment towards Koromaru.
• That One Boss:
  • Aside from being Nightmare Fuel, the Old Doll is ridiculously tough even by F.O.E standards. The fact that it's weak to two types of basic physical attacks tricks you into thinking it'll be easy, but this is counterbalanced by its extremely high evasion rate. It can inflict Curse, has powerful damaging skills and worse, Mamudoon, a high chance of One-Hit Kill that hits your entire party, which is particularly bad if you're on the P3 Route, as you'll be forced to use a character who's weak to it. It's heavily resistant to all status ailments, which usually make bosses a lot easier. On top of all this, it's also able to fully heal itself. The one saving grace it it's one of the only F.O.Es that's not immune to Hama, so if you're really lucky you might be able to One-Hit Kill it... emphasis on really lucky, as Hama's chance of success on it is still very low. Even discounting its combat abilities, as a level gimmick it's also very annoying: it constantly chases you through the 4th floor of the dungeon, moving 2 spaces at a time, and (due to the way the floor is layed out) it's inevitable you'll get caught by it a few times and need to run away. In order to get it off your tail, you need to do something that might be a Guide Dang It! your first time though.
  • The buff F.O.Es from the Inaba Pride Exhibit are all notoriously difficult due to their high speed, evasion and physical attack prowess, but the Festival Dudes take the cake - they all attack as a group, and all of their attacks hit everyone, no exceptions. Avoiding them outright is almost as difficult as fighting them: the Fast Guy and Sweaty Guys can gang up on you within a two panel radius, Sweaty Guys can very easily trap you against a wall if you make the wrong steps (and their diagonal movement compared to other F.O.Es can really throw you off) and if you have a torch on in range of a Sweaty Guy, puddles of sweat will appear beneath your feet and cause you to slip around (and you actually have to do this to carry the Holy Flame to certain spots). Meanwhile, you have to carefully maneuver around the Festival Dudes and the mikoshi they carry - all of them occupy four spaces. They can gang up on you if you cannot figure out their pattern of movement, and said movement speeds up if you're carrying a lit torch.
    • Festival Dudes are especially tough, which is not helped by the fact that you have to take one on for one of Elizabeth's requests. First, you have to face them with a party of four guys, otherwise they will keep on casting Diarahan. Even some characters that are male, such as Teddie, Koromaru, or Zen, once Rei is taken away don't count, leaving you with a very limited selection of characters and roles. Want to bring a healer? Sorry, but no Yukari or Yukiko for you! And even when you do gather a party, the Festival Dudes will constantly spam Spin Slash, which hits all of your members for a hefty amount of physical damage. Level grinding is practically a necessity.
• That One Level: The third labyrinth, Evil Spirit Club. Not only is it creepy and outright Nightmare Fuel, it's without a doubt the most difficult dungeon. The enemies are faster then any other dungeons and then there's the confusing layout with a lot of backtracking. The worst part is that there are enemies which can use a Corrosion ability to make you weak to whatever element they use. If they go first and/or have more then one, get ready for a Total Party Kill with no way to stop it. There's also a annoying and rather confusing puzzle on the second floor and the F.O.E's are annoying too. After the first floor the game throws enemies that can put up a shield type ability that makes it where all attacks only hit them. The problem is that they're only weak to Mudo, which can be unreliable. This makes it where those above mentioned Corrosion attacks will tear your party apart.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The game has cute and colorful art-style, but it deals with extremely mature subject matter. Like the plot centered around the death of a teenage girl and purgatory, along with the imminent erasure of all the characters you love from Persona 3 and 4 implied if you fail.
• The Woobie: Rei. She was a sickly child when she was alive. As a result, she was almost always bedridden with constant treatments and never got to enjoy such things like going to school or even the outdoors. To twist the knife even further, her mother pretty much disowned her when Rei got sick, and while in the hospital, Rei made friends with another patient, who got to leave and enjoy her life, making Rei even more envious of that which she couldn't have. Even after her death, she can't catch a break, as she becomes a plaything for some extradimensional entities and isn't able to pass on for at least a decade.
  • All three of Rei, Chie, and Yukari during the 3rd labyrinth. They have every right to be as scared as they are.
  • Yosuke gets a small part in this during a late-game Stroll on the 4 side. He walks in on the girls explaining to Fuuka and Yukari he's a little TOO nice by putting everyone's needs and problems before himself and consistently call him an idiot for doing so. That's all he hears, none of the compliments about his niceness, and walks off crying while the Protagonist just stands there and watches.
• Woolseyism:
  • The puzzle on the last floor of the Evil Spirits Club dungeon in the original Japanese release was actually a puzzle based on the way Japanese katakana is written. Knowing how much the solution would probably be lost on the English-speaking players, the translators had to make up a completely new puzzle in its place, so what resulted was a math puzzle.
  • During an event in the 4th labyrinth where the cast misread the kanji in each other's names, the P4 protagonist comes up with a kanji reading for Kuma, since his name is normally written in Katakana. In Japanese it's "scary demon", while the English version uses the kanji for "hand" and "dirt/filth" to get "Te-dei". "Dirty hands" arguably fits Teddie's character far better than the Japanese joke did.

---