Persona series

A really, really easy one, since instant death is viable in a game that's normally about wearing enemies down.

Yeah. Statuses are king and multi hit physical moves are the meta.

Oh right, forgot people were talking about instant death effects. I guess that means Naoto will be a party member when I meet up with the P4 side.

edited 6th Jan '17 10:13:19 AM by Arha

Magic's pretty useless, but Links become absurdly broken later on.

I'd say Rotom makes the most sense for Yu. By default, he's electric, but he can change form to several other types for other situations. And come Pokemon Sun And Moon he's Suddenly Voiced, just like Yu in Arena. Also Izanagi is definitely either Dark or Ghost-type.

edited 6th Jan '17 10:43:21 AM by Larkmarn

You didn't even mention they share the same Japanese VA! For shame!

...wait what the shit

The Rotom in the new anime has Yu's seiyuu, yep

But every well known one has 500 roles so that's not that surprising

So uh, is there a consensus on how good P5 is from japanese players/people who imported the game?

Haven't checked but from what I saw?

Gameplay is great, possibly the best it's ever been. The dungeons in particular are a vast improvement over the uncreative designs of the two prior ones.

Story has a lot of pretty unexpected twists starting from the midpoint, but all that said: the ending is a bit of a dissapointment.

And is rife for a DLC Expansion/updated release with more stuff.

I've heard it sort of just... stops. People have been trying to sniff out an uber-hidden secret ending but no luck.

I'm still not sure how much of that is actual pacing or expectations brought about from Persona 3 and Persona 4.

So I'm almost done with Nocturne and I am looking ahead to whether I'll be playing P3 or 4 after it.

I'm kinda leaning towards 4 based on the first 5-10 minutes of the respective games. My P3 guy is absolutely hideous.

Also I have the strangest temptation to pick all the jerk responses.

edited 11th Jan '17 11:29:08 PM by Nikkolas

Well if you play P4 golden there is an slink where all the jerk responses are the correct choices :).

Both games have slinks where if you be a jerk the slink just ends without any hope of finishing it though.

edited 11th Jan '17 11:35:12 PM by Memers

I do not have Golden, alas. I got both games for PSN. But Persona 3 "FES" has a nifty epilogue or something that is apparently terrible or maybe good depending on who I ask.

edited 11th Jan '17 11:38:38 PM by Nikkolas

The epilogue is hit or miss, it entirely depends on how much you like what is basically amounts to Nocturne style adventure without the ability to pay to resummon demons for fusion fodder.

Play Persona 3 first, then 4.

Alright, I started 3. Saved just after awakening my Persona and about to go met the old guy and the others. I just started it to get a feel for it.

Now I hear the games have multiple endings but it's not like SMT. It's just a good, true and bad ending. But I also have heard these games criticized as dating sims. So...do I get to decide who my bestest friends are? Is there Romance? Yukari is already crushing pretty hard on me.

I guess I'm asking how much choice is available to me.

Social Links are the dating sim elements. You spend time with either a party member or NPC, select dialogue options that give varying amounts of points, and if you meet the point requirement then the Social Link with level up to the next rank. You can hang out with Social Links either after school or the weekend, but this uses up the time of day you're spending with them. During a weekend, you can give a present to a Social Link if they called you to hangout for the day. This present will boost Social Link experience points if they like the gift enough.

In Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES, the female Social Links all become infatuated with the MC over the course of the Link. This is pretty one sided though, and the game leaves it up to the player how far anything actually goes. Persona 4 is when Social Links gained a "Friend Route" to allow non-romantic Social Linking.

Social Links progress over 10 Ranks, and there's a Link for each Arcana. Each rank adds more bonus experience to any Persona of the matching Arcana you created with fusion. When you max out a Social Link at 10, you unlock the ability to created the ultimate Persona belonging to that Arcana.

P3 has just a bad and a good ending, the bad end choice is pretty obvious when you come to it so don't worry. P4 has a bad end, a good end, true ending with golden adding a REALLY bad end and a Golden Ending some of these you might need hints for when it comes to it.

The games have social links which are basically Dating Sim Relationship Values, these apply to being friends and romance. You upgrade it by spending time or answering a question. Hint: always have a persona of the same race as the slink you get bonus points, i.e. Have a chariot persona when spending time with the chariot link

Vanilla P3 has dating social links which operate like friendship links but you can give gifts and they can get pissy if you do not hang around with them after so long or go out with another girl. If you max me out at 10 they are done and won't get pissy. Edit: all of them require a social stat to be maxed to start the link. In P4 you get a choice to form a romance or stay friends with romance options.

Managing your time between slinks, dungeoning and grinding social stats is the big difficulty of the game, you only have so much time.

edited 12th Jan '17 2:04:40 AM by Memers

Uh oh. I'm no good at time management. Are Persona dungeons like SMT dungeons? You guys have any idea how long I spent in Strange Journey's duneons?

Time management as in blocks of time, you have unlimited time inside that block until you do something that advances time.

The dungeons are randomly generated affairs, not too complex and the tutorials do a good job at showing you the ropes. Do not spend too much time on a single floor though unless you want to fight Death and he has shotguns!

Oh and being tired does not mean you always gotta quit dungeoning, you just take an accuracy hit, the others will leave if you return to floor 1 though. You can press on a far as you dare.

edited 12th Jan '17 2:17:32 AM by Memers

Sounds like it's something to see at least.

For a comparison to give me some idea, how does this compare to Lightning Returns? Is there no real time limit in this game like in LR?

LR's time constantly flows real time unless you use chronostasis. The two are not really comparable.

Persona's time is infinite in the block until you choose to do something like spending time with friends, go Karaoke, eat fast food go to sleep and so on. That will advance it to the next block.

You have 1 lunar month to reach as far as you can go in the dungeon and that's the only real short term goal, everything else is up to you and you have 1 year to do it. You do not and very likely will not complete everything, even if you did the reward for 100% Completion in FES sucks. If you want to there are guides out there.

If you have played The Legend Of Heroes Trails Of Cold Steel that time system is close to Persona's.

edited 12th Jan '17 2:39:09 AM by Memers

Yeah. It's one reason I went with Portable (and said 'fuck it' to the epilogue). You get a Guard command that replaces pass, the ability to play as a female protagonist, and tired/sick does not kick in until you leave. You also don't get healed by going to the entrance, but the save clock now provides healing.

Basically, time management in the dating sim-sonas is done as "wonder around areas until you interact with something that asks if you'd like to spend time there." It's about what you do with your days, not your minutes and hours.

Not to say it's easy to get everything done- Because of gating regarding the personality characteristics, a perfect run on a fresh file is basically "you have to use a guide" tier- But there's nothing wrong with just following the sideplots you're interested in and worrying about the rest for NG+, if ever.