Persona series

I actually kind of like multiple physical attack types. I think it gives more variety and might help a bit with things like Hassou Tobi just being the best thing to use against 99% of all enemies and the other 1% feeling too troublesome to even bother fighting. Having it be split between bonk/cut/pew would be a good way to do it. Put spears and swords under cut, maces and fists under bonk, guns and bows under pew. If you wanna get fancy you can even have special attacks that come from one weapon type but use a different type, like having an axe able to do both bonk and cut. Or hell, poleaxes.

Also I did like Q allowing for physical attacks to carry elemental properties. It'd help with coverage when you have characters like Chie with her beefy attack stat and pitiful ice abilities or Junpei and his fire skills not really being up to snuff. Instead they just give you entirely new party members to fill that slot instead, but the fill ins often have issues of their own like Teddy feeling unfocused and Koromaru honestly just kind of sucking iirc.

Shoutout to Chie being unable to do literally anything in the fight against Marie

Unless you got some Corn.

Dude that whole dungeon alone is plain bullshit.

IIRC there's no item that deals with her physical repel, so Chie is royally fucked; at least Kanji has electric magic

Chie gets access to Bufula from her social link and Bufudyne from bike rides.

One thing I did like about Reload compared to Golden and Royal was that hangouts unlocked Combat Characteristics (basically Reload's answer to Royal's Persona Traits) rather than outright moves. I get the rationale, but being able to customize your party member's kits without having to spend in-game time is something I liked in Reload more than the others.

I also prefer Theurgy to Combination Attacks and Showtimes because you can trigger them at-will.

So I guess I should probably do my review of/history with Persona 3 FES while it's still relatively fresh on the mind. Warning: Block of text incoming.

Picture this, it's thousands of years ago, sometime in the early 2010's. You're on YouTube, watching a bunch of video game reviewers and two of them, the Wiiviewer and Happy Video Game Nerd, who don't usually review PS2 games, both offhandedly mention Persona 4 as an example of a great (then-)modern JRPG. You look it up online, you find a short video of the King's Game scene, and you decide to buy the game based on these three things.

That was my introduction to Persona as a whole. I think I had bought Strange Journey right around that point, probably a few months before, maybe a few months after, so Atlus games as a whole were still pretty new to me. I was still in the target age range for P4, and that game really stuck with me at the time. I ended up buying every other Persona and SMT game on the Playstation 2 I could in the next few months. Nocturne, DDS1 and 2, and Persona 3 FES, all for 30 bucks a pop at GameStop. I couldn't find the Raidou games, and I still haven't bought or played them, but that's a discussion for another time.

I ended up beating DDS1, Nocturne, and even DDS2 after I accidentally corrupted a save file 18 hours in by pulling out the memory card while trying to save (yes, really). I loved those games, and I really came to appreciate the series as a whole.

I did not beat Persona 3 FES at that point. I tried. Twice even. But both times I gave up about about a couple in-universe months in. It wasn't the story, it wasn't Tartarus, it wasn't physical being divided into three elements, it wasn't the jealousy mechanic, and it wasn't the first few social links being kind of unappealing. It was the fact I couldn't control my party members.

Stupid decision, borderline nonsensical idea to put in any game this side of the millennium. I don't care in the slightest about the arguments people make about it being "more realistic, and showing how your party members are different people"; Dragon Quest 4 did this shit sixteen years prior, and it was dogged on for it. I still see jokes about Kiryl endlessly spamming Thwack on bosses because of his dirt-for-brains AI.

Sure, Mitsuru might not be as dumb as him, and sure, once you mess around with the tactics menu she won't be endlessly spamming Marin Karin, but man, that's the game developers solving a problem they created in the first place. I haven't played Portable or Reload, but making that shit optional was the smartest thing they ever did for this game. And Reload apparently rebalanced the difficulty since the enemy AI was also kind of gimped in lieu of the fact that you could never be 100% sure what you're party was going to do.

Earlier this year I decided I wanted to finally get around to beating FES. I don't have a modern console outside of the Switch, and I wanted to keep up with the discussions and the various challenge videos that were going to be done on Reload so I figured now was the time. Having made the decision to beat this game this year, no matter what, I set out to play it and...it wasn't as bad as I expected. I grew to tolerate the game play. Not like it, no it's still far worse than Persona 4 and 5 and every other modern SMT game in basically every way, but knowing what I was getting into blunted a lot of the more difficult parts. And by that I mean like the first 10 to 20 hours. After that it was pretty clear sailings.

I did stack things in my favor. I didn't look up things much in the early game, but I knew from playing a while ago Quad Element Lilim and Pale Rider were the way to go. I also basically stumbled my way into the Magician and Hierophant social links, which gave me some very strong Severe-tier skills in the form of Surt's Ragnarok and Odin's Thunder Reign which basically marked the end of any actual difficulty in the game. I also made sure to get Mamoru's social link done to get Helel and the busted Armageddon fusion spell. I used it against the last few bosses, including the final Nyx Avatar fight. Not ashamed to admit it. The fact that my disc is kind of messed up and kept freezing/stuttering on the last few cutscenes also played a part in me just wanting to rush through the end game as fast as possible in case my game just...literally died.

I know I've been shitting on the game a fair bit, so let me talk about what I liked more about P3 compared to P4 and P5. A big thing is how the cast was largely independent of you. I like all three games' respective casts, but P4 and P5 have way too many similarities in terms of everyone relying on you, the founder/leader of the Investigation Team and the Phantom Thieves. They also both have the constantly yapping non-human party member mascot scrumblo-blumblo. Also, the way the second Personas are unlocked in Persona 3 is miles better than how the second and third-tiers are unlocked in P4 and P5.

I get that the introductory unlock is supposed to be the big moment for P4 and especially P5, but nothing in either game elicits even a fraction of emotion you feel at Caesar or Trismegistus' awakenings.

I don't blame Persona 3 for a lot of its flaws. While it was the fifth Persona game, it was a Soft Reboot, and they were trying to do a lot of new things. Persona 4 and 5 were built on top of it (literally in 4's case), so I'm willing to cut it a lot more slack considering it's the reason Atlus is even still around. Yes it sucks you have to romance every girl your age if you want to max out their social links, yes it sucks you can't have social links with any of your guy friends, yes a lot of the social links in this game have some really stupid moments you need to slog through, but it's fine. It's the starting point, and something to appreciate for what came after.

But like, please keep Manual Leader, A.I. Party as an option, not an obligation. For anyone making turn-based role playing games. That shit isn't fun.

Wonder what are the more romanced social links in Reload, honestly.

I'm thinking the order goes Yukari, Aigis, Mitsuru, Fuuka, Yuko, and Chihiro.

Is it me or are there just less Personas in Reload than the original?

If I had to guess its either

• the amount is the same as in the base game...
• or that the FES added ones were removed to be added into the Episode Aigis DLC and the Portable ones were likewise removed and may be added there as well.

They moved on to P5/SMTV/SH models and no longer use the PS 2 ones(save for SH Loki in SMTV).

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 7th 2024 at 1:04:24 AM

that explains it.

Ok, looked it up... it has the exact same number only IF you count the DLC. Otherwise... it comes up short.

Edited by Memers on Apr 7th 2024 at 2:59:39 AM

To be honest they could easily increase the number just by using Doi designs in Persona.

SMTV Vengeance is itself filled with a bunch of new demons that got models on Soul Hackers 2 like Armaiti and Azazel. Also a new model for the Loki I mentioned above.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 7th 2024 at 1:32:16 AM

nvm

Edited by Memers on Apr 7th 2024 at 2:49:18 AM

I get why, but it's funny that P5 didn't include the whole IT's Personas as DLC while Reload includes the whole PT's Personas as DLC.

Annoyingly, it has more Personas locked behind obscure missables...all Linked Episode conclusions give you a unique Persona, and at least one of those is required to do a Tetra Fusion...

(Can't fuse the Hierophant MAX Persona without the Koromaru linked episode ending...it's in January.)

I have Persona 3 question. I've tried my best to get an answer, but I've yet to find anything conclusive.

They often refer to the events of ten years ago where the main character's parents died, Yukari's dad died in the explosion, and Aigis sealing Death away into the MC, among other things, but they never give a specific date. Is there an exact date where all of that happened in 1999 or do we just not have one?

To my knowledge, no. Maybe they give some specific dates in some obscure Japan-only guidebook or something, but I haven't heard of anything like that.

Grr they screwed up with Aigis... in P3 and P3 FES, she can not be poisoned in any way till The Answer.

In Reload she can be poisoned like any other character.

Eh, thats a nitpick.

If a Supernatural creature like Teddie or Morgana can be poisoned, a Robot can be too.

She can... in The Answer, its one of those small clues as to what is going on in The Answer.

There is even an early dialog line in The Answer about it IIRC.

But they're largely biological creatures, even if their origins aren't necessarily human. Aigis is explicitly a robot, made of metal and running on oil(?) rather than flesh and blood

Then again, I always did wonder how a robot got tired while we were exploring Tartarus, so....