History YMMV / PersonaQShadowOfTheLabyrinth

* FridgeBrilliance: Aside from the stoic Zen, Aigis isn't smiling when she sees Teddie [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXn3TLAw7Ekt=2m20s in the intro]] is because she has not gone through her character development yet since the ''P3'' cast came from well before November, [[spoiler: before gaining her memories of why she was attached to Minato in the first place. And also losing her robotic characteristics due to being broken by Ryoji.]]

* InternetBackdraft: Personas being DLC, but ''especially'' Thanatos, who is Minato's signature Persona outside of Orpheus.

** Ironically, certain hints dropped during the game imply [[spoiler:that it's the same girl. The timeline of Niko's hospitalization and death line up with Labrys's creation]]
** It can be taken even further with the fact that [[spoiler:both this game ''and'' ''Arena'' take a lot of cues from ''Persona 1'': Labrys and Rei are Maki, and the warped Yasogami High in both games are Mikage-cho. Rei also exhibits nihilism like Maki did, and both were very sick in the real world, although Maki still lives. And while the first person dungeon gameplay is also a staple of ''Etrian Odyssey'', it was also used in ''Persona 1'', making the connection even stronger.]]

* MemeticMutation: Even in my ''Persona'' games, F.O.E.!

** It can be taken even further with the fact that [[spoiler:both this game ''and'' ''Arena'' take a lot of cues from ''[[ShinMegamiTenseiPersona]]'' game: Labrys and Rei are Maki, and the warped Yasogami High in both games are Mikage-cho. Rei also exhibits nihilism like Maki did, and both were very sick in the real world, although Maki still lives.]]

* ItsTheSameSoItSucks: The story is rarely 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 [[spoiler: 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 DiskOneFinalBoss before the true culprit is revealed]].

* GoddamnedBats: The Fate Seeker in the later stages of the Evil Spirit Club. Unlike some other DemonicSpiders 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.

*** Luckily, the consumable Winged Sandals negate Tile Damage for a number of steps. However, they take up item slots and the nature of these items makes multiple forays between the dungeon and back necessary if one does not want to take any damage at all.

* DudeNotFunny:
** A lot of the girls' treatment of the boys falls into this - Yukari's treatment of Junpei, which is far meaner compared to their home game, Yukiko's reaction to others saying how terrible of a cook she is, and Mitsuru's tossing around empty execution threats over minor things, such as Yosuke getting startled at one point in the Evil Spirit Club are just a few examples. The worst of it is arguably Elizabeth and Margaret's treatment of Theodore.
*** To expand on the latter, some people see it more as an abusive familial relationship than anything to laugh at.
** A brief scene in the Inaba Pride Exhibit (one that leads to Shinjiro and Akihiko having a competition seeing who can get closest to a fire before passing out) presents the notion that Akihiko has absolutely ''no'' concept of what sexual harassment is. He's confused at Chie for not taking her clothes off due to the heat, and he makes it clear that he's ready to strip down, until Shinjiro steps in. It makes it seem he truly ''is'' completely socially inept, as opposed to simply being awkward and aloof in his home game.
** Teddie's flirting, which is not helped that he does it almost constantly.

** 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 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 has Junpei think they'll drain HP, [[MagicIsRareHealthIsCheap which would have been much more convenient.]]

* [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap Rescued From the]] [[TierInducedScrappy Tier-Induced Scrappy Heap]]: Ken and Naoto. In their original games, both had OneHitKO skills as specialties, while their other aspects lagged behind. However, because Hama and Mudo hit rates have been increased to GameBreaker status, they become MUCH more useful. Naoto is elevated to GameBreaker status with this and her other aspects (see above) and Ken is now a FragileSpeedster rather than a MasterOfNone, 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 EnsembleDarkhorse), and unlike the original game, he shows that he is willing to reconsider revenge.

* ItsTheSameSoItSucks: The story is rarely praised in its own right, but it's especially bad 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 [[spoiler: 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 DiskOneFinalBoss before the true culprit is revealed]].

* TierInducedScrappy: 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 the P3MC, can retain their usability with a Sub-Persona that can cast either Light or Dark Magic or status effects. Although Yukari has better healing prowess than either Yukiko or Ken, she only has a single-target wind spell, and her Luck is among the lowest in the party; Mitsuru is affected similarly, on top of having a borderline-useless unique move (Punishment, which relies on her low physical power, and requires binds that the move ''removes.'').

** Unlike the party's other [[FragileSpeedster Fragile Speedsters]], Yosuke doesn't have much going for him aside from speed. He lacks Ken and Koromaru's OneHitKill specialty, his Magic is decent but not the best, as Yukari deals more raw wind damage then him and has better healing skills to compensate, 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 low 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, which would otherwise be his saving grace.

** Yukari is easily the worst character in the game. Although she has multiple healing spells, her low Agility makes her a poor healer. Worst still, Fuuka is easily capable of handling healing duties with her Navi skills. Even if you aren't using Fuuka, characters with high Agility (such as P3MC or Naoto) make for far better healers, ''especially'' when skill cards come into play. Her Magic offense is limited due to high SP costs, which means she's not really suited for attacking, and she's incapable of abusing status effects due to her dismal Luck. Swapping her Magic with Strength makes her a decent physical attacker, but she still has to contend with her awful Agility and Endurance. Overall, Yukari has very little appeal.

* TierInducedScrappy: 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 Yukiko, Naoto, and the P3MC, can retain their usability with a Sub-Persona that can cast either Light or Dark Magic or status effects. Although Yukari has better healing prowess than either Yukiko or Ken, she only has a single-target wind spell, and her Luck is among the lowest in the party; Mitsuru is affected similarly, on top of 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 he's a SquishyWizard can be exploited if you equip him with a Sub-Persona with multi-hit physical skills - his extremely high Luck stat will cause him score repeated critical hits, giving one of the most competent magic users in the game ''basically unlimited SP'' thanks to the Boost-System. If cleverly equipped with a well-chosen Sub-Persona, this can result in unlimited healing, Instant Kills for Zero SP cost and a rain of Megido-Spells.
** Unlike the party's other [[FragileSpeedster Fragile Speedsters]], Yosuke doesn't have much going for him aside from speed. He lacks Ken and Koromaru's OneHitKill specialty, his Magic is decent but not the best, as Yukari deals more raw wind damage then him and has better healing skills to compensate, 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 low 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, which would otherwise be his saving grace.

** Being [[VideoGame/Persona4Arena another crossover]] between ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'' with no sign of the casts of ''VideoGame/{{Persona}} 1'' and the ''VideoGame/{{Persona 2}}'' duology, even though they have the perfect excuse. Though, this probably did not come as a surprise to anyone aware that [[RealLifeWritesThePlot the lead writer of Persona 1 and 2 has left Atlus several years ago, meaning that there is nobody with experience in writing these games' characters on the current Persona development team.]] To add to that is that current director does not want to mess with characters in respect for the previous writer.

** Being [[VideoGame/Persona4Arena another crossover]] between ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'' with no sign of the casts of ''VideoGame/{{Persona}} 1'' and the ''VideoGame/{{Persona 2}}'' duology, even though they have the perfect excuse. Though, this probably did not come as a surprise to anyone aware that [[RealLifeWritesThePlot the lead writer of Persona 1 and 2 has left Atlus several years ago, meaning that there is nobody with experience in writing these games' characters on the current Persona development team.]] To add to that is that current director does not want to mess with characters in respect for the previous writeter.

** Being [[VideoGame/Persona4Arena another crossover]] between ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'' with no sign of the casts of ''VideoGame/{{Persona}} 1'' and the ''VideoGame/{{Persona 2}}'' duology, even though they have the perfect excuse. Though, this probably did not come as a surprise to anyone aware that [[RealLifeWritesThePlot the lead writer of Persona 1 and 2 has left Atlus several years ago, meaning that there is nobody with experience in writing these games' characters on the current Persona development team.]]

** Unlike P3 and P4, 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.

** Effective use of Link attacks. Golden Link + Quadruple Link (Infinite Link is even more overkill) + hitting an enemy's weakness means that they'll take reasonable damage for the first hit, then every time a teammate hits the enemy, they'll also take a hit that does twice the damage of the first link. Dragon Cry is perfect for this as well; it makes sure that the user goes first and gets a massive attack boost, ensuring that damage is maximized.

* TierInducedScrappy: 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 he's a SquishyWizard can be exploited if you equip him with a Sub-Persona with multi-hit physical skills - his extremely high Luck stat will cause him score repeated critical hits, giving one of the most competent magic users in the game ''basically unlimited SP'' thanks to the Boost-System. If cleverly equipped with a well-chosen Sub-Persona, this can result in unlimited healing, Instant Kills for Zero SP cost and a rain of Megido-Spells.

** Yukiko has better Luck then several characters and the highest SP count in the cast but she falls behind several other characters despite this. Her element being fire makes it one of the more common elements since the P3 MC, Junpei, and Koromaru also use it but can use more versitile skills that fit better in combat. Adding to that, she doesn't learn Mind Charge to overpower Mitsuru or Naoto, and her counterpart, Yukari, has better healing skills and wind spells, which makes her valuable in battle.

** Although Yukiko is not as bad as the above, she's generally inferrior in many ways. Her element being fire makes it one of the more common elements since the P3 MC, Junpei, and Koromaru also use it but can use more versitile skills that fit better in combat. Adding to that, she doesn't learn Mind Charge to overpower Mitsuru or Naoto, and her counterpart, Yukari, has better healing skills and wind spells, which makes her valuable in battle. In short, Yukiko CantCatchUp.
** She and Yukari are similar in many ways, but she trumps Yukari in Luck, which makes Yukiko a viable option to use a sub-Persona that uses Mahamaon or Mamudoon, or she can also cast status ailments. Yukari, on the other hand, only has outstanding magic - her luck is among the lowest in the party. Yukiko's SP growth is also the highest among the entire team, so she can throw around magic without too much of an issue, especially if she's given the Chakra Ring accessory, which cuts SP costs in half.