Persona series

I know the Haru conversation is done, but I got one more (that I probably already posted):

, Does that mean better Shadow boss designs are coming up?

Kameshida's Shadow is clearly the most shocking, disgusting, and threatening looking out of the bosses, and it's sad ATLUS maybe played their cards right too early. It's clear they didn't mean to though. I mean geez, Haru's fiance appears in her Palace and he looks exactly like he does in the real world before he transforms!

P5 is all about the early impact. After that it kind of peters out.

Okay so I never actually used Haru at all and I don't remember anything she said in Mementos at all so I have no idea what you all are talking about.

Yeah I wouldn't say any of the Shadow designs after Kamoshida are all that great. In addition to the ones already mentioned, Sae's is bizarre but it clashes horribly with her palace and Shido's first form is decent but it goes super downhill after that. The pyramid is really dumb and no amount of Armstrong comparisons will make "Literally the same but buff" interesting.

Edited by LordVatek on Nov 16th 2018 at 12:42:15 PM

I unironically prefer Armstrong as a villain over Shido lol

I mean why wouldn’t you?

Shadow Madarame's transformation, with his head swelling and bursting into paintings, is probably the creepiest thing in the game.

I would say Shido is pretty different from Armstrong. They are evil muscular politicians but that's really where the comparison ends.

But which is better, Rivers in the Desert or It Has To Be This Way?

It Has To Be This Way. Easily.

Rivers in the Desert is good but nearly good enough to be overused like it was.

Edited by LordVatek on Nov 16th 2018 at 12:52:02 PM

According to the artbook Shido stays human in his boss form because they thought he'd be more satisfying to beat up that way.

Kampshida isn't intomidating as a Shadow I thought he looked drugged out from all his Lust. They really need to stop the stupid looking bosses.

I only really liked Leviathan for not being goofy and the anime had to go and ruin that with the googly eyes.

Yeah armstrong is leagues better as an actual villain that shido because they actually gives him a vision that comes very close to reasonable in the metal gear setting and you can see he likes raiden in a weird way. Shido's what armstrong would be if he skipped everything between "alright then, the truth now" and the beginning of the boss fight.

Shido just works because it's catharsis time.

I like rivers in the desert more than it has to be this way, but the lyrics of it has to be this way works much better comparatively.

Edited by Yumil on Nov 17th 2018 at 11:23:50 AM

That's exactly what I was looking for in a Shadow boss, though. A human form twisted into something gruesome by the darkest parts of their personalities.

Not...a rapper with a giant pig robot. I'd really rather have a generic Beelzebub boss than that.

I'm not sure what you are getting at in your praise of Armstrong and criticism of Shido.

Armstrong is barely in HIS game while Shido has a pretty large presence in P5. Granted, the conspiracy stuff is easily the dumbest part of all of P5 but it still means Shido was involved and important for much of the game even outside of him and the MC's past.

I liked Shido myself. Good voice and presence and that fuckin' amazing dungeon music. Now if only somebody uploaded a version of it with his quotes. It's just not complete without hearing his monologues.

EDIT:

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Edited by Nikkolas on Nov 17th 2018 at 3:11:57 AM

You could say that about most lyrics in P5. Aside from Life Will Change and Last Surprise, it's kind of bland. It's like the music thinks it's more clever than it actually is.

If nothing else, 3 and 4 had some So Bad, It's Good pronunciation and lyrics with legitimately awesome rap sections. 5's musical cohesion comes at the cost of creativity.

But YMMV.

Sure Armstrong didn't appear much in Revengeance but Good God does he make the most of it.

In his short time in that one boss fight he has become a tremendously well-known & beloved character.

Armstrong is a motherfucking legend.

I'm not getting what YOU are getting at. Sure shido has a lot more screentime than armstrong, but shido is entirely defined by the fact that he's the villain of the story. He has next to no substance as a character besides being the villain and having traits you expect from a villain. We don't even know what he intended fro japan aside from the whole "ark of the elite while the rest of japan is flooded" which doesn't really translate to any tangible idea aside from Kill the Poor, which is a good way to say nothing at all.

Sure it's satisfying to beat him up because joker's got a beef with him, but that's all he's got going for him : catharsis factor. That's not the kind of thing I find villains memorable for.

Armstrong on the other hand is all about the Visionary Villain trope. His "I have a dream" speech gives more depth than the entirety of shido's screentime does. And the point of the speech is not establish him as the villain, but as a gray figure that has a fairly good number of points and his plan to end the war economy and give back a meaning to war is something a normal person can get behind.

You can root for armstrong despite him having almost no screentime (although you shouldn't and he's ultimately wrong about the means to achieve the end), while it's impossible to root for shido because he does nothing to make you want to. Shido does nothing meaningful that can't be summed up by "he's the villain you have to beat up". Even fucking madarame has more depth than that. And that's without mentionning the traitor.

Raiden has no stakes with armstrong, but he manage to become something much more important for him than someone to get revenge on, even embracing the part of his worldview that makes sense.

If i wanted to make a punchline to get a reaction out of people, i'd say that armstrong and his 15 minutes or so speech has more interesting things to say about the whole social darwinism and philosophy thing than the entirety of the SMT series ever does about chaos and law in dozens of hours.

And If I wanted to say something slightly less dumb I can actually back up, i'd say he has a lot more to say about it than the 50 or so hours i've sunk into strange journey redux so far.

It terms of actual characters rather than aesthetic, armstrong is a lot closer from Ashnard of Fire Emblem than to Shido.

Edited by Yumil on Nov 17th 2018 at 12:56:31 PM

Except Raiden shoots down everything Armstrong said in a few seconds:

Raiden: What do you know about the weak? You weren't born poor. You've never been hungry. You don't know what it's like to fight and steal and kill just to survive!

Which makes sense since Armstrong being more entertaining than Jimenez or Walter or whoever is all he has going for him. He doesn't articulate Social Darwinism in a more intellectual or believable way, he's just a lot more fun to watch and listen to. SMT Chaos also isn't just about the meritocracy stuff, it's about self-indulgence or a brutal kind of realism. The weak get trampled and furthermore it feels good to crush others. I'm reminded of Pacino's Devil:

"I’ve nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have! I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him, in spite of all his imperfections! I’m a fan of man! I’m a humanist. Maybe the last humanist."

It's notably different from what Armstrong was going on about.

And yes, I would have liked if Shido was more than just a caricature of an evil politician, if he had some Well-Intentioned Extremist element to him and we saw some of his plans for changing Japan. But this is P5 we're talking about. That would require a level of effort and complexity the game wasn't really interested in.

you're conviently forgetting that armstrong immediatley shots down that counter point.

"But you DID survived ! Through sheer force of will, you took back your life !"

And all raiden has to retort is that now, he'll kill him. which doesn't really disprove armstrong's point and, in a sense, actually support amrstrong's beliefs.

Raiden also has nothing to say about the sensible part of armstrong's ideals, ie the whole shutting down the war economy and giving back it's meaning to war. In the codec convos during that fight, he actually express agreement with that point and double down on it during the ending.

Literally the only way to give raiden the moral high ground was to make armstrong have a straw social darwinist component to him. that should speak volumes.

I agree that armstrong ultimately doesn't have much to say about the chaos ideology, but the point is that his ideals makes a lot more sense in the world of metal gear, which is a fairly different universe than ours. Raiden ultimately never disproves armstrong, and ends up embracing his ideals. Because he's this close to be right on all accounts in the world of metal gear. That's a lot more interesting to me than just catharsis.

Also here's a completely gratuitous "Persona 4 is shit" for you since you seem to want one.

Edited by Yumil on Nov 17th 2018 at 1:50:09 PM

I don't care which of the two is a better villain because I'm not invested enough to are about that subject in those terms. As far as the bosses character designs go, a subject I usually don't care about because the reason it ever comes up is never interesting to me, I like them because they fit what the character's sin and crimes represent.

Now mechanically, only Shadow Madarame and maybe Shadow Futaba's Mom have anything else going on besides the standard attack-heal-attack common in the rest of the persona games. How easy they may be to an individual person isn't a point against their fight design having steps you need to take into consideration while fighting them, especially when every persona game is easy enough for you to win with any party member you like over the ones that play better.

I don't remember shadow madarame having anything out of the ordinary during his fight (nor the sphinx, for that matter). Care to refresh my memory ?

Edited by Yumil on Nov 17th 2018 at 1:56:09 PM

Shadow Madarame has the painting form which target-wise are split into two eyes, a nose, and a mouth and a real form. Each absorb something, but I only remember that the mouth absorbs Physical and Gun attacks. The real form is rather weak, but will return to painting form if you take too long to kill him. After returning to painting form, those four targets can inflict an ailemnt on someone that makes them weak to every element in the game.

As for the Cognitive version of Futaba's Mom, she's out of range for your normal attacks and physical skills so a Special Operation will need to be performed to knock her out of the sky, where upon completion she's knocked down and within physical attack range for about three turns. She also has an attack where she leaves and returns three turns later to deal a very heavy amount of damage to your party.

Edited by CybranGeneralSturm on Nov 17th 2018 at 5:02:40 AM

Oh, okay thought I was missing something, but no, it's really just that. I guess the sphinx thing is the whole taking flight to use a big aoe next turn then ?

Honestly neither of those really diverge from the hit and heal formula. i'm fairly sure persona 3 also had bosses with immunities too, and taking a turn to guard from time to time isn't the biggest departure from the formula.

Edited by Yumil on Nov 17th 2018 at 2:02:08 PM

There is that Mementos boss who auto-dodges everything and you have to start on Tower in order to get an ability that you use to defeat him, but he's a sidequest. You're focusing on main storyline bosses I think.

Edited by CybranGeneralSturm on Nov 17th 2018 at 5:08:45 AM