Sayo Yamamoto directed the original OP, and she was Directing Yuri!!! on Ice at around the same time.
Watch SymphogearManaged to finally finish Royal last night. Exactly 137 hours apparently. Honestly, could've done without all the Valentine stuff after the final boss, it just unnecessarily stretched the ending out even more, and it was already feeling like a slog by the time I started that Semester. At least the final boss was pretty great, loved that boss theme, and now I finally know where that credits song is from, some videos I watched awhile ago used it as an outro song and never mentioned where it came from.
Now I can speed through the next playthrough and get all the Confidants.
I know there are some - not many - who really like the AI party members in P3. I am not one of them but I still think AI party members is a vital part of the P3 experience. That's not praise nor is it condemnation, it's just a fact. So I wanna try to beat it with just AI controls once again.
But a big reason why AI party members can't actually be all that good is because they don't even listen to the commands you set them. I'm at the table boss in Tartarus 25F, the ones weak to ice and use fire, and I set Junpei to Heal/Support because he has Rakukaja. He proceeds to not use any healing or support but instead casts Agi.
I'm playing P 3 P like I noted earlier and I am so tempted to just switch over to Direct Command because P 3 P removed all the extensive AI options and left just the original Full Assault/Act Freely/etc. and that plainly doesn't work as it is supposed to.
So you can say you like AI party members for narrative reasons and I can kinda get behind that. But the fact the mechanic in battle doesn't actually function properly is probably why most people hate it.
Edited by Nikkolas on Sep 24th 2020 at 6:21:47 AM
Man, either I completely forgot about all this (which is possible) or I totally missed out on so much. I played P 3 P up till Fuuka but in this current run I remembered nothing about Maiko or "Striped Shirt" or Tanaka selling stuff. I feel like I must have completely missed all of it which is pretty impressive in how stupid it is. Tanaka sells some great stuff and for dirt cheap.
And nothing else is dirt cheap in this game. Personas cost an arm and a leg to re-summon and I mainly want a lot of Personas to help with S Link progression. I'm not sure but do S Links take longer to progress in this game? They have this whole "give them an item" mechanic to help them along so I'm just wondering if the items giving you free S Link points means it takes more points to advance them to balance things out
I just got Fuuka.
S Links: Maiko 6, Junpei 4, Yukari 3, Rio 4, Saori 3, Student Council 2. Doesn't seem like much.... I got Courage and Charm up to 3 and working on Academics to 3 as well. I think then I can start talking to "Striped Shirt" and start his S Link. Also Akihiko's S Link "technically" became available fairly early on but given I need to be "Queen Bee" before I can actually start it, I don't see me starting that S Link for a long time.
Also I'm keeping all my party on AI controls because that's part of the P3 experience. Besides, I'm just curious if I can beat the whole game like this. An added little challenge/makes the gameplay more novel. The game isn't nearly as hard as I remembered, at least right now. Maybe I just felt like FES was the hardest because it was my first.
Although, remember me talking about making sure I got Null Dark on a Persona? Maybe I was thinking of this game because random enemies here can use Mudo and hit you with like 99% accuracy. Seriously, they killed my party about 7/8 times. They missed Mudo exactly one time on my party and that was without a Dark weakness. Meanwhile, even with them weak to Light, my Hama almost always missed.
Overall things are going much more smoothly than last time. I'm enjoying myself. I really like Maiko and Saori. I also ahve a new found interest in Yukari. When the game isn't pushing her on you as your LI, it helps a lot.
Yeah persona 3 strikes me as the game where mudo and hama are at their most useful - there is such a thing at enemies you look at and just go "fuck it I don't want to have to deal with their weaknesses, too bothersome to hit" and just go mamudo goes brrrrr on them. I've never encountered this situation again.
"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."I honestly can't remember because it's been too long but I wonder if I failed to notice how, even if a character says they're getting tired, it has no effect on their present Condition. Mitsuru can say she's fatigued and Fuuka can tell me to stop but everyone's Condition still says Good and Mitsuru's is Great.
So the optimum strategy is to take that first day auto Great you get with Junpei, Akihiko or Mitsuru to finish the currently available section of Tartarus up to the next barrier. Let them be Tired or even Sick afterward, what does it matter. You won't be going back to Tartarus for weeks, maybe a month. I maybe try to go back a second time for extra money or items but other than that? Pointless.
It's just like P4, best to finish off the dungeon in one day. I don't think I ever did this in my first P3 run.
the tiredness mechanic no changing the actual status is a thing P 3 P brought forth. The original had the condition change mid dungeon, which made it a lot more punishing than it is.
"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."First, this is unbelievably adorable: https://twitter.com/jojimuto/status/1309569220745846790?s=20
But it also just makes ya think....

The cat ninja's Morgana, the mascot of the game. The ice skating I think is just a cool visual, like most of the opening imagery.
The legend has returned.