I mostly agree with the sentiment that this game helps ease people into the respective series, since playing this game was what convinced me to buy a PS Vita and Persona 4 Golden. That said, I think \"beginner\" is a misnomer for the difficulty, at least as far as Persona goes, since Persona 4\'s normal mode is easier than Persona Q\'s Easy mode.
The fact that elemental attacks cost so much SP and you can\'t really exploit boss weaknesses definitely impacts the balance in favor of physical attackers. It\'s also annoying how easily the Boost status is broken, which, ironically, makes it somewhat more difficult for fast characters to keep it long enough to take advantage of it. By contrast, Persona 4\'s system, which has lower SP costs and more bosses with elemental weaknesses definitely helps in making magic users more viable.
As for Etrian Odyssey (which I haven\'t played), I\'d argue that Q\'s opting to ease you into dealing with FO Es, as you described, is actually a good thing, because it makes for a better learning curve. The puzzles in Q were quite interesting, but it\'s a bit annoying to have to deal with Random Encounters while doing them, which can break your concentration , and on higher difficulties, potentially put an end to your dungeon run or even force you to load a game.
All in all, good review, and I definitely agree that 4 is a much better game than Q.
@Valiona
Personally, I feel that PQ\'s handling of F.O.E.s gives too low a ramp in difficulty with regards to them. In most Etrain Odyssey games, each floor has a tendency to introduce and get the player acquainted to the movement patterns of a unique F.O.E., maybe stepping it up a little by having the player maneuver around more than 1 of them at once as they approach the floor exit. The final floor of each stratum then begins to really mix things up by throwing in 2 or more different F.O.Es in a single room, giving another degree of complexity to navigation puzzles in said rooms as it Final Exams the player on the behaviours of each F.O.E. PQ doesn\'t do that last thing, instead opting for event-based floor puzzles like the \"graph\" in the 3rd stratum and the long mixture of the Holy Flame and numbered gates in the 4th.
Gadjitron,
Actually, there are some cases of multiple types of FOEs in a single room in Persona Q, such as:
- In the second labyrinth, the room near the southwest corner of the fourth floor involving the rotating FOE and the FOEs that follow you- you have to avoid the arrows while also luring out the other FOEs.
- Another one from the second labyrinth, in which you have to move one of the ones that follows you into the path of one that shoots arrows.
- In the fourth labyrinth, the room with the FOE that moves diagonally and the one that pursues you.
- Immediately after the above one, the one with the FOE that patrols the branching path and the one that quickly goes down the hall- you\'ll have to take both into account no matter which way you\'re going down the hall.
Perhaps they might not be as diverse or challenging as the ones from Etrian Odyssey, but they could be quite difficult when combined with environment-based mechanics (e.g. the long chase with the Old Doll in the third labyrinth), so I\'d call them an adequate challenge.
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A beginner's entry to Etrian Odyssey and Persona gameplay.
Keyword: gameplay. I would not recommend this as an entry point to Persona 3 or Persona 4 due to it requiring a lot of background knowledge regarding the characters involved, excluding Zen and Rei.
Looking back at this game after having experienced Etrian Odysseys 4, Untold, and Untold 2, I feel that trying to mesh together the systems of both series resulted in the game not easily conveying what its parent game systems were like.
A fair amount of Persona 3 and 4's battle system involves covering your weaknesses and exploiting the enemy's, especially when it comes to customizing your Personas through fusion. Enemies and your Personas eventually begin to null, absorb, or reflect attacks, but here in PQ, any attack element that does damage is resisted at best (you're only allowed to be immune to light and/or dark). Couple with the fact that more advanced affinity-altering skills on Sub-Personas can't be inherited and you lose a bit in trying to puzzle out how to make your party member take and deal damage reasonably without an Achilles' heel.
Etrian Odyssey's draw lies in its sprawling dungeons and variety of F.O.E.s with different behaviours that serve as puzzles as you navigate the floors. EO sics aggressive F.O.E.s on you as early as the first stratum; PQ just likes to ease you into the difficulty, only throwing in aggressive ones by the time you're at the third. The smaller variety of F.O.E.s also means a smaller variety of floor puzzles involving these F.O.E.s.
That, and it's missing a nice postgame for people venturing on a New Game+. While a Bonus Dungeon rife with enemies that mark a Difficulty Spike would be welcome, I can understand why it won't implement one, given the finality involved in wrapping up the game's plot.
Combat itself is fair barring a single flaw. It combines the One More system of rewarding criticals and weakness hits with EO4's base combat system with lines, rows, and a Leader Gauge. Fairly reasonable, but the Boost system gives the biggest gripe in this area. Getting free skills for crits and hitting weaknesses is fine; heavily jacking up the cost of spells (seriously, 40SP for Mind Charge?) to enforce this is not.
All in all, based on looking solely at the gameplay, Persona Q is a good game, but its parent series can do what they do a lot better.