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Arist posted:I'm not sure you understand what the essence of SMT is There would still be demons as encounters and things to negotiate with for their cards for fusing, there would just be fewer Personas and they would actually get to have unique designs due to that. That's the tradeoff I'd make.
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Feb 12, 2023 07:59
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| # ? May 27, 2024 17:39 |
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What you're advocating for would stifle the gameplay systems to an absurd degree. The backbone of those systems is the large number of usable demons. You need a large pool of demons, especially with twenty-one different arcana to fill, to populate with varied skill types and affinities. And don't say they should just ditch the arcana, because the tarot motif has existed since Persona 1, and replacing it now would be ridiculous. They should just make a new series at that point. Also, considering you seem to still want old demons to be in the game, there's no benefit to it. It's at least as much work as just using the old ones. The only reason to do that, going off your own reasoning, is wanting Personas to have "unique designs," which doesn't require stripping out the entire crux of SMT's gameplay. Hell, they can already redesign or add new demons, they do that a bunch as it is. I just really don't see why "I want the Personas to look cooler" trumps "this is the entire series' core gameplay identity and limiting it would cut it off at the knees."
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Feb 12, 2023 08:16
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I also don't understand why "fewer Personas" directly correlates with "cooler looking"
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Feb 12, 2023 08:21
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Hell, half of the demons in P2 look nothing like they do in any other SMT game.
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Feb 12, 2023 08:51
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Funky Valentine posted:Hell, half of the demons in P2 look nothing like they do in any other SMT game. Looks at P5S Pandora, looks at P1 Pandora, shudders
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Feb 12, 2023 09:02
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Funky Valentine posted:One of your party members has Jack Frost as a person and instead of getting a personalized redesign like all common demon -> party member's personas get it's just normal Jack Frost. And then when they unlock their true persona after you max out their social link they still have Jack Frost except now he also has a gun and that's the only change.
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Feb 12, 2023 09:23
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now I have a machine gun, hee hee ho
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Feb 12, 2023 09:24
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Warmachine posted:On the topic of the life sim, I don't think it's possible to resolve the tension between liking the life sim and social links vs adding more reactivity to the main story. It's the old paradox of choice in game design--you can make a short and reactive game, or a long and static game. You're always trading reactivity and length, and Persona feels like it has chosen length in that trade, but also wants to keep the individual stories that you can choose to interact with or not. The best you could do is integrate some optional branches at distinct points where a social link gets a payout if you've done it--which Atlus already did with Hawaii, the school festival, and Christmas/V-Day/White Day. When it comes to what's possible in terms of a long and reactive game go play Hades (and probably Witcher 3) and then get back to us. Hades, as a story, is not significantly shorter than Persona 5 and it is almost as linear. But it's about a thousand times more reactive. What's almost tooth-grindingly annoying is that the cost of adding extra dialogue to Persona is almost nothing. It's not even a matter of getting the actor to record multiple versions of the same voice line; most of the lines are unvoiced and just use grunts. It's just a matter of writing them.
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Feb 12, 2023 16:25
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neonchameleon posted:Hades, as a story, is not significantly shorter than Persona 5 I'm not sure I agree Hades introduces a handful of supporting characters and then there is a series of cutscenes that plays over the course of the first ten clears followed by credits. Then there is a little bit of post-credits content obtainable by doing a bunch more runs on top of that. The interactions with the supporting characters have about as much dialogue as a typical Persona support. P5's mainline story content alone has something like 20 hours of conversations if you let them play out in real time.
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Feb 12, 2023 16:50
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Hades's dialogue system is very impressive but it also doesn't use that many assets outside of the voice acting. Persona dialogue, outside of texts and phonecalls, is a lot more leaning onto the visuals.
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Feb 12, 2023 18:05
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I've been replaying P3P since y'know, Switch release and all (was gonna just get P4G but it was a bundle, so why not). Been just working off memory and already a few things sticking out: * Fuuka's voice acting is worse than I remembered. * I didn't realize you could start Akihiko's SL super early and by the time I was like 'huh, I wonder when I can start it' and looked it up it was summer, whoops. At least starting it in September will make the segue into the post-October stuff smoother. * Not being able to do almost any SLs during the day in summer was a very rough decision. At least let me hang out with the SEES pals, nobody other than Fuuka relies on being in school for their scenes. * The Persona compendium's prices are way higher than P4G and P5. I've just been either ignoring SLs that I don't have the matching Persona for or just shrugging and eating the penalty for doing it without matching Personas because I'm almost never paying Theo's highway robbery prices. * Actually using skills like Sexy Dance is helping clear out annoying big shadows. I don't think I ever really relied on those kind of status effects much in other games other than very early on in the original P5 where Ann's Dormina was vital for clearing the first Palace. It's definitely less of a slog than I'd feared it would be. The balance is definitely still a bit off (Junpei's skillset is still kinda all over the place), but I was worried it would be a lot worse.
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Feb 12, 2023 19:14
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So Persona 5 Royal is my first one of these (thanks gamepass) and man, I love how this game takes its dumb poo poo seriously sometimes. Sae "tell me about the kid teaching you to play light gun arcade games!" or "Psychics are real and your clearly have one working for you!" Gets me every-time I got a new confidant
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Feb 12, 2023 22:28
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Hipster Occultist posted:So Persona 5 Royal is my first one of these (thanks gamepass) and man, I love how this game takes its dumb poo poo seriously sometimes. Gets you to wonder if that's just her standard M.O. with every suspect.
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Feb 12, 2023 22:32
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YaketySass posted:Gets you to wonder if that's just her standard M.O. with every suspect. Why else is she so successful?
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Feb 12, 2023 23:33
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Sapozhnik posted:I'm not sure I agree Hades has a pretty huge script, over 300,000 words. I can't find the script length for the later Persona games - but Persona 3 base was only 190k words in English while Persona 3 Portable was (counting both protagonists) 340k. And there's far more than "a little bit of post credits content" if you go all the way to and through the dinner party. YaketySass posted:Hades's dialogue system is very impressive but it also doesn't use that many assets outside of the voice acting. Persona dialogue, outside of texts and phonecalls, is a lot more leaning onto the visuals. Persona 5 Royal basically has about three different art assets per character. It uses them magnificently - but there's basic face, there's cutaway, and about one other face per character.
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Feb 13, 2023 00:36
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Hipster Occultist posted:So Persona 5 Royal is my first one of these (thanks gamepass) and man, I love how this game takes its dumb poo poo seriously sometimes. It's even worse if Joker gets into the targets. "In between taking down our serial abuser volleyball coach, the crime lord of Shibuya, and the CEO of a corporation built on exploiting its workers, we took down a middle aged guy that was clowning on kids at the arcade with cheats. He required... special measures."
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Feb 13, 2023 00:46
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The flash forward is definitely the goofiest part of the game if you think about it too long, but I still love it as a framing device. It really sells the idea that you managed to be a whole criminal enterprise even if the actual gameplay is just doing Persona stuff. Also it's fun to imagine Joker spilling all the beans, including every attempt he made at eating a big burger because he was too spooked to dial a maid service. Also if you assume they're all presented chronologically, the one-two punch of "so you blew off the cybercrimes threat because you found out genius hacker Futaba Sakura's life was in danger and went after her instead, that actually tracks with my own investigation" and the subsequent plot-unlocked confidant "you guys had crazy digital opsec and even managed to hack my poo poo; who is the Phantom Thieves' hacker!?" ApplesandOranges posted:It's definitely less of a slog than I'd feared it would be. The balance is definitely still a bit off (Junpei's skillset is still kinda all over the place), but I was worried it would be a lot worse. Dunno if it was intentional or just RNG shenanigans, but I kept getting weapons for Junpei that were like two tiers above anything else available, so he'd be my best damage dealer off his standard attack alone. Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Feb 13, 2023 |
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Feb 13, 2023 03:17
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Another thread I follow went off on a desktop posting train. So, I figured I'd share the Persona wallpaper in my rotation:
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Feb 13, 2023 04:45
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AlternateNu posted:Another thread I follow went off on a desktop posting train. So, I figured I'd share the Persona wallpaper in my rotation: *Camera pans to Orpheus sulking in a corner* P3P Male MC spoilers: Kinda surprised at how... underpowered the other SEES personas are. I'm already in the high 50s level-wise and only Shinjiro and Koromaru still have skills to learn. If these are holdovers from the OG P3, it does underscore why the series protags have been built to be Swiss Army knives since P3 - because in this game, you pretty much had to carry the team. anakha fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Feb 13, 2023 |
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Feb 13, 2023 07:42
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anakha posted:*Camera pans to Orpheus sulking in a corner* You get more skills unlocked after a certain point in the story.
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Feb 13, 2023 12:46
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On the subject of Wild Cards, don't forget that in P4AU Sho is a Wild Card who was explicitly offered Velvet Room access, but told Igor and Margaret to gently caress off (though the ending implies he may be rethinking that decision)
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Feb 13, 2023 20:17
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AlternateNu posted:Another thread I follow went off on a desktop posting train. So, I figured I'd share the Persona wallpaper in my rotation: That is a pretty kickin rad wallpaper. Though with regards to the P3 protagonists where are you supposed to pick up Thanatos? They start with Orpheus, and I figure their ultimate persona is Jesus, who I unlocked and never got anywhere near the unlock level, but I never realized Thanatos was a persona you could actually get. I'd figure he'd come from the plot-related Death confidant, but all that gave me was Alice, who tbf was good enough to last me the rest of the game.
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Feb 14, 2023 18:49
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At least in FES (I have no experience with P3P) Thanatos is the persona you unlock when you max Death.
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Feb 14, 2023 18:57
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Though with regards to the P3 protagonists where are you supposed to pick up Thanatos? They start with Orpheus, and I figure their ultimate persona is Jesus, who I unlocked and never got anywhere near the unlock level, but I never realized Thanatos was a persona you could actually get. I'd figure he'd come from the plot-related Death confidant, but all that gave me was Alice, who tbf was good enough to last me the rest of the game. He's one of the special fusions - pentagon or hexagon.
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Feb 14, 2023 18:58
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Huh, maybe I'm just blind. Ah well, his loss, he's not as cool as certain other Death personae.
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Feb 14, 2023 19:02
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So is there some reason I wouldn’t be able to fuse Yatagarasu? I am looking at the P3p calculator and tried the first 2 recipes but neither came out to Yatagarasu. Would I be locked behind something?
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Feb 14, 2023 23:11
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HaB posted:So is there some reason I wouldn’t be able to fuse Yatagarasu? There are level caps to fusing. If the components you're using are too high a level, it will skip to the next persona in the arcana.
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Feb 14, 2023 23:16
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AlternateNu posted:There are level caps to fusing. If the components you're using are too high a level, it will skip to the next persona in the arcana. Hmm. Does that mean I’d need to fuse to base personas of the ingredients first?
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Feb 14, 2023 23:30
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Take the average level of the two personas and find the closest level persona of the correct arcana and that's usually what you get. You can try skewing the average by swapping out of the two fusees with one of a lower level but of the same arcana. Or using two base personas.
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Feb 14, 2023 23:44
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If you have the three immediately lower-level Personas of the same arcana you can also Triangle fuse those to get the next one up iirc.
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Feb 14, 2023 23:50
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Hot take: Aigis is actually pretty bad for most of P3. She takes a while to get to Ma-buffs, she cannot hit weaknesses 90% of the time which makes her less ideal for Tartarus, and Elec pops up more often than you might think which sidelines her for several boss fights. I actually prefer Junpei because he has more bulk, gets Marakakuja earlier (which is fine, Masukukaja is optional and MC can carry Matarukaja), and he gets a bit more variety in his attack types if he has to. Akihiko is still a star (he learns Elec Boost surprisingly early to keep him up to par, and debuffs speak for themselves), Ken's still less ideal compared to Yukari but he's still usable, and I really wish Koromaru had better offensive stats but he's still best boy so.
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Feb 15, 2023 06:56
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HaB posted:Hmm. Does that mean I’d need to fuse to base personas of the ingredients first? No, it uses the average base level+1 of the two ingredients for a normal fusion. It looks for the nearest value that result is equal to or less than. Regular Sun personae, however, is Triangle fusion only in P3 which gives no fucks at all about levels. Yatagarasu/Quetzalcoatl shows that really easily, in fact, since Yatagarasu is level 30 and Quetzalcoatl is 43 but the cheapest way to get Quetzalcoatl has an average+1 of 27.
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Feb 15, 2023 11:51
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Lotus Aura posted:No, it uses the average base level+1 of the two ingredients for a normal fusion. It looks for the nearest value that result is equal to or less than. Yeah it's Yatagarasu I am trying to get to. I will have to check the levels on what I am trying to use to fuse. But it's giving me a different arcana result entirely, rather than just saying it's invalid.
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Feb 15, 2023 12:34
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Counterpoint: Aigis gets sad if you go into Tartarus without her.
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Feb 15, 2023 12:35
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neonchameleon posted:When it comes to what's possible in terms of a long and reactive game go play Hades (and probably Witcher 3) and then get back to us. Hades, as a story, is not significantly shorter than Persona 5 and it is almost as linear. But it's about a thousand times more reactive.  Hades is mechanically very reactive, but the story is linear with bits of random chance to when you make progress based on if you encounter a certain god's boons in your run. That's not reactive, that's chance-based progression. I've played the poo poo out of Hades because it's probably one of the best games ever made. Using it as an example here is really loving weird. Fair point on Witcher 3 I suppose. But when I think about games that actually change character reactions and the impact of plot developments based on player choice, I think Alpha Protocol. The order you do the missions matters, what you say to people in those missions matters, and even how you execute the mission and what you find in that mission matters. Dawgstar posted:Why else is she so successful? Coerced confessions OP. Less blithely, I have no reason to suspect that Sae was ever immune to the same injustices that plague the rest of the Japanese legal system. ACAB. Zulily Zoetrope posted:The flash forward is definitely the goofiest part of the game if you think about it too long, but I still love it as a framing device. It really sells the idea that you managed to be a whole criminal enterprise even if the actual gameplay is just doing Persona stuff. Also it's fun to imagine Joker spilling all the beans, including every attempt he made at eating a big burger because he was too spooked to dial a maid service. Since I already mentioned Alpha Protocol in my post, when I first started P5R I couldn't help but think back to the same framing device being used there with Thorton and Leyland. Though, as I said to a friend of mine, "I somehow doubt I'll be decking Sae at the end of the interrogation and shooting her in the head after the final battle." To P5R's credit, I did shoot SOMEONE in the head. Twice.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:27
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Warmachine posted:Coerced confessions OP. Less blithely, I have no reason to suspect that Sae was ever immune to the same injustices that plague the rest of the Japanese legal system. ACAB. My take is that she benefited from it but was not directly involved in that type of stuff. So still tainted but not as much as she would have been if things had continued with her working there.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:41
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Alpha Protocol is real good, but also much shorter. They should make more games like it whether or not those are Persona games. Personally I think it works fine for them to be mostly linear, it would just be nice to have a little reactivity based on side activities instead of always carefully talking around those. Like, I haven't seen the default valentine's day event in P4 but I bet the version I saw changed two or three lines at most to have Yukiko say she didn't get you any platonic chocolate, I think just peppering a couple of those across the story would do. Also another neat parallel to the Alpha Protocol flash forward is that it looks like your mission is going to fail and you're wondering how you're going to wiggle out of this future jam, but it's actually both part of your plan and a job interview. Except Sae isn't the one who is going to make an offer at the end.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:50
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The game is pretty explicit that Sae has not actually been coercing confessions, but that she's been getting worn down into accepting it as part of the system and will soon do it herself as part of her need for success. You can argue that it's unrealistic and whitewashing misdeeds the character would have needed to perform to succeed, but given that the ultimate lesson Sae learns is that she needs to abdicate from that system entirely, I think that's a poor read.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:53
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Sae plays the role of the "good cop" in the interrogation tactic, but she is not, in fact, a good cop.
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Feb 15, 2023 18:07
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| # ? May 27, 2024 17:39 |
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I mean, Sae absolutely sucks, but I would argue that a cop who completely opts out of the system and takes up a career actively opposed to the police is the best kind of cop.
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Feb 15, 2023 18:12
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