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Catalina posted:From what I've read, you do, but the MAX RANK scene has been toned down in the English version to *specifically* not be sexual. The Japanese version was not. I have no idea about the Christmas event, though. While the fade-to-black message for every other Rank 10 dating link is "You spend a long time with (character)", the message for Ken is "You spend a long time talking with Ken". So, y'know, I guess at least they at least acknowledged how weird it was, sort of?
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Aug 4, 2011 03:35
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King of Solomon posted:The early dungeons in Strange Journey aren't really all that bad. I only pulled out a guide (well, loaded up a map on the SJ wiki) in very specific places, and even that's because I thought the door search is retarded. Sector E is probably the worst thing in the game. Sector F is basically a boss rush, Sector G has a few mildly annoying conveyor-belt mazes and Sector H has some teleporters and other irritating poo poo, but in terms of concentrated frustration nothing really compares to E.
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Aug 12, 2011 08:21
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Couch Life posted:Could you share a link? I've been interested in picking up another copy of Nocturne since I sold mine a few years ago. Play-Asia currently has used copies available and new copies listed as being on backorder. Prices are decent, too: only about $30-35.
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Aug 20, 2011 01:39
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Snowcow posted:Persona 3 Portable is getting PAL PSN release This is pretty cool. I'm a little worried that its sales figures might not reflect the demand for it, because all the people I know who are really into niche games that don't always see releases over here just use a US PSN account with a fake address and buy PSN-bucks off the internet anyway.
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Aug 22, 2011 10:11
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Dolphin Fetus posted:I feel like the most rear end backwards, bizarre person in the universe because out of all the smt spinoffs my favorite is Devil Survivor. Devil Survivor isn't a bad game but there are kind of a lot of potential dealbreakers in it: if someone hates SRPGs or the game's art style or high-schooler protagonists then it's probably not gonna change their minds about any of those things.
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Sep 1, 2011 14:56
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Pureauthor posted:Question remains of which demon is the dominant personality, and in any case at least one demon gets shafted. One of the characters in Devil Survivor actually speculates about exactly this. I don't think anyone really comes to any conclusions beyond "demons' minds probably don't work the same way as human minds do".
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Sep 1, 2011 18:09
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ImpAtom posted:Go for Chaos. Law creeps me the gently caress out in that game. The Law and Chaos endings in SJ are both pretty creepy, and for similar reasons. Law is slightly less batshit insane; I'll leave you to decide whether this is a good or a bad thing.
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Sep 2, 2011 07:00
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Magikoopa189 posted:Wait, you honestly had no problems with the Izanami reveal? The entire message of Persona 4 was "truth only has value if you discover it for yourself". Making the true ending easier to find would have kinda cheapened that. In other ways it wasn't handled as well as it could have been (it did feel a little rushed), but being non-obvious isn't really one of the problems with it. At any rate, finding the true ending is less frustrating and counterintuitive than having to give exactly the right series of responses to avoid the bad ending. vvv yeah, good point, spoilered Thuryl fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Sep 3, 2011 |
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Sep 3, 2011 07:40
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Dolphin Fetus posted:It always struck me as strange that parents and religious fundamentalists never attacked these games like they do with GTA or military shooter #44. Obviously the most controversial(SMT2) game was never released here but geeze..I've seen tons of fundies say how pokemon is satanic. So, what I'm getting at is that I did a bored google search and found this webpage: I think some crazy little LaRouchie newsletter did an article about how Persona 3 was emblematic of today's social decay way back when, too. They mostly seemed to be focused on the whole suicide motif.
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Sep 8, 2011 23:57
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Morpheus posted:Finally beat Yuzu's 8th day in Overclocked. The irony of taking her route to finish the game quickly, only to end up with what I assume is the toughest 8th day is not lost on me. All of the 8th days are going to be pretty brutal on a first playthrough; if anything, Yuzu's is still the easiest. At least it actually offers a satisfying ending for her route.
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Sep 22, 2011 14:47
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Rinkles posted:Care to spoil it? I definitely won't be getting Overclocked. The angels and the government are both trying to hunt you down, along with a bunch of stray demons drawn to you by your power as a Bel. You fight them all off, but have to return to the lockdown area to go into hiding. Eventually God announces that he's abandoning the world because humans hosed up so badly in the ordeal. The final battle of the route is against a levelled-up version of Belberith, who's commanding most of the demons in the lockdown. If you completed a sidequest to restore the barrier over Tokyo that the Four Devas were protecting then it's possible to drive out all the demons, otherwise you get to look forward to a future as a government-appointed anti-demon squad, fighting on the front lines in a war with no end in sight. Even the bad ending of the 8th Day is still better than the "you hosed up, have a drat ending and go play NG+" that the original was.
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Sep 22, 2011 15:14
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Ibram Gaunt posted:Did both of those endings have their own achievement? Both of Naoya's 8th day routes did, but I don't think I saw a slot for two Yuzu ones. Sort of. The good ending gets you the generic "finish Yuzu's 8th day" achievement and the "defend Tokyo on Yuzu's 8th day" achievement; the bad ending only gets you the former.
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Sep 22, 2011 15:21
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I think it's only Naoya's 8th day that lets you create 8th day data instead of regular clear data after the 8th day is over, so if you're playing on a single savefile and gently caress up Yuzu's 8th day then you're kind of SOL unless you do an entire NG+.
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Sep 22, 2011 15:51
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Verbal posted:Design flaws aside, overall it was a fun game. On to SMT2! Hopefully the second one fixes some of the balance issues from the first. And a slightly more navigable UI. Not really. I mean the UI is less hateful and there's actually a usable automap, but you can still trivialise 90% of encounters with status effects. Sleep bullets make everything that isn't immune to guns or sleep into a joke, and charm bullets even more so.
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Sep 29, 2011 05:27
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Law posted:e: Couple of questions before I carry on though: Does agility affect the turn order outside of combat or just in combat? Also do you get more exp for taking out the demons wingmen before taking out the leader? Only in combat. How fast your turn gauge empties outside of combat is based on your Speed stat, which is fixed for each character (except the main character, who gets a small permanent one-time Speed boost for defeating Beldr and another one in NG+). You do get more experience if you can defeat all enemies in a group: if you kill only the leader, you'll get half experience from the surviving allies.
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Oct 17, 2011 03:39
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^  Technique posted:Is there even any new SMT poo poo on the horizon that ISN'T related to Persona 4? Devil Survivor 2's coming out some time early next year, if that counts.
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Nov 30, 2011 03:56
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Even better: Reflect is completely broken in SJ and is based on the difference between levels between the attacker and defender. So it's possible to just use a super low level demon with some reflect skills and kill the final boss in 1 hit. :I Wow, I'm pretty sure that's some legacy code from Etrian Odyssey showing through. You could pull a similar trick on the ultimate boss from the second game by using low-level Landsknechts with the Counter skill to do five-digit damage. Alteisen posted:That boss can also one shot your MC if it feels like it, no warning and there's no way to defend against it just, WELP GAME OVER, HAHAHA. That's actually the other end boss that can do that (and its success rate is low enough that it almost certainly won't happen more than once, so just have an auto-revival item equipped like you should anyway.) The normal end boss just uses regular Curse and Expel attacks.
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Dec 25, 2011 00:07
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Strange Matter posted:I finally started Persona 4, and maaaaaan I am not prepared for the Contrarian King at all. Am I supposed to come back to that way later, or just figure out a better strategy to beat it? He only uses physicals, so a tough Persona with Resist Phys (you can get it by levelling up Slime) is your best option. Innate resistance and the Resist skills do stack with each other, so if you put it on a Persona that already resists physical attacks it'll work even better. Probably easiest to wait a few levels, though.
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Dec 28, 2011 11:06
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Pureauthor posted:Pretty sure Gin's last day hits the meter in terms of 'bullshit'. Gin's final battle does have a lower-levelled version of the final boss to compensate for the bullshit it hits you with. I'd say overall it's not any harder than the other endings, but it depends on your strategy.
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Dec 29, 2011 02:05
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vividArcanity posted:I think this is why most people argue that Chie is a better physical fighter than Kanji is Well, that and Power Charge. At the endgame when they both have all their best skills, Kanji can technically do more average damage per round by spamming Primal Force than Chie can with Power Charge/God Hand, but he'll burn HP much faster.
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Jan 5, 2012 14:28
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tooooooo bad posted:I feel like we've lost the point of the discussion. Yeah, the mythology stuff is actually a bit of a distraction. The most important thematic connection between P4's true ending and the rest of the game comes from the way it follows through on the game's core epistemological thesis: that you can only truly know the truth if you've discovered it for yourself.
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Jan 19, 2012 00:36
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Lucinice posted:Would it be advised to play the original devil survivor before devil survivor 2? They just released a 3ds port of it right? They're not particularly related to each other except in general plot and theme, so you don't have to. Still, the original Devil Survivor is a good game, and Overclocked (the 3DS version) is the version to get if you haven't played it before -- the additions and improvements to the original release aren't huge, but they do exist.
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Mar 16, 2012 13:26
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KataraniSword posted:No better or worse than Strength. Almighty damage (and Drain, in turn) has taken a bit of an effectiveness hit, and Strength has a bunch of awesome new toys (the Strike skills, Piercing Blow, Ultimate Hit), but really it's a fairly even playing field as far as the main game goes. You'll want Str-based characters and you'll want Mag-based characters, instead of focusing on ALL MAGIC ALL THE TIME like in DS1. Really, the one big thing making phys characters more viable in DS2 is that there aren't a million Rangdas and Murmurs in every loving battle in the endgame like there were in DS1.
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Mar 27, 2012 00:08
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McDragon posted:Imagine having this crazy idea about beating Shiva with two characters. I can't remember what I did but I bet it was cheap. He's powerful, but he's only one dude. He's within range to hit him with Evil Flow from the rearmost starting position without even having to move, and three shots of Holy Dance keyed off a decent Magic stat will probably take him down before he can even act.
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Mar 29, 2012 01:01
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RentACop posted:edit: The derpiest mc (top right is funniest to me, also mild spoilers in this picture) My favourite part of the "Shrinky-shrinky!" one is the follow-up where you get a chance to use the thing you've shrunk, and you can say "Shrinky-shrinky!" again to try and make it work. AO's reaction is especially funny if you have him with you.
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Mar 30, 2012 00:42
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Alteisen posted:Just like I did with DS2. :iamafag: There have been murmurings about Persona 5 for ages now, and they've only got so long to make the drat thing before this current generation of consoles becomes obsolete. If they do make Persona 5, I kinda hope they take a cue from DS2 and make the social links work a bit more like the FATE system: being able to advance your relationship through any event that gave you points with a character felt a lot more natural than getting someone's life story dished out to you over the course of 10 meetings in the same order regardless of what's going on with the plot.
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Mar 31, 2012 04:29
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WrightOfWay posted:In DS1, viles are probably better since they have better stats and higher level demons for the end game and the same adjusted range (3 move plus 3 range vs move plus 2 range). In 2, Evil Flow is just plain better than Chaos Breath so dragons are the better option. Does Evil Flow stack with Chaos Breath? I'm assuming not, but having 8 attack range would be pretty amazing.
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Apr 3, 2012 04:44
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Dragongem posted:Beat DS2 Yeah, physical attacks are powerful enough, physical skills are diverse enough and physical reflection is rare enough that you could probably have as many as three solid physical teams in DS2 if you really wanted. Magic is still totally usable and has its own advantages, but physicals just straight-up wreck enemies.
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Apr 5, 2012 07:09
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Genpei Turtle posted:I dunno, it wouldn't surprise me if in this case it didn't take so long. After all SMT if... is basically a glorified romhack of SMT2, which they already did. I doubt it would be that much harder to hack it. Last I heard about if... (a couple of years back), the text compression the game used was some kind of incomprehensible nightmare that nobody had much faith in understanding well enough to hack. If they've overcome that hurdle, though...
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Apr 8, 2012 23:51
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Really, even if you miss all the other hints, the biggest clue that you're not at the true ending is that you still have plot-based social links that haven't hit rank 10.
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Apr 18, 2012 02:44
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Technique posted:Do this, but kill off the S-Links so that the character development can finally feel natural again instead of DING! YOU LEVELED UP YOUR FRIENDSHIP. TOMMY IS NO LONGER AFRAID OF SPIDERS. I don't mind the idea of there being some mechanical bonuses for hanging around characters. I think Devil Survivor 2 handled it a little better than Persona 4, though, since the events that could rank you up actually varied based on what was going on with the rest of the plot.
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Apr 25, 2012 05:53
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Corrosion posted:This distinction doesn't work because being able to choose whether or not you socialized (social link) is what communicated Persona 3 and 4's respective themes to the player. You don't have to involve yourself with others, but it enriches you or some such. I can't guess what Devil Survivor 2's whole gimmick is regarding them, but I don't think I need to to state that these two different approaches don't invalidate one or the other. I was more talking about how in Persona 3 and 4 the social link events are exactly the same whether you do them in April, November or whenever, which could make your interactions in some links feel kind of weird if you did them at the wrong time: even if something hugely consequential to that character is happening in the main plot, they just plain won't mention it in the social link, because P3/4 social links just don't work that way. DS2's FATE events tend to vary more based on when you do them and what's happened in the game up to that point: as a result, there are more events where you can actually talk to characters about the plot instead of kibitzing about their backstories. I'd call that a fairly unambiguous improvement. Tae posted:There's some characters that die if you don't talk to them before an event happens, and those are Fate point conversations too. There's also at least one case where a character's survival is tied directly to their FATE rank: if you don't have them at FATE 3 or higher at a critical moment, they'll die after channeling Lugh even if you do everything else necessary to save them. That'd require you to pretty much ignore them throughout the rest of the game, though. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Apr 25, 2012 |
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Apr 25, 2012 09:38
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quote:If we're going to let characters exist outside of a sphere, I don't think criticizing Persona while praising a game that makes a slight against that idea in a different way is constructive. Persona does well enough, and future games... poo poo, I'd hope they are different. In Devil Survivor, why should anyone live or die based on an interaction with the player? How is THAT realistic or even interesting? There's only one case in DS2 where that happens, and in that one case the character's survival or death is directly tied to their mental state, so it's pretty well justified. In every other case you save the character's life and they get closer to you as a result, rather than the other way around. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Apr 25, 2012 |
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Apr 25, 2012 09:57
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Corrosion posted:If you're saving their life, then it's still you directly influencing the outcome of their development. Which means it's your influence that matters, not the character or anything about that character. I'm not saying social links have to work exactly like the FATE system and I'm definitely not saying that other characters' lives have to depend on how you interact with them, I'm just saying I'd like social link events to be a bit more responsive to the context of what else is going on in the game, and that was a thing that the FATE system did well. P3/4 links sometimes felt really disconnected from each other and from the rest of the game, like seeing a bunch of separate books laid out on a table and picking one to read a chapter from.
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Apr 25, 2012 10:02
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I agree that the concept of social links was important to the plot, but the actual execution of the social links could have used some work. Like, say, if I'm playing the female protagonist route in P3P, why can I take Akihiko out for beef bowls a week after Shinjiro gets shot and he doesn't even mention it, just acts exactly the same as he would have if I'd chosen to advance his Social Link the week before instead? Devil Survivor 2 isn't perfect about this either and has its own issues with weird and abrupt shifts of emotional tone, but it does at least make more of an effort to take that sort of thing into account. At this point, though, I get the feeling that we mostly agree with each other and are just emphasising different things in our arguments.
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Apr 25, 2012 10:18
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Technique posted:So Devil Survivor 2 FINALLY came in the mail (after 32 days. Unlike Devil Survivor 1, Strength and Magic builds both work fine. Magic is a bit more versatile and better at hitting weaknesses but Strength is better for raw damage. If you're going for strength, get some agility as well because Multi-Strike rules. Apart from that, the big thing to know is that the game isn't playing around when it sends you a death video: you have to take action or the character in the video will die, and sometimes you're on a very tight time limit. Actively seek out events that weren't around before you got the video and follow up on them.
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Apr 25, 2012 14:21
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Zombies' Downfall posted:The concept of S Links in the newer Persona games absolutely contribute to their themes; your character is special for their ability to change personas, which essentially means you're "changing your face" to be able to protect yourself and others. Each of the S Links, because they advance when you pick the answers the other person wants or needs to hear (not what's morally or logically right), represents a different facet of the protag's personality. It isn't about hiding or eradicating the true self, though; it's about recognizing that there is no such thing as a Platonic self. All of those facets, good and ill, are a part of who you are and successfully coming to grips with and integrating them into your conception of identity are how you become a fully-realized adult. A large part of the action of P4 was everyone in the party doing this. And of course, sometimes even "the immutable true self doesn't exist" is the opposite of what somebody needs to hear at a particular moment, even if it's true. In P4, look at Teddie's reaction to Rise's epiphany that the two sides of herself aren't mutually exclusive, taking "there's no real me" as meaning "my existence isn't real". Unlike every other character, he inflames his shadow side not by saying "You're not me" but by saying "I'm not me." Which makes sense, considering what he is. Corrosion posted:It's such a great game to use content in this way. Now if anyone can provide examples of what kind of message and themes that Devil Survivor 2 has in this same, err gently caress, similar way (excuse me), I'm interested in seeing what folks walked away with. Because with Devil Survivor 1, I just remember walking away with "Oh look biblical symbolism, this is stupid." Maybe it's changed in 2, I don't know. For all the criticism that Persona 3/4 gets for social links, I just don't have reason to believe that there's any of this type of stuff used to greater effect in Devil Survivor. I honestly don't see how this is a relevant question. Even if DS2's FATE system doesn't serve the same dramatic purpose in that game that Persona's S-Link system did in P3/4, there's no reason it couldn't be adapted to do so. At its heart, looking purely at the mechanics without reference to specific content, it's simply a more flexible and adaptive version of the S-Link system, and flexibility and adaptivity were exactly what it felt to me like P3/4's S-Link system lacked. If you're talking about the quality of the writing while I'm talking about mechanics, that explains why it felt like we were talking across each other a bit last night. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Apr 26, 2012 |
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Apr 26, 2012 02:20
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Corrosion posted:I had a much longer post written out, but there's very little point arguing with you at length about a mechanic you don't have experience with in a game you haven't played, so I'm going to boil it down to the most important part. Here's the bottom line for me: as other posters have pointed out, Persona 3 and 4 (especially 4) already have many of the context-sensitive character events that a FATE-system-enhanced version would have. There'd be no extra budgetary cost required to put them in, because they're already in there. The S-Link system in those games just makes them mostly useless (because they don't rank up S-Links, only give points that you may or may not need) and therefore discourages you from going out of your way to see them. In P3 I hated being disincentivised to just go out on Sundays with characters and talk about current events, or take them out to the film festival, because I knew there'd usually be no mechanical benefit to it. That made me feel less like I was being rewarded for developing a relationship with the characters, not more: instead I felt like I was picking up a book about a character, reading canned segments of it in fixed order and being actively discouraged from learning anything else about them. You seem to have implied that this was a minor issue for you, but it was a critical one for me. So given that you don't care very much about that issue either way and I have a strong preference for one way in particular, would it offend you too much if the optional incidental events outside of a character's main story like Sunday outings or the film festival in P3 were actually able to rank up S-Links instead of just giving points toward them? Because that is the one feature of the FATE system that I would most like to see in Persona, and I don't see how it would be anything other than an unambiguous improvement with next to zero added development cost. The radical idea I am proposing here is that a game that includes interesting and thematically relevant content should not have mechanics that actively discourage you from exploring that content under nearly all circumstances, and I don't understand why you're resisting it at every turn. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Apr 27, 2012 |
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Apr 27, 2012 02:30
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Corrosion posted:My whole point is still that you're not going to improve the narrative without changing it. I'd like you to acknowledge that with that, you're not respecting the strengths of both games, giving me little reason to, and at that point you're just thinking in a linear fashion which, well, is why we get 2D vs 3D arguments or console wars or whatever stupid poo poo usually occurs. I disagree. You can improve the narrative without changing it by providing better incentives for the player to explore the narrative. For me, P3 fails on its own merits because its mechanics are at odds with the themes of the game. In practice it doesn't encourage me to do things that help the main character build relationships with other characters, it encourages me to do S-Link events and give the right answers, and those are two very different things. You may have had a different experience with it, but that was mine. quote:You're not going to learn about characters in a dynamic way, because they're not meant to be dynamic. That's just not a critical flaw and you're just splitting hairs. The limitation suits the narrative. Can you explain to me how it does this? Because to me that limitation seems to contradict one of the central themes of P4 in particular. For what it's worth, though, I strongly disagree that either P3 or P4 is in any sense the story of the main character, in part because I disagree that they're actually developed enough to count as characters in the first place. Also, accusing people of stuff like "linear thinking" is both condescending and kind of weird, so kindly knock that poo poo off. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Apr 27, 2012 |
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Apr 27, 2012 02:55
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I still don't really buy the argument that the S-Link system is a fully coherent and realized expression of the developers' intent. I can't prove it, of course, but the FATE system feels to me like what the developers wanted the S-Link system to be all along. But since neither of us is telepathic that's probably not going to be a productive line of discussion.
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Apr 27, 2012 03:06
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