lunar detritus posted:

At least in P4 and P5 it's pretty important to at least try and max out your party members, they get some great combat benefits.

Spiffster posted:

I did it in 3 but hoooo boy did I cut it close. I was convinced I was gonna miss it. Compared to Royal when I messed up and didn’t max out temperance before a certain point and was locked out of advancing them for a bit due to story and school related stuff. Thought that was gonna Kill my max run but I ended up spending the last months just killing time at the shrine and club.

Harrow posted:

As questionable as the translation is for P5, the dub is fantastic and the cast work really hard to make it work. Special shout out to Max Mittelman as Ryuji, just a perfect performance. (Speaking of FF7R, he plays Red XIII and similarly nails it.)

Ostentatious posted:

Honestly I preferred the characters in p4 to p5

Except Yosuke, gently caress Yosuke

Ostentatious posted:

Morgana radiates intense creepy simp energy

I mean so does Teddie, I’m noticing a trend

Ibram Gaunt posted:

The AI is mostly fine if you use the tactics system properly. I never had problems.

Fojar38 posted:

So I realized something about Ryuji.

He's an inner city delinquent raised by a single mother? He's a superb athlete with a particular fondness for running?

His preferred beverage tends to be sugary drinks like soda? In combat he favors using blunt objects and a shotgun?

He's quick to anger and a bit simple but he has a good heart and watches out for his comrades? He's often the butt of jokes from the rest of the team?

Harrow posted:

Unless you count the MMO characters being named after them, nope.

The P1 protagonist is mentioned a few times in P2 and almost appears on screen but that's the only time in the whole series a previous protagonist even kinda appears.

Commander Keene posted:

Yeah, but the majority of the cast is still in high school, including Joker, so that may not satisfy the requirement.

Also Persona 2 had adult party members; Innocent Sin had Maya and Yukino, and in Eternal Punishment I think most of the party is adult; at least Maya, Ulala, Katsuya, and Baofu are all adult IIRC. But that game doesn't have the life sim elements like modern Persona.

Commander Keene posted:

She's in both P1 and P2, at least Innocent Sin, IIRC. She's apparently inspired by an idol that the main writer, Satomi Tsdashi, had a crush on, so he wrote her into the plot of the first two Persona games and then had his self-insert date her.

WrightOfWay posted:

He's still high school age in EP, just world weary and depressed from being the only one who remembers the alternate timeline.

Lord_Magmar posted:

Prometheus is still a giant machine it just is covered in trippy rainbow fire. Honestly it reminds me of Yami from Okami, a giant robot ball eclipsing the existing sun.

The first tier party personas are all rebellious literary figures in one way or another, the second tier are all rebellious/unusual divine and mythical figures. Anat and Astarte are both older deities representative of the kind of rebellious soul Makoto and Haru have, Anat is a goddess of violent war who brings peace, Astarte is a goddess of life and destruction/War. The rest are far more simple of course.

Arguably three of the phantom thieves intentionally have Persona who don’t match the theme because their spirit of rebellion is also different in nature. Or maybe all this pattern seeking is nonsensical and they just did what sounded and looked cool.

ApplesandOranges posted:

I'm hoping if/when they do P6, they shake up the cast members' Arcana a bit more. Every game from P3-on we've had Magician/Priestess/Emperor/Chariot/Lovers. Empress, Hierophant and Justice have also always been major characters if not playable. Give us someone from Temperance or Hanged Man or something to shake it up a bit.

HootTheOwl posted:

I can't wait for p5 to come to the PC so I can read all those spoilers.

mastajake posted:

I just love that (Persona 5 late game spoiler) Igor's voice change was actually relevant. I thought they just decided to go in a different direction, and was weirded out, but then there was actually a reason.

Gaius Marius posted:

The nurse is kind of not great, Eiri is actually pretty good but I don't think a lot of people hang with her. The Tutored kid is just sad, but also boring, I'm glad I forgot to do it my first playthrough.

Funky Valentine posted:

Tower has one of the more outright surreal moments in P4 in the form of the birthday party.

Gaius Marius posted:

I'd go to bat to say P3 has better links than P4, MC or FeMC. P5 has better links than both though, and P2 has the best characters of all of 'em.

ApplesandOranges posted:

Like if I was being strict about comparing 'best' links between Arcana (why not, I have the time):

ApplesandOranges posted:

I don't even remember the Fortune link for P3P. It was ehhhhh *goes to check* oh yeah it was the same as P3, the very forgettable guy. I guess I don't see how they're better than Naoto?

Shinjiro was really good and it was tough picking between him and Ai though. Like if you asked me tomorrow I might say Shinji, ask me another day I might say Ai again. Screw it, I'll say it goes to P3P so it goes 6/6/6 between P3P/P4/P5.

Gen. Ripper posted:

Persona 5's attempt at a "nooooo everyone is good at heart deep down!!!" moral is easily the most irritating thing about it. It's stupid enough they try to do it with Ichiryusai "I murdered a woman to steal her magnum opus and control her son" Madarame and Kunikazu "Haha selling my daughter off to a well connected rapist go brrr" Okumura, and I'm pretty sure the Palace 6 plan does not work - every indication is that developing a Palace is the moment where the ruler crosses the Rubicon and can no longer be reasoned out of their mindset, and may not even let others attempt to do so.

Harrow posted:

Yeah, I agree with this reading. I think what would've helped make Shido work for me is some idea of what he actually wants to do with his power. We see that Shido wants power, and that he is capable of grabbing it, but we get very little idea of what he plans to do after that. He's just a distant conspiracy mastermind who is also just an awful narcissist with way too much power.

And I get why he's a major villain. The uniting theme of the villainous Palace rulers is that they have power over others and abuse that power. Shido, on paper, makes sense as the final one because he wields a lot of power and abuses it heavily. I just wanted more personality from him and, as you point out, I thought that the whole Grand Conspiracy angle was unnecessary and actually undermined some of the earlier villains.


Strikers doesn't really conflict with Royal, it just also doesn't acknowledge it. It's like how Persona 4 Arena didn't have anything from Persona 4 Golden in it, but in the end, both were considered canon. In the long run, it's probably safest to consider both Royal and Strikers as canon, and any inconsistencies that brings up are pretty easy to handwave.

Harrow posted:

Yeah, the randomly-generated dungeons are a thing in both Persona 3 and 4. In 3, it's all one dungeon, a giant tower called Tartarus, so it's functionally like if Mementos was the only dungeon in Persona 5. I actually don't really mind it, and it thematically worked well in 3, but the hand-crafted Palaces are a huge improvement in 5 and something I was incredibly excited about when the game was first revealed. P5's Palace dungeons, with light stealth and puzzle elements, are a lot of fun for me and I definitely prefer them to the random dungeon crawls in 3 and 4.

One thing I think Persona 3 and 4 definitely do better than 5 is plot pacing, and I think it's because, despite appearances, they're ultimately less episodic. Persona 4 has its episodic "victim of the month" structure, but ultimately everything ties into the central kidnapping/murder mystery plot, and each arc advances it. In Persona 3, there's one major plot about the full moon Shadows and exploring Tartarus, and everything feeds into that. Persona 5 doesn't really have that, and for the most part I actually like that. I liked that some of the targets were just bad people with too much power who needed to be brought to justice, while others, like Futaba, tie into a deeper plot that grows in prominence. The problem comes at the end, when the story tries to tie all of it together with Shido's conspiracy and everything just kind of becomes a big car wreck of a plot.

Lord_Magmar posted:

In terms of non-spoilers, Mementos is absolutely the best handling of the random dungeon thing in my opinion, at least once Royal fixes some of the most glaring issues with it. The designed palaces are definitely super cooll and stylish and help better make a story for the actual persona action fighting bits, instead of having to put all the plot into the real world or boss fights. If I had to make fixes, I'd say maybe having the random dungeon gain different appearances so that the visuals aren't so samey would help. Something like each palace having a remnant that looks like the random dungeons of P4. Could even keep the going down theme by having doors into main mementos at the bottom of each Palace Ruin.

DC Murderverse posted:

*the Kawakami stuff is insane and uncomfortable and I hated it so much. I get what it’s going for, the game has a lot to say about toxic relationships but I really do not think that solving her problems only to immediately try to pick her up as a 17 year old is absolutely nuts and kind of makes her a worse character because how do you talk about wanting to be a better teacher and then date a student! I made an alternate reality save just to watch the scene and get the mark for my award and

Motto posted:

I'd give her the cool design she had before Hashino weighed in.

Harrow posted:

Yeah, this would be a big improvement, I think.

I'm kind of curious: did anyone actually have trouble with the alert levels in Persona 5, vanilla or Royal? I always found that the stealth was simple enough, and the default levels of alert reduction on ambushing an enemy were generous enough, that I never once had to actually think about the alert level while exploring Palaces. That alone makes whatever they tried to do with Ohya's abilities just kinda . It's help managing a system that I never had to think about in the first place.

Deltasquid posted:

I know that's part of their appeal/idea behind a mute character, yes, but I have a lot of trouble understanding people who do. Characters always have their own design that differs from the player, as well as inferred character traits, even if they aren't explicited. If anything blank slate characters are just boring (Byleth in FE:3H comes to mind) or have sufficient panache and character like Joker that their body language and mannerisms make them stand out sufficiently.

Likewise, I can't treat my dnd characters or characters in Western RPGs as self-inserts. I see them as distinct characters, and I get input on how their story goes but they're not me...

Harrow posted:

I suppose I don't really know what it would be like to play one of the social sim Persona games while I'm in high school myself. Persona 3 came out when I was already in college, so I never really had that experience.

Funky Valentine posted:

Ryuji is the only Persona character to have never done anything wrong, ever, and he is my bestest bud.

Gaius Marius posted:

Ehh the three stooges did worse

Namnesor posted:

From the viewpoint of Ryuji being a teenager, I actually kind of like those scenes because of Ann's reactions: during the beach cutscene, she just loving laughs at him, and then when he tries to peep an upskirt, she just waves him off.

from the viewpoint of the omnicient camera, it sucks

NikkolasKing posted:

This is a debate I've been having with some people since I played P4 for the first time in 2017 - what to make of gag scenes.

People give Yosuke poo poo but it is Chie who introduces herself by physically assaulting him in a very vulnerable, dangerous spot without any real provocation and also ​later on steals his money.

Sounds terrible, why would you be friends with anyone who does such awful things to you? Simple answer is because it's a gag. Persona might not be a comedy but it is absolutely loaded with comedy. All that was missing win those scenes was a horn going womp womp. Persona loves its 90s humor.

But some people really take gag scenes super seriously. I've honestly heard people ask why the Investigation Team are even friends given the high number of these scenes. And it isn't even that high but people remember them and Mystery Food X and etc. and judge all of the IT's relationship with each other by those standards. The standards of scenes you are not in any way supposed to take seriously or think about and which have absolutely no bearing on the characters.

Never made sense to me.

Endorph posted:

The reason people take those scenes seriously is because they aren't funny in the slightest. Like people don't worry about Kanji's embarrassment with being publicly nude because the scene where he has to cover himself with a leaf is funny. If those scenes were funny, people wouldn't care. But they aren't, so people take them at face value.

Lord_Magmar posted:

I feel Ann’s response before Futaba’s palace is less discomfort because they’re being pervy and more that she’s hot and sweaty and feels gross and they’re looking at her back to see her bra strap. Like more of an oh god not the time you guys thing.

Especially because she doesn’t care at all when Ryuji is clearly appreciating her in her bikini at the beach. Basically Ann is fine with Ryuji being attracted to her in scenarios she wants to be attractive, which makes sense. That’s kind of Ann’s deal overall, she’s fine with being attractive to men, when it’s on her terms and at times she chooses to be attractive.

Lord_Magmar posted:

I was commenting on you mentioning before Futaba’s palace yes, and then musing as to why Ann has different reactions in different situations to Ryuji.

I think it’s actually very well handled, Ann has clear defined situations she is happy to be ogled and appreciated and ones where she is not, but she clearly never actually feels threatened by Ryuji at all.

RillAkBea posted:

Yeah, this is what it felt like to me. Half of Ann's story is about learning to accept her beauty on her own terms.

ApplesandOranges posted:

I'm staring at Shinjiro being romanceable in P3P.

P3 has a hot springs joke, which is pretty bleh and a sadly time honoured tradition (it shows up in P4G and P5S).

Harrow posted:

No, that boss was totally redone.

I didn't check myself but I assumed when going through the fight that I needed to pick the right answers so Futaba could stand up to the cognition and protect the group from the big damage attacks. If she protects you either way then

Simply Simon posted:

You can be a relentless dick to many people with some of the answers in P4/5, I think that's either supposed to be funny or give you more options to roleplay as something different than a blank slate goody-two-shoes hero at least in those limited ways.

Of course, I always busted Yosuke's and Teddie's balls whenever possible

Commander Keene posted:

And the P3 protagonist can be the most dickish of all of them, though I don't really have context for Futaba's Palace boss because I haven't played Royal yet. Telling your buddy to buy running shoes as a present for his cousin who can't walk? You can do that! Telling a 7-year-old that she's probably responsible for her parents getting divorced? You can do that! You can be incredibly cruel to most of your Social Link buddies, whereas most of Yu's "third option" dialogue choices are just kinda goofy and off-the-wall, and Joker's are kinda snarky but harmless.

Also the optimal path through most of the Social Links in that game involve enabling questionably wise behavior, whereas the more modern protagonists feel like they're helping a little more, even if the actual developments are mostly driven by the character who isn't silent.

Hunt11 posted:

It is funny playing P5R again and interacting with Akechi. All I can think is how I wish he would drop the goody two shoe act quicker as he is so much more fun to interact with when he is being true to himself.

Harrow posted:

Should I take that to mean the writing in Caligula Effect is good? I've been somewhat curious about it ever since I heard about this game from the former Persona writer with a weird battle system.

Endorph posted:

don't worry, p5's worse

Lord_Magmar posted:

And P5R in theory fixed that scene, depending on how you feel about the new version of said scene.

Also everything with Akechi’s improved social link in Royal really deserves mention. Even if they don’t let you kiss him that social link oozes tension.

IShallRiseAgain posted:

Kanji's sexuality is irrelevant to his arc, and explicitly spelling out his sexuality would ruin the message of his arc. The entire point of his arc is that he can be into "girly" things without that defining his entire identity.

PMush Perfect posted:

Ibram Gaunt posted:

Persona 2 already let you have a gay romance so I don't think that they walked anything back tbh.

Best Bi Geek Squid posted:

I think we can just all just agree to asexually and aromatically knit each other a bunch of persona dolls

Funky Valentine posted:

The only romance I remember in P1 is like half the playable girls wanting to bone Boy With Earring.

DC Murderverse posted:

I wish there was more hugging in this game. I feel like there are 50 conversations that should end with a hug and it’s just “alright.” *nods, leaves*