Persona Megathread: I Am Thou, Thou Art I

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SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Take an all-bro party for the endboss because he can only hit women.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2021 09:46

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 20:54

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Acerbatus posted:

1/Magician: Initiative and confidence

Morgana lacks in confidence significantly. He postures a lot but is clearly insecure, constantly picking fights with Ryuji. He wants to take initiative, but ultimately relies on Joker for everything. Ultimately, Morgana starts off just wanting to go do Mementos and palaces go go go.

The P5 Magician cut himself with a dagger; Perhaps meaning OVERconfidence? That works for Morgana.

All of the P5 major arcana follow the French naming conventions of e.g. the Tarot of Marseilles, and many of the readings are straightforward interpretations of them: The Magician is Le Bateleur, which is explicitly a street performer performing stage magic (the depiction in P5, as in the Marseilles deck, explicitly depicts the cups and balls illusion) and so refers to someone not with arcane powers or anything like that, but someone who is faking it/conning people to get by.

The P5 High Priestess is La Papesse, the Popess, and again the P5 depiction copies the Marseilles deck. The female pope is of course Pope Joan. The association is with purity, and a paradoxical simultaneous struggle for spiritual union and physical asceticism, or desire and denial. Modern decks usually associate this card with the Shekhinah, the kabbalistic concept of the imminence of the divine which is (theoretically) the end goal of religious study.

And so on.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2021 08:27

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Acerbatus posted:

Like I said for Makoto though, I do get how the P5 card shows a corruption of the original (or at least inferred it), just not how goofing off/looking at porn instead of studying describes Makoto in any way.

In kabbalah the Shekhinah is feminine and has this whole thirsty schtick that's usually presented in academic terms but its totally horny nerd poo poo. Like the belief was that serious study of the Torah was something that should only be undertaken by unmarried men, after midnight. And you were supposed to study for years so that you could approach perfect understanding or enlightenment, which meant being joined with the Shekhinah--the female immanence of YHVH--and this would be perfect bliss. Zohar explicitly describes Shekhinah as a queen and a bride that you should prepare pillows and bedding for. And so on.

It's totally the hermeneutic version of the anime ice queen that you have to max your academic stat before you can date.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2021 09:48

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Omobono posted:

It doesn't. EDIT: although people obviously disagree based on posts above. I don't really agree, but those seem valid points.

The uncanny valley tarot deck is a general stylistic choice to underscore the fact that Joker has been Screwed by society at large and must band together with other in similar situations, to give returning players a general sense of unease, and (vanilla endgame spoilers) as another hint that the Wild Card supernatural support network is not being run by Igor this time.

I don't disagree with most of this. It's worth making the point that the tarot arcana aren't meant to illustrate--either in P5 or in the abstract as theurgical tools or whatever--how a person conceptualises themselves. They're meant to illustrate to the reader (Joker and/or the player in this case) a particular element of the reader's journey/life/problems/whatever.

Like Joker starts out as The Fool--an unnumbered card which (like his namesake joker card in the poker decks that borrowed it) has no fixed position. It depicts a vagabond carrying a bindle and (in P5's case) getting bit in the rear end. The parallels to Joker's situation at the start of the narrative are obvious. But that's not supposed to summarise Joker in his entirety. It's just a stage in his journey, the same as all the other major arcana. Most of the Persona games don't really gloss this directly for the player, but in P3 there's a lecture given by the school nurse that more or less spells this out explicitly. The various arcana definitely refer to and describe other people--the confidents--around Joker, but (and this is the basis for a lot of criticism of the writing) they do so predominantly in terms of how they affect Joker's story.

Hell, you could argue that P5's final major arcana--Le Monde or The World, signifying over-arching victory, wisdom, completion, and the end of one cycle beginning another--contains minor spoilers for P5S, as the central female figure on the card is generally identified as Sophia, the personification of divine wisdom.

I mean it's only a game and the writing isn't stellar. And one of the reasons people have found so much meaning in things like the tarot over the years is because they're fuzzy enough that you can read almost anything into them. So there's that. So I'm not trying to argue that P5 weaves a flawless symbolic tapestry or whatever the gently caress. But insofar as P5 is a fairly muddled narrative that gets more unfocused and muddy as it goes--and, like all the Persona games the expansions all tend to step on the interpretations suggested by the originals--given all that, the tarot symbolism is all pretty straightforward and, if anything, seems to be more internally consistent than in the prior games.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2021 22:24

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

CharlieFoxtrot posted:

Oh there's a whole separate Persona thread? And here I was posting in the SMT thread like a fool

Looking forward to April 9 when I can start my real-time Persona 5 Royal playthrough

Per the framing story shouldn't you be starting in like October or November?

# ¿ Mar 30, 2021 22:28

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

PMush Perfect posted:

Other potentially available Velvet Attendant names: Victor (obviously), Felix (Morgana?), Alphonse, Moritz, Beaufort, Henry (??, really doesn't have the right aesthetic, IMO), Walton

Of them, I think Alphonse is my favorite for a potential male Attendant, and I guess Beaufort for a female one???

Victor's already running the Gouma-Den:

# ¿ Apr 1, 2021 01:33

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

One more god rejected [accordion polka riff]

# ¿ Oct 28, 2021 21:49

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

roomtwofifteen posted:

Wait isn't P4AU a direct sequel to P4A? Why this one and not the first one? Am I missing something

They couldn't obtain the license for Labrys' accent.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2021 02:56

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

The English voice cast for Shin Megami Tensei V alternates between pronouncing "Shiva" as SHE-va and SHIV-uh. They also consistently pronounce "Shekinah" as the American name instead of Hebrew word (shuh-KYNE-uh instead of sheck-HE-na). So it's not just Japanese names that're wonky in Atlus games.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2021 02:00

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Acerbatus posted:

Is that an american pronunciation or something? I've never heard 'uh teh lee ay'.

Since at-leer has one too few syllables there had to be a pronunciation with one too many to balance it out.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2021 03:36

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

HaB posted:

I always assumed that a lot of the perceived value of NFTs to people who bought them were things like that one series of tweets about "imagine buying an in-game asset, then being able to use that forever going forward, in ANY game!!!!"

which of course ignores almost everything about how games work, copyrights, IPs, and about a million other issues which would prevent that use-case from EVER happening.

I assume there are similar nonsense lines of thinking in other areas which are not gaming.

But to people who pay $500 for a hat in a video game, the idea of getting to wear their cool hat IN EVERY GAME EVER was a big draw, and jacked up the price?

I'm just guessing, tho.

The reason NFTs are valued the way they are is because the market is almost completely unregulated and so basically every crypto business is the equivalent of three kids in a trenchcoat pretending to be an adult except instead of kids it's scams.

# ¿ May 17, 2022 02:13

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

GiantRockFromSpace posted:

Which would be awesome but tell me of a port (not a remake or reimagining, a port) that did stuff on that level.

Off the top of my head: Persona 3 Portable the last time they released it.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2022 15:23

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Arist posted:

P3P is an updated rerelease, not a port, and they still cut a ton of poo poo from that game.

Okay. In that case they should do an updated rerelease for modern platforms that uncuts that poo poo.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2022 15:31

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

So more like what they somehow managed to do with the PSP ports of the original Persona and Persona 2: Innocent Sin? Or are you thinking more along the lines of the Switch port of Nocturne?

# ¿ Jun 13, 2022 15:36

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

The solution is to translate the honorifics into new, made-up nonsense words.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2022 21:48

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

The pre-release tagline was "You are a slave. Want emancipation?"

I can see someone promised emancipation being dissatisfied with "reform of slavery is possible".

# ¿ Nov 30, 2022 10:19

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Gaius Marius posted:

Anyone here can absolutely wait on Soul Hackers 2. Even as a huge fan of the franchise and it's predecessor specifically it's a very C Tier game. $25-30 is the price I would say it becomes a should buy for fans of Megaten.

Yeah. It's not bad, it's just that...well, it's not that it's slightly worse than the original Soul Hackers, it's that it's only slightly better than Mind=0. Like it feels like its a low-effort modern port of a megaten knockoff made for the Vita.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2022 01:47

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

How so? I barely know anything about the male MC or his implied personality, but from my understanding (major P3 spoilers), he's kind of gloomy and serious while the female MC is bubbly and cheerful, and they're obviously both determined friends who manage to fully internalize the inevitability of death and carry on regardless. Of those, I'm far more compelled by the one who insists on having as much of a good time as she can until the end and going out with a smile than I am by the direct Jesus analogue. I also think that makes her a better fit for the ____Sun____ social link that I assume is the one everyone is alluding to as the best.

The main thematic/narrative reason why the original protagonist "works" better (narratively) than the FemC is that Ryoji works as a gloss on the protagonist and his behaviour in a way that really doesn't come across the same way with a female protagonist. With a male protagonist Ryoji's relentless horny pursuit of every female character he encounters is, and this is just barely even subtextual, an uncaring alien intelligence's impression of how a human should act...which is almost entirely informed/shaped by his having "lived" inside the protagonist for ten years. Which is to say, Ryoji's shamelessly manipulative horndog routine is the abstract concept of doom's impression of how the player has been behaving the entire game. And this in turn recontextualises the protagonist's behaviour as well; the influence isn't just one-way, so just as Ryuji has become more human, the protagonist has gained some of the grim allure that moves all things toward their ultimate demise. That is, the protagonist being "rewarded" for always telling people what they want to hear (even when it is not particularly good advice and might be ultimately self-destructive) "makes sense" in a way that seems like only justified by non-diegetic (that is, purely gameplay-related) reasons otherwise. And this isn't just some whimsical contrarian reading or something, during the big reveal in December it's more or less spelled out, although not explicitly in these terms.

It's also one of the thematic elements that more or less gets re-written after the original PS2 version, and the female protagonist's Fortune social link casts the relationship in a completely different and thematically weaker "forbidden love" context.

I absolutely understand from a player's standpoint preferring later versions of the game for quality of life reasons. And I also think that in general the social links of the original vanilla P3 feature some of the weakest social link writing and design from all of the later Persona games (almost all of the original P3 social links feel more like overlong conversations awkwardly broken up into ten segments instead of ten episodes from a complete story). But the original version of P3 hangs together better thematically than any of the later versions.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2023 21:56

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

I mean yeah, P3, particularly in its original version, is a resolutely downbeat game. And I absolutely understand why a lot of people would prefer to play something not so relentlessly grim. And apparently so does Atlus—because every subsequent Persona title, and for that matter successive versions of P3, has softened things.

But I kinda like the clarity. Everyone is, one way or another, kinda a hot mess. We're not perfectly-centered zen masters interacting with each other in perfect harmony. And so we suffer, and we cause suffering. And so we (collectively) move toward our (collective) destruction, intentionally or not. Any resolution to this that doesn't ultimately resemble a Law or Chaos hero's agenda in a mainline megaten game (that is, simply exterminate all the "bad" people or just let chaos reign and let survival of the fittest sort 'em out) has to accommodate the nature of people as they are: fundamentally flawed. The pairing of the protagonist with the Nyx Avatar suggests that there are two possible resolutions given people as they are: ultimate destruction, or a synthesis of all the disparate and often conflicting parts of ourselves into a transformed, unified whole. And again, this is just barely subtextual, as it's very nearly explicitly spelled out in Edogawa's lectures and, for example, Igor's exposition in the final visit to the Velvet Room.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2023 23:10

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Arist posted:

That's fine, but it's also not actually a response to anything anyone said. Grimness is not the issue.

For me, the issue is that Persona 3 is a game that seems to actively resist any attempt I make to invest myself in any part of it, down to the protagonist being textually awful.

I'm not trying to talk you out of disliking the protagonist or anything. A couple pages back AlternateNu said that the male protagonist works better thematically. Zulily Zoetrope asked how so. I tried to answer that question—why the male protagonist works better thematically.

If you don't find that compelling, that's cool. And if you don't like me characterising your objections as having to do with the "grim" nature of the game, that's fine. The point I'm making is that the protagonist is a bit of a poo poo because he's, more or less explicitly, a reflection (or embodiment or whatever you want to call it) of the nature of the world and the nature of the world is kinda poo poo. That's the central problem. That's why the entire plot happens in the first place. Not because of a bad guy or an accident or an external force. It's because some things are inevitable and people don't react well to that and so everybody, in aggregate, is causing the problem. That's what I'm calling "grim". Sum up the feelings of everyone in the world and the sum is Ryuji/the protagonist. Originally, ten years before the events of the story, the situation was even worse because then the sum was just Ryuji. And then a robot stuffed mankind's collective drive toward destruction into the head of a kid whose parents had just been killed. And that joining or connection is the only reason why there's an alternative. Again, this isn't even subtext. And the alternative isn't "just be a better guy" or whatever, because the world hasn't changed and the fundamental problem is still the same. It's just where everybody, collectively, is kinda lovely in aggregate, Ryuji represents the "unconnected" state in which everyone is lovely in isolation. The protagonist, and again this is very nearly explicitly spelled out in so many words, represents everyone, flawed and hosed up as they are, connected. That necessarily involves not just rejecting or negating the bad parts of others and ourselves. Because the transcendence this allows is just the ability to function in the continuing knowledge of the inevitable end of all things. That is, it isn't that the world is suddenly a place where most people aren't shits or a place where death isn't inevitable or anything. The big victory is just that everyone doesn't just throw in the sponge in disgust. Everyone is still flawed, everything is still mostly poo poo, and the reprieve (or whatever you want to call it) is necessarily temporary, and so the acceptance of the "bad parts" of ourselves isn't a one-time thing (like it is, implicitly, in the later games), it's an ongoing and continuous thing. That is: this isn't a story about "solving" the problem or triumphing over adversity or anything like that, it's about coming to terms with the fundamentally lovely nature of things and the inevitability of loss. A protagonist that embodies that isn't made stronger, thematically, by being nicer (or however you want to say it).

If you don't like the word "grim" to describe this, that's fine. And like I said I'm not trying to talk you into liking the protagonist or anything like that. I'm just arguing that the protagonist is the way he is, at least in the original version, for fairly direct narrative reasons, and making him nicer or more relatable or whatever undermines those narrative reasons.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2023 01:45

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Arist posted:

I really don't think a lot of this comes across in the actual game[...]

Yeah, I think specifically in terms of the characterisation of Ryuji it's less obvious than it needs to be because almost all of the narrative where it's developed occurs before the Big Reveal that provides the context for interpreting it. And generic bad horny is kinda one of the default moods in a lot of anime and video games. And we've absolutely see plenty of that earlier in P3—operation babe hunt, the hot springs scene, and so on. So even though the story explicitly calls out that the only reason Ryuji has a personality (and a human appearance) is that he spent ten years living in the protagonist, it probably won't be something that causes most players to go back and reinterpret everything in terms of the reveal.

Same thing with Edogawa's lectures. He's a transparently oracular figure in the game, providing an unsubtle gloss on the narrative. But as an example his explanation of the major arcana happens in August, more or less smack dab in the middle of the game. And for someone unfamiliar with tarot his comments would be most helpful in the endgame (I'm thinking specifically of the player's final visit to the Velvet Room).

And yeah. I also agree that the fact that something is meaningful doesn't mean it's good. I happen to really enjoy the fact that P3 has a cohesive enough narrative that we can even talk about this sort of thing. But I happen to have a very high tolerance for both close textual analysis and grindy, repetitive dungeon crawling so I'm willing to accept that not everyone is going to feel the same way.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2023 18:48

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

NikkolasKing posted:

You can now play the fan translated P2 Eternal Punishment PSP with the official English dub of P2EP PSX.

Dammit I gotta replay this too now.

The best part about the PSP port is that you no longer have to step in literally every square of the map for the mapping sidequests.

# ¿ May 3, 2023 09:52

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Item Getter posted:

Then they went and put that same dumb mechanic into Persona Q.

I like it in Persona Q because of course I'm going to walk in every square in an EO game. And it's easy enough to identify which bits you still need to do, and the locked chest will helpfully highlight them if you need help. And of course you can always go back to any levels you missed the first time through. None of which are true of the original Eternal Punishment.

And that's not even getting into the encounter rate.

PQ also makes it very easy to one-shot random encounters more or less indefinitely.

# ¿ May 3, 2023 20:47

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Commander Keene posted:

Also, in PQ you don't have to literally step on every tile, you just need to have the floor accurately mapped.

Kinda. It doesn't require you to step on every tile, but you do have to step on most of them. You can't just mark damage tiles, for example. Notably, it doesn't require that you step on tiles with static FOEs and things like that.

# ¿ May 3, 2023 21:49

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

For maximum comedy P3R should not include the Answer or FemC and instead include the content from P3eM and First Mission.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2023 01:19

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

neonchameleon posted:

Works well for Mario + Rabbids. Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate: Demonhunters has four to a squad and is good.

Into the Breach is fun as hell too.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2023 21:37

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

A megacorporation trying to build a robot to do something they already have humans doing doesn't really feel like a contradiction to me.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2024 19:29

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

Ytlaya posted:

Prestige live-action television series where the protagonists are adults who awaken their personas...and their personas are the characters of Persona 5

Group of plucky Japanese high school students start playing a video game about a goofy but earnest former Yakuza who is way too into Dragon Quest, who starts playing a modern RPG about a group of plucky Japanese high school students who are playing a video game about....

It's called At Swim-Two-Dragons.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2024 23:44

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

For whatever it's worth, I finished everything on first playthrough with I think two days to spare. Without using a guide, but having played the game before and so knowing to prioritise the classmate links. Main "strategic" planning was just always picking the lowest-ranked link, so toward the end when links started finishing I didn't have any days where no links were available (until the last couple Sundays).

The two major things that I think make a full-link run easier in Reload are: a lot of formerly "romantic" links can now be "just friends", which means that after things "get serious" in one link you're not soft locked out of all other potential "romantic" links until the first one is done; and being able to always get a couple extra music notes for any link at night using the computer really helps.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2024 22:28

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 20:54

SubG: Aug 19, 2004; It's a hard world for little things.

And Vincent from Catherine has a cameo in P3P (at least on PSP, no idea if it's in the recent re-release).

P3 also implies both that the characters from P2 exist as people in the P3 world, but also that they are characters in a video game which exists in the P3 world. There are several ways to resolve this apparent contradiction; mine is to realise that canon isn't real and so it doesn't loving matter.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2024 06:42

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