The Persona Franchise (and Atlus in general I guess)

[Ruki]

Always with Persona I go "I'll keep all my Persona until they get their abilities THEN fuse them!", and I always last about 2 hours before I throw that out the window. I did manage to get all the abilities with Orpheus though!

[Bobfoc]

I hadn't played Persona 3 before and decided to wait for Reload. I'm still in the early stages and it's the usual Persona formula so far. I'm hoping the story picks up before long.

[Ruki]

I just unlocked the Magician social link...

Spoiler

Was surprised it wasn't Junpei. Apparently Junpei, Ken, Akihiko, Shinji and Koromaru are only social links in P3P?? That seems silly to me. 

 

[Ruki]

Also, are you only able to escape dungeons on floors with teleporters?

[stokeriño]

2 hours ago, Ruki said:

I just unlocked the Magician social link...

  Hide contents

Was surprised it wasn't Junpei. Apparently Junpei, Ken, Akihiko, Shinji and Koromaru are only social links in P3P?? That seems silly to me. 

 

Spoiler

Not sure if this is Atlus being super dedicated to replicating the whole weird approach P3 always took with social links (though at least they ditched the "auto-romance any female friends" part), or super dedicated to not acknowledging anything that ever featured in the FeMC route.

Both, probably. 

 

 

[Ruki]

If you know, you know.

Spoiler

I'm on May 27th so far, playing on Hard difficulty which isn't too bad. Really enjoying this game, especially all the quality of life improvements (quicker battles, skipping floors you've already been on that day, seeing the special type of monsters on the map, Dark/Light having damaging and not just insta-kill skills).

[stokeriño]

I'm told this was the case in OG P3 as well (but possibly not in Portable), but I am infuriated that the EXP number it shows you at the end of a battle has to go through hidden calculations before it gets split between your party - like a % modifier depending on your relative level to the enemy and such.

E.G. beating a weak enemy for "55 EXP" actually ends up being a total of 16 EXP shared 5/5/6 between party members.

I'm not against the mechanic of penalising EXP against weaker enemies. I just want to be told the bloody truth without having to go into the Stats menu before and afterwards to do maths.

[lanky316]

I think years ago I might have tried to play a Persona game on the PS3/4 (damned if I remember, I didn't actually get to play much of it) but I'm tempted to jump on the hype train and give 3 Reloaded a go - and maybe play others if I enjoy it - any basic recommendations for a newbie?

Biggest question I have though, can I control my party members? I saw something that said you couldn't do so, but they added it in for the portable version later? I'd probably pick it up better if I'm not half relying on AI acting out of my control!

[Bobfoc]

9 minutes ago, lanky316 said:

I think years ago I might have tried to play a Persona game on the PS3/4 (damned if I remember, I didn't actually get to play much of it) but I'm tempted to jump on the hype train and give 3 Reloaded a go - and maybe play others if I enjoy it - any basic recommendations for a newbie?

Biggest question I have though, can I control my party members? I saw something that said you couldn't do so, but they added it in for the portable version later? I'd probably pick it up better if I'm not half relying on AI acting out of my control!

You can control your party members in Reload, as well as in 4 and 5. The battle mechanics are all very simple and quickly explained through in-game tutorials, so there really isn't much that you're likely to be confused about.

I think it's worth bearing in mind that you're not likely to do everything in a single playthrough. You allocate your activities to sections of the day, meaning that in-game time is finite.

[stokeriño]

Concur with the above and the only thing I'd add is that in P3 it pays to poke around and try different activities. Some are more rewarding than others, but there's quite a lot of hidden bits and pieces hidden behind them that you will simply never know you missed otherwise.

E.G. spending time with one character for a while will sometimes introduce you to another character, and so on.

[Ruki]

This is the third time I'm playing Persona 3 in some form. I've never maxed out Mitsuru's social link. I think that's my goal this time around. I am going hard for raising my academics, spending free nights eating at the restaurant that gives a boost to that. 

[stokeriño]

Not sure if Akihiko being 5 levels lower than the rest of my team when he turns up is the game intentionally playing into his "I've been slacking off for a month, need to get back up to speed" angle, or just evidence that I did too much grinding. 😅

[Ruki]

3 hours ago, stokeriño said:

Not sure if Akihiko being 5 levels lower than the rest of my team when he turns up is the game intentionally playing into his "I've been slacking off for a month, need to get back up to speed" angle, or just evidence that I did too much grinding. 😅

He was 2 levels ahead for me..... you did too much grinding!

[stokeriño]

If I go into Tartarus I'm not leaving until I've absolutely run out of SP, damn it!

[Ruki]

That's what I do! But apparently I use way more SP than you. 

[stokeriño]

I admit... I watch Twitch streams of other people playing Persona games, and almost every time I am triggered by less-than-perfectly-economic use of SP. It really annoys me to see. 😂

I can only presume that my first bad experience of an SP shortage (Kamoshida's Palace, circa 2017) traumatised me in ways I did not fully appreciate.

[Ruki]

4 hours ago, stokeriño said:

I admit... I watch Twitch streams of other people playing Persona games, and almost every time I am triggered by less-than-perfectly-economic use of SP. It really annoys me to see. 😂

I can only presume that my first bad experience of an SP shortage (Kamoshida's Palace, circa 2017) traumatised me in ways I did not fully appreciate.

What's the perfect economic use? Generally I just hit the weaknesses ASAP and All Out Attack. Although I have occasionally caught myself using AOE spells when there are only 2 enemies....

[stokeriño]

3 minutes ago, Ruki said:

What's the perfect economic use? Generally I just hit the weaknesses ASAP and All Out Attack. Although I have occasionally caught myself using AOE spells when there are only 2 enemies....

Basically that. You won't believe the number of streamers who are like "oh, a new type of enemy...... let's start with Sukunda", or "my person with the right element isn't up yet...... so I'll just blow SP on a random magic attack with this other person first". I think beyond that I otherwise default to physical weapon attacks a LOT more than the norm (even persona physical attacks cost SP indirectly from the need to heal spent HP, after all).

You also have to be careful to spread the SP cost where possible. Usually it's the MC who's prone to run out first because he has all the element types, so I make sure that if another party member can do it, they do. (Sometimes though circumstances are different. I just played a section where Mitsuru was running lowest because there were a lot of ice-weak enemies.)

Finally, I'm not shy of using those "deal 50 damage of this element to every enemy" items if the SP cost would otherwise be prohibitive. There were a few floors where I'd get encounters of 5x light-weak enemies and I only had Kouha, not Makouha. Saving 20 SP at the expense of one item is lovely.

[Ruki]

21 minutes ago, stokeriño said:

Basically that. You won't believe the number of streamers who are like "oh, a new type of enemy...... let's start with Sukunda", or "my person with the right element isn't up yet...... so I'll just blow SP on a random magic attack with this other person first". I think beyond that I otherwise default to physical weapon attacks a LOT more than the norm (even persona physical attacks cost SP indirectly from the need to heal spent HP, after all).

You also have to be careful to spread the SP cost where possible. Usually it's the MC who's prone to run out first because he has all the element types, so I make sure that if another party member can do it, they do. (Sometimes though circumstances are different. I just played a section where Mitsuru was running lowest because there were a lot of ice-weak enemies.)

Finally, I'm not shy of using those "deal 50 damage of this element to every enemy" items if the SP cost would otherwise be prohibitive. There were a few floors where I'd get encounters of 5x light-weak enemies and I only had Kouha, not Makouha. Saving 20 SP at the expense of one item is lovely.

Oh, those 4 or 5 floating mages? Yeah, I used my light attack items on those fights!

[Ruki]

Another quality of life upgrade

 

I really like that it tells you what the skill DOES. Because if I'm being honest, I've spent hundreds of hours on the Persona series... I could not tell you which buff does which.