everything rad is good for you: a persona/shin megami thread

Yeah, everything weird and off is part of the magic, the script's effort to engage with cultural sexism even as it enacts it etc

NG+ is almost wholly about exploring the life sim stuff tbh

it's a fucking great story, basicslly

I'm guessing that players generally use SP attacks more often than melee attacks?

SP run out, is the thing, so you'll want to balance magic attacks with physical attacks

At least so far, my party doesn't seem to be capable of doing enough physical damage in a single round to kill the enemy/enemies, who when given the chance can wipe me out pretty quickly (I've been one-shotted more than once). So instead, I've been using SP to weaken them first for hold-ups.

On my ng+ I've got a stack of sp refill items and it ceases to be an issue, harder on a first play thru tho but doable

Different enemies are held up by sp or HP attacks, again eventually it becomes more possible to work out which

For Justine/Christine's fusion list, is there an in-game way to check to see which Persona with which skill I'm supposed to create? I always forget after they mention it the first time.

In the cell if you step slightly to the left you can speak to Justine instead of Igor.

I have to say I don't really have a strategy with my confidants. I say yes to anybody who asks and then decline if it says "I don't think my bond will deepen". Is there any point in hanging out if your bond's not going to deepen?

short anwser, yes.

long answer: it depends. at the simplest level, social link (confidant) rank ups are point based, you need a certain amount to proceed to the next level. if you overshoot it, the excess goes to waste, i think. good answers give more points, as does having a persona in your roster of the same arcana of the link you want to level up. of course there are a few other systems in place, some links are gated by your skills, or main plot, or by reaching a certain rank in other links.

i don't want to say much more because i'd certainly spout some outright falsehood (maybe i already did) but mostly because you shouldn't overthink it, it's very unlikely you'll max everything in a blind playthrough without any guidance

sometimes iirc you might need to have more than one meeting with a confidant to get them to the next level - there are definitely special circumstances where this is the case but you always get a clue that this might happen. i'm pretty sure that the meetings/dates that don't raise your level sometimes provide the chance to get room decorations (which don't do anything but improve the look of your room, but that's good enough for me)

also there is a degree of optimizing within the order - increasing your relationship with a particular confidant can help you to speed up your relationship-building with everybody else.

AND at least one confidant has a time limit to reach max, which is a pain

AND at least one confidant won't progress until certain in-game events have transpired

Thanks Noodle!

Occasionally when the game starts to drag, it turns on its head-turning charm and you go awww.

Ok the game's charm is officially suave, Futaba's socialization has been tremendous fun and Yusuke continues to be hilarious.

Strangely, I've found the dungeon/palace crawling to be real stressful and unfun, because of the constant fear of getting ambushed, of getting one shot killed, or of running out of SP. I've bought a couple SP Adhesive 3's so that hopefully alleviates the last concern (having 4 seems overkill, especially since I'm still money limited and I can just swap them around my party), and now that I'm cultivating more confidants and leveling up, maybe that takes care of the first two.

Ryuji really got on my tits at times tho

i still have no idea how to use blank cards

have you started a confidant relationship with Yusuke?

yep! i hung out w him once and he offered to do something w blank cards but i was like *geh* and left

I've never needed them tbh

I've read some people complaining about the Instant Kill ability for your party members -- is it bad enough to gimp them deliberately?

what does that mean

i have a few spells that offer the chance of instakill but frankly some of the shadows have instakill too so it only seems fair

I guess only Ryuji has an instakill ability, which kicks in when you try to ambush lower level enemies, but doesn't give XP or money.

Possibly minor spoilers in here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/835628-persona-5/75389564

i don't like it cos i like to grind but it kicks in v rarely, also i guess you can just keep Ryuji out of the starting line-up?

Good call there re: Ryuji.

I'm up to the fifth palace but apparently I have yet to master the art of figuring out the attack types of the strongest enemies and equipping a persona that mitigates that type of damage (I wiped last night and lost an hour of crawling).

lol i went down a level too far in Mementos two days ago and got my ass HANDED to me.

omg the casino music is so good.

Just finished the 6th palace and dang the narrative wrinkle manages to be pretty awesome when it could've been contrived.

trying to get all the trophies now but there are 2, maybe 3, that are stupidly difficult to the point of maybe not bothering

For real!?

Tracer, how far into the game are you?

lol @ "for real"

I'm in the outer space palace now, the one belonging to the trumpian burger lord

i just bought SP adhesive 3 and am romancing both the doctor and the shogi player (naughty!)

In one session I've got 2 of those trophies but the last one is going to drive me nuts because it comes down to a broken, stupid button combo.

I romanced all the romanceable characters on my last game. Felt guilty, but then I feel guilty when I tell them we're just friends too.

I'm in the outer space palace now, the one belonging to the trumpian burger lord

i just bought SP adhesive 3 and am romancing both the doctor and the shogi player (naughty!)

lol "Burger Lord." I like that palace mostly for its Daleks.

SP Adhesives are game changers. (I did end up buying 4 because I didn't like having to equip/unequip all the time.)

Kaneshiro's the closest to Trump imo

Personally, I thought Bezos was a closer analogue to Okumura.

Seems reasonable. Shido isn't Trumplike at all, apart from being a nazi.

Just passed 100 hours. Feels like half of that came from the 7th palace.

Hooboy, the last mini-boss (who isn't really a mini-boss) in said palace... I kept forgetting to heal/restore SP between fights when I had the chance, so I needed 3 tries to beat that part.

I'm crawling through Mementos for end-game prep and read up on the Reaper farming trick, which seems to break the game. The only reason I might keep doing it is to create an untouchable Persona for the NG+ optional boss, but I wonder if that's even worth it?

i used it on my third go thru, partly because beating the Reaper is one of the achievements and it's the only way to do it, partly because i wanted to beat the NG+ boss(es). you can do it to the degree of moderation you want, it's probably the best way to be able to fuse some of the rarer high level personae too.

my first go of P3 feels considerably harder than P5 in some ways, not least the dungeons

Yoshitsune is probably enough for the secret boss, you don't need a 100% invulnerable persona. i did abuse the reaper trick in ng+ but that was because i wanted to 100% the compendium (and don't recall if i actually did it or not)

i'm no smt expert but of the few i've played p5 seemed the most forgiving

OK I'm about to start finals and, as I understand it, after that I can finally fuse Yoshitsune. I've managed to max all my social stats, I've maxed 2/3s of my confidants (or will once the I reach the date for the story ones), I'll have 300K-400K yen, and I've managed to fuse Trumpeter, Throne, and Black Frost, plus I've got a Siegfried with Null (or Evade) Nuke (I keep wanting to put a magic skill on him but I don't have any appealing skill cards).

When this game is good, it is rad.

Having maxed Ryuji and then Reaper farming to level 77, I can say now that his instakill ability is totally annoying. If I have open persona slots, then I automatically get that persona, whether or not they're in my compendium, but when I'm full up, the game just sez that I can't recruit that persona and doesn't even give me the option to choose a persona to set free.

Anyway, I fused Yoshi, and also Satan even though his elemental resistances are kind of underwhelming.

hassou tobi your way to victory

Beat it last night! Felt bad (really bad) standing up Hifumi on Valentine's, but Mako-chan seems like the game's canonical romance.

Can't wait to start NG+!

Hah and I wasn't able to level Yoshi enough to get Hassou Tobi. 😐

if they're not going to give us P5 on switch, can they at least give us P4 golden and P3 FES ?

lol the dog