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

Short version of why I should get P5 while it's $35?

epic storyline, emotional and smart; brilliant merger of Visual Novel, JRPG and life sim; complex dense combat mechanics that i felt like i was barely beginning to get good at after one play thru; it looks beautiful

main caveat would be if you don't like VNs or looooong cut scenes (depending on your point of view) this mightn't be for you. also it's just eaten 3 weeks of my (admittedly unemployed) life

The life sim aspect gives me pause...

it's not the main game but there's an important time management element that alters your powers and relationships with other characters as well as opening a bunch of mini story-arcs

I watched some gameplay and the colors do look pretty as all get out.

with maybe MGS games aside it’s the most completely designed game i’ve ever played, from menus to loading to various gameplay modes. it’s a GESAMTKUNSTWERK

I've spent the evening trying not to just start it over again.

who did u date

Makoto. I realised I could date multiple people, but I felt guilty so I stayed faithful.

It's a really long game to contemplate going thru every possible storyline but what the hell

i never made it the dating stage of this

i gave a gift to the doctor but she didn’t want it :o

The randomness of the gifts is a bit of a pain - there are 3 or 4 obvious ones, but most of the time you're just guessing, or looking up a guess paper on the internet. Tae was the first character I cd've dated, but I gave the wrong answer when she asked me.

atlus has only made 2 console rpgs this decade and they're both visually insane in different ways

Persona 3 is on the PS Store and I'm probably getting that next but somebody upthread said the PSP/Vita version is better? Such a pain trying to track down old console games

makoto's a cop, designer drug doctor all the way

the thing that's stayed with me the most about this game is how beautifully the menu/ui moves

3 and 4 both have significantly improved versions on vita by my understanding

im probably gonna pick up a cheap pstv later this year to play 4 which has been my white whale game for a decade now

if you are going back from 5 then yeh the PSP version of 3 is probably the best move with all its QOL improvements, although I'd rather play FES since it was the first Persona game I played. I kinda want to play it now dammit.
haven't played the vita version of 4 cos I'd played the PS2 version twice and was burnt out on that, but heard they added a lot of content
really hoping for a Q2 localization announcement at some point, but they only just announced the last Etrian game for the West so it may be some time yet
crazy that I'm still going to be buying new 3DS games in 2019 but then P4 came out 2 years after the PS3 did, Atlus gonna Atlus

here's the Q2 trailer btw, love the weird Bomberman Aegis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RICSmSbPzVs

yeah and persona 5 was their ps3 game. atlus works slowly

times like this that the difficulty of being easily able to get hold of and play all these games is agony. you rarely have this issue with books or movies.

I started P5 last night! The most notable thing I did was to close up the shop we're I'm staying at -- I assume things will be more fun "tomorrow" when I go to school?

The game is so pretty to look at, at the very least.

It's a little slow getting in but it will open up

atlus has only made 2 console rpgs this decade

woah. wait. what?

P5 and Tokyo Mirage Sessions? Both incredible games, the latter enhanced if you like the music/get all the J-Pop references (Yatsufusa Hatanaka lol)

yeah they've mostly been making 3ds games since the ps2 era ended

tokyo mirage sessions is the sort of game that 10 years later you'll describe and people will think you're bullshitting them that it exists. bonus points for being an exclusive on a console no one bought

> I started P5 last night! The most notable thing I did was to close up the shop we're I'm staying at -- I assume things will be more fun "tomorrow" when I go to school?

IIRC my favourite bit of the whole game happens tomorrow but it's a one off, not representative of the rest of the game or anything you'll ever do again

Finished the first palace -- it was hard! I think the biggest difficulty I had was getting used to the sneaking system and how limited the camera became when I was in cover, which resulted in me alerting guards etc.

HUEG regrets on not naming my team The Groop mere minutes after I set what I chose in stone. I would pay much Yen to change it again.

The sheer amount of stuff outside of dungeon-dives is a little overwhelming, especially with the nagging sense that I ought to min-max the stat-building stuff.

Definitely not a casual game that I can pick up on a random weeknight!

OK so I just unlocked Mementos and puttering around in a Catbus makes my life complete.

I saw an article that complained about the wonky US localization, and I kind of wonder if P5's translation issues were by design to maintain the JRPG flavor?

i feel like there might be some puns that aren't fully translatable, at least

people complain about the translation for literally every JRPG ever released in the West. the only exception i can think of is the Trails series and for those people complain about how long it takes for them to get localized instead

I've had the theme song stuck in my head, from what I remember the lyrics go something like this:

Who am I?
Like Johnny 5,
I am a-live,
I am... PERSONA 5!

i googled the Japanese criminal conviction rate today and no fucken way

I finished the second palace yesterday, and I was surprised how much the story has grabbed and moved me! Likewise with Yusuke, the big weirdo.

One thing I wish was different is the quintessentially Japanese pervertedness, eg Morgana randomly telling Panther that she's gorgeous, and the fact that your home room teacher is a romance option.

Oh and the life simulator parts of the game are wonderful! I fully expected to hate it.

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!