The Persona Series

[hogso]

11 hours ago, RunRickyRun said:

Just completed it and have to say it's a brilliant game and stands up with the rest of the series.

There's a point when you start palace 6 where the game ramps up from a good game to a great game. The story advances rapidly, you max out most of your confidants, the music is amazing, the palaces are more interesting, you don't have to manage your sp as much and it's boss fight after boss fight after boss fight (plus another boss fight because 3 boss fights in a row would be too easy).

The weakest part of the game is Mementos. The music is uninteresting and the enemies are too weak (often filled with lower shadows than the palace you have just beaten). Grinding is definitely a chore here.

I don't think I'll play a NG+ because I've maxed out all but 2 confidants.

The most useful confidants by far are Fortune (level 7 allows you to increase affinity with someone every day) and Death (those 50k SP recovery accessories are awesome)

My party for the endgame was

  Reveal hidden contents

Ryuji (great physical attacks and party attack booster), Ann (Decrease attack for all enemies is a key skill) and Makoto (Healer and can do some decent damage.

All that's left for me to do to complete the true Persona ending is to aggressively argue online on who is the best Waifu

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It's Makoto 

 

Which 2 didn't you manage? As for Fortune's abilities, never used any of them, and I'm well on my way to maxing them all.

[jon_c]

4 hours ago, hogso said:

Which 2 didn't you manage? As for Fortune's abilities, never used any of them, and I'm well on my way to maxing them all.

I'm in a similar situation not going to get

Spoiler

Iwai and Haru 

 maxed out, because I didn't get my stats up quick enough to carry on their stories. Also seemed to have completely missed unlocking the fishing. 

Will probably do NG+ though.

Bona-fide Mona-fied. 

 

[RunRickyRun]

5 hours ago, hogso said:

Which 2 didn't you manage? As for Fortune's abilities, never used any of them, and I'm well on my way to maxing them all.

Emperor and Tower. I probably did too many attribute activities early on which would have naturally been maxed out by hanging out with confidants later in the game.

 

[hogso]

Still chugging along with this. At the end of November now, got a couple of confidants to max, all books to read, all video games to complete, mementos to finish, the twins to defeat, and the reaper to defeat - all of that will put me very close to the plat. I'd love to do, but there's a few iffy trophies - I haven't even tried fishing yet, so don't know how hard the 'guardian of the lake' will be (home run in baseball didn't take many tries, though), and the navigation lines thing might just be a write off and scupper any chance I have...

Should complete the Persona compendium, any treasure demons I've missed I should be able to pick up in mementos (super easy having maxed Tower!), but it will cost me a lot of Yen.

Anyone else still playing?

[Dodgyknees]

Started from scratch this week, as I sort of forgot what I was doing.

[hogso]

Yesssss 

[hogso]

3 new games announced - 

Persona Q 2 on 3DS, unclear as yet which characters it will feature 

Persona 3 Dancing Moon Night

Persona 5 Dancing Star Night

Both confirmed for Vita and PS4, which is nice 

[Dodgyknees]

Same problem as before, work overload means I have taken a step back from playing the game. Annoying.

[hogso]

Persona 5 Royal has a UK release date of 31/03/20. It'll have 2 extra 'main' characters, an extra school term, and a bunch of other features - in a similar vein to P3 FES and P4 Golden. I've also seen reference to a digital 'ultimate edition' which includes P4 Golden, which is a massive if that really does mean it's playable on PS4, as it's currently only on VITA/PSTV.

[hogso]

Persona 5 Strikers aka Scramble finally gets a proper western trailer and release date

Hack and slash follow up which, from a story perspective at least, is similar to the P4 beat em ups in that it writes a new story and threat for the gang to tackle after the events of the original game. 

[Designer1]

This (Persona 5) is free on PS Plus now for PS5 owners.

Edited December 9, 2020 by Designer1

[Chindie]

It's also really, really, really, really good.

A shame the free version is the original release rather than the 'Royale' rerelease but it's still an incredible game with the best 'style' in gaming. It's also an obscene time sink.

[tom_avfc]

7 minutes ago, Chindie said:

It's also really, really, really, really good.

A shame the free version is the original release rather than the 'Royale' rerelease but it's still an incredible game with the best 'style' in gaming. It's also an obscene time sink.

Is the original version worth playing? I've heard stories that the 'Royale' edition fixes issues from the original release. Also is it possible to upgrade from the original to the 'Royale' or would you have to buy the whole game again?

[Chindie]

32 minutes ago, tom_avfc said:

Is the original version worth playing? I've heard stories that the 'Royale' edition fixes issues from the original release. Also is it possible to upgrade from the original to the 'Royale' or would you have to buy the whole game again?

I've only played the original, and I found it to be fantastic. I know the Royale edition adds a character and some additional content and is by all accounts better, but I absolutely didn't feel like I missed anything when I played the original release.

[hogso]

3 hours ago, tom_avfc said:

Is the original version worth playing? I've heard stories that the 'Royale' edition fixes issues from the original release. Also is it possible to upgrade from the original to the 'Royale' or would you have to buy the whole game again?

If you're going to play a version, get Royale. 

[tom_avfc]

Just now, hogso said:

If you're going to play a version, get Royale. 

I think my worry is sinking time into the normal edition which is free to me as part of the PS Plus collection and then wishing I'd played Royale.  Might give it a few hours on the normal edition and pick up Royale if I enjoy it.

Having never played a Persona game before having the opportunity to play the normal version for free may be enough to tell me its not the sort of game for me!

[hogso]

Persona 5 Strikers is out now, and offers a follow up to the story of P5. 

Note the avoidance of calling it a sequel, in a similar sense that the Arena games continued the story of P4, but were an entirely different genre (proper beat em ups), this is essentially Persona 5 x Dynasty Warriors, so yes, provides zero incentive from a gameplay perspective, but if you want to revisit the characters and what happens next in the Canon of P5, it might be worth a look. 

[hogso]

Strikers is really enjoyable. It feels like a proper Persona game, although, without the social link / life sim aspect. 

I think, if you loved the characters of P5, you'll love this, as it is a sequel of the originals game story (not P5R) and is essentially a road trip across Japan. 

It is very much Persona 5 x Dynasty Warriors, though. I find it kinda easy on the whole, there's the odd sub boss or boss who might take a bit of tweaking with your party members to clear, but because you're not time limited with the calendar like the main line games, you can leave a dungeon to replenish SP whenever you reach a checkpoint, so management of that isn't really necessary. 

Plus, the way the velvet room works I'm not sold on either, as it seems too easy at this point (I'm at the 6th dungeon) to accrue all of the persona, and make new ones / ones you've missed. 

The story pings along wonderfully though, so those gripes feel pretty minor in comparison. Recommended to P5 fans. 

 

On an unrelated note, this guy puts together some really decent Shin Megami Tensei content, and in particular, I liked this with regards to P3FES

If you're ever likely to play the game, you'll need to skip the majority of it, as it provides heavy spoilers as part of the analysis of the game. If you have played it, or never will, give it a look of you have the time, it's excellent. 

I hope that with P6 Atlus go down a darker route and make it more like P3 compared to P4 and P5 in story content. I like that the QOL features of P5 make it more accessible (I imagine someone going back to playing P3 now if they've only played P5 would just hate Tartarus), but the story with each game, for me, has been a little worse each time. 

What the above video reminded me about, was just how good P3FES was. I haven't played it for few years now (10 at least I guess), but I could clearly remember the major moments in the story. And that ending...jeez.

The same guy also did a piece on 'The Answer' which is an epilogue to the main game, which was packaged with P3FES, and is pretty much universally disliked. I recall giving it a go and giving up after a couple of hours. A shame, as otherwise it'd comfortably be be amongst my favourite ever JRPGs. 

Edited April 1, 2021 by hogso

[hogso]

This September marks the 25th anniversary of the Persona series. You'd be forgiven for not realising the series had been around that long - although Persona itself of course is part of the MegaTen series of games, which themselves, began back in 87.

The first three Persona games (I'm including the sequel to thr second one in that number) were released to minimal fanfare between 96 and 2000, although only one of those was actually released on the PS1 in English in America, until re-releases some years later on the PSP. 

With each game since those initial three, though, Atlus have really made waves in the US and in Europe, with even the spinoffs to the main games not only doing decent sales wise, but being good games in as varied genres as beat em ups, rhythm games, recently a dynasty warrior esque hack n slasher in the form of Persona 5 Strikers. 

They have form too, as fans will know, for releasing upgraded versions of the main numbered games. And before that is judged with any cynicism, the upgraded versions do represent wholesale changes, and it's something they've been doing for years, even in the PS2 era - with Persona 3 having both an upgraded PS2 version, and a specific, very different, PSP version. 

All of which brings me to the 25th anniversary itself. Atlus have done a bit of promo, there's talk of announcements to come, and teasing of new merch. The put together a couple of nice little pieces of art work featuring all the protagonists from the series too

The 'secret' is repeated a lot on their site, with fans already being able to feature merch with what ever the 'secret' is. 

Given that it's sitting there next to the other protags, the likelihood is that, of course, Persona 6 will be announced. 

Atlus have been a little more specific too - confirming there will be seven announcements between the 25th anniversary in September, and fall 2022.

It's likely these will include P6, a P5R anime, perhaps a P6 anime too, the long touted P5 Arena game, a new Persona Q, and potential updates / re-releases of P1, P2IS and P2EP. 

That's my 7 picks, we'll see how that turns out...the most popular suggestion amongst fans is that, given the popularity of the series since P3, there will be some sort of proper cross over game. There's a loose, very loose actually, connection between the games which is never really explained (the Velvet Rooms for those itk), which is prime fodder for getting all of those characters together in a single game. They've dabbled in it before, but never in a meaningful way. 

Exciting none the less, with regards to P6 I'm mostly interested to see if it's being developed for PS5 solely, or if it'll be cross gen as P5 was. 

[Keyblade]

I've yet to get into the series proper. I have the last 4 "main" games but I can't start yet as my PSP is busted. Persona 2 was looking pretty cool from the little I played though.