Atlus Persona 4 Golden - out on Steam

[StaticSpine]

There's already much I love u Sempai in base game you want to die from overdose?

I picked Chie, so at least most of it was delivered closer to end game, but I still feel girls in this one are too easy it's boring. Imo the most realistic one is Ai, and I like game's twisted logic in the choices you make there.

First playthrough - Chie
Second playthrough - Yukiko
Third playthrough - Rise

 

[turkishronin]

Like with many JRPGs, the combat fundamentals and presentation are quite solid

How is this solid?
-Use the elemental weakness of the enemy
-Spam your strongest physical attack
-If you have a Persona who repels the enemy attacks, put it on and then go light a smoke while the fight plays itself.

 

[Please No]

Which one is less shit, P4 or P5 ?

Persona 5 is the least shit of P3-P5.

Persona 3 is the best, dumbass.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Which persona 5??

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(series)



2016 Persona 5
2018 Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight
2018 Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
2019 Persona 5 Royal
2020 Persona 5 Scramble

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Persona 5 Full Body

 

[Shadenuat]

Like with many JRPGs, the combat fundamentals and presentation are quite solid

How is this solid?
-Use the elemental weakness of the enemy
-Spam your strongest physical attack
-If you have a Persona who repels the enemy attacks, put it on and then go light a smoke while the fight plays itself.

6 resists with different states (weak/normal/resist/reflect) is more than 99% of rpgs have already. give me system and editor and I will make you dungeon and encounters just based on that alone which will be better than what is in the game. well, if I wanted to of course. developers just used it all as a filler, focusing more on social aspect of the game while wasting a perfectly fine system and dungeon maker to fill the rest of the gameplay. Take away good chunk of player power, rework dungeons and make good encounters, and it will be fine. Make player actually merge personas for companions too as extra management challenge, would be even better.
If you r interested in game design, need to look at things like lego parts, not banal metagamer "hurr i just beat all this like dis > everything in system is shit developers stoopidt".

 

[StaticSpine]

 

[cosmicray]

Btw, holy shit. Is is looking this crisp? I want to replay it. Kilometers better than on PS2.

 

[Ebonsword]

I played through Persona 4 on the PS2 back when it first came out. I picked up Golden for the Vita years ago, but never was in the mood to play it until recently.

While I've been enjoying my playthrough, the flaws of the game are a lot more evident this time through.

(1) Combat is a bit too easy. I've beaten 95% (maybe more?) of the fights just by having a Persona with decent resistances and the four basic, single-target elemental attacks equipped. I used to have to switch to a Light/Dark Persona occasionally, but, once I got

Spoiler

Naoto

, I didn't even have to bother with that.

(2) As some other folks have commented, the plot isn't that strong. I had forgotten most of it from my first playthrough, so I was mostly going in fresh this time. The basic mystery was kind of interesting, but the whole "Oh, you thought *he* was the real mastermind? Oh ho ho! It was really X!" didn't really work for me. Possibly because it made the characters look stupid for missing obvious clues that there was more going on.

(3) It's way too easy to get the "bad end". The choices you have to make to keep going after the confrontation with

Spoiler

Namatame

seemed not at all obvious to me.

(4) I don't think the game balances the dungeon crawling and S-links very well. You're under huge pressure to clear the dungeons as quickly as possible, preferably in one day. What that seems to lead to is spending three hours doing nothing but S-link stuff, then going dungeon crawling for six hours, then back to S-links for more hours, etc. I would have preferred it if it was easier to split the dungeon crawling into smaller chunks, interspersed with correspondingly smaller chunks of S-link stuff.


That being said, I do enjoy the main cast, and the quality of life enhancements with the Golden version (skill cards, etc.) were much appreciated. It's still a great game, but maybe not quite the classic I remembered it being.

 

[cosmicray]

(4) I don't think the game balances the dungeon crawling and S-links very well. You're under huge pressure to clear the dungeons as quickly as possible, preferably in one day. What that seems to lead to is spending three hours doing nothing but S-link stuff, then going dungeon crawling for six hours, then back to S-links for more hours, etc. I would have preferred it if it was easier to split the dungeon crawling into smaller chunks, interspersed with correspondingly smaller chunks of S-link stuff.

Isn't it always like that in Persona games? If you want to max more S.Links you need to clear dungeons in minimum days possible. Besides, I don't remember game pressuring you to complete the dungeon in one day. It nags you to save a person, but until fog is set you have lots of days.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

(4) I don't think the game balances the dungeon crawling and S-links very well. You're under huge pressure to clear the dungeons as quickly as possible, preferably in one day. What that seems to lead to is spending three hours doing nothing but S-link stuff, then going dungeon crawling for six hours, then back to S-links for more hours, etc. I would have preferred it if it was easier to split the dungeon crawling into smaller chunks, interspersed with correspondingly smaller chunks of S-link stuff.

Isn't it always like that in Persona games? If you want to max more S.Links you need to clear dungeons in minimum days possible. Besides, I don't remember game pressuring you to complete the dungeon in one day. It nags you to save a person, but until fog is set you have lots of days.

It's more of a pressure to be efficient I guess. Due to the SLG element with Social Stats and Social Link, finishing a dungeon using multiple days are inefficient because it presents opprtunity lost to do the social part of the game.

 

[turkishronin]

(4) I don't think the game balances the dungeon crawling and S-links very well. You're under huge pressure to clear the dungeons as quickly as possible, preferably in one day. What that seems to lead to is spending three hours doing nothing but S-link stuff, then going dungeon crawling for six hours, then back to S-links for more hours, etc. I would have preferred it if it was easier to split the dungeon crawling into smaller chunks, interspersed with correspondingly smaller chunks of S-link stuff.

Isn't it always like that in Persona games? If you want to max more S.Links you need to clear dungeons in minimum days possible. Besides, I don't remember game pressuring you to complete the dungeon in one day. It nags you to save a person, but until fog is set you have lots of days.

It's more of a pressure to be efficient I guess. Due to the SLG element with Social Stats and Social Link, finishing a dungeon using multiple days are inefficient because it presents opprtunity lost to do the social part of the game.

Not to mention that healing is very expensive so sometimes you have to lose a day for healing

 

[CarbonCarousel]

I've always heard nothing but praise for the Persona series, but I've never played any of the games. Now that P4 is on PC, I'll give it a shot. Is it very different from traditional JRPG's? I've played too many turn-based, save the world type of games.

 

[Sentinel]

I've always heard nothing but praise for the Persona series, but I've never played any of the games. Now that P4 is on PC, I'll give it a shot. Is it very different from traditional JRPG's? I've played too many turn-based, save the world type of games.

No, it's exactly that type of game. It's a massive waste of time and the most generic nu-jRPG you'll play.

 

[Derringer]

I've always heard nothing but praise for the Persona series, but I've never played any of the games. Now that P4 is on PC, I'll give it a shot. Is it very different from traditional JRPG's? I've played too many turn-based, save the world type of games.

No, it's exactly that type of game. It's a massive waste of time and the most generic nu-jRPG you'll play.

You're not wrong but people enjoy garbage as a product, there's worse you could play but I wouldn't say it's very good either. People kept going on about Persona 3's story when it's just a bunch of bad anime tropes strung together with a bad randomly generated dungeon romp, when I got to the crucifixion shit like it came out of Mazinger with 'the bad guys' just stringing everyone up to crosses for the hell of it and Jumpei being a fag randomly out of the blue for the sake of melodrama I just got sick of it, time-slog paced fucked writing without a payoff that speedhacks don't do enough to help with. The last Megami Tensei games with halfway bearable writing were the DS games, past that it's just bad. And DeSu2 was already getting up there to bad writing territory.

 

[MpuMngwana]

I've always heard nothing but praise for the Persona series, but I've never played any of the games. Now that P4 is on PC, I'll give it a shot. Is it very different from traditional JRPG's? I've played too many turn-based, save the world type of games.

It is quite different, in both gameplay loop (a mix of visual novel-style day to day high school sim/time managment and dungeon crawling) and setting (urban fantasy set in real world as opposed to a stock medieval setting). The combat is pretty good, though not as good as Megami Tensei proper, but the dungeon layout is a randomly generated mess. I found it to be a really cozy game, it just resonated with me for some reason and I found just hanging around the game world with the characters extremely satisfying, .

That said, if you already hate jRPGs and anime tropes, Persona won't magically change your mind.

 

[Derringer]

Based off what I saw Persona 5 is probably the most bearable of the 3D Persona games but they're all basically the same game updated for the past decade or so, they're all re-skins, just more polished with each update. The best thing you could say about 5 is that they put in actual dungeons and replaced the generic shadow monster garbage with Kaneko's designs. The 'Lupin' aesthetic if you can call it that doesn't really impress me.

 

[Silva]

P3 - good gameplay, gets stale due to repetitive dungeon, is (mostly) free of the visual novel trash of the others
P4 - shit
P5 - shit with so much style you'll want to play it anyway. But still shit.

My recomendation:

P3 on a PS2 emulator if you REALLY want to know Persona series.

Otherwise just play Nocturne.

 

[AdamReith]

Man, I blasted through this. First game I've completed in a long time.

You are kind of left wondering why they bothered having the dungeons in it at all though, felt more like a way to pad it out to be honest. At least in P3 there were story fights outside of the dungeons which tied it all together a little.

That ending was such deus ex machina bullshit but I enjoyed the (vast majority of the) journey so much I didn't care.

 

[Ebonsword]

You are kind of left wondering why they bothered having the dungeons in it at all though, felt more like a way to pad it out to be honest. At least in P3 there were story fights outside of the dungeons which tied it all together a little.

I think I prefer the dungeons in P4G to P3P. Or, at least, I like the fact that they are used to provide insight into the characters instead of just being a bland place to grind.

 

[AdamReith]

You are kind of left wondering why they bothered having the dungeons in it at all though, felt more like a way to pad it out to be honest. At least in P3 there were story fights outside of the dungeons which tied it all together a little.

I think I prefer the dungeons in P4G to P3P. Or, at least, I like the fact that they are used to provide insight into the characters instead of just being a bland place to grind.

Yeah, that's true. The music in Rise's dungeon was also quite good.

I still feel having thematic scenary without thematic enemies is a bit meh.

 

[Maxie]

 

[AdamReith]

That's it I'm calling the pound.

 

[AdamReith]

Ah who am I kidding, I love it.

 

[Lilliput McHammersmith]

But I didn't expect the giant space flea out of nowhere of the true final boss but I don't think anybody does. Is it even foreshadowed?

I just finished the game with the "True" ending. When you reference the "space flea" do you mean Ameno-sagiri or do you mean Izanami?

Ameno-sagiri for sure was not foreshadowed in any real sense, but if you were to pay attention in class, they tell you the story of Izanami and Izanagi. If you were paying attention at the beginning of the game, you would remember that your first Persona was called Izanagi. It may not be the best foreshadowing of all time, but they kept hinting at the fact that someone else was conducting it. I remember trying to follow up with the gas station attendant early in the game about the part time job.

Anyways, Izanami has a very cool character design IMO, and that boss fight was easily the most atmospheric of the whole game.*** I very much enjoyed the "True" ending and it was much more satisfying than I had felt about the game before that point.

***Besides Shadow Yosuke, which is probably the most memorable part of the game for me.