The Persona 3 Thread

I did a lot of grinding last night. I tend to play this while watching TV to make it less boring. I still have about 20 levels left. I can't wait to get to the end and put it behind me because this game is a huge time sink, and I have a lot of shorter games I would like to be playing.

Enter Persona 4 Golden stage left.

I have been on the last week of January for about a month. I am just dreading the final boss fight because I heard it can be arduous and my level us only about 80 and I don't have any more motivation to grind for levels. That being said, I still love the game.

Assuming you have good personas for your main, which is more the issue at that level, 80 is more than enough to take on the final boss at normal difficulty. It's possible starting around 66-67 and is relatively simple on normal difficulty starting around 73-74.

I decided to poke around and read up on some of the games on sale on PSN right now, and I decided to take P3 FES for a spin instead of a second playthrough of P3P. I will eventually play through from the lady's point of view, but everything I read said that the story was more fleshed out in FES than P3P. The actual game has more flaws (can't control party members, other things), but for $5 I figured it was worth giving it a shot. I was surprised how much P3P differs from FES in terms of presentation. It also sounds like I'll get a more complete picture story via an epilogue. The production values are also worth pointing out as being much more impressive.

I will be playing through FES as a side project, but what this experience has done is make the purchase of P4 Golden ASAP a certainty.

Well, I finished just now. It was a good game definitely worth playing. I still say it was way too drawn out. I think it should have been about half as long, but whatever. I still had fun. It took me 88 hours and 27 minutes and I finished at Level 71 on normal difficulty.

Spoiler:

I played the final boss last night. I was having no problems and was getting rather lax paying attention to stuff. Got him to the death archana mode, and after getting him about halfway dead I accidentally sent my main to do a physical attack while the mirror was up. Dead instantly. I was so incredibly frustrated at having lost an hour's work that I put the game away until today. That boss isn't really hard on normal, but geez, it takes forever. I purposefully used a magic mirror at the end so that he would end up killing himself, which he did. In your face, I really liked how on the day before graduation everything gets quiet in the dorm except for a slight industrial fan humming sound. That was cool.

I'm sure I'm close to the end. About a week into November now, but playing on Easy.

Also, personal tale that may spoiler an earlier part of the game:

Spoiler:

I passed by the canned cat food last night at the grocery store and almost reached for some. I don't have a cat. I just remembered that there's a hungry cat who needs cans of cat food.

With that in mind, I hope the end of the game comes swiftly.

MrAndrewJ wrote:

I'm sure I'm close to the end. About a week into November now, but playing on Easy.

That's the same thing tuffalo thought. Yes the end is in sight. And yet, you're so far.

Well, I sunk a ton of time into this over the weekend. I think I stand a good chance of finishing it up this week.

Spoiler:

I'm in mid-January. I just cheezed the reaper (used my one armegeddon card) to open up Monad and now I'm pushing hard to hit 90 so I can fuse Messiah. Man, the bump in XP from Monad is fantastic. I went from level 78-83 in about 5 battles. Social Link-wise, at this point, I'm focused on Aigis and Mitsuru, but there's a ton that I only ever pursued half-way. Once I hit 90, I'm going to push through to the end. It's been great fun, but I'll be glad to move on something else for a while.

Getting back in. Just finished the August full moon event, which was exceptionally easy.

I'm probably being dumb:

Spoiler:

It's November 11 in-game. Easy difficulty. I'm level 73 and grinding up the last few levels to fuse Mara.

I have all of the required Personas to do it, after lucking into the more difficult one. Mara was one of my goals coming into this game. I will have that persona.

From the sounds of it, this is horrible overkill. But you're playing it right if you're having fun, aren't you?

MrAndrewJ wrote:

I'm probably being dumb:

Spoiler:

It's November 11 in-game. Easy difficulty. I'm level 73 and grinding up the last few levels to fuse Mara.

I have all of the required Personas to do it, after lucking into the more difficult one. Mara was one of my goals coming into this game. I will have that persona.

From the sounds of it, this is horrible overkill. But you're playing it right if you're having fun, aren't you?

Yes, on both counts.

Spoiler:

When I beat the game, I was level 74, on Normal

....and done. It was everything I hoped it would be.

Now I can go back to beating the game.

I finished it. Holy crap, I finally finished it. 83-ish hours on normal. I can't recall the last game that I played for that long. Now I finally feel free to play something else on my vita.

So, how does Persona 4 compare?

Depends on if you played P3P or FES.

If you played FES, the mechanics work better in P4. The story is just as good; less evocative in my opinion, but tighter and more personal overall, and with a more positive message. The dungeons at least change in theme if not in function.

You'll notice a lot of familiar character archetypes: Yosuke = Junpei, basically, and Yukiko = Yukari.

It's another truly great game. They knocked both of these out of the park.

The Persona 4 Golden thread is here. I haven't played Persona 4, so I'm especially looking forward to it after playing P3P. The changes made for the Vita version are going to be interesting, especially the Dark Souls mechanic where you can see bubbles of all the choices people commonly made.

Edit: Actually added the link.

Im being a filthy skimmer because I am sure others have asked. Where is a good starting point for the series?

IntangibleFate wrote:

Im being a filthy skimmer because I am sure others have asked. Where is a good starting point for the series?

Persona 3 and 4 are both great starting points. If you have a system that can play one of the remakes, do that rather than play the PS2 originals. But all the options are good.

Man the 4th block gets way harder.

I have to actually think about party composition now?

IMAGE(http://inserteyeroll.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/crying-baby-300x300.jpg)

Haha, I was being facetious, mostly commenting on how it kind of comes out of nowhere. It was helpful for boss fights up until this point but now it makes a huge difference. I like it.

SixteenBlue wrote:

Man the 4th block gets way harder.

I have to actually think about party composition now?

Up until about that point I let my AI partners do whatever they wanted. That changed quick.

I just finished Persona 3 Portable.

Spoiler:

I really want a hug now.

See everyone in the P4: Golden thread on Tuesday.

MrAndrewJ wrote:

I just finished Persona 3 Portable.

Spoiler:

I really want a hug now.

Spoiler:

But see, that's the beaty of it. You spent the whole game being a grossly manipulative bastard, telling people what they wanted to hear in order to further your own goals, using people as items rather than feeling, caring human beings, for what? So that, eventually, you could turn around and lay your life down for them. But did you know that when you were being the aforementioned manipulative bastard? I think probably not. It's a dark and evocative theme, but I love the way it wraps up. Absolutely one of my favorite endings ever. Lots to think about.

Although very true, I had probably a different set of goals in mind. I think, also, my personal experience in this moment added to the experience.

Game spoilers and a lot of being in touch with my inner feelings to come:

Spoiler:

Less serious answer: I wanted to save the world with my giant green wiener-monster. Was it really so manipulative that the dorm's goals and mine could co-exist so wonderfully?

The honest answer: I saw mutual benefit in almost all of the social links I finished except for the Moon and Magician. Those characters made me feel uncomfortable. The remaining social links felt like people helping each other in such a way that they both grew. There were a lot of heady questions, too. There were at least four Arcanas I didn't even start (including Mitsuru), and two more I only half finished. One of them went unfinished because it felt like it was manipulative to Yuka. It wasn't a complete victory. I even did that on purpose.

Personally, I have only recently started making friends again after very many years of being very alone. These friendships are through two different live theater pursuits. As such, the friendships came from people meeting over common goals. Many of these friends have surprised me in absolutely wonderful ways after rehearsal was done and the lights went out.

A lot of the concepts in P3P's plot reflected this new-all-over-again place I'm at right now. I was absolutely processing and enjoying the game through that filter. I was looking inward even if I kept also saying "it's just a video game." I'm personally learning what it means to have real friends again. Relating this work of fiction to my personal experience became more fun than worrying about getting those social links.

In short, my current personal status colored the game for me in a completely different way. I see what you're saying and would have been able to agree wholeheartedly a year ago. Today, it touched something else.

I just saw the Fin screen. What a wonderful ending. I can't add too much to what had already been said other than it made me feel pathetic for being so cynical. It made me just want to go make a friend, something I haven't done in over 5 years.

Now my enthusiasm for 4 is almost uncomfortable. The last game I was this excited for was Journey. I know I'm going to miss the evokers though.

I'm downloading FES on my PS3 as I type this. I don't really know what I'm getting into, but I've heard enough people talk about how great the series is that I want to try it.

Anything I should know as I get my feet wet?

Demiurge wrote:

I'm downloading FES on my PS3 as I type this. I don't really know what I'm getting into, but I've heard enough people talk about how great the series is that I want to try it.

Anything I should know as I get my feet wet?

Be prepared to do some grinding, they'll only be a few times that you'll actually need too and with careful planing you might not even need it, but you should still be prepared for it. And don't expect to understand how the fusion works any time soon, luckily the basics are easy enough and they'll get you trough the game, and there's also a pretty good program you can download that will do all the hard work for you, unfortunately I don't remember what its called.

But most importantly realize that this is a seventy-hour game, you'll probably still be playing it april.

Social links and smart fusion beat grinding any day of the week once your team has a bit of stamina.

Minarchist wrote:

Social links and smart fusion beat grinding any day of the week once your team has a bit of stamina.

That's what I meant by careful planing. (Which was supposed to be planning, but if the dictionary I have installed on my browser is to be believed then telling him to be careful while planing is still good advice. ;))

I mean, there will still be a little bit of grinding.

Unless you decide to complete all of Elizabeth's requests, in which case no real grinding should be necessary. The great items coupled with the extra .5-.75 times you'll have to run each block should get you where you need to be. On normal, at least.