Persona 4 Golden Catch-All

DSGamer wrote:

I failed out on normal as well. I hope I hit a rhythm with this game, but I fear I'll tire of micromanaging every decision of every day when it's not as clear what those decisions mean.

I may go back to easy. I like the combat but I don't have the patience to grind and I really want to see the end of this game. I like the characters here better than P3P and really want to see where everything goes.

EverythingsTentative wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

Do you not have the ability to leave the dungeon, purchase HP/SP then go back into the dungeon, like in P3P?

Not that I can see. You have to head home it seems.

Bummer, I'm having trouble on normal. Haven't died but once but I don't like getting to the boss with 1/4 HP/SP with all party members.

There's no regular portals back to the entrance like in P3P, but you can buy Goho-M at the store which will instantly warp you back to the entrance, and then you can resume from the highest floor you reached. Teddie even gives you a few for free on your first trip in.

cyrax wrote:

Those who fought through, bravo you masochists. :)

Yeah, well... I'm about ready to toss in the towel on Very Hard. I've now fought the 3rd true boss 3 times, and while I can see it being possible to win on this difficulty, there's just so many ways to lose rapidly that it's fairly frustrating. I had that boss down to 1/3 on the latest try, and then it used Double Fangs on Yu, and that was game over. I find the name of the game with Very Hard is overkill, you absolutely *must* be higher level and higher power than the enemies you are facing, or at a minimum on-par with them, to avoid getting one-shot by surprises.

I don't want to lose the 8 hours I've already put in, but given how long these games are I don't know that I want to keep doing this.

I almost just threw my Vita. I'm on

Spoiler:

Yukiko's boss fight

and there was a rhythm to it's attacks. So I knew when to guard, attack, and buff. It took about 10 minutes but I got it down to where I would only need to attack one more time and I would kill it. But instead of going in the same rhythm it had been in for the past ten minutes, it throws out a super attack just after I attacked, wiping out everyone. The only reason the Vita didn't go through the windshield (aside from the fact that I would have to buy a new one) is because it made since for the boss to change it's tactic just before death...But I don't have to like it!

Oh, I think I should clarify something about my earlier comment: Double Fangs on Yu killed him from 100% HP. This is a fairly regular occurrence on Very Hard actually.

DSGamer wrote:

I failed out on normal as well. I hope I hit a rhythm with this game, but I fear I'll tire of micromanaging every decision of every day when it's not as clear what those decisions mean.

Eh, it's not as important to perfectly maximize things as it might sound, especially when more seasoned players are talking. In Persona 3 it was very straight forward, do some kind of social link in the afternoon after school. Work on a stat at night (or go to the dungeon). That's it, as long as you are doing that, you're fine.

In P4 it's just a tiny bit more complicated, because (if I remember right) you can do social links at night sometimes as well. But still, the general idea is the same: take advantage of times to build social links. If there aren't any available, work on a stat.

Which social links you choose and which stats you work on will matter to experts with certain goals in mind, but nothing you do will break the game for you. I personally focus on a couple social links and max them out, then move on. This helps get higher level personas (which can in turn lead to fusing other higher level personas) but it's also just a nice way to see the story arcs of these social links.

Returning to the entrance another way:

Spoiler:

Cu Sith learns a skill called Traesto. It will take you back, too.

Plus things said in previous spoilers to help.

I'm hoping the game will give me time to work on social links again.

ahrezmendi wrote:

I was referring to:

Spoiler:

The Avenging Guard on the 5th floor of Yukiko's Castle.

My problem was I was way too low level, I spent an afternoon grinding the earlier floors to hit 8, fused a Forneus with Bufu, Garu, and Zio, and things went well after that. Trouble is now I'm at the next boss on the 8th floor, and I'm completely out of SP and SP items. I have another day before the fog hits, so I could just come back tomorrow to finish it. I was just hoping to not have to spend 2 days fighting a single boss, but I suppose that's on me for playing Very Hard.

I had the most epic battle with this guy on hard. I was not prepped for it and my whole team was basically out of SP. I still managed to barely pull it off with a little luck. I came out of the battle with everyone under about 10 health.

I had to travel back home after that fight. I just returned to level 5, spent about 10 minutes clearing stuff, found the stairs,explored a bit more on level 5, and then died via 2 suiciding fuzzy dice. Damn it!

Does going to the dungeons automatically tire you that night?

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

I was referring to:

Spoiler:

The Avenging Guard on the 5th floor of Yukiko's Castle.

My problem was I was way too low level, I spent an afternoon grinding the earlier floors to hit 8, fused a Forneus with Bufu, Garu, and Zio, and things went well after that. Trouble is now I'm at the next boss on the 8th floor, and I'm completely out of SP and SP items. I have another day before the fog hits, so I could just come back tomorrow to finish it. I was just hoping to not have to spend 2 days fighting a single boss, but I suppose that's on me for playing Very Hard.

I had the most epic battle with this guy on hard. I was not prepped for it and my whole team was basically out of SP. I still managed to barely pull it off with a little luck. I came out of the battle with everyone under about 10 health.

I had to travel back home after that fight. I just returned to level 5, spent about 10 minutes clearing stuff, found the stairs,explored a bit more on level 5, and then died via 2 suiciding fuzzy dice. Damn it! :)

I'm still on Very Hard.

I managed to clear this boss without tremendous difficulty. The first time I fought her with a partially exhausted party: about 200SP total and big recovery items burned. I got close to the end but the MC succumbed to Double Fangs; he had close to full HP but was in a Persona with low Endurance (which I think affects defense??). At this point I felt like I had a strategy that would work if I started out with a fully rested party, so I tried that, and voila it worked.

I think I went in with characters at level 10. In addition, I found two coats of armor that give +50HP each, which helps survive Double Fangs. (EDIT: forgot to add that I fused a Persona that is immune to Fire damage and casts Bufu and Zio; this really improves the MC's survivability for this fight. Think it's Senri, a Level 9 Empress or something. No S. Link and she doesn't get great Magic damage, but the safety was worth it.)

In all, I had to spend three or four days in the TV world. One or two days (don't exactly recall) exploring and beating the sub-boss, one day running the dungeon again for EXP and loot, and one day going in fresh against the boss. I am planning ahead for the next boss so that I have at least that many days free to go to the TV world. If I wind up needing much more, I will probably quit and restart on Hard.

I have had more than one frustrating death in this game, but so far I tentatively feel the rewards are worth it. I am also locked in and don't want to replay the last several hours on Hard, even if I think the fast-forward feature works pretty well.

I was about level 9 or 10 on that one, too.

BTW - question

Spoiler:

Was there something on level 5 that you are supposed to get? The glass key opened a couple doors. I can't recall if one of them was the stair door. I'm up on level 7 now, and it's the last day of rain. Not really sure how everything works yet. I'm guessing that I'll get drawn into the world and fight a steam bath boss that I heard mentioned. The level 7 enemies are a bit on the tough side just because I've gotten one-shotted a couple times trying to discover what the weaknesses are.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

Does going to the dungeons automatically tire you that night?

Yes, going into the TV is your only action for the rest of that day.

grobstein wrote:

I have had more than one frustrating death in this game, but so far I tentatively feel the rewards are worth it. I am also locked in and don't want to replay the last several hours on Hard, even if I think the fast-forward feature works pretty well.

I went out the same way, and I also have a persona that is strong vs Fire. I'm keeping my latest Very Hard save, but I went back and fast-forwarded through the earlier parts of the game. I would say if you aren't liking the "you could die to a random attack" aspect of Very Hard, it will take you approximately 1.5 hours to reach the same point in the game, so you won't be replaying a ton of content.

I'll give it another go, but last night I was super salty after losing once again. I've spent 3 real days playing the same floors, and just want to have an option to progress without more grinding.

I remember I tried a hard run of P3 on PS2, whiffed twice, got critted twice, and game overed the first shadow fight on the roof

Wow, I wish I had been using the SOS system from the beginning. It's kept me completely topped off on both HP and SP, and is super helpful on Very Hard. That extra 2/4 SP per fight is huge.

I also just fused the solution to all my problems - a Nul Fire Senri. Bring it the frak on, fire-based boss!

ahrezmendi wrote:

Wow, I wish I had been using the SOS system from the beginning. It's kept me completely topped off on both HP and SP, and is super helpful on Very Hard. That extra 2/4 SP per fight is huge.

I also just fused the solution to all my problems - a Nul Fire Senri. Bring it the frak on, fire-based boss!

How does the SOS system work exactly? I haven't even tried it. I didn't know you could get HP and SP using it while dungeon crawling. I'm always running out of SP.

You tap the icon (duh) and when you next get into a fight it broadcasts your help request to all other players who have also activated it. A notice appears to them, and if they tap the notice then when your fight starts a text bubble from them appears, cheering you on. Per player who cheers you on, you get 4HP/2SP, and you can get help from multiple players.

You'll also get requests for help, so you can tap away to help others out. It's a neat little system.

Oh, but it's only active for the next fight, so you have to re-activate it every time you finish a battle. That's a bit annoying, I wish it was just a permanent toggle.

That sounds cool. Will have to try it out tonight.

I beat the first boss last night. I had to roll back to a save from 3 hours of gameplay (and 7 days in the game) earlier. It worked, though. I was able to grind the castle more than 1 day and I stocked up on consumables. The boss fight went fairly smoothly, actually. I think I needed that learning time to figure out how to play the game, being new to the series.

I went through a similar experience with Dark Souls, but in Dark Souls there is really no penalty for back tracking and grinding and making mistakes and learning from them. In fact, that's kind of the point. So I was forced to roll back and try again. Thank goodness for fast forward.

ahrezmendi wrote:

You tap the icon (duh) and when you next get into a fight it broadcasts your help request to all other players who have also activated it. A notice appears to them, and if they tap the notice then when your fight starts a text bubble from them appears, cheering you on. Per player who cheers you on, you get 4HP/2SP, and you can get help from multiple players.

You'll also get requests for help, so you can tap away to help others out. It's a neat little system.

Oh, but it's only active for the next fight, so you have to re-activate it every time you finish a battle. That's a bit annoying, I wish it was just a permanent toggle.

Ah, that bolded part is cool. I assumed that the other players would participate in the battle or something so I never used it. That's cool! Say goodbye to low SP issues.

Oh geez...

Spoiler:

Shadow Yukiko is kicking my ass. All of the regular enemies were so easy that I didn't grind quite enough during lunch hours. I'm probably gonna have to start back a couple hours. I've even got 2 characters with bufu, but that's not enough. I just don't have any medicine and one of my characters is out of SP. I may be able to grind from level 1-8 one more time, but that's kind of a crapshoot too.

Yeah, that's the boss I've been complaining about for pages now. I'm still grinding up a few levels to beat it, SOS has helped a lot. I'm now 11, I'm aiming for 14 before I take another crack at it.

Spoiler:

Also, go get yourself Senri (Forneus x Orobos), that Nul Fire will help you out a lot.

Ok, it's been a while since I watched the Endurance Run, or what little I played of the game. Is it advised to spend more than the last day in the dungeon? Also, what other leveling tasks can you do and go to the dungeon?

I beat that boss at level 12. I had two party members with Bufu and one had...I think it's called double pierce. Also, Hero had Orobas which is resistant to fire.

I would use Bufu with Hero then do Double Pierce, instead of doing an all out attack because it would do more damage, and keep the boss on the ground. Then I would do a physical attack, and then the other characters Bufu.

It would then use it's ice resist. I would then guard. It would use a fire attack that would hit everyone. I would guard again. It would do another fire attack that only hit one person. I would then do physical attacks/buff. It would then loose it's ice resistance and "stare" at us. Start cycle over.

It will

Spoiler:

summons a prince. Ignore it! Once you get the main boss down to about 1/3 HP the prince runs away and can't be re-summoned. It should only take 2 more turns to get the prince to run away once it's summoned.

I did go into this fight rested, so I had MAX HP/SP. I never had to use a healing item only Dia.

Also, once the boss get's down to less than 200HP it will attack out of it's rhythm. So prepare to guard more late in the battle.

Oh, just FYI, I'm playing on normal.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Yeah, that's the boss I've been complaining about for pages now. I'm still grinding up a few levels to beat it, SOS has helped a lot. I'm now 11, I'm aiming for 14 before I take another crack at it.

Spoiler:

Also, go get yourself Senri (Forneus x Orobos), that Nul Fire will help you out a lot.

So, I went and grinded the first level twice without traveling to level 2. For whatever reason they let you travel to level 8 when you do that. Using the SOS allowed me to get full health/SP.

Spoiler:

Going in with full health and SP allowed me to beat her without trouble. I had a persona that was resistant to fire which I added a Bufu skill card to. I definitely did use up about 5 revival beads, though. Luckily, I at least had those handy. She gets easier half way through because she's unable to summon the minion. The minion is vulnerable to lightening. I even beat her just ignoring the minion for a long time. On a whim I finally switched to a persona for a bit with lightening to see if it would get him. Yup. Anyways... I think hard is a great difficulty level to play on. It would have been much easier if I had done a little more dungeon crawling in preperation rather than almost solely focusing on social links and leveling up my characters attributes.

I'm at 11 hours 13 minutes after completing that boss (level 8 of the dungeon) if anyone is curious as to how long it took me on hard difficulty. I could have probably done it much quicker if I did it over again, but I may have missed some social link opportunities.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

I beat that boss at level 12. I had two party members with Bufu and one had...I think it's called double pierce. Also, Hero had Orobas which is resistant to fire.

I would use Bufu with Hero then do Double Pierce, instead of doing an all out attack because it would do more damage, and keep the boss on the ground. Then I would do a physical attack, and then the other characters Bufu.

It would then use it's ice resist. I would then guard. It would use a fire attack that would hit everyone. I would guard again. It would do another fire attack that only hit one person. I would then do physical attacks/buff. It would then loose it's ice resistance and "stare" at us. Start cycle over.

It will

Spoiler:

summons a prince. Ignore it! Once you get the main boss down to about 1/3 HP the prince runs away and can't be re-summoned. It should only take 2 more turns to get the prince to run away once it's summoned.

I did go into this fight rested, so I had MAX HP/SP. I never had to use a healing item only Dia.

Also, once the boss get's down to less than 200HP it will attack out of it's rhythm. So prepare to guard more late in the battle.

Oh, just FYI, I'm playing on normal.

Spoiler:

It's hard to ignore the prince on hard. I think I could have done it, but it would have taken even longer. The battle took me about 30-40 minutes I think. After the battle, I was level 14. The prince is vulnerable to Zia, so you can hit her with Bufu then hit him with Zia to get your party attacks. It took me a long time to end up trying Zia on the prince and figure that out. On hard you have to go into guard mode quite a bit. There's that one point where she has the stare where you have to put your whole party into guard mode and there are a few points where it's a wise choice to put your main character into guard mode. Other than that, you just have to wait for the ice resistance to go down and hit the weak points. I always did a plain attack just after the ice resistance went up. The next turn I would go into guard mode to avoid the AOE fire.

Yep. I was happy I went through that. Even though I had to go back a few hours. I hope that doesn't happen to me again and I can stay ahead of it, but we'll see. This is literally my first Persona game. So it's all new to me. Also a couple random thoughts.

1 - Has anyone looked at the TV shows within the game? Those are a fever dream. The first one is a live "concert" of Persona songs.

2 - Since my only SMT game before Persona 4 was Devil Survivor I was pleasantly surprised to see the same attack names and demon names show up. Transferrable knowledge like in Final Fantasy.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

I beat that boss at level 12. I had two party members with Bufu and one had...I think it's called double pierce. Also, Hero had Orobas which is resistant to fire.

I would use Bufu with Hero then do Double Pierce, instead of doing an all out attack because it would do more damage, and keep the boss on the ground. Then I would do a physical attack, and then the other characters Bufu.

It would then use it's ice resist. I would then guard. It would use a fire attack that would hit everyone. I would guard again. It would do another fire attack that only hit one person. I would then do physical attacks/buff. It would then loose it's ice resistance and "stare" at us. Start cycle over.

It will

Spoiler:

summons a prince. Ignore it! Once you get the main boss down to about 1/3 HP the prince runs away and can't be re-summoned. It should only take 2 more turns to get the prince to run away once it's summoned.

I did go into this fight rested, so I had MAX HP/SP. I never had to use a healing item only Dia.

Also, once the boss get's down to less than 200HP it will attack out of it's rhythm. So prepare to guard more late in the battle.

Oh, just FYI, I'm playing on normal.

Spoiler:

It's hard to ignore the prince on hard. I think I could have done it, but it would have taken even longer. The battle took me about 30-40 minutes I think. After the battle, I was level 14. The prince is vulnerable to Zia, so you can hit her with Bufu then hit him with Zia to get your party attacks. It took me a long time to end up trying Zia on the prince and figure that out. On hard you have to go into guard mode quite a bit. There's that one point where she has the stare where you have to put your whole party into guard mode and there are a few points where it's a wise choice to put your main character into guard mode. Other than that, you just have to wait for the ice resistance to go down and hit the weak points. I always did a plain attack just after the ice resistance went up. The next turn I would go into guard mode to avoid the AOE fire.

I figured things would be different on other difficulty levels.

Spoiler:

The prince never tried to attack me. He would keep casting silence which would rarely hit. So after trying to boss the third time I just ignored him, it worked

As frustrating as it was, beating it was very satisfying. That feeling of satisfaction has strengthened my resolve. I don't think I will be going down to easy...yet!

Spoiler:

I just saw Yukiko and Chie combine their personas to do some type of fusion attack. Mind blown!

So apparently Persona 4 Golden has a feature that teaches you the Jungian philosophy of "personas and shadows". WTH? Well done, Atlas.

It concerns me how much the game is making me care for Nanako.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

It concerns me how much the game is making me care for Nanako.

Hehehehe

Minarchist wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

It concerns me how much the game is making me care for Nanako.

Hehehehe

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