The Persona 3 Thread

Well, I banged my drum a lot when P3P was first announced to point out that direct control of characters was in direct conflict with the pure ethos of the game, but everyone else was too busy going "OMG! Direct controlz!"

Minarchist wrote:

Well, I banged my drum a lot when P3P was first announced to point out that direct control of characters was in direct conflict with the pure ethos of the game, but everyone else was too busy going "OMG! Direct controlz!"

:roll:

To be fair, I love direct control, but it's fun to do a thought experiment and know what I am missing out on. =) That was a good read, thanks.

necroyeti wrote:
Minarchist wrote:

Well, I banged my drum a lot when P3P was first announced to point out that direct control of characters was in direct conflict with the pure ethos of the game, but everyone else was too busy going "OMG! Direct controlz!"

:roll:

To be fair, I love direct control, but it's fun to do a thought experiment and know what I am missing out on. =) That was a good read, thanks.

I agree that from a philosophical perspective the indirect control makes thematic sense, and that it's a bummer that the social link system was made easier. That's the only change I think hurts the experience while actually playing. It takes out some of the frisson of dating two girls or deciding to neglect a friendship to get other stuff done.

But from the perspective of someone coming from P4 back to P3 (which makes up much of the audience for P3P) it would be an incredibly tough sell to convince someone they are missing out on vital thematic elements by giving up direct control. (Plus that dang save point in the high school!) Thus I will continue to recommend P3P to anyone who hasn't played P3 already, though I was quite on the fence when I started playing some months ago. I actually played both versions simultaneously until I settled on the smoother experience of the PSP version. Anyone that isn't intimately familiar with the game already is just as likely to get frustrated by earlier versions as they are to 'see the light', so to speak.

Minarchist wrote:

Well, I banged my drum a lot when P3P was first announced to point out that direct control of characters was in direct conflict with the pure ethos of the game, but everyone else was too busy going "OMG! Direct controlz!"

:roll:

As the article points out though, this is only an issue for people who have played P3 or FES. I can't speak for others but I did not play either of those, so from my perspective all the changes made in P3P weren't in conflict with anything.

Also that was a very good article, thanks for sharing.

I just started playing P3P on my PSP last weekend. I am very early in the game: beat the first block in Tartarus, just joined the Student Union Something when asked by Mitsuru. Overall, I do enjoy the gameplay, perhaps except for the sudden spikes in difficulty which I expect after battling the first Tartarus block boss, and having played Strange Journey in the past...

One thing which could be better though is the calendar - I wish I could access it from the menu anytime! Especially when deciding whether I want to hang out with somebody or meet them on a certain date - I'd like to see if I have anything planned for that day already.
Also, I joind the Track & Field Team, and I can't see the team workout days marked in the calendar - this kinda sucks. I'm slightly concerned that I'd miss a workout day because of that.

MsbS wrote:

I just started playing P3P on my PSP last weekend. I am very early in the game: beat the first block in Tartarus, just joined the Student Union Something when asked by Mitsuru. Overall, I do enjoy the gameplay, perhaps except for the sudden spikes in difficulty which I expect after battling the first Tartarus block boss, and having played Strange Journey in the past...

One thing which could be better though is the calendar - I wish I could access it from the menu anytime! Especially when deciding whether I want to hang out with somebody or meet them on a certain date - I'd like to see if I have anything planned for that day already.
Also, I joind the Track & Field Team, and I can't see the team workout days marked in the calendar - this kinda sucks. I'm slightly concerned that I'd miss a workout day because of that.

If you go into the S. Link section of the menu the descriptions tell which days the S. Links are available. In the case of the athletics club it's just a backdrop for Kazushi's S. Link. You can just find Kaz in the classroom rather than going to the actual gym area.

In terms of the difficulty spikes it's nowhere near the level of Strange Journey. It's of course harder if you don't switch everyone to Direct Control. Since the indirect control options are stripped down compared to P3 original it's probably best to switch to direct control.

imbiginjapan wrote:

In the case of the athletics club it's just a backdrop for Kazushi's S. Link. You can just find Kaz in the classroom rather than going to the actual gym area.

Just Kazushi? Dang, I was hoping I would get to know the tanned brunette girl (Yuki?) a tad better...

IMAGE(http://perfectlycursedlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2790387-IF-you-know-what-i-mean.png)

MsbS wrote:
imbiginjapan wrote:

In the case of the athletics club it's just a backdrop for Kazushi's S. Link. You can just find Kaz in the classroom rather than going to the actual gym area.

Just Kazushi? Dang, I was hoping I would get to know the tanned brunette girl (Yuki?) a tad better...

IMAGE(http://perfectlycursedlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2790387-IF-you-know-what-i-mean.png)

Oh, you will.

MsbS wrote:
imbiginjapan wrote:

In the case of the athletics club it's just a backdrop for Kazushi's S. Link. You can just find Kaz in the classroom rather than going to the actual gym area.

Just Kazushi? Dang, I was hoping I would get to know the tanned brunette girl (Yuki?) a tad better...

IMAGE(http://perfectlycursedlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2790387-IF-you-know-what-i-mean.png)

Oh, yea, I forgot about Yuko. Don't worry, you'll have your chance there too. :p

The broad point is that joining the club generates social links, but those links will have their own schedules.

I think I'm closing in on the end of this...

Spoiler:

New Years Eve has come and gone, I chose not to kill Ryoji because every gaming instict I had was crying out that was the fast track to a bad ending. I'm now 7 days away from the battle with Nyx... I'm still not quite getting the feeling that it'll all be over then (and once again the calendar continues past January 31st), so I suspect there's STILL more to go after that, but I can't imagine there's a lot more.

I'm looking forward to finishing this up soon, it'll be the first JRPG I've completed since Final Fantasy X if so. I've really enjoyed the ride, but I want to knock this over so I can dedicate more time to FFIX and Soul Sacrifice.

As an aside, I've been playing the game almost exclusively letting the AI control my squad-mates. The only time I've changed it is that one fight against Natural Dancer, which required a lot more micromanagement to complete. Other than that, I mostly just leave them on the default AI, and they're suprisingly capable (although not great at SP management over the long term... which would be a bigger issue if I didn't now have Escape Route and maxed out Yen).

I've also finally started paying more attention to the Personas I have available as well, my only real nod to that up to this point has been making sure I have access to single target and mass target versions of all the elemental effects. And I mostly ignored the physical attacks, which seemed dangerous to rely on considering they're cast from HP.

Now that SP is less of an issue, I'm finding that having mass & single target versions of spells is less important, and the physical attacks can be devastating if used correctly, so I have a couple of Personas dedicated to covering all 3 physical attack types, and most of my Personas have at least one physical attack of some sort. I don't have mass versions of all elements, but I've found I don't really need them anymore.

Cybele is my current favourite, she has both Weapon Master and Spell Master, which makes my attacks hit like a truck, and my spell cost is halved. She has Agidyne and Ziodyne, as well as Mabufula (couldn't get Mabufudyne unfortunately), and she also has Myriad Arrows, which does amazing damage, and almost always crits against grouped enemies, giving me another turn. I think she also has a couple of Auto-buff spells, but I can't remember which off the top of my head. I was also building up a lot of stat increase cards, which I was afraid to use, so I dumped them all into her and maxed out her strength, magic and luck. I suspect she'll be my main Persona in the up coming battle, but I also have some higher level Personas with lesser stats rounding out my roster, and at least one with Mediarahan for emergencies.

I'm feeling confident! I love the expertise curve in this game, in the early game you don't need to worry about any of the crap I've just mentioned above, but new concepts are introduced slowly, and by the end you can really focus on the small details to tweak your Personas just so.

Edit: Apparenly I never pronounce the Personas correctly either, I usually find out when the main character calls out their name. I thought Cybele was si-BELL, but it's SI-bul-EE. I didn't even try to guess with Susano-o. I just call him Susan.

Redwing wrote:

I think I'm closing in on the end of this...

You're a lot closer than the calendar might suggest. Time flies when you're not killing gods.

12 hours into the game,and I keep chuckling when I see 'You have welcomed Slime into your heart'

MsbS wrote:

12 hours into the game,and I keep chuckling when I see 'You have welcomed Slime into your heart' :-)

I've welcomed all sorts of weird crap into my heart in this game... I haven't welcomed Satan into my heart yet, but I'd like to!

Aaaand done! Good grief but that was a long game, well worth it though. I have P4G ready to go, but I might wait for a bit before starting it, I need to get some more time into Soul Sacrifice and I'd like to finish up Final Fantasy IX again too. I probably won't be able to resist starting it up soon though, heh!

Yeah, for maximum enjoyment I would suggest at least a 3 month hiatus.

I did Devil Summoner to Devil Summoner 2 to P3P to P4G, pretty much in a row, with some Strange Journey in the middle.

The worst it did was spoil me on all the character focus. Now it's hard to play a game that doesn't draw me into that kind of human experience.

Making me want to play FES again.

That makes me miss the soundtrack so much! I need to listen to it again!

Adore the saturation in the trailer.

So Persona 4 is out on PSN/PS3 now. I realized I never actually finished this. I got through Dec and got distracted with some other games and a little frustrated that I wasn't going to be able to complete all the social links I wanted.

Figured I might as well play that last month and see the ending before moving on to the next game. I rewatched some monthly video cutscenes on youtube to refresh me on where the story was and dove back in yesterday. Played through the first couple weeks of Jan, and finished off some social links. Decided to head to Tartarus and go ahead and clear out a boss or two, instead of saving it all for the end of the month.

Spent an hour or two dungeon crawling tonight. Got to boss floor. Saved. But it looked like that old save bug was popping up again. The save spot that I made didn't show up when I went to save again. So I saved in a 2nd spot. And then I did some fusion and saved in that same spot, which was showing up this time.

Heading back up to fight boss. Died. Went to load save... both are gone.

2+ hours just completely gone. I cannot believe they haven't fixed this stupid bug. I can't believe I put up with it for 100 hours. I guess I might as well watch the rest of the ending on youtube and screw it. It's already stressful enough to deal with the artificial difficulty of a game that can't save anywhere, but even more frustrating when I jump through the hoops of saving and then get f*cked over and watch my saves deleted for no good reason. Ugh.

Yuck. I was frustrated enough with hours of lost progress due to dying on a boss not due to a bug. Thank god P4G fixed that issue. That's pretty awful. I say just wait for the movie. I sure hope they have a way to rent it because I will never pay the $75-$100 they are asking for the blu-ray.

Ugh. I didn't know about the save bug in the PSN version. That stinks, Stele.

Apparently it was in the original PS2 version too just not as prevalent. So the PS3 version you have an emulated PS2 memory card or whatever that it loads up. It says checking PS2 memory, 8 MB. I guess maybe it saves as if you have 2 memory cards because the save file is 17MB though?

Anyway when I go to save/load a game it shows 16 separate save slots. Back when I was playing before I ran into the bug several times. You go to save and there's nothing in one of your save slots that you know had something in it before. If you try to save over that slot, when you go to load there will be nothing there. Something like that. It's an odd situation but I've seen it happen several times. What ends up happening is the slots become completely unusable. You can't save to that slot or load from it. It reports no saved game there when you try to load or when you try to save it just will give a "save failed" message. Really messed up.

So my current game if I try to load it will show data in slots except for 3, 4, 6, 7, and now 15 I lost tonight. Out of 16 slots I've had 5 corrupted and lost saves. But I was obsessive about saving before/after fusing, and using the various slots after I first encountered the bug, so I never lost more than 10-15 minutes of progress before. Tonight I got hit losing two save slots and that sucked.

There are two different error messages. Save failed. Or "memory card not inserted". Both seem to do the same thing though, you can't use the slot ever again.

Now I did google tonight after being frustrated and found this:

We recently updated the package file for Shin Megami Persona 3 FES PS2 Classic on PSN in order to fix a serious bug. If you've encountered this issue, the only way to fix the issue for current consumers is to redownload the game from the PlayStation Store. This bug would crash the game at a certain point within the game, but again, it has been fixed.

Your existing save file from the previous version will still be valid, so you can still continue your progress. Simply go to the PlayStation Store, re-download the game by visiting your Download List, or just searching for it in the Store, and you'll be all set.

The development teams extend their sincerest apologies to those encountering this bug, and hope that you will continue to enjoy Shin Megami Persona 3 FES on PS2 Classics.

And some threads at gamefaqs confirm that since installing that version they have no more of the weird flickering on certain levels of Tartarus, and also have had no save bugs. Looks like that patch was a couple months after I first bought and played the game.

So I deleted my current game, re-downloaded, and am now re-installing it. IF (big if) it actually restores me access to my saves that got corrupted today I might try to finish it after all.

Wish I had thought to search for that yesterday, but I'm used to games patching automatically on PS3. I guess PS1/PS2 classics don't have an auto-patch, but you just have to download the whole game installer. And I remember when I first had the save bug, I thought I searched on gamefaqs then and found a lot of other people with the issue and a general consensus that no one thought they would ever patch it. Nice to be wrong I guess.

EDIT: Did not recover the save from earlier. But it did let me use the two slots that got corrupted tonight. The old slots (3, 4, 7) are still corrupted, forever it seems.

...huh. I didn't even know there was a save bug. And I played through the whole game twice!

Sounds awful, though. Thanks for warning me away from getting the PS3 version.

So - I bought Persona 3 FES about a month ago for my PS3 on PSN. Just to be clear: does this mean I need to download it again?

concentric wrote:

So - I bought Persona 3 FES about a month ago for my PS3 on PSN. Just to be clear: does this mean I need to download it again?

It looks like that thread is from 2012, so I'd say you're okay.

Yeah and I would still use multiple save slots, just in case. I mean you get 16 of them. Might as well rotate through them. For any JRPG that lets me I always use 3-5 save slots anyway, just in case I screw something up and need to go back a few hours.

So... f*ck the final boss. I want 2 hours of my life back.

I may just quit after all. Spent the whole weekend playing through the last month, doing one big Tartarus run, and generally getting my party and personas up to a good level. I am level 76. Every general strategy topic I've seen says you should be about 70 to beat the boss. And once you get above 75 it starts getting easier.

They all mention the final phase being the worst part, and the random status effects. And how if you get charmed and heal the boss you could undo tons of work. So I have like 3 personas with Null Charm, just in preparation for this fight.

So first you spend an hour+ slogging through the first 12 phases. Only a couple of them are difficult, mainly the ones with status effects. I kept losing Junpei, but that's because he was only level 66 I think. Mitsuru and Yukari are more like 72 and 74, in much better range. But both of them did die once or twice at some point because by the final phase the turn order was me, boss, boss, then the other 3.

Then the real final boss. This part of the fight alone would have been enough. The 12 other phases could be a pre-fight. With high resist to everything, I'm pretty sure this one phase took almost as long as the rest of the fight. So then of course I survive the ridiculous Moonlight Gown part. Junpei kills himself a couple times. But mostly the group is intact. I even switch Junpei to heal/support, so he boosts the team defense and then he still attacks like 2 out of 3 turns. So everything is going along nicely.

Then the Night Queen bullsh*t starts. Junpei dies first. I'm in a bind at this point. Either I revive Junpei or I use Mediaharan to heal the whole party so we can survive the next round of Night Queen. If we're not healed up and we all die then what does it matter if Junpei is alive? I have to hope Yukari will revive him. Then of course she gets panic on the next go round, so she can't cast anything. Now I have to either heal or cure her, and no chance to get Junpei up. I cure. We survive, but Mitsuru gets knocked out. Instead of reviving one of them, Yukari heals the two of us. Thanks. So now I get Mitsuru back up. We survive that wave and I get Junpei back up. Everything is looking like it might work out now. I get poisoned but Junpei even cures me. I heal the group and then the boss gets really nasty. Instead of just two attacks, it targets Mitsuru's fire weakness, for a "1 more", then uses Night Queen, which enrages me and kills Mitsuru, and then uses Megido almighty attack, which kills Junpei. So it's me and Yukari and I'm enraged. She actually heals me instead of reviving the others, which might be a good thing? But then I can't do anything but attack. Actually do a ton of damage, and the boss is down to a sliver of health. I think I might win. But then the next Night Queen puts her in panic again, so she can't heal me. Still enraged, I come so close to killing it. I can't believe it's not dead. And then of course it wipes me out on the next attack.

2 hours wasted. 1 good round away from winning. So pointless, so random. Maybe I should have got Junpei up that one time instead of healing the group, but then again it probably would have killed me on that wave instead of later. Very crazy fight. And seriously who thought a 90-minute at best fight was a good idea without a freaking save point?????

If it let me save right before that last form I would probably try it again. As it is I might just give up and watch the ending story on youtube. From what I can gather from forums, I won't be the first or last person to abandon this game at the final boss. What a joke.