The GWJ JRPG Club - Q1 2019 - Persona 5!

LastSurprise wrote:

If you’re looking for enabling, you’ve come to the right place. Glad you’re loving the game! Any particular favorite moments or characters so far?

Enjoying the heck out of the battle system and making all the cat jokes.

Agathos wrote:

Before I had the good SP accessories, I was able to push surprisingly far by fusing a Persona with the Invigorate skill. "All" I had to do was switch back to it between battles so I got that bonus the first time Joker's turn came up. I do not necessarily recommend that you follow my example.

It's a pretty good practice to start a persona with some sort of ability that works for your party. Invigorate and the higher levels of it are good to have. I used one to start with higher attack for 3 turns for most of the game and then I think I ended up switching to invigorate 3 once my sp costs started to sit at like 50

And Palace Numéro Cinq is now complete! I did lose some progress at some point when I got too greedy. And I did die during the boss fight and had to do it again. Oups.

I liked that palace's music a lot, but overall I did not like the dungeon itself as much as the previous one. The bit about

Spoiler:

having to track down the access cards

dragged on just a tiny bit too long for my tastes.

I think I've been averaging on palace per week for the past three weeks. I don't think I'm going to maintain that momentum, but I am starting to be optimistic that I can finish this in March (in time for next quarter's game, whatever it ends up being). I will try to play some more this week.

Congratulations! Let us know when you see the change of heart scene, and when you get to flashback introducing the boss of palace #6. That scene (the flashback) really surprised me.

LastSurprise wrote:

Congratulations! Let us know when you see the change of heart scene, and when you get to flashback introducing the boss of palace #6. That scene (the flashback) really surprised me.

I assume the #6 boss is the

Spoiler:

guy responsible for MC's current situation. I might be wrong, though I'm pretty sure this asshole will show up at some point!

bobbywatson wrote:
LastSurprise wrote:

Congratulations! Let us know when you see the change of heart scene, and when you get to flashback introducing the boss of palace #6. That scene (the flashback) really surprised me.

I assume the #6 boss is the

Spoiler:

guy responsible for MC's current situation. I might be wrong, though I'm pretty sure this asshole will show up at some point!

Spoiler:

He will! But, who do you think the guy is?

LastSurprise wrote:
Spoiler:

He will! But, who do you think the guy is?

Actually, I have no idea

bobbywatson wrote:
LastSurprise wrote:
Spoiler:

He will! But, who do you think the guy is?

Actually, I have no idea :)

I want to say something, but I assume giving you any sort of palace number could be a spoiler...Well, I'll give you the total amount of palaces and let you decide to look:

Spoiler:

Including the final, there are 8, and MOST people agree that #5 is the worst and 3 are USUALLY rated in the top right after Futaba, which everyone seems to like the best. So you are in for some good times towards the end.

If I remember correctly, the dungeons do seem to get longer near the end and there is going to be a long period of time where you can grind mementos for xp/money/whatever part you want to create. Get those 6-piece fusions done. Also, you should start doing the Strength social link if you haven't already. The rank 10 ability is really useful for late game (although I won't say it's required) It definitely helps if you plan on doing new game plus though since compendium and money carries over (so you can buy insanely strong lvl 99 personas and run through most enemies early on)

KozmoOchez wrote:

Also, you should start doing the Strength social link if you haven't already. The rank 10 ability is really useful for late game (although I won't say it's required) It definitely helps if you plan on doing new game plus though since compendium and money carries over (so you can buy insanely strong lvl 99 personas and run through most enemies early on)

I started doing that this afternoon. I think I'm up to rank five at the moment. I believe I only have one social link left to unlock, and I'm getting pretty close to finishing one or two. Right now I'm trying to get my charms up so that I can continue with the doctor. (I also need to get my guts up so I can unlock the last one.)

The in-game clock on my save just broke 60 hours.

Palace 4 is down. It was probably my favorite one yet.

Spoiler:

I liked the desert/pyramid theming and it only took me one day to secure the infiltration route as opposed to the two that I've been taking for the previous palaces. SP adhesives 3 for the win. The boss was pretty hard even though I took it down on the first try. I feel like I'm always a bit underleveled? I was level 30 when I took it on. The plot also thickens since it seems like someone covered up Futaba's mom's murder and tried to pass it as a suicide. Poor Futaba felt responsible for her mom's death. Hoping that she'll start to open up and leave her room more with the help of the crew. Also, her persona is a UFO. Awesome

Haven't started any romances yet but I kinda wish there was male options. I want to ask out Ryuji and Yusuke darnit.

Forlorn Hope wrote:

Haven't started any romances yet but I kinda wish there was male options. I want to ask out Ryuji and Yusuke darnit. :D

Agreed!

5th palace done also. I thought it was pretty cool, not my favourite though. The school trip was very underwhelming though. So much more they could have done!

Mr GT Chris wrote:

5th palace done also. I thought it was pretty cool, not my favourite though. The school trip was very underwhelming though. So much more they could have done!

I thought it was pretty pointless overall. Oh well.

Do we really need 2 beach pickup scenes? Sigh...

Mr GT Chris wrote:

Do we really need 2 beach pickup scenes? Sigh...

Especially so close to one another.

Forlorn Hope wrote:

Palace 4 is down. It was probably my favorite one yet.

Nice! I loved the 4th palace. And, while I found the 5th one frustrating at times, I think the boss fight at the end might have been my favorite, both thematically and for how it played with the formula (6 and 7 are also exceptional).

bobbywatson wrote:
Forlorn Hope wrote:

Haven't started any romances yet but I kinda wish there was male options. I want to ask out Ryuji and Yusuke darnit. :D

Agreed!

It would be so interesting to see how either of them would react! Though I think Ryuji's character would have to be rewritten pretty substantially, or he would need to have a bunch more scenes added, to have a male-male romance make sense for him.

Question for the group: is everybody done with Palace 4, or on track to finish it by the end of the month? And, if so, what do you think about making spoilers through the end of Palace 4 fair game in posts, here? I think it would be interesting to talk about some of our favorite overall characters and moments after we hit the two-month mark, but it's hard to do that when that information gets hidden. Of course, if there are still people out there who haven't made it that far -- or who are planning to start the game, but are running late -- I don't want to ruin things for them!

I finished palace 4 yesterday. I am probably in the minority but I felt it went on a bit to long, but I felt that way about palace 3. And do be fair I feel that way about most games generally.

I am really enjoying the story though and am excited to spend a bit of time building skills and relationships rather than dungeon crawling.

One thing I do love though it the ability to grind if I want. I can do the same floors in the palaces or do mementos until I feel like I am tough enough to handle things. It allows me to make the boss fights as hard as I want based on how much time I am willing to spend grinding. Many games have the enemies disappear, or give tons less exp. so that boss fights are tackled at about the same level for all players. I guess that makes it easier to tweak the boss encounter but I like being able to make it harder or easier because of my choice.

If you are playing with the online stuff, when you pull up the screen that tells you what percentage of people did what that day, at the bottom, it also tells you the average level of someone at that date. This way you can judge for yourself. I will say, I think I played under that level for most of the game, then I shot way past it near the end.

I'm way below average level now, but that's because it's NG+ and though i'm lvl 13, my personas are 99 and my weapons/armor carried over. With those stats I can one shot almost anything with the MC (except when using the ranged weapon)

I always wondered if those level stats were inflated by people playing through for a second time. I’m definitely fighting as many shadows as the first time, and I must be at a higher level because of my early access to all of Mishima’s XP boosting abilities. But then again, some people on a second playthough might stay under-leveled on purpose, so that easily could balance out.

I don’t want to be under-leveled, though, because I know that fusing all the end-game personas that I didn’t get the first time (plus the bonus one) will cost a huge bundle of cash, and it’s more expensive the lower my level.

LastSurprise wrote:

Question for the group: is everybody done with Palace 4, or on track to finish it by the end of the month? And, if so, what do you think about making spoilers through the end of Palace 4 fair game in posts, here?

I say 'Spoil away', but then again I usually read all the spoilers anyway, so I'm not a good judge here.

Some progress notes: I finally maxed out my first confidant (Ryuji), witnessed the

Spoiler:

gory

change of heart of target #5 as my team was enjoying an evening at

Spoiler:

DisneyDestinyLand

, and I just discovered who is supposed to be the next target. That... came out of nowhere. I guess I will see how this happens over the weekend!

bobbywatson wrote:

Some progress notes: I finally maxed out my first confidant (Ryuji), witnessed the

Spoiler:

gory

change of heart of target #5 as my team was enjoying an evening at

Spoiler:

DisneyDestinyLand

, and I just discovered who is supposed to be the next target. That... came out of nowhere. I guess I will see how this happens over the weekend!

Right? I never saw it coming. But I think, as it’s explained, it makes total sense. And it definitely puts earlier scenes into a different context:

Spoiler:

As when Sae called Makoto “useless” during Kaneshiro’s part of the story.

It’s also really interesting to consider the concept of reforming a person who is being corrupted, but isn’t yet totally gone. And, there’s an ulterior motive at play, which you’ll see later :)

If you are worried about being leveled for end game persona fusing, you can always quickly farm exp during flu season with no effort.

Just secured my infiltration route to the second treasure, need to do some serious catching up this next month. Got distracted by other things this month but it should go quickly. I forgot how cringey all the stuff around Yusuke joining and Ann is. Almost wanted to just fast forward those scenes.

Malkroth wrote:

I forgot how cringey all the stuff around Yusuke joining and Ann is. Almost wanted to just fast forward those scenes.

That was pretty bad. Also pretty bad: the two gay characters that pop up once in a while.

I seem to recall that the localization drew a lot of criticism when the game launched. As English is not my first language, I don't really notice anything being wrong or terrible. So, I'm asking native English speakers: Is it really that bad? In what way exactly?

There's the content itself, the beach scenes, the two gay characters, Palace 2, but I don't think that's a localisation issue. I've been listening along with the Japanese audio and haven't noticed anything bothersome. But I often skip through the text fairly quickly so I might have missed something.

This week I have just had a terrible time getting motivated to play. I finished the 4th palace and know I am in for a few sessions of building my connections, skills, etc. and I just feel overwhelmed/bored.

My play time is at 44 hours and I know the game is around 80 so I am only half way done...and my brain just screams You are only halfway done! UGGGGG

Oh well real life kept me away from gaming a lot this week so I probably wouldn't have gotten much done but I am having to work to find my motivation.

There was some criticism of the localization. Some of the lines were clunky or odd. This article details some of the issues.

Some good points in there! Actually, it's one of those times I benefit from the Japanese audio because I tend to treat the written text as a confirmation of the meaning of what I heard rather than what someone would naturally say in English. In fact, using overly idiomatic English in a subtitle of say an anime tends to rile up fans of the Japanese voice track. On the other hand, using a barebones translation as your English dub script is just bad. Since most people are probably following along with the English audio (of which the acting was quite good I thought from the first couple of hours I experienced) then that is doing a disservice to a large part of your fanbase.

I was reading a bit about the confidants and... apparently

Spoiler:

Sun and Temperance

are not available past November? Did I read this right? I'm nowhere near maxing one of them and I'm at rank 9 for the other. Crap.

Quick progress update: Unlocked palace #6, went through it, and the card is about to be sent. Not sure I liked that one... Also, my in-game clock has gone past 70, and I'm starting to feel some fatigue... Maybe I should take a little break and play something else for a week.

Phew, already maxed them both! But that sounds like a dodgy thing to do to the player.

I'm just at the start of the 6th palace.

bobbywatson wrote:

I was reading a bit about the confidants and... apparently

Spoiler:

Sun and Temperance

are not available past November? Did I read this right? I'm nowhere near maxing one of them and I'm at rank 9 for the other. Crap.

I'm not sure if that's right, but I'd believe it. But if it's true, then they're not available past Nov. 18. You should be ok before then.

Likewise:

Spoiler:

If you're going for the "read all the books trophy, the school library is unavailable after 11/18.