The Persona 3 Thread

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This is what the cool kids are playing right now.

Handy link:

Stele wrote:

Igor's Index is an amazingly comprehensive program for a few Persona games that will let you find stats and fusion possibilities for every persona. It's fantastic.

So, re-playing as a girl in P3P, up to the middle of May, and loving it. Minor annoyance? You can no longer go to a shop at night and study before bed. It's one or the other. Boo. Hiss.

On the other hand I don't think you have to worry about being tired except from Tartarus.

Oh? I hadn't realized that. That's a fair trade, I suppose.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

You can no longer go to a shop at night and study before bed. It's one or the other. Boo. Hiss.

Is that something new in P3P? I think I did most of my shopping during the day in FES anyways.

Still going to grab this on PSN... just keep forgetting to grab a PSN card on the way home.

SixteenBlue, how in the hell did you make it to August/September in 16 hours? I've put 7.5 into P3P now and I'm in late May. There's no way I could do four more months in eight more hours.

One question: on PS2 I never really bothered with the abilities that let you fuse Personas into weapons. I seemed to get along just fine without it. However, I'm playing on hard now, so should I be looking into that? Is it a valuable system or just some extra stuff for completionists?

Haha, that's a good question. I did most of it a while ago. I think I'm at 8/1 though, you've only got a little over 2 months to go to catch up to me.

I'm a really fast reader and skip through text as fast as I can. I also run through Tartarus pretty hard. The fact that I can't quick save actually makes me try and power through more because sometimes I just want to stop but don't have a good point to.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

One question: on PS2 I never really bothered with the abilities that let you fuse Personas into weapons. I seemed to get along just fine without it. However, I'm playing on hard now, so should I be looking into that? Is it a valuable system or just some extra stuff for completionists?

You get some special stuff with the high level personae. I don't remember how much above the norm they were, but I vaguely recall getting a 2H sword for Junpei that does fire damage.

shoptroll wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

One question: on PS2 I never really bothered with the abilities that let you fuse Personas into weapons. I seemed to get along just fine without it. However, I'm playing on hard now, so should I be looking into that? Is it a valuable system or just some extra stuff for completionists?

You get some special stuff with the high level personae. I don't remember how much above the norm they were, but I vaguely recall getting a 2H sword for Junpei that does fire damage.

I've got a couple really strong weapons right now from fusing but I don't think it's a huge deal.

Ha, I'm also waist deep in this now. I'm in late May, I think - it's my first playthrough. It's an interesting balancing act between improving charm/courage/academics and developing social links and exploring Tartarus. Anyone got any advice? I've advanced my academics and charm a little, but nothing so far on courage. How much should I be focused on this stuff instead of developing S.Links?

Duffman wrote:

Ha, I'm also waist deep in this now. I'm in late May, I think - it's my first playthrough. It's an interesting balancing act between improving charm/courage/academics and developing social links and exploring Tartarus. Anyone got any advice? I've advanced my academics and charm a little, but nothing so far on courage. How much should I be focused on this stuff instead of developing S.Links?

My general approach is to do social link after school and stats at night. I worked at the coffee shop on the days I could because it makes you money and raises 2 stats and most activities only raise 1. Days I couldn't work I would often study.

I kept my Tartarus runs to a minimum and would just make them count. Once you get a ways in you don't have to worry about getting tired too much and you can do the entire run for the month in one trip if you want. I would usually do it in 2.

I don't know much, but if I learned anything from the GB Endurance Run of P4 it's that you never have enough courage.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I don't know much, but if I learned anything from the GB Endurance Run of P4 it's that you never have enough courage.

True. I think all of the stats will help you with your social links so they're all worth maintaining.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

SixteenBlue, how in the hell did you make it to August/September in 16 hours? I've put 7.5 into P3P now and I'm in late May. There's no way I could do four more months in eight more hours.

One question: on PS2 I never really bothered with the abilities that let you fuse Personas into weapons. I seemed to get along just fine without it. However, I'm playing on hard now, so should I be looking into that? Is it a valuable system or just some extra stuff for completionists?

Can you do weapon fusions in May? I thought that was a later addition.

Anyway, my experience (also from playing on 'Hard') is that if you're willing to give up one of your higher-level Personas, you can often get a weapon that's much stronger than what you can buy, and this can be a great boon. It can be a hard tradeoff, though, because the cost of resummoning a high-level Persona from the Compendium tends to be much higher than the cost of a new weapon. (Did the Compendium costs increase in P3P? I didn't play the earlier versions but based on what I've heard it sounds like the Compendium might have been much cheaper in those games.)

This is in addition to the special or unique weapon fusions, most of which do produce very powerful weapons (depending on where you are in the game when you get them).

Duffman wrote:

Ha, I'm also waist deep in this now. I'm in late May, I think - it's my first playthrough. It's an interesting balancing act between improving charm/courage/academics and developing social links and exploring Tartarus. Anyone got any advice? I've advanced my academics and charm a little, but nothing so far on courage. How much should I be focused on this stuff instead of developing S.Links?

There's a really interesting little loop there. Social links are the best way to get more powerful persona because they give them such big experience boosts when you fuse them. More powerful personas will obviously let you adventure more in Tartarus. Your non-combat stats (charm/courage/academics) are necessary for getting more social links. After a certain point, you won't be able to start new social links until you're smart enough, bold enough, or suave enough.

So the best piece of advice I can give is to try to develop it all as evenly as possible. Don't spend all of your time doing any one thing or you'll fall behind with the others and they're all interconnected.

grobstein wrote:

Can you do weapon fusions in May? I thought that was a later addition.

Not in May, but I think it'll open up soon. Elizabeth has started dropping hints about it, and I've started collecting loot that's used for it. I think it opens up after the June boss, but I'm not sure.

I'm just trying to plan ahead.

grobstein wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

SixteenBlue, how in the hell did you make it to August/September in 16 hours? I've put 7.5 into P3P now and I'm in late May. There's no way I could do four more months in eight more hours.

One question: on PS2 I never really bothered with the abilities that let you fuse Personas into weapons. I seemed to get along just fine without it. However, I'm playing on hard now, so should I be looking into that? Is it a valuable system or just some extra stuff for completionists?

Can you do weapon fusions in May? I thought that was a later addition.

Anyway, my experience (also from playing on 'Hard') is that if you're willing to give up one of your higher-level Personas, you can often get a weapon that's much stronger than what you can buy, and this can be a great boon. It can be a hard tradeoff, though, because the cost of resummoning a high-level Persona from the Compendium tends to be much higher than the cost of a new weapon. (Did the Compendium costs increase in P3P? I didn't play the earlier versions but based on what I've heard it sounds like the Compendium might have been much cheaper in those games.)

This is in addition to the special or unique weapon fusions, most of which do produce very powerful weapons (depending on where you are in the game when you get them).

I rarely have money problems in P3P. The few weapon fuses I did were followed my immediate re-summoning without thinking about the cost.

SixteenBlue wrote:
grobstein wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

SixteenBlue, how in the hell did you make it to August/September in 16 hours? I've put 7.5 into P3P now and I'm in late May. There's no way I could do four more months in eight more hours.

One question: on PS2 I never really bothered with the abilities that let you fuse Personas into weapons. I seemed to get along just fine without it. However, I'm playing on hard now, so should I be looking into that? Is it a valuable system or just some extra stuff for completionists?

Can you do weapon fusions in May? I thought that was a later addition.

Anyway, my experience (also from playing on 'Hard') is that if you're willing to give up one of your higher-level Personas, you can often get a weapon that's much stronger than what you can buy, and this can be a great boon. It can be a hard tradeoff, though, because the cost of resummoning a high-level Persona from the Compendium tends to be much higher than the cost of a new weapon. (Did the Compendium costs increase in P3P? I didn't play the earlier versions but based on what I've heard it sounds like the Compendium might have been much cheaper in those games.)

This is in addition to the special or unique weapon fusions, most of which do produce very powerful weapons (depending on where you are in the game when you get them).

I rarely have money problems in P3P. The few weapon fuses I did were followed my immediate re-summoning without thinking about the cost.

Interesting. I can't say I really had money problems, but I did sorta feel constrained by money.

The game only allows you to carry 10 million yen. By the last couple months of the game, I found that playing with the compendium could kill off a big chunk of that almost instantly. Like, if I used the Compendium to do one of Elizabeth's trickier assignments, I might spend 2-3 million yen. If I used a strong Persona for a weapon fusion, re-summoning could cost about a million yen. Do that stuff for a little while and you can easily go from maximum money to zero.

It bothers me a little because I think I'd rather be able to just play around with the Compendium, go ahead and re-summon some 80th-level dudes and fuse some stuff and see what happens. Hard to do because the price is high.

For me what makes P3P the definitive version is the female character. I feel like her dialog is much more interesting somehow. Plus, if you've already completed the game previously you can experience some of the social links from a different POV along with new romance options of course! I was actually pretty crushed to learn that there would be no new female MC for P4 Vita.

So, Darksiders is good, right?

Just beat the

Spoiler:

12th shadow

in P3P - goddamn, I love this game. I'm torn between my eventual NG+ being a second male runthrough, followed by a female runthrough, or just a female runthrough.

Does the NG+ add any new content to the game? I think there wasn't much in FES aside from an uber-boss.

shoptroll wrote:

Does the NG+ add any new content to the game? I think there wasn't much in FES aside from an uber-boss.

I don't think so, but I seriously doubt I'm going to see all the social links through on a regular playthrough

Tanglebones wrote:

I seriously doubt I'm going to see all the social links through on a regular playthrough

That's a very good point!

Word of warning: in P3P, if you're getting ready to go to Tartarus and ask Mitsuru how everyone is and she says, "Everyone can go tonight," she means that everyone is physically present to go, not that everyone is well enough to fight.

grobstein wrote:

(Did the Compendium costs increase in P3P? I didn't play the earlier versions but based on what I've heard it sounds like the Compendium might have been much cheaper in those games.)

A bit late on this, but it's because you're playing on hard. Compendium costs are way, way, way higher on hard. I had to spend about half of my accumulated 10MM on my hard run to re-extract my level 99 satan.

I'm currently stuck fighting

Spoiler:

the Change Relic on Level 36

. So close each time, and then we're all corpses.

Any hints or prayers would be welcome.

I just beat that one this afternoon.

What level are you? What Personas are you using?

KidDork wrote:

I'm currently stuck fighting

Spoiler:

the Change Relic on Level 36

. So close each time, and then we're all corpses.

Any hints or prayers would be welcome.

Don't bring Junpei. No really, just leave that 4th party slot empty. All those extra turns Junpei's giving him? Bad.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I just beat that one this afternoon.

What level are you? What Personas are you using?

Level 17. I finally managed to do it last night, putting Yukiko on Healing and Support and just having everyone else throw their strongest physical attacks. Still a very close thing. And a day before the full moon, as well.

Minarchist wrote:
grobstein wrote:

(Did the Compendium costs increase in P3P? I didn't play the earlier versions but based on what I've heard it sounds like the Compendium might have been much cheaper in those games.)

A bit late on this, but it's because you're playing on hard. Compendium costs are way, way, way higher on hard. I had to spend about half of my accumulated 10MM on my hard run to re-extract my level 99 satan.

Ah, thanks.

That may be the one thing I don't like about the 'Hard' difficulty.

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