The Persona 3 Thread

Through most of the game, I did pretty well just getting to the top of each block then going back to do a handful of side quests. They do help.

Any additional grinding I did was out of want more than need. That was on easy, though.

MrAndrewJ wrote:

Through most of the game, I did pretty well just getting to the top of each block then going back to do a handful of side quests. They do help.

Any additional grinding I did was out of want more than need. That was on easy, though.

I had a similar experience and I was playing on Hard.

One additional thing I would say (this applies especially on Hard): "grinding" in P3 is not like grinding in other games, where you mindlessly churn through lots of enemies that pose less and less of a threat. The enemies that you fight to get good experience rewards are actually threatening, and they can and will wipe you out if you are careless. And it's hard to heal and restore TP in the dungeon, which means that you have to carefully manage your resources, and sometimes have to do whiteknuckle battles and escapes with the party in bad shape. Grinding is a lot more active and interesting than in other games.

Much like Dark Souls in that sense. But, y'know, before Dark Souls came out.

Minarchist wrote:

Much like Dark Souls in that sense. But, y'know, before Dark Souls came out. :)

That applies to most rogue likes too.

So far I've been able to handle everything thrown at me on Normal with just one single run to the top each month and I've only missed a couple quests so far. No grinding, no FAQ.

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?

I don't want to get into spoiler territory, but here are some general suggestions:
- Check out Igor's Index, it'll help you figure out how to fuse personas you need/want.
- Don't be afraid to use the persona registry. As long as you have the cash, you can use the registry to experiment and play with fusions.
- If you register your persona right before you unlock a heart item or card, you can retrieve the registered version later with the item/card still locked and get multiple items.
- The game sets up social links as an important way to min/max your character - and they are - but I found that the stories revealed when I went through with them were mostly very good. The brilliance of the game is how these tasks pay off at the end.
- Don't forget to work on your character's stats (Courage, Academics, Charm). They affect whether or not you can even begin many of the social links.
- In combat, analyze right away. In FES, you don't have control of your party members and their AI will become much more effective against analyzed enemies.
- Don't push yourself. If you character gets tired, let him rest. Getting sick is a giant pain!

I now have a vita on the way. The race is on to finish off P3P so I can lay it to rest along its dedicated console, my PSP Go. I made it to the top of the 6th block before school had even started in Janurary, but I still have a lot of social links I want to squeeze in everything wraps up.

It is finished: 112 hours, plvl 77, Narcissus lvl 68 (my one true persona). I really want to make a run at NG+ with the female protag, but that will have to wait.

So I'm at mid November. Taken down the first two bosses in Tartarus for the month. I'm assuming there's more than two this month but haven't found out yet. I'm only at 37 hours though. I know I play fast, but damn.

November is the month when everything gets interesting. So sit tight.

SixteenBlue wrote:

So I'm at mid November. Taken down the first two bosses in Tartarus for the month. I'm assuming there's more than two this month but haven't found out yet. I'm only at 37 hours though. I know I play fast, but damn.

Geez. I'm in early/mid November,

Spoiler:

the week before the class trip apparently, the teacher just talked about it last time I played

and am closing in on 80 hours played. I do a lot of Tartarus time and persona fusing/grinding, apparently. And in spite of that, don't feel like I have a particularly optimal or powerful set of personas!

I suspect at this rate I'm going to top 100 hours before I reach the end of the game.

Minarchist wrote:

November is the month when everything gets interesting. So sit tight. :)

Oh it's already crazy interesting. I'm excited.

It's interesting, I think the story is the great and don't want it to be any shorter but I think the game is too long. That leaves cutting out the dungeon times but I'm not sure if changing that ratio will make the game any better.

SixteenBlue wrote:

So I'm at mid November. Taken down the first two bosses in Tartarus for the month. I'm assuming there's more than two this month but haven't found out yet. I'm only at 37 hours though. I know I play fast, but damn.

I can't believe how close we are together! I just beat the first boss of November and am almost to the second. I'm at ~75 hours though b/c I've spent time messing with fusions a lot and let it sit idle a few times.

Jamull99 wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

So I'm at mid November. Taken down the first two bosses in Tartarus for the month. I'm assuming there's more than two this month but haven't found out yet. I'm only at 37 hours though. I know I play fast, but damn.

I can't believe how close we are together! I just beat the first boss of November and am almost to the second. I'm at ~75 hours though b/c I've spent time messing with fusions a lot and let it sit idle a few times.

I haven't done a ton of fusing. I did early in the game since it helped me get much higher personas faster, but I've been pretty happy with what I pick up from Shuffle Time lately.

I mainly keep fusing to fill up the compendium with new personas so that when I hit the final portions of the game, I can put together a specific batch of personas by fusing whatever I need through my compendium's custom-built personas.

Question for people who have finished (or almost finished)

Spoiler:

Should I not reach the top of the 5th block in November? I guess the whole thing is available in one shot and the perfectionist in me says to have it all done by the 12/2 full moon. I've already done something like 45 floors of it. Should I save some for later so I don't go insane grinding 90 floors in one shot or whatever it ends up being?

It seems to me that you'll be fine going at it however you please. If you do it all now you'll just end up being stronger for it. You can take your time off and work on social links for a while, but inevitably more people are going to end up lost in Tararus and you'll have to go after them and re-run parts of it around the week before the full moon. The Elizabeth quests to retrieve old documents are the game's suggested guidelines for reaching the end of a block, so just keep turning those in and you'll be fine.

psoplayer wrote:

It seems to me that you'll be fine going at it however you please. If you do it all now you'll just end up being stronger for it. You can take your time off and work on social links for a while, but inevitably more people are going to end up lost in Tararus and you'll have to go after them and re-run parts of it around the week before the full moon. The Elizabeth quests to retrieve old documents are the game's suggested guidelines for reaching the end of a block, so just keep turning those in and you'll be fine.

OK cool then I'm well ahead of where I need to be, I think. I have a month and a half to get the last document, and that's about it.

People lost in Tartarus are optional, as I've finally had the courage to discover. There's no penalty, just rewards, as far as I can tell.

SixteenBlue wrote:

People lost in Tartarus are optional, as I've finally had the courage to discover. There's no penalty, just rewards, as far as I can tell.

Even social link characters?

Jamull99 wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

People lost in Tartarus are optional, as I've finally had the courage to discover. There's no penalty, just rewards, as far as I can tell.

Even social link characters?

I think so, or maybe I just got lucky. I know I rescued someone that Elizabeth told me was an acquaintance and nothing different happened.

I really hate the way the difficulty jumps up in Tartarus. Around floor 230 it just gets brutal.

All rescue requests are optional, even the social link characters. You lose access to that link, and any links that require it, so it's not a good idea to fail those requests.

ahrezmendi wrote:

All rescue requests are optional, even the social link characters. You lose access to that link, and any links that require it, so it's not a good idea to fail those requests.

Interesting. I don't think I missed any, but not sure..

ahrezmendi wrote:

All rescue requests are optional, even the social link characters. You lose access to that link, and any links that require it, so it's not a good idea to fail those requests.

Ok this is what I thinking would happen. I haven't missed one yet. I really need to hurry up and finish this so I can start p4g!!

SixteenBlue wrote:

I really hate the way the difficulty jumps up in Tartarus. Around floor 230 it just gets brutal.

There must be something wrong with me. I read this sentence and immediately thought "aw yeah, bring it on!"

...maybe I should restart my P4G game and put it on Sadistic Difficulty.

Farscry wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

I really hate the way the difficulty jumps up in Tartarus. Around floor 230 it just gets brutal.

There must be something wrong with me. I read this sentence and immediately thought "aw yeah, bring it on!"

...maybe I should restart my P4G game and put it on Sadistic Difficulty. ;)

It'll still be too easy, starting around the 4th zone. You'll get one-shot a lot, but the rest of the time will be easy.

ahrezmendi wrote:
Farscry wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

I really hate the way the difficulty jumps up in Tartarus. Around floor 230 it just gets brutal.

There must be something wrong with me. I read this sentence and immediately thought "aw yeah, bring it on!"

...maybe I should restart my P4G game and put it on Sadistic Difficulty. ;)

It'll still be too easy, starting around the 4th zone. You'll get one-shot a lot, but the rest of the time will be easy. ;)

That was pretty much my experience with P3 once I got my Narcissus with all the spells I needed. Either I stab them for first move, hit all their weaknesses, and destroy the shadows before the turn leaves my MC, or I screw up, grant enemy advantage and have to suffer a 30% chance of party wipe while I wait for a chance to move. Once I learned how to reset agro on the shadows to guarantee back-stabbing it got a lot easier. (my impatience was usually my undoing)

Done!

Level 77, 53 hours. I'm fast.

Spoiler:

The last boss killed himself thanks to my magic mirror. Seemed fitting.

SixteenBlue wrote:

Done!

Level 77, 53 hours. I'm fast.

Spoiler:

The last boss killed himself thanks to my magic mirror. Seemed fitting.

That's exactly what I did!

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:

Done!

Level 77, 53 hours. I'm fast.

Spoiler:

The last boss killed himself thanks to my magic mirror. Seemed fitting.

That's exactly what I did!

Spoiler:

My wife's response was "can this game have more suicide?"

She's very put off by the evokers.

Fin.

I just finished the game! My final time was ~108 hours, level 80, normal. I spent a lot of time on fusions b/c the Pokemon-fanatic in me from 5th grade came back a bit haha. I also found myself not wanting it to end and did a bit of extra grinding.

What a great ending!

Spoiler:

The "Burn My Dread" remix that is playing when you are fighting Nyx on the moon is all kinds of awesome! I really liked how there was an epilogue where you could see the conclusions to all your social links. My favorite conclusion was Maya's. My only regret is that I didn't get to do Mitsuru's social link at all.

Does anyone have any links to/files of sound effects from the Persona games that would work well as a text tone? I've tried googling around, but haven't found many good ones.

I'm playing through this, early days yet, still on level 27-28ish of Tartarus, mid-May. Pointed to this thread from the Vita one, so I may have questions at some point.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Spoiler:

My wife's response was "can this game have more suicide?"

She's very put off by the evokers.

I found that funny for some reason. I remember the controversy around them when the game came out, but the Persona series just wasn't on my radar in those days, so I mostly dismissed it as Japanese craziness.

Is there any explanation (either in-game or out) for why the evokers are shaped the way they are? It's certainly an odd design choice.

My only thought is that it'd be a damn fine way to prevent muggles from accidentally using them on themselves.