The Persona 3 Thread

Don't worry, there are plenty of other personas with barely concealed jugs later on.

No jugs required. 100% Narcissus, yo.

Natural Dancer is officially the first boss I've had a decent amount of trouble with. What a pain in the butt.

Redwing wrote:

Natural Dancer is officially the first boss I've had a decent amount of trouble with. What a pain in the butt.

This boss is next on my list. I should be reaching it this evening.

Redwing wrote:

Natural Dancer is officially the first boss I've had a decent amount of trouble with. What a pain in the butt.

Did you get past this boss? He went down like a chump for me.

imbiginjapan wrote:
Redwing wrote:

Natural Dancer is officially the first boss I've had a decent amount of trouble with. What a pain in the butt.

Did you get past this boss? He went down like a chump for me.

Yep! Got myself a Clotho with Rebellion and Charmdi, used Yukari, Mitsuru and Aigis, who're all relatively strong against wind. I think I just got lucky with his ability roulette as well, he only did his Sexy Dance twice, the first time was pretty bad, hit both my characters with Charmdi... but I recovered, healed up, and then took him down. I also had a well placed Magic Mirror combined with Wind Break, he did himself about 600 damage with a Magarudyne with that.

Edit: This is the first boss where I directly controlled the other characters as well, I've been letting them do their own thing up to this point.

Redwing wrote:
imbiginjapan wrote:
Redwing wrote:

Natural Dancer is officially the first boss I've had a decent amount of trouble with. What a pain in the butt.

Did you get past this boss? He went down like a chump for me.

Yep! Got myself a Clotho with Rebellion and Charmdi, used Yukari, Mitsuru and Aigis, who're all relatively strong against wind. I think I just got lucky with his ability roulette as well, he only did his Sexy Dance twice, the first time was pretty bad, hit both my characters with Charmdi... but I recovered, healed up, and then took him down. I also had a well placed Magic Mirror combined with Wind Break, he did himself about 600 damage with a Magarudyne with that.

Edit: This is the first boss where I directly controlled the other characters as well, I've been letting them do their own thing up to this point.

'

The trick I used was to break his Tetrakarn with Aigis' normal attack. Since she's strong to her own piercing attacks she would take only a few points of damage. With Tetrakarn down he would use that in favor of other skills thus mitigating the frequency of his damaging attacks.

imbiginjapan wrote:
Redwing wrote:
imbiginjapan wrote:
Redwing wrote:

Natural Dancer is officially the first boss I've had a decent amount of trouble with. What a pain in the butt.

Did you get past this boss? He went down like a chump for me.

Yep! Got myself a Clotho with Rebellion and Charmdi, used Yukari, Mitsuru and Aigis, who're all relatively strong against wind. I think I just got lucky with his ability roulette as well, he only did his Sexy Dance twice, the first time was pretty bad, hit both my characters with Charmdi... but I recovered, healed up, and then took him down. I also had a well placed Magic Mirror combined with Wind Break, he did himself about 600 damage with a Magarudyne with that.

Edit: This is the first boss where I directly controlled the other characters as well, I've been letting them do their own thing up to this point.

'

The trick I used was to break his Tetrakarn with Aigis' normal attack. Since she's strong to her own piercing attacks she would take only a few points of damage. With Tetrakarn down he would use that in favor of other skills thus mitigating the frequency of his damaging attacks.

Ahh yes, I definitely broke that as soon as I could, although I wasn't nearly as tactical about it as you, I just had any one of my characters break it and take the hit. I should've considered that Aigis is nearly immune to her own damage type!

And of course the next dead end was about 5 floors up from there, it always feels like an accomplishment reaching that. It's good to be back out of Tartarus and doing the social-link stuff again, it feels like I've been in there almost constantly lately.

I just finished the Hermit boss. That was easy - unlike most bosses its elemental affinity is incredibly obvious.

Turns out Macho Man Randy Savage is pretty badass P3 boss. No elemental weakness, absorbs fire AND repels 2 kinds of phys attacks (and is strong to the other) + High Counter? Dude can put up a fight!

I had a persona that repelled slash AND had Counterstrike with my MC's persona so the boss's Deathbound would actually damage himself and other attacks had a reasonable chance of negating. This helped enormously as most of his attacks were physical (with a bit of fire tossed in).

Mitsuru did healing duties while Akihiko debuffed and threw in heals when needed. Junpei went normal slash attacks and MC went with Fatal End/regular attacks. In the end I got the championship belt but it was not easy. I had to revive people a couple times and do a lot of turns of just defending.

Sounds like you've overtaken me! I've been on a War of the Lions bender recently, so I haven't been playing Persona. It'll drag me back shortly though... probably when War of the Lions kills off a character of mine again forcing me to reload.

I'm into the golden area now (Tziah?), feels very strange compared to the dark and scary 3 levels that preceded, it feels like I'm being lulled into a false sense of security.

Have any other P3P players noticed Vincent hanging out at the Escapade? I just caught that the other day when he was talking about not wanting to get married, and how he's in a totally messed up situation.

I am almost at the end of the game now, with maybe 20 floors of Tartarus left. I feel like the enemy difficulty is really starting to spike. This is an issue that crops up in so many JRPGs that sours me on them. Here's hoping I don't end up in a grinding situation as so far the game has been just great and forced grinding tends to just stop me in my tracks.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Have any other P3P players noticed Vincent hanging out at the Escapade? I just caught that the other day when he was talking about not wanting to get married, and how he's in a totally messed up situation.

Vincent as in Vincent from Catherine?

ClockworkHouse wrote:
imbiginjapan wrote:

Have any other P3P players noticed Vincent hanging out at the Escapade? I just caught that the other day when he was talking about not wanting to get married, and how he's in a totally messed up situation.

Vincent as in Vincent from Catherine?

Yes, the very same.

Spoiler:

I seem to have come to the end of Tartarus at the top of block 4, Tziah. There's also only one "Big Shadow" left. I really suspect this is far from the end of the game though, there's certainly plenty of dates mentioned far in advance.

I suspect Tartarus will probably grow another floor after I've killed the last shadow, and I also get the feeling the Big Bad Shadows aren't what they seem, nothing is ever as simple as a series of boss fights in a JRPG, heh!

Redwing wrote:
Spoiler:

I seem to have come to the end of Tartarus at the top of block 4, Tziah. There's also only one "Big Shadow" left. I really suspect this is far from the end of the game though, there's certainly plenty of dates mentioned far in advance.

I suspect Tartarus will probably grow another floor after I've killed the last shadow, and I also get the feeling the Big Bad Shadows aren't what they seem, nothing is ever as simple as a series of boss fights in a JRPG, heh!

Yeah, I wouldn't hold your breath. Lots left to do. Some of it quite interesting in fact.

Up to about floor 205 of Tartarus now, it just keeps going and going! Oh, and it seems disco isn't dead in Tartarus!

Spoiler:

Story wise, just past when Mitsuru gets back from her leave of absence after her father is killed.

I'm starting to get to the point where I kind of want this to end now. I think I'm about 70ish hours in, and I'm excited to try out Persona 4 Golden, but I'm afraid this is going to take so long I'll be burnt out on the series for a bit. It only took me so long to get to this point because I needed a break and went back to Final Fantasy IX again for a couple of weeks (which is still an excellent game I might add).

Redwing wrote:

I'm starting to get to the point where I kind of want this to end now. I think I'm about 70ish hours in, and I'm excited to try out Persona 4 Golden, but I'm afraid this is going to take so long I'll be burnt out on the series for a bit.

Yup. That's a fairly universal opinion. It does end up being worth it as things pick up towards the end, but there's a pretty big lull in between.

As an aside, I finished out Yukari's social link, so that's nice. I kinda want to try to get Mitsuru's social link next, but I feel like that would be, er... cheating on Yukari. I mean, the game seems to imply once you've finished a social link, it's unbreakable from that point, so it's not like it'll have any gameplay ramifications. But if Yukari so much as gives me an unhappy look I'm gonna feel like a complete dick.

How does it play out in game terms?

Uh... you're supposed to max social links with all the girls.

Right?

Well that's what a lot of people do anyway. It can be done. Just not 2 (or more) at the same time.

Yeah, there's no gameplay penalty for completing a social link and moving onto another one.

I'm sure this has been covered elsewherein this thread, but will I be disappointed going to this game from Persona 4?

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I'm sure this has been covered elsewherein this thread, but will I be disappointed going to this game from Persona 4?

I found this game to have the more interesting storyline and characters of the two, but the dungeon design is less interesting and the combat is a bit more frequent and repetitive. If you go with P3 Portable, you'll probably find it OK as most of the mechanical improvements from P4 were ported over. P3 FES is a bit rougher as you don't have the option of direct control over your characters, there are some useful save points that are not there, and the fatigue mechanics are more onerous.

Redwing wrote:

Up to about floor 205 of Tartarus now, it just keeps going and going! Oh, and it seems disco isn't dead in Tartarus!

Spoiler:

Story wise, just past when Mitsuru gets back from her leave of absence after her father is killed.

I'm starting to get to the point where I kind of want this to end now. I think I'm about 70ish hours in, and I'm excited to try out Persona 4 Golden, but I'm afraid this is going to take so long I'll be burnt out on the series for a bit. It only took me so long to get to this point because I needed a break and went back to Final Fantasy IX again for a couple of weeks (which is still an excellent game I might add).

The good news is that the last chunk of the game goes pretty quickly. Unless you feel like you are under-leveled and need to grind you can blow right through the last 50 floors or so, and the days will pass by quickly. The whole game took me about 70 hours total. That said I have a knack for the combat in the Persona games.

I prefer the P4 characters, though the story in P3 doesn't slap you in the face the way P4 does. That said I don't think you'll be disappointed with P4 coming from P3, they're both great games.

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I'm sure this has been covered elsewherein this thread, but will I be disappointed going to this game from Persona 4?

Storyline, characters, and theme/mechanics integration are all better in P3, but most people still prefer P4 due to dungeon variation and control. They play down to you a bit more in P4, I think.

Minarchist wrote:

They play down to you a bit more in P4, I think.

I'd call that an understatement. A few pages ago I called the story insulting to the player, and I stand by that. I think the characters in P4 had more depth than the P3 characters though, that's what kept me going.

Since we're on the subject, I'm pretty sure I haven't dropped this in here yet. It's a super-deep look at the three versions of P3 and how the changes of each affect the heavily intertwined core mechanics/theme/plot. It's deep end of the pool, but both Clocky and I found it fascinating and it made us both wish for easier access to the original PS2 version.

It's also nice to hear someone else agree with me that P3P is a vastly inferior version

Minarchist wrote:

Since we're on the subject, I'm pretty sure I haven't dropped this in here yet. It's a super-deep look at the three versions of P3 and how the changes of each affect the heavily intertwined core mechanics/theme/plot. It's deep end of the pool, but both Clocky and I found it fascinating and it made us both wish for easier access to the original PS2 version.

It's also nice to hear someone else agree with me that P3P is a vastly inferior version :)

Wow that was an awesome read. And I knew you guys had said P3P was easier, but damn, I didn't realize just how much easier.

I think I'm glad FES was the only option available to me.