The Persona 3 Thread

That's why I always recommend P3P over P3 on PS2 when anyone asks. I played through P3 on PS2 when it came out and ended up getting frustrated by the difficulty/gameplay about 60 hours in. Which is a pretty big commitment to pull away from. A few years later I got P3P, blasted through it in a few weeks (80 hrs or so!) as the female character and then immediately played most of the way through again as the male character. Having all the P4 tweaks and then some makes a real difference.

Oddly, I never use the ability to issue direct commands in P3P. I just shift their tactical status and they take care of it for me.

The social links are interesting, although I can't help but feel there's something meta about needing to be an absolutely terrible friend to so many people to make your personas stronger.

I wrote up a huge post in the JRPG thread about this that I can dig up if you'd like, but this strongly ties into the themes of the game.

I wrote up a huge post in the JRPG thread about this that I can dig up if you'd like, but this strongly ties into the themes of the game.

I agree with you - what I see P3 doing very well is trying mechanics together to strongly push the central themes, and that's to its credit. Social links, battle tactics, art design, audio, etc all push in the same direction. At the same time through, I can appreciate that great game directing while having a hard time relating to the characters - everyone just seems so young and frankly awful. Obviously, I'm 50 hrs, so it's not slowing me down, but I do roll my eyes from time to time.

How screwed am I if I decide to go after only a few social links? I'm a touch nervous about not doing enough, but is the game still workable without taking on half of them?

I just got past the second boss.

MrAndrewJ wrote:

How screwed am I if I decide to go after only a few social links? I'm a touch nervous about not doing enough, but is the game still workable without taking on half of them?

I just got past the second boss.

I've been doing fairly well so far with just the handful of S.Links I have--I've actually been stumbling onto some I probably should have gotten before (I'm on around floor 96 or so currently). The rule of thumb I'm finding is that if the Personas I'm fusing get SOME kind of EXP bonus from S.Links, then I'm okay. The system seems to be working for me so far.

CptDomano wrote:
MrAndrewJ wrote:

How screwed am I if I decide to go after only a few social links? I'm a touch nervous about not doing enough, but is the game still workable without taking on half of them?

I just got past the second boss.

I've been doing fairly well so far with just the handful of S.Links I have--I've actually been stumbling onto some I probably should have gotten before (I'm on around floor 96 or so currently). The rule of thumb I'm finding is that if the Personas I'm fusing get SOME kind of EXP bonus from S.Links, then I'm okay. The system seems to be working for me so far.

You don't really need to do better than stumbling onto links from time to time. Many simply don't become available till later in the game, or don't become available until some stat is maxed out (which is designed not to occur till later in the game, unless a concerted effort is made).

Is there some trick to the tactics that I'm missing? Yukari absolutely refuses to use mediarama, instead using diarama to heal one character at a time. This is making a number of the boss fights much more challenging then I think they need to be. I have her set to Heal/Support.

I'm gotten very frustrated with this game; I'm greatly enjoying the social links and character development, but the actual battle aspect seems really sort of broken. It wasn't a problem until the boses in October and beyond, I don't think, but I'm noticing it more and more now.

Yeah I think that's why they fixed it in P3P and most people seem to recommend that version. With only a PS3 I didn't have the option, so I just suffered through it.

Sometimes I just had to take over healing myself to do it right.

Stele wrote:

Yeah I think that's why they fixed it in P3P and most people seem to recommend that version. With only a PS3 I didn't have the option, so I just suffered through it.

Sometimes I just had to take over healing myself to do it right.

I have to mentally get myself into the mindset that the party doesn't really exist - it's up to the protagonist to be offense, debuff, support, and healing. The rest of the guys are just hanging around, and if they help, great, but can't really count on them.

Are those mechanics improved in the PS2 version of Persona 4? Once I finish this I need a break, but after some time away I'd like to give it a try.

Yup, P4 allows you to control your party members if you want.

After a long break I've picked this back up (again). I'm coming up on New Year's pretty quickly, and it's hard to tell how much more game the is going to be afterwards. Do I need to be settling any accounts before I cross into next year?

Spoiler:

Based on how things have gone so far I'm assuming that Aigis will show up around new year's, her persona will evolve opening the opportunity to form a social link with her, and I'll be given some time to explore that and prepare for Nyx. I also expect other options to go away at some point, so I don't want to lose my chance to play around with the weapon fusion system and fusing the persona I've unlocked with my s-links.

psoplayer wrote:

After a long break I've picked this back up (again). I'm coming up on New Year's pretty quickly, and it's hard to tell how much more game the is going to be afterwards. Do I need to be settling any accounts before I cross into next year?

I think you look pretty set.

Spoiler:

Your spoiler is the gist of it. I'm cranking through Jan now, basically making sure I'm strong enough for Nyx, and finishing up a few social links. I am eager for the game to end, and Jan seems to be taking forever! I swear this game never ends! Just end!

Alright, I'll just keep charging forward then. My pace would probably put me putting the wraps on this in a few months, making a holiday price drop on the Vita super convenient to get started with the release of P4G!

Is there any reason to experiment with new Personas if the ones you have are working even though they are 5 levels below the players current level?

What quest reward did you find extremely helpful? I am finding there is enough content here without having to grind to complete The Velvet Room quest, but if there was a really good reward I would try to get it.

Am I missing anything because I am playing on easy? I started on easy because I wanted to complete the game before P4G and because this is the first Persona so I wasn't sure of how difficult I would find it.

Can you defeat

Spoiler:

Death

?

EverythingsTentative wrote:

Is there any reason to experiment with new Personas if the ones you have are working even though they are 5 levels below the players current level?

I'm not really sure how "easy" the combat gets on easy, but on normal it's good to keep a few with specific resistances on hand, but eventually you're going to need to fuse higher level (fancy pants plural inbound!) personae. If you roll with what you've got you're basically wasting XP that could be going to better personae. It becomes next to impossible to level personae that are much higher than their base level, and the differences between levels becomes large. To clarify, moving a base level 25 up to 26 costs way less XP than moving a base level 20 from 25 to 26. Also mostly the only way to get new more powerful spells is to make new personae.

If there is a specific skillset or resistance you like, you can always fuse it, then buy it back to swap in for emergencies. I find that I typically keep about 8 persona on-hand, and only routinely use my three favorite/best. The others may be lower level, but may have a really useful skill. For instance, I'm keeping a persona ten levels below me because of Sexy Dance and Ailment Boost, for example.

If your main combat persona is way under level though you'll really notice, particularly on bosses.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

Can you defeat

Spoiler:

Death

?

Yeah there's a sidequest from Elizabeth for just that. From what I hear though, you need to be close to level 99 to succeed.

Stele wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

Can you defeat

Spoiler:

Death

?

Yeah there's a sidequest from Elizabeth for just that. From what I hear though, you need to be close to level 99 to succeed.

I read that 75 is enough, or even 70 depending on what links you have. Sadly you can't use Megido* skills anymore, that was the easy way in P3.

So I'm guessing there was no quest reward that anyone found essential or really useful?

EverythingsTentative wrote:

So I'm guessing there was no quest reward that anyone found essential or really useful?

I find the quest reward weapons to generally be better than what you'll be picking up at the same level. The spiked bat for Junpei, for example, has a 50% change of inflicting fear, which is incredible. I complete all of the quests for that reason.

imbiginjapan wrote:

It becomes next to impossible to level personae that are much higher than their base level, and the differences between levels becomes large. To clarify, moving a base level 25 up to 26 costs way less XP than moving a base level 20 from 25 to 26. Also mostly the only way to get new more powerful spells is to make new personae.

Early on I managed to get my Narcissus (base lvl 20) to learn multi-target spells for all four elements, and he happened to be strong versus all elements, so I just stuck with him. Flash forward to now and he's lvl 57 (I'm 65) and I still haven't found a good reason to use anything else on a regular basis. It's just so much more convenient to be able to hit whatever weakness I need to without switching, and not having any major weaknesses of my own. On the occasional boss fight where I'm stuck using physical attacks, I can switch to something with higher STR, but even that doesn't seem to make a major difference to my damage output.

Stele wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

Can you defeat

Spoiler:

Death

?

Yeah there's a sidequest from Elizabeth for just that. From what I hear though, you need to be close to level 99 to succeed.

I did it the first time in the upper 50s, I think. There's a pretty clear strategy for doing so (it involves exploiting that it takes him a turn to recover from his weakness). I one-shotted him with Armageddon in NG+

In P3P, it doesn't take a turn for staggered enemies to recover.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

In P3P, it doesn't take a turn for staggered enemies to recover.

Also Armageddon is now an item, not a persona spell, and unless if you do some *serious* farming you won't get more than 1 per game.

Well, now I know not to take Minarchist's advice. I've been enjoying P3P so far playing on normal. It hasn't been challenging so far. I'm at level 26F. I'm guessing that's gonna change.

psoplayer wrote:
imbiginjapan wrote:

It becomes next to impossible to level personae that are much higher than their base level, and the differences between levels becomes large. To clarify, moving a base level 25 up to 26 costs way less XP than moving a base level 20 from 25 to 26. Also mostly the only way to get new more powerful spells is to make new personae.

Early on I managed to get my Narcissus (base lvl 20) to learn multi-target spells for all four elements, and he happened to be strong versus all elements, so I just stuck with him. Flash forward to now and he's lvl 57 (I'm 65) and I still haven't found a good reason to use anything else on a regular basis. It's just so much more convenient to be able to hit whatever weakness I need to without switching, and not having any major weaknesses of my own. On the occasional boss fight where I'm stuck using physical attacks, I can switch to something with higher STR, but even that doesn't seem to make a major difference to my damage output.

Well now that is commitment!

EverythingsTentative wrote:

One you max out a S.Link is there any incentive to continue to pursue it?

No. Drop that friend like a hot potato.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

In P3P, it doesn't take a turn for staggered enemies to recover.

Then I don't understand why everyone likes it so much.

One you max out a S.Link is there any incentive to continue to pursue it?

Edit: Just realized once a s.Link is maxed you can't continue to pursue it.

Minarchist wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

One you max out a S.Link is there any incentive to continue to pursue it?

No. Drop that friend like a hot potato.

Buh bye Saori, I think that was her name. See we weren't that good of friends anyway.

Just when I didn't think it could get better...Aigis.