The Persona 3 Thread

EverythingsTentative wrote:

I have my courage, academics, and charm are all maxed now. When I Dont have a social link to pursue I end up sleeping the days away. Am I missing something? I feel like I should be doing something other than sleeping.

If you're finding days where you have nothing to do, it means you've missed some social link somewhere. This could be a link you have missed permanently (some have time limits), or you just haven't explored the right place at the right time. Make sure you've pursued all the tertiary characters you've met through other links (i.e. the pale boy you met while doing Hanged Man, the online computer game you heard about from Junpei, etc.)

I've posted before, but Igor's Index is an awesome fusing resource for P3 and P4. You can search for combinations with persona that you have or whatever. Or just list them all. It's very comprehensive, and extremely accurate from all the times I used it.

ahrezmendi wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

I have my courage, academics, and charm are all maxed now. When I Dont have a social link to pursue I end up sleeping the days away. Am I missing something? I feel like I should be doing something other than sleeping.

If you're finding days where you have nothing to do, it means you've missed some social link somewhere. This could be a link you have missed permanently (some have time limits), or you just haven't explored the right place at the right time. Make sure you've pursued all the tertiary characters you've met through other links (i.e. the pale boy you met while doing Hanged Man, the online computer game you heard about from Junpei, etc.)

I think I am beyond missing some S.Links then. I am into the new year and basically sleeping anytime I'm not in Tartarus. I am still going to see the monk whenever he is at the club. I never found the online computer game. That could be because I avoided Junpei because I didn't like him at first.

These new bosses are a Female Doggo too. Also, is it worth fighting each full moon boss again. Is the reward worth it? Is there any reason to level up everyone's persona before the final showdown? I used Aigis, Mitsuru, and Koromamu? for the majority of my play though, so they are leveled with me but everyone else is fairly low.

Junpei mentions the online game whether you're doing his link or not, so that should still be available. There aren't very many truly missable links, maybe 3 or 4.

So I am at the end of July in the game and haven't really bought anything at the Antique store yet. What are the best items to spend the gems on?

Every time Shinjiro talks, I just think of The Californians SNL sketch. I think that voice actor might have been pushing himself a little too hard.

I almost died when old man Bunkichi said "On the way home from work, he got into an accident... He was hit by a dump truck driver who was drunk on the job..."

Am I a terrible person?

Yes.

Holy crap, I just made it to the top of the tower. I checked how long I've played, and I'm at 58 hrs 28 minutes. In my estimation, all I have left is to do is save 2 people in the tower and then defeat the final shadow. Hopefully I'll keep it in the low 60s. Sheesh. I didn't realize this game was so long.

How quickly did ya'll beat it? I guess I've been fairly thorough because I've felt overpowered for the most part. I definitely haven't done everything, though.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Holy crap, I just made it to the top of the tower. I checked how long I've played, and I'm at 58 hrs 28 minutes. In my estimation, all I have left is to do is save 2 people in the tower and then defeat the final shadow. Hopefully I'll keep it in the low 60s. Sheesh. I didn't realize this game was so long.

How quickly did ya'll beat it? I guess I've been fairly thorough because I've felt overpowered for the most part. I definitely haven't done everything, though.

Tha hell? I'm in the final month and probably only a couple of floor guardians between me and the top of Tartarus, but I'm at 99 hrs played. I guess I spent an awful lot of time doing... other stuff? I have no idea what happened.

Well, I'm playing it on normal if that makes a difference. I've definitely skipped some side quests. I still can't believe I sunk that much time into it over the last month just playing on the bus. Then again, I've already put 69 hours into Borderlands 2, and that's only been out for a week.

I don't even remember what the difficulty options were at this point, being well over 18 months of real life behind me. If it was as simple as easy/normal/hard I almost certainly would have gone with normal as well. Now that I think about it, I did go back and grind for quite a few hours trying to clean up some leftover requests from Elizabeth. (Those greed hands don't exactly grow on trees.) Maybe if I hadn't stubbornly stuck with Narcissus all the way through I wouldn't have had to grind up a few levels on some of the floor guardians as well.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Holy crap, I just made it to the top of the tower. I checked how long I've played, and I'm at 58 hrs 28 minutes. In my estimation, all I have left is to do is save 2 people in the tower and then defeat the final shadow. Hopefully I'll keep it in the low 60s. Sheesh. I didn't realize this game was so long.

How quickly did ya'll beat it? I guess I've been fairly thorough because I've felt overpowered for the most part. I definitely haven't done everything, though.

What month is it?

Hint:

Spoiler:

You probably haven't actually made it to the top of the tower.

Minarchist wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Holy crap, I just made it to the top of the tower. I checked how long I've played, and I'm at 58 hrs 28 minutes. In my estimation, all I have left is to do is save 2 people in the tower and then defeat the final shadow. Hopefully I'll keep it in the low 60s. Sheesh. I didn't realize this game was so long.

How quickly did ya'll beat it? I guess I've been fairly thorough because I've felt overpowered for the most part. I definitely haven't done everything, though.

What month is it?

Hint:

Spoiler:

You probably haven't actually made it to the top of the tower.

Ha! That's why I mentioned the "In my estimation" part. I'm not surprised. It's only October.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Holy crap, I just made it to the top of the tower. I checked how long I've played, and I'm at 58 hrs 28 minutes. In my estimation, all I have left is to do is save 2 people in the tower and then defeat the final shadow. Hopefully I'll keep it in the low 60s. Sheesh. I didn't realize this game was so long.

How quickly did ya'll beat it? I guess I've been fairly thorough because I've felt overpowered for the most part. I definitely haven't done everything, though.

I think I played 100 hours and change. I was playing on Hard, but I actually suspect the difference in our experiences may be due to what Minarchist is hinting at.

EDIT: beat to the punch! Hehe.

October? Ha! You are soooo not done.

Not in a bad way, though. Things really get crazy starting in mid-November.

Minarchist wrote:

October? Ha! You are soooo not done.

Not in a bad way, though. Things really get crazy starting in mid-November.

Yeah. Not even close. I can't wait for 4 to come out for the vita.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

It's only October.

Yup, I should have seen that one coming. Jeez, assuming you're done with the game when you're really slacking off on the job. Tartarus isn't going to let you go that easily!

After finishing the non-ending, I'm at 61 hours. The game is still quite easy but still enjoyable. I imagine if you didn't do any side quests, the game on normal might be a bit more challenging. There is one thing that really annoys me about the game. When a monster is charging you but your view isn't oriented behind the character, your sword won't connect with the monster even if your character is oriented correctly and the hit is timed correctly. It's super frustrating to see your character poke the blob with his sword and then you get the "Enemy Advantage" pop up. It's hell of annoying.

I'm going to try and rush as fast as I can to try and finish this. I liked the twist well enough, but I'm ready for this game to be over with.

Persona, I love you, but you're bringing me down.

Basically, I chose to use party members I liked rather than party members with a good mix of powers and vulnerabilities and got unlucky. You can roughly divide the party into two groups: the starting group of four companions (Akihiko, Mitsuru, Junpei, and Yukari) and then a mirror group that has similar but slightly different combination of powers and vulnerabilities (Ken, Shinjiro, Koromaru, and Aigis, respectively). With a good mix of characters, you'll need three regulars and an alternate to swap in whenever one of your regulars' weaknesses is exploited by a guardian or full moon boss. Koromaru can swap in for Akihiko against a wind enemy, for example, or for Yukari against an electricity enemy.

Most of the time, given a random mix of characters, you're not going to run into problems. Most players will end up with a mix of characters with a mix of vulnerabilities even if they only play the characters that they like.

But some character combinations aren't very successful. Take my party, for example: I roll with (in order of preference) Yukari, Aigis, and Mitsuru with Koromaru as a sub. Yukari and Aigis are too similar. They're both vulnerable to electricity, and they both use piercing attacks. An enemy that attacks with electricity can now knock down two members of my party, and an enemy that's strong against piercing attacks is going to have a defensive advantage.

This overlap has caused some problems for me, especially going up against enemies like the Hermit boss, but I can sub out one of the two characters for Koromaru and one other character if necessary. But I've now run into a real snag: the Arcane Turret boss on level 122 of Tartarus uses both electricity attacks and fire attacks, which chases all three of my top characters out of my party.

Subbing in Koromaru and two irregulars leaves me with a party that isn't quite strong enough to survive the battle. Tinkering with equipment and Personas has only gotten me so far, leading me to believe that my only option is to grind these substitute characters up to a reasonable level and try the guardian battle later. That kind of arbitrary grinding completely kills games for me. Always has.

So I dunno. I put a few hours into it recently and just reached a state of total apathy. I'm not inspired to keep trying the boss fight, and I'm not inspired to grind up a bunch of characters I don't enjoy playing with. I've really enjoyed the game up until this point, despite my regular breaks from it, but I feel like I've hit a wall where my desires and the game's design just don't match up.

I spent the weekend sick in bed playing Persona 3 Portable -- and just got past the 122 Boss. I picked my team based on whoever was lowest level, which was Yukari, Akihito and Junpei. MC had to keep casting recarn on Yukari.

It all started to feel like a grind for a while. Grind on social links. Get my characters up to a close-enough level, or to the point where it takes a half hour to grind to the next level. I did manage to max out one more social link.

Spoiler:

Yuko. That was rather vague.

I feel your pain from other SMT games, and even a little from Persona 3. This is a lot of grinding. At least SMT games tend to provide value in hours played versus dollars spent beyond almost any other franchise out there.

I thought you guys might appreciate my Persona pumpkin carvings I just did!
IMAGE(http://i50.tinypic.com/de5pfn.jpg)
IMAGE(http://i49.tinypic.com/2z53zb4.jpg)
I like how the glow from the Jack Frost carving is on the wall...it looks like he is being summoned!
IMAGE(http://i47.tinypic.com/345fvgz.jpg)

Awesome!

I can only react with awe.

Excellent work.

Jamull99 wrote:

I thought you guys might appreciate my Persona pumpkin carvings I just did!
IMAGE(http://i50.tinypic.com/de5pfn.jpg)
IMAGE(http://i49.tinypic.com/2z53zb4.jpg)
I like how the glow from the Jack Frost carving is on the wall...it looks like he is being summoned!
IMAGE(http://i47.tinypic.com/345fvgz.jpg)

Wow! Best pumpkin carvings I've seen all year.

There, I posted about the carvings in the love thread.

Those are sweet.

No one else loves Junpei? He was my favorite in P3P. I almost always used him in battles. My base team was usually Junpei and Yukari, with either Aegis or Akihiko. Mitsuru tended to be a swap in for Yukari. Kind of the same for Ken. The only timed I used Koromaru was a duo blitz run through the optional zone to bring him to level 99.

Finished P3P last night. This was the very first 'grind style' game I've really played with a serious intent to finish it, and surprised myself when I spent the final weeks of the story finding some way to stretch it out. Putting this much time into any single game on anything but my Vita would be unheard of, but here I was taking additional trips for XP, playing with fusions, or trying to max out every social link I could. The game plays extremely well - I enjoy the combat system a ton - but the reason I was stretching it out was my attachment to the game's characters and the fear that the ending would suck. I'm happy to say that was definitely not the case, and it was one of the best endings I've experienced. If you're thinking about putting it down before finishing, I urge you to play it through. I found a huge amount of surprisingly good story to enjoy following what I originally thought would be the end of the game.

Did I mention that the actual ending was bloody brilliant?

Glad you finished! And yes, the ending is brilliant. If you've closely paid attention to the main themes of the game, it is...poignant? Just desserts? Maybe the best ending in video games that I can think of.