Persona 4 Golden Catch-All

So can I talk about regular P4 in here? Or should I go necro this old 2009 thread?

Since it's finally out on PSN/PS3, those of us without Vita (or an old PS2) can finally play it and I intend to start it this week.

I'm going to post here and see if anyone else wants to chat about Persona 4 Golden. Due to all of the praise that it gets in the JRPG thread and from some local gamer friends, I really want to like this game. I feel like I'm totally playing it wrong though and it is not clicking with me yet.

I'm in the first dungeon and it feels like I am burning through SP like crazy, even on lower floors. I finally figured out how to do the Final Fantasy equivalent of a Libra spell so at least I'm not guessing what enemies are weak to anymore. But still, the Attack doesn't seem to do much damage compared to even the magic that the enemy isn't weak against. Am I missing some ability to refill my SP or use less somehow? Does Teddie get less annoying? Can I stuff a sock in his mouth during the battles?

I don't remember Attack being that weak, but then again, you start out with a golf club. Better weapons, and the ability to refill SP, will come with time. After a while, Teddie won't give any more commentary during the battles

Spoiler:

Because someone else will take over that job, and Teddie will become a party member

He'll still be annoying, IMO. Persona 3 is similar, but I find the personalities to be less annoying.

I was under the impression that SP is supposed to be quite scarce early on. For one, it limits how much time you can spend in dungeons and paces the game out better than P3. As you progress you'll find more items that replenish SP so don't worry.

SP is definitely scarce in this first section. I'll keep trying to limp through and see if I can beat the boss. I haven't found any great weapon upgrades either.

I remember the first dungeon or two seeming a bit challenging because of lack of SP, but you'll soon get the ability to refill your SP constantly, and the dungeons will get a lot easier as a result.

Cathadan wrote:

Both Personas 3 and 4 are unusual RPGs in that they have a sort of "reverse difficulty curve" where the difficulty is at its highest at the beginning of the game before you have any of your recovery tools developed.

In my experience, most of Atlus' games are like this. The early parts of all the Shin Megami Tensei games I've played, as well as Etrian Odyssey IV, have constrained the player with lack of SP and the items or abilities to recover it. By the end of the game, you need to be churning out some really powerful and expensive abilities to run out, and items to recover it are plentiful.

In some ways, it's very much like the old D&D games where low-level characters were chumps who needed to heal up constantly but became god-like.

Cathadan wrote:

Both Personas 3 and 4 are unusual RPGs in that they have a sort of "reverse difficulty curve" where the difficulty is at its highest at the beginning of the game before you have any of your recovery tools developed. (On the portable versions in particular) By the time you get to the end of the game you'll have to start wearing maxi-pads just to keep all the extra SP from ruining your outfit. For now, just use magic as sparingly as you can, only to hit weaknesses to let you get extra turns to attack. That's really all magic is ever good for anyway.

I feel better knowing that the lack of SP is a design thing vs. me not understanding how to play the game. I am only using magic to hit stronger enemies with their weakness but I'm still down pretty low. It feels like the game is encouraging me to run around, level up until you run out of SP then leave/sleep and come back another day to the dungeon area. When you feel powerful enough, just sneak around the enemies and head right to the boss. Just different I guess. The lack of any recovery items, while not unusual in the early parts of RPGs like this, is a little annoying. In most Final Fantasy games, Ethers are gold plated until the end game when it does matter.

This game is still not clicking with me after over 7 hours of play. A co-worker is urging me on to at least finish the first dungeon and see how the story progresses. I think that I will stick with it through at least that far. All of this high school/social link stuff is driving my OCD crazy with the number of options to fill my days.

Both Personas 3 and 4 are unusual RPGs in that they have a sort of "reverse difficulty curve" where the difficulty is at its highest at the beginning of the game before you have any of your recovery tools developed. (On the portable versions in particular) By the time you get to the end of the game you'll have to start wearing maxi-pads just to keep all the extra SP from ruining your outfit. For now, just use magic as sparingly as you can, only to hit weaknesses to let you get extra turns to attack. That's really all magic is ever good for anyway. (Edit: not counting buff/debuff magic. You don't have access to much of it yet, but don't underestimate them!)

walterqchocobo wrote:

It feels like the game is encouraging me to run around, level up until you run out of SP then leave/sleep and come back another day to the dungeon area.

*ding* *ding* *ding*

That's pretty much the Atlus school of RPG design. You'll find the time that your SP bar will last steadily growing as you continue playing. The social link and dungeon exploration training wheels will come off after you finish the first one and get the ball rolling on the second one, so you should probably press on just a bit further.

If you still don't like how it plays at that point, then it's just not the game for you.

Thanks for the feedback--I will press on...with voices on mute for now so I can avoid Teddie's voiceover.

walterqchocobo wrote:

Thanks for the feedback--I will press on...with voices on mute for now so I can avoid Teddie's voiceover.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/vdakdyA.png)

walterqchocobo wrote:

I finally figured out how to do the Final Fantasy equivalent of a Libra spell so at least I'm not guessing what enemies are weak to anymore.

Maybe this is what you mean, but know that when you use a spell against an enemy, the game will remember for you if that enemy was weak (or anything else) to it. I just felt like first run through a new area where the enemies were new wasn't for trying to go deep into the dungeon. The first run was a chance to just use everyone's spells to figure out the weaknesses by trial-and-error, not worry about how fast I ran out of SP and had to leave the dungeon, and use that first run as a set up for later runs, like Cathadan said. Once you know what every enemy is weak or strong to from the start of each battle, you can be a lot more precise in how you fight each battle, which will save you a lot of SP.

Also like Cathadan said, I found the big strategy is (total non-story spolier, just a battle mechanic of the knock down that's fun the first time you see it happen)

Spoiler:

to whittle down the opponents to where all the enemies left are weak to the same spell, so one spell knocks them all down so you can do the pile-on thing. I found that was key to making SP last--that beyond the damage, it's the knock-down pile-on effect that's the real weapon.

Cathadan wrote:
walterqchocobo wrote:

It feels like the game is encouraging me to run around, level up until you run out of SP then leave/sleep and come back another day to the dungeon area.

*ding* *ding* *ding*

It's very different from the Final Fantasy/Tales of school of dungeon design. Dungeons aren't meant to be run through beginning to end when you first encounter them, stopping to rest up at save points along the way, with a big boss fight at the end that also serves as a story beat. They're places that you venture a little ways into, then retreat to heal up, then venture further into, then retreat again, all the while building up your strength and resources.

Which is part of the reason why I prefer the endless towers of Persona 3 and the earlier Etrian Odyssey games. It makes a lot more intuitive sense for players to revisit places that they push deeper and deeper into when the location is intuitively impossible to traverse in one go. You pretty much immediately know you won't be climbing Tartarus in a single session or even a few sessions, but it makes sense to press on and climb as far as you can.

Interesting...I got to the end boss of the first dungeon (after stopping and sleeping so I had full health) and won without barely taking any hits. I find it a little odd that I can sometimes get wiped out by two small normal enemies but had no problem at all with the boss and the summoned minion. Maybe I just got lucky? I'll keep going to see where the story goes and how uncomfortable it gets.

Spoiler:

Teddie making the moves on Yukiko right after the battle. Yep, that was weird and uncomfortable. I know that they are trying to be funny but I was thinking "Hey, creepy!" during that scene.

After what seemed like an endless series of meaningless dialogue, I am just starting the second dungeon. First of all, this game is really weird. Secondly, I don't understand why but the combat is a bit more fun with four characters. My biggest issue at this point is trying to figure out which Personas to fuse since I get tons of cards that I cannot use as I go through the battles. Should I have several of the same type (Magician, Justice, etc)? It doesn't really seem to matter as long as they have the right spells...I think?

You'll want to have one of each as each character uses a persona type for their social link, you get more points towards the link if you have a matching persona with you. Also you can always resummon personas you found before so don't be afraid of loosing them.

walterqchocobo wrote:

My biggest issue at this point is trying to figure out which Personas to fuse since I get tons of cards that I cannot use as I go through the battles. Should I have several of the same type (Magician, Justice, etc)? It doesn't really seem to matter as long as they have the right spells...I think?

Just fuse new ones as you level up and find the level of your previous personas falling behind. You are correct that the arcana type doesn't matter in battle. It's the spells and elemental strengths/weaknesses that you have to pay attention to. Try to have as all four primary elements available to you, as well as making sure your primary hitters aren't all weak to the same element. Getting all four elements on a single persona makes things a lot more convenient, especially if you can get the multi-target variants. If you can get the right persona lineup with the right skills in place you should be able to finish most battles before the shadows ever get a chance to make a move.

The arcana type affects your S-Links though. If you want to make the most of your time hanging out after school, try to have a persona from the arcana of each S-Link that you're focusing on.

Not sure where to put this, but I think here is best. Dancing All Night is out, and the reviews are mostly positive.

Polygon
Gamespot (the one big hater so far)
IGN
Destructoid

and Metacritic (79 so far) for the rest of them.

I don't have time for a new game right now, but this is definitely on my interest list (as it always was).

So I have this game. I think I played 20 hours or so. I met a weird creature inside a tv and other spoilery things I'll not mention in detail. They made me join some clubs or something, I did some dungeon fighting. I called to the internet for between battle heals.

I've been informed that it's not very dungeon grindy, but rather social linky. Does that mean there's more emphasis on the after-school stuff and less on the dungeons as it goes? I might be interested in picking it back up, at least on a trip or something. Thanks!

Localgod54 wrote:

So I have this game. I think I played 20 hours or so. I met a weird creature inside a tv and other spoilery things I'll not mention in detail. They made me join some clubs or something, I did some dungeon fighting. I called to the internet for between battle heals.

I've been informed that it's not very dungeon grindy, but rather social linky. Does that mean there's more emphasis on the after-school stuff and less on the dungeons as it goes? I might be interested in picking it back up, at least on a trip or something. Thanks!

I played through both P4G and P3P and didn't HAVE to dungeon grind. I don't remember grinding in P4 at all, but I did in P3. I think I was grinding for a specific drop. I think. I want to play that game again but...the pile.

I didn't consider the social links a grind, but I guess they are. You need to know what days to trigger certain events and you can easily miss them. I completely missed one link in P4 (band I think) because I forgot to sign up during sign ups. Which makes sense, when you consider the game takes place during a school year.

If the combat grind thew you off, but you enjoyed the social stuff. I'd say go back and turn down the difficulty. It's worth it.

Localgod54 wrote:

I've been informed that it's not very dungeon grindy, but rather social linky. Does that mean there's more emphasis on the after-school stuff and less on the dungeons as it goes? I might be interested in picking it back up, at least on a trip or something. Thanks!

Well hello!

So, to go into a bit more of an explanation, it really all depends on what you consider "grindy". You are restricted in the types of fusions you can make by what your MC (main character) level is. So, while you might have all the Personas available to fuse a level 50 "Bringer Of Death", if your main character is only at 10 you're not going to be able to do that.

However, if you are at level 10 and you have the ability to fuse a level 10 Persona of the Strength arcana, you have the ability to level that Persona past 10 if you have increased the social link for Strength. In turn, that may automatically give you an ability for that Persona that you can use to exploit an enemy's weakness.

Generally speaking, as long as you're not playing on hard mode, you should kind of stay at the level you need to be or maybe a little over. It is much more beneficial to have the proper Persona & team set up before venturing into the dungeons. If you're in an area where the majority of monsters have a vulnerability to ice? Be sure to equip a persona that has Bufu and make sure you bring Chie along. The same goes the other way--if the enemies have a resistance to ice and primarily use fire attacks, it'll be smart to leave Chie back at base.

The primary focus on this game is not a typical JRPG and just wander around dungeons for hours at a time in order to have your characters become super powered. It is very much about preparing ahead of time and being able to use weaknesses/strengths to your advantage. Keep in mind that doesn't just apply to elemental attacks. Buffs/Debuffs play a very large role in combat as well.

Oh hey!

That actually sounds more my speed. I prefer to plan things rather than grinding. I really don't want to micromanage the school stuff, to be honest. Having to sign up for things on a certain day seems like a bit of a nightmare to me. Ah well, I'll give it another shot at some point soon. I enjoyed my first time with the game; I simply lost momentum a bit. This tends to happen to me on longer games.

I think I was playing on normal, having never played a persona game before. I didn't find it particularly difficult, though I had only played a couple dungeons.

Localgod54 wrote:

Oh hey!

That actually sounds more my speed. I prefer to plan things rather than grinding. I really don't want to micromanage the school stuff, to be honest. Having to sign up for things on a certain day seems like a bit of a nightmare to me. Ah well, I'll give it another shot at some point soon. I enjoyed my first time with the game; I simply lost momentum a bit. This tends to happen to me on longer games.

I think I was playing on normal, having never played a persona game before. I didn't find it particularly difficult, though I had only played a couple dungeons.

It took me about 2 years to finish this game I would get hooked and then I would lose momentum on and off again until I eventually went ahead and powered through it. Its a really good game so I hope you get to it at some point

Is it wrong that I recently bought a second hand Vita just for this one game?

NOPE

For this one game, no. For most other one games, yes

strangederby wrote:

Is it wrong that I recently bought a second hand Vita just for this one game?

I bought a new Vita for this game, so...

I also played Dancing All Night on it, though!

Demyx wrote:
strangederby wrote:

Is it wrong that I recently bought a second hand Vita just for this one game?

I bought a new Vita for this game, so...

I also played Dancing All Night on it, though!

On my list

Are the other Megami Tensei games worth playing?

Yes.