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Iāve never played the mainline SMT games, so I canāt say anything about those, but when it comes to Persona, I feel like the combat system just isnāt deep enough to last through an 80 hour JRPG without getting somewhat dull. It is adequate in that battles never started feeling agonizingly tedious, but grinding for the bossfights or just clearing the latter levels of Tartarus still felt like a chore.
The bosses are difficult, sure, and beating them can be satisfying, but I guess Iāve never felt that amazing about beating bosses in turn based RPGs. Perhaps it just isnāt my thing. When playing RPGs, Iām almost always far more interested in the story and the characters than the battle system. The gameplay between story sections definitely serves a purpose, but it isnāt the main draw for me. And if thereās too much of it and the battle system isnāt deep enough, it will eventually start feeling like more of an annoyance, at least outside boss battles. And usually, the amount of time spent fighting random battles is far greater than the amount of time spent fighting bosses.
Oh yeah the encounter rate in Persona is pretty high, though I got good at getting away from shadows pretty fast and despite taking up axes and hammers after they became available (which are the hardest weapons to get preemptive strikes with) I still became pretty good at it quite quickly.
Though tbh towards the end of the game I found myself buffing Thor in the arcade to crazy levels and not doing any social links because Iād done all the evening ones and I had maxed my social stats. Really wish there was more to do in the evenings other than mindlessly push Strength, Speed and Luck to 99 on all your personal, that did feel shallow
If you wanted something interesting to do, try making certain specialty personas (or in mainline, demons obviously) such as Surt with full Ragnarok, Fire Boost, Fire Amp, getting a Michael with a 98% critical rate Heavenās Blade after using Rebellion and Revolution, or my personal favourite, making a Beelzebub thst was invincible to all except almighty. Yes, that IS possible - he needs nulls or better on strike, Slash, Fire, ice and Light and youāre done which is only 5 skill slots leaving open 3 more for anything else. I think I got mine with something trashy like Maragion, Megidola and Samarecarm, which meant I had an invincible revive bot.
And despite all that, the game can still sometimes wreck me with random encounters and it feels fair when it does (excluding the times I listed above).
Not sure if thatās your cuppa tea but itās definitely admirable that ATLUS made a game that resistant to being cheesed
You can either play Strange Journey on the DS or SMT4 on the 3DS, theyāre both pretty amazing.
Edit:
I love Persona. What Iāve played from the mainline is amazing in terms of combat but not the story, though. P4G is my favorite game of all time (if we donāt count VNs, in which case The House In Fata Morgana ties for the first place with it).
Really hyped for P5 but I donāt have a PS3 or PS4 so ;_;
Should make sure youāre aware the EN version of Persona 5 is only on PS4. PS3 version isnāt localized.
Just in case you consider an impulse purchase or somethin, haha.
I thought they were releasing P5 on the PS3, but you couldnāt get the cool collectorās edition of it unless it was the PS4 version (ie the Morgana plush, the OST, the bag, the collectorās box, and so forth)? Between Disgaea 5 on the Switch and P5 on the PS4, I will be one very broke gamer. :'D
My first ventures into the series was with roleplaying with two characters from Persona 4, and since I had a PSP, I picked up P3P, not knowing how to properly manage my Slinks, so as FeMC, I only had Junpeiās, Koromaruās, Fuukaās, the little girlās, the old coupleās, the Sun boyās, the one council personās, the library girlās, Ryojiās, and Rioās. (These donāt really count as spoilers since you can easily find them anywhere, and Iām not stating what happened in them). Oh, if Iād only known you could have started Yukariās the day you could freely chooseā¦ I think itās a pretty fun game but the countless times when my whole PARTY is Charmed and hitting each other/healing the enemies and when Iāve beat a huge boss but get slaughtered by a little mook getting lucky with a Hama/Mudo with no Homunculus, itās enough to make you regret life decisions, and the only other game thatās done that to me is Love Live with its rage-inducing gameplay. (And Nintendo games like Mario and Yoshi.)
It took me a while, but I got P4 Golden and I definitely liked the changes to battle and especially Slinks, so that you arenāt forced to date girls and cheat on them just to have your Slinks maxed like MaMC in P3, and you can spend time with people at night so you donāt waste a perfectly good day getting that dreaded āYou feel your relationship will grow soonā¦ā The only dungeons that really tested my patience there were Heaven (mostly because it was like getting Charmed all over again) and the bonus dungeon where I couldnāt make my characters dress up in fun costumes. And I feel that the thing for the True end wasnāt so well-written, just tacked on to try to wrap up the parallels and to bring home the āTrue Incarnation of the Goddessā thatās in the name of the series, but thatās me. Me, I very much liked most of the characters you get to know (save for Chie and Yosuke), which was part of what makes P4 so great to me. Also the whole ability to go āScrew everybody, Iām petting a cat all day and night after school.ā
Me, I personally like fighting games even if they donāt like me, so the gameplay for Arena and Ultimax was really good (and I cried so hard in Labrysā story). The story for Ultimax, I think everybody whoās played it can agree was absolutely weak, and the DLC stories were better (though itās easy to be better than a bad story). Itās a result of trying to put three full games out in one year, and itās a shame, especially since the engine for the gameplay was so much better than Arena and you had about three times as many characters as the original Arena in it (fun fact though: The Arena games run on a BlazBlue engine, while Golden Fantasia runs on a Melty Blood engine). At least the Ultimax manga seems to be set on fixing the story. (Another fun fact: Labrys and I have the same birthday, which you can see which character youāll be fighting next! Yu aināt got a birthday, whoops.)
Iāve followed playthroughs of Q and own Q myself, but I havenāt played it since the first day I got it since a monster killed Koromaru and I started crying, since in P3P, he was one of my strongest party members who never got statuses besides anger and never died (and because I love dogs).I also followed a playthrough of DAN and own the game, but since the interface for the rhythm part looks confusing, I havenāt played it. Miku is still best Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon, though!
And the only non-Persona SMT game Iāve played is Catherine, and I honestly donāt know how I came to suck at block puzzles so badly. I came for the story and the perfect character that is Catherine, and even own the OST for the series, but I canāt even finish the game.
A mega-ten thread? Yay!
Like many modern MegaTen fans I discovered Atlus through the existence of Persona 3. I saw a friend playing it at a time when I basically had not played video games in a year or more and I was instantly hyped.
I didnāt play anything until Persona 4, which is now one of my all time favorite games. I have beaten it 4 or 5 times now three times on the PS2 and 2 times on Vita.
For this community if someone was looking for a MegaTen game to play after Persona I would suggest Devil Survivor. It is an SRPG that has a lot of really good moral dilemmas in it that effect the story in fairly significant ways. The premise is that you are stuck in small section of Tokyo with demons appearing. Japan has stationed military guards around the perimiter and no one is allowed to leave - you have to survive until the guard is lifted or otherwise get home. Part of the play is done with a time management system that is used to create a real sense of weight to who you chose to help at any given moment. The strategy aspects arenāt amazing - kind of a basic grid set up with minimal tactical options, but the game play as it is is solid enough to be interesting and challenging at times.
There is a Devil Survivor 2 as well - it got an anime and stuff and sold better - but I personally like 1 better. The scale was smaller so in that way the stakes hit home emotionally a lot stronger for me.
From MegaTen also played Persona 3 Portable, Persona 1 for PSP, Persona Innocent Sin Devil Summoner 2, Strange Journey (particularly good), IV, Persona Q (LOVE IT), P4 Dancing all night, and both P4 Arena games.