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Persona 5 |OT2| Someone must have been helping you go to bed early. Talk!

Astral

Member
I was around 75 hours there and it took me 130 to beat but the average time to beat this seems to vary like crazy.

From the looks of things I'll probably clock in at about the same. That's insane to me. I thought P3 was crazy for taking me 90 hours to complete but this is gonna take the cake easily.
 
The problem with palaces and their length/pacing comes from the fact the developers clearly don't intend the player to clear the whole thing in one marathon. If you did 1-2 safe rooms a trip and visited the palace 2-4 times during the month that wouldn't be an issue. Of course doing this creates the conflict of wasting precious social time constantly being in palaces. I think it's telling that the dungeons that have forced exits due to needing to change cognition aren't the ones people generally complain about, yet that issue ties into the general complaint that the game "waste your time" with so many story scenes where you can't do social stuff.

I really can't even think of a good suggestion to fix the issue as long as persona keeps the format it's had since p3.
 

PK Gaming

Member
I have to say, the game did disappoint me in how it treats its own combat system.

You have all these weaknesses to exploit, area spells vs single target spells, etc... and yet the bosses (except those from palace 2 and 5 I guess) are mostly single-target, no-resistance hitpoint behemoths where you just spam charged up physical attacks/spells until they fall.

So much more could have been done with it.

There's a reason for that. Giving bosses would weakness would make them even more shallow, considering you'd One More Turn + Baton Pass spam to victory. P5 isn't peak megaten when it comes to boss design, but it introduces enough wrinkles to a point where you're not just spamming attacks to win. Also the missions are cool.
 

LotusHD

Banned
I hear you. It just goes on and on and doesn't know when to call it quits. I have never played a game before that's shown such complete disregard for my time. I spent almost ten hours in ONE palace, listening to the same shitty pop tune over and over till my nose bled.

I loved it for the first 60 hours, then that love turned to hate, and I've never been happier to be done with a game.

Devs need to quit it with this fooling the player to think it's over shit. This game could have been half the length, and been much better for it. The dialogues could have been cut with a cleaver as well. Every character doesn't have to say some useless garbage in every single damn scene just to make sure we know they're there. There's just so much boring chatter I ended up fast forwarding through a lot of it in the end.

Yeah. 30 hours of this would have been perfect.

So much of the dialogue was shitty repetition of plot points that were just experienced or opportunities to let every team member deliver the exact same cliched platitude.

I dunno about 30 hours, but I felt similarly in feeling the game kind of dragged on and on, to the point where I kinda just wanted it to be over already. And that's coming from someone who fucking loves games that take forever to beat.
 

Opa-Pa

Member
I think an aspect of combat P5 fails to communicate is that the point is not to just mindlessly exploit elemental weaknesses at all, that's only supposed to apply to mobs where your goal is to win as fast as possible because they can kill you with ease if you ley them act... On hard that is.

Boss battles are more about planning carefully and making use of your strongest moves while keeping buffs and debuffs on to make sure you can survive. Giving bosses weakness would make them pushovers, unless they went the SMT4 Apocalypse and make everything a boss gauntlet, which judging by the reception of a certain moment in Palace 7, people don't seem to like (I love those).

But yeah I think combat only realizes its full potential on hard, and it's a pity this wasn't the default difficulty because it's so much fun. Of course it's hard to say something like that without coming off as pretentious or elitist, but eh what can you do. Normal is simply too easy and you deal too much damage to need to care about strategy most of the time.

The problem with palaces and their length/pacing comes from the fact the developers clearly don't intend the player to clear the whole thing in one marathon. If you did 1-2 safe rooms a trip and visited the palace 2-4 times during the month that wouldn't be an issue. Of course doing this creates the conflict of wasting precious social time constantly being in palaces. I think it's telling that the dungeons that have forced exits due to needing to change cognition aren't the ones people generally complain about, yet that issue ties into the general complaint that the game "waste your time" with so many story scenes where you can't do social stuff.

I really can't even think of a good suggestion to fix the issue as long as persona keeps the format it's had since p3.

I agree, I think the game is clear enough in how palaces shouldn't be cleared in one go, except that they made the terrible mistake of tying the SP adhesives to one of the first Confidants you have access to, and thus making them relatively easily available, so players will bypass the low SP barrier with ease, thinking this is the way the palaces are intended to be played.

I personally don't get the general anxiety over losing days that could be spent ranking up social links, simply because I see the dungeons as the meat of the game, and the social aspects as appetizers... HOWEVER I can see how the many sections that take control away from the player could make this anxiety worse.

And I agree that it's really hard to think of a solution with the current framework unless they were to force you out of every dungeon, which goes against the appeal of time management. And clearly making them shorter isn't an option for me haha.
 
C

Contica

Unconfirmed Member
I don't think there is a shitty piece of music in this whole game.

For a vocal track to be worth listening to for almost ten hours, it needs to be flawless. I might be more sensitive to this than some others since i work with music production, but her voice is slightly out of tune quite often, and to me it was sonic torture listening to her in the end.
 
I agree, I think the game is clear enough in how palaces shouldn't be cleared in one go, except that they made the terrible mistake of tying the SP adhesives to one of the first Confidants you have access to, and thus making them relatively easily available, so players will bypass the low SP barrier with ease, thinking this is the way the palaces are intended to be played.
fortunately for me, I quite enjoy grabbing those accessories and plowing through the Dungeons in 1 go. I never got bored, even in palace 7
 

Opa-Pa

Member
fortunately for me, I quite enjoy grabbing those accessories and plowing through the Dungeons in 1 go. I never got bored, even in palace 7

That's cool, I don't think it's impossible to enjoy doing them in one go. It's just that I did all of them in multiple sessions, and I can definitely see how some of them would have been unbearable for me in one go.

I did do the 7th in a single run though and loved it.
 

LotusHD

Banned
I agree, I think the game is clear enough in how palaces shouldn't be cleared in one go, except that they made the terrible mistake of tying the SP adhesives to one of the first Confidants you have access to, and thus making them relatively easily available, so players will bypass the low SP barrier with ease, thinking this is the way the palaces are intended to be played.

I agree that trying to do the palaces in one go would obviously tire someone out. But at the same time, it doesn't change the fact that the dungeons are quite lengthy. Like if I take a break and finish the palace the next day (in real life), I'm still going to be ultimately spending the same amount of time finishing that palace regardless if I did or did not do it in one day. I'd still end up complaining about most, if not all, of them are. Doesn't help things either that the combat at some point just had me feel like I'm going through the motions, which is understandable since I played for 90+ hours, but if the palaces weren't often so long and tedious, it would've helped somewhat.

I personally don't get the general anxiety over losing days that could be spent ranking up social links, simply because I see the dungeons as the meat of the game, and the social aspects as appetizers... HOWEVER I can see how the many sections that take control away from the player could make this anxiety worse.

The part that I enjoyed the most was the social links and progressing the story, so in that sense, the palaces were an impediment to that. I have to get it out of the way so I can have as much time as possible hanging out with people, as well as have the story progress. Generally I'll see the palace, think it looks really swell and like the little puzzles they have within them, but before long I can't wait to leave the damn place.

As for the anxiety, well, you only have so much time. I didn't use a guide or anything, but you can't blame someone for wanting to make sure they max out the social links they've become most interested in.
 
I agree, I think the game is clear enough in how palaces shouldn't be cleared in one go, except that they made the terrible mistake of tying the SP adhesives to one of the first Confidants you have access to, and thus making them relatively easily available, so players will bypass the low SP barrier with ease, thinking this is the way the palaces are intended to be played.

I personally don't get the general anxiety over losing days that could be spent ranking up social links, simply because I see the dungeons as the meat of the game, and the social aspects as appetizers... HOWEVER I can see how the many sections that take control away from the player could make this anxiety worse.

And I agree that it's really hard to think of a solution with the current framework unless they were to force you out of every dungeon, which goes against the appeal of time management. And clearly making them shorter isn't an option for me haha.

The issue with forcing someone out is there is no way for the player to know how far away they are from that force point. Quiet a few people who lost a day leaving the 1st palace before going to the treasure room after getting to the save room outside assuming getting to the treasure would spark the boss fight. I'm sure some people have left later palaces, gone back in, then got blocked by the forced exit point (November palace spoiler)
I imagine this has happened to a lot of people leaving after gaining access to the elevator for the high spender floor but not actually going up until the next day where they instantly got kicked out

Also the
7th palace
would be awful regardless of how many breaks I took during it
 

Opa-Pa

Member
I agree that trying to do the palaces in one go would obviously tire someone out. But at the same time, it doesn't change the fact that the dungeons are quite lengthy. Like if I take a break and finish the palace the next day (in real life), I'm still going to be ultimately spending the same amount of time finishing that palace regardless if I did or did not do it in one day. I'd still end up complaining about most, if not all, of them are. Doesn't help things either that the combat at some point just had me feel like I'm going through the motions, which is understandable since I played for 90+ hours, but if the palaces weren't often so long and tedious, it would've helped somewhat.



The part that I enjoyed the most was the social links and progressing the story, so in that sense, the palaces were an impediment to that. I have to get it out of the way so I can have as much time as possible hanging out with people, as well as have the story progress. Generally I'll see the palace, think it looks really swell and like the little puzzles they have within them, but before long I can't wait to leave the damn place.

As for the anxiety, well, you only have so much time. I didn't use a guide or anything, but you can't blame someone for wanting to make sure they max out the social links they've become most interested in.

I think it's totally fair that some players are more interested or basically play the game for the social links only, but at some point you have to accept that modern Persona is turn based RPG first and social life simulator second (and please don't read this as "hey maybe these games aren't for you!!"). Like you can ignore all social links except the plot related ones if you want to, but dungeons and combat are mandatory, so naturally if you are mostly in for the social stuff you're gonna have a hard time enduring dungeons.

I do agree that some are notably long, but the advice of dividing them in chunks is intended for people who disliked the content of them more or less, that kind of stuff can definitely be avoided by not tackling them in one go, but if you just want them to end regardless of the content then there's not much to do, and the only solution would be to make them shorter, which lots of people who are in for the combat and dungeon crawling won't agree to.

The issue with forcing someone out is there is no way for the player to know how far away they are from that force point. Quiet a few people who lost a day leaving the 1st palace before going to the treasure room after getting to the save room outside assuming getting to the treasure would spark the boss fight. I'm sure some people have left later palaces, gone back in, then got blocked by the forced exit point (November palace spoiler)
I imagine this has happened to a lot of people leaving after gaining access to the elevator for the high spender floor but not actually going up until the next day where they instantly got kicked out

Also the
7th palace
would be awful regardless of how many breaks I took during it

For the record I actually hated whenever that happened because I like to go as far as possible before I'm out of SP, so these felt patronizing and I can see how they can confuse other players trying to figure out how many mandatory days it'll take them to clear a dungeon.

I think the next time they should simply not have anything similar to calling cards so you don't need to calculate how many days you have left, just let players manage their time freely... And hide SP adhesives better.
 

PK Gaming

Member
As for the anxiety, well, you only have so much time. I didn't use a guide or anything, but you can't blame someone for wanting to make sure they max out the social links they've become most interested in.

People are maxing out all confidants on their first playthrough without a guide. That's how generous Persona 5 is when it comes to time management, so the anxiety to clear dungeons asap is quite unnecessary. If you're finding the dungeons (with the obvious exceptions of 5 and 7) too long, then you're simply rushing through them.
 
How long is the final dungeon compared to the others? I'm 91 hours in and just reached my first save point after like 45 minutes.

End Game / Final Dungeon spoilers:
I'm guessing this is the final dungeon at least. It's Christmas Eve and I'm in Mementos Depths.
 

ShadyK54

Member
Dat music when you
first enter Sae's Palace/the casino
drake-dancing-hotline-bling-gifs-5.gif
 

LotusHD

Banned
I think it's totally fair that some players are more interested or basically play the game for the social links only, but at some point you have to accept that modern Persona is turn based RPG first and social life simulator second (and please don't read this as "hey maybe these games aren't for you!!"). Like you can ignore all social links except the plot related ones if you want to, but dungeons and combat are mandatory, so naturally if you are mostly in for the social stuff you're gonna have a hard time enduring dungeons.

I do agree that some are notably long, but the advice of dividing them in chunks is intended for people who disliked the content of them more or less, that kind of stuff can definitely be avoided by not tackling them in one go, but if you just want them to end regardless of the content then there's not much to do, and the only solution would be to make them shorter, which lots of people who are in for the combat and dungeon crawling won't agree to.



For the record I actually hated whenever that happened because I like to go as far as possible before I'm out of SP, so these felt patronizing and I can see how they can confuse other players trying to figure out how many mandatory days it'll take them to clear a dungeon.

I think the next time they should simply not have anything similar to calling cards so you don't need to calculate how many days you have left, just let players manage their time freely... And hide SP adhesives better.

I did accept them, and it's not like I hate the palaces or want them removed. I'm aware that's what comes first. I just felt they were overall too tedious. Simple as that.

People are maxing out all confidants on their first playthrough without a guide. That's how generous Persona 5 is when it comes to time management, so the anxiety to clear dungeons asap is quite unnecessary. If you're finding the dungeons (with the obvious exceptions of 5 and 7) too long, then you're simply rushing through them.

Well I didn't rush through them, so... yea. Still found them tedious.

And in terms of time management, I agree that it was ultimately generous. Though I didn't max out everyone, I maxed out everyone I genuinely wanted to hang out with, so it's whatever.
 
Re: Mementos banter- the interruptions annoyed me at first but it actually repeats fairly regularly so it doesn't bug me anymore.

What does bother me is that it feels like most of the dialogues need an additional response from the person originating the conversation.

And it shouldn't be so boilerplate anyway. Let some dialogues have more than two team members, let them be 3 or 4 lines if needed, etc.
 

Splinter

Member
Is a melee focused team (for saving SP) a viable strategy at any point in the game? Particularly early in the game up until you increase your SP allotment and have enough to not worry about running out? I'm still early in the game, end of first palace, and find the biggest challenge to be maintaining enough SP. I don't necessarily run out and lose because of it, but I have to return to a safe point to refill which loses my progress and causes me anxiety lol. At this point I have been using the personas to deal most of the damage and using melee's to finish the enemies off. I don't even use guns, are they even worth using?

Any early game weapons, gear, tactics, etc that I can use to clear out most of the lower level enemies without taking too long, and causing my team much damage?
 
Is a melee focused team (for saving SP) a viable strategy at any point in the game? Particularly early in the game up until you increase your SP allotment and have enough to not worry about running out? I'm still early in the game, end of first palace, and find the biggest challenge to be maintaining enough SP. I don't necessarily run out and lose because of it, but I have to return to a safe point to refill which loses my progress and causes me anxiety lol. At this point I have been using the personas to deal most of the damage and using melee's to finish the enemies off. I don't even use guns, are they even worth using?

Any early game weapons, gear, tactics, etc that I can use to clear out most of the lower level enemies without taking too long, and causing my team much damage?

By the time you could do a physical team you'll have plenty of sp where it's no longer an issue
 

Kssio_Aug

Member
People are maxing out all confidants on their first playthrough without a guide. That's how generous Persona 5 is when it comes to time management, so the anxiety to clear dungeons asap is quite unnecessary. If you're finding the dungeons (with the obvious exceptions of 5 and 7) too long, then you're simply rushing through them.

If that's really the case, then I can't understand why people are complaining about the given time to Social Link. =o

Still at beginning, so I can't tell anything yet. Can't wait to come back playing later today!
 

RalchAC

Member
If that's really the case, then I can't understand why people are complaining about the given time to Social Link. =o

Still at beginning, so I can't tell anything yet. Can't wait to come back playing later today!

They probably didn't level up the Fortune arcana.
 

RalchAC

Member
I mean that slink doesn't open up for almost half the game and you have to get pretty far into the link to get that reward.

She has some other good rewards though. Like a boost go Social Stats at an early level.

And she is an evening Confidant. It's much easier to level those up.

Guilty as charged. I just couldn't accept giving her 100K on my first run.

I was told that it was worth it tbh. And it sure was.
 

Not Spaceghost

Spaceghost
So I am still mid palace 6 but I had to look something up which was the date that morgana hits max confidant rank which makes makes me ask, is yoshitsune basically an NG+ persona this time around?
 

RalchAC

Member
So I am still mid palace 6 but I had to look something up which was the date that morgana hits max confidant rank which makes makes me ask, is yoshitsune basically an NG+ persona this time around?

Strength arcana allows you to create Personas above your level at MAX and the last dungeon gives quite a lot of experience

So not necessarily.
 
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