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Persona Community Thread |OT4| The Golden Number

Musolf815

Member
Ha, in a way, but not quite what I had in mind. P4A has the contrived "illusion" reason for fighting each other and they overcome it in a way that makes sense for Persona 4 by trusting in each other; in their friends.

But what I'm talkin' about is really Danganronpa, but literally replace the cast with Persona characters and have the plot reflect the Persona series. An "alternate reality" game where they're actually forced to kill each other for motives that are analogous to the ones in the actual RPGs (motive 1 for Yu = Nanako, for example)... I'd actually probably like that.

Seeing the P3/P4 cast truly go off the deep end... heh, wonderful.

Honestly, I'd buy both Persona 3 x Danganronpa and Persona 4 x Danganronpa...but I'd be very emotional the entire time...making it an alternate reality would ease the pain a little.
 
I never picked up Japanese with games as an end goal in mind just because I knew those alone wouldn't be enough of a motivating factor for me personally, so the ones that I do pick up are mainly done either for enjoyment or just genuine curiosity like with a lot of dating sims. To be certain, the better written ones do help keep my reading skills sharp in addition to everything else I consume normally in Japan; part of the reason I like playing stuff like Dangan Ronpa in Japanese is that the writing in those sorts of games is because their verbosity all but ensures I'll come away occasionally learning new terms here and there and those games can be great ways for having a better grasp of modern colloquialisms and whatnot. But I otherwise comes to most Japanese-only games for the same reasons I do the ones I play in English: they look like they'll engage me and be sufficiently entertaining enough to hold my attention and that includes the dumb dating sims I'll occasionally pick up. I force myself to read and write a lot of Japanese so it stays fresh when I'm not living over there, but since games have that interactive element to them, it's harder for me to grind away at them for the sake of purely reading them like I could more traditional media unless I just have that inherent interest in the subject matter.

So for what it's worth, while a lot of people will tell you that visual novels are a great way to practice Japanese reading once you're at a high enough level, I've personally never been able to play a pure visual novel that didn't have other gameplay mechanics attached from start to finish. Part of it's probably just because a lot of the subject matter and character designs in visual novels don't appeal to me, but I've found in the ones that I have played that the indulgent nature of the writing rarely justifies the extra expense in intellectual energy I have to spend reading all of that text as a non-native. There are a few games I suspect I could make exceptions for; I have physical copies of both Hatoful Boyfriend games lying around that I really need to play through at some point, for instance, even though it looks like they got brilliant localizations. But otherwise much like how it is with western games, a lot of Japanese games don't have writing that's as enjoyable as what you'll find in more mature mediums, so you're more likely to see me pick up a Haruki Murakami novel for actual reading practice than a lot of games.

Hmm, interesting. To be honest, the only motivating factors for me to learn Japanese would be to play Japanese only video games or for the sake of communication if I ever visit Japan. Though now I understand why it would be more beneficial to read a novel then play a video game when it comes to actually practicing reading the language. This kinda reminds me of how I would watch Naruto and Bleach with Spanish subtitles to practice reading for Spanish class in high school. By the end of the school year my teach gave me an A but gave my Spanish profanity an A+. I remember all of my Spanish teachers telling me that the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. Constantly speaking it with others, reading it, listening to it, etc etc. Can you vouch for that? Did your time in Japan help your Japanese immensely?

We joked in class that our final would be blind folding every student and dropping them all off in different Spanish speaking countries. If you find your way home, you get an A+. Haha good times.
 

Pepsiman

@iiotenki on Twitter!
Hmm, interesting. To be honest, the only motivating factors for me to learn Japanese would be to play Japanese only video games or for the sake of communication if I ever visit Japan. Though now I understand why it would be more beneficial to read a novel then play a video game when it comes to actually practicing reading the language. This kinda reminds me of how I would watch Naruto and Bleach with Spanish subtitles to practice reading for Spanish class in high school. By the end of the school year my teach gave me an A but gave my Spanish profanity an A+. I remember all of my Spanish teachers telling me that the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. Constantly speaking it with others, reading it, listening to it, etc etc. Can you vouch for that? Did your time in Japan help your Japanese immensely?

We joked in class that our final would be blind folding every student and dropping them all off in different Spanish speaking countries. If you find your way home, you get an A+. Haha good times.

Oh yeah, totally, immersion in the native environment is the only way you'll completely grasp a foreign language in the end, especially something like Japanese. I'd say I was already pretty competent at Japanese before I last lived there; I communicated with native friends in it pretty regularly and as I've mentioned elsewhere, I did a lot of optional studying on the side constantly to make sure I knew more than I was obligated to know for classes. But I wouldn't at all compare how I was back then to how I am now, positively. I'm still not perfect at it, but going over to Japan helped with my fluency immensely in two ways: 1. It gave me a much better sense of how different grammar points and colloquialisms are applied naturally and 2. It gave me the confidence to build up my knowledge of the language using material already written in that language. Prior to going over there, I'd spent my third year of Japanese studying from an entirely Japanese language textbook and taking classes that were conducted mostly in Japanese, but that was only for 50 minutes a day four days a week. Over there, though, it was do or die and not only was I continuing to study Japanese exclusively in Japanese, I had to engage my professors exclusively in that language even outside of class and I had to do so for a minimum of two hours a day five days a week depending on my daily schedule before factoring in homework and independent study, which was also all in Japanese and was usually three hours a night minimum. Mix that in with just going about daily life with verbal and written Japanese completely surrounding me outside my mostly English-speaking dorm and I'd say that the different was day and night compared to when I was studying it in the States. One of the many reasons I'm working on moving back to Japan aside from just liking the place so much is in fact because I can't really use it in my daily life in the States outside of work and I worry about my fluency slipping if I let things simmer much longer.

That being said, there is a merit to studying Japanese using games and I can provide some suggestions at different levels if you're ever curious enough about it. I just personally don't recommend that anybody do it for at least the first couple of years so that they can figure out how the language fundamentally works and also work out any weird quirks they might pick up during those initial phases. Japanese is a really grammatically flexible language in a lot of ways and while that makes popular media a good asset for studying and practicing, it can also be a liability if you're not cautious enough about when and how you apply it in your studies since a lot of natives play it fast and loose with the rules and it can be easy to end up emulating the wrong things without actually understanding the implications of what's being said or written natively. I personally didn't start doing it until about halfway through my third year of studying and from what I've seen with other people, that's generally the time frame where they feel comfortable learning from popular media without inherently wanting to just parrot everything they read and hear.
 
Oh yeah, totally, immersion in the native environment is the only way you'll completely grasp a foreign language in the end, especially something like Japanese. I'd say I was already pretty competent at Japanese before I last lived there; I communicated with native friends in it pretty regularly and as I've mentioned elsewhere, I did a lot of optional studying on the side constantly to make sure I knew more than I was obligated to know for classes. But I wouldn't at all compare how I was back then to how I am now, positively. I'm still not perfect at it, but going over to Japan helped with my fluency immensely in two ways: 1. It gave me a much better sense of how different grammar points and colloquialisms are applied naturally and 2. It gave me the confidence to build up my knowledge of the language using material already written in that language. Prior to going over there, I'd spent my third year of Japanese studying from an entirely Japanese language textbook and taking classes that were conducted mostly in Japanese, but that was only for 50 minutes a day four days a week. Over there, though, it was do or die and not only was I continuing to study Japanese exclusively in Japanese, I had to engage my professors exclusively in that language even outside of class and I had to do so for a minimum of two hours a day five days a week depending on my daily schedule before factoring in homework and independent study, which was also all in Japanese and was usually three hours a night minimum. Mix that in with just going about daily life with verbal and written Japanese completely surrounding me outside my mostly English-speaking dorm and I'd say that the different was day and night compared to when I was studying it in the States. One of the many reasons I'm working on moving back to Japan aside from just liking the place so much is in fact because I can't really use it in my daily life in the States outside of work and I worry about my fluency slipping if I let things simmer much longer.

Well, once again, my Spanish teachers were right. Your life in Japan sounds... intense... Well more power to you man, keep working hard on your Japanese. I think your dedication is awesome.

Not gonna lie, part of me randomly imagined you as Bebe from the P3. But instead of a fan, you have a Japanese text book. Instead of sewing, you are practicing Japanese.
 

cj_iwakura

Member
Sheesh, walk into a Soul Hackers thread and people are trying to get the OP to play Strange Journey instead.

Dark times. Dark times.
 

Lunar15

Member
Part of me wishes they had kept Yozu Koshiro on as the composer for Persona Q. I would have liked to see how he would have tackled Persona music. Him and Meguro having a bit of a collaboration would be a dream.

Plus, his EOIV soundtrack is one of the best I've ever heard.
 
Sheesh, walk into a Soul Hackers thread and people are trying to get the OP to play Strange Journey instead.

Dark times. Dark times.
i really wish nocturne was on psn so it'd be much easier to suggest a starting point for anyone. it should be okay i guess. as long as the op has any idea what to expect. maybe…

Obvious answer in that thread was clearly Megami Tensei for the PC-8801. I don't know why you'd give that guy any other answer. It's like you want him to enjoy these games or something.
hahahahaha that opening
 

Pepsiman

@iiotenki on Twitter!
It's a strange game all around. I love that intro dearly and how campy it is in a uniquely 80s Japanese PC game sort of way. Not developed by Wolf Team proper, obviously, I think it was Nihon Telnet, but yeah, I don't know how you get the idea to make a Gauntlet clone from those novels. I will say that some of the music is at least pretty great, though. Some of it's terrible, but some of it's great! I'm not sure what it says about me personally, but I've made it a lot further in that version than I ever have the actual RPG in its various incarnations. I always found it a neatly obtuse footnote in the history of the series, though. Imagine if THAT had been what took off and what the series and various spinoffs would have become.

Can you say Gauntlet with waifus?
 
Seeing that makes me very glad that we're past the age of throwaway Megaten spinoffs.

I'm ignoring the mobile games of course.

And forget about games like Giten Megami Tensei: Tokyo Mokushiroku? Which has one of the best Alice sprites.

Alice.PNG
 

Pepsiman

@iiotenki on Twitter!
Seeing that makes me very glad that we're past the age of throwaway Megaten spinoffs.

I'm ignoring the mobile games of course.


For some of us, that age has never ended. It still lies alive and well underneath a thin layer of shrinkwrap, waiting patiently for the time it can roam free and cause death and suffering to all that come into contact with it. You can live a happy life for a little while if you attempt to ignore it, but rest assured, it will stare at you relentlessly surrounded by countless other superior games from your bookshelf until you relent and acknowledge that it exists simply so it may quiet down but for a few moments so you can have your inner peace.
 
For some of us, that age has never ended. It still lies alive and well underneath a thin layer of shrinkwrap, waiting patiently for the time it can roam free and cause death and suffering to all that come into contact with it. You can live a happy life for a little while if you attempt to ignore it, but rest assured, it will stare at you relentlessly surrounded by countless other superior games from your bookshelf until you relent and acknowledge that it exists simply so it may quiet down but for a few moments so you can have your inner peace.

SMT: NINE, the only thing I practicality remember about the game that stood out to me is pretty much these two demons that show up nowhere else in the series
Adam & Eve
 

Sophia

Member
The only two things I know about SMT Nine is that it looks highly unpolished and unfinished, and that somewhere in the game
I'm in it as a goddess.
:O
 

Caladrius

Member
And forget about games like Giten Megami Tensei: Tokyo Mokushiroku? Which has one of the best Alice sprites.

Alice.PNG

Didn't her concept get recycled for Alraune and some other demon?

For some of us, that age has never ended. It still lies alive and well underneath a thin layer of shrinkwrap, waiting patiently for the time it can roam free and cause death and suffering to all that come into contact with it. You can live a happy life for a little while if you attempt to ignore it, but rest assured, it will stare at you relentlessly surrounded by countless other superior games from your bookshelf until you relent and acknowledge that it exists simply so it may quiet down but for a few moments so you can have your inner peace.

THINK OF THE RESALE VALUE

The only two things I know about SMT Nine is that it looks highly unpolished and unfinished, and that somewhere in the game
I'm in it as a goddess.
:O

Hey can you tell us how gnosis works

yaldabaoth should have been used instead of demiurge in strange journey and smt4

It's a pity such stellar designs haven't been reused. (Though I just barely prefer the Evil Rainbow Demiurge to Yaldabaoth)
 

Marche90

Member
i'm looking forward to having mastema in p5. hopefully.

belberith for cross fusion.

Throw in all the Devil Survivor bosses. Iirc, only Beelzebub has appeared in them.

Yikes, Monday again. I don't even remember what the hell did I do the whole (long for me, 4 days) weekend... Anyway, have a nice workweek guys
 
Throw in all the Devil Survivor bosses. Iirc, only Beelzebub has appeared in them.

Yikes, Monday again. I don't even remember what the hell did I do the whole (long for me, 4 days) weekend... Anyway, have a nice workweek guys

SMTIV has some of the Devil Survivor bosses in it, Beldr (Naturally changed to his correct name, Baldr/Baldur) and I think one more if I recall.
 

CorvoSol

Member
You know, the only thing P4 doesn't have that SMT4 had that I'd care to have is Burroughs' Apps. Cuz shit like demons getting one shotted by world map encounters who are 70 levels lower can go die in a fire.
 

Gazoinks

Member
P5 better have SMT IV's fusion system.

If it doesn't some tables are getting flipped.

That LTTP thread reminded me that I need to get back to Nocturne soon! Also Soul Hackers! I have the JRPG problem in Soul Hackers where I completely forgot what I'm supposed to be doing and even the digest won't help. >.>
 

PK Gaming

Member
If it doesn't some tables are getting flipped.

That LTTP thread reminded me that I need to get back to Nocturne soon! Also Soul Hackers! I have the JRPG problem in Soul Hackers where I completely forgot what I'm supposed to be doing and even the digest won't help. >.>

Have you tried going to the Spookies base?

Nemissa/Hitomi will usually tell you where to go after leaving.
 

Gazoinks

Member
Have you tried going to the Spookies base?

Nemissa/Hitomi will usually tell you where to go after leaving.

Yup. Sux and Yuichi show up and mention something about my sister, but she doesn't have anything to say and there's no other dialog there. The digest goes up to the end of the second Vision Quest, and I must have beat the airport because there are policemen guarding it that won't let me in.
 

CorvoSol

Member
Draw as in physically bust out a pen and paper or Draw as in FFVIII where you absorb Persona from shadows.

Had this exact thought, haha.


So in P4G last night I redid the
February
Dungeon, and I have some positive things to say to contrast with my griping from last go around. Well, sort of.

First of all, I actually really love the dungeon's presentation. The aesthetics, the music, and the approach to the final battle are all nice. I appreciate that they attempt to take some of Marie's poetry and use it in a way that sort of makes sense, too. The dungeon's challenge is really, really mitigated by Victory Cry, but I still don't mind it. It's a good challenge when your party is, like mine, basically maxed out. The only thing I don't like about the dungeon is that you cannot wear costumes inside it. I just got the Deep Blue Set and wanted to check it out, but oh well.

As to Marie, I still hold to my previous opinion that they did a half-assed job of implementing her. She really doesn't have to come across as forced as she does, and it would only take a few adjustments to really fix her. Making he a full on PC would've helped because then she wouldn't have been caught half-way between "friends" and "party". Doing something more than just "you went to hang with Marie and then everyone coincidentally showed up!" would've helped, too. Like, letting her interact with others more. I feel some of her SLinks work well in this, like going shopping with Chie and Yukiko, and the whole search for her memories is fine enough, but there are several forced "spend times" where they could've really had her interact with the cast in a more meaningful way.

I'm not a fan of her attitude, nor her outfit, but I will say her voice actress does a pretty damn good job. Especially in the battle with her.
 

PK Gaming

Member
Yup. Sux and Yuichi show up and mention something about my sister, but she doesn't have anything to say and there's no other dialog there. The digest goes up to the end of the second Vision Quest, and I must have beat the airport because there are policemen guarding it that won't let me in.
Hmm

Did you
defeat the dolphin demon that was holding your sister captive?

Can you tell me what your latest reader's digest is? I can cross-reference yours with mine and from there.

Uuugh I need to get back to SMTIV. Not until after I finish my quest to finish the irrelevant Persona games ;)

Speaking of, P1P:
I'm in Deva Yuga right now, near the end I believe. How much more do I have to go? My party is all around level 40, except Elly cuz she's a superstar, and that seems low for what feels like almost endgame stuff.
One more major dungeon. My party was around the late 40s when I beat the game, with the exception of the MC, who I had grinded to lvl 63, in order to use his ultimate Persona. The final boss shouldn't be "too" hard; if you're struggling, you can always cheat and summon the Fool Persona's.
 

Acid08

Banned
P5 better have SMT IV's fusion system.
Uuugh I need to get back to SMTIV. Not until after I finish my quest to finish the irrelevant Persona games ;)

Speaking of, P1P:
I'm in Deva Yuga right now, near the end I believe. How much more do I have to go? My party is all around level 40, except Elly cuz she's a superstar, and that seems low for what feels like almost endgame stuff.
 

Gazoinks

Member
Hmm

Did you
defeat the dolphin demon that was holding your sister captive?

Can you tell me what your latest reader's digest is? I can cross-reference yours with mine and from there.

Nope, I haven't got that far yet. My latest digest is the end of the second Vision Quest
when Winpe explodes.
I can't remember whether I've done the airport or not, but I can't get into it.
 

PK Gaming

Member
Nope, I haven't got that far yet. My latest digest is the end of the second Vision Quest
when Winpe explodes.
I can't remember whether I've done the airport or not, but I can't get into it.

I see

It sounds like you haven't completed the airport yet, because you should have gotten the digest where
you find Judah's COMP + his demons.
It might seem like it's blocked, but there's actually a path you can take to enter it (around the police officer)
 

Acid08

Banned
One more major dungeon. My party was around the late 40s when I beat the game, with the exception of the MC, who I had grinded to lvl 63, in order to use his ultimate Persona. The final boss shouldn't be "too" hard; if you're struggling, you can always cheat and summon the Fool Persona's.
Wow, late 40's seems so low. The game has not been challenging at all though.

And I did fuse the first Fool Persona :p it's pretty awesome. If I get the MC high enough level I'll probably fuse the second one too. I think it's supposed to be 47, right?
 

Gazoinks

Member
I see

It sounds like you haven't completed the airport yet, because you should have gotten the digest where
you find Judah's COMP + his demons.
It might seem like it's blocked, but there's actually a path you can take to enter it (around the police officer)

OH. You're right, I remember now. I think I left to go shopping or something. Now I feel silly spending so much time wandering around when it was right there all along. :p
 
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