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Persona Community Thread |OT5| Pull up a chair! [NO PQ OR P4U SPOILERS!]

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S

SloaneRisette

Member
SpacePirate Ridley said:
This one is specially for you ;)
risesmedwickspersonadt3j8y.png
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Didn't see this until just now, thanks! I think this might be rocked on my Twitter for awhile.
 
H

hipsterpants

Member
I was going to write a big post about my impressions of P4 but realized I was not nearly inspired enough to do so. So while this probably won't give my full opinion on the matter, I'll give it a shot.

Warning: P3 ending spoilers contained within.

- I'm clearly a heartless bastard, because that ending barely moved me. Whether it was the fact that its predecessor has one one the GOAT video game endings, or that it was animated like ass, or that its undone by the fact that I knew Yu returns only 2 months later in P4A, I was underwhelmed. The credits song was pretty fantastic though.

- I really enjoyed the contrast between P3 and P4's ending "themes" however. While you never really know if Izanami's words are true, it doesn't matter because the Investigation team is like "fuck that" and just destroys her. Meanwhile P3 basically says people do want the world to end and there's nothing you can do about it except stop it via Makoto's sacrifice.

- This game's "good ending" suffers from a bad case of FFIX syndrome. The entire game is about finding the killer and stopping him. When you do discover its Adachi, he turns out to be a pretty great villain with awesomely evil facial expressions and motives.... Then you fight him and destroy him with ease. And then Ameno-Sagiri appears and is like "I am actually the being that did all this" out of fucking nowhere and Adachi becomes irrelevant. However, I think Izanami was done pretty well. Tying it all back to a seemingly harmless yet strange scene in the beginning was pretty genius.

- I fucking despise how character development was done in this game. It's just bad. While it is the point of the plot, simply having the characters up front be like "these are all my problems" via their Shadow ruins any subtlety or mystery surrounding them. Imagine in P3 if when you met Junpei he just immediately told you about all of his problems and that he was jealous of your skillz. It would suck. S. Link development also means that the characters barely change at all in the main story. I never got very far in Chie's link, so from what I saw she was literally the exact same character at the end as she was after her shadow appeared. Doing so also forced them to stick to the Status Quo in their development, meaning you couldn't have anything too major or too radical happen to them.

- This biggest crime the S. Link development did is that is destroyed, in my opinion, the "organicness" of the group. It's weird enough that all these characters are able to become instant bffs with little to no conflict (any there is is used for laughs), but showing that apparently I'm the only person that can really help Kanji gain confidence in himself or help Yukiko decide her future makes it hard to believe that we're as close as we're apparently supposed to be. P3 has the characters actually really interact with each other and help each other out. They're able to change without the need of the protagonist guiding them along and providing support the whole way through. One of the reasons Junpei is so amazing is because he changes on his own making his own decisions. P4 simply does not have a character like that.

Tired or writing by this point, but yea, Naoto is bad. She exists as a plot device to get the Investigation Team (of morons) to realize that shockingly Mitsuo is not the killer. Her issues are shown very poorly and her character itself is incredibly absurd for a game that tries to make its characters believable. And if you ask me how she changed during her S. Link I honestly couldn't say, it was terrible.

I felt the music was rather lacking. There were no real stand out or emotional tracks in this game in my opinion. Mass Destruction is also a better battle theme.

The combat was embarrassingly easy to the point of boredom as I approached end-game. The only things that mattered in regular combat were whether you could cover the elements your teammates didn't have and for the boss fights just have a few buff/debuff abilities. "Heaven" was the worst offender of all, where 90% of the enemies are weak to light or dark so if you bring Naoto its just gg.

The real strength of the game in my opinion is the S. Link writing. While not perfect, they are a far cry from some of the shit in P3. Kou actually felt like a good friend, Nanako's was warm and fuzzy, and Dojima's really made you feel for the guy. The dungeon design was also much better. If only because it didn't involve 256 floors or whatever that were all randomly generated and colored blue.

In conclusion: A very good game that, at least for me, failed at some of the things that it tried. It leaves me looking forward to P5 wondering what the protagonist will be like and what
incredibly sad event will require you to talk to your maxed S. Link friends one final time.
 
H

hao chi

Member
crush said:
I was going to write a big post about my impressions of P4 but realized I was not nearly inspired enough to do so. So while this probably won't give my full opinion on the matter, I'll give it a shot.

Warning: P3 ending spoilers contained within.

- I'm clearly a heartless bastard, because that ending barely moved me. Whether it was the fact that its predecessor has one one the GOAT video game endings, or that it was animated like ass, or that its undone by the fact that I knew Yu returns only 2 months later in P4A, I was underwhelmed. The credits song was pretty fantastic though.
Click to expand...

P4's ending didn't really do much for me either, though in my case it's because growing up in a military family I've moved away from close friends many times, and it sucks, but you get over it, find new friends after school starts back up, and hopefully keep in touch with your old friends.

Also, I can't really be sad for Yu after the shitty ending Makoto got.
 
S

Sophia

Member
Dantis said:
Apparently so!
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That's dumb. How are they stopping people from voting multiple times? Surely they're aware they're playing favoritism due to Facebook's layout too? The ones near the top are getting more likes than the ones near the bottom, on average....

This whole contest reeks of foolishness.
 
D

Dantis

Member
Sophia said:
That's dumb. How are they stopping people from voting multiple times? Surely they're aware they're playing favoritism due to Facebook's layout too? The ones near the top are getting more likes than the ones near the bottom, on average....
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No idea. It's a pretty flawed system.
 
C

CorvoSol

Member
Tiu Neo said:
Maybe? It could be a game, but it would probably be too soon to announce it. I can see why they did that with P4D and P5, since it was a big event at the time.



Haha, cool! Here on Brazil, May 1st is a holiday, so if I'm not travelling, I end having a party that day. Last year I got an awesome P4 chibi collection as a gift. :O

In my family, we have a similar situation. My brother has the same birthday as a cousin, they end doing one big party, haha.
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HOLD UP. We got someone from Brazil in here? I'm like, whatever the weeaboo equivalent is for Brazil, haha. I lived in the Centro-Oeste for 2 years. Mostly in the Triangulo Mineiro and the Goiania region of Minas Gerais and Goias respectively. God I miss that place.

ANYWAY

Persona 2 Innocent Sin

KOZY IS EIKICHI'S EX? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Dudes, this game is silly as fuck so far. I mean, Heartboobs pops in with Yukino (who is apparently back from a trip to 1969 judging by those pants! But more importantly OSTRICH) and at one point Lisa gets her nickname for the rest of the game because Eikichi just shouts it at her like seven times and now she's Ginko forever and ever. Which is funny to me because when you say "Ginko" the first thing that comes to my mind is the Ginkgo Petrified Forest. But anyway, Eikichi wants to be Michel but he is UNDIE BOSS. We run around school breaking clocks with a mop, and TATS-MAN is a silent protagonist who will not shut the fuck up. So basically my party is now Heartboobs, Psychedelic Ostrich (not a MMX boss), Petrified Kung Fu America, Undie Boss and TATS-MAN.

And then midway through what I guess is a serious moment Heartboobs is all "HERE LET ME QUOTE GERMAN POETRY. THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT PLOT IMPORTANT. PLEASE IGNORE."

I do enjoy that, with rumors coming true and all,
the game confronts you with a terrifying moral choice fairly early on. Do you say Hanya is dead and risk the fact that your rumor can kill him, or do you say he's alive and let the bastard live to be a pain in the side yet again?

Meanwhile, Principal Hanya,
wielding his Persona
wants me to think he's as menacing as Kandori or other
Persona wielding enemies in the series,
but really he's basically a slightly more agressive Mr. Morooka. Which, by Persona logic means I should expect the busty nurse from St. Hermelin to be the new principle of Sevens.

Battle is clunky as FUCK though. Like, I almost feel like they went out of their way to make negotiation an even more annoying process in this game. Since when you choose someone to be the negotiator, you don't just immediately start their negotiations. You have to scroll down and click "confirm" from a list of people for some weird reason. It's small, but an incredibly obtuse decision that somehow makes battles more of a hassle. The tradeoff, if you want to call it that, is that battles are shorter in spite of this because enemies are pushovers.

Like, y'all weren't kidding when you said this game was babies mode. I recover SP just walking around and NO ONE DOES MORE THAN SINGLE DIGIT DAMAGE. Persona 1 was by no means a hard game (barring its shitacular boss fights), but enemies still put up more resistance than that!
 
D

Dantis

Member
Sophia said:
Yeah. I voted for you, but as much as I want you to win yours is getting burred cuz some at the top are being voted on over and over.

Mind you, there are some really cool ones in there.
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Yeah, there are some really good ones. Some people have put a ton of effort in there too.
 
C

CorvoSol

Member
Oh, so I mentioned this on Twitter but I'll sorta write a bit about it here, too.

P4A and P4G spoilers will be up in here.

Anyway, after playing P4A I kinda feel like Labrys highlights what went wrong with the execution of Marie's character. In one sense, both girls are similar because they're both
nonhuman characters tied to the series' villains and greater mythology who are upset by their lack of humanity and unseemly pasts who are befriended by the Investigation Team
and while I once loathed Marie (still not a fan of her design like, at all), I'm much less averse to her now, but I think the real difference between the two is that where Marie's interactions with all the IT members aside from Yu are fairly ho-hum and caught in that sort of wacky structure that the Aeon SLink has in that game, Labrys actually forms meaningful connections in Arena with most of the Investigation Team. Except Rise and Kanji
because Rise is being held captive by her shadow and because who knows what the fuck Kanji's deal is in Arena.
I grant that it's not quite fair, since Marie is confined to a social link with Yu, where Labrys has the entirety of Arena's storymode centered on her, but I think what could've been done to really ease Marie's situation was twofold: first, she needed to interact with the others more and have less of those wacky "ohohoho the whole gang is suddenly all here!" moments. The event where she points out Yukiko and Chie's clothing preferences is a good starting point, but she needed to have moments where it was just her, Yu and Rise or Kanji or the sort. Second she sort of feels like she's absent once her arc is resolved. What they should've done was give her a Persona and stick her into the party, even if just for the final dungeon. Labrys feels like a fully-fledged party member at the end of Arena, but Marie is stuck half-way, and that's kinda what's odd.

Anyway, this isn't meant to be just a slam on Marie nor to say I feel Labrys was done perfectly, just a thought I had. If, and I grant that this is an enormous if, but IF Atlus ever did make another RPG starring the IT I'd like both Labrys and Marie to join in as full party members.
 
S

Sophia

Member
Basically, Marie needed to actually be part of the game, rather than simply a mere social link sucking blood from the game like a leech. >_>;
 
C

CorvoSol

Member
Sophia said:
Basically, Marie needed to actually be part of the game, rather than simply a mere social link sucking blood from the game like a leech. >_>;
Click to expand...

Really yes, going the extra mile to make her a party member was what would've helped her out.

Guess Who said:
The other problem with Marie vs. Labrys is that Labrys comes off as a believable character while Marie is a generic tsundere.
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I did feel like Marie improved in February, though.
 
Mobile Suit Gooch

Mobile Suit Gooch

Grundle: The Awakening
CorvoSol said:
Oh, so I mentioned this on Twitter but I'll sorta write a bit about it here, too.

P4A and P4G spoilers will be up in here.

Anyway, after playing P4A I kinda feel like Labrys highlights what went wrong with the execution of Marie's character. In one sense, both girls are similar because they're both
nonhuman characters tied to the series' villains and greater mythology who are upset by their lack of humanity and unseemly pasts who are befriended by the Investigation Team
and while I once loathed Marie (still not a fan of her design like, at all), I'm much less averse to her now, but I think the real difference between the two is that where Marie's interactions with all the IT members aside from Yu are fairly ho-hum and caught in that sort of wacky structure that the Aeon SLink has in that game, Labrys actually forms meaningful connections in Arena with most of the Investigation Team. Except Rise and Kanji
because Rise is being held captive by her shadow and because who knows what the fuck Kanji's deal is in Arena.
I grant that it's not quite fair, since Marie is confined to a social link with Yu, where Labrys has the entirety of Arena's storymode centered on her, but I think what could've been done to really ease Marie's situation was twofold: first, she needed to interact with the others more and have less of those wacky "ohohoho the whole gang is suddenly all here!" moments. The event where she points out Yukiko and Chie's clothing preferences is a good starting point, but she needed to have moments where it was just her, Yu and Rise or Kanji or the sort. Second she sort of feels like she's absent once her arc is resolved. What they should've done was give her a Persona and stick her into the party, even if just for the final dungeon. Labrys feels like a fully-fledged party member at the end of Arena, but Marie is stuck half-way, and that's kinda what's odd.

Anyway, this isn't meant to be just a slam on Marie nor to say I feel Labrys was done perfectly, just a thought I had. If, and I grant that this is an enormous if, but IF Atlus ever did make another RPG starring the IT I'd like both Labrys and Marie to join in as full party members.
Click to expand...

Maybe in Persona ?
 
G

Green Mamba

Member
I actually warmed up to Labrys as a character a lot within her own story, though within the context of the main story she's pretty meh, felt like a P4 version Aigis retread (though that's not helped by the game's piss-poor method of telling its story).

And I am now greatly confused by Inorigo's insistence that Arena is a parody, because while it may not take itself as seriously as a heart attack, I would say they take it at least as seriously as, like, a hernia, or something. Because unless I'm missing some seriously meta joke, there was nothing funny about Labrys's story.

So I believe I am justified in my feelings on the portrayal of the established characters.
 
D

DryEyeRelief

Member
Guess Who said:
The other problem with Marie vs. Labrys is that Labrys comes off as a believable character while Marie is a generic tsundere.
Click to expand...

Pretty much.

CorvoSol, the problems you brought up aren't unique to Marie. Like how crush brought up in his thoughts, a lot of the characters in this game go through that development problem. They develop mainly on the basis of interacting with P4MC and no one else. And they disappear from the spotlight as soon as their arc is over.
 
M

Meia

Member
Sophia said:
Which coincidentally (or not ¬_¬) is where she actually starts being a part of the story. :p
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Yep. When she was first announced, we all wondered at the possibilities, but they kind of did fuck all with her.


The bottom line is: Making a new character part of the storyline would have to have added lines here and there to the overall narrative(even having her as a part of discussions about various things that happen during the game) would have helped her a lot, but also apparently was deemed too much work.


Think about it: You've already gotten the entirety of the VA cast back together again, and threw in more VA than you had in vanilla to begin with, even with the same scenes(all 9 and 10 rank social link ranks with team members being fully voiced for example), and they just flat out decided not to write extra lines for them to do to insert her. I mean, what the hell is that?


I mean, I can kind of understand why you don't have her dungeon in a period of time where there was little to nothing going on in terms of the Investigation, but putting her into the story more so she could be more of a part of the group would have done nothing but help her having a dungeon in the first place, ya know? It just would have required, well, effort. P4 is a game that's full of it, but Marie in 4G sticks out like a sore thumb because of the lack of it.
 
Tiu Neo

Tiu Neo

Member
CorvoSol said:
HOLD UP. We got someone from Brazil in here? I'm like, whatever the weeaboo equivalent is for Brazil, haha. I lived in the Centro-Oeste for 2 years. Mostly in the Triangulo Mineiro and the Goiania region of Minas Gerais and Goias respectively. God I miss that place.
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Haha, yes! I think I saw some of your posts on the BrazilGAF OT. :D

Dantis said:
If anyone votes for my DOA costume in the costume competition I will love you forever.

https://www.facebook.com/deadoraliv...6851554085605/520486094722147/?type=3&theater
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Done. Yours is one of my favorites there, anyway!

Man, I miss playing DOA. Maybe I'll get the Vita version someday.
 
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