Got rid of the stupid ass shuffle and made fusion easier.
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Persona Community Thread: The Butterfly Effect
- Thread starter Dantis
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Got rid of the stupid ass shuffle and made fusion easier.
Winter months! \o/
Bolded for emphasis. P4G is a not insignificant step forward in that regard.
I disliked both of those changes. All of the 'magic' from fusion disappears if you just get up a list of possible fusions and shuffle went from a chance game to WIN WIN WIN.
Indeed. Unless you really, really, really like fusion attacks, haha.
You sound like the kind of person who would complain about repel having an autorenewal in Pokemon. Shuffle was still a chance game because you didn't know what cards would appear. As if Persona needs more instant death chances. And there was NEVER any magic in fusion. It was always an annoying chore.
That's just false difficulty. In practice what most players did was just spend 40 minutes fusing every goddamn time re rolling the dice until they got the perfect combination they wanted.
I'm not talking about move inheritence. That's something I'll agree that P4G improved (Althought it made things a little easy). I'm talking about how you can just get up a list of all possible fusion recipes.
There was no magic there. In practice, it was just buttoning through your collected Personae trying to find the arcane combination necessary to meet a demand by Margaret or a Persona of a particular arcana. It was just more tedum, compounded by the fact that the game gives absolutely no indication of how to get any kind of desired result. It's literally just forcing a myriad of pegs into a very specific hole until you find the magic ingredient.
Every change that was made to the fusion system was one for the better. A system in dire need of a streamlining.
Every change that was made to the fusion system was one for the better. A system in dire need of a streamlining.
Agreed.
I will say that although P4G made the process much more tolerable, just by sheer virtue of negating a lot of those elements - it probably does render the whole thing a little too easy.
Well, all it did was expose the flaws of the Fusion/Persona system. As I've said earlier (or at least a variation of this): all the P4 changes that seem to make the game easier only make the broken and/or problematic less tedious and more enjoyable.
It really needs more ~depth~ (and real depth not RNG crapola) but I don't have any good ideas.
A revised system would be the best option, yes. Though as a portable title, I think P4G's changes were more for the sake of brevity.
buddha0991
Member
I can't find myself disagreeing with many of Turnip's points, to be honest, those are legit flaws with a
game
great
see what happens when you take the time to explain yourself guys
I sometimes think I'm the only one in the world that didn't pick out her twist before the reveal.
Funny story: THAT was spoiled for me back in the day from a game magazine's CD-ROM, who thought it "so hype!" I guess to have every single FMV cutscene from FFVII on it months before the game hit.
And damn this thread moved fast while I was asleep, holy crap.
I think pacing is fine in p4, it's just most people don't remember what it was like the first time going through the game. It's a murder mystery, where for most of the game they have no way of actually catching the killer, but instead have to help save the victims. Only late do you start making any breaks, and that's mostly because you have the full cast, yes.
In 3, you get a game over when Minato dies, and it makes sense
in that supposedly that act of happening releases Death from you, and it's able to reform that much earlier(and it's because of this that this mechanic makes no earthly sense in p4))
Yeah, it's odd to not save a person thrown in the TV immediately and that you can fap about a bit, but then again that's a choice I myself never made(always rescued the person day one). P3's was waiting and preparing for the inevitable to stand a chance, P4 was saving people as they came down the pipeline, waiting for the killer to screw up or for you to catch them in the act. Because of that, I find the pacing ok in terms of 4, 3 nothing happens for a bit. Whole middle of the game this happens with 3, only happens during a 2 month period in 4.
Ultimately, you have to wonder if a game is going to have perfect pacing for everyone so long as it follows a calendar system.
ShmeebAlina
Member
I guess they are flaws, but I see them more as compromises made in order to improve the gaming experience. It is a game after all, not a book or film. Player choice is prioritised over plot. If you were forced to save the kidnapped characters on the day, it would either be incredibly frustrating or the dungeons would be made much smaller. Also, if you get burned out from the fighting, instead of being forced to continue, you can take a time-out and complete some social links. It's not as if you're 'goofing off' either. Completing the links still ties into the end goal as it grants significant experience boosts to personas, which makes you a better fighter.
I think games are less about 'depth' and more about the illusion of depth. You can tear a great game apart all you want and it'll still be great. I compare it to the way cartoons are animated. They don't look or move realistically. They're exaggerated. They're expressive and get their point across.
I vastly prefer that P4G had the fusion list. I didn't create any of the big Personas in vanilla Persona 4 (besides Black Frost), in P4G, I created a lot of the big-ass fusions because of the list. I am grateful for that list, and I hope it stays in Persona 5.
ScraftyDevil
Banned
I'm sorry; I still can't see how people view P4 as a better package than P4G. The portability, costumes and fusion tweaks alone make it a worthwhile purchase to me.
God damn, Shenmue!
P4G is a way better game. I'll admit there's some pandery stuff and concede that that may throw some people off of it, but for most players I'd wager P4G is a better experience than vanilla P4.
ScraftyDevil
Banned
I agree. A lot of people I know had P4G as their first Persona experience and loved it so much that they couldn't even go back to P3P due to missing the P4G experience so much.
Also as mentioned before the pandery stuff both appeals to a specific audience (so even if we don't like it, there's someone out there who does) and makes up approximately 1% of the overall game, meaning it's rather disengenuous to say it's an altogether worse game because of it. It's not all bad either; I personally found the Okina City excursion with Yosuke and the beach and ski trips to be extremely enjoyable and fun.
If Golden was nothing more than a portable Vanilla I'd still have said it was better, for that fact. Still salty the Vita doesn't do full screen HDMI out like the previous system did, especially when there's no real reason it doesn't.
New content is welcome, balance changes destroyed a lot of why I found Vanilla's gameplay fun, but yeah. I'd have preferred it if the difference between Hard and Very Hard was to disable some of the things they did(golden hands reverted, Rise not OP as a link, shuffle time back to what it was).
New content is welcome, balance changes destroyed a lot of why I found Vanilla's gameplay fun, but yeah. I'd have preferred it if the difference between Hard and Very Hard was to disable some of the things they did(golden hands reverted, Rise not OP as a link, shuffle time back to what it was).
Yes, thank you. The changes threw the game out of whack because it wasn't originally designed for them. If you take P4G's mechanics though and balance a game around them entirely it'd be near perfect.
You make my, social link groooOOOooow~!
YES!
DOES THIS MEAN THAT I PASS?
Indeed it does Dantis, indeed it does.
Aye.
ARMADA, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?
Also, I see that we finally have the trio of FSN characters here.
I should change mine for a Tsukihime one.
A lot of argument and discussion happened while I slept and it was very interesting to read.
Too late to add my two cents, and no one cares anyways!
in P4G. You know, because balance.
Too late to add my two cents, and no one cares anyways!
I like the way Rise
flys from the sky naked to save you
Huh, this thread has moved faster than normal. Well then.... I have only one thing to say.
Sophia is gonna have your head
ShmeebAlina
Member
Yeah, even I take back what I said a while back about the P3 cast being kinda dull. They took a lot longer to warm up to though. Still prefer the P4 cast, though Aigis replaced Naoto as my favourite character. Sorry Naoto.
Dude, are you kidding me.
+Costumes: Being able to personalize each of the characters in battle is awesome, and the in dungeon conversations over them are really cute. It only adds to the replay value. It's pretty much the reason why I use Teddie in battle (Bishie human Teddie > regular Teddie)
+Two new social links. Marie (who's blargh overall, but her social link events are occasionally good when the other characters show up) and Adachi's (who's social links are great and add further depth to his characters)
+New personas and a scene beyond lvl 10S.link for the investigation team members. Sure, you might not find use for these abilities, and you get to use these abilities only in 2 dungeons, but these new skills end up making each of the characters "more fun" in the long run.
+Scene fast forward(why hello there, new game+)
+A dozen new Personas like Kaguya.
+/-Some new events that are hit or miss. Skiing trip was a fairly good event imo the game.
+The TV listing feature which adds a TON of new content (Music, concept art, quiz game, a minigame, etc)
+Rebalanced characters. Naoto is usable now(she was really awful in vanilla) and Chie actually has a couple of reasons to be used over Kanji now, and the characters who lost their weaknesses like Yosuke got them reversed (why on earth did Yosuke lose his electric weakness when Yukiko kept hers?!?)
+The bike plot that initially went nowhere is now a thing. Everything associated with bikes (new skills, okina city and the beach) are great additions.
+Night time events. You can use them for boosting S.links, but simply talking to your friends at night is a reward in itself.
+It's possible to hang out with your friends after you've maxed out social link, which shuts down the "max out S.link and never talk to them again" mentality.
+Several unmentioned tweaks to the game. According to buddha, there are a couple of these scattered throughout the game. The biggest one that comes to mind are the scenes that are changed if you have a girlfriend. (It's only a line or a blush, but it helps drive the point home that "X" is your girlfriend)
+Golden ending.
+P4G has more of "hanging out and being silly with your friends" which is my favorite aspect of Persona 4, hands down. So much fun.
+/-Difficulty
The game is easier overall, but you know have access to "very hard" difficulty, which is somewhat challenging if you don't grind.
As an aside, I've always seen Persona 4 as an "easy game" once you get going. It's difficulty was accentuated by some of its more archaic game design choices, but overall P4 is an easy game once you understand the mechanics. People harp on Rise for breaking the game, but it's pretty much impossible to lose once you get some of the ultimate Persona (which is around Rise becomes ridiculous). The changes to some of the bosss (looking at you Yukiko) make easier for new players to get their groove on.
P4G is the whole package. That golden RPG that's supposed to last you 200+ hours.
I feel like it becomes a 'by the numbers' thing with this though. I'd load up the list, choose the best Persona, move on. Yes, the old way was much clunkier, but I felt like it added to the charm.
You're missing the context, pal. We were talking about mechanics, not raw content.
The discussion wasn't about the difficulty but the game's actual core mechanics. I might be inclined to agree with P3P being a bigger change concerning that than P4G, but I'd have to see a list comparing them.
I will fight to my death the concept that a clunky and frustrating mechanic is anything other than negative. I get that it's possible to be nostalgic about it, and I won't say it wasn't rewarding trying to get that perfect fusion because there was no other way, but from a game design standpoint, it's just awful. There would have been a much better way to handle fusing if their goal was to make it difficult to get the skills you desired. The way it works in P4 is just time consuming.
I personally think they could have done more with what they did, and that they didn't kind of angered me, honestly. Bike skills are unnecessary and make absolutely 0 sense at all, and there's never an explanation for their inclusion. Many of the January rank 11 meetings are pointless, or handled very poorly(this speaks more to the idea of new writers or whatever trying I guess). You can meet with them after rank 10, which while nice, doesn't really do anything considering you're using a time block(not everything has to be an increase in power, but it would be nice for just more scenes). Like Teddie moving in so to speak in January, would have made infinitely more sense for this to happen
in November/December when you come home to an empty house every night.
Funnily enough, it was a lot of the new behind the scenes kind of stuff that I appreciated the most. The costumes were nice, but the character's talking about them when you talked to them with them on added more to it than the costumes themselves did. The nighttime stuff added was nothing but great, as it's more chances to hang out with specific characters and have them talk about stuff happening at that time of year(something I hope more from in Slinks moving forward too). That these meetings get more added if you're romantically involved with them is just icing on the cake.
Ultimately, one of my favorite games ever getting more added, so can't complain too much. But I can point out little things that could have made the new stuff added gone from nice to incredible.
Requiring more grinding is, and always will be, a fake way of adding difficulty. It doesn't make anything inherently harder, it just makes it take more time. The lower experience was fine, the money thing was below the belt.
I probably shouldn't post immediately after waking up haha
I think I stand by P4G's mechanics over the original though. If I was serious about fusing i'd use a guide, and P4G basically eliminates that need for me. (and it uses a similar fusion system that Devil Survivor used)
I think I stand by P4G's mechanics over the original though. If I was serious about fusing i'd use a guide, and P4G basically eliminates that need for me. (and it uses a similar fusion system that Devil Survivor used)
Yeah I wanna see an Easy/Normal/Hard setting that actually changes enemy mechanics and patterns around. Very Hard in P4G was just Hard except enemies hit harder and you get less XP/Money. More frustrating, essentially.
They should just replace the One More System and return to the Press Turn System (what's it!?).
Or at least make the system less exploitable/broken, you can finish most battles using the mc with the first attack. Make the system more similar to Nocturne, give the other party members the ability to use other Personae.
Or at least make the system less exploitable/broken, you can finish most battles using the mc with the first attack. Make the system more similar to Nocturne, give the other party members the ability to use other Personae.
Or you can keep the system and instead make it harder to just replenish SP. Maybe it's a bad thing overall for you to be able to finish a dungeon in one day? Choice is good, being able to choose to do so is good I guess, but I worried more about the tired mechanic of 3 than I ever did about SP in 4.
Recent playthrough of 4 I spent 9 hours in Yukiko's castle before I fought the boss(using SP recovery from chests I got from luck to be able to just barely have enough SP to finish off that battle). Maybe it wasn't a good thing overall to have Tired removed completely from 4? With more of a limit on SP though, you can't just spend forever in a dungeon, and you can't fully exploit the 1 More system as much either.
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