f13.net

It's almost here. LEss than a week. I preorderd. This is one of the two reasons I bought a PS4 for (the other being Bloodborne). I am obsessed so time to start a thread to vent off some steam about it.

Kotaku says it's good but fuck Kotaku of course it's good. http://kotaku.com/persona-5-the-kotaku-review-1793752909

Also, here have another trailer just because. Although FUCK ENGLISH VOICE DUBS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lV-eaEKxjQ

I don't want to buy a PS4, but I also don't want to order a physical disk and deal with my PS3.   :sad_panda:

I'll probably cave and buy a disc.

edit: All of the reviews are pretty good, not just kotaku.  Reviews thread on reddit. (https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/627ika/persona_5_review_thread/)

Also looking forward to this as it's one of the main reasons I got my PS4.  I will say I've enjoyed the console for the other games I've purchased in the meantime.

I preordered. Supposedly it's fantastic.

This is me as well.  Mostly been on media blackout, still on the fence about which voices to use though.

If you can survive Chie's voice work from P4, you can survive anything.

I already have and enjoy the PS4 (two in fact).  I'll buy this as well.  I wish I finished games.

00:00 - It's out!

Edit. "Why Persona 5 is the best JRPG in years" https://youtu.be/RgeyeqAxpAk

Atlus Japan came out earlier today and basically banned streamin P5

http://atlus.com/note-persona-5-streaming/

lol

idiots

Anyone is playing it? I need to know if we can play with the original Japanese voices or it's mandatory bullshit English crap.

For the US version and the US PlayStation store there's a free 2.9 GB download if you want the Japanese audio track. No idea about other regions.

The voice work so far isn't grating on me. I'm just enjoying some Persona.  Sweet, sweet Persona.

FYI, intro sequence is a bit long and sparse with the save points. I'd say budget a couple hours to get this one going.

Goddamnit, I wish I didn't actually have to work tomorrow.

It should be pretty quick if you just read the dialog, though, and skip ahead of the talking. But yeah the "intro" (after the prologue) does take a while. It's *very* Japanese so far.

I wish they'd re-release P4 or golden on current consoles as well.

 :Love_Letters:

It's also not fully subtitled, only direct dialog. For example in an early cutscene (very light spoiler)

I have not played other Persona games. Do I need to have played old ones to understand and enjoy this one?

Nope. The whole concept will just be a bit more WTF, but the game guides you through it. It might actually be pretty awesome to play this with no knowledge of the series.

It is very Japanese. There's anime cutscenes. It's a JRPG dungeon crawler / social game. Turn based combat. Early parts of the game will be somewhat on rails until the "intro/tutorial" portion ends. So, I'm not sure if that's your thing or something you can even tolerate. I'm not into anime and it doesn't bother me at all.

However, this so far, is really good and just seeps style out of every pore. This is one of the more compelling early portions of the game they've done.

At some point, schild and I had a discussion on how to categorize Persona 3, and the best category we could come up with is "Persona".  :awesome_for_real:

You don't need knowledge of prior games to enjoy Persona 5.

The only thing you should know though is that Persona games are very, very Japanese. The 'J' is very pronounced in this particular JRPG. Not in the sense of japanese weirdness (even though the games also dip into that part of Japanese culture) more that they are crafted for Japanese sensibilities and are deeply rooted in contemporary Japanese culture and norms. That also means that the games are slower paced than western games would be.

There is a reason why Atlus was hesitant to do proper western releases for Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games and it was because they thought that the games would not appeal to western audiences. Only the continuing success of Persona 3 and Persona 4 in western markets slowly changed that.

Persona 5 is actually probably the first game that got a 'proper' western release with enough effort put into localization and reasonably close to the Japan release and I hope it pays off.

How "Mature" is the rating? My kid is asking for this for her birthday. She reads a lot of other anime titles, off the top of my head I know she likes Blue Exorcist and Vampire Knight.

I suppose I'm less concerned with penis monsters than I am with excessive gore and self-harm concepts. Anything to be worried about?

It's Mature. I'll spoiler the early examples:


Whether that's OK for your kid, is up to you. I don't read or watch anime, so I don't know how it compares.

I thought about this and the only way I can describe it is 'well it's a Persona game'

Was Persona 3 the one where you activated your Persona by shooting yourself in the head?

Yup.

Fantastic.  My eldest started last night.

She named her character Akira.

Should I be worried?

The only recent game I could compare it to would be "Life is Strange" but even darker. Not game design or mechanics-wise but in the story beats and the topics it tackles. Persona games tackle all kinds of real life issues, like physical or sexual abuse, abandonment, personal struggles connected to mental health, self esteem, substance abuse or societal pressures and the power dynamic inherent in Japanese culture and especially the rigorous school and clique system.

The magical or mystical aspect of Persona tends to heighten the 'real life' aspect even more because it is almost always an escapist fantasy the Persona characters are involved in. Similar to Dorothy's travels through OZ or the door to Narnia that leads to a magical realm far away from the harsh reality of WW2 London.

So fewer magical penis monsters or exploding demon heads but nevertheless dark and bleak and also gory at times. I'd say it's even heavier because all of the dark shit is rooted in contemporary culture and hits much closer to home.

If she has read Akira or similar things then she's probably well prepared for a Persona game.

So, yes you should be worried :why_so_serious:

Daughter was at work, disc was in, so started this instead of switching back to Stab Robots in the Face (HZD).

Very nice so far.  I only just made it to [REDACTED] for the second time.


I've dinked around with a couple of SMTs in the past, so I'm not going in blind.  Of course, since my play of P5 will be limited by my daughter's attention span, I may have to find one of my SMTs to hold me over in the meanwhile.

You can play the best SMT (3, Nocturne) on the PS2 emulator. It runs great!

It's a small thing but this is the first PS4 game that I've owned on disk that you can just pop in and play.  No 15 minute install, no huge day 1 patch.  It's kinda nice!

This game is pretty damn good. Translation is definitely not effortful however- it's like they sat down a couple average translators and had them just blast through the script. There's weird grammar, fucked up phrasing because the translators clearly had no context for the scenes they were translating, etc.

About 10 hours in and really liking this one.

Forcefully reminded that these games give no fucks when it comes to using elemental weaknesses against the MC.  Slept through the first dungeon but been one-rounded a couple of times in the second.

My only real complaints are the tightness of SP early on and that even after ten hours there are large stretches of days where I can't pick WTF I want to do.

Anyone remember what level they were when they took down the first palace?  The boss is giving me some trouble.  Before I even started the game someone gave me the tip that I should be finishing the palaces as soon as possible and now I'm wondering if I'm under leveled or if need to go buy armor or what.  Most of my guys are level 8 or 9.  The part I lose on is where -

If you're getting to that point on the first palace boss, you'll probably get it with a few more tries. As I recall, I was level 11 or 12 when I finished first palace, but I'm grinding every palace visit until I'm beat to hell and have no choice but to stop.

I think I fought him at 10. I probably spent too much time making sure I got some of the treasures that I had to skip earlier due to not having lockpicks made.

Well it was close but I finished it first try today.  Not being 1 am probably helped.

I finished the first palace at level 11-12. Send Ryuji, and attack with at least 2 characters every round. If you can just survive long enough for the event to finish it becomes a cake walk.

Just a warning for the next Palace: Make sure you at least level your party members enough that everyone has a spell that can hit multiple targets.

You'll also be introduced to treasure personas- who can't be equipped but if captured can be fused to make really strong personas and give you a huge list of good inheritable skills to pick from. The gimmick is they can randomly appear, and are resistant to basically everything but a single element. You can however cheese the one in the second palace by spamming lucky punch and swift strike at it- if you crit it, it'll be knocked down and instantly give up. I'm only explaining this because the first one is kinda bullshit- it's only weak to Nuke I think and you'll almost certainly not have a Nuke spell when you find it. I used it and made a persona with Rampage (hits every enemy with physical damage multiple times) and it made a world of difference.

Cool, thanks for the tips.  Maybe I'll spend an extra day in the next one to catch up a little bit.  Also I think I was probably using Hold Up too much in the beginning trying to get cash.  It seems like the amount of extra cash you get isn't worth it compared to getting the mix of XP and cash.  Unless you already took down 2 out of 3 and your just holding up the last guy.

The draw to be optimal in this game is strong :grin:

Also Mementos is a good place to level. It's also very integral to the game even though you might not think so at least.  Minor spoiler below

Just finished the fourth palace and I've fallen victim to this and may bump it up to hard.  Haven't spent any extra days grinding or more then the bare minimum time in Mementos and after the second palace things seem trivially easy. (Currently on Normal difficulty)  You really only need to do three things.  Don't skip enemies when proceeding through dungeons, recruit/fuse enough demons to fill out the compendium and to keep your active personas at or above your level, and buy a couple of the SP regen accessories.  Money is only useful to bring out copies of registered personas and to take shortcuts on the social side of the game.

Still having a great time but it doesn't seem as compelling as P3 or P4.  Pacing feels a bit off.  There are large stretches where you have no choice of activities followed by long story droughts.  Needs to be more back and forth.

I imagine the targets get more important/personal but the third palace's target is pretty lame and not much happens with him other than an amusing boss fight. Catchy palace theme however.

Demon negotiation is really stupid though- I don't give a shit there's a guide on it when you can't really even tell what the "serious" or "joking" response is half the time. I managed to pick up most of the personas in the third palace by sheer luck by getting them critically weak so they just gave up. I managed to get my link with the Sun Arcana leveled up however and being able to repeatedly extort shadows is a great way to make a lot of money. It's nice when a shadow throws 3000 yen at you and you're able to make them do that another 4-5 times.

I need to do this, I'm always running out of money.  I've been avoiding that one just because I don't have a sun persona on my team at the moment and it's hard to keep one of everything at this point.

I ended up missing the treasure guy, I didn't have lucky punch or swift strike.  I'm definitely getting caught back up on levels and things are going smoothly.  There's still some occasional BS where a single monster decides to weakness chain or crit my main guy to the game over screen in a single round, but that just seems to be the way this game rolls.

Everything about this game just works so well together and feels good. The screen transitions, the menus, the music, the little combat details like the baton pass.  Loving it.

I'll echo that I really love the style of this game, but negotiation is awful in the beginning (I'm assuming it gets easier as the game progresses).

Don't care for negotiation much either but there is a blurb in the tutorial menu about what types of responses the various persona personalities respond to.  Takes away at least some of the randomness.

Grinding in mementos is a good way to get cash too. You don't really need a Sun persona to get him leveled quickly however- same with the Moon Arcana.

Yeah, I struggled again on the second palace boss @ level 16 (I forgot to buy any meds or anything, so no revives).  I beat him, but it took a few tries.  So right after that I ended up going through mementos a couple times, made it up over level 20 and grabbed enough to upgrade all of my equipment plus have a spare ¥100k.  Decently far along in the 3rd palace now so we'll see how it goes.  Also I found some melon bread or something near the access-way that you can buy for 1k that is a cheap revive.

Be sure to grind up the Death Arcana ASAP with a Death Persona until you get the discount- which is pretty easy to do. Once you can buy SP Adhesive accessories from her your worries about SP can largely disappear.

The second palace boss basically requires you to have everyone spamming skills that hit all enemies. Rampage being the most useful.

I one-day'd the third palace which IMO was a mistake because I was on fumes the last 1/3rd and should've just taken a break instead of blowing through a ton of SP recovery items. Spoilers: if you can make sure you have a Psi attack for most of the mobs. The boss is a slog and basically should just be everyone autoattacking and healing when needed until he tries his special attack- at which point you have two options to prevent it.

Yeah, I have the discount.  They are pricey!  Psy was the only element I didn't have an aoe for, so I made one and it turned out super strong.  Time to head for the treasure!

3rd palace was a lot worse for me than the 2nd. I got wiped a couple times due to an Oni critting me with rampage. One of those times was when I hadn't saved in about an hour.  :tantrum: That palace needed more safe rooms. Took me one time to get to the vault maze, and just barely made it through the maze on my second attempt. Plus I seemed to keep messing up on getting through the mob conversations. The guides on this really aren't that helpful as some of the answers could fit into either category it seems.

I bought a SP Adhesive before I got the discount.  :heartbreak:

It's hard to buck the feeling that I'm not playing optimally, and I should be farther along with my confidants and skills. I really want to avoid looking up the conversations for the right answers, and I think I'll stick to this, although I think I eventually caved at some point during Persona 4.

Only slightly spoiled myself early on concerning which links to prioritize.  I'm in the final dungeon and had maxed social links about two weeks before what I assume is the end of the game calendar.

Very light mechanical advice on how to not waste time.


This game is much more forgiving than the last two and if I understood some of the mechanics better going in I'm sure it's possible to have a full month of more or less free time without having to game it down to specific conversation choices.

I breezed through the 3rd & 4th palaces for whatever reason.  Probably because the SP Adhesive is a bit OP.

There is a good 3 week period between the 4th & 5th where you can do whatever you want, which is awesome.

Yah, I put the adhesive 3 on Joker and Mona and it made it trivial getting through the main part of 4. No SP issues at all. I ended up using a lot of my useless HP consumables also to conserve SP On the way through.

Those floating Anubis guys were a pain in the ass. No weaknesses (that I could find, pretty sure I tried everything), tons of HP, and insta-kill or massive AOE damage.  Boss fight was a bit dumb, but it was a really interesting story point at least.

I ended up winning the lottery and now have SP Adhesives all around :grin:

The Anubis guys suck.  I never did find a good way to deal with them other than to heal up.

Is the lottery a monthly thing? I suppose I could be less lazy and just google it.  :awesome_for_real:

I just had to nuke them down as hard as possible, which still meant they could get 2 (or more if they weren't alone) rounds of spells off. Luckily one of Joker's Personas was immune to most of its nukes. I nearly wiped on the double spawn of one near the treasure. Ended up running away.

I have no idea on the lottery, I just kind of buy them when I'm in the area.  I think it's every few weeks?

I did find that shocking the Anubis guys and then getting technicals sometimes works which makes me wonder if you can confuse or sleep them or something.  It was way too much work to try all of the combinations though.

So the one game mechanic I really dislike is needing to have the matching arcana in your current list for social points.  Fusing is already a huge money sink and then having to re-summon just for social points just compounds it.  Even money aside though, it's just annoying.  Also not being able to have duplicates makes leveling the Strength confidant another money sink.  Kind of nit picky I guess, but I think managing persona is my least favorite part of the game.

You can get by without duplicate personas if you don't mind each link taking longer, or you can spend cash with the fortune teller to speed things up.  I just try to plan carefully to make sure I've always got most of what I need on-hand and to fuse with that in mind.  Limits the amount of re-summoning you need to do.

Re: Anubis and other no-weakness enemies, Morgana has an ability that does physical damage with a very high crit rate, it helps a ton.  Later on, you get a gun ability from the Tower link that can take care of these guys as well.

I still hate negotiating, but it gets a lot easier once you max out Sun and Tower and get the conversation bonuses for most of your party members.  Maxing your confidants has a real, noticeable impact on your performance in the later palaces.  My only lingering issue is that I keep running out of cash even if I hit close to 500k at some points.  Never did try the lottery, though!

5th palace took me quite awhile, mainly due to just being busy.  There was one part with the  that had me going in circles for awhile.  I thought the boss on this one was quite a bit tougher than the last two.  It actually took me a few tries to get my strategy down.

My copies of Persona 3 & 4 came in the mail today.  Now it's time to see if my PS2 still works.   Last time I tried it I was getting audio but no video.  I think it was just an AV cable issue, so I'm hoping it's an easy fix.

Hah, I'm not even sure I can play my PS2. The wall mount for my TV covers up the composite input rather inconveniently.

For anyone that's beat this already, how long did it take? I'm sitting at, I think, 57 hours and am just into palace 5. I don't think I'll one shit this as I haven't bought enough SP accessories at this point and don't want to blow the actual good consumables at this point.

So some how I missed the batting cages.  I think the first time I went, it told me to come back later and then I forgot about them. Now that I have rediscovered them, some serious save scumming has ensued  :awesome_for_real:

Luckily the new AV cable fixed my PS2, so hopefully it holds out.  It sounds a little rough when it gets going, but it works!  I have an AV switch box on my basement wall unit since that's where the kids use the N64 & Gamecube.  They still like quite a few of the older games.

Also a cool surprise was that P4 came with the soundtrack CD in the regular edition box (no super special edition, no $15 dlc).  After that I got to flip through the game manuals  :heart:

While I was digging through all the PS2 stuff I put Shadow Hearts in the need to play again pile.  I have no idea when I'm going to play all of this but somehow I created a like 100 hours worth of old game backlog for myself.

I'm near the endgame and up to 90 hours, but I think a few of those are from leaving the game idle.

So, longest non-sandbox no-sidequests no procedural game ever? I think so.

Could be.  The ending just kept going on forever, too.

Don't make it sound like it's a bad thing! On that note, I read a stupid article (title. Couldn't read it because spoilers) couple of days ago that complains about the game being too long. So, if we have day 1 DLCs people complain and if we have huge games people complains now? *sigh*

I tried to finish the game this weekend and failed.  It really is a long game, I'm at just over 100 hours now in the final palace (or at least I hope it's the final palace).  Granted that's with a bunch of pause time and me just generally taking my time and trying to complete everything possible.

I am over 100 hours myself and I have no idea at what point of the story I am. I am doing everything too although to be fair there isn't much room to branch out (choices, sure, but the calendar advances all the same no matter what you pick) which in a way is a good thing in such a long game. Mementos seem to be really the only place where you can "waste" time but I only use them to clear Requests and reach the next bottleneck. I don't wanna know how many palaces I still have to go through or how many months or days are there still. I am loving this ride more than I could have ever hoped and as long as the game may be I wish it would never end. Such a wonderfully crafted story and characters, for anime lovers of course.

Just finished it, and it took me about 130 hours. This is probably my new favourite RPG of all time. Citizen Kane Neon Genesis Evangelion of videogames, confirmed.

But wait, there's more!


Actually I saw the end screen but I'm still not 100% convinced there's not another palace  :awesome_for_real:

Depending on

On to Persona 3!

Done at 88 hours/level 73 according to my clear save. Really a great game and I'll be sure to give NG+ a go eventually.

88 hours! I am impressed. I know I move slowly as I like to take everything in, but I really couldn't imagine finishing this in less than about a 100 hours. Normal difficulty? Granted, I didn't even buy all the SP Adhesive as I felt it was gamebreaking, but still.

Anyway, congrats. Such a great game. Not sure where Persona will go without Katsura Hashino at the helm, but his new "fantasy" project is a good candidate to become my next obsession.

Yeah, I abused the hell out of those SP adhesive 3s. As well as Mystery Stew->Dekunda for the late game bosses.

I found Normal to be regular Normal for this game instead of the extra harsh Atlus-Normal I remember coming from P3. As long as I kept somewhat up with the levelling, the bosses all went down in 2-3 tries at the most, where some P3 endgame bosses had me stuck at what felt like hours at a time.

Finished at around 102 hours and level 73/74. I didn't manage to max a fair number of confidants: Futaba, Sojiro, Haru, Iwai, and Yusuke. A lot of stat-related cockblocking and early on not getting great bonuses. All were pretty high, but alas they didn't get finished.

My main group was Ann, Morgana, and Makoto. Ann is a pretty rad nuker if you steer her toward that. Morgana was nukes/heals. Makoto was more support/nuke. Joker seems to not be that great in some instances because you don't get the bonus stacking the others can so your output isn't nearly as high. I mostly became support/physical damage.

Great game. Probably my favorite Persona. I think it was probably the easiest of all of them, mainly because there were a lot of mechanisms to avoid getting wiped once you sufficiently level confidants. Plus, it was less of a pain to play: there were a lot of great QOL improvements.

My finish time was  ~115 hours and level 70/71.  I dodged about half the combat in the final dungeon, so that probably lowered my levels a bit.  Team was Joker, Ann, Makoto, Ryuji - with Makoto healing and Joker on support + phys damage after Ryuji crits with Assault Drive (or w/e).

I did manage to max all the confidants but I did a bit of s/l if I got a really bad conversation (not too often).  I totally neglected the video games & fishing and only read about 3/4 of the books.

I came in a little over 100 hours as well, also in the mid-70s level-wise.  I thought I read all the books but I never got the achievement for it.  Grr.

Necro! New trailer for Persona 5 Royal is out.

Persona 5 Royal is supposed to be an enriched version of the original. With new characters, dates, locations, monsters, stories, animations, everything. Coming out next year though. Not sure it'll be worth a replay (it's the longest rpg I've ever played) or a new purchase, sometimes you wonder what's the point of this stuff. Maybe launching on Playstattion 5? I mean, "P5", seems pretty much made for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12a8cSiJO88

EDIT: Release date is actually October 2019.

I'd really need to know the differences (and the cost) before deciding. P5 was one of my most favorite games ever, but 100+ hours is a lot to go back through, especially if the overarching story isn't that different.

I literally just opened my brand new copy of Persona 5 and played about the first 30 minutes of it.   :oh_i_see:

I think I'll be ready for this in 3-4 years when I'm ready for a replay.  I keep hoping for a PS4 version P4 Golden or a P3 remaster of some kind.

you know what's great

i still haven't bought persona 5

guess I can keep waiting a little

I own it but still haven't played it. I'm still holding out hope for a Switch port.

How about Dynasty Warriors instead?

https://youtu.be/CyaRQnfQ9Dg

Yea, I saw that on reddit. :heartbreak: :uhrr: :mob:

totally buy that in 5 years when it's $9 for hte Ultimate edition

It's never going to be $9 on Switch :awesome_for_real:

Why would you play it on the Switch anyway?  :awesome_for_real:

I personally loathe big-screen console gaming. Either give me something on PC, or let me play it in my bed/on the shitter/at my desk at work on my Switch/3DS/Vita. Apparently P5 runs pretty well on a PS3 emulator so I might go that route; I didn't realize PS3 emulation was a thing.

Oh yes it is. Persona 3 and 4 and Shin Megami Tensei, all awesome (if not better than the originals) on the emulator.

EDIT: My bad. That was actually PS2. But still, PS3 is a thing, and I know this cause I played Demon's Souls on an emulator a while ago (although admittedly it ran like ass on my laptop).

Persona 3 and 4 I played way back on PS2 before I basically swore off consoles. If I want to replay them, I can do so in portable form (P3P and P4 Golden).

This is $14 for PS+ members and my kid wants it. Does she miss anything by not buying the DLC packs besides costumes? Hard to tell by descriptions.

Not that I know of. The upcoming "Royale" will have lots of new stuff, but I don't think there are DLCs for the original game that add anything (meaningful or not) other than costumes.

Thanks!

There are dlc personas that supposedly make postgame stuff easier, but they’re otherwise ignorable.

I played it through without any paid-DLC, as most of it was just cosmetic or one or two personas. It's definitely optional.

Also, be aware that it deals with some fairly serious subject matter. For instance, sexual assault and forced prostitution are plot points.

. (wrong thread delete please)