Board 8 > I am going to play Persona 3 FES soon. (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

This won't be a playthrough topic like my P5 one because I'll be going on and off from this game. Is there anything I should know going in gameplay-wise? My only experience with the series is P5. All I know here is that someone shoots himself in the head to summon demons and Igor is in it.
---

If your main character dies it's game over so watch out!
---

you cant control party member's directly. like, at all. it's in the hands of the ai baby.

If you're playing PS2 FES, Direct Commands isn't a tactic, so you can't outright control your party members. Portable rectifies this.

Nova4554 posted...

you cant control party member's directly. like, at all. it's in the hands of the ai baby.

Woah, this is actually news.
---

Anagram posted...

Nova4554 posted...

you cant control party member's directly. like, at all. it's in the hands of the ai baby.

Woah, this is actually news.

yeah its pretty crazy, that being said thou you CAN influence their actions in combat. and the ai is (for the most part) pretty good. except for mitsuru, marrin Karin for days.

Get ready for the best soundtrack of all time.
---

try not to burn you're bread while playing.

So to be clear, you can't control them directly, but you are able to give them general commands like "focus on healing" or "focus on knocking down enemies" or something. There's a pretty decent number of them such that generally, I've found the only major difference gameplay-wise is that you're forced to choose all of your party member's actions for a given round during the MC's turn rather than choosing everyone's actions as you go.

The exception to this of course is Mitsuru who for some reason has an AI that reeealllly loves using status spells. I recommend just not using her if you can avoid it.

Also it's probably hard to get them to take specific healing actions. Like, you probably can't get them to use items effectively and I can't remember whether or not they will heal status. Also I think they're programmed to heal whoever has the lowest/most missing health, which might be a pain if you want to focus on keeping the MC at full HP. The way I play the game I've found these were all minor issues.
---

Also this:

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Get ready for the best soundtrack of all time.

---

Its a great game, but I expect to run into this at least once.

*one or more people low on HP*
*ally set to focus on Healing*
MARIN KARIN
*game over*

pyresword posted...

So to be clear, you can't control them directly, but you are able to give them general commands like "focus on healing" or "focus on knocking down enemies" or something. There's a pretty decent number of them such that generally, I've found the only major difference gameplay-wise is that you're forced to choose all of your party member's actions for a given round during the MC's turn rather than choosing everyone's actions as you go.

Also to be more clear, this is actually the default setting in both p4 and p5. But everybody changes to direct commands ASAP instead of exploring the system.

I played P5 a few months ago and have no memory of AI-controlled party members.
---

They changed direct commands to be default in P5, but I think the AI option is still there.
---

Did they? I remember having to change Ryuuji and Morgana onto it

I'd just assumed I could play this on my PS3. I could have sworn I replayed the MGS series on it at some point. Had to bust out the ol' PS2 for this.
---

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Get ready for the best soundtrack of all time.

what is he playing Chrono Cross on the side or something

hopefully not
---

Portable Girl > Original MC.
---

Ah, meant to comment on this earlier but totally forgot to.

School/Social Link stuff:
-Schedule is far more brutal than P5 was. Even if you follow a max S-Link guide for FES you end up with like 3 free days. In Persona 5 it's basically a month. So I'd definitely not worry about that and focus on your favorites.

-Only 3 Social Stats this time around: Academics, Charm, and Courage. Academics takes the most to max out so don't worry if it starts lagging behind, could easily take most of the game to get there. Courage is the "fastest" of the three in leveling.

Battle/Dungeon stuff:
-The AI control stuff was mentioned. I'd recommend you set the AI to "Knock Down" once it becomes available (IIRC you unlock additional commands as you play and may not have this to start) it's generally the command they work the smartest under.

-Always carry a healing persona on your main character. You are the best and most reliable healer so if it's important that healing is done right, you need to do it to be safe. The AI is silly when it comes to healing. Often they'll use a single-target heal over a party one and leave the rest of the team SOL. This is most important for you though because of the whole "MC dies = Game Over" if MC needs healing right away the safest bet is to always do it yourself.

-There's a fatigue mechanism at work here. Every character has a condition: Great, Good, Tired, or Sick. As you fight battles, the condition will decline from Great/Good to Tired. When Tired your hit and evade rates go down. Additionally, if your party members get tired, I think they ditch you if you happen to return to the main "hub" area and are done for the day. Condition improves as you sleep (although there's a chance you go Tired to Sick.) Early in the game you get tired fast, it's less of a problem later on. Finally, party availability is a little unpredictable. Some party members will be busy/tired on some days. You can check on this before going to the dungeon and using your time on it but yeah. Despite me saying all this, it's usually not an issue.

-You don't control the other party members' skill lists. The game picks what gets removed for new skills, so keep that in mind.
---

BlackMageJawa posted...

Portable Girl > Original MC.

I looked her up and she does have a better design, but sadly I don't own a PSP.
---

Thank xp. A more unforgiving schedule sounds bad, but I guess I'll live.
---

Well, you don't get bonuses with S. Link level ups the way you do in Persona 5 (other than being able to fuse a new Persona from maxing one out), so it's not that big of a deal other than missing out on content, I guess.

I wouldn't recommend trying to follow a daily guide on a first playthrough because I think it'd be frustrating, but it's pretty much impossible to do everything without one.
---

Yeah, following a Max S-Link Guide for P3 on a first playthrough would be a pain. Lot of early game grinding for money to be able to use the best stat increase activities and just no freedom all around.

If 100% completion is important to you you kind of have to do this because it's nigh-impossible to do it blind, but if it's not then I'd say just don't worry about it. Know that you're not going to max everyone so I'd prioritize who you like/are interested in their story.
---

I don't care at all about 100% completion. There are very few games where I've bothered.

One thing I do care about is that I've heard this is the grindiest Persona. Is that true? Am I going to be grinding all the time?
---

Anagram posted...

One thing I do care about is that I've heard this is the grindiest Persona. Is that true? Am I going to be grinding all the time?

I wouldn't call it that. However, I would say it's the most difficult out of 3, 4, and 5 by a fair margin and so in that sense I guess you might need to make sure you don't fall behind on levels or anything. There is one fight around mid-game that I do characterize a bit as a level/skill check because you basically need to have access to Mediarama or else your healing won't keep up with its damage but that's about it.

idk, it might "feel" grindy because there's a single randomly generated dungeon (again, think Mementos but it's not as bad as Mementos was) and you explore it at your own pace. (There are barriers that keep you from going too far that are removed as the plot advances - again, think Mementos) but I dunno, grindy feels wrong to me. I wouldn't say it's that personally.
---

No, you don't have to grind any more than in P4 and P5, which is essentially 'none, if you don't feel like it'. Your level will be appropriate for the plot battles as long as you are completing the unlocked dungeon section every time it becomes available.
---

Yeah, I wouldn't describe P3 as grindy. The way the gameplay works almost kind of discourages grinding, actually.
---

Wait a second, without Morgana, who will tell me to go to sleep?
---

Your body
---

You play The Journey and then The Answer, right?

How long is this game? Longer than P5?
---

The Journey is 70-80ish hours. The Answer is quite a bit shorter, but it sucks, so I just watched the cutscenes on YouTube instead.
---

I played Persona 5 as Brent Johnson because I couldn't find the canon name after one second of googling. I found Persona 3's character name this time, but it's dumb, so this time I'll be Frank Svensson.
---

Anagram posted...

How long is this game? Longer than P5?

Depends how you play, really. I'd say it's similar length.

And yes Journey first.
---

So is the protagonist of every game a transfer student?
---

Anagram posted...

So is the protagonist of every game a transfer student?

Yeah. Well, for 3-5 at least.
---

Wait, so I'm a boy staying in the girl dorm? In the female version, are you still in the girl dorm?
---

This guy is much less stylish than Joker.
---

I still never played The Answer even though I own FES >.>
---

I chose to overlook this in Persona 5, but does Japan have some weird fascination with bread? These aren't the first JRPGs I've played where a desire for bread was mentioned by characters early on.
---

Oho, the new teacher. Unfortunately, I remember from Leon in the P5 topic that you can't romance adults in this game.
---

pyresword posted...

I still never played The Answer even though I own FES >.>

for shame

it doesn't deserve the hate it gets (though it makes some really dumb design choices)
---

Anagram posted...

Oho, the new teacher. Unfortunately, I remember from Leon in the P5 topic that you can't romance adults in this game.

Which one? Toriumi? She's the best teacher in P3.

Anagram posted...

I found Persona 3's character name this time, but it's dumb, so this time I'll be Frank Svensson.

There are a couple of "unofficial" names and one actually official one. Which one did you find?
---

LeonhartFour posted...

Which one? Toriumi? She's the best teacher in P3.

It probably was. But Edogawa actual best teacher.
---

LeonhartFour posted...

There are a couple of "unofficial" names and one actually official one. Which one did you find?

Minato Arisato off of the first google result of "persona 3 main character."
---

Yeah, that's the manga's name for him. The "official" name Atlus uses in the movies (and I'm assuming in the upcoming P3D) is Makoto Yuki.
---

Oh, is Makoto a gender neutral name in Japan? My only knowledge of Makotos is the one in Persona 5.
---

Oho, the chairman and the girls are secretly monitoring me with a giant screen filled with graphs of sine and cosine? Interesting.
---

Yeah, you see Makoto used for boys and girls. At least, I've seen it used about evenly I think. Well, in anime/games, don't know how it's used in real life.
---

This game just had a character glare while the word GLARE flashed across the screen

So far it's pretty good.
---

"Yukari gave you a short sword"

*Sword is more than half your body height*

I don't think Yukari understands what short means.
---