Board 8 > Jeff Zero & Leonhart in Different Houses: Life Will Change Edition [JZLF]

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was hoping the topic would hold out until I finished the game, but alas!

Loved it, seen it more than once

Clannad
Cowboy Bebop
Full Metal Panic!
Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
Kanon
Kawai Complex Guide to Manors and Hostel Behavior
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU
Persona 4 The Animation
Sailor Moon
School Rumble
Steins;Gate
The Disappearance of Yuki Nagato
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Toradora!

Really liked it, will watch again

Ace Attorney (when the dub comes out)
Attack on Titan
Baccano
Eureka Seven
Planetes
Psycho-Pass
Usagi Drop
Working!!

Liked it, but probably won't watch again

Air
Azumanga Daioh
Great Teacher Onizuka
Love Hina
Mobile Suit Gundam 00
Ouran High School Host Club
Trigun
Your Lie in April

Didn't like it, definitely won't watch again

Beyond the Boundary
Code Geass
Persona 4 The Golden Animation

Dropped it, never finished

Fullmetal Alchemist
Gurren Lagann
Slayers


New and Improved Female Character Rankings 2.0

Kurisu > Yukiko > Aqua > Makoto > Mitsuru > Shiori > Akane > Pepper > Namine > Mikasa > Eureka > Valentine > Vera > Elizabeth > Cora
---

Really tough call between Kurisu and Makoto. Voted Makoto but they're both excellent.

not better than estelle though. it was agony being unable to respond to such heresy for so long
---

Actually tempted to make Joker a guru nom
---

Makoto > Kurisu > Yukiko > Mikasa > Mitsuru > Pepper > Akane > Namine

First three are all top tier though.
---

Anyway, Persona 5 is complete! At least the initial playthrough is anyway. Now comes the New Game+ to max out all my Confidants, catch all the foreshadowing hints I missed the first time through, and attempt to better understand the story.

It's getting kinda late tonight, but sometime tomorrow after work, I plan on doing some cross-comparisons between Persona 3, 4, and 5 with various categories. If there are any in particular you want me to tackle, feel free to suggest them. I don't plan on comparing S. Links and Confidants until I've maxed out all Confidants though.
---

xp1337 posted...

not better than estelle though.

Nah, seems fair to me!
---

come back to me with that after playing the 3rd
---

xp1337 posted...

come back to me with that after playing the 3rd

pretty sure I still will

you and Jeff Zero already had her lauded as the best thing ever after SC and I did not so I don't particularly expect to change my tune

actually the fact that Board 8 can be so annoying about Estelle sometimes makes it even less likely...!
---

Jeff Zero Left Fehind
---

tag
---

MariaTaylor posted...

Jeff Zero Left Fehind

technically I was the one who was left behind

for the third time no less
---

So let's see what carries over with my NG+ benefits.

Social Stats, Compendium, Skill Cards, Equipment, Money, Playtime. I also get to keep the farewell present benefits and my Christmas gift benefit from Makoto, which boosts how much your Confidant grows when you have a matching Arcana, which is crazy helpful for trying to max everything out in one go. It's weird that the game tells me that if I want to go on lots of outings without raising their rank, I shouldn't bring a matching Persona, but why would I want that? You can still hang out even after someone is maxed.

I feel like equipment is the big one there because it'll make most of the game a breeze having such high end stuff
---

LeonhartFour posted...

you and Jeff Zero already had her lauded as the best thing ever after SC

that's not true

Loewe is the best, not Estelle. Estelle is simply the best playable character.
---

LeonhartFour posted...

MariaTaylor posted...

Jeff Zero Left Fehind

technically I was the one who was left behind

for the third time no less

there's not really many good words that start with Z unfortunately, so it's hard to do a J(..) Z(..) Leonhart Four
---

Couple more P3 questions. Is it possible to raise the status of my other party members to great before going to Tartarus? And should I just kinda balance how I raise academics, charm and courage or is one of them more important than the other two?
---

Nah, you can't raise party members to great.

It's important to try to max out all social stats, so just try to balance them out.
---

Gracias
---

ProfitProphet posted...

Couple more P3 questions. Is it possible to raise the status of my other party members to great before going to Tartarus? And should I just kinda balance how I raise academics, charm and courage or is one of them more important than the other two?

Party Members: I don't think so. They hit great seemingly at random, I believe.

Social Stats: Academics requires significantly more to rank up than the other two, but there's no real benefit to it being at the highest levels until later either. I'd just do whatever you feel like with them. Generally speaking their importance is that some people won't form links with you unless you have enough of a given stat.
---

Kurisu > Makoto > Mitsuru > Akane > Shiori > Yukiko > Pepper

The rest I am unfamiliar with.

Estelle better than all of them though. I don't really expect anyone's opinion of her to change much after the 3rd though for reasons I don't think I can fully explain without black bars. I will however say that the reason is not "she doesn't have good stuff in the 3rd", which would of course be a blatant lie.
---

Persona 5 is so massive that there were multiple things I never even bothered attempting the first time through, like fishing. I think I only tried the batting cages once. I guess I should spend more time doing that stuff this time around so I can get the trophies for them, if nothing else.
---

anyone who experiences the ending of the 3rd and doesn't have estelle rise to the heavens of their personal rankings... ...is someone who i would disagree with and pout at
---

Personally I don't really see that happening. In my head it's sort of like "if it didn't already happen with all the other Estelle stuff in the series why would this be the deciding factor?"

But then again what do I know Estelle was probably already cemented at the top of my rankings extremely early on in the series.
---

Also Leon out of curiosity what is your game time on Persona 5?

I think when I finished I was at >100 hours, which was ridiculously long even compared to my game times on previous Persona games.
---

LeonhartFour posted...

So let's see what carries over with my NG+ benefits.

Social Stats, Compendium, Skill Cards, Equipment, Money, Playtime. I also get to keep the farewell present benefits and my Christmas gift benefit from Makoto, which boosts how much your Confidant grows when you have a matching Arcana, which is crazy helpful for trying to max everything out in one go. It's weird that the game tells me that if I want to go on lots of outings without raising their rank, I shouldn't bring a matching Persona, but why would I want that? You can still hang out even after someone is maxed.

I feel like equipment is the big one there because it'll make most of the game a breeze having such high end stuff

I think there are missable hangouts that won't trigger if you raise them too much, where they give you books you need for the trophy.
---

Yeah, mine was like 113 hours or something, but I did have stretches where the game was on and I wasn't actually playing, so it's inflated a bit. Still way longer than either P3 or P4 though.
---

I... don't think any books are missable like that. I could be wrong though.

Speaking of books though, if you want to save time, any book that unlocks a location you would otherwise gain access to (like a S-Link taking you there) if you read it after you have it unlocked, reading that book takes no time.
---

xp1337 posted...

Speaking of books though, if you want to save time, any book that unlocks a location you would otherwise gain access to (like a S-Link taking you there) if you read it after you have it unlocked, reading that book takes no time.

Yeah, I figured that out on my first playthrough.

And it doesn't look like any Confidants give you books, based on a chart of how to get all the books I'm looking at. I guess they realized how dumb that was in P4 and dropped it! I know you'd have to do it that way if you wanted all the room decorations or whatever, but there's no trophy for that, so who cares...!
---

Room decorations were only justified by the Rise poster being one of them. Still love that shoutout to what the P4 crew is up to these days.
---

Yeah, the Rise poster was the only worthwhile one out of all the ones I ended up getting.
---

oh it was room decorations and not books.
---

The coolest thing about the Valentine's Day event is that Sojiro smooths things over so well that you actually get to keep dating all the girls. So absurd, but so awesome. Eternal greatest bro.

One of the coolest NG+ benefits is that once you initiate a link with a Confidant, you get all the bonuses you'd unlocked with that Confidant before. Early max Confidant bonuses are pretty nice!

Also the whole ending sequence of the game is pretty damn awesome. P5 great game. Not quite GotY due to stacked year, but very close! Leon, if you're curious, I made a topic earlier with a ranking of all the Confidants. I still have the document here if you're interested in checking it out: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aK3UlYTSpJ3vfbTMedU-nIpXj9Rd3v3oSyiKG9z59F4/edit?usp=sharing
---

The way it was described didn't sound like you got all the benefits, just some of them, depending on the link.

but i suppose leon can report on this soon
---

Yeah, it's not all the benefits, just one or two specific ones. Best benefit is being able to use Kawakami's massages after Palaces/Mementos immediately.

Part of me wants to look up the other Valentine's Day events on YouTube since there's no way I'll play this game enough times to see them all, at least not for a really long time. I don't want to do it quite yet though. Maybe after this run through.
---

Oh, okay, didn't realize it wasn't all of them, sorry.

I watched all of the Valentine events on YT. Didn't blow me away too much, especially since they're a little bit samey, but still fun.

hoo boy
---

Yeah, I'm sure they all follow the same template like events like this in the other games did, but it's still neat to experience them all.
---

props on makoto being persona 5 waifu

not-props with her still being behind yukiko
---

SSBM_Guy posted...

props on makoto being persona 5 waifu

not-props with her still being behind yukiko

---

Now that I'm on an NG+ run, I'll probably take P5 at a more leisurely pace and take time to watch some anime as well, including finishing my SNAFU re-watch. Not sure what I should start with after that though. I've been having this nagging desire to re-watch Clannad, probably because of the Kanon re-watch.

I actually was in the middle of a School Rumble re-watch around the time Jeff Zero came back last time and didn't get back to it, so maybe I ought to work on that, too. My motivation has been rekindled because they recently released two more volumes of the manga in English. I really wish they'd finish up the anime, but I'm just glad they're finishing localizing the manga after a hiatus of several years, even if it's digital release only.
---

You watch Angel Beats yet?
---

Gonna mess a bit with JP voices in NG+? The cast is legendary. I loved english as well, especially for the guys, but it was neat to hear Pikachu as something other than Pikachu.
---

All dub, all the time.

Mac Arrowny posted...

You watch Angel Beats yet?

I have not, but it's on the queue.
---

All right, time to cross-compare the three Persona games I've played, and we'll start with the most obvious one! Again, if there's a category you want me to talk about, feel free to mention it.

Oh right, there may be spoilers for all three games here (although I'll try to keep them to a minimum), so beware of reading any of this if you haven't beaten all three.

Battle System: 5 > 4 > 3

Is this even debatable, unless you're one of those people who enjoys the artificial difficulty of not being able to stop Mitsuru from casting Marin friggin' Karin all day long? Do those people exist? Not to mention, you don't have the ability to control which abilities your fused Personas get. Yes, I know P3P changed some of those things, but they just copied what P4 already did, so that doesn't count. I was wondering what P5 would do to improve upon P4, and they went straight to my heart by copying FFX's ability to switch out party members mid-battle (although with more restrictions than FFX, but I imagine that will change by P6). Confidants granting you certain battle benefits was a nice bonus. The game setting it up to make ambushes much easier than the other two games is a huge improvement in my book, too.

Dungeons: 5 >> 3 > 4

This one might be surprising to some people. It feels like most people don't like Tartarus, but I like it a lot as a concept, even if the execution is flawed at times. The atmosphere and feeling of the slow climb to the top are solid for me. I don't really like Persona 4's dungeons at all though. The bathhouse is easily my least favorite dungeon, and even the ones people consider "good" like Void Quest or Heaven aren't about the dungeons themselves. It's more about the story and the design. Just monotonously looking for stairs while fighting Shadows is bleh. Yes, you do the same thing in Tartarus, but again, better atmosphere. Persona 4 is more merciless when it comes to progress, too, because you can get free heals by going back to the entrance in Tartarus, but not so much in Persona 4. SP healing items were scaled back and you have to pay an increasing rate to have the fox heal you. The Palaces were a huge improvement. The designs were excellent, and they were much more enjoyable to navigate. Just the feeling of infiltrating a secret base adds an element of tension and excitement, too.

Bosses: 4 > 5 > 3

Fighting random Shadows on the full moon got me a lot less invested in Persona 3's bosses, even if it does probably have the best overall boss in the series. The only Shadow I even remember is the October one, partly because that's the best full moon mission overall and partly because of that stupid Wheel of Fortune gimmick. I get more invested in boss fights when there's a more personal stake involved, and I think that's why Persona 4's are my favorites. You're fighting Shadows of your teammates most of the way through, so the personal stakes are huge. They're pretty big in Persona 5, too, because you're fighting the Shadows of people who are threatening to ruin the lives of the Phantom Thieves, but fighting your other self is too cool. Even the ones who aren't your other selves benefit from excellent designs and excellent music, like Mitsuo or Ameno-Sagiri. I guess perhaps the one knock against P4's bosses is that none of them are particularly difficult, but I don't care about that too much.
---

Agreed on Gameplay/Dungeons/Bosses.

Though I'll point out you couldn't select what abilities were passed down in P4 either until Golden. I think P3P introduced Skill Cards as well.
---

Oh, that's right. That was a Golden benefit. Eh, whatever. I rarely use Skill Cards except for a way to meet Margaret's/the Twins' requirements, so that's not a big deal to me overall.
---

Well, Skill Cards became less of a big deal in Golden since you could pick abilities to pass on! I did make some use of them in P5 though when I picked up a few useful ones and had Yusuke clone them. Basically let me pass an extra skill down since I knew I could just get it via card.
---

Yeah, Yusuke's copy ability is really useful if you use Skill Cards. I guess I should take better advantage of it this time around.
---

Yeah I also think I agree on all those actually.
---

I really hate Tartarus much more than anything in P4. P5 blows both out of the water, mind you. But I still can't fathom preferring Tartarus to the TV World.
---

Tartarus has that atmosphere. Also there's something to the fact that it's the one dungeon you have and the steady sense of progression throughout the game.

Mementos is Tartarus done wrong, IMO, but maybe it's just exacerbated by the actual P5 dungeons being so much better that the contrast is more glaring.
---

P4's dungeons felt longer to me than the respective Tartarus segments. Maybe the superficial differences between them emphasized how fundamentally copied they were from each other as well.

Another perk of P5: less dumb sidequests. Hated going back to the dungeons in the previous two games to do them, but couldn't help myself due to my completionist nature...

Mementos was not so great, but it was really fast, so I didn't mind it that much. Never spent more than an hour there, and when I did spend an hour it was to clean up a ton of Mementos quests and go through a whole lot of floors.
---