Current Events > Today at last i shall start Persona 5!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hmm... I decided to look up the ng+ confidant items and I might prioritize fortune for the affinity readings. Shouldn't affect other confidants I care about, but I might fall short of max social stats. If I'm lucky I can sneak in Hiero as well (kindness locked right now). But having Temper, Sun and Moon will be really nice. And I'll be sure to pick up Strength before the end.

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minor warning: prioritize the Sun confidant. the final day to do it is 11/13.

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I got him way back. It looks like I might be able to finish more confidants than expected.

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Jabodie posted...

God damn that boss was annoying. I had to make a persona just to deal with one of the phases, and basically needed to switch party members between phases to manage the debuffs.

Yep. This was the boss I was talking about in my last post. Pretty sure this one most likely clapped all of us that went into this fight for the first time, and also was not using any of the busted dlc personas. (Even more so those of us that already played and finished the base game. I came up in this fight thinking its probably going to be similar (a.k.a. easy) to the base game's version of the fight and was in for a rude awakening).

My one lost was misarable since it was a dragged-out war of attrition. Spent 30 minutes in the fight struggling to make it past one of the last giant rows of robos with the personas I had, going through tons of consumables, and still ended up losing that one fight, lmao.

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When I lost to Okumura a bunch of times, I had to go back to the day before and spend time in Mementos leveling up and making new Personas, and those items that give you elemental attacks.

The boss was manageable at that point, but still incredibly annoying. Fitting for this particular palace.
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I just turned the difficulty down for Okumura >_> Fuck that fight

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I always have way too much pride to drop the difficulty (went on hard right from the start because fuckit, I played base persona 5, I gots this!)...I was determined to kick that dude's ass, lol. What I did was just warped back to the velvet room, fused something real quick with some sort of status effect, and made sure I put on the defense up for all and attack up for all accesories on haru and whoever I was using, I forgot (don't remember if my makoto actually learned her's naturally at this point). Then it was just a matter of defense downing all the robots, attack up'ing the party, occasionally using forget on the enemy party, and praying I can kill the line before one enemy robot decides to randomly run off and reset that line......this is that shit that kept grinding my gears.

Real talk though, playing on hard right from the start on royal actually caught me slipping a few times....lost to kamoshida twice, that damn thing guarding the 3rd will seed in madarame's palace like 3 times (sleeping on status effects again. He kept wiping me with brainwash and psy combos, so I had to slap rage on him to keep him from doing that shit), and okumura twice. It definitely got better from there though.

....not going to front though, I did drop the difficulty from the hardest setting to the game's "normal" for resident evil 2 remake though on the night it first released. Holy shit I could NOT get past that first gas-station zombie before I said "you know what, lets just play on normal for now and see where it goes", lol.

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So I got to the big twist (though I suspect there could be another):

Things were pretty well set up, and it's kind of funny that pancakes thing did end up being so important. Frankly I didn't pin Akechi as a psycho at the time of my prediction, but his level 7 and 8 confidants gave some serious "death note" vibes, along with cracks in his personality showing in the story. I find it interesting that he also has his persona, meaning he should be his "true self."

I say it's all set up because everything that happened was something I could reasonably come up with. Even when the MC was shot, I was wondering if that was a cognitive version with a switch up. I also saw that the whole "recalling the story" set up had a narrative reason: to withhold information from the player. And I had been wondering about those weird "warps" which I now know signified memory holes.

Now I'm just wondering why in the world I would be working with Akechi again, because I know you can use his evolved persona (I assume in the Royal semester). It makes me suspect there may be another twist: perhaps Akechi was aware of the true plan the whole time and is actually setting up Shido (which is why he said his name on the phone).

Fun stuff. Now I have some level 8 and 9 confidants to finish off lol. With the royal days MAYBE I can slip in the Gamer King... but we'll see.

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Pancakes became such a meme in the Persona fandom, lol.

A Mementos line in Royal even references it.
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Idk if I already said it but the opening cinematic before the title screen is one of my favorite game openings in recent memory.
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There's actually a decent chance I can max out all confidants, but just barely. I'm sure I can calculate whether it's strictly possible, but I'm pretty sure I'll get them all or all but one or two.

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Thanks to tips ITT I have only 3 confidants that aren't max on December 22: Devil (9), Magician (9), and Fool (9). So I should have plenty of time for Kasumi in the third semester, along with the R personas I think.

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Magician and Fool are automatic, so just Devil.
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"This will make the Metaverse disappear!"

Me playing Royal, looking forward to Strikers:

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Just started what I believe is the 3rd semester, entering that palace with Akechi and Kasumi for the first time.

My guess as to what's happening: Dr. Maruki, with his breakthroughs and cognitive psience, along with something he learned during the fusion, has learned to alter reality to essentially undo or prevent people's sources of emotional pain. That's why everybody's greatest struggles seem to have been undone, despite the struggles being what united the team in the first place. For some reason protag, Akechi, and Kasumi did not have their memories altered, probably because they were less desperate to buy into an illusion or something.

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Well they just flat out tell you all that stuff lol. Mini theory: this Akechi is actually an actualization of the protag somehow.

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Jabodie posted...

Well they just flat out tell you all that stuff lol. Mini theory: this Akechi is actually an actualization of the protag somehow.

I believe that this Akechi is not the real Akechi and a creation created by Maruki. I'm not 100% sure what you mean by actualization, but I think this Akechi is the ideal version Joker has of him (similar to how Futaba and Haru have idealized versions of their dead parents who are "alive")

End game spoilers after this, you may not want to read until after you finish the game:

The game is never 100% clear if this Akechi is real.


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YellowSUV posted...

I believe that this Akechi is not the real Akechi and a creation created by Maruki. I'm not 100% sure what you mean by actualization, but I think this Akechi is the ideal version Joker has of him (similar to how Futaba and Haru have idealized versions of their dead parents who are "alive")

Actualization is just the language they use for Maruki's reality warping.

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I might walk to target and get P5 Strikers today <_<;

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As an aside, I really like the idea of the third semester. Really gives "scouring of the shire" vibes, and asks a smart/important corollary to the Phantom Thieves philosophy. I'm pretty curious why the metaverse comes back in Strikers too. Presumably it never really leaves, since it exists in some way in every Persona game, but sort of comes in waves of strength.

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Jabodie posted...

I might walk to target and get P5 Strikers today <_<;

Good man.
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I have to do a Q&A for this little virtual conference first, but after I'm gonna pick it up I think. I'll be glad for a change in game play. (I doubt my presentation will inspire many questions, but I gotta show up nonetheless).

Oh snap it's $40 at best buy. Gonna hit that price match.

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Are we expecting Strikers to get some kind of Royal version too? I definitely plan to get it, but I have enough other games to play that I can wait if there's gonna be an expanded version down the line.
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AvlButtslam posted...

Are we expecting Strikers to get some kind of Royal version too? I definitely plan to get it, but I have enough other games to play that I can wait if there's gonna be an expanded version down the line.

Well Arena got a version with Golden stuff, but IIRC that was a sequel to Arena, not an updated version

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mehmeh1 posted...

Well Arena got a version with Golden stuff, but IIRC that was a sequel to Arena, not an updated version

It did have the first Arenas story mode as DLC.

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Just got to level 93 getting all the stamps >_> should be good on levels I think lol. I have every non story trophy too. Other than missing concentrate for Makoto and finishing off the last confidant, I've done everything I'd like to basically. Just going to go to the gym and meditate when non in the palace/mementos.

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Decided to check out the bad royal ending... pretty cool alt ending honestly. Wish I checked out the bad vanilla endings, but maybe that'll be for ng+. Maybe grab the vanilla ending for thieves den that run too (leave last Councilor rank for very last down and reload after ending).

About to reload and get the true ending though.

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The bad ending to Royal has one of my favorite themes in the game. The melancholic reprise of Dr. Maruki's theme is a perfectly fitting song for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8CZXpAM4e0


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Watching the credits right now. What a game. I like the fact that there's a "here we go again!" story waiting for me in Strikers. I'll probably write some thoughts later.

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This is now a Persona 5 Strikers topic.

I like how immediate this re awakening to the velvet room is playing these games back to back lol.

Edit: the ALIASING though lol

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P5R: really great game with really fun characters, and a weirdly addicting game play loop with the social time management side of things. Like many popular jrpgs, it's really the characters that make the story engaging and fun. And this game has a lot of engaging and fun characters, with pretty natural social interactions and reasonably well written growth and consistent personalities. That being said, the weakest leg is the game is easily the stuff involving the God of Control, and definitely has that "JRPG god boss tacked on for an epic ending" vibe. I think vanilla would have been better if it just ended with Shido as the final boss.

The battle system was pretty engaging thanks to how impactful buffs/debuffs and status ailments are too both you and the enemies. Persona fusion is pretty intuitive and fun. It's nice to get a new set of personas and mix them all together to see what you get, along with making decisions of what abilities are inherited. I also really appreciate the insta kill ability in Mementos: grinding and exploring that area in general would have been 10x more annoying without it.

Dungeon crawling was pretty fun to, with will seeds, chests, and stamps giving just enough side goals to keep things interesting. And the light puzzle mechanics helped avoid it being mindless treks through corridors. It was always fun to see how the theme gimmicks would play into the dungeon, and I know people love the themes in this game. I'll throw in that I did enjoy the music in this game, but music is not really something I focus too much on games unless it's really bad. But I always enjoyed the themes the day after you send the calling cards.

I'll say too that the easy the daily life stuff interacts with the dungeon crawling is really smart, especially with the royal additions. It's pretty cool how you're incentiveized to engage with confidants for rpg advantages.

I might have more stuff to say about specific characters and plot lines later, and maybe more about the game play.

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