Current Events > Just finished Persona 3: The Answer. It wasn't as bad as I thought *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

With that, I've fully finished Persona 3.

First of all, I definitely get why this is a controversial game. Moreover, I totally get the Yukari hate after the last third of the Answer.

Before I had finished the mode, I speculated that the difference in opinion between the Japanese and English fanbase comes down to cultural differences. Anime and manga tends to do this archetype pretty well, someone who's hostile and hurtful to others due to significant trauma that's happened to them - look at Ano Hana for one example where a character is a total bastard, but it stems from significant childhood trauma. Everybody's hurting, but this person is having a particularly aggressive reaction for right or wrong.

In a western context, we frown upon this and view it as annoying and bratty. This affects the performance in English as well.

That's one way of looking at it. I think it's a factor, but I also do think Yukari's dilemma in the Answer is a bit wangsty. It probably makes sense if you consider her the canon love interest, but even then, her outburst turning the last third of the game into a fighting tournament is definitely stretching the point of likability. Like you have to take down a child and a dog as a walking murder machine, take their keys and enforce your will on them. It doesn't help that because of this conflict, you lose access to your entire party and have to team up with Metis.

That's the point where the game drags, and it is because of Yukari. I definitely get why she's a controversial figure in the game's fandom now.

With that being said, I thought the Answer was a pretty good addition to the Persona 3 canon - and before you laugh me out of my own thread, let me explain.

Sure, Yukari's characterisation is off-putting and complicates the plot. I'm not talking about that. What I like is everybody's backstory getting some elaboration - finding Junpei before he awakened to the Dark Hour as he flees from his alcoholic dad, seeing Ken at the police station after his mother was killed, seeing Mitsuru awaken to her Persona as a child. All of these segments are awesome.

And compared to the main game, the anime cutscenes are honestly pretty great. When you beat the shadow protagonist, you watch his fucking body degrade in this horrific scene that sucks all the moisture out of his skin, then takes away the skin to show the muscle layer, then the skull, then the brain etc. It is gory and fucked up and awful, and it's a lot more ballsy than a lot of the main game's cutscenes - and a lot more on-model too.

Then you have Erebus, who looks terrifying - those huge glowing red eyes and the rictus grin of its jaws without a head or a face. Even at the start of the campaign where Athena gives way to Orpheus, you get this sense that something is immensely wrong. The Answer sells the horror of what is happening, and it is engaging to watch.

The gameplay, though, is filler. It's straight dungeon crawling, and it gets pretty old. It was a great podcast game for a while as I grinded levels, but you're going to need to put the time in to make the Answer worthwhile and it will probably be a bit of a chore.

Here's the thing about the Answer, though. It's presented like the Final Fantasy X-2.5 audio drama, this extra-canonical thing that introduces a bunch of stuff that ruins Final Fantasy X. It's tacked onto the main game, it fucks around with the characterisation of the characters, and it's pretty wildly reviled by the fanbase.

But to me, The Answer is more analogous to Final Fantasy X-2 - a game that saw a lot of flak itself back in the day, but which has since been vindicated somewhat by people sitting down, playing it and enjoying it on its own merits. Or maybe the dungeon-crawling post-X-2 game mode that came with the remasters.

Either way, I think it's a perfectly worthy addition to the Persona 3 mythos. Yukari's a janky character, but this game is so much more than just the worst aspects of Yukari's character. Is it necessary to get everyone's backstory? Not really. But I like that I get to see that. Is Erebus anywhere near Nyx as a worthy final boss? Storywise, it comes out of nowhere. Designwise, Erebus is fucking terrifying and I really enjoyed fighting it.

All I can say is that people should approach The Answer with an open mind. It's the closest I've come to regretting this playthrough, but ultimately I had an okay time, even with all the grinding. There's nothing about it that I think deserves to be cast off from canon - Yukari sees the error of her ways at the end and apologizes, even. I think the intent was for her to be an icy character due to the trauma of losing the main character, and both the writing inherent to the scenario and the English performance wasn't exactly up to snuff. Again, Yukari is supposedly a pretty popular character in Japan, even today - I think it's because this scenario wasn't as big a deal in Japan as it was over here, which I think comes down to cultural acceptance of the trope and the performance tied to the character. That's just speculation on my part, but that's how I feel.

The Answer isn't as good as the main game by any means, but I thought it was a perfectly acceptable gaiden story.

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No it was bad

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Irony posted...

No it was bad

But how much of it was bad?

Before you say "all of it", I've explained my take on this and I'd genuinely like to hear your own take on this game mode. Is there nothing of merit here? Is there more bad than good? Does any goodness stemming from this get overshadowed by the badness? Like legitimately, let me know what your take on this is that isn't just "this game bad and there's nothing you can do about it".

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It gives an explanation to the end of the main game that no one asked for and it explained what the evokers represent which was fucking stupid.

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What do you mean it explains what the evokers represent? The evokers come up at the start and the end of the game, and at the end of the game Mitsuru explains why she was taking them away at the start. She wasn't like "the evokers represent our willingness to die, and with the battle over we can begin to move on and heal".

The evokers themselves aren't explained at all. Mitsuru does say that her way of coping with the past was taking them back, but with the new lease on life offered by the end of the game, she lets everyone keep them in case the day should come that they need to use them again.

I can respect that you feel like they added an unnecessary explanation for the end of the game, though. I kinda did need it, because it wasn't extremely clear that the main character died at the end of the main game. But I can understand if you thought it treaded ground it didn't really need to on that front.

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She literally says they represent not fearing death

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I took that more as philosophical navel-gazing than anything else. But I guess I was wrong that she never brought it up, it just happened at the start of the campaign and it was never that big of a deal again.

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i wanted to play it but didnt really want to grind all over again and now i missed the opportunity to do so

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I don't have much of a problem with it from a story perspective and that's all a little subjective. But I do have to say that from a gameplay perspective it makes some really confusing choices. Most importantly being the removal of the compendium - which I think that actually removes a lot of the strategy and fun.

Secondly the forced Hard Mode. Well, it's almost Hard Mode. If I recall, the damage values are like The Journey's Hard Mode but some little things like the escape chance is like The Journey's Normal Mode. Anyway, forcing people to play on Hard to see the epilogue of the story is weird. I think they were going for the idea that if you beat the main game then you must know the battle system pretty well and so The Answer might keep you interested in the gameplay more if it's a little challenging. But that doesn't work so well in practice I think. And then that segues into my final gameplay complaint which is that a lot of the boss and dungeon design is just mean. Removing save points from before bosses I guess adds more tension but really just makes me want to separate my dungeon-crawling into dedicated grind sessions or dedicated boss sessions. And I recall there's a bunch of bosses where they give them a weakness and the corresponding Evade Weakness skill so that winning is a little more RNG even when you know their weak spot. You can say it makes you try more strategies than just fishing for weaknesses but in the end you can't realistically design good personas for any crazy theorycrafting without the compendium or without grinding for free personas from battles.

There's probably a lot more I could rant on it too but those were the first points that came to my head so I'll leave it at those.

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You definitely make some good points. I also disagree with the removal of the compendium, it made fusion a lot more of a pain in the ass. And while I did eventually take to it, I definitely get what you mean about forcing hard mode.

Like I said, the gameplay is definitely chore-ish after a point. I didn't mind because I would just mute the game and listen to music, but that's certainly a valid complaint. The main game is undeniably better, but I still think The Answer is a worthwhile addition despite its controversial standing in the fanbase. Certainly not without its problems, but maybe not deserving of the full backlash it tends to get.

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