Yeah, I'm a maximization sort of guy on these kind of games. I try not to use guides on the first playthroughts, but I don't like to enter multiple battle sessions when I could potentially get away with one and spend more time working on my S-Links. Hmm. They're cheap? All I remember is some really expensive MP restoration you can buy at one of the shops. Of course, it's been quite a while since I played... over two years ago now. Good tip. I hadn't really thought of that. Unfortunately it doesn't help for your other characters. Hehe. Victory Cry. Gotta love it. That reminds me, have you played the PSP version of P3? In addition to the major change of letting you control all your allies directly, there's this new "skill card" system where you can get cards with abilities on them and then give them to any persona to learn the skill. Makes it SOOOO much easier to customize a persona the way you want it. Not all skills show up on cards (i.e. Morning Star), but most do. I personally felt it difficult to run past people, much less get preempts. A lot of that had to do with the narrow hallways everywhere. I always placed P3 on "hard," and not getting a preempt against some enemy groups on that difficulty level sometimes meant death, even if you didn't make any mistakes and your AI allies didn't act like idiots (although in the PSP version you needn't worry about that last part of it). In any case, small as all these issues may be, altogether they add up to a critical level of annoyance for me, to where I'd rather just play through P3 again than play P4. I realize I'm in the minority... most people and most critics seem to think P4 is better.
Yes, although I'll throw in that P3 (or P3:Fes anyway) is up there too (as for P3P, I've played a bit of it but haven't had the motivation to sink another 60+ hours into it). P4 just took what I liked about P3 and improved upon it IMO. I agree with meh for the most part. Some additional points. 1. I think the design, as meh put it, was to get players to not spend only one day in the dungeon (if you could get everything done in one day, that would be "too easy"). Think they tried this with P3, but decided to go a little further with it in P4. I didn't have a problem with it...and actually, I think I did max my social links and stats (wasn't going to, but eventually started using a guide since I started off well). And as mentioned, this becomes even less of a problem (pretty much not a problem at all) the further you get into the game. I only remember being bothered by this in the early dungeons (Yukiko's dungeon is probably one of the hardest/most annoying in the game). 2. Didn't bother me. I think I prefer it off (i.e., figure it out yourself). Think some of the other SMT games were like this (unless I'm forgetting something), so I might have gotten used to it. 3. I might have preferred 3, but not a big deal either way. Plenty of different damage types as is. 4. I seem to remember it being more difficult, but not impossible. P3 was probably too easy. I picked up my last P4 save a few weeks ago, and decided to do some battles in the last couple of dungeons. I found out that I had never fought most of the enemies on the lower floors (when scanned, all types were still "?"ed out). Think I must have run through the floors until I reached the boss floor, then saved and leveled up on the top floor (monsters on the top floors all had their weak points marked). Maybe I was just escaping from battle instead (I can't remember), but either way, I guess I was skipping battles pretty easily, at least at that point (may have been partly influenced by my level overall though). I think you get used to the timing after a while though, and preempts (while not nearly 100% like they were in P3) become a lot easier (as does evading enemies). 5. Don't remember having a problem with the camera. 6. Didn't mind the aesthetic changes. Some I might have preferred in P3 (blue menus, evoker, Dark Hour, etc.), but not really a big deal to me. Using Personas in P4 is more akin to previous Persona games, which maybe they wanted to get back to (even though I liked the idea of the evokers). I didn't like some of the changes, but overall, they were pretty minor to me. I'd trade all those things for having direct command of each character (of course, P3P does this, but it has its own "downgrades" that I'd rather not have). Gameplay-wise, I found the two very similar (P4 I felt was a slight improvement IMO....having social link status impact battles was also a nice touch). I also like the stories in each. But I think the thing that set P4 apart for me was the characters. I liked the characters in P3 (way more than a lot of games), but the cast in P4 was just much stronger IMO (i.e., no Ken). Yeah, you could get them in some of the vending machines around the shopping district IIRC. I don't think I had to use them that much, but yeah, you could use them to help with SP restoration early on. I watched the Giant Bomb endurance run a little while back, and they were definitely using them (and they were also taking up multiple days "in the TV"). The MC usually ended up doing most of the spell-casting anyway (or Yukiko, who has crazy amounts of SP anyway), so this is less of problem I think (or that was the case for me).
Trailer for P4U: <iframe width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/IuVCDMKY_oA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I started with a used version of P3, mainly because although I love JRPGs, I very much disliked Nocturne(?) due to it being way too much of a dungeon crawler. So I didn't want to risk a new copy. Loved the game. Proceed to get P4, then FES, then P3P. I never played the answer though, just read the script, since heavy grinding isn't my thing. I very much loved the skill card system since it really saved the unnecessary inheritence annoyance. And the female perspective is nice, especially her Naginata. My only grip with P3P is that the female lead has a dearth of male social link interest. Seriously? A boy, a dog, a guy who dies, and a creepy non-human? Only Akihiko's not bad.
Lots of stuff from TGS. On P4U, two articles from andriasang: http://andriasang.com/comy7t/ (May Have Original Fighters) http://andriasang.com/comy78/ (move list) I don't know if this is accurate, but someone (Chrono Helix) posted this at NeoGAF about the move list: Some videos: <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4xLThKPCRp0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tZIYGTqu--s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tzvAzKpyq-E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yevB-feyMfY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Another trailer for the anime if anyone's interested: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jOhkqf5qulE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Also, some teasers for the arranged music (for the anime I think?): http://www.p4a.jp/cd/index.html
Love Rise commentating during battle. That's an interesting take on the old combo counter. Still not interested to buy it, though. Maybe when it drops to near bargain bin price.
I'm surprised there's no fandub of the trailer so we can see what they're saying. In any case, it looks pretty decent, although it's not a studio I know well. The animation itself seems good, at least. As for the game... Arc System Works did all the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue games, so as a 2D fighter it really couldn't be in better hands. Probably not a game I'll buy, however, just because I'm not generally into the 2D fighter scene (Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has been an exception, although I suck at it). I prefer 3D fighters like Tekken or Dead or Alive, partly because they tend to not be quite as fast and twitchy.
I'd like to clarify that it isn't really a "new" new game. This is from Atlus USA. So they're basically just announcing an announced-but-not-in-the-US game that they'll be publishing here. Won't be a new Persona game or anything like that, so hopefully no one gets too excited (Atlus USA usually publishes decent games, but not all are great). I have a few guesses on what it could be, but probably will just wait and see. Is anyone checking out the P4 anime? Hulu (and maybe others) have had it online, and so I've tried to checked out each new episode every week. Started off kind of shaky, but it has gotten progressively better, and I really like it now. Does a good job of keeping what made the game awesome, but still putting in a few new wrinkles that make the anime a bit unique (e.g., the main character is kind of a dick). Also, new Shoji Meguro music!
