Shin Megami Threadsei

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Thad
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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Thad » Sat Oct 17, 2015 4:02 pm

Well, I was asking about DSO, not the main series or Persona, but since we're on the subject:

The rules also seem to be "Save constantly" and "Hope you don't run into the wrong party."

I'm not sure what I'm doing differently than you are, but here's a short list of the types of parties I've encountered in P4 that have resulted in cheap deaths. All they need to do is attack first, either by an ambush or by just having high enough Agility to get the initiative.

  • At least one monster has Atk+ buff; uses it on other monster(s).
  • Multiple monsters with Confuse.
  • Large number of monsters with moderate attack power.
  • At least 2 monsters who use attacks that hit hero's current elemental weakness.

Which brings us to:

MarsDragon wrote:It's okay to have elemental weaknesses if you're pretty sure enemies won't be using it against you,


So I guess rule #3 is "know what's going to happen before it happens." I mean, how will I know what attack enemies are going to use before I encounter them? P4 seems to rely pretty heavily on learning by dying. You get wiped out and then you know which characters/personas not to use next time. Until you get two more floors up and have to deal with a whole new slate of enemies. Which is why you should probably Goho-M and save at least every other floor.

Then again, the last couple of dungeons seem less inclined to sucker-punch me than, say, Kanji's and Rise's; I don't know if the game's easing up, or if I've just gotten better at Fusions or something else that made me less susceptible to getting wiped out.

SMT4 (which is, at this point, the only other SMT game I've played; I started DSO the other night but I'm only through the first fight) is punishing in a different way; it lets you save anywhere and takes this as an invitation to really front-load the difficulty. Once you get the rhythm down (and build a respectable party) it's pretty manageable, but in the early going they stick you in a dungeon crawl with limited resources (including really low MP) and hit you with challenging enemies right upfront. In the early going, at least, it's not just an accomplishment to get to the next floor, it's an accomplishment to get to the next room.

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby pacobird » Mon Oct 19, 2015 2:51 pm

If you have trouble in DSO, especially later on, the One True Tip is that Shield All is the best skill in the game by a wide margin. If you have demons you like but can't beat a given stage, the most grinding I'd recommend in free battles is just long enough to get a magnetite bonus for a team or two so you can slap Shield All onto a demon.

Also, for your first playthrough on those first couple of days, I really recommend putting a couple points in ST for your MC, even if you want to make him a caster. I can't say why without spoiling*, but you'll be glad you did


*Day 3 ends with a boss that can only be harmed by the MC's regular attack
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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby MarsDragon » Mon Oct 19, 2015 4:16 pm

That boss relies entirely on levels, not STR. At most you need 8 STR for Holy Dance, which is the actual best skill in the game. (well, that and Multistrike. Anyone with good STR and AGL gets Multistrike) I think the right levels of VIT and AGL are 14/15, for Anti-All and Blitzkreig. Everything else goes into MAG.

Anyone who uses Physical skills NEEDS Pierce eventually. That's mostly why Magic was so overpowered back in the original: only one copy of Pierce for the humans. Overclocked fixes it a bit, but I still think it's better to go MAG for the MC. You could go heavy on STR/AGL and run Peirce/Multistrike while Atsuro picks up Holy Strike, that could work.

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby pacobird » Tue Oct 20, 2015 9:12 am

With no points in ST he's quite hard at level 30.
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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby MarsDragon » Tue Oct 20, 2015 1:36 pm

I've beaten the game multiple times, including that fight and the re-fight with only 8 points in STR. The special attack runs off the MC's level.

The biggest problem with facing him the first time is that he has annoying demons, hits hard, and can regen health. All of these are dealable problems. Use the rest of your party to set up at chokepoints and take out his demons before they can get at the MC. Load the MC up with a healer and a Kishin (so you can hit him twice per turn). Punch. That is literally all you need to do.

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby pacobird » Tue Oct 20, 2015 3:57 pm

All damage scales based on attacker's level vs. target level; it's nothing to do with the special itself. That's why you've got demons doing 2500 damage when you start NG+.

XP scaling locks you in around 30 or so for that fight. Unless you want to grind for hours to get to 32 or 33, the only thing you can really do to prepare (except getting Nalagiri, yeah) is dump a few points in ST. It's not like moving 8 ST to, say, 12 is derailing any builds.

And yeah, Holy Dance is great but Shield All is on a whole different level. It strips extra turns from attackers and grants them to defenders.
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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Classic » Tue Oct 20, 2015 5:26 pm

And since Shield All doesn't scale on any stats you can Agi stack on the Shield All caster without many problems?

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby pacobird » Tue Oct 20, 2015 6:13 pm

Yes, I'm a big fan of giving every endgame team a MA/AG demon (Amaterasu/Norn/Remiel) who is basically only there to cast Shield All and Samarecarm. The third skill will be Holy Dance (or an elemental dance if they happen to have an Amp passive) for when they get extra turns, which is often, because Shield All.

Holy Dance is wonderful against lategame bosses, mainly because you want as many people on them bringing them down as quickly as possible and it (same logic as with Pierce) ensures your MC will always be able to do damage regardless of resistances. The thing is it's ludicrously expensive and you can't reliably use it every skirmish in a lategame fight unless you've got a Divine or Tyrant in-group. This might not seem like a big deal but good Tyrants and Divines are unique and you've got other teams to look after. Usually I just throw a single target -dyne on my MC along with Holy Dance and use that until I close with whatever I need to really drill.
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Re: Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

Postby Thad » Sun Mar 19, 2017 5:45 pm

Lyrai wrote:Why are you not playing Persona 4 Golden, which is amazing in every way and superior to P4 vanilla.


So, finally started this.

I'm pretty ambivalent about starting fresh after sinking so much into vanilla -- not just the time, but really the feeling that every choice I'd made in how to spend each day and which fusions to create was something, as the title implies, personal --, but what the hell, it's prettier. (Not loving Chie's new voice, though.) And it's got a Very Easy mode. Which frankly is a little insulting, but lol Japan. I don't really need all the bumps to experience, damage, and money; the problem is, as usual, the existence of fucking save points. Like, as I said upthread, SMT4 frontloads the difficulty pretty hard, but it lets you save anywhere, so even if you get sucker-punched you never lose too much progress.

I don't remember the exact details of when I quit playing P4 before, but it was on Naoto's dungeon and it was just one too many "enemy gets initiative and wipes your party out before you can move" battles. Which, really, is what stuck in my craw most about the game: the frequency with which you die not because you made a wrong move but through sheer random fucking chance.

So, y'know, if the only way I can mitigate that is to dumb down all the enemy stats? Fuck it, I'll take it.

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Niku » Sun Mar 19, 2017 6:53 pm

I've still yet to finish P3:FES or P3P despite starting both a handful of times. It turns out the reason I loved Persona 4 so much when I played through it was that I did so on PCSX2 and was able to just reload a save state whenever I got randomly party-wiped and otherwise played the game normally!

Basically I'm really hoping P5 cuts back on that, because the ability for random enemies to party wipe you so easily is pretty much my only complaint with the series. Even getting a heads up on what you'll be fighting before you actually get into the battle would basically be all you need, but I've been 100% in the dark on the details of P5 to date so I'm not sure if that's any different than the growlyblobs of the last two games.
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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Mothra » Sun Apr 02, 2017 2:52 pm

P5's probably gonna be the first game I've bought at launch in years.

Was going to get the PS3 version, but I'm curious - anyone know what the differences are between the PS3 and PS4 versions?

Sounds like:

PS3 has longer loads.
PS3 has slightly worse texture detail
PS3 has slightly worse lighting
PS3's resolution is slightly lower

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby sei » Tue Apr 04, 2017 5:59 am

Niku wrote:I've still yet to finish P3:FES or P3P despite starting both a handful of times. It turns out the reason I loved Persona 4 so much when I played through it was that I did so on PCSX2 and was able to just reload a save state whenever I got randomly party-wiped and otherwise played the game normally!

Basically I'm really hoping P5 cuts back on that, because the ability for random enemies to party wipe you so easily is pretty much my only complaint with the series. Even getting a heads up on what you'll be fighting before you actually get into the battle would basically be all you need, but I've been 100% in the dark on the details of P5 to date so I'm not sure if that's any different than the growlyblobs of the last two games.

have a sweet demon

btw it's weak vs hama

glhf
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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Mothra » Tue Apr 04, 2017 10:25 am

oh my god today's the day I am going to find a way to leave work as early as humanly possible and sit on my ass and play this game straight through till the weekend

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Grath » Tue Apr 04, 2017 3:47 pm

Atlus wrote:Eat a dick, Let's Players and Streamers. We don't like your kind here.

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Metal Slime » Tue Apr 04, 2017 8:36 pm

Go as dark as possible on P5 now. Assholes have turned outright malicious on attempting to spoil and ruin this one's plot. They have actually gone as far as making twitter bots that hunt down people mentioning P5 and hitting them with spoiler tweets. No comment section on anything P5-related is safe either. It's only gotten worse after Atlus made their statement regarding videos.

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Wheels » Tue Apr 04, 2017 10:17 pm

Frankly, I don't really mind that stance on streaming a game like this. I can't be surprised that anyone is butthurt about anything, really. Really though, I'm not of the opinion that people should limit the proliferation of information about anything, but a long awaited RPG that's only good for one playthrough at least makes more sense than say, Nintendo's youtube crackdown on LPers playing 5 year old games.
Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Friday » Wed Apr 05, 2017 1:59 pm

I just don't understand why they're framing it as "please don't spoil by streaming the game."

If a person is watching a stream of p5, they want to be spoiled. That is the entire point.

I mean, shit, it's not like I could ever bring myself to actually play a persona game. They are so fucking grindy and stupid it's not even funny. (and that's coming from me, a masocore grindfest lover who will happily walk around town perimeters for hours in DQ games.) I think p4 is one of the best jrpgs ever made AND I HAVE NEVER AND WILL NEVER PLAY IT. I watched that shit on youtube, and then I watched the anime.
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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Mongrel » Wed Apr 05, 2017 3:06 pm

The only one I played was P3. I tried to do as was mentioned and just play on my own without trying to max everything, and I was *almost* able to stomach the grind thanks to playing it on an emulator. But then I discovered that there were entire characters who I missed out on because I said the wrong thing on one day in one conversation which was my ONLY CHANCE to access those characters and that just broke my will to play, so I finally gave up about 2/3rds of the way through.
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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Grath » Wed Apr 05, 2017 3:27 pm

Friday wrote:I just don't understand why they're framing it as "please don't spoil by streaming the game."

If a person is watching a stream of p5, they want to be spoiled. That is the entire point.

I mean, shit, it's not like I could ever bring myself to actually play a persona game. They are so fucking grindy and stupid it's not even funny. (and that's coming from me, a masocore grindfest lover who will happily walk around town perimeters for hours in DQ games.) I think p4 is one of the best jrpgs ever made AND I HAVE NEVER AND WILL NEVER PLAY IT. I watched that shit on youtube, and then I watched the anime.

Reportedly, the Japan side of Atlus doesn't want people to be able to experience the story without paying for it, and there being the LP/streaming culture in the US is the reason for it suddenly being "NO STREAMS! NO SPOILERS!"

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Re: Shin Megami Threadsei

Postby Mothra » Wed Apr 05, 2017 4:04 pm

I mean I will say it's always kind of amazed me that entire FPS campaigns and RPGs - games that are essentially movies - are allowed to be streamed in their entirety on youtube. The number of times I've not bought an RPG or shooter because I knew I could just get all the story bits from a longplay is pretty impressive at this point.

Like I am never going to buy Halo Wars or Metal Gear Solid 4, but boy howdy I did enjoy watchin' those cutscenes.

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