MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Thematically, I enjoyed the idea that you only controlled the main character in 3 because it made a point of the fact that you yourself are only the main character and you have to build your relationships with the rest of the cast.
In practice, once I got access to party control in 4 again I took it and never looked back.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I'd suggest the games without (as much) questionable content, 1 and 2, especially since 2 breaks the mold by having adult party members... but falling access to a PS1 or PSP, I'd suggest P3.
i don't think access to a ps1 is the problem as much as persona 1 and 2 being 250-300$ games, so suggesting that route to a newcomer is basically pointless short of emulation or being a crazy collector like me
i don't think access to a ps1 is the problem as much as persona 1 and 2 being 250-300$ games, so suggesting that route to a newcomer is basically pointless short of emulation or being a crazy collector like me
They’re available digitally on the ps store if you got a ps3 for like 20 bucks but what I understand about the old personas are that they’re both extremely dated and so different from the current games. They don’t even have social links right? What’s even the point?
oh if they were available digitally somewhere then yeah that's the best route to play those but yes they are very dated and lack a lot compared to more recent titles
i don't think anyone new to the series would really enjoy playing them tbh
I think P2 holds up well, personally, as long as you go into it expecting a PS1 era JRPG instead of a modern Persona game.
No social links but the cast is fun, the story is batshit crazy in an entertaining way, and the art/character design is excellent because Kazuma Kaneko is very good at his job.
I'd compare it to something like Trails in the Sky, where the appeal is the main cast + going around to talk to all the NPCs and watch their dialogue change over the course of the story.
Can't say the same of P1, unfortunately, that game is definitely a slog.
telling someone who's looking at persona now to play persona 1 and 2 is like telling someone who said "hey that looks neat" to ff15 to go play dragon quest 2
Getting further in, I do have to cut P4G some slack though
The first four months or so are a SLOG, pretty much until after you get Rise and summer is in full swing, and then more once school starts again. Summer/Cultural festival, the impromptu concert, the fireworks stuff, and the school trip and the night at the inn are all varying levels of "good" when everything that comes before that is just boring as hell. Just dumb goofy but sometimes endearing anime bullshit to actually give the setting some personality. And the November palace actually has a much better track than the other which makes traversing it easier. If it were at this speed the whole time I'd probably have a much better opinion of it as a whole.
When I first started the game I considered posting that 'I've known <X> for 10 minutes and if anything ever happened to them I'd kill everyone in this room and then myself' then forgot about it and now I just got to the part where Nanko gets TV'd and I'm wishing I had.
Also I don't care what anyone says and that he apparently was with me during the kidnapping I will never ever actually trust Adachi. He's the evil sociopathic mastermind, I know it. He reminds me too much of Akechi.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
telling someone who's looking at persona now to play persona 1 and 2 is like telling someone who said "hey that looks neat" to ff15 to go play dragon quest 2
You could make a solid case that Dragon Quest 2 is a far more cohesive game. I like FF15, but I freely admit that it's a disjointed mess, with huge chunks of the game relegated to DLC, animes, or films.
P1 is not for the faint of heart, but I think P2 holds up fine, especially the super fast PSP version(s).
Persona 1 is an infuriating game to play, unless you are really into old school style Shin Megami Tensei games. Like holy fuck I got halfway through that game and gave up.
Persona 2, especially the PSP version, is a hell of a lot of fun. It's got some old feel to it, but it doesn't take much getting used to and the characters are really good.
If you want to get into Persona nowadays though, I recommend Persona 5 (haven't played Persona 5 Royal, so can't comment on it). The mechanics are good, the cast is very good, and I very much enjoyed the story.
A big appeal of P5 and presumably FF15 is the style/graphics; they're very eye catching games that draw you in by looking really fucking cool.
So yeah, if someone is looking for that kind of experience then P2/DQ2 isn't really the same thing at all, no matter how good those games are.
I really wish Atlus would put P2 on steam though so more people could play it; I feel like that game's reputation for being intimidating/outdated is vastly overstated (probably due to it's limited availability and just being so different than the modern personas).
To me a big part of the hook of modern persona is also the dungeon crawling/social sim split-up
those are both genres i get pretty tired of on their own, but being able to switch gears between the two makes them complement each other really well and makes me stick with those games way longer than i would otherwise
I really like the atmosphere of P2 but at some point I just couldn't keep going with the dungeon crawling
To me a big part of the hook of modern persona is also the dungeon crawling/social sim split-up
those are both genres i get pretty tired of on their own, but being able to switch gears between the two makes them complement each other really well and makes me stick with those games way longer than i would otherwise
I really like the atmosphere of P2 but at some point I just couldn't keep going with the dungeon crawling
P3 is 100% the worst of the modern 3 in terms of dungeon crawl due to Tartarus. On the other hand it's still a really good story if you can push through it... I don't know if I'd want to try it without the QoL of P3P though.
P5 is the only one you have any reasonable chance to 100% your first time through without a guide (they can all be 100% on an NG+ easily because social stats carry over, saving you countless time slots) though. It does a lot of good QoL stuff, so it's easily the best to play.
But P3 is probably the best story of the modern Persona games.
I beat P5R today, and as a old 37 year old am embarrassed how sad I am.
I beat P5 twice to get all the trophies, and loved it. P5R arrived on day 3 of quarantine.
While working from home, every single day, I have got up for my 9AM meeting, turned on the PS4 as it was going on, and played starting at 9:30. Some days I'd make 5 minutes of progress due to insane workloads. Some days id get a full 8 hours in.
Tomorrow is the first day since the pandemic started I will wake up without my dumb high school crew, and I'm actually really bummed.
Gonna miss those kids.
P5R definitely has some problems (I was insanely overleveled by the end. Beat the final boss in like 4 turns), but goddamn it's fantastic.
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They do a great job of getting you attached to your group members and the parting of ways was really touching.
I was actually caught off guard after finishing P5 how much they'd grown on me, as I got a little burned out during the second last dungeon and took a break for a couple of months.
I did like that it wasn't a parting of ways in P5, instead they all go off on a road trip together.
P3 is a little too navel gazey for me and also has lots of weird little tossed off plot points that never really go anywhere, like when you find out that the bad guys (who you don't really ever meet) were trying to invent time travel when they invented tartarus??
It feels like a script that went through lots of revisions and didn't have enough clean-up work done on it to make the whole thing cohesive
Honestly my biggest knock against P5 is that, while it's not even slightly unique in having unprompted moments of homo/transphobia, its themes are really deeply undermined by the handful of times the game pumps the break to remind you that it hates gay people
Like, it's about a bunch of kids who don't fit in fighting to undo the unjust power structures of the world, it should be queer as hell
My main problem with P3 is the pacing. There's a lot of months where basically nothing happens besides the characters fighting another big shadow monster.
P3 is a little too navel gazey for me and also has lots of weird little tossed off plot points that never really go anywhere, like when you find out that the bad guys (who you don't really ever meet) were trying to invent time travel when they invented tartarus??
It feels like a script that went through lots of revisions and didn't have enough clean-up work done on it to make the whole thing cohesive
Honestly my biggest knock against P5 is that, while it's not even slightly unique in having unprompted moments of homo/transphobia, its themes are really deeply undermined by the handful of times the game pumps the break to remind you that it hates gay people
Like, it's about a bunch of kids who don't fit in fighting to undo the unjust power structures of the world, it should be queer as hell
I've only played 4 and 5 but I think 4 fails even more spectacularly in this regard
P3 is a little too navel gazey for me and also has lots of weird little tossed off plot points that never really go anywhere, like when you find out that the bad guys (who you don't really ever meet) were trying to invent time travel when they invented tartarus??
It feels like a script that went through lots of revisions and didn't have enough clean-up work done on it to make the whole thing cohesive
Honestly my biggest knock against P5 is that, while it's not even slightly unique in having unprompted moments of homo/transphobia, its themes are really deeply undermined by the handful of times the game pumps the break to remind you that it hates gay people
Like, it's about a bunch of kids who don't fit in fighting to undo the unjust power structures of the world, it should be queer as hell
I've only played 4 and 5 but in a way I think 4 fails even more spectacularly in this regard
Four definitely is the bigger issue that way.
Five is pretty accurate in a lot of the societal political stuff that makes it uncomfortable because you can't solve your problems in real life by beating people up.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
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Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
P5 has probably the best final boss sequence of the three. But I think P3 has the best final boss fight.
if you're barely leveled enough to beat it, P3's final boss takes forever though. I never beat P3P because I ran into the same problem I did w/the original where i'm about 3 levels too low to get through the fight smoothly and I wiped on the last phase, and was like, "naaaaaaaaaaah. Not doing it again, I know how it ends."
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
P5 has probably the best final boss sequence of the three. But I think P3 has the best final boss fight.
if you're barely leveled enough to beat it, P3's final boss takes forever though. I never beat P3P because I ran into the same problem I did w/the original where i'm about 3 levels too low to get through the fight smoothly and I wiped on the last phase, and was like, "naaaaaaaaaaah. Not doing it again, I know how it ends."
I mean yes. You don't want to go into that without being really prepared. But it's the best of the fights at making use of the Wild Card ability of the protagonists...
Because it's fourteen phases, each representing a different arcana, each with their own moveset and weaknesses. So it's a real good thing the protagonist can change theirs on a whim.
And then there's the solo fifteenth phase, but that's really just a cutscene.
P5 has probably the best final boss sequence of the three. But I think P3 has the best final boss fight.
if you're barely leveled enough to beat it, P3's final boss takes forever though. I never beat P3P because I ran into the same problem I did w/the original where i'm about 3 levels too low to get through the fight smoothly and I wiped on the last phase, and was like, "naaaaaaaaaaah. Not doing it again, I know how it ends."
I mean yes. You don't want to go into that without being really prepared. But it's the best of the fights at making use of the Wild Card ability of the protagonists...
Because it's fourteen phases, each representing a different arcana, each with their own moveset and weaknesses. So it's a real good thing the protagonist can change theirs on a whim.
And then there's the solo fifteenth phase, but that's really just a cutscene.
it's just tooooooo loooooong. Unless you're at a solid level, then it's just like 2 shotting each of the first 13 phases and then phase 14 is a proper fight
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
P5 made a lot of quality of life changes that I wanted since P3 which is nice.
But P4 did the same so I guess they slowly fix things.
I remember the hell that was maxing out female S. Links in 3 simply because the devs thought boys and girls being really good friends without kissing was impossible.
P5 has probably the best final boss sequence of the three. But I think P3 has the best final boss fight.
if you're barely leveled enough to beat it, P3's final boss takes forever though. I never beat P3P because I ran into the same problem I did w/the original where i'm about 3 levels too low to get through the fight smoothly and I wiped on the last phase, and was like, "naaaaaaaaaaah. Not doing it again, I know how it ends."
I mean yes. You don't want to go into that without being really prepared. But it's the best of the fights at making use of the Wild Card ability of the protagonists...
Because it's fourteen phases, each representing a different arcana, each with their own moveset and weaknesses. So it's a real good thing the protagonist can change theirs on a whim.
And then there's the solo fifteenth phase, but that's really just a cutscene.
it's just tooooooo loooooong. Unless you're at a solid level, then it's just like 2 shotting each of the first 13 phases and then phase 14 is a proper fight
Okay, I can give you that. But it's more interesting to me than the others because it's constantly shifting around on you and rewards a versatile MC lineup more. The thematic elements of the fight, advancing through the arcana, etc. are neat - I don't think 4 and 5 tie into the core conceits of the game as well basically and feel a bit more generic final boss.
P3 is a little too navel gazey for me and also has lots of weird little tossed off plot points that never really go anywhere, like when you find out that the bad guys (who you don't really ever meet) were trying to invent time travel when they invented tartarus??
It feels like a script that went through lots of revisions and didn't have enough clean-up work done on it to make the whole thing cohesive
Honestly my biggest knock against P5 is that, while it's not even slightly unique in having unprompted moments of homo/transphobia, its themes are really deeply undermined by the handful of times the game pumps the break to remind you that it hates gay people
Like, it's about a bunch of kids who don't fit in fighting to undo the unjust power structures of the world, it should be queer as hell
I've only played 4 and 5 but I think 4 fails even more spectacularly in this regard
yeah for sure. P4 is a worse case but also a weirder case because the plot is explicitly about queer stuff at a few points and it just hideously fumbles the ball on it
whereas in 3 and 5 the bigotry is totally disconnected from everything else, you're just having a nice time and then the game pops its head in to say "hey by the way there are some types of people that we hate, anyway bye!"
And in 5's case it unintentionally ends up turning the game into a hypocrite, because the hegemony enforced by the powers that be is cruel and oppressive and restricts the freedom of the human spirit... you know except when it comes to queer people, in that case the hegemony enforced by the powers that be is correct and good
P3 is a little too navel gazey for me and also has lots of weird little tossed off plot points that never really go anywhere, like when you find out that the bad guys (who you don't really ever meet) were trying to invent time travel when they invented tartarus??
It feels like a script that went through lots of revisions and didn't have enough clean-up work done on it to make the whole thing cohesive
Honestly my biggest knock against P5 is that, while it's not even slightly unique in having unprompted moments of homo/transphobia, its themes are really deeply undermined by the handful of times the game pumps the break to remind you that it hates gay people
Like, it's about a bunch of kids who don't fit in fighting to undo the unjust power structures of the world, it should be queer as hell
I've only played 4 and 5 but I think 4 fails even more spectacularly in this regard
yeah for sure. P4 is a worse case but also a weirder case because the plot is explicitly about queer stuff at a few points and it just hideously fumbles the ball on it
whereas in 3 and 5 the bigotry is totally disconnected from everything else, you're just having a nice time and then the game pops its head in to say "hey by the way there are some types of people that we hate, anyway bye!"
And in 5's case it unintentionally ends up turning the game into a hypocrite, because the hegemony enforced by the powers that be is cruel and oppressive and restricts the freedom of the human spirit... you know except when it comes to queer people, in that case the hegemony enforced by the powers that be is correct and good
Something that bugs me about it in 3 about the transphobia is that they realized how shitty it was, and changed it in the movies they made, and in the Persona 3 Portable version (well the female route, as the male route is as much copy and paste from the original game is possible). Yet for Persona 4 and 5, they continued to do this shit.
Persona 5 at least has the benefit of Lala Escargot when it comes to representation, though she's a pretty minor role overall, and it does not fix the shitty stuff with the gay characters who prowl on Ryuji. Didn't that get changed in the western localization of P5R?
Persona 4 is the one that feels the worst because while it tackles queer themes, the game jumps between subtly condemning it to outright being shitty.
There's everything with Kanji's palace and the imagery used with that, and the resolution being that long term Kanji conforms to societal expectations physically while having the one person he is attracted to be revealed to be female. And the director's response to the question of "is Kanji bay/bi" is "you decide" being a total copout.
Naoto's storyline is just blatantly transphobic as fuck. Going with the idea that the creator intention, and all info shown at the end of the game and subsequent material, is that Naoto canonically identifies as female. Which is fine, the idea of having a female character tackling the blatant and rampant misogyny of the police force in Japan is a great idea, and her taking on a more masculine view to do it could be fine. Except her entire dungeon and shadow is horrifically transphobic and insults the very idea of someone being trans or genderqueer, its not even an option for Naoto. Its gross.
I'm hopeful that having a new director for Persona 6 will mean maybe the games will be better when it comes to queer characters.
The English p5r rewrote the dialogue but the intention of the scene is clear enough that it's not really possible for them to make it not seem like what it is
That's fair. There's only so much you can shine up that gross stuff.
I'm real sad from what I've read that they didn't give Lala much of an expanded role; she was the npc I most wanted to know more about after playing vanilla Persona 5. At the same time, with the track record the P3-P5 team has had with this representation, any expanded stuff would have likely been bad so....
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http://www.audioentropy.com/
In practice, once I got access to party control in 4 again I took it and never looked back.
They’re available digitally on the ps store if you got a ps3 for like 20 bucks but what I understand about the old personas are that they’re both extremely dated and so different from the current games. They don’t even have social links right? What’s even the point?
i don't think anyone new to the series would really enjoy playing them tbh
No social links but the cast is fun, the story is batshit crazy in an entertaining way, and the art/character design is excellent because Kazuma Kaneko is very good at his job.
I'd compare it to something like Trails in the Sky, where the appeal is the main cast + going around to talk to all the NPCs and watch their dialogue change over the course of the story.
Can't say the same of P1, unfortunately, that game is definitely a slog.
When I first started the game I considered posting that 'I've known <X> for 10 minutes and if anything ever happened to them I'd kill everyone in this room and then myself' then forgot about it and now I just got to the part where Nanko gets TV'd and I'm wishing I had.
Also I don't care what anyone says and that he apparently was with me during the kidnapping I will never ever actually trust Adachi. He's the evil sociopathic mastermind, I know it. He reminds me too much of Akechi.
You could make a solid case that Dragon Quest 2 is a far more cohesive game. I like FF15, but I freely admit that it's a disjointed mess, with huge chunks of the game relegated to DLC, animes, or films.
P1 is not for the faint of heart, but I think P2 holds up fine, especially the super fast PSP version(s).
trying
to
make
fetch
happen
Persona 2, especially the PSP version, is a hell of a lot of fun. It's got some old feel to it, but it doesn't take much getting used to and the characters are really good.
If you want to get into Persona nowadays though, I recommend Persona 5 (haven't played Persona 5 Royal, so can't comment on it). The mechanics are good, the cast is very good, and I very much enjoyed the story.
So yeah, if someone is looking for that kind of experience then P2/DQ2 isn't really the same thing at all, no matter how good those games are.
I really wish Atlus would put P2 on steam though so more people could play it; I feel like that game's reputation for being intimidating/outdated is vastly overstated (probably due to it's limited availability and just being so different than the modern personas).
those are both genres i get pretty tired of on their own, but being able to switch gears between the two makes them complement each other really well and makes me stick with those games way longer than i would otherwise
I really like the atmosphere of P2 but at some point I just couldn't keep going with the dungeon crawling
http://www.audioentropy.com/
P3 is 100% the worst of the modern 3 in terms of dungeon crawl due to Tartarus. On the other hand it's still a really good story if you can push through it... I don't know if I'd want to try it without the QoL of P3P though.
P5 is the only one you have any reasonable chance to 100% your first time through without a guide (they can all be 100% on an NG+ easily because social stats carry over, saving you countless time slots) though. It does a lot of good QoL stuff, so it's easily the best to play.
But P3 is probably the best story of the modern Persona games.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I beat P5 twice to get all the trophies, and loved it. P5R arrived on day 3 of quarantine.
While working from home, every single day, I have got up for my 9AM meeting, turned on the PS4 as it was going on, and played starting at 9:30. Some days I'd make 5 minutes of progress due to insane workloads. Some days id get a full 8 hours in.
Tomorrow is the first day since the pandemic started I will wake up without my dumb high school crew, and I'm actually really bummed.
Gonna miss those kids.
P5R definitely has some problems (I was insanely overleveled by the end. Beat the final boss in like 4 turns), but goddamn it's fantastic.
They do a great job of getting you attached to your group members and the parting of ways was really touching.
I was actually caught off guard after finishing P5 how much they'd grown on me, as I got a little burned out during the second last dungeon and took a break for a couple of months.
P3 is a little too navel gazey for me and also has lots of weird little tossed off plot points that never really go anywhere, like when you find out that the bad guys (who you don't really ever meet) were trying to invent time travel when they invented tartarus??
It feels like a script that went through lots of revisions and didn't have enough clean-up work done on it to make the whole thing cohesive
Honestly my biggest knock against P5 is that, while it's not even slightly unique in having unprompted moments of homo/transphobia, its themes are really deeply undermined by the handful of times the game pumps the break to remind you that it hates gay people
Like, it's about a bunch of kids who don't fit in fighting to undo the unjust power structures of the world, it should be queer as hell
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I've only played 4 and 5 but I think 4 fails even more spectacularly in this regard
Four definitely is the bigger issue that way.
Five is pretty accurate in a lot of the societal political stuff that makes it uncomfortable because you can't solve your problems in real life by beating people up.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
if you're barely leveled enough to beat it, P3's final boss takes forever though. I never beat P3P because I ran into the same problem I did w/the original where i'm about 3 levels too low to get through the fight smoothly and I wiped on the last phase, and was like, "naaaaaaaaaaah. Not doing it again, I know how it ends."
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I mean yes. You don't want to go into that without being really prepared. But it's the best of the fights at making use of the Wild Card ability of the protagonists...
And then there's the solo fifteenth phase, but that's really just a cutscene.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
But P4 did the same so I guess they slowly fix things.
I remember the hell that was maxing out female S. Links in 3 simply because the devs thought boys and girls being really good friends without kissing was impossible.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
yeah for sure. P4 is a worse case but also a weirder case because the plot is explicitly about queer stuff at a few points and it just hideously fumbles the ball on it
whereas in 3 and 5 the bigotry is totally disconnected from everything else, you're just having a nice time and then the game pops its head in to say "hey by the way there are some types of people that we hate, anyway bye!"
And in 5's case it unintentionally ends up turning the game into a hypocrite, because the hegemony enforced by the powers that be is cruel and oppressive and restricts the freedom of the human spirit... you know except when it comes to queer people, in that case the hegemony enforced by the powers that be is correct and good
http://www.audioentropy.com/
http://www.audioentropy.com/
this was also my exact experience
P3 rules but I don't think I'll ever play it again cause of stuff like that
Something that bugs me about it in 3 about the transphobia is that they realized how shitty it was, and changed it in the movies they made, and in the Persona 3 Portable version (well the female route, as the male route is as much copy and paste from the original game is possible). Yet for Persona 4 and 5, they continued to do this shit.
Persona 5 at least has the benefit of Lala Escargot when it comes to representation, though she's a pretty minor role overall, and it does not fix the shitty stuff with the gay characters who prowl on Ryuji. Didn't that get changed in the western localization of P5R?
Persona 4 is the one that feels the worst because while it tackles queer themes, the game jumps between subtly condemning it to outright being shitty.
Naoto's storyline is just blatantly transphobic as fuck. Going with the idea that the creator intention, and all info shown at the end of the game and subsequent material, is that Naoto canonically identifies as female. Which is fine, the idea of having a female character tackling the blatant and rampant misogyny of the police force in Japan is a great idea, and her taking on a more masculine view to do it could be fine. Except her entire dungeon and shadow is horrifically transphobic and insults the very idea of someone being trans or genderqueer, its not even an option for Naoto. Its gross.
I'm hopeful that having a new director for Persona 6 will mean maybe the games will be better when it comes to queer characters.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I'm real sad from what I've read that they didn't give Lala much of an expanded role; she was the npc I most wanted to know more about after playing vanilla Persona 5. At the same time, with the track record the P3-P5 team has had with this representation, any expanded stuff would have likely been bad so....
Phantasy Star was created by a woman.