Yes, we should be putting many things in spoiler tags since people often stumble into this thread for the latest SMT game, then decide to play all the older ones after.
So for DDS2 optional bosses...
I'm level 5 of the sun and I'm pretty sure I'm close to the end game, so I looked online about fighting Satan.
Holy shit, is it really a get to level 99, max the stats, get nearly all the mantras, demi-fiend level fight? I swear I remember someone in this thread saying Satan wasn't nearly up to demi-fiend's caliber, but what I read online implied that he was.
Also, if I decide to finish the game now and leave Satan until I get some time off, what are end game levels for DDS2 hard mode? Are low 60s up to snuff or would I need to spend some time grinding first anyway?
Oh you'll absolutely need to grind to 99, you probably will anyway getting the required items to fight Seth, but anyone who says he's as hard as the Demifiend is a fool. I beat him on like my 4th try.
Yes, we should be putting many things in spoiler tags since people often stumble into this thread for the latest SMT game, then decide to play all the older ones after.
So for DDS2 optional bosses...
I'm level 5 of the sun and I'm pretty sure I'm close to the end game, so I looked online about fighting Satan.
Holy shit, is it really a get to level 99, max the stats, get nearly all the mantras, demi-fiend level fight? I swear I remember someone in this thread saying Satan wasn't nearly up to demi-fiend's caliber, but what I read online implied that he was.
Also, if I decide to finish the game now and leave Satan until I get some time off, what are end game levels for DDS2 hard mode? Are low 60s up to snuff or would I need to spend some time grinding first anyway?
Oh you'll absolutely need to grind to 99, you probably will anyway getting the required items to fight Seth, but anyone who says he's as hard as the Demifiend is a fool. I beat him on like my 4th try.
Specifics? Does he have any uber kill everything attacks? I know nothing about what to expect.
People said you need to be L99 for the Demi-Fiend, and that's just not true.
He does have a super attack, but you can block it by casting two buffs or debuffs on the turn he uses it. He'll use Dekunda or Dekaja instead. Honestly the worst attacks are the "You're charmed now" attack and the attack where he randomly picks someone to die. There's no guarding it, someone just dies. The hardest part of the fight itself is keeping track of his HP. If he gets too low he'll heal to full and keep all of his attacks, like the charm and death one. So you basically lose at that point.
The thing is you'll probably be 99 anyway because to fight him you have to get past Seth, and Seth requires you to beat the other two bosses in the last dungeon and they require the items to open the door. I was probably level 150 by the time I found them if the game would've let me be that level.
Excuse me, but I'm just starting Persona 1 right now and I was hoping anyone reading this thread might be able to answer a question I had. I found out that you have to pick your team mates in the two story modes. Is there any suggestions as to who I should pick just for the sake of not getting stuck with the exact same character in both story arcs? Or can I get anyone no matter what arc I'm in?
Excuse me, but I'm just starting Persona 1 right now and I was hoping anyone reading this thread might be able to answer a question I had. I found out that you have to pick your team mates in the two story modes. Is there any suggestions as to who I should pick just for the sake of not getting stuck with the exact same character in both story arcs? Or can I get anyone no matter what arc I'm in?
Thanks.
If you don't want any repeats between the two (other than the MC) get the secret character for the "Main" story, and take Eriko and Brown in the Snow Queen Quest.
As for knowing which route you're on...without spoilers, I will say it is very easy to tell if you're on the SEBEC route or the Snow Queen route. You need to do a lot to get the Snow Queen route and while it is technically possible to get it by just exploring everywhere, it's also very unlikely.
Quick question concerning Persona 3 FES: I've got thirteen days left before my big fight against Nyx and I'm currently training in Monad for the big event. My strongest Persona is Surt, who's at level 85 but has all the stats maxed (yup, I used lots of cards). Is there any point in levelling Surt any further, since the stats can't go higher than 99? Does the persona's level also influence their effectiveness in combat? Or does it make more sense for me to focus on my other Personas (especially the ones unlocked by Social Links) and max their skills?
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Quick question concerning Persona 3 FES: I've got thirteen days left before my big fight against Nyx and I'm currently training in Monad for the big event. My strongest Persona is Surt, who's at level 85 but has all the stats maxed (yup, I used lots of cards). Is there any point in levelling Surt any further, since the stats can't go higher than 99? Does the persona's level also influence their effectiveness in combat? Or does it make more sense for me to focus on my other Personas (especially the ones unlocked by Social Links) and max their skills?
Yes, it does.
You don't really need to level that much though, anything above 80 or so and the final boss just becomes a cakewalk. Or you could do like I did and have a level 99 Orpheus Telos with all stats maxed and the added magic resistance special weapon equipped.
So, which of these two would you recommend: grinding so I can max 2-3 personas, or focusing on one and maxing that one? I have to say that the combat is slowly starting to wear thin (I've never been a big fan of RPG combat, playing them for story more than anything), so if I can just max out Seth or Thor and leave the rest of the personas where they are without shooting myself in the foot for the Nyx fight, I'll probably do that rather than max 4-5 personas.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
So, as I'll be smashing my way through the dungeon next time I fire up Persona 4... anything to note or be prepared for in the Secret Lab (or whatever the dungeon is called)?
And you all were right. Black Frost > Void Quest. It was a cakewalk.
Two threads ago I bought Persona 4 again. I missed Chie and the rest of the gang, thought I did the game a disservice by not dabbling in fusion on my first playthrough, and Dragon Age wasn't going to be released for a very, very long time.
Yesterday I finally worked up the will to slog through the final dungeons and for the second time witnessed an awesome game end with a whimper, not a bang.
It's tragic, really. On the day that I got the game, I wiped my previous save and played all the way through to the end of Kanji's dungeon in one marathon session. I wanted to beat every dungeon in one day apiece, which is not an achievement in the slightest from Rise's dungeon onwards, but in the first two dungeons this enables some really compelling gameplay. SP is truly precious, as it should be, a wider array of skills are used since SP-burning everything isn't a viable option and a lot of fights are best avoided. Also, boss fights are done underlevelled and with a half-drained party. I beat Shadow Yukiko with only Chie (edit: and the protaganist, duh) left standing, on 1HP each.
Isn't that awesome? Isn't that how the game really should have been until the end?
Unfortunately, after Kanji's dungeon the gameplay rapidly spirals down the shitter. Most random encounters quickly become beatable with one AoE from Yosuke and maybe a followup from whoever moves next. SP becomes practically meaningless. All your characters are reduced to having anything between one to three skills; typically one move only for normal encounters and two or three skills they repeat in a cycle for boss fights. Boss fights rapidly degenerate into using the same strategy, because of a killer flaw in the scaling of healing skills: when your party can heal to full every turn, if the boss cannot wipe out your party in a single turn you can not lose. To be fair, this is a problem common to every single JRPG I've ever played, but it's sad to see such a good game fall to such shitty skill design.
And, on top of this, when you enter the Velvet Room a couple of times per dungeon, the main character becomes an all-conquering, game-ruining super faggot. I was torn between not having any customisation options at all, or customising the main character just a little and inevitably being overpowered as fuck. No inbetween.
On top of this the story gets a lot less compelling after Teddie Ex Machina. Ugh. Because of all this, despite beating a quarter of the game in one day it took me three months to slog through to the end.
This isn't going to be a totally negative post, though. Persona 4 is still my favouritest RPG ever, ever, ever.
You know what I did when I took down the dull-as-all-fuck final boss and let the game play itself out twenty hours too late? I deleted my completed save file, started over from scratch, and beat Yukiko's dungeon in a single sitting again.
I've gotta agree with the difficulty. I wish the hard as nails nature of the first dungeon had carried over to all the others. It was a glorious victory when I finally took Yukiko's Shadow down, and took about 10 tries to deal with the boss shadow that shows up later in her dungeon. Every other boss was considerably easier.
Though the boss of Heaven did manage to surprise and destroy me with quad converge the first time it dropped.
Two threads ago I bought Persona 4 again. I missed Chie and the rest of the gang, thought I did the game a disservice by not dabbling in fusion on my first playthrough, and Dragon Age wasn't going to be released for a very, very long time.
Yesterday I finally worked up the will to slog through the final dungeons and for the second time witnessed an awesome game end with a whimper, not a bang.
It's tragic, really. On the day that I got the game, I wiped my previous save and played all the way through to the end of Kanji's dungeon in one marathon session. I wanted to beat every dungeon in one day apiece, which is not an achievement in the slightest from Rise's dungeon onwards, but in the first two dungeons this enables some really compelling gameplay. SP is truly precious, as it should be, a wider array of skills are used since SP-burning everything isn't a viable option and a lot of fights are best avoided. Also, boss fights are done underlevelled and with a half-drained party. I beat Shadow Yukiko with only Chie (edit: and the protaganist, duh) left standing, on 1HP each.
Isn't that awesome? Isn't that how the game really should have been until the end?
I recall there was an interview with the producers and they were disappointed that most people would try to rush through the dungeons.
Two threads ago I bought Persona 4 again. I missed Chie and the rest of the gang, thought I did the game a disservice by not dabbling in fusion on my first playthrough, and Dragon Age wasn't going to be released for a very, very long time.
Yesterday I finally worked up the will to slog through the final dungeons and for the second time witnessed an awesome game end with a whimper, not a bang.
It's tragic, really. On the day that I got the game, I wiped my previous save and played all the way through to the end of Kanji's dungeon in one marathon session. I wanted to beat every dungeon in one day apiece, which is not an achievement in the slightest from Rise's dungeon onwards, but in the first two dungeons this enables some really compelling gameplay. SP is truly precious, as it should be, a wider array of skills are used since SP-burning everything isn't a viable option and a lot of fights are best avoided. Also, boss fights are done underlevelled and with a half-drained party. I beat Shadow Yukiko with only Chie (edit: and the protaganist, duh) left standing, on 1HP each.
Isn't that awesome? Isn't that how the game really should have been until the end?
I recall there was an interview with the producers and they were disappointed that most people would try to rush through the dungeons.
Well, don't make it a choice between that and not getting all the S.Links, then. Jerks. I didn't rush the P3 dungeons nearly as much.
EmperorSeth on
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
Two threads ago I bought Persona 4 again. I missed Chie and the rest of the gang, thought I did the game a disservice by not dabbling in fusion on my first playthrough, and Dragon Age wasn't going to be released for a very, very long time.
Yesterday I finally worked up the will to slog through the final dungeons and for the second time witnessed an awesome game end with a whimper, not a bang.
It's tragic, really. On the day that I got the game, I wiped my previous save and played all the way through to the end of Kanji's dungeon in one marathon session. I wanted to beat every dungeon in one day apiece, which is not an achievement in the slightest from Rise's dungeon onwards, but in the first two dungeons this enables some really compelling gameplay. SP is truly precious, as it should be, a wider array of skills are used since SP-burning everything isn't a viable option and a lot of fights are best avoided. Also, boss fights are done underlevelled and with a half-drained party. I beat Shadow Yukiko with only Chie (edit: and the protaganist, duh) left standing, on 1HP each.
Isn't that awesome? Isn't that how the game really should have been until the end?
I recall there was an interview with the producers and they were disappointed that most people would try to rush through the dungeons.
Well, don't make it a choice between that and not getting all the S.Links, then. Jerks. I didn't rush the P3 dungeons nearly as much.
This is funny because in Persona 3 to max all the S.Links you have, at most, one free day.
In Persona 4, to max all of the S.Links you have an entire month.
Two threads ago I bought Persona 4 again. I missed Chie and the rest of the gang, thought I did the game a disservice by not dabbling in fusion on my first playthrough, and Dragon Age wasn't going to be released for a very, very long time.
Yesterday I finally worked up the will to slog through the final dungeons and for the second time witnessed an awesome game end with a whimper, not a bang.
It's tragic, really. On the day that I got the game, I wiped my previous save and played all the way through to the end of Kanji's dungeon in one marathon session. I wanted to beat every dungeon in one day apiece, which is not an achievement in the slightest from Rise's dungeon onwards, but in the first two dungeons this enables some really compelling gameplay. SP is truly precious, as it should be, a wider array of skills are used since SP-burning everything isn't a viable option and a lot of fights are best avoided. Also, boss fights are done underlevelled and with a half-drained party. I beat Shadow Yukiko with only Chie (edit: and the protaganist, duh) left standing, on 1HP each.
Isn't that awesome? Isn't that how the game really should have been until the end?
I recall there was an interview with the producers and they were disappointed that most people would try to rush through the dungeons.
Well, don't make it a choice between that and not getting all the S.Links, then. Jerks. I didn't rush the P3 dungeons nearly as much.
This is funny because in Persona 3 to max all the S.Links you have, at most, one free day.
In Persona 4, to max all of the S.Links you have an entire month.
Except in Persona 3 considerably less happens at night. Even if you're maxing all the social links on your first playthrough you end up with considerably more free time over the course of the game (although admittedly you have very little free time at night at the beginning because you'll be busy maxing Courage out up until the second or third week of June). If you try for dungeon crawling in Persona 3 you only lose half of a day and it is the considerably less important half.
If you go dungeon crawling in Persona 4 you lose an entire day and you need to rush through dungeons to get your courage/understanding/expression high enough to get a couple of answers that give you points in some social links high enough otherwise you're going to be going crazy trying to fit in a couple of the social links before their cutoff time.
Just realized I missed maxing Dojima's SL (It's at 9) and a lot of others are either really low or not started. This is my first Persona game though.
I'm currently in that Adachi dungeon and at that floor where you can't get hit by enemies or he ejects you out of the dungeon. It's kind of making me mad, since the enemies seem to be faster than me.
Also, I just got up to Lvl. 75 and I can try and fuse Yoshitsune. Should I spend an hour or so trying to get him?
Just realized I missed maxing Dojima's SL (It's at 9) and a lot of others are either really low or not started. This is my first Persona game though.
I'm currently in that Adachi dungeon and at that floor where you can't get hit by enemies or he ejects you out of the dungeon. It's kind of making me mad, since the enemies seem to be faster than me.
Also, I just got up to Lvl. 75 and I can try and fuse Yoshitsune. Should I spend an hour or so trying to get him?
Well, I saw that he had Heat Riser, so I figured he'd be pretty awesome.
I don't have the Tower SL though...
don't bother
I'm not sure you can even pick up Hassou Tobi (which is the main reason to make one at all) without a significant amount of leveling on a maxed link and social link exp.+ fusion day
with a straight up maxed link you have to level three more times to pick it up
not to mention how much work it'll take just to gather the components
Edit: Heat Riser is kind of mediocre, too, as buffing one character doesn't offer a whole lot over group buffs.
You pretty much just want Power Charge, Hassou Tobi, and whatever Nulls you can get.
If you're going to use Yoshi and his game-breaking skill, you might as well break the game completely by doing the Infinite XP trick to get yourself to 99 and get Yoshi all his skills. It's cheap, but I couldn't see why I should spend hours grinding just to complete my compendium.
But the point is that you can achieve the same amount of damage with Chie by buffing the entire party's Attack while also boosting everyone else's damage as well. Heat Riser only makes sense if you're prioritizing one character for some special reason, and that usually won't be the case.
So I really want to jump into this series since I hear so much about it, but...
To be honest, I don't want to wade through the whole series. I hear that P3 and P4 are probably the best...? Which one do you guys think is a better game? Thanks for the help in advance, and I'm sorry if I've offended you for not wanting to play any of the other iterations.
Edit: To clarify, I'll be playing on my PS3 (80GB BC), so if there are any backwards compatibility issues with a certain one of these, that'd probably be important.
ElKaboom on
0
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
Nocturne's the best in the series, and I hear it looks especially good when upscaled on a PS3.
Also if you play P4 on a PS3 I think you don't ever see area location names. It's nothing major, but that's what I've heard. You're also going to have a really hard time catching a fish for a side-quest if you don't have rumble.
Personally though I'd say go with Nocturne or the two DDS games. They're really the best.
I think Persona 3 and 4 are a lot better than anything else in the series, and more importantly I think they have a lot more broad appeal, so they're always what I recommend as an introduction to the series.
So I always recommend Persona 4 as the first, with room to expand into everything else depending on what particular aspects you like most and how much you like them.
Posts
Puuuursonaa!
Oh you'll absolutely need to grind to 99, you probably will anyway getting the required items to fight Seth, but anyone who says he's as hard as the Demifiend is a fool. I beat him on like my 4th try.
Did I mention Drunken Laura Bailey voice?
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Specifics? Does he have any uber kill everything attacks? I know nothing about what to expect.
People said you need to be L99 for the Demi-Fiend, and that's just not true.
The thing is you'll probably be 99 anyway because to fight him you have to get past Seth, and Seth requires you to beat the other two bosses in the last dungeon and they require the items to open the door. I was probably level 150 by the time I found them if the game would've let me be that level.
Thanks.
How to get the secret character
As for knowing which route you're on...without spoilers, I will say it is very easy to tell if you're on the SEBEC route or the Snow Queen route. You need to do a lot to get the Snow Queen route and while it is technically possible to get it by just exploring everywhere, it's also very unlikely.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585503ab/?bt=0&sb=1&mt=32&gu=66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585503ab&p=1&of=0
And for those young whippersnappers who have only played the PS2 games and need help getting the joke:
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Yes, it does.
You don't really need to level that much though, anything above 80 or so and the final boss just becomes a cakewalk. Or you could do like I did and have a level 99 Orpheus Telos with all stats maxed and the added magic resistance special weapon equipped.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Unless you're level 1 and abusing the hell out of death spells. :P
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Watch everything in the game die in one turn and the last two forms (the only difficult ones) of the final boss die in one turn each.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
And you all were right. Black Frost > Void Quest. It was a cakewalk.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Yesterday I finally worked up the will to slog through the final dungeons and for the second time witnessed an awesome game end with a whimper, not a bang.
It's tragic, really. On the day that I got the game, I wiped my previous save and played all the way through to the end of Kanji's dungeon in one marathon session. I wanted to beat every dungeon in one day apiece, which is not an achievement in the slightest from Rise's dungeon onwards, but in the first two dungeons this enables some really compelling gameplay. SP is truly precious, as it should be, a wider array of skills are used since SP-burning everything isn't a viable option and a lot of fights are best avoided. Also, boss fights are done underlevelled and with a half-drained party. I beat Shadow Yukiko with only Chie (edit: and the protaganist, duh) left standing, on 1HP each.
Isn't that awesome? Isn't that how the game really should have been until the end?
Unfortunately, after Kanji's dungeon the gameplay rapidly spirals down the shitter. Most random encounters quickly become beatable with one AoE from Yosuke and maybe a followup from whoever moves next. SP becomes practically meaningless. All your characters are reduced to having anything between one to three skills; typically one move only for normal encounters and two or three skills they repeat in a cycle for boss fights. Boss fights rapidly degenerate into using the same strategy, because of a killer flaw in the scaling of healing skills: when your party can heal to full every turn, if the boss cannot wipe out your party in a single turn you can not lose. To be fair, this is a problem common to every single JRPG I've ever played, but it's sad to see such a good game fall to such shitty skill design.
And, on top of this, when you enter the Velvet Room a couple of times per dungeon, the main character becomes an all-conquering, game-ruining super faggot. I was torn between not having any customisation options at all, or customising the main character just a little and inevitably being overpowered as fuck. No inbetween.
On top of this the story gets a lot less compelling after Teddie Ex Machina. Ugh. Because of all this, despite beating a quarter of the game in one day it took me three months to slog through to the end.
This isn't going to be a totally negative post, though. Persona 4 is still my favouritest RPG ever, ever, ever.
You know what I did when I took down the dull-as-all-fuck final boss and let the game play itself out twenty hours too late? I deleted my completed save file, started over from scratch, and beat Yukiko's dungeon in a single sitting again.
Yeah, it was still great fun.
Though the boss of Heaven did manage to surprise and destroy me with quad converge the first time it dropped.
Oh well. Here's hoping Strange Journey is harder.
I recall there was an interview with the producers and they were disappointed that most people would try to rush through the dungeons.
Well, don't make it a choice between that and not getting all the S.Links, then. Jerks. I didn't rush the P3 dungeons nearly as much.
In Persona 4, to max all of the S.Links you have an entire month.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Except in Persona 3 considerably less happens at night. Even if you're maxing all the social links on your first playthrough you end up with considerably more free time over the course of the game (although admittedly you have very little free time at night at the beginning because you'll be busy maxing Courage out up until the second or third week of June). If you try for dungeon crawling in Persona 3 you only lose half of a day and it is the considerably less important half.
If you go dungeon crawling in Persona 4 you lose an entire day and you need to rush through dungeons to get your courage/understanding/expression high enough to get a couple of answers that give you points in some social links high enough otherwise you're going to be going crazy trying to fit in a couple of the social links before their cutoff time.
I'm currently in that Adachi dungeon and at that floor where you can't get hit by enemies or he ejects you out of the dungeon. It's kind of making me mad, since the enemies seem to be faster than me.
Also, I just got up to Lvl. 75 and I can try and fuse Yoshitsune. Should I spend an hour or so trying to get him?
He's a pretty major gamebreaker, so yes.
I don't have the Tower SL though...
I'm not sure you can even pick up Hassou Tobi (which is the main reason to make one at all) without a significant amount of leveling on a maxed link and social link exp.+ fusion day
with a straight up maxed link you have to level three more times to pick it up
not to mention how much work it'll take just to gather the components
Edit: Heat Riser is kind of mediocre, too, as buffing one character doesn't offer a whole lot over group buffs.
You pretty much just want Power Charge, Hassou Tobi, and whatever Nulls you can get.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Heat Riser + Debilitate, as seen on Trumpeter, is a nasty combo and makes Chie break the game open.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Especially since a Tri-Auto-Makaja Norn is so easy to make.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
To be honest, I don't want to wade through the whole series. I hear that P3 and P4 are probably the best...? Which one do you guys think is a better game? Thanks for the help in advance, and I'm sorry if I've offended you for not wanting to play any of the other iterations.
Edit: To clarify, I'll be playing on my PS3 (80GB BC), so if there are any backwards compatibility issues with a certain one of these, that'd probably be important.
Personally though I'd say go with Nocturne or the two DDS games. They're really the best.
So I always recommend Persona 4 as the first, with room to expand into everything else depending on what particular aspects you like most and how much you like them.