Personaaaa

[Himu]

Damien watch this

[youtube=560,345]SzCwCsbN1Ks[/youtube]

[Damian79]

As i said i like loot and customisation.  Hence why i like FFV and DQ games.  And Titans quest sucks ass, dunno why exactly though.  I find it tedious and boring.  But i am waiting on Diablo 3.

As for reviews, i hate reading reviews and they generally skip out in the quesation  want answered in the shorter reviews.

[Bebpo]

Bebpo i play RPG's for customisation and phat loot these days, does this game have that?  Please explain.

P3 doesn't really have much loot besides some weapons/armor.  The customization is in which persona you take with you and use in battle.

Game is good because the battle system is fast and fun with good challenge on the bosses.  The art/music are great and the story/characters are good.

[Himu]

FF5 and DQ have story. DQ7 is over 100000 hours because of the story.

[Himu]

Game is good because the battle system is fast and fun with good challenge on the bosses.  The art/music are great and the story/characters are good.

And because the formula is addicting.

[Damian79]

Damien watch this

[youtube=560,345]SzCwCsbN1Ks[/youtube]

Hmm.  Judging by that i am really not interested.  I got sick of that style of gameplay(the school time thingy) in the Mana Khemia games.  Thanks guys much appreciated.

[Damian79]

FF5 and DQ have story. DQ7 is over 100000 hours because of the story.

They have kinda crappy stories though.  Just workable stuff.

[Himu]

I actually think DQ games, particularly 4 and 5, have extremely experimental and interesting storytelling that still haven't caught on 20 years later.

School portions in P3 are a huge portion of the game, so are story and characters. Persona games were always the more story-based SMT side game anyways.

It's impossible to get anything out of P3/P4 without at least liking the story sections, because the story sections impact the gameplay. For example, you have to know the character's personality so you pick the right dialogue choices to rank up your slink with them so you can create more powerful Persona. Gameplay and story in P3/P4 are like *that*

So I knew the game wasn't for you when you admitted to having skipped through SJ's intro.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, uh, I wouldn't recommend P3/P4 for anyone who doesn't like a lot of story in their rpgs.  The school stuff is half the game and that's alllllll text.

[Himu]

P3 has a lot of story, but it also has a lot of gameplay.

[Joe Molotov]

P3 has a lot of story, but it also has a lot of gameplay.

If want to though, you can play on Easy mode, and it's like 80% Story/S-Links and 20% Gameplay because you can blow through a section of Tartarus in one or two nights without any grinding, and then focus on just the high school shenanigans the rest of the time.

[Himu]

Yeah but who wants to do that? Not me.

[Smooth Groove]

Smooth, I know what you mean...just hang in there and you'll FINALLY get to the dungeon.

There seems to be so much stuff you can once the game opens up.  Do I want to get a part-time job?  Will doing that affect my being able to enter the dungeon on that day?

I'll try to be more patient with it since you and Bebpo both vouch for it although who knows if Bebpo would change his mind in a couple of days.  LOL

It was just a little disappointing because I was so hyped up for it and the slow-ass pace totally killed my buzz. 

[Himu]

P3 takes about an hour to get going.

[bork]

Smooth, I know what you mean...just hang in there and you'll FINALLY get to the dungeon.

There seems to be so much stuff you can once the game opens up.  Do I want to get a part-time job?  Will doing that affect my being able to enter the dungeon on that day?

I'll try to be more patient with it since you and Bebpo both vouch for it although who knows if Bebpo would change his mind in a couple of days.  LOL

It was just a little disappointing because I was so hyped up for it and the slow-ass pace totally killed my buzz. 

If you find you don't care for the dungeon-crawling segments, then it's time to dump the game.  But it shouldn't take you long to get to the first one.  It's fucking annoying up until that point though, so I know what you mean.  I actually kinda like the story, characters, and especially the music enough that the non-dungeon segments aren't bothering me, but I don't know if I'd want to play the game if I didn't care for that stuff.

I watched the video Himuro linked, and it really does look like a lot of little details are missing in the PSP port from the decision to cut out the real-time exploration/3D character models during the school parts, but not being able to control the entire party like you can in the PSP version (make sure you change this in the battle settings to allow for it) would probably drive me fucking crazy. 

Does Persona 4 let you control everyone?

[Smooth Groove]

Oh, I don't hate the story.  It's just that there's too damn much of it at the beginning and the player is involved passively almost the whole time. 

Storytelling is one thing that I think JRPGS generally do better than their western counterparts but I still need to play the damn game!  It's worse when the story is not terrible because then I feel bad about skipping over all the cut-scenes. 

[iconoclast]

Does Persona 4 let you control everyone?

Yes. P3P plays almost exactly like P4 as far as I can tell.

I never really had a problem with the AI in P3 either. They'd almost always do what you wanted if you change their AI setting (heal/support, attack, etc)... Except for one character who's obsessed with Marin Karin.

[brob]

played about ninety minutes. A little disappointed that the in-game cut-scenes are all done radio-play style, but I didn't expect the polygonal model to look so assy either, so I guess it's understandable.

are my comrades set to manual by default? I didn't find the option for it when I was in the dungeon, but that was a tutorial run so I guess some stuff could be sectioned off.

[bork]

No, you have to change the character control setting to manual.  Default is auto.

That's good to know about P3P taking a cue from P4.  I will definitely pick up P4 when I am done with this game...

...although the way I play RPGs, that probably won't be for a long, long time.  Maybe after P5 is out.   

[brob]

Five or so hours in and it's very fun. Even with the in-game cut-scenes being radio plays I still would have liked to navigate the environments with my character rather than a cursor. 

[Ichirou]

Playing as the female character since I already played as a dude on PS2.

Awesome port, having a blast.

[Ichirou]

I'm in the middle of summer vacation now in the game.  The game ends at the end of January, right?  Man, I hope I'm able to max out all my s-links this time around.  Last time I wasn't able to do all of them.

[Ichirou]

The latest firmware has a bug that, whenever you put the game in sleep mode and start it up again, it can no longer read the data install.

You can just turn it back on in the configuration menu in-game so the PSP will start reading from the data install again, though.  I wonder if this problem is just with Persona 3 Portable or if the latest firmware update fucked up data install for all games...I have like four or five games installed on my memory stick.

[Rman]

The latest firmware has a bug that, whenever you put the game in sleep mode and start it up again, it can no longer read the data install.

You can just turn it back on in the configuration menu in-game so the PSP will start reading from the data install again, though.  I wonder if this problem is just with Persona 3 Portable or if the latest firmware update fucked up data install for all games...I have like four or five games installed on my memory stick.

Prole said this doesn't happen with the PSN version.

[ch1nchilla]

I have such a bahner for this game but I don't like the lack of real-time exploration at school. That said, I now have yet ANOTHER huge time rapist of a game on my hands in addition to Monster Hunter Frontier, Red Dead Redemption, FFXIII, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Yakuza 2. SMH I need to stop buying games. :\

I'm finna max out everything and slay multiple bitchez similar to Persona 4. And that nurse or whatever that you can supposedly bang.

[Ichirou]

You don't really bang the nurse in Persona 4.  I think she just cockteases you mostly.

[ch1nchilla]

You don't really bang the nurse in Persona 4.  I think she just cockteases you mostly.

That's irritating at best. Can I take home the P3 equivalent of Kenji? 

[brob]

beat the game. good fun. NG+ playing as the gay looking bro now and the optional dungeon is easily the best part of the game yet. My stats and pokedex carry over from the last playthrough so I get to use all my fancy persona and there are still new ones to pick up that I didn't see in my last game. These enemies are also much harder so you have to exploit the system better. Feels good man.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

beat the game. good fun. NG+ playing as the gay looking bro now and the optional dungeon is easily the best part of the game yet. My stats and pokedex carry over from the last playthrough so I get to use all my fancy persona and there are still new ones to pick up that I didn't see in my last game. These enemies are also much harder so you have to exploit the system better. Feels good man.

I beat it last night too, woo! 72.5 hours 

What optional dungeon are you talking about? I thought there were just the boss battles with Elizabeth

[Bebpo]

I beat it last night too, woo! 72.5 hours 

What optional dungeon are you talking about? I thought there were just the boss battles with Elizabeth

wtf, I thought the portable version was supposed to be like 30 hours!

[brob]

there is one door on the left of the tartarus staircase, that's the boss rush deal Elizabeth opens up. but then there is another door to the right of the stairs that's called Monad (supposedly 99 levels high dungeon). I killed the grim reaper in my first play-through so maybe that was a condition for opening it? I didn't get shit for killing him then anyway.

First floor in monad got yukari and junpei from level 1 up to 50, so it's all kinds of serious end-game biz.

fake-edit: I think I clocked at  a little over 60~ hours. Then again, I did take it kinda chill on several floors (as the fighting really is where I wanted to spend most of my time).

[Himu]

persona 3 rpg of forever

[Howard Alan Treesong]

there is one door on the left of the tartarus staircase, that's the boss rush deal Elizabeth opens up. but then there is another door to the right of the stairs that's called Monad (supposedly 99 levels high dungeon). I killed the grim reaper in my first play-through so maybe that was a condition for opening it? I didn't get shit for killing him then anyway.

First floor in monad got yukari and junpei from level 1 up to 50, so it's all kinds of serious end-game biz.

fake-edit: I think I clocked at  a little over 60~ hours. Then again, I did take it kinda chill on several floors (as the fighting really is where I wanted to spend most of my time).

My clock was so high because I wanted to break the game ... I made a Cybele with no weaknesses (Str Fire, Str Lightning, Nul Dark) and Mediarahan, Samarecarm, Vorpal Blade, Megidola, and Spell Master. Then I used cards to pump all her stats up to 99 (except Agility, which got stuck around 75 before I ran out of gems). I also farmed four Tomes of the Void from Abbadon so my entire party was status resistant. The last boss was a hilarious joke and the punchline was ITS FACE.

Brobzoid, Monad is accessible as soon as you enter Tartarus from a NG+? You can switch genders on NG+ so I'm tempted to replay Himusona.

[brob]

did something similar with my Sigfried. :p

But ya, both the additional doors (boss rush and monad) were there from the word go. Kinda fucked me over too, because I went in there before the pokedex opened up so I didn't have shit to work with.