I restarted 3 times. I also dropped to Normal difficulty to give me more free time. Too much grinding needed on Hard. I think Hard should be kept for NG+ when you no longer have other stats to worry about. I might even play Merciless.

I'm just enjoying the story and seeing as much as I can hassle free for now.

I started on hard and moved up to merciless, it was one of the causes of my restarts. I'm not honestly sure merciless is harder though, so I kinda regret it. The first palace probably is, but after that you mostly one shot everything. The fact that Joker can get 1-shotted in return on any single sloppy non-ambush trash pack does add something though, a certain frisson of tension.

I don't think you really need to do any grinding on hard (outside of maybe confusing the odd mementos boss for 20 minutes). Merciless is kinda shit from that front, you're gated at two points by certain confidants not having any persona below a fairly high level, but being pretty much mandatory to advance if you don't want to waste enormous amounts of the schedule (Wheel of Fortune requiring level 26 being the worst offender), but the XP gain reduction means that in natural gameplay you're easily 4 levels short of the mark.

It's actually pretty funny looking up gameplay or boss vids for merciless though, I've yet to see a single one that hasn't blatantly cleared the game on normal and then switched up for the bosses. Nobody is posting vids of Kamoshida at level 8 and Madarame at level 13 (etc.) which is where you are if you just kill everything you meet a single time on merciless. The extra HP cushion from levels dramatically changes the encounters. Kamoshida at level 12 is a piece of piss whatever difficulty you play on. At level 8 a single bad move is pretty much game over.

I lost you after the first paragraph.

I had a feeling you'd go all out on this one, and wondered if it was why we haven't seen you. Do you make spreadsheets and everything for these games?

Honestly I rarely have a clue what I'm doing in these games when it comes to stats. I rely a lot on skill, luck, and intuition. A good build is often something of a fluke. I'm no good at maximising my potential.

Spreadsheet, moi?



Ok. Yes. Yes, I have.

My point is that I wouldn't recommend merciless, it's not significantly more challenging than hard. Crits/weaknesses/technicals do vastly more damage, but XP and cash (cash only being from regular kills though, you can still earn loads once you're past the very early stages) are cut badly. This results in most fights being trivial if you get the ambush and frequently literally impossible when you don't (e.g. first enemy sleeps Joker, Joker then gets your first move and skips it, random enemy then lands any attack which scores a 900 damage technical).

Judging from the vids I've seen on youtube nobody is actually playing a full merciless run, they're playing on normal then showcasing how you can do certain bosses with the difficulty switched up for a certain battle, which is meaningless as the real handicap is the XP reduction. Either that or they're doing ridiculous amounts of tedious grinding, which defeats the point too.

That's interesting. Usually a harder difficulty means more XP and levelling quickly. The hardness comes from being hit harder or having reduced defences or both.

Thommo wrote:

Animavore wrote:How's everyone getting along with Persona 5?

Played far, far too much of it. I suffered a bit from restartitis in terms of realising just how much better I could use my time, finally got over that and am now in September, having resigned myself to a number of wasted days.

Generally I love the game, the aesthetic, the music, the pacing, all very good. It's pretty interesting having read about the series in a number of places over recent years to see what it's all about. The very quintessence of the JRPG from the nonsensensical characterisations and stereotypes down to the tips of its gameplay. Wonderful and bizarre in equal measure.

In game the summer off-period and the mementos music are a bit of a let down, but there's no denying this is a classic.

Hoping to waste pretty much all free time in July and August sitting in the AC and playing it, seriously can't wait. First playthrough's for the story, second is for graphing!

I think you're the only one here who isn't a Persona virgin, SAM. I can't compare it to earlier ones, but veterans on the PlayStation forum love it.

It sold 5 times more in its debut month than P4 in the US, making it by far the franchise's biggest seller.

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Thommo wrote:

Animavore wrote:How's everyone getting along with Persona 5?

Played far, far too much of it. I suffered a bit from restartitis in terms of realising just how much better I could use my time, finally got over that and am now in September, having resigned myself to a number of wasted days.

Generally I love the game, the aesthetic, the music, the pacing, all very good. It's pretty interesting having read about the series in a number of places over recent years to see what it's all about. The very quintessence of the JRPG from the nonsensensical characterisations and stereotypes down to the tips of its gameplay. Wonderful and bizarre in equal measure.

In game the summer off-period and the mementos music are a bit of a let down, but there's no denying this is a classic.

Hoping to waste pretty much all free time in July and August sitting in the AC and playing it, seriously can't wait. First playthrough's for the story, second is for graphing!

Sounds good, I wish I'd played it this way. Normal or hard without restarting or optimizing for a run, then going full on nerd second time through.

That said, I've had a shitload of hours of enjoyment out of it as it is, so I can't really complain.

By the way, running google translate on the Japanese wiki (which I only found out was a thing last week) or using the Chrome browser extension that does the same is vastly, vastly better than using any info in English. Gamefaqs is full of duff info and so are a lot of the top google hits.

Even basic info like ♪ = 2 points; ♪♪ = 3 points; ♪♪♪ = 5 points seems to have completely bypassed the English language speaking community. To be fair it's pretty opaque in terms of the user interface, but people are writing ten thousand word guides based on the number of notes you need when that's not how the game works at all.

Animavore wrote:I think you're the only one here who isn't a Persona virgin, SAM. I can't compare it to earlier ones, but veterans on the PlayStation forum love it.

It sold 5 times more in its debut month than P4 in the US, making it by far the franchise's biggest seller.

I've honestly no doubt it's better than 3 or 4. I'm pretty sure Persona has long been the best seller of the SMT franchise, seems like they really broke out with this one. Probably for the best, for as much as I enjoyed P3 and how stylish it was, it was a deeply flawed game. The gameplay of P5 seems much more engaging like other SMT titles, it's really just a question of whether they got the characters and themes right, P4's biggest failure IMHO.

Thommo wrote:
By the way, running google translate on the Japanese wiki (which I only found out was a thing last week) or using the Chrome browser extension that does the same is vastly, vastly better than using any info in English. Gamefaqs is full of duff info and so are a lot of the top google hits.

Even basic info like ♪ = 2 points; ♪♪ = 3 points; ♪♪♪ = 5 points seems to have completely bypassed the English language speaking community. To be fair it's pretty opaque in terms of the user interface, but people are writing ten thousand word guides based on the number of notes you need when that's not how the game works at all.

Thanks for the pointer! Makes sense since the Japanese have had way longer to play this. Should be some decent guides around by the time I'm ready to play.

Persona 5 = amazing. Between that, WoW, and work I havent had much free time.

Animavore wrote:I restarted 3 times. I also dropped to Normal difficulty to give me more free time. Too much grinding needed on Hard. I think Hard should be kept for NG+ when you no longer have other stats to worry about. I might even play Merciless.

I'm just enjoying the story and seeing as much as I can hassle free for now.

Funny that.

Started playing Nier:Automata, again. Found a stable updated torrent.

I saw there was a difficulty setting beyond "Hard" where it said I'd die from one hit. What kind of masochistic fuck would choose to play that. Something like that has to be exclusively for some Japanese fucks.

And speaking of killing someone with one hit, can I kill 9S at some point, or have someone ELSE as follow me. I'm barely into the desert area and I wanna drown him in it. *GASP* That's it! No one will find there!

Just for the hell of it, here are my top 3 tips I learned while playing Persona 5 (don't worry - spoiler free)

1) Turn off persona memory in the settings screen.
2) Some conversations do not have the skip option. Hold down triangle and you get the same effect.
3) Some places feature numerous jump/climb actions, you can quickly perform them in succession by holding down the dash/R2 button without having to repeatedly push X.

Yo, Dead Cells though...

Thommo wrote:1) Turn off persona memory in the settings screen.

Why?

Thommo wrote:2) Some conversations do not have the skip option. Hold down triangle and you get the same effect.

Nice one! Also just tried it on the after battle screen and it works there too.

I have personally lost two family members to Persona 5. Something must be done to stop this horrible disease.

Animavore wrote:

Thommo wrote:1) Turn off persona memory in the settings screen.

Why?

It means that you start battle with the same persona each time without having to go to the menu between every fight. This is extremely good if you have a fast/buffing/no weakness/regen persona or any subset of those that you want to start every fight with to make sure you get the first action on Joker and get the max regen or auto buffing. Then you can swap to whatever weakness hitting persona you like during the fight.

You can change your battle start persona in the menu manually at any time, but I find you have to do this far, far less with the option off than on.

Animavore wrote:

Thommo wrote:2) Some conversations do not have the skip option. Hold down triangle and you get the same effect.

Nice one! Also just tried it on the after battle screen and it works there too.

Fallible wrote:I have personally lost two family members to Persona 5. Something must be done to stop this horrible disease.

Play it as well so you don't notice any more?

Thommo wrote:

Animavore wrote:

Thommo wrote:1) Turn off persona memory in the settings screen.

Why?

It means that you start battle with the same persona each time without having to go to the menu between every fight. This is extremely good if you have a fast/buffing/no weakness/regen persona or any subset of those that you want to start every fight with to make sure you get the first action on Joker and get the max regen or auto buffing. Then you can swap to whatever weakness hitting persona you like during the fight.

:

Wut?

I haven't got a handle on this game at all. I'm just slapping Personas together like Play Doh.

Not sure if that's a rhetorical question, so sorry if this is redundant, but simple example:-

You're in a location where there are a bunch of enemies that are weak against ice and use fire attacks and a bunch of other enemies that are weak against fire and use ice attacks. You don't want to be running around with a fire or ice weakness persona, because if you fail to get an ambush you can get in real trouble immediately since the enemy can smash you with a weakness + 1 more hit (which is instant death on merciless), so you need to switch persona after every fight if you are finishing fights with some persona which attacks with fire and is weak to ice or attacks with ice and is weak to fire and leave the option on. By turning the option to "off" you can just set some other persona that is neutral or strong against those elements (and preferably has high agility so you go first more often) and you don't need to go to the menu between fights.

You can still smash whatever you want together, but it just means less dicking about in menus.