The only good persona game is 1 and not because it's some awesome rpg but because it's the only one in the series that's a fricking rpg >persona 2 games are story games with shit gameplay >persona 3-5 are glorified visual novels
Visuals: Good
Dialogue: Awful
Gameplay: Borderline bad
Story: Mess
Characters: Mixed bag
World design: below average
RPG mechanics: passable
Music: Good
Divinity Original Sin 2 and Xcom2 shit on it, therefore its bad. >where the frick did that come
the same place that said Skyrim and Witcher combat is bad because its not Dark Souls
It's laughably easy and Royal makes it even worse. Nothing about it ever feels challenging because of how Baton Pass works. Royal adds a bunch of passive abilities that make you even more powerful even earlier. People got filtered by Okumura not because he was hard, but because he had slightly more going on mechanically than anything else the game had to offer up to that point. It's also lacking in texture on the front of diversity in skills and abilities. There's almost never any reason to use anything but the strongest damage-dealing moves you can slap on something with the relevant boosts/amps because status effects and insta-kill moves are a joke. Insta-kills are only useful for trash mobs, but late-game ones tend to come in mixed groups with at least one target who is immune to them, so it's just easier to have different hard-hitting damage types available to accomplish the same thing. PSY attacks work with mental ailments, but you're better off just hitting things harder. The designated PSY party member, Haru, is a better user of gun skills. She only really wants a PSY move or two for targeting weaknesses so that she can then trigger Baton Pass or set up an AOA. Makoto's Nuclear skills are decent, but you rarely want to bother building around their secondary effect and Makoto herself is better as a support-skill caster who can also hit for decent damage. Compare this to games like Etrian Odyssey where status effects are not only useful but actually really good and applicable in many places.
Considering the main complaint about P2 is that its combat is so easy that you can steamroll through it without having to hardly think, this is a valid criticism of P5 as well.
I played 4g before 5r, I really enjoyed 4 and went into 5 expecting it to be the weakest entry but I ended up liking it more than 4, the writing was pretty much at the same level but 5 just had more style and really good music. 4 had a really good atmosphere, and the story was consistently good throughout while persona 5 started slow but got better as it went on, and i liked the whole murder mystery and light horror tone of the earlier persona games, but 5 gave me more of a lasting impression especially around the end. Also mostly preferred the cast of characters in 5
It improves on basically every aspect the last 2 games set, so I would have to say yes even though it’s not my favorite. Persona is really on the few video game series each game is better than the last
I really never connected with p5. thematically it meant nothing to me. The guy being in trouble for keeping some woman from being raped is just out of this world corny. I wish he'd actually done something wrong and felt regret or if the theme is injustice at least make it less flattering
3 and 4 both felt more cozy despite 3 being very fantastical. But the super slick ui and snappy combat was good enough to get me to finish it
Kamoshida being a more personal enemy was both believable and played well to the game's themes. Almost everything afterward was too outlandish a jump in scale, and it got successively worse with each one. >abusive former star athlete gym teacher and sports coach uses his position to assault students and bully his way through life while directly affecting the lives of the main cast >scummy washed-up art dealer with a workshop full of literal starving artists that he squeezes for talent by stealing their works, selling them as his own, and pocketing the cash so that he can live a comfortable life >yakuza with a grip on the local nightlife is extorting people and selling them into slavery; one of your to-be party members attempts to tackle the problem with nothing but a cellphone recorder and her exceptionally dull wit >genius hacker child shut-in whose mother was killed in an accident under shady circumstances; she becomes the deus ex machina for several developments afterward >fast food corporation CEO who works his employees to extreme excess who is in the process of marrying his daughter off to another hoity-toity frick for business reasons; later turns out that he wasn't actually as bad as he was made out to be but it doesn't matter because he dies and his daughter — who became a party member — has barely anything to say about this because she was introduced too late for her to get much focus before you move on to >power-hungry prosecutor who holds the fate of the MC in her hands and is the only one that can prevent your brain from being splattered on a table in a backroom execution (her interrogation of the MC is also the framing device for most of the story) >prime minister candidate who attempted to rape a woman, the prevention of which is what got the MC in trouble in the first place; he's corrupt and has a psychic assassin running around killing off people he doesn't like
It just balloons so out of proportion with each arc that it's maddening.
I gotta ask, how can people survive P4 and P5 without cringing to death? The writing is so shit (mainly the dialogues), it's like a satire of all the high school anime tropes except it's not a satire and they expect you to not bleed from your eyes / ears.
>The main strength of the Persona games is not the main narrative, but everything surrounding it.
True, but staying at this studio and nu personas, P3 still pulled it off so shit excuse
>True, but staying at this studio and nu personas, P3 still pulled it off so shit excuse
P3 has weak narrative. weak story, weak characters and weak script.
Some people get confused and think it's "good" because of the simple theme of death and how people deal with it, along with having several characters die.
The main story of P3 is literally just "defeat these set number of shadows and then the big bad nyx". Shit like Strega is an extremely awkward plot device at best.
P3R improved upon some of this, but P3 still has by far the worst story, but arguably the most effective theme.
>the most effective theme
I disagree, P3 abandons its own themes by having characters that come back from the dead. P4 and P5 don’t have anything like that outside of bad endings
The theme of P3 is about death and tackling it multiple ways.
Dying, dealing with the death of others, finding meaning in death, accepting death, what happens after someone has died, can something "dead" be alive, etc.
Now you could ask people on this board what the main theme of P4 and P5 is and most of them wouldn't be able to tell you, despite not exactly being subtle.
So P3's main theme is much easier to grasp and relate to.
1 month ago
Anonymous
When you said “most effective” I thought you meant it explored its theme the best. But it seems like you think it just has the easiest one to explain, which I suppose is true. Although I believe that has more do with the subject matter rather than P3’s writing itself. Death is very simple to grasp and P3 doesn’t do anything interesting, but concepts like truth and freedom are subjective. Even more so in P4 and P5 where the themes in those games are more tied to the culture there. Just because some schmuck here didn’t it ( or more than likely didn’t play it) doesn’t mean mean P3 did anything better than the other 2
1 month ago
Anonymous
I'm saying people on this board praise P3 for the story while shitting on the other game, because they can grasp and relate to the main theme of P3 more easily. The story of P3 is very basic, borderling on formulaic with the main antagonists Strega mostly being a plot device (like notjesus using his cutscene gun only to kill characters when it's convenient for the narrative).
1 month ago
Anonymous
>P3 doesn’t do anything interesting
No piece of Japanese media has ever done anything interesting with a theme. Every story they tell is on the intellectual and emotional level of a comic book or Saturday morning cartoon. Fundamentally, their culture cannot (or chooses not to) engage with the imagination on a mature level.
So there's no point in complaining about this stuff. Japan has its own playbook that it will never deviate from. Any time you enter a Japanese narrative you have to expect to feel to some degree that 'two bombs weren't enough'.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>No piece of Japanese media has ever done anything interesting with a theme
Stop playing square enix and fatlus games.
>P3 abandons its own themes by having characters that come back from the dead
yeah that's so stupid, its also why I never bothered with the answer and never will.
howerever iirc it's not the case in the og ver. and in reload you can OPTIONALLY bring back one, who isn't even the same person anymore really. so that's one half less drop in the bucket throughout the whole game so as long as you stick to the base game it's alright.
When you said “most effective” I thought you meant it explored its theme the best. But it seems like you think it just has the easiest one to explain, which I suppose is true. Although I believe that has more do with the subject matter rather than P3’s writing itself. Death is very simple to grasp and P3 doesn’t do anything interesting, but concepts like truth and freedom are subjective. Even more so in P4 and P5 where the themes in those games are more tied to the culture there. Just because some schmuck here didn’t it ( or more than likely didn’t play it) doesn’t mean mean P3 did anything better than the other 2
I'm saying people on this board praise P3 for the story while shitting on the other game, because they can grasp and relate to the main theme of P3 more easily. The story of P3 is very basic, borderling on formulaic with the main antagonists Strega mostly being a plot device (like notjesus using his cutscene gun only to kill characters when it's convenient for the narrative).
imo p3 works best because it doesn't want to say too much and when it's serious time I can actually take it seriously. other two feel forced and cringe. 3 also works as an example for teenagers, while 4 really just gives them friends they dont have and 5 is the modern kid's powerfantasy.
p5 took an hour to get me hooked and Act 1 was fantastic. it all went down by Act 2 when not only the villains are irredeemable and cartoonishly evil, there were barely any stakes to begin with since anything they do will always result in a successful change of heart, short of sabotage by their enemies.
but to answer your question, P2EP is the best by a mile
I dunno but it's a great jrpg. I wrote these off for a long time, ever since PS2, but I started P5R because I finally downloaded a Switch emulator,to play Unicorn Overlord, but didn't feel like committing to starting it. P5 just seemed more comfy and casual.
Now I'm 40 hours in. And holy shit, the high school social simulation that I thought was lame is the best part. It's so addictive and rewarding, especially with the professional voice acting combined with strong characterization and tight themes.
In terms of presentation, it blows other jrpgs out of the water. I've enjoyed a few in the last couple years, but most of them just don't cut it. This game feels like something that's worth paying $80 for, which I can't say about the vast majority of games.
I quit playing because the game told me that I have to beat the gym teacher before selected date. So I went to the dungeon on the day before but the game pushed out some event that could not be foreseen (forgot what it was) and prevented me from going to the dungeon. So I had to replay some 1-2 hrs and I just quit instead. I may go back sometime.
The only good persona game is 1 and not because it's some awesome rpg but because it's the only one in the series that's a fricking rpg
>persona 2 games are story games with shit gameplay
>persona 3-5 are glorified visual novels
R3load is better
Not sure, I've only played 5 so far
Legendary game tbh
Visuals: Good
Dialogue: Awful
Gameplay: Borderline bad
Story: Mess
Characters: Mixed bag
World design: below average
RPG mechanics: passable
Music: Good
Aren't gameplay and rpg mechanics hand in hand?
Yes they are, but i separated them because of the genre's nature.
Combat alone is not bad, its actually average at best, but the rest of the gameplay systems are awful so that makes it borderline bad.
>Gameplay: Borderline bad
where the frick did that come from this literally the best implementation of turn based JRPGs.
Divinity Original Sin 2 and Xcom2 shit on it, therefore its bad.
>where the frick did that come
the same place that said Skyrim and Witcher combat is bad because its not Dark Souls
It's laughably easy and Royal makes it even worse. Nothing about it ever feels challenging because of how Baton Pass works. Royal adds a bunch of passive abilities that make you even more powerful even earlier. People got filtered by Okumura not because he was hard, but because he had slightly more going on mechanically than anything else the game had to offer up to that point. It's also lacking in texture on the front of diversity in skills and abilities. There's almost never any reason to use anything but the strongest damage-dealing moves you can slap on something with the relevant boosts/amps because status effects and insta-kill moves are a joke. Insta-kills are only useful for trash mobs, but late-game ones tend to come in mixed groups with at least one target who is immune to them, so it's just easier to have different hard-hitting damage types available to accomplish the same thing. PSY attacks work with mental ailments, but you're better off just hitting things harder. The designated PSY party member, Haru, is a better user of gun skills. She only really wants a PSY move or two for targeting weaknesses so that she can then trigger Baton Pass or set up an AOA. Makoto's Nuclear skills are decent, but you rarely want to bother building around their secondary effect and Makoto herself is better as a support-skill caster who can also hit for decent damage. Compare this to games like Etrian Odyssey where status effects are not only useful but actually really good and applicable in many places.
Considering the main complaint about P2 is that its combat is so easy that you can steamroll through it without having to hardly think, this is a valid criticism of P5 as well.
I played 4g before 5r, I really enjoyed 4 and went into 5 expecting it to be the weakest entry but I ended up liking it more than 4, the writing was pretty much at the same level but 5 just had more style and really good music. 4 had a really good atmosphere, and the story was consistently good throughout while persona 5 started slow but got better as it went on, and i liked the whole murder mystery and light horror tone of the earlier persona games, but 5 gave me more of a lasting impression especially around the end. Also mostly preferred the cast of characters in 5
Not even the best Persona 5 game
No.
It improves on basically every aspect the last 2 games set, so I would have to say yes even though it’s not my favorite. Persona is really on the few video game series each game is better than the last
No, but it's still fun.
I've only played 3, 4 and 5.
4 has the best cast but as a game 5 is superior.
>4 has the best cast
No.
i prefer 4 but i really liked 5
I really never connected with p5. thematically it meant nothing to me. The guy being in trouble for keeping some woman from being raped is just out of this world corny. I wish he'd actually done something wrong and felt regret or if the theme is injustice at least make it less flattering
3 and 4 both felt more cozy despite 3 being very fantastical. But the super slick ui and snappy combat was good enough to get me to finish it
4 = 3 >>> 5
not saying 5 is bad but it's the most fartsfartfart one between the three. like if you unironically like sony movie games, you'll enjoy 5.
Kamoshida being a more personal enemy was both believable and played well to the game's themes. Almost everything afterward was too outlandish a jump in scale, and it got successively worse with each one.
>abusive former star athlete gym teacher and sports coach uses his position to assault students and bully his way through life while directly affecting the lives of the main cast
>scummy washed-up art dealer with a workshop full of literal starving artists that he squeezes for talent by stealing their works, selling them as his own, and pocketing the cash so that he can live a comfortable life
>yakuza with a grip on the local nightlife is extorting people and selling them into slavery; one of your to-be party members attempts to tackle the problem with nothing but a cellphone recorder and her exceptionally dull wit
>genius hacker child shut-in whose mother was killed in an accident under shady circumstances; she becomes the deus ex machina for several developments afterward
>fast food corporation CEO who works his employees to extreme excess who is in the process of marrying his daughter off to another hoity-toity frick for business reasons; later turns out that he wasn't actually as bad as he was made out to be but it doesn't matter because he dies and his daughter — who became a party member — has barely anything to say about this because she was introduced too late for her to get much focus before you move on to
>power-hungry prosecutor who holds the fate of the MC in her hands and is the only one that can prevent your brain from being splattered on a table in a backroom execution (her interrogation of the MC is also the framing device for most of the story)
>prime minister candidate who attempted to rape a woman, the prevention of which is what got the MC in trouble in the first place; he's corrupt and has a psychic assassin running around killing off people he doesn't like
It just balloons so out of proportion with each arc that it's maddening.
No, in fact it's the worst persona game story wise
1 is the best one, it's a solid dungeon crawler, the snow queen quest dungeons are especially good
You get to frick your teacher who's also your maid, even a decade out of school that's peak.
>You get to frick your teacher
Persona 3 should have let you do this with Maya/Ms Toriumi
It doesnt let you do everything, but what it does let you do is pretty neat
>Is it really the best Persona game?
I don't know but after trying this garbage I'm never touching another persona game again
It has the best combat system. I liked 4's story better then 5.
it has the best soundtrack
P5R is, yes.
I gotta ask, how can people survive P4 and P5 without cringing to death? The writing is so shit (mainly the dialogues), it's like a satire of all the high school anime tropes except it's not a satire and they expect you to not bleed from your eyes / ears.
Most videogame writing is bad or subpar at best. Including most of the games this board praises like Baldur's Gate 3 or whatever.
The main strength of the Persona games is not the main narrative, but everything surrounding it.
>The main strength of the Persona games is not the main narrative, but everything surrounding it.
True, but staying at this studio and nu personas, P3 still pulled it off so shit excuse
>True, but staying at this studio and nu personas, P3 still pulled it off so shit excuse
P3 has weak narrative. weak story, weak characters and weak script.
Some people get confused and think it's "good" because of the simple theme of death and how people deal with it, along with having several characters die.
The main story of P3 is literally just "defeat these set number of shadows and then the big bad nyx". Shit like Strega is an extremely awkward plot device at best.
P3R improved upon some of this, but P3 still has by far the worst story, but arguably the most effective theme.
>the most effective theme
I disagree, P3 abandons its own themes by having characters that come back from the dead. P4 and P5 don’t have anything like that outside of bad endings
The theme of P3 is about death and tackling it multiple ways.
Dying, dealing with the death of others, finding meaning in death, accepting death, what happens after someone has died, can something "dead" be alive, etc.
Now you could ask people on this board what the main theme of P4 and P5 is and most of them wouldn't be able to tell you, despite not exactly being subtle.
So P3's main theme is much easier to grasp and relate to.
When you said “most effective” I thought you meant it explored its theme the best. But it seems like you think it just has the easiest one to explain, which I suppose is true. Although I believe that has more do with the subject matter rather than P3’s writing itself. Death is very simple to grasp and P3 doesn’t do anything interesting, but concepts like truth and freedom are subjective. Even more so in P4 and P5 where the themes in those games are more tied to the culture there. Just because some schmuck here didn’t it ( or more than likely didn’t play it) doesn’t mean mean P3 did anything better than the other 2
I'm saying people on this board praise P3 for the story while shitting on the other game, because they can grasp and relate to the main theme of P3 more easily. The story of P3 is very basic, borderling on formulaic with the main antagonists Strega mostly being a plot device (like notjesus using his cutscene gun only to kill characters when it's convenient for the narrative).
>P3 doesn’t do anything interesting
No piece of Japanese media has ever done anything interesting with a theme. Every story they tell is on the intellectual and emotional level of a comic book or Saturday morning cartoon. Fundamentally, their culture cannot (or chooses not to) engage with the imagination on a mature level.
So there's no point in complaining about this stuff. Japan has its own playbook that it will never deviate from. Any time you enter a Japanese narrative you have to expect to feel to some degree that 'two bombs weren't enough'.
>No piece of Japanese media has ever done anything interesting with a theme
Stop playing square enix and fatlus games.
What an adolescent mindset.
>P3 abandons its own themes by having characters that come back from the dead
yeah that's so stupid, its also why I never bothered with the answer and never will.
howerever iirc it's not the case in the og ver. and in reload you can OPTIONALLY bring back one, who isn't even the same person anymore really. so that's one half less drop in the bucket throughout the whole game so as long as you stick to the base game it's alright.
imo p3 works best because it doesn't want to say too much and when it's serious time I can actually take it seriously. other two feel forced and cringe. 3 also works as an example for teenagers, while 4 really just gives them friends they dont have and 5 is the modern kid's powerfantasy.
why did some autist bump all the SMT/Persona threads on the board?
p5 took an hour to get me hooked and Act 1 was fantastic. it all went down by Act 2 when not only the villains are irredeemable and cartoonishly evil, there were barely any stakes to begin with since anything they do will always result in a successful change of heart, short of sabotage by their enemies.
but to answer your question, P2EP is the best by a mile
I dunno but it's a great jrpg. I wrote these off for a long time, ever since PS2, but I started P5R because I finally downloaded a Switch emulator,to play Unicorn Overlord, but didn't feel like committing to starting it. P5 just seemed more comfy and casual.
Now I'm 40 hours in. And holy shit, the high school social simulation that I thought was lame is the best part. It's so addictive and rewarding, especially with the professional voice acting combined with strong characterization and tight themes.
In terms of presentation, it blows other jrpgs out of the water. I've enjoyed a few in the last couple years, but most of them just don't cut it. This game feels like something that's worth paying $80 for, which I can't say about the vast majority of games.
No.
Are there even other Persona games?
Objectively it's one of the best turn-based JRPGs. It's still garbage.
>theme
Storygays are fricking cancer like this series.
I quit playing because the game told me that I have to beat the gym teacher before selected date. So I went to the dungeon on the day before but the game pushed out some event that could not be foreseen (forgot what it was) and prevented me from going to the dungeon. So I had to replay some 1-2 hrs and I just quit instead. I may go back sometime.