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Persona 3 Portable & Persona 4: Golden |OT| Velvet Underground

Teslerum

Member
OG Persona 4 is where it's at. Golden and P5 are disappointments imo.
:messenger_smiling_hearts:

I wouldn't call Golden a disappointment (because gameplay improvements), but the added content in the Persona special versions usually just makes the story worse. P4 especially, because
Adachi was a surprise in P4 when you were figuring out the killer
and you had to go by process of elimination and think about it. P4 constantly spoils it like its a jackhammer. The whole Marie+ storyline is also meh personally.

Nice to know I'm not the only one that thinks that way.
 
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nightmare-slain

Gold Member
OG Persona 4 is where it's at. Golden and P5 are disappointments imo.
I have the original Persona 4 for PS2 but never bothered playing it. I could emulate it instead of playing Golden which I already have on PC and just bought again for Switch.

Why is 4 better than Golden?

I'm emulating P3FES on PC right now so I might be convinced to play P4 next instead of Golden.
 

RobRSG

Member
I have the original Persona 4 for PS2 but never bothered playing it. I could emulate it instead of playing Golden which I already have on PC and just bought again for Switch.

Why is 4 better than Golden?

I'm emulating P3FES on PC right now so I might be convinced to play P4 next instead of Golden.
I thought it was a consensus that P4G is better than vanilla P4. NeoGAF always delivers.
 
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sloppyjoe_gamer

Gold Member
Im LOVING P3 portable, after never playing it until now. Music is outstanding and the point and click stuff, while different, isnt hurting the experience for me at all!
 
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BouncyFrag

Member
Random, but important P4G tip. Near the end of the game, you will get a prompt asking if you would like to go directly to the bus/train station. If you respond ‘yes’, you will end up missing out on a huge chunk of endgame content.

I also think Teddy is awesome. Come fight me!
 

KrisB

Member
Started up my P4G playthrough on the Xbox last week. Already played through it twice on the Vita but it’s great to play it on the TV now.

The soundtrack slaps, easily one of the best in history along with FF7.
 
Im LOVING P3 portable, after never playing it until now. Music is outstanding and the point and click stuff, while different, isnt hurting the experience for me at all!

I liked it a lot more than the PS2 version, it streamlines all the filler and keeps the story beats intact while making some tweaks here and there to its mechanics to make it more accesible. It's a very fluid, compact experience.
 

Astral Dog

Member
I been playing up to the Bathouse boss fight on Persona 4 Golden, this is my first game in the series after i heard so much praise apparently its pretty popular, decided to try P4 first since the premise sounded interesting and i remember watching the Anime.

Its pretty solid, i just have some issues:

. The characters and murder mystery are cool, but i don't like when the protagonist is silent, and here he sticks out because of that, feel like it brings the plot down a little, as i don't care so much about his relationships with others when he is a robot :(
. The famous 'social' features become annoying quickly, the events themselves are fine (most of the time) in reality its just repetitive tasks, how you spend your day doesn't matter much since you can only do a few things before going to sleep, wich makes the days feel 'short' compared to other sim games with a similar system also a lot of the same dialogue repeated, the gameplay loop
. Music is fun although i wish it was more diverse, there is like one tune playing on town(unlike say TWEWY)
. Dungeons unfortunately are weak, confusing on purpose with filler floors

. Boss fights, combat is pretty good, i like that you don't even have to control all characters in battle if you don't want to, still not sure if im supposed to change Personas quickly or level up the ones i have 🤔also i never get tired of the party ganging up on enemies when they are down!

. I wish the small town was a little bigger, however there is a great cast and premise here, and the events are charming , the TV channel gimmick is not something you see every day. I enjoyed the game more at the beginning when it was setting the cast and the plot, before the gameplay loop became what it is. It was like a visual novel
 

The_hunter

Member
I been playing up to the Bathouse boss fight on Persona 4 Golden, this is my first game in the series after i heard so much praise apparently its pretty popular, decided to try P4 first since the premise sounded interesting and i remember watching the Anime.

Its pretty solid, i just have some issues:

. The characters and murder mystery are cool, but i don't like when the protagonist is silent, and here he sticks out because of that, feel like it brings the plot down a little, as i don't care so much about his relationships with others when he is a robot :(
. The famous 'social' features become annoying quickly, the events themselves are fine (most of the time) in reality its just repetitive tasks, how you spend your day doesn't matter much since you can only do a few things before going to sleep, wich makes the days feel 'short' compared to other sim games with a similar system also a lot of the same dialogue repeated, the gameplay loop
. Music is fun although i wish it was more diverse, there is like one tune playing on town(unlike say TWEWY)
. Dungeons unfortunately are weak, confusing on purpose with filler floors

. Boss fights, combat is pretty good, i like that you don't even have to control all characters in battle if you don't want to, still not sure if im supposed to change Personas quickly or level up the ones i have 🤔also i never get tired of the party ganging up on enemies when they are down!

. I wish the small town was a little bigger, however there is a great cast and premise here, and the events are charming , the TV channel gimmick is not something you see every day. I enjoyed the game more at the beginning when it was setting the cast and the plot, before the gameplay loop became what it is. It was like a visual novel
It's better to fuse your personas together to get stronger ones. You can always re-summon a persona from the compendium should you need it.
 
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I really wish Persona 4 had a speed-up option that was faster than the “Rush” mode and didn’t automatically attack for you. The regular battle speed is too slow. And battles in general feel a tad repetitive.

Otherwise, I think the game is pretty great, so far but I’m still very early. I’ve only just completed the first dungeon.

I like it a lot more than the couple of hours I spent with Persona 5, that’s for sure.
 
It looks like they didn't have any better quality assets than what was originally released on PSP, because P3P looks really bad on the Switch. It's like in the old days of emulators when you were upscaling with pixel doubling and then smoothing the result.

Persona 3 was always the best of the "modern" Persona era, all the Personas after it were progressively worse. Don't @ me with your wrong disagreements. It's sad that it seems like they'll never do a proper remaster of P3 and combine the PS2 and PSP versions in a way to create a more definitive version of the game.
 
It looks like they didn't have any better quality assets than what was originally released on PSP, because P3P looks really bad on the Switch. It's like in the old days of emulators when you were upscaling with pixel doubling and then smoothing the result.

Persona 3 was always the best of the "modern" Persona era, all the Personas after it were progressively worse. Don't @ me with your wrong disagreements. It's sad that it seems like they'll never do a proper remaster of P3 and combine the PS2 and PSP versions in a way to create a more definitive version of the game.
Persona 3 has a dancing spin-off, a 3DS spin-off, 3 re-releases, and FOUR movies. I’m sure another re-release or a remake will come eventually. And that’s exactly why I didn’t bother with buying this P3P port. Especially since I want a version of Persona 3 with anime cutscenes.
 
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cormack12

Gold Member
It's better to fuse your personas together to get stronger ones. You can always re-summon a persona from the compendium should you need it.

Does that go for ones you don't really use. I started to swap them so for example I used Angel to level her up to like level 5 but my main persona is like level 9 now, so should I fuse them, or should I fuse the 5 with a low level slime I ain't used yet?
 

MudoSkills

Volcano High Alumnus (Cum Laude)
If you're trying to maximise what you have you would generally be looking to fuse once each persona involved has learned all their moves. The level of each persona used in a fusion is less important than the outcome, and generally you should be looking for results that make a new persona (as in something that hasn't already been registered/in your party).
 
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cormack12

Gold Member
If you're trying to maximise what you have you would generally be looking to fuse once each persona involved has learned all their moves. The level of each persona used in a fusion is less important than the outcome, and generally you should be looking for results that make a new persona (as in something that hasn't already been registered/in your party).
So I should use them until all 8 skills have been unlocked? Registering them as they level up?
 

John Bilbo

Member
I just don't understand how Persona 4 Golden can be so good, it defies understanding
WUwzvi9.png

I got you fam :messenger_fistbump: I got you
 

nightmare-slain

Gold Member
I've been playing Persona 3 FES and I feel like I'm doing everything wrong. I've only finish P5/R. I like the feel and tone of the game but I hate feeling like I'm playing it wrong 100% of the time. I'm trying my best to level up my stats and spend time with social links but it's pissing me off that I know I'm not doing it efficiently. The creepy Elizabeth woman is giving me requests and i done most of them but I'm stuck on 2 (finding a Juzumaru or something and doing a special attack with Jack shadows).

The social links don't really interest me so far either. I want to talk to the main characters like Yukari, Misturu, Junpei, Akihiko but I'm stuck with some weird school kid, a track team dude, a couple old people, and some sports girl.

I'd go back to Portable (I played an hour of it) but I can't face having to grind through Tartarus again. Right now I'm about 5 hours in to FES. I'm about 2 days away from the full moon in May? I think. I don't know if I'm going to be able to finish this lol maybe I should try 4 Golden and come back to FES later. I'm emulating the game on PC (ripped from my PS2 copy) and can back up my save until I'm ready to come back.
 
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Nico_D

Member
About 35 hrs in and the game starts to drag. P5 dragged sooner but still. Summer holiday, wake up, run around the town finding social links, watch cutscenes where something happens or not (if not levelling up), go to bed. Repeat.

School trip. Just dialogue and silly scenes on and on. I get they have fun together, we just had the beach scene - which was actually funny -, don't need to be reminded so soon.

At first I was relieved there's no clown character this time around, I hated Ryuji in P5. And then they brought Teddy.

I might need a break. Good game but the Persona formula is getting slightly tiring. Too much advancing dialogue.
 

Astral Dog

Member
Slightly off topic but after playing Persona 4 i decided to give Persona 5 Strikers a chance, since the action gameplay interested me but i thought it was gonna be like Warriors and i wasn't that familiar with the series

to my surprise i been enjoying it way more than other Omega Force games, its pretty fun like i wasn't expecting actual dungeons, 2D sections, short stealth sections a combat system that requires some strategy etc. it barely resembles a Warriors game design wise and its more of its own thing.
This team has potential to grow but they keep making the same thing with Warriors, i hope we see more games like Persona 5 strikes from them, because its a cool game
 

Power Pro

Gold Member
:messenger_smiling_hearts:

I wouldn't call Golden a disappointment (because gameplay improvements), but the added content in the Persona special versions usually just makes the story worse. P4 especially, because
Adachi was a surprise in P4 when you were figuring out the killer
and you had to go by process of elimination and think about it. P4 constantly spoils it like its a jackhammer. The whole Marie+ storyline is also meh personally.

Nice to know I'm not the only one that thinks that way.
Totally agree, and yet it sucks to go back to the PS2 version because there are the gameplay improvements to P4G.

Also even though the replacement grew on me sometimes, the original Chie VA is far superior, I still maintain that opinion.
 

sloppyjoe_gamer

Gold Member
Can't get the one song from P3 out of my head lol....

"Jump around jump around jump around now, jump around jump around jump around now" :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 

nightmare-slain

Gold Member
I've gave up on FES for now because I am dying all the damn time!! Tartarus is a bitch. I wasn't feeling the game for the first few hours but settled in and was having fun.

Got to the second block of Tartarus and getting my shit rammed back in again. I rushed to the portal just before the 3 table boss and took my time fighting enemies on floors 14+ to get stronger but I feel like it's down to luck. I can kill enemies without too much trouble and then next time they destroy me. It didn't help I couldn't always sneak up on shadows. I know what I am meant to do (I done it flawlessly in P5) but something feels off in this. I could feel myself getting stronger but I still died three times in a row!

I think I picked Normal difficulty and so I'm stuck with that unless I start a new save. I got just after the exams finish so maybe end of May?

So I've started Portable again and playing it on Easy lol. This is way more enjoyable for me plus there are a lot of nice QoL changes which says a lot when I hardly played any more than 10 hours of FES.

Maybe I'll go back to FES at some point but fuck that shit right now. The lack of cutscenes and exploration with a 3D model doesn't bother me because I felt like FES is too tedious without fast travel. Portable feels a lot quicker paced and it's easier to get around.
 
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Astral Dog

Member
I ran out of days on the kaiji(?)/bathhouse boss fight lol, he was a tough one and i arrived a little underleveled, i wanted to beat it fair and square just needed a few days to prepare, buy stuff etc and then puff the game is over 😒

How annoying, reset and changed the difficulty to not lose a whole week but man that sucks i can't play the game how i like
 
Man this is fun. First couple hours were slow, but back in the groove now doing every dungeon in one day and trying to keep up with all the crazy social links. I hit level 54 and made a Tam Lin persona that is immune or resists every attack type and has apt pupil and cool breeze, but I guess I wasn't paying attention while I was doing all that fusing because my massive bank account is now zero yen lol
 

april6e

Member
I only have two things to say:

A. Persona 3 FES is better in just about every single way and it's a shame that it wasn't ported instead of Persona 3 Portable which is what the PC players got.

B. I hope all of you who are new to these games enjoy yourselves. I wish I could travel back in time and play these for the first time again. I discovered the series in college right before P4 came out and played Persona 3 FES and vanilla Persona 4 back to back and it was one of the most memorable 5 months of my life. Persona 3-5 are all incredible JRPGs.
 
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BryceNobody

Member
I've gave up on FES for now because I am dying all the damn time!! Tartarus is a bitch. I wasn't feeling the game for the first few hours but settled in and was having fun.

Got to the second block of Tartarus and getting my shit rammed back in again. I rushed to the portal just before the 3 table boss and took my time fighting enemies on floors 14+ to get stronger but I feel like it's down to luck. I can kill enemies without too much trouble and then next time they destroy me. It didn't help I couldn't always sneak up on shadows. I know what I am meant to do (I done it flawlessly in P5) but something feels off in this. I could feel myself getting stronger but I still died three times in a row!

I think I picked Normal difficulty and so I'm stuck with that unless I start a new save. I got just after the exams finish so maybe end of May?

So I've started Portable again and playing it on Easy lol. This is way more enjoyable for me plus there are a lot of nice QoL changes which says a lot when I hardly played any more than 10 hours of FES.

Maybe I'll go back to FES at some point but fuck that shit right now. The lack of cutscenes and exploration with a 3D model doesn't bother me because I felt like FES is too tedious without fast travel. Portable feels a lot quicker paced and it's easier to get around.
FES will truly test your patience even on Normal difficulty. The final boss was one of the hardest fights I’ve ever pushed myself through in a JRPG. I remember having to grind an extra +15 hours to get through it (even though I wasn’t under-leveled), plus sit through a long-ass 45 minute battle with unskippable sequences. Brutal stuff.

And yeah… Tartarus is always kind of a pain regardless of platform. Portable mitigates some of the FES frustrations, though I personally did enjoy having character models/cutscenes and the overall satisfaction of beating FES was awesome.
 
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Mobile Suit Gooch

Grundle: The Awakening
I’m not surprised that journos find P4 problematic these days. A lot of the character arcs are refreshingly non-progressive. Instead of the ‚be yourself‘ stuff you hear everywhere these days, the moral of the story in P4 is more like ‚the world doesn’t revolve around your narcissistic desires, and living up to society‘s expectations isn’t always a bad thing‘. That‘s not the kind of message that goes over well in our current age of infantilization.
Looking back on it now, this is probably why it's one of my favorites. I put this above Persona 5 in terms of story and characters.
 

sloppyjoe_gamer

Gold Member
Wow....loved P3 Portable at first but what a fucking slog this has turned into. 50 hrs and my characters are close to level 50 and im still getting fucking one shotted by enemies in tartarus, level 180ish even on beginner difficulty. I had wanted to just wrap this up to see how the story ends but its just too infuriating slow at this point.

Game is too long and this is coming from someone who spent 115 hrs in persona 5 and loved every minute.

Moving on to P4 Golden, ive had enough of this slog
 
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NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
I started P4G last night.
It’s definitely more streamlined than P5. P5 took fucking forever to even get going. Here you have one straight road to school compared to P5’s subway, it could hardly be more different. And you make acquaintances in a matter of minutes. A nice change of pace.

I thought the graphics would be more jarring. Sure, there’s some embarrassingly low-poly views here and there, but overall it’s nicer than I expected. The art direction is limited by the game’s PS2 origins, but Atlus’s style still shines through the rough. I’m liking the cast, but I don’t think Teddie will ever be as good a character as Morgana. I loved that not-a-cat to bits.

I’m sure I’ll have a lot of trouble with the game at one point, but until then, I think this is going to be fun.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
There’s some stuff in Persona 4 that would never, ever, ever fly with today‘s gender police. It’s amazing that this game was a favorite on old GAF. I guess it came out exactly at the right time to be loved and then conveniently swept under the carpet once certain themes became a reason to send death threats to developers. This stuff is much, much worse than, say, Link crossdressing in BOTW, and God knows that one raised quite a big stink in 2017.

That said, I’m still not quite finished with P4, but on the gameplay side, P5 is an improvement in pretty much every aspect... except the pacing. P5 drags everything for way longer than it needs. A lot of it is due to the rise of smartphones and the extensive use of instant messaging in P5, which gives even more opportunities to chat with teammates and make every situation even longer.
 

sloppyjoe_gamer

Gold Member
Finished Persona 4 Golden last night after 54 hrs. Overall i loved every minute, and the game has an amazing soundtrack, so many great ones!!!

With regards to how it wrapped up....

It was ballsy of them to kill off Nanako, i was certain she would miraculously recover so Kudos there. However, the actual ending was pretty anticlimatic. After all that time spent together with all your teammates, you get a pretty lame 30 second or so anime clip at the bus stop lol.....and then before that you have that little scene with Dojima at his house and he's all "I'm alone now, and it's going to be so weird. Ok....it's time for your bus lets go" LOL I was hoping for a little more scenes with your friends before the credits, but oh well.

Oh and i'm convinced that Mr Edogawa is a Persona user
 

drganon

Member
Finished Persona 4 Golden last night after 54 hrs. Overall i loved every minute, and the game has an amazing soundtrack, so many great ones!!!

With regards to how it wrapped up....

It was ballsy of them to kill off Nanako, i was certain she would miraculously recover so Kudos there. However, the actual ending was pretty anticlimatic. After all that time spent together with all your teammates, you get a pretty lame 30 second or so anime clip at the bus stop lol.....and then before that you have that little scene with Dojima at his house and he's all "I'm alone now, and it's going to be so weird. Ok....it's time for your bus lets go" LOL I was hoping for a little more scenes with your friends before the credits, but oh well.

Oh and i'm convinced that Mr Edogawa is a Persona user
Sounds like you got the bad ending.
 

LakeOf9

Member
Finished Persona 4 Golden last night after 54 hrs. Overall i loved every minute, and the game has an amazing soundtrack, so many great ones!!!

With regards to how it wrapped up....

It was ballsy of them to kill off Nanako, i was certain she would miraculously recover so Kudos there. However, the actual ending was pretty anticlimatic. After all that time spent together with all your teammates, you get a pretty lame 30 second or so anime clip at the bus stop lol.....and then before that you have that little scene with Dojima at his house and he's all "I'm alone now, and it's going to be so weird. Ok....it's time for your bus lets go" LOL I was hoping for a little more scenes with your friends before the credits, but oh well.

Oh and i'm convinced that Mr Edogawa is a Persona user
Bad ending, go back and try the conversation in the hospital room again
 

LakeOf9

Member
Well damn!!! I was wondering why it was so anti climatic lol
Pass the conversation check for the scene in the hospital and you get set on the True Ending path.

Try and max out Marie ASAP, at the expense of everyone else; she unlocks the Golden Ending.

Did they ever patch the poor audio quality in the Switch release like they said they would?
I can't find either any reports of lowered audio quality on the Switch, nor of Atlus/Sega promising a fix. Not sure this was an issue?
 
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Killer8

Member
I can't find either any reports of lowered audio quality on the Switch, nor of Atlus/Sega promising a fix. Not sure this was an issue?




However now that i've looked into the source of the news about a patch being in development, which was parroted by many outlets like TheGamer, DualShockers and Nintendo Life, it came from a tweet by SMT Network and wasn't announced by Atlus directly.



This was 7 months ago so either the development on the patch stalled, or more likely SMT Network were talking out their ass here.
 
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