Topic: The Megami Tensei Thread

@TheFrenchiestFry Both games are ridiculously easy when you get into them, but I'll say this: the beginning of Persona 4 (vanilla, not Golden) is significantly harder than P5/P5R is at any point.

Persona 5 also makes it way easier to fuse Personas with exactly the skills you want.

I also don't recall Very Hard in Persona 4 TRIPLING damage done when hitting enemy weaknesses, either. On the highest difficulty, you're effectively an unstoppable god of death the moment you get a decent spread of skills. Except against bosses, where the game becomes a war of attrition. Which is funny, because I'd say bosses are what mainline games do best.

Even on the second highest difficulty, every battle becomes "auto-target enemy weaknesses/all-out attack/win" and lasts, like, ten seconds.

All-Out Attacks shouldn't trigger as soon as you drop everyone. Hitting enemy weaknesses is WAY too damaging to enemies. When you use an attack that hits multiple enemies and one of them absorbs/repels it, you're not punished for playing poorly.

P5R with more balanced mechanics would probably be one of their best games. There's barely even room for stuff like baton passing to shine in anything other than boss battles, and boss battles aren't built to test the player's understanding of the gameplay like in Nocturne/IV/IV:A.

I'd give anything for P6 to go back to a battle system that's more like Nocturne's.

@Ralizah Merciless in Persona 5 Royal is much the same story

Unironically easier than hard mode due to the damage multipliers when exploiting shadow weaknesses and giving you more EXP after the end of encounters

I'd love for Persona 6 to go back to something more along the lines of Persona 3 or Nocturne where it actually gets easier the better you get at understanding the game mechanics and the better equipped you are for encounters. It actually rewards player skill rather than through arbitrary rewards based on the difficulty you play at

The boss battles in P5 especially aren't that rewarding to go through. It feels like you can get through pretty much all of them with the same team/Persona builds and you aren't really required to strategize. Focus moves like Mind Charge are also way too good to not be used almost by obligation especially by endgame

Since people are bringing up Persona 6...it will be interesting to see what happens next since the director of 3-5 has gone off to work on games of a "different style" I wonder if the next Persona will be doubling down on the established and popular formula or if the new person will want to inject new ideas into it.

I hope they bring in fresh blood honestly

P3-5 aren't in a position where they're creatively stagnant per se, especially given Persona is the most critically well received branch of the Megami Tensei franchise, but I personally think the stories have been getting weaker with each installment even though they're all relatively strong, especially in P3's case

I personally hope they go back to the darker and more character driven nature of P1-3 since the emphasis on slice of life aspects in P5 particularly greatly affected how much I actually liked the cast of that game. Most of them kind of act like caricatures and not necessarily like actual characters I care about, and not helping things is that they made the Confidant system so important in that game to the point where I feel they're barely fleshed out in the main story itself and I don't really get a sense of camraderie or chemistry when they're together as a team

Popular opinion; Haru was boring and had no character. Boooooo.

I hope we do get some good story and characters though. I enjoyed 4’s story and characters more than 5’s.

I'd like to see some more work done on the dungeons for the next Persona myself, I know some like randomly generated dungeons but I liked the change.

P5's dungeons were a massive step up in terms of variety and visual identity. Handcrafted dungeons should just be the way MegaTen goes from now on. It makes the procedurally generated ones look especially archaic going from Persona 5/Royal back to Persona 4 Golden. I hope SMT V also goes the route of having pre-determined dungeon designs rather than randomized ones

I just hope the stories get more variety. Persona 4 and 5 have huge similarities in stories, causing me to guess certain things that would’ve been a surprise if I didn’t know the plot of 4 to begin with. I hope that Persona 6’s story is entirely different.

The Nintendo Switch needs Persona 4 Golden HD. Great way to educate people in the teachings of Karl Gustaf Jong.

@Slowdive Should I ask that Youtuber to post a video to explain what your own opinions on the game is? ;p

@CactusMan It’s a perfect crash course for Jungian psychology, Gnosticism, and Freudian psychology. I wonder if a better remaster than Golden is warranted on Switch. Then again the dated graphics wouldn’t be too out of place due to the likes of the SaGa games, FFX and so on.

@TheJGG Maybe just some higher polygon models, Golden was already loaded with tons of extra content. I just think it's a bit sad not many people got to play it because of the unpopularity of the PS Vita. Maybe they'll do it if they sell la lot of SMT3 HD.

@TheJGG Honestly if a numbered Persona game ever comes to Switch at any point I bet Golden will probably be first before the other ones, especially given Atlus in terms of remastering games has really been emphasizing the PS2 era of the series above the other ones

@jump Heh, Persona 4 Golden on PlayStation Vita remains my favorite entry in the series.

@TheFrenchiestFry I wonder if perhaps Persona 4 Golden on PC was a response to the PS Vita store shutdown as in Atlus knew about the shutdown early.

@Grumblevolcano Probably not. I think it was moreso a response to Catherine Classic actually doing pretty well for itself given it was them testing how people would respond to them bringing their games to PC. Persona 4 Golden was definitely a natural step from that given the game being locked to Vita meant it couldn't really cultivate as large of an audience as Persona 5 ended up doing as a PS3/PS4 release

I know Persona 4 didn't really need it, but I wish it got a full remake in 5's engine. They already have the character models.

I'd personally rather see P1 and 2 get remade first. The classic Personas definitely have the potential to get really popular especially with people who don't like the direction the series took after 3 with its emphasis on the social sim/dating mechanics

@TheFrenchiestFry It'd be neat to have Persona 1 and 2 fully remade honestly. I also feel like 3 deserves a remake, since it's the most dated out of the three modern games in terms of their mechanics.