I fell a bit behind, but I’m catching up and have reached the full moon. I completed my first and only run to Tartarus for the month and I have to say I’m really enjoying the combat system. I saw a recommendation somewhere about going once a month to allow more time for levelling stats and social links. I haven’t decided whether I like playing it that way or not.
I also find it very entertaining when the teachers at school casually drop occult goings on into their lessons…
What’s this type of triangle called? Which poet wrote this quote? Did you know that my daughter is actually a strange and terrifying creature that manifested inside the walls of my house?
I’m getting a lot of the hanging out but not advancing the social link scenes at the moment, which is a bit frustrating. I’m not using guides for the dialogue choices, so I’m probably not making the most effective ones.
From May 10th 'til today I’ve been on a relatively non-stop push to catch up to the thread, and I’m happy to say I’m finally caught up. Feeling lucky that the day that I sync up is also a pretty hefty one to boot. We got some new battle costumes and gear, and a new team member to boot. Looking back on my notes, I’m surprised to see that it’s true what @Jaffe noted on the show some time ago: weekends are pretty damn busy for these kids and weeknights are mostly chill.
On weekends without a full moon or horrible crisis, I’ve taken up doing fairly long Tartarus runs on Sunday nights in-game. This leaves most weeknights free and open, usually landing at the arcade or the strip mall. Every Sunday for the last three weeks has been MMO times with Maya, whose identity I am slowly piecing together – which has made being flirty retroactively very uncomfortable and doing 20+ floor runs in Tartarsauce to help pad out my perpetually thin wallet.
You and me both! It’s been an interesting experience feeling this story unfold in such a piecemeal way. When I look back at my notes and look up all the questions I’ve left myself to be answered in the future, I can clearly see the momentum building. But at the same time, even 20 hours in, I feel like this game’s only just getting started. Especially tonight, where I’ve left a question bolded for my future self, “met with the chairman tonight and he brought us some custom gear… hey who’s paying for all this stuff anyway? and it’s well-tested? by who???” I’ll be happy if I do get an answer down the line, but also I won’t mind if it never gets answered - there’s more than enough for me to ponder already.
Reload has a pretty neat feature that shows you what other players chose to do during different phases of the day, which has made me realize that there are at least three people that I haven’t started the social links for at all Suemitsu, Tanaka, and a man I’d just heard of who’s supposed to be at the nightclub. It’s also made clear to me as well that most people probably aren’t choosing to go to sleep in their beds during the evening. When was the last time you picked that as an option? I don’t think I have since April, let alone ended my day doing anything in my room.
Some questions for the thread:
What did you pick as Bebe’s signoff phrase?
If you were to play another Persona game in this manner (day-by-day), would you align yourself so that the calendar date matched in-game and IRL, or would you consider aligning the day of the week instead (e.g. Monday in-game is April 6, IRL you are playing on Monday April 8)?
For Reload players, did you also find the phrasing “I don’t think our bond will grow any stronger even if I spend more time with [social link character]…” to lead you to think you shouldn’t bother hanging out? I passed on a few opportunities to spend time before realizing (hopefully correctly) that those encounters still count even if they’re minor.
The Persona Dancing Collection is on sale for the PS4 - I’ve gleaned (carefully searching as to not spoil anything) that it’s more or less non-canon… but if I were to wedge P3D in during the Game Club, when in the year should I plan to make room?
Here’s some excerpts from my notes from the last month. Names/social link stuff has been spoiler tagged:
May 5 - 31
5/6 (Wednesday) - back to school:
there’s a sad child at the shrine! must visit after school.
her name is maiko and she’s eaten my faux takoyaki and drank my red bull.
(regarding Odagiri) this dude’s such a damn narc
5/8 (Fri)
oh… I forgot about the fridge cleaning date.
5/11 (Mon)
checked the computer and saw the chairman coming up with some incredible one liners. yet to be seen if this is meant to be disarming or if he’s just a goofy guy
5/13 (Wed)
since it’s my irl birthday in game i decide to treat myself to a trip to the movies! For my brain
and tartarus! for my braun
5/27 (Wed)
after school: someone’s been bullying yuko! :(
Also hee hee i flirted
5/29 (Fri)
class with mr edogawa subbing
hey this guy is chill! teach me all the meditation things
5/31 (Sun)
decided to see Maya. it got flirty and i have mixed feelings about it. is harmless flirting on an MMO really harmless? this person is definitely older and she seems to have some stuff going on in her life…
ran from floor 1 to 43 with the gamble fortune active. took me two IRL sittings to do.
June 1 - 13
6/1 (mon)
we’ve switched to our summer uniforms today. i feel svelte.
made 36k yen selling tartarsauce spoils from last night.
6/2 (tues)
ghost facts I’ve collected:
- Kirijo wants a man with a love for studying
- Fuuka fainted again.
- ghosts might haunt you if you throw rocks at birds
after school: yuko time
“I don’t think our bond will grow any stronger even if I spend more time with Yuko…” means something more like “I probably won’t get closer to them this time (but I’m still gaining points).”
what it seems to mean is that the social time spent won’t be a BIG story thing. it will be a small hangout that furthers the friendship. this really could be phrased better.
6/4 (thurs)
Tomato harvest day!
6/6 (sat)
yuko is so sweet and well meaning!
6/10 (wed)
decided to eat at hakagure… and it just occured to me why kenji keeps wanting to come here. lol. (charm ++)
met with bebe, weirdly somber text from him
it is incredibly jarring to jump from the somber piano version of “color your night” to the level up arcana music and back again
As I opened a tin of sardines for my lunch today, I noticed a label proclaiming their abundance of omega-3. Almost subconsciously I felt the 2 points going into academics as notes flashed by in my peripheral vision.
From what I’ve understood, you stand to gain a little bit as long as you remember to equip a Persona with the right arcana. I had a couple of meetings now where I chose an option that was … less correct than the other two, but I still got a point in my favour. Specifically, trying to gently talk Kaz out of exploding his knee without restoring to the firmly negative responses.
Yesterday I realized that my pattern of spending Sundays in Tartarus in-game would map out to every Friday night in the wall world doing a Tartarus run. That being said, for my first night playing a single day of gameplay, I was in Tartarus for nearly two hours trying to find black quartz for Elizabeth… when I realized I was in the wrong chunk of Arqa for most of it.
Now I’ve gotta decide on how I handle day changes. I could save right before doing whatever I decide is my last action of the evening, or start the next day, watch whatever happens first thing in the morning, and save ASAP.
I haven’t played for a little while, I’m on the 12th at the moment. Just lost a half hour of progress to the PSP’s battery indicator being under my right thumb where I can’t see it while playing.
Just want to say this to save anyone from potential hassle or worry: You don’t even have to equip the persona with the corresponding arcana, just having it in your roster of personas is good enough. If you want to be certain, when you have a compatible persona there is always a message when talking to the person prior to initiating the social link event that says something to the effect of, “I think we can grow closer because I have X persona of Y arcana.”
Have any of you been living with bits of the soundtrack rattling around in your head non-stop? I’ve had Color Your Night stuck in my head for a little while now, but especially this Rhythm Heaven edit.
Looking forward to meeting with the chairman tonight, where I assume he will be publicly apologizing to me for eating my taiyaki that was in the icebox, and that I was probably going to have for breakfast.
I got pretty behind on this, but I’m almost caught up now. Starting to have more social links than I know what to do with. I’ve been kind of spreading my attention between them, tending to take whichever link was lowest, but I think I’m going to try focusing on a few and getting them done to reduce the number of links I’m juggling. But which to choose? I think my highest is the bookstore at level 7, but since they’re the only one I’ve got for Sundays at the moment I might leave not do them on other days. I’ve been sort of prioritising party members on suspicion that leveling their social links will boost the character somehow. Dunno. I’ve got like three or four more available to me that I don’t have the stats for, too.
Finally tipped my academics over to “smart”, just in time for the dude at the shrine to show up on Sunday, only now he wants some pen I can’t find. Oh well. I was planning to go to Tartarus tonight to search for missing people, but Mitsuru and Akihiko aren’t in the dorm so we can’t go. What’s the deal, guys? Sunday is Tartarus day!
Everyone’s been so worried about the next full moon that I feel like maybe I should be paying closer attention to preparing for it. Junpei’s six or seven levels behind everyone else because he wasn’t in the last couple of boss floor fights. It’s been a drag trying to get him enough EXP to catch up. It’s too close to the next full moon to try for a fortune, and too risky to go up with a shorthanded party.
So instead, the last week and a half has been all about hanging out and watching old boxing DVDs, evening tea, nighttime gardening, batch cooking, and reading manga and sci-fi novels, and praying I get just a little smarter before exam time eating Iwatodai Strip Mall’s entire seafood supply with no regrets! Playing the way that feels truest to my gut feelings.
I also fell a bit behind and did some catching up. I’ve maxed out my first social link (with Bebe). I also have the old couple at level nine. Not sure if I should be splitting my time between people or focusing on one at a time. I guess I risk running out of things to do on certain days if I balance it wrong - once I finish the old couple I won’t have anything for Sunday until I find the guy at the shrine’s pen. Can always grind stats, though. Or start accepting when people phone up on Sunday mornings to go out. I never know if my social link is about to advance or not so it seems like I risk wasting the day if I hang out with someone who was already ready to advance. The game seems to encourage a mercenary attitude to socialising. I haven’t been interacting with my two evening social links much. Instead I’m working part time at the cafe and playing arcade games.
Looking at the calendar it appears finals and school break are coming up, so I might not have to think too hard about allocating my time for a while.
It’s easy to miss banter rolling through Tartarus in between all the callouts to stairs and treasure. But sometimes certain people in the team will drop a bomb like this into the conversation and then we go back to floor 1 to have them go on timeout.
Have not played this for a whole month as I’ve been trying to blast through Red Dead Redemption 2, but now I’m cat-sitting for all of July (do not have Red Dead Redemption 2) and am ready to return
I think I did pretty good in the exams, but results aren’t out yet. I’ve gotten myself a few days ahead thanks to the island trip which I’ve been dreading as a low point in the game. It wasn’t as bad as I remembered - Junpei was a real creep but the transphobic bit wasn’t there. Not sure if that’s because I’m playing the female lead or if they removed it from portable (or if I’m just misremembering when it happens) but it’s good that it’s gone.
One day at a time is certainly interesting, but isn’t an ideal way to play now that the social game is up and running. Planning a given day prompts thinking about what to do several days after that—“if I see Rio on Monday I’ll want to give Wednesday to Bébé, freeing up Tuesday for Saori and Friday for Rio again or Akihiko if he’s available” etc. All this time/resource management creates tension, and the Hashino Persona games pull you onward with the feeling that you should do just one more day in order to relieve that tension, but of course half the time those “one more” days happen to open up some entirely new path for the player, like a new social link or a new social stat level (i.e. another social link), provoking more negotiation with yourself about whether to give it one more day.
Persona 3 was among the first SMT games I played. I tried it after Devil Survivor and Strange Journey, neither of which I got into or understood much at the time; back then the simpler mechanics and systems in P3 were more inviting, but only because they were easier to ignore in favor of the social sim and narrative. 12 years later I have a grasp on Strange Journey and IV and have completed P4 and P5 and find I still want to mostly ignore the battles in this game (following P4 and P5 I am not surprised, but disappointed). Granted, I am making them more boring for myself by playing on Easy and by controlling everyone in the party. Someone can slap me on the wrists for this but my thinking is if I want to play SMT, I’ll play Nocturne (or finish IV or Strange Journey, ha ha ha…).
The social links at this point are less compelling than I thought they might be (still early I know). I’ve heard Persona 4 described unfavorably for basically apportioning its story out as social links and leaving its characters with nothing to say or do when it comes to the larger events which drive the plot—this in comparison to the supposedly more holistic Persona 3. The social links I’ve seen so far (girl protagonist Hermit, Temperance, Hierophant, Chariot) are all pretty light, so I guess I’m curious to see whether the ones you unlock later are any more probing, and of course what will happen with the main party.
What I like about Persona 4’s social links is that they explore (however clumsily) the same vague theme from a variety of perspectives; it’s not especially deep but they all cohere into a compelling whole. Persona 3 at this point (14 hours, July 23) is still mostly setting up whatever the story is “about,” although like P4 there is already a very vague central theme in death.
It’s sort of shocking to think I’ve played all this before, and in fact got to the point when Koromaru and Aegis have joined the party (unsure of how soon that is). I hardly remember anything past this point.
Was out of town and away from the game for a little more than a week and a half, so I had a buttload of catching up to do. Got as far as repeatedly writing in my notes Junpei’s bein an ass!! almost nightly before the exam period. Now I’m in this awkward spot of time post-exams/pre-beach where I’m stuck wondering if I want to just go hog wild in Tartarus before leaving or not.
Some stray thoughts:
whoever picked the weak cat meow for the lil buddy you gotta feed, they chose perfectly
skimmed my notes from way back in April and it’s funny that the first social link you gain is, as far as I’ve encountered, also one of the worst people to spend any amount of time with. Kenji reminds me so much of people i knew and avoided back in my teens and 20s. Having a lot of trouble imagining how his social link could possibly redeem him in my eyes.
What’s everyone’s current save time? I’m trying to figure out how many of my ~55 hours might be of me falling asleep, Steam Deck in hand.
