“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.
MH4U on the 3ds was my first introduction and I actually kinda miss being able to quickly tap the items that were up on the touch screen to use them. World on PS and Rise on the switch scratch the itch but I was visibly upset that tracking didn’t make it into Rise; it was just a great mechanic and it felt extra satisfying to build out the monster knowledge, and it added some wonderful depth to the gameplay.
I’m not really all that crazy about the fort defense mechanic in Rise, I’d genuinely skip it if I could.
As much as I enjoy the series and still play it, there’s a certain amount of ennui that I’m experiencing when it comes to hunting Jaggis and the rest of the same monsters every time. New mechanics help to make up for it by having the hunt be slightly different, but wow what I wouldn’t give for a totally new experience playing Monster Hunter.
I have a slightly different perspective as someone just starting Rise as my first ever experience with this series.
Holy shit, the tutorials are terrible. Massive info dump walls of text explaining too many systems at once, cryptic warning messages to confirm you want to dismiss the tutorials are extra confusing… And despite the massive info dumping, they don’t even tell you everything you need to know to complete the tutorial missions as you complete them. When you go to trap your first monster, there’s no tooltip to teach you how to use items in the “how to trap” explanation or NPC dialogue. I needed to google it.
And no ability to pause in a singleplayer game? I googled some explanation about pause being on one of the menus, but I couldn’t find it. Thankfully, suspending the game on a Steam Deck pauses it, so it’s playable.
Also, why was I given massively OP equipment and piles of loot just for logging in? The entire early game is now so easy that it’s not fun. I’m only 3 tutorials + 1 “real” mission into the game, so I’m going to try starting over without the EZ-mode loot and give it a second chance, but so far, I’m not impressed.
If I’d bought this through Steam, I’d have refunded it already before the 2-hour playtime window closed.
TL;DR: Terrible new-player onboarding has me questioning if I should push through.
For the ez mode loot it’s to allow players to get to the expansion content quickly if they want to, otherwise yeah just don’t touch the initial high powered loot you got gifted.
Yeah, I’m hoping they finally figure out the tutorial balance in Wilds. Earlier games had next to nothing for tutorials, and you pretty much had to look outside the game to even understand the basic movesets of the weapons, much less how things like skills work. I think they overcorrected with the recent ones though, it’d be nice if they could get a little better about introducing information in the world instead of constantly stopping the action to make sure the player sees it.
But yeah, absolutely do not use the OP armor, you’ll only ruin your fun and then have a really hard time once you get to the real fights. The main reason to use it would be to power through low rank if you’ve done it on another platform or something.
It's really the kind of game that either requires a significant in-game tutorial and very long ramp up (and you're right, even with all the info in the current tutorial it's not all inclusive) or it requires someone to bounce questions off of, which is the far superior way to learn, even though it's far less accessible.
Once you've learned it, though, I actually don't think it's all that complicated, it's just such its own beast that someone coming from nothing would have a hard time wrapping their head around the whole loop and all of the systems, but once you do one time it's like riding a bike.
The pause menu in Rise is if you press start, it's the bottom option on one of the menu tabs, it'll only show mid mission, so trying to find it in the village is pointless. But if you found a workaround that works too.
Also, yes, the free game breaking gear with no clear indicators is fucking stupid. I understand why it exists, but it trivializes the experience for so many new players due to the way its implemented that I think it should never have been created. I get wanting to get to end game fast if you've done it before, but the consequences are absurd.
I just started playing Stories yesterday in order to learn Japanese. It’s wild how different some of the names are. Hopefully the language barrier will keep me occupied until Wilds is released.
I’ve been playing since Freedom 2 and have played almost all of them to at least village completion. Exceptions are Tri and Frontier(s?). Def my favorite series by far and even if they have had their failed experiments, I’m glad they tried them.
I’ve tried fair share of clones as well but they usually don’t hit the mark.
Ive put hundreds of hours into monster hunter portable 3rd with the english patch. Also played a decent amount of Rise and will be playings Wild when it comes out
One of my favourite series. Started with vanilla P3 back when it was released, during the golden era of PS2 JRPGs, then put hundreds of hours into P4, P3P, P4 Golden and P5, both royal and original. Also went back to check out the first Persona and two P2 games.
P2 and P2 aren’t really “Persona” games, they are “Shin Megami Tensei: Persona” games. Dungeon crawlers with random battles. Unlike more modern Persona games, you don’t go to school in these games, you go out of it by beating the shit out of demons. No school life simulator, no social links, just good ol’ 10% story + 90% battles. I love P2’s story, though. It’s the most… entertaining, I’d say, and definitely feels different compared to other Persona games. Probably because the characters are mainly adults. If you decide to give it a try, beware that it has two games and the second is the direct continuation of the first. Hope it gets remade as well someday. It’s also the best Persona game in terms of demon negotiation. The player can choose one or several members of the party and make them do a comedy act, play violin, tell jokes etc. to acquire persona cards. It’s a lot of fun to explore these little scenes, as they change with the story’s progression. P5 sort of added demon negotiation back, but in its early SMT form of “answer the question right”. It’s not even half as fun.
New Persona games are more or less similar, the main difference is the theme and the mood. P3 is blue and depressive, P4 is yellow and fun (but also a bit unhealthy), P5 is red and adventurous. P3 was a true revolution, as it added school life simulator aspects to an existing SMT formula. P4 and P5 use the same formula that was invented for P3, and it’s my main issue with Persona series. It doesn’t progress anymore. P4 being the same as P3 was understandable, as these games are a couple of years apart and were released for the same system. P5 being the same as the two previous games isn’t exciting at all. Yeah, it has better UI, QoL features, of course, better graphics, animations and everything else one might expect from a newer game. However P5’s core is the same as P3 and P4, and this core is immersion. At which P5, imo, is worse than P3 and P4. Can’t really pinpoint why, maybe its aesthetics are the reason, or the less believable, too grandiose setting. It went from “we are saving the world behind the curtains, but nobody knows it” (P3) and “we are solving a crime case and saving the world, but nobody knows it” (P4) to “we are defeating all sorts of evil people and saving the world and everyone sort of knows it” (P5). P5 felt less immersive than previous games to me. Compare Joker to P3’s MC - a chad Arsène Lupin who happens to go to school sometimes vs. a sad emo boy always with headphones on. I liked more down to earth and realistic approach of P3 and P4 in that regard. School life in P5 felt as an honestly unneeded afterthought. Another thing that broke immersion in P5 specifically for me is social links, pardon, confidants mechanic that was too centered on gameplay. In P3 and P4 you could do a run without some social links just because you felt like it, but in P5 your freedom of choice is severely affected by passive abilities gained by meeting with certain confidants. I dislike the game dictating me which confidants I have to prioritise. Don’t get me wrong, P5 is a very good game on its own, it’s just some things about it rub me the wrong way when I compare it to other games.
btw, I always thought that P3 OST is so unusual because it was composed with the idea that it’s the music that the MC listens to first and a game soundtrack second
P3 is one of my favourite games ever. Story, music, characters, art, gameplay - everything is stellar. Haven’t yet tried the Reload version, because Atlus taught me to never buy their games before the definitive edition is released. I’ll probably wait until the female MC is available. Anyway, I like it more than other Persona games due to how deep and immersive it is. It’s the only modern Persona where relationships within the party felt natural to me, where party members didn’t instantly become bff just because they shared the same goal. I liked the tension between Mitsuru and Yukari, Junpei’s ambitions, Ken’s animosity and so on. I enjoyed that the characters were wary of the MC at first and slowly opened up to them. P4 and P5 are a bit more “nakama power” in that regard. Notice how party dynamics remain unchangeable in P4 and P5 - once you get a new character, their story is more or less done and they behave the exact same way until the end of the game. And it’s always “one dungeon - one new party character” policy. P3 has less predictable structure.
Didn’t say much about P4, but it’s also an excellent game, with the best humour in the series.
Thank you for writing all of that. I’ve been avoiding the Persona series because I played some of P1 back in the day and didn’t care for it. P3 sounds much more enjoyable to me.
Huh didn’t know P1 and P2 were SMT games. Good to know. I’ve tried at least one entry in the SMT side and just could not get into it. Don’t even remember which it was. I get they’re both dungeon crawlers, but I don’t think I’m a fan of the more old-school SMT-style games.
Wow everyone seems to love P3 but I actually liked P4 better. I mean I really enjoyed both, but P4 was a more immersive experience for me. I should reboot my vita and play it again.
I really felt like P4 had deeper connections and relationships between the characters. It felt more real, and that made the tension in the game more exciting. I love every second of it and am still trying to find a game like it.
Don’t get me wrong, P3 was great also. The gameplay was superb and the characters were all great. But P4 still has a special place in my heart.
I love this series. First played 4 Golden on the Vita, and it was really something that connected with me. I loved the combination slice of life and intriguing mystery, and the characters and voice acting really drew me in. It took me years to actually finish that game, and I'm about halfway through 3 Reload and 5 Royal as well.
However, biggest thing we need to mention here? The soundtracks. Holy fucking shit, these games have the best OSTs I ever damn heard, as someone who plays bass and loves acid jazz and other adjacent music every game hits the spot in different ways.
Admittedly the ones I’ve played the most are 3, 4 and 5, although I’ve tried 2 a couple times a while back. I wouldn’t mind doing it again, I just don’t remember why I kept bouncing off of it.
3 is my favorite, and admittedly I played it at a younger age than I probably should have, as a teenager. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it after getting the ending spoiled to me online, but I always had a fondness for the game and I preordered Reload as soon as I could. I will finish it this time. Mitsuru my love.
4 is my second favorite. Kanji and Naoto in particular really always stood out to me and I used to go by Kanji online for a long time. I made a character who spun into an oc with just traits inspired by him too, who is one of my favorites to write.
5 is fine but my least favorite of the bunch, even though I know a lot of people who only like that one. I felt the pacing was poor and the escalation of the severity of what the adults did wasn’t really going in order. I also didn’t feel any real attachment to the characters, in sharp contrast to the other two games I’ve played.
It still irks me every time a teacher and student romance comes up, or the times the games have been phobic. I wish we had the option to maybe pick between a masc/fem/androgynous looking protag and slap our own pronouns on them and romance who we wanted out of the options regardless of those selections, but I know that’s not ever the game Persona is gonna be. I’m happy they included content warnings at least in Reload.
I’ve only played P3 Portable and Persona 4, on PSP and Vita respectively (though I also have these on Steam now). I have Persona 5 (also Steam), but I’ve yet to start it, since I have quite the backlog to get through. Including P3 and P4!
I got fairly far into P3P before stopping, while I didn’t get as far into P4 before stopping, then restarting, then stopping again (though I got a little further than the first time). My last attempt must’ve been during the pandemic, so not that long ago. It’s not necessarily that I didn’t enjoy them; I just have a thing with JRPGs where I intend to take a short break…which often turns into years-long breaks.
P3P was more enjoyable than P4, IMO. P4 just seemed really slow at the start, while P3, I felt had much better pacing. If I’m remembering the correctly, the latter just dropped you straight in to the weirdness, and it just kept going, where I felt like P4 had more lulls in the action.
I don’t mind the school stuff, though I’ll admit it’s not my favorite thing in the world. I do try to make an effort, rather than just breeze through it. I do hope to one day complete both of them and then get to P5. I very much enjoy their visual styles and music. I also like games that take place in the modern world, so the series is right up my alley.
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