Nah, I’ll get through it. I still enjoy the battle system and fusion, though the latter loses a bit of its charm without s.links and the compendium. I’m just a little disappointed, is all.
I think the Answer is pretty damn bad, and not worth playing even for diehard Atlus fans.
The story is almost non-existent, and the new robot character is pretty lame. I already hated “Aigis” in the first one. I found that the new lines of dialogue are piss-poor.
As others have already stated, the game simply doesn’t work well when you take out most of the story, the ingenious social interaction system, the passing of time and stuff like that, all that’s left is a repetitive and dull dungeon crawler. Almost nothing happens to the lovable NPCs of the original game when all’s said and done.
What insulted me the most is that virtually ALL the bosses are just ordinary enemies with palette swaps. It’s as if almost no effort went into the conception of this.
Just avoid and wait for Persona 4.
I thought the Answer was easy, quick, and fun, myself. But clearly this was done by the Atlus equivalent of a low-budget “live team”, they obviously had extremely limited resources for it.
Well, play this if you loved the dungeon crawling in the original above all else, otherwise there’s no point.
Yeah, the Answer is 99% dungeon crawl, 1% wacky anime cut scenes. Only bother if you really liked the dungeon crawl portion of P3. On the plus side, it’s really challenging (I didn’t realize how much I used the compendium as a crutch to breed super-personas), while at the same time advancement is accellerated (personas gain a skill every level, which was usually spread out to every 2 or 3 levels in the original).
Fuck golden shadows. I spent forever running floors 5-14 to try to get the Wealth Hand for a request. Found it once but couldn’t manage to sneak up on it. Is there a trick to this or is it supposed to be incredibly annoying?
The rest of the game is really addictive, despite nothing really standing out yet (somehow the sum is more than the parts).
It is annoying, but it is training in a way. That extra time learning how to stalk golden mobs will save you a lot of frustration on floors with much more cataclysmic encounters available.
Key thing: angle of approach. You have to be as close to exactly behind the mob as possible, in a straight line with their direction of movement. You have to walk slowly until you’re within ringe (tilting the analog stick slightly). And you have to ensure that there’s a variety of weapon types (strike, pierce, and slash) across your party if possible once you’re in the fight, because the best way to kill them is to force everyone to do non sp or physical attacks. Every mob is critically weak to one and only one of these types, and will die instantly when hit by it. Don’t waste your time with spells and high damage hp abilities if you can help it.
Early on, I found using a bow the most likely way to catch them. The reload time sucks, but you don’t have to get quite as close to shoot. Later on when you’re punching them to catch them with minimal effort you’ll laugh at these times.
Yeah – once you’re in battle with them, just hit Rush (Triangle) to make sure no one does anything stupid like some 25% HP-cost attack that misses entirely.
Every now and then you’ll hit a floor with nothing but gold shadows. These are good floors.
Okay, but is it just me, or do you get precisely twenty seven and one half seconds on those floors before the freaking Reaper shows up to chase you around like a small child with a sheet over his head? You can’t fight him (like a real child), so you just have to ignore him as best you can (like a real child), but the degree to which he gets on your nerves ultimately just drives you to go somewhere else (like a real child).
I believe the designers made it so on golden shadow floors that the reaper will spawn fast. I second Lizard’s strategy to get them, you really need to slow down to a crawl to sneak up on them. After that it’s luck that the right type of attack will hit before it runs away.
The reaper does show up faster on floors with either all gold enemies or no enemies. I adore the design on him, too, having finally fought him very late in the game. Very well done.
I haven’t had any trouble with the reaper. As soon as I hear Death is approaching, or accidently pick a cursed card, I high tail it off the floor. I haven’t had to fight him (and presumably die, yet). Also, I believe standing still is what brings forth the reaper, not an arbitrary time length, though I could be wrong. As for the rare shadows, the trick I use is wait until you have a clear run at its back, and charge and wack it. You really need to be exactly behind it, though. Then it won’t detect you.
On another note, when I was about half way through Persona 3, the standalone FES expansion came out, and considering how hard (and expensive) it was to get my hands on the original after time, I nabbed this one right away. Now, when I finish the game on the original, can I transfer my save files to the FES for the extra content, or does it work some other way?
Ok, rushing the golden shadows wasn’t so bad. Slowly sneaking up on them just wasn’t working, maybe because I suck at using the knobs on the controller to walk straight. So now I’m not angry at the game anymore.
On another note, when I was about half way through Persona 3, the standalone FES expansion came out, and considering how hard (and expensive) it was to get my hands on the original after time, I nabbed this one right away. Now, when I finish the game on the original, can I transfer my save files to the FES for the extra content, or does it work some other way?
I don’t think anything carries over to the extra content since you can’t use the compendium and your stats don’t matter, but I could be wrong.
Probably the best bet is to stop playing the vanilla edition and just transfer your save file over to Fes. You have to start from scratch, but any persona’s you’ve unlocked are maintained, as is all progress in charm/academics/courage leveling for s.links. Plus some other minor aspects carry over.
Though you do start over, the additional content and adjustments added to the campaign give the experience a slightly fresh twist with a far greater payoff than if you slog through the original for the non-ending. Just something to consider.
The brand new epilogue dungeon crawl quest can be started anytime though in Fes, and is entirely segregated from the main adventure, but the new content in the campaign proper really is worth a reboot.
obDiary: Finished the Answer! 46+ hours. Died 5 times fighting the final boss only because I evenly leveled the party up, and so they were all much weaker than me, and couldn’t even soak up a single Almighty attack. I had to bring Akihiko with me, and set him up to cast all the Ma*nda. I can now happily file this game and its guide book away on my bookcase, to be reopened 2010 for the playthrough of FES main adventure. (PS3 backward compatibility works for this, I hope?)
If you have the original 60 gig PS3, it works perfectly. The other ones, I have no idea.
P3:
I haven’t played it in months - I think I just started chatting up Mitsuri (the smart, serious redhead). Picked up the P3 FES. Should I just finish P3 real quick and load FES, or start FES directly?
FES has two parts, the Journey and the Answer. The Journey is pretty much just the main campaign with some added good stuff: additional personas, more Elizabeth requests, Weapon Fusions (basically takes a Persona and turns it into a weapon, useful at times), a new social link (Aigis/Aeon), and in general made improving stats and social links easier. However, its still pretty much the campaign over again with very little new stuff in way of story or Tartarus. Ask yourself if you’d like to replay the campaign, only slightly better, and that will tell you whether or not you should restart and play the Journey.
The Answer, on the otherhand, is original content that takes place three months or so after the end of the Journey and is completely self-contained. Its also annoyingly difficult (for as far as I’ve gotten, you do not get a compendium or SLinks to improve fusion to say nothing of just having a steeper difficulty curve.
works good on my launch 20gb machine
Is there anything more embarrassing than killing yourself in the very first turn of a fight by casually unleashing an AE wind attack on a group on enemies that you’d forgotten have the ability to oh, I dunno, reflect wind?
Oh yeah, there is, when you do so without having saved yet after finding a bunch of good equipment on the previous floor.