Shin Megami Tensei and other Atlus games.

[PrimaGaga 1025]

Yeah thats actually wut perked my interest in the game!

[T1g 1503]

oh yeah i totally played that demo when it first came out

[Fierce Muffin 490]

Also, on the topic of P1, I have no idea what I'm doing after three battles, this isn't P3 or P4 and I'm scared. But, I know that after I get used to everything and have more battles that I'll understand it in time. It's just so different and not to today's standards, but that will only make it so much sweeter when I learn how to abuse it.

 

So, I've finally finished this today. It was a decent experience, I definitely enjoyed the story a lot more than the gameplay, though.

 

The path that I went made the characters rather likeable, besides Brown... maybe. It's cool how in each room that wasn't first person, you could read what the character had to say about the situation... which is why Brown is just kind of banana because he never really says anything about anything but himself.

 

But more on the gameplay because it was waaaay flawed and they should've fixed it up in the remake. I could be wrong and the Japanese version is decent with this, but when you analyze an enemy, you're given their attacks, type, subtype, etc. these are all decent and most likely correct. You then go and look at their weaknesses/strengths and everything is awful. Sometimes a weakness or strength will be missing like a REFLECT: [X] which is extremely important information. Sometimes, a weakness is even wrong or not even visible. Speaking of not even being visible, status effects have their very own weakness/strength list but it's invisible, I tried looking online for anything even related to it and couldn't find anything. Not one for demons nor for Persona.The only reason I bring this up is because the final boss used an attack called "Paralyze Puncture" which is, I assume, electric damage with a chance to Paralyze. My whole party was Paralyzed.

 

"The party was annihilated"

 

Everyone was still alive. Lost an hour of progress. I then searched for a Persona that nulls/reflects Paralyze and couldn't find anything on the matter, yet all Persona have a status effect "chart" on them that has all their nulls and reflects and weaks to every status effect. Why doesn't the game or anything have a chart for this or just a way to tell what a Persona is strong and weak to from their order/subtype?

 

The encounter rate also should've been lowered as well and to coincide with that, an increase in experience to make up for what's being lost. Maybe more along Strange Journey's encounter rate as well as an item that allows you to increase/decrease it like in Strange Journey. Quite useful for when you want and do not want to fight enemies.

 

The level difference the demons make in the last part of the game is also pretty outrageous. Most of the time, I'd like to think the gap between each are is around 5-10 levels, with areas in between still getting you experience. In the last 4 floors of the game, there's a difference of 10 levels.

 

??????????

 

I'm not saying I had much trouble with this, but still, this was p. crazy.

 

Other than these flaws, it was a p. decent game. It was surprising to find such a small amount of Personas, though, considering how many there are in Persona 3 and 4. Four different Arcanas only had one Persona in them. One of the Arcanas(Fool) can only be created through Fusion Accidents. And there are three Fool Personas. Strange that the hard to make Arcana has three compared to multiple ones that have a single Persona, but it doesn't really matter. There are enough to keep your party diverse. I wish when fusing with a Persona Artifact that I could add a Spell stone/tablet.

 

On another note, I kind of wish the voice actors voiced their lines of dialogue. This made me connect more with the characters in Persona 3 and 4, I feel. It added some life to them. Sadly, it only happens in battle("Persona", "Aghhh!", etc.) and cutscenes which while even though there are a total of 42, seldom have any dialogue and the ones that have a decent amount of talking are the ones with Philemon, who isn't even a member of the party, but he's important and the voice is great.

 

I guess I've just been comparing it back to P3/P4 the entire game so it FEELS bad because I've played better made games. It obviously started the series off great and don't bring up if...., this one's actually called Persona. It still has a great story that I'd play again to see the character interactions with a new character since you can have 1 of 5 different characters in the SEBEC route, which is pretty cool.

 

The amount of different elements in the game adds decent variety to battles, with stuff like Gry, Zan, Frei, Eiha, and even a different "element" for each weapon and gun type. This is something it has over Persona 3 and 4 for me, which completely eliminates everything in the "Force"(Gry, Zan, Frei) type except Megido which was turned into the "Almighty" element. It also removed Eiha(Curse) and Kouha(Miracle) and their variants, which were kind of neat. They did damage over time after their initial damage and if you absorb Curse or Miracle, you gain health over time. Their removal isn't so concerning, though.

 

Another thing it has over Persona 3 and 4 to me is the way "auto-battle" works. In 3 and 4, you can only press Triangle and have your whole party use their physical attack, which when faced against an enemy that reflects/absorbs/nulls/resists physical is rather unfortunate. In P1, you can select from "replay last action", "physical attack", "gun attack", or "selected actions"(Actions selected in a menu. It's basically like your own attack palette) which is EXTREMELY convenient because they allow a large array of 5 actions that cut down on battle times when you're going through a dungeon. I don't understand why they chose to get rid of this feature in later games like P3, P4, and Strange Journey since it makes going through dungeons a lot more enjoyable.

 

Music was apparently redone by Meguro to make it more "Persona-like", maybe? I haven't listened to the original but the music in the game was very enjoyable and engaging like the rest of Meguro's works. He just finds a way to make every game's soundtrack unique from Catherine to Strange Journey to Persona 4.

 

 

So, overall it was enjoyable and would've probably been more so if it were my first Persona game instead of my third. Will probably start up Persona 2 next since now I know how the combat works and how to get demons' cards to make Personas. I hear the story and characters in P2 are apparently the greatest Atlus has ever done in those two regards. I very much look forward to completing it and its sequel.

 

So concludes my overly long and horribly worded review about Persona 1.Hopefully you made it okay through my trainwreck of a post.

[Chimetals 344]

gawd, persona 1....i will beat that, one day. but honest to goodness, i was using a guide for recruiting demons, which consisted of not "X type = Y ability" but "use this on this exact demon"

 

maybe id have better feelings about it if i had managed strange journey? but my first SMT game was devil survivor, lol, so even P3 feels weird. "what do you mean i have one team? and what are all these bloody status effects? what do they even dooooo" was about where i was initially :s

[Fierce Muffin 490]

One fun thing I didn't mention in that post was that I actually wrote down all the eager responses for specific demon traits in a notepad file. It was pretty handy when I'd come across some banana 12 years down the line with some trait combo that I wrote down near the beginning of the game.

 

I looked up a list of all the eager/happy/scared responses, though, and apparently some trait combos can have different responses based on whether they're male or female, so I'd have these eager responses and then they wouldn't work and I'd just put "?" next to the response and then erase it and put the new one. Erasing the truth... that's not what Persona is about...

 

Recruiting demons is banana, though. Like, if you didn't do what I did/used a guide, getting those delicious cards would be a horrible, horrible chore.

 

 

It's not that bad, though. Maybe one day I'll play Devil Survivor... but I've worn out the JRPG in me and need to play some other genre before I pick up P2 or Devil Survivor.

 

Oh, also, Persona 4 Golden is on sale on Amazon for the next week if anyone wants to buy it. $10 off, meaning it's $30 right now instead of $40. Free shipping, too.

[Luneth Uchiha 72]

I noticed Gamestop was having this sale as well, as It was only $30 when I checked yesterday. I'm thinking of getting P1 and P2 soon, but they won't be played for a bit. P3 wore me out with grinding, and I need to wait some time before I can grind again (By playing Monster Hunter). Also Soul Hackers in less than a month.

[Chimetals 344]

One fun thing I didn't mention in that post was that I actually wrote down all the eager responses for specific demon traits in a notepad file. It was pretty handy when I'd come across some banana 12 years down the line with some trait combo that I wrote down near the beginning of the game.

 

I looked up a list of all the eager/happy/scared responses, though, and apparently some trait combos can have different responses based on whether they're male or female, so I'd have these eager responses and then they wouldn't work and I'd just put "?" next to the response and then erase it and put the new one. Erasing the truth... that's not what Persona is about...

 

Recruiting demons is banana, though. Like, if you didn't do what I did/used a guide, getting those delicious cards would be a horrible, horrible chore.

 

 

It's not that bad, though. Maybe one day I'll play Devil Survivor... but I've worn out the JRPG in me and need to play some other genre before I pick up P2 or Devil Survivor.

 

Oh, also, Persona 4 Golden is on sale on Amazon for the next week if anyone wants to buy it. $10 off, meaning it's $30 right now instead of $40. Free shipping, too.

yea, the guide i saw also mentioned that for card getting, you wanted eager and happy maxed. from experience i wanna say that eager/scared and happy/scared resulted in things fairly frequently as well. eager was generally the quality that got you things, though eager/angry usually resulted in the demon giving you... damage.

[Fierce Muffin 490]

LET'S GO!

 

So, I was in an SMT thread yesterday and I happily came across a post that was sadly talking about how the remake of Persona 1 didn't include the original songs and he linked to three different songs, one being Karma(Kama) Palace:

 

 

Like, how amazing is this? I love the "Let's go!" throughout the song and just the 90's/80's feel to it. Compare to this:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymC63Wbvzuc

 

Although, I do have to say that Shoji Meguro did want to go for more of a "Persona 3 or 4" feel with his music this time, which he definitely accomplished with the redone tracks. The only problem is, you can only listen to the new music, which is obviously a huge flaw in the remake. Like, if you were allowed to listen to both, it wouldn't even have caused this post or at least not as big of a post about the old music versus the new music. This problem was fixed in the Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment remakes for PSP where you can switch between the old and new music freely, so that'll be fun to play and listen to.

 

 

Also fantastic. I do have to say that the music doesn't really sound like Persona as it is now, but that's forgivable since at the time Persona was still Shin Megami Tensei(sort of), but just a spinoff series that was more lighthearted, the genre of music used for it didn't exactly need or try to be as different as it is nowadays with such upbeat and hip hop tunes in Persona 3 and 4.

 

 

 

I wonder how late I am to this "debate" of sorts between the two. Also, finding a download for this was bananas awful. Google, Nyaa, and Kickasstorrents were all like "Do you want P1P's soundtrack? Of course you do."

 

 

And one last cool song with two people talking while one of the dungeon songs goes on.

[Teto 2609]

Actual Persona 3 Movie PV btw 

http://gematsu.com/2013/03/persona-3-the-movie-hits-japan-this-fall

 

For some reason the main character's listed as "Makoto Yuki"???

[Chimetals 344]

For some reason the main character's listed as "Makoto Yuki"???

they always gotta name the main characters. like yuu narukami/seto souji in P4's anime/manga, or now Hibiki Kuze in DS2.

[Chimetals 344]

so i picked up devil summoner for 3ds today, and once again, i cant judge anything about the game yet since i need to pick a name and a handle before doing anything. it doesnt help that the protagonist, who i dont think even appears in-game(?), but is plastered on the box, OP sequence, and everything else, happens to remind me of some sort of junpei/dojima hybrid with a side of douche. something about his dumb smile just bothers me.

 

im trying to get used to it, but i still have issues with the older SMT character pictures and such. desu was my first game, so art like p1 always throws me. and this game is loaded like that.

 

im also debating whether or not i want to leave the voices on, since the stuff ive played before has fallen under the category of what i call persona dubbing--its not trainwreck awful, but it bothers the hell out of me, and i cant quite pinpoint why. either its everyone being in everything, or that the actors dont seem to give a single shit about anything going on at the time, ever. i really wish SMT would start giving the japanese voices as an option--ono daisuke was in this game, for puppys sake.

[Fierce Muffin 490]

Not a big deal, but I'd refer to your game as Soul Hackers and not "Devil Summoner" since the original Devil Summoner is just... "Devil Summoner", while that one has a subtitle. Just putting that out there.

 

Don't have much else to respond with, but I can say that I am amazed at all the stuff Atlus is giving for pre-ordering SMT IV,

 

 

Soundtrack, guidebook, artwork in that guidebook, and vidja game. Giant case to hold all of it, too. Maybe I'm a sheep, but I'm lovin' it. Even if I won't even be able to play it until I get a 3DS... same with my copy of P4G... the ultimate woe.