Hey, everyone, so I started playing Persona 4 Golden a few days ago, and would like to discuss the story here!
My boyfriend has beaten both Persona 4 regular and Golden and has been giving me vague hints and advice (“Only go into the dungeon on rainy days”) but I’d like to discuss this with more people.
I’m at April 29, have just rescued Yukiko after attempting the Castle three times. I’m pretty decent at battling, but hit some bad luck close to the boss fight with Shadow Yukiko which made it somewhat difficult.
I loved Shadow Yukiko’s design and the Charming Prince. It seems some real thought was put behind it. I also usually hate mascot characters, but Teddie’s actually okay. Also, I’ve played about a third of Persona 3 Portable and it seems to me that Yosuke is a better character than Junpei. Junpei seems to resent you if you play as a girl in P3P.
Yosuke bothers me. He is a polarizing character, people are either fine with him or absolutely hate him. I fall in the latter camp. I rarely bring him along in the dungeons as a result.
I can’t remember @bmo, did you end up finishing Persona 4 Golden?
I remember this battle being tricky. I think I ended up just leveling up a bit, and it became much easier.
The rainy day strategy is solid. I would do that, and just try and clear floors until I was as high a level as the highest level monsters I was facing. Then I would move on to the next area.
@bmo Why do you find Yosuke distasteful? He can be a bit whiny, but I am curious about your take on him.
Haven’t played much the past couple of days. I can say I’m really impressed so far with how Nanako’s written. Normally, little kids are either dumb, or act too much like adults. Nanako Dojima and Clementine from the Walking Dead are the two most realistic minors in gaming.
When it comes to Personas, what should I be focusing on? Right now, I’ve been focusing on leveling up weaker ones so the fusions will have more moves, but I’m not sure this is the best strategy.
@peter, I completed one play through. I have yet to complete a second for the full experience of the game.
I find that most difficult fights can be dealt with by additional levelling also. I tend to go into the dungeon on more than rainy days, depending on how many things I need to do in town. I also tend to run through a dungeon several times, up to the top and back down repeatedly, to gain the experience needed for later major fights.
Ah, Yosuke. I could spend a lot of time on this subject. But to avoid all my issues with the game (which I think is a mix of both problematic and exceptional elements) I will simply say Yosuke is a terrible friend. He is selfish, mean and a bully in ways that do not also describe the rest of the group. He embodies characteristics that at first I thought were due to Yosuke’s need to warm up to people, but that later you realize are just part of his crappy personality. I don’t like the way he treats others and he generally never really redeems himself throughout the game. It comes down to the fact that the entire group is made up of sympathetic characters with interesting portrayals that I want to spend more time with than I do Yosuke.
I agree that Naoko is well written. And you have a good point about both she and Clementine. They are excellent portrayals.
I experimented a lot with levelling various and varied personas but eventually settled on a selection with maximum flexibility. Enough variation to get me through any fight. I’d have to go back to my save file to check actual personas used but I generally covered the various types of attack (physical, elemental etc) as well as made sure I had sufficient support personas. I tried to balance my team by filling out Yu’s roster with whatever my team members were lacking.
I should add that a key to personas is fusion. I think that for a good portion of the game I experimented with fusions to gain a set of personas with the exact mix of stats and skills that I felt worked.
I’ll look for those traits. They seem to be hidden behind a veil of congeniality and agreeableness that I tend to often fall for in real life as well. It takes me a while to see someone’s bad traits for what they are. Guess I’m a optimist. But my boyfriend did say Yosuke doesn’t get as much character development as the rest and that his Social Link storyline is meh. Junpei is still The Worst though if you’re a girl. “I’m the only boy in the group; I should be the leader.” Shut up.
So focus more on fusions and what I can get for fusions rather than leveling. Also, boyfriend said it’s pointless to level up a persona past when it learns its final move. Okay. I have a feeling I’ll be trucking along better with fusions once I have more/better Social Link ranks. The game says I’m doing good at that.
As for Persona 5, I heard the dungeons are static and not randomly generated? I dunno about that; the formula works. I also thought Tokyo Mirage Sessions was sooooo boring. Maybe they are planning to make dungeons less replayable so you have more free time for stat-raising activities and…whatever they are turning Social Links into?
Agreed. stick to levelling other personas at that point. Also consider using a maxed persona in a fusion because that will often open up new possibilities. Fusion is a bit of a gamble and a bit of a science. There are guides to fusion available but I enjoyed going into it blind.
Yes and no. The layout is static but enemy position and type is randomized. And you can run a dungeon as often as you like, provided you’re not bored.
He seems very eager to please at first. But as the group grows he starts to show bullying tendencies. He’s also super bigoted in ways that I understand may reflect some of Japanese culture, but he is far worse than anyone else in the game and doesn’t really show nuance or complexity. He’s just not my kind of guy sadly.
As for Junpei, I don’t have first hand experience, having not yet played Persona 3.