Yeah, that's Persona 4, for the PS2. I'm talking about Shin Megami Tensei 4, for the PS3, which is not mentioned in that article you linked to at all.

Okay sorry man you weren't clear which part you were replying to.  <3

Persona 4, I have to admit, looks like a horrid recycle-bin mess. If the plot is actually decent I might consider picking it up but if it isn't then screw it.

Persona 4 looks awesome! I already love the soundtrack! Wohoo!!

Yeah man I've noticed that the AI is always really smart about using the best abilities.  They don't use attacks that are stronger than they need to, they always target an enemy weakness (if you've analyzed the enemy or hit its weakness before), etc.  They very frequently and smartly disable every enemy in one turn, if they can, so I can use a combo and kill them all right away.  Like I don't get what you and Hiret experienced because the AI is great in my experience.  I only rarely adjust their strategies from Act Freely, and that is for cases where I want someone to heal every round and never attack during a boss or whatever.

Anyway, this game is pretty great!  Not controlling your party is a serious game-breaking flaw though.  It was a really bad idea.  I *do* enjoy the lame social bits because I find the subplots somewhat interesting and funny (world-class fencer who conceals his broken leg from the team, etc).  Although like everyone else who likes this game I will also agree that it's definitely not as good as Persona 2 or most other SMT games.

yeah the AI tended to always do what it should be for me too, save for my party members occasionally using a stronger spell than needed. and I agree with pretty much everything in the second part of the post too so I don't have much to add, other than I do think it would have worked better if it had more urgency like cho said. eventually I only really went to the dungeon on full moons.

also I haven't grabbed FES yet and I doubt I will, but I dunno. I think it is only 30 bucks so I might get it if I see it. can anyone say how much new stuff there really is though?

also I haven't grabbed FES yet and I doubt I will, but I dunno. I think it is only 30 bucks so I might get it if I see it. can anyone say how much new stuff there really is though?

there's an extra chapter after the end thats suppose to be 30 hours, new weapons and armor(and i believe there is a way to crate items yourself) some of which will change the characters appearance(like swim suits and shit), a hard mode, new social links, which of course means new personas(including the infamous Mara), some social links have been moved around(that company president guy now only appears at night) and that arcade in the mall is now usable(the games can increase stats).  There is probably some other stuff as well.

So yeah, its not just a minor update at least. i haven't beaten it yet so i'm going to sell my copy and get FES. you can carry your saves over, you only get to keep you stats and persona encyclopedia, so i gotta start from the beginning again, sadly, but at least i won't be starting over completely.

Just a heads-up, guys:

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/persona/persona4/propaganda/persona410.jpg

Looks like Persona 4 is going to be a direct sequel to Persona 3 (I definitely recognize some of the characters in there from P3) and will probably share it's retarded mechanics.  I guess we'll just have to wait for another Nocturne or something if we want to get back to real hardcore SMT mechanics.

ugh

reading this has made me OFFICIALLY give up hope for the persona series. i bet you didn't wake up this morning and think your internet posting today would be this influential, did you?


regardless, i think i've pretty much given up on atlus games entirely. i have found myself irritated by every single atlus game i've ever played with the exception of, ironically, the first persona game. it's a real shame most people hate the first persona. it's a pretty damn awkward game, but i really loved the way it worked and felt. also demon conversations in persona 1 was arguably the best THING that existed for the psx

alright i guess i'll play this game when i've got nothing better to do and feeling really bored.

i still haven't gotten past the first 10 minutes of devil summoner but i buy these things because the value sky rockets after they're released.

I was really looking forwards to Persona 3 just before it was released... And what did I get?
Some really shitty Roguelike game with an even shittier dating sim slapped on. The Rougelike aspect of the game was just terrible, roaming around some boring and uninspired dungeon where every floor looks the same. It wouldn't have been half as bad if there was something fun to do :[
The dating sim part of the game however... Holy shit. What the hell were the developers thinking when thy added it? Every month you'd go to the new floors of the dungeon... Which would take you exactly 1 day to do. After that there was no reason to go back for another month, you couldn't grind, the dungeon was boring and offered nothing new from going back. So you were left with 29 days of NOTHING TO DO.
Morning... Before School... School... After School... Night
29 fucking times in a row. Maybe once or twice a day you would see some stupid dialog like "I totally heard, blue is the new pink!!!". And if you wanted you could go and talk to some really boring characters who had nothing interesting to say... "Bonjour, J'mapelle gay french guy!" (seriously, the french person was the only NPC I remembered, and that was only because they made him so obviously gay).
The game basically consisted of 1-3 hours of crappy dungeon crawling. And then a few hours of NOTHING. Hopes you enjoy shitty dialog for hours at a time with nothing to do inbetween. Hahahaha.

Also, anyone who says the AI in the game and the battle system in general isn't retarded is well... A retard.
Seriously, I can't remember the number of times I lost a fight because of absolutely fucking stupid reasons. "Hey look at that Junpei! The enemy has one hp left and you could kill it in a single hit and win the fight"... "Junpei: THEN I WILL FUCKING DEBUFF IT INSTEAD AND REDUCE IT'S DEFENCE!!!". And then the next enemy turn the enemy will pull some move out of it's ass and win the fight, like an instant kill to the entire party move (which after a few hours into the game every enemy had).
Another fun one was when everyone would go into a healing frenzy, and keep healing each other, when they could have just as easily killed the enemy in 2-3 hits and not needed to heal. And they would do this every god damn turn until you finally got to kill the monster.
One that also happened a lot was 3 out of 4 enemies knocked down, Junpei is up and can easily know the 4th down, letting us use a finishing move and win the fight. What does he do? Sure he knocks the 4th enemy down, and hit its the other 3 enemies as well, making them stand up. Great job Junpei!
Honestly, if you could have controlled every character in battle the game would have been a hell of a lot less frustrating (and probably no challenge at all).

Also... Holy shit. The music was fucking terrible. When not in the dungeon you get this annoying song that plays everywhere and it is basically "I couldn't nananaanana!!!" over and over and over again (I am pretty sure there was also a rap song that played once in a while which was really bad and basically consisted of "BODY... BODY!!"). Almost like the singer wanted to sing a song, but only knew one verse of it and didn't even know the lyrics to the entire verse. And then summer came, and along with it this horrible French sounding song. At that point I basically muted the game and never unmuted it. I think the only song I could even listen to was the song played when you were in the Velvet Room.

Also, anyone who says the AI in the game and the battle system in general isn't retarded is well... A retard.
Seriously, I can't remember the number of times I lost a fight because of absolutely fucking stupid reasons. "Hey look at that Junpei! The enemy has one hp left and you could kill it in a single hit and win the fight"... "Junpei: THEN I WILL FUCKING DEBUFF IT INSTEAD AND REDUCE IT'S DEFENCE!!!". And then the next enemy turn the enemy will pull some move out of it's ass and win the fight, like an instant kill to the entire party move (which after a few hours into the game every enemy had).
Another fun one was when everyone would go into a healing frenzy, and keep healing each other, when they could have just as easily killed the enemy in 2-3 hits and not needed to heal. And they would do this every god damn turn until you finally got to kill the monster.
One that also happened a lot was 3 out of 4 enemies knocked down, Junpei is up and can easily know the 4th down, letting us use a finishing move and win the fight. What does he do? Sure he knocks the 4th enemy down, and hit its the other 3 enemies as well, making them stand up. Great job Junpei!
Honestly, if you could have controlled every character in battle the game would have been a hell of a lot less frustrating (and probably no challenge at all).

any sort of halfway decent use of the tactics command would avoid just about all these problems(espically with junpei since he can't heal and avoids his one de/buff spells like the plague). of course i agree that it would have been much better with full control of your party.

I'd just like to note that i've had my guys do stupid shit plenty of times, but if you take the time to keep your guys under control you can usually avoid most problems and being an smt game, getting fucked over by one mistake isn't exactly anything new, just this time you have AI control teammates to bitch at instead of yourself.

I think the only song I could even listen to was the song played when you were in the Velvet Room.

this is the only song my mom ever complained about hearing and she is voice and piano teacher(apparently the chick singing is out of tune)

I was also hoping that Mark would pull out a pistol and bust a cap on Nate's ass.

when you get the chance to choose between meeting the woman or the man later on, you will probably wanna choose the woman...

reading this has made me OFFICIALLY give up hope for the persona series. i bet you didn't wake up this morning and think your internet posting today would be this influential, did you?

Well there's still an entire Shin Megami Tensei franchise

regardless, i think i've pretty much given up on atlus games entirely. i have found myself irritated by every single atlus game i've ever played with the exception of, ironically, the first persona game. 

Well Atlus' bread and butter is selling ridiculous jpop RPGs to America so you sort of get what you get! 

this is the only song my mom ever complained about hearing and she is voice and piano teacher(apparently the chick singing is out of tune)

Actually it is a synth.  The notes are most certainly in tune but maybe they aren't "wrong" enough for your mom because singers never actually nail exactly the right note the way a synthesizer does and it might kind of freak her out.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, one of the notes might have been sampled a little flat.

btw my persona is nebiros (creepy as fuck puppetmasteryyy)

Dude I was thinking of making a Persona Compendium here but now this thread just became another generic discussion thread...should I just make a new thread for the compendium?

BTW Im guessing Nebiros is of the [Devil ][/Devil] rigth?

ahaha i don't know man!  don't get me wrong, i liked persona 1 and remember playing and SCHOOKIDS and TALKING DEMONS and it was all such a huge departure from what i was used to in the genre, but i just couldn't quite get over the wizardry-like dungeons you had to wander aimlessly through, or the ridiculous map, or really any of the other absurd design decisions the developers made.  in spite of all that, though, i like it a lot just from the fact that it did something really weird and interesting alone.  i'm curious, though, why you think it's better than persona 2.

i want to stress that i did not say better!!!! i just preferred persona 1.

i mean shit, yeah persona 2 is obviously a better made game. it's infinitely cleaner and more coherent. the story was told a lot better, and made quite a bit more sense(although i didn't like how we were basically playing persona 2.5). but after all these definite improvements i felt like quite a bit of STYLE was lost, and nothing else was really GAINED to offset the loss of the thing that I found to be the game's selling point. and it's not like the sequel was that much more substantial than the first one in terms of sheer ideas(if at all). it just executed itself in a much more professional manner. but i think the sloppiness of the first one ultimately created this odd sense of disorientation and contemporary chaos that i've never seen before in a game.

also, i STRONGLY preferred the music and the monster dialogue in persona 1. particularly the monster dialogue. you can't even tell if it's ENGRISH or SUPPOSED TO BE THAT DISORIENTING, but regardless, it's definitely some of the most remarkable game writing i've ever seen.

i mean, i'm not really ARGUING THIS POINT here because digging a style(primarily for its sloppiness) is remarkably subjective, but this is really just my take on it. it's pretty infrequent that i see a game that manages to really nail some sort of unique style.

Well Atlus' bread and butter is selling ridiculous jpop RPGs to America so you sort of get what you get!

eh, i don't know if i'd summarize the history of atlus as JPOP. sure, it's always been there to an extent, but it's hit something of a breaking point with persona 3 where the jpop finally overlapped the distinctly atlus feel. i don't think it's all in my head when i say that they've changed direction a bit.

plus, i've grown pretty weary of the smt/dds games. they always start off REALLY COOL but i always grow genuinely sick of them by the half-way point.

also i always see it as being a TERRIBLE SIGN when a game company turns their flagship title into a mmorpg. i can only IMAGINE how badly this will turn out for the company(see: squaresoft)

Dude I was thinking of making a Persona Compendium here but now this thread just became another generic discussion thread...should I just make a new thread for the compendium?

BTW Im guessing Nebiros is of the [Devil Arcana] rigth?

Nah Nebiros is a Hermit persona that can be fused after completing one of Elizabeth's fusion requests. He has the best moveset for the Fear ailment in the game.