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tenshinoakuma) wrote2011-01-15 11:49 pm
tenshinoakuma) wrote2011-01-15 11:49 pm
[P3:FES] Thoughts + TST things
When I first started RPing Joshua, I never, ever, imagined that one day he'd get engaged, among other things. As funny as the whole thing is, it's even more entertaining watching the enthusiasm other people are showing planning the wedding.
Went to a friend's house and played some P3:FES. Specifically, the Answer. I've heard that the general consensus on the Answer is that 1) it's a really hard game because of automatic hard mode, and 2) the characterisation and/or the story of it is a piece of crap. I'd like to say that based on what I've played so far (I'm up to the second boss in the third dungeon), I have to disagree. I'm only going to talk about the gameplay aspect of it for today, as I'm quite sleepy right now.
Maybe it's because I'd already started playing P4 on Hard Mode, and maybe because I played the original P3, meaning I didn't get the 'improved AI', but I haven't found the Answer any harder than when I was playing P3. The early levels might be a bit tough, since you have a very limited arsenal of Personas at your disposal, but once you have a decent array of Personas, the game becomes relatively easy if you back attack all the normal enemies and have a suitable party for the bosses. There a few (additional) difficulties the Answer has compared to the Journey, though:
1) Like P4, you don't get a free heal before the boss battles that you get in the Journey if you teleport to the bottom floor. There's a save point and a teleporter, and you can teleport to the central area for free heals. However, there's no teleporter back until you defeat the boss, meaning you need to run all the way back to the boss floor. This can be a bit annoying if you happened to bring party members who are inappropriate for the boss fight (e.g. Having Akihiko in your party against a boss that spams hard hitting bufu spells). On the upside, there are far fewer floors between doors (teleporters) than there are in Tartarus, so it doesn't take so long to run back up.
2) You don't have any decent gear or any cash, at least in the beginning. So none of the awesome accessories you had initially. If this was the Journey, this would be okay, but in the Answer, the enemies start off quite hard hitting, so the difference between having and not having accessories can be quite pronounced until you do get some.
3) Party AI. If you have a really good grasp on how your party's AI works (I do), then this difficulty becomes significantly lessened. However, there are still times that the AI will do something really dumb, or that of the tactic choices, you know you won't be able to force the AI into doing what you want. On the other hand, sometimes the AI doing 'dumb' things can reveal some glaring weaknesses in the boss fights.
4) Certain dungeons dicking certain party members. Don't bother bringing Akihiko to the second dungeon. Most of the enemies usually resist BOTH strike/zio attacks, ranging from just being strong against them, to repelling them. Plus, the boss spams bufu attacks, so Akihiko's going to spend most of the time with his ass glued to the ground... when he isn't dead.
5) Speaking of Akihiko, he starts off at that level range where none of his skills are all that useful. Sonic Punch is really weak, especially when every other person with an attack skill has a higher level one. His zio skills aren't particularly strong at this moment, and Ken actually has the stronger ones. He still has Dia when every other person who can heal has a stronger heal. Yeah, he still has his status reducing skills but those have always been difficult to get the AI to use the one you want, when you want it. I know he's going to improve significantly later at higher levels, but yeah, he's at that one level range where he's just generally outclassed by everyone else. Pretty ironic when he's just returned to boxing again.
However, there are also additions that make the Answer easy:
1) Metis, Metis, Metis. This is the party member that is heavily broken. IIRC, her Persona's stats seem rather average, biased towards physical, but don't let that fool you; she can easily take out enemies that you'd struggle with otherwise. For starters, he Persona is like Castor. No particular strengths, but no particular weaknesses either, so you can take her to any battle without having any issues with enemies striking her weakness. But what really makes her broken is her Orgia mode. Like Aigis, she can go into overdrive, essentially cranking up her damage by about an additional 50%. This lasts about 3-4 turns before she overheats, which leaves her unable to do anything and extremely vulnerable to any attack. You also cannot control her while she's in Orgia mode, though the AI is generally pretty smart in it. HOWEVER, when Metis is in Orgia mode, in addition to her dealing more damage, she also does not consume ANY HP or SP when executing skills. Essentially you can freely let her spam her strongest attacks without worrying about her bringing herself to low health from skills, or her ever running out of SP. Sure, when she overheats, if she gets hit, she'll probably keel over and die, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. When she's overheated, usually cooling down takes like 2+ turns, but reviving her after she's been killed means she's instantly back up on her feet and ready to lay down the hurt. If you don't think spamming Orgia mode on bosses is a good idea, then at least use it after the bosses have taken damage, so you can use her to end the boss turns earlier. At the very least, on normal enemies, Metis being constantly in Orgia mode makes fights much, much easier.
2) In the Journey, I remember the gear you buy from shops generally being better than the ones you found in Tartarus. However, in the Answer, the weapons you find and gain from the shuffles are often either better, or at par with the weapons you can buy from the shops. The game is pretty generous with them, and if you're good at shuffles (both in gaining them and in picking the right card), you can keep all your party up to date with their weapons despite having not all that much cash to buy gear. Some of the armour you find is also a lot better than what you can buy, but they're harder to find since you can only find them in treasure chests.
3) Boss fights where there's three enemies: two minions and one boss. While the boss may not have a weakness, in the earlier dungeons at least, often the minions do. This basically allows you to incapacitate them, meaning you take a LOT less damage in what would be an otherwise painful fight. You've gotta set up your party AI in such a way that they leave downed enemies alone, though.
4) Yukari doesn't seem to die as much.
As always, I'm still a few levels underlevelled, but I'm not finding the battles too difficult despite the hard mode. You just need to always get initiative on normal encounters, have a good grasp on party AI, know how to use Aigis' ability to have multiple Personas to best fit the situation, and know when to not bother with a normal encounter and escape. Be smart with your SP and remember that HP is an easily replaceable resource.
Went to a friend's house and played some P3:FES. Specifically, the Answer. I've heard that the general consensus on the Answer is that 1) it's a really hard game because of automatic hard mode, and 2) the characterisation and/or the story of it is a piece of crap. I'd like to say that based on what I've played so far (I'm up to the second boss in the third dungeon), I have to disagree. I'm only going to talk about the gameplay aspect of it for today, as I'm quite sleepy right now.
Maybe it's because I'd already started playing P4 on Hard Mode, and maybe because I played the original P3, meaning I didn't get the 'improved AI', but I haven't found the Answer any harder than when I was playing P3. The early levels might be a bit tough, since you have a very limited arsenal of Personas at your disposal, but once you have a decent array of Personas, the game becomes relatively easy if you back attack all the normal enemies and have a suitable party for the bosses. There a few (additional) difficulties the Answer has compared to the Journey, though:
1) Like P4, you don't get a free heal before the boss battles that you get in the Journey if you teleport to the bottom floor. There's a save point and a teleporter, and you can teleport to the central area for free heals. However, there's no teleporter back until you defeat the boss, meaning you need to run all the way back to the boss floor. This can be a bit annoying if you happened to bring party members who are inappropriate for the boss fight (e.g. Having Akihiko in your party against a boss that spams hard hitting bufu spells). On the upside, there are far fewer floors between doors (teleporters) than there are in Tartarus, so it doesn't take so long to run back up.
2) You don't have any decent gear or any cash, at least in the beginning. So none of the awesome accessories you had initially. If this was the Journey, this would be okay, but in the Answer, the enemies start off quite hard hitting, so the difference between having and not having accessories can be quite pronounced until you do get some.
3) Party AI. If you have a really good grasp on how your party's AI works (I do), then this difficulty becomes significantly lessened. However, there are still times that the AI will do something really dumb, or that of the tactic choices, you know you won't be able to force the AI into doing what you want. On the other hand, sometimes the AI doing 'dumb' things can reveal some glaring weaknesses in the boss fights.
4) Certain dungeons dicking certain party members. Don't bother bringing Akihiko to the second dungeon. Most of the enemies usually resist BOTH strike/zio attacks, ranging from just being strong against them, to repelling them. Plus, the boss spams bufu attacks, so Akihiko's going to spend most of the time with his ass glued to the ground... when he isn't dead.
5) Speaking of Akihiko, he starts off at that level range where none of his skills are all that useful. Sonic Punch is really weak, especially when every other person with an attack skill has a higher level one. His zio skills aren't particularly strong at this moment, and Ken actually has the stronger ones. He still has Dia when every other person who can heal has a stronger heal. Yeah, he still has his status reducing skills but those have always been difficult to get the AI to use the one you want, when you want it. I know he's going to improve significantly later at higher levels, but yeah, he's at that one level range where he's just generally outclassed by everyone else. Pretty ironic when he's just returned to boxing again.
However, there are also additions that make the Answer easy:
1) Metis, Metis, Metis. This is the party member that is heavily broken. IIRC, her Persona's stats seem rather average, biased towards physical, but don't let that fool you; she can easily take out enemies that you'd struggle with otherwise. For starters, he Persona is like Castor. No particular strengths, but no particular weaknesses either, so you can take her to any battle without having any issues with enemies striking her weakness. But what really makes her broken is her Orgia mode. Like Aigis, she can go into overdrive, essentially cranking up her damage by about an additional 50%. This lasts about 3-4 turns before she overheats, which leaves her unable to do anything and extremely vulnerable to any attack. You also cannot control her while she's in Orgia mode, though the AI is generally pretty smart in it. HOWEVER, when Metis is in Orgia mode, in addition to her dealing more damage, she also does not consume ANY HP or SP when executing skills. Essentially you can freely let her spam her strongest attacks without worrying about her bringing herself to low health from skills, or her ever running out of SP. Sure, when she overheats, if she gets hit, she'll probably keel over and die, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. When she's overheated, usually cooling down takes like 2+ turns, but reviving her after she's been killed means she's instantly back up on her feet and ready to lay down the hurt. If you don't think spamming Orgia mode on bosses is a good idea, then at least use it after the bosses have taken damage, so you can use her to end the boss turns earlier. At the very least, on normal enemies, Metis being constantly in Orgia mode makes fights much, much easier.
2) In the Journey, I remember the gear you buy from shops generally being better than the ones you found in Tartarus. However, in the Answer, the weapons you find and gain from the shuffles are often either better, or at par with the weapons you can buy from the shops. The game is pretty generous with them, and if you're good at shuffles (both in gaining them and in picking the right card), you can keep all your party up to date with their weapons despite having not all that much cash to buy gear. Some of the armour you find is also a lot better than what you can buy, but they're harder to find since you can only find them in treasure chests.
3) Boss fights where there's three enemies: two minions and one boss. While the boss may not have a weakness, in the earlier dungeons at least, often the minions do. This basically allows you to incapacitate them, meaning you take a LOT less damage in what would be an otherwise painful fight. You've gotta set up your party AI in such a way that they leave downed enemies alone, though.
4) Yukari doesn't seem to die as much.
As always, I'm still a few levels underlevelled, but I'm not finding the battles too difficult despite the hard mode. You just need to always get initiative on normal encounters, have a good grasp on party AI, know how to use Aigis' ability to have multiple Personas to best fit the situation, and know when to not bother with a normal encounter and escape. Be smart with your SP and remember that HP is an easily replaceable resource.