Mahaloth:
I know a lot of your questions got answered, but I’m going to throw my 2c in anyway, just in case it helps.
Megami Tensei / Persona games can be really confusing if you’re not familiar with the game mechanics. I’ve bee playing them since Revelations came out on the PSX ages ago, so it doesn’t seem foreign to me, but even so, I generally have to get used to the new stuff in each game. There’s a bit of a learning curve.
- Social Links, as someone else mentioned, have multiple purposes. If you raise a link to level 10, you will get an item that will allow you to summon the ‘ultimate’ persona of that particular arcana. For example, raising the ‘Magician’ S. Link to level 10 will get you an item that will enable you to fuse the highest-level ‘ultimate’ persona of the Magician arcana. The other thing S. Links do is give bonuses to the experience of a persona of the matching arcana starts with. The higher your level, the bigger experience boost you receive when fusing a person of that arcana. This lowers the amount of level grinding you have to do to get better skills, and they start at higher levels.
S. Links can and will reverse if you piss the character off by saying abysmally wrong things in dialogue (I think. I know it can in 4, but not sure if it does in 3), or by waiting too long in between meetings with them. I can’t remember how many days you have before they get angry at you and reverse the link, but when you’re dating the girls it gets shorter and shorter. If you have a link at level 10, it will never reverse. A reversed link requires additional effort to ‘repair’, and it wastes time. I had problems with this during the times when you have exams and other such things like vacations, and you’re not allowed to contact your school friends.
One thing that’s a bit disappointing is that the personalities of the characters you can form S. Links with in Persona 3 are a bit lacking. Either you have to be a complete butt-kissing yes-man to whatever they want to say and fawn all over them, or you had to be a total jackass and tell them to suck it up and get over it if they were having problems. In P4, they fix a lot of this. I mean, you’re supposed to be enriching your relationships by helping people get through their problems in life, but all too-often I wanted to smack them and tell them to knock it off. Since the main character is a ‘SILENT PROTAGONIST’ that is supposed to be relatable to the player, it sucked not being able to pick the options I wanted on S. Links, because my links wouldn’t raise if I didn’t pick JUST THE RIGHT THING. There is a link much later in the game, and the character is very sympathetic, but you pretty much have to tell him to grow a pair and quit whining, and I really didn’t like it. Anyway, I digress.
-
Charm, Knowledge, and the third stat (I can’t recall what it is offhand) are VERY important. Knowlege takes a ridiculously long time, so raise it as much as possible. You need this either very high or maxed to get the Empress S. Link. The others are important, too, but Knowledge especially. Certain activities raise each more or less, and you can do them during different times of day. It’s good to know what’s available any given day, so you don’t waste time.
-
The Arcana are, yes, like ‘categories’ of Personas. Each category generally is loosely themed to incorporate personas that somehow fit into that category. Magician personas tend to rely on fire magic, and often have fire-resistance. Death personas tend to have death-based skills, but will null death-related attacks on the main character if equipped. Chariot personas tend to have specialties in strong physical attacks, but might be weak to magic. These are general rules, but you have to examine each persona to see what they’re good at and what their weaknesses are.
Arcana are also important to S. Links, because if you have a persona that matches the link’s arcana, you get extra ‘points’ toward raising that link’s level. Try to always have matching persona when you spend time with your S. Links.
In Persona 2, you actually had to collect tarot cards of the corresponding arcana to summon personas. I like the fusion system much better.
- Persona Fusion can be really complicated. You can only fuse persona that are equal to or less than your current level. Later in the game you’ll get the ability to fuse multiple persona, but some require SPECIFIC personas to do so, not just personas of a certain arcana. What result you’ll get when you fuse two persona is based on their arcana as well as their level. The higher level the two personas you fuse, the more skills the resultant persona will retain. Each persona also has an ‘inheritance type’, that is, a preference for what skills it ‘likes’ to inherit. Sometimes a persona will NEVER inherit a particular skill from its ‘parents’ (for lack of a better term), and sometimes it will almost ALWAYS prefer a certain skill over others. A persona that is weak to wind will PROBABLY have a harder time inheriting any wind skills in a fusion. A persona that absorbs or reflects fire spells will probably have preference for those skills. Et cetera.
You have to play around with combinations to get what you want, sometimes. It can be time consuming.
- As far as Tartarus goes, you have a bit of leeway. In the original version of Persona 3 (not the FES copy), you get tired if you fight in Tartarus for too long, unless you’re on the night before a full moon. I THOUGHT Fes fixed this so that you get tired, even on nights before full moons, but I’m not positive. Anyway, the game paces you with your time limit, to get to the next level of Tartarus before the full moon sets in. You can go as much or as little as you like, as long as you’re strong enough to get to the checkpoints as necessary.
There are some ‘tricks’ that can help you. If you use the teleporters you find like every 10-20 floors or so (sometimes more, I think they’re right before each ‘boss’ fight), you will regain your HP and SP, and then go back in. My parties seemed to last longer without getting tired doing this.
If any of your characters become ‘tired’, they will not fight at full strength, and when you leave via stairs or the teleporter, you will not be able to take them back in. There is a way to get around this. If your characters get tired, then choose to ‘split up’ your party, and have them go off on their own. After they’re off on their own (they may need to engage an enemy in fighting, I’m not sure), head to the stairs to go up to the next floor. You should be prompted on whether or not you want to continue without them. If you do continue, it should deposit them back at the entrance, and you can go teleport out, re-add them to your party and continue plugging away.
If enemies are running away from you, it’s a pretty good indicator that you’re leveled plenty, overleveled even. Levels aren’t always as important as equipping the right combinations of personas to use against bosses. Good strategy is really important. You can’t control your party members but you can ‘guide’ them, which is sometimes helpful. It’s a pain, but they did fix this in P4.
Some of the most important spells in this game are the ‘-kaja’ and ‘-kunda’ spells. LEARN THEM AND USE THEM. They are massively helpful, possibly even battle-winners, at times.
Also, magic and physical mirrors are godsends in boss battles.
Familiarize yourself with the terminology. If you’re new to persona, this is vital. Prefixes and suffixes help, as well as the terms for the elements.
The ‘ma-’ , ‘maha-’ or ‘me-’ prefix on something means if affects your whole party or all enemies. ‘-la/-lao/-ra/-ga’ and ‘-dyne’ are indicators of spell strength. ‘-kaja’ is a buffing spell, ‘-kunda’ is a debuffer.
For example, GARU is wind.
MAHAGARU is a weak wind spell that is cast on all enemies.
GARULA is a moderate strength wind spell, cast on one enemy.
MAHAGARUDYNE is a very strong wind spell, cast on all enemies.
DIA is the standard heal spell for one person. MEDIA is a spell that heals all party members.
DIARAMA and MEDIARAMA are the next strength up healing spells.
DIARAHAN and MEDIARAHAN are the strongest. Diarahan heals one person fully, Mediarahan heals all members fully.
With the buffers and debuffers, if you can remember that -kaja is a + and -kunda is a -, that’ll help.
Tarukaja raises attack power. Rakukaja raises defense. Sukukaja raises speed/accuracy. Makakaja raises magic power.
Same principle for the -kunda spells. Dekaja will remove all good buffs from your opponent. Dekunda will remove any stat-lowering stuff your enemy has cast on you.
If you can get familiar with those terms, it’ll be REALLY helpful.
Stats are specific to the persona, so be mindful while fusing. If you have some great magic spells, they won’t work so well if the persona you’re ending up with in a fusion is a primarily physical-attack related persona with a weak magic stat.
I know I kind of covered a lot of material here, but if there’s other more specific questions you have, fire away. I really love the Persona series and it’s really been hard finding other fans of it, since it was a pretty niche crowd for a long time. P3 and P4 are helping with popularity, it seems, though.
P3 is a really really great game if you’ve got the time and energy to play it, but it’s a huge timesink. If you enjoy P3, DEFINITELY get your hands on P4. I think they’re still selling limited edition copies with the artbook that was a preorder bonus, if you order soon enough before they run out. Atlus produces their stuff in really limited quantities. I’d suggest trying Persona 2 also, but good luck finding a copy of that for less than 100$, even used. Atlus just reprinted a few more copies and Amazon’s stock of preorders was gone in 2 hours.
I hope some of this was helpful and not just me blabbering like a moron!
