I think the “giant tower” could have worked a bit better if it was a little more varied in style and environment. The fact that the different zones in P4 have somewhat distinctive building blocks and generating algorithms helped them stand out better.
And random floors helped smooth over the grinding.
That’s strange. I cake walked through those first two and then started having the difficulty ramp up with the toughest boss being the video game themed one and the toughest regular enemies in the mid-range of the secret base. I had a few party wipes there where I entered combat and never got a turn because they kept chaining critical group attacks until I was dead.
For me, the toughest two bosses were Yukiko’s shadow, when I only had three players, one(Chie) who was weak to the boss’ attacks and the bonus boss of Yukiko’s castle, which could take me out with “rampage”.
After that and the sauna/bath house, I have found the game easing up.
However, it may also be that I only realized you could leave using Gohm-M and return to the floor you left after that…in the strip joint I think.
I had almost no difficulty with the video game boss.
I made a similar post in another P4 thread, but it’s worth repeating here. I don’t know what you consider a spoiler, so I’ll put this in a box. I’ve tried not to give anything away plot-wise (no characters or plot points are mentioned), but I’ll mention a couple of dates and instructions to maximize your enjoyment of the last part of the game. It’s about how to get various endings (if you save your game at the wrong time, you can potentially screw this up). Read if you want to.
It’s almost impossible to get the true ending of P4 without someone telling you how to do it. Basically:
Make sure to save on December 2nd. If the game ends on December 3rd, that’s the “bad” ending. It’s worth watching, but then you should reload and avoid that ending. Look up on GameFAQs for how to do it; you have to choose the right options in a conversation tree.
On March 20th, you will most likely get the “normal” ending without explicit instructions. If you watch this ending, don’t overwrite your save file when it asks you to save. If you want to get the “true” ending, here’s what you do:
a. Talk to everyone you have a max social link with.
b. Don’t go home when it asks you to.
c. Go to the Junes food court and examine the elevator twice.
d. Go to the riverbed.
Yeah, I’ve looked at enought guides to know that December 2 is “D” day. I have theories about who it is(I still suspect Adachi) even though we have captuerd Namatame, but I won’t risk guessing without looking it up.
I’ll view the true ending in my playthrough and save the other endings for youtube.
Since I was clearly playing the bizarro version of the game get ready for a critical ramp up in difficulty, Mahaloth. I could have slept through the remaining dungeons and bosses which means that in your game you’ll suddenly find yourself being crushed by their terrible power.
As I recall, Naoto is great against regular enemies but not so great against bosses. It’s very helpful to have either Yukiko or Teddie, but both isn’t necessary. I’d go with:
I don’t recall on that particular boss, though I kept everyone leveled so I could have any team I needed should a boss require something specific. Once the teams no longer mattered I went with Teddie, Yukiko, and Chie and that last slot was mainly determined by the hole in my own persona set up.
Adachi is the killer and I totally called it, though I had no idea how it all went down.
I am loving this game and I rank it higher than P3 by quite a bit. I can’t wait to see how it all ends. I do, however, hate that they killed Nanako…only to fake us out. Wimps!
That was my first big problem with the plot. Adachi only makes sense in a metatextual context. “Hey, that person has far too big of role in the movie for what they’re doing; I bet they’re the killer!” He had no means, motive, or opportunity that the player could have been aware of and the after the fact reasoning given when you guess him makes no sense. Yes, the police have access to evidence; that’s because they’re the police. The investigating officer as the prime suspect because he’s the investigating officer is crazy (or bad movie logic). And as for that line about him knowing too much I was expecting that to be the “tell” for the player and was watching closely for it. When Adachi “knew too much” it was ten minutes after he was in the room when the player character explained the entire plot.
It’s a terrible solution to the mystery. There isn’t any information in the plot beyond metatext to even make a guess at it.
I have one other major problem with the plot but I’ll save that for when you reach that point.
So, I’ve read some guides, and now I learn that I’m not technically in the final dungeon?
I’m at 72 hours of playtime with this game, and I love it, but I really want it to end! I read that I have yet another dungeon on March 20, during the epilogue?
Yep. And the story for that one is another out of nowhere twist (yes, referencing something two minutes into an eighty hour game and then not mentioning it again until dropping it on the player at the end is definitely “out of nowhere”).
ETA: Oh, and if you don’t know Japanese folklore it will make even less sense then it does.
ETA-Again: Well, after some serious problems with getting my copy of Devil Summoner I’m diving into Nocturne once I get back from dinner.
Not to hijack the thread but I just started playing Nocturne for the first time myself. I wasn’t all that familiar with Shin Megami before playing the Persona games and I’m not sure if I like it yet. I absolutely fell in love with Persona 3 within a few hours of starting it and it kinda surprises me that I don’t feel the same about the main series. I know the game is a few years older than P3 but I think I may be running into some technical issues that are troubling me. I’m not a big fan of random encounters to begin with, for example, but it seems like every time I trigger a fight I have to wait a few seconds for the battle to load up, more than I’m used to. (Waiting 5 seconds for a battle to load up isn’t a problem, but it becomes one when it occurs for every single random enemy.) I think my PS2 may be having problems reading the disc but I don’t have anything to compare it to so I’m not sure.
I’d be interested in reading your thoughts on the game Just Some Guy if it isn’t too much trouble.
As I said I’m not all that familiar with the Shin Megami Tensei series as a whole. Early in 2008 my attention was drawn to Persona 3 after reading all the positive press in got from both critics and fans, (at the time it came out I was preoccupied with Assassin’s Creed, BioShock and especially Mass Effect, when I finished those I was left with a “what do I play now?” moment), I decided to wait for the FES edition and when I picked it up I fell in love with it almost instantly. The story, the characters, the gameplay, everything just hit that perfect note, so to speak. Between the main game and “The Answer” I sunk over 120 hours into P3. Afterwards I thought it was time to give it a rest for awhile.
I haven’t played P4 yet, (I have every intention of doing so but not at this particular moment), but recently I decided I wanted to play another Shin Megami game and I did some research and discovered that Nocturne was the first main line game to make it to the States so I thought it would be a good place to start. I may have been wrong.
I’m only renting Nocturne at the moment and if someone tells me explicitly that I’ll probably enjoy DDS more I’ll gladly switch up.
On Edit: I know Devil Summoner is the latest in the series, and I’m thinking about picking that up as well. Is SMT like Final Fantasy in that each game is self contained? If I switched to another game would I be missing anything story wise?
Well, so far so good. From first impressions I wouldn’t call Nocturne brilliant like the Persona series but it’s got it’s own unique take on things.
The combat system is going to take some getting used to. Each side in combat has a turn and a number of actions equal to the characters in the group. Then it proceeds by speed. So the player’s side could start and then each character on the player’s side goes, then the attacker’s go and each character on their side takes a turn. The trick is that a critical earns your side an extra turn and missing (or botching up a magic attack) causes that side to lose a turn. So you can attack weaknesses like in Persona to take extra actions but you can also cause the slower members of your party to lose a turn. It’s got some interesting tactical considerations that I think will make it interesting.
The other big game play element is the recruitment of demons since most of the enemies in the game can join your party. While it’s not as straightforward as getting new personas in Persona 2 and 3 it is a lot more straightforward than getting them in Shin Megami Tensei 1 and 2 (Nocturne is the Shin Megami Tensei 3 for those not up on those things but much like the Final Fantasy series it only holds the most tangential connection to the previous games). I like my options for recruitment so far; the player and some of the demons you recruit can try to get any enemy you encounter to join you by talking to them during combat. Sometimes the enemies will interrupt combat to try to join you or bribe you off. And since you can put any of them in your party it’s got that demonic pokemon feeling to it.
The pacing seems right so far. I did a little bit of grinding in the hospital to get up to level six before fighting the boss and I stomped him flat. It looks like the monsters level up at about half the rate of the player which makes fusing them up look like a better option than leveling them for more powers. I’ve only dabbled with the Magatamas to get myself ice and fire breath. I like the simplified equipment like that but with that many spots for magatamas on the screen I’m forseeing some hard choices when it comes to leveling up in the future.
I like the design aestetic so far; the cell shading makes me think of Killer 7 and that’s not a bad place to be.
I’ve hit level 10 and I’m about to head into Ginza for those who want to know how far I am; that’s about two hours into it. It hasn’t been nearly as hard as what I was getting the impression of but then I’m just starting out; from the way some people talk about the game I was expecting it to be a wrist slitting super-macho challenge right from the get-go and that hasn’t been the case. The PS2 Persona releases are definitely more refined but I’m enjoying myself so far.
Devil’s advocate on this point: Adachi shouldn’t have believed a word the PC said. Remember, it was included in a bunch of talk about demonic shadows from another world on the other side of the TV screen.
Not that I didn’t guess Adachi for the exact reasons you mentioned. Heck, Nanako’s line about letting strangers in confirmed my suspicions for exactly the wrong reasons. Though, idiot that I was, I actually believed the Namatame reveal and apologized to Adachi for suspecting him.
I sorta agree with your basic point (though Adachi’s characterization up to that point had been the goofy, more open minded detective so having him say there might be something to it wouldn’t be completely out of character). The problem is that the point when he knows too much is when that wild story the main character told him would be confirmed. I mean the driver of a run away truck just vanished by climbing into the back where a big screen television was. If Adachi had left the room during the attempted explanation the whole thing would have made a lot more sense.
And yeah, Nanami’s line about strangers was what I took as one of the big clues that it was going to be Adachi. And then it turned out that line had nothing to do with him…
Ah, and there’s some of that stuff that was rough in Persona turning up in Nocturne. Get stuck in a crazy dungeon that I can’t leave for an hour, earn three levels in the process of exploring it, appear to be approaching the end, then one Mudo and it’s instant game over.
Well I’ve put Nocturne on the back burner for now. I think I might have had a bad disc as I was having some insurmountable problems with it loading the random encounters. I was waiting 5-10 seconds for every battle to load and, as I choose to think Atlus couldn’t have possibly have thought that was acceptable, I’ve decided that the technical problems were on my end.
I did play up to the point where I reached the underground “mall” in Shibuya however and I was quite intrigued with the story at that point. Seeing the personas I was so familiar with as active party members, (specifically I had recruited pixie and Hua-To at the time along with some “demons” I wasn’t previously aware of), lent a resonance that I might not have had otherwise.
I’ll probably come back to the game at some point but I did, just today actually, pick up a cheap copy of Rogue Galaxy for the meantime. Excellent game thus far, BTW.
Mahaloth, I’m taking your advice and looking for a copy of Persona 4 right now. I’ve been keeping on eye on the thread and, even out of context, I’ve been intrigued by what I’ve seen. If I could recapture the feeling I had when I started Persona 3 I’d consider it worth the money.
