The Velvet Thread (Persona Series/Spinoffs General Thread)

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The Velvet Thread (Persona Series/Spinoffs General Thread)

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Postby IronEvangelion » Sun Aug 09, 2015 9:35 pm

Welcome to the Velvet Thread. This thread exists between dream and reality, mind and matter, between the seat cushions on your couch...

Joking aside, I noticed that there were threads for individual games in this series but none for the series in general. So I made this thread for the discussion of all games in the Persona series (past, present, and future), as well as all the spinoffs and the original Shin Megami Tensei series as well.

To start off, I currently own Persona 4 Golden and Persona 4 Arena. I was originally planning to wait until I finished P4G to get Persona 3 Portable, but after playing P4A I fell in love with best fembot Aigis, and I'm itching to get started on P3. Then I noticed that P3 FES is also available on PSN for half the price of P3P. Which version should I play first? I know P3P has more content than FES, but FES seems to be the better looking game.

And who are your mains in P4A? Mine are Naoto, Aigis, and both versions of The Jerseynator.
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Postby Ray » Fri Aug 28, 2015 4:41 pm

I'm really enjoying Persona Q. It's surreal to see all my favorite characters (Chibi-ized) on my nintendo 3DS.

Is the plot contrived as hell? Yes. But that doesn't mean it isn't a whole lot of fun.

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Postby IronEvangelion » Fri Aug 28, 2015 7:12 pm

I've seen screenshots of Persona Q. Chibi Aigis looks adorable (and that's coming from someone who usually can't stand chibi). It's on my to-get list whenever I get a 3DS or NX next year.

Anyhow like I said in the Currently Playing thread I've got Persona 3 FES now. I'm amazed at how different it is from Persona 4. In contrast to P4's bright and colorful menus, the ones in P3 are very subdued and monochromatic. The atmosphere is darker too, but thankfully not nearly as grimdark as Trinity Soul.

I was really disappointed in the social links this time, it doesn't look like you can bond with your party members in P3. Instead you can only befriend the mostly lame students at the high school. The only two of them I actually like are Chihiro and the girl who manages the Kendo team (Yuka I think?). If there is a way to actually forge links with your fellow Persona users, I'd like to know about it. I've read that Aigis has a social link, but for some reason she can't become the MC's girlfriend, which still pisses me off. So it's okay to help Kenji get a date with his teacher, but loving a robot is wrong somehow? :crazytwirl:

Speaking of Aigis, I can't wait until I actually get her as a party member. I just rescued Fuuka and got her as the new battle announcer, so hopefully I'll be meeting Aigis soon too. I'd like to have more than one character in my party that I actually like, so far the only one I really like is Akihiko. The rest of them I find either bland or annoying. I'm still enjoying the game, though, and it's just as addictive as P4. Just writing about it makes me want to go play it again.
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Postby Final Messenger » Fri Aug 28, 2015 7:34 pm

View Original PostIronEvangelion wrote: If there is a way to actually forge links with your fellow Persona users, I'd like to know about it. I've read that Aigis has a social link, but for some reason she can't become the MC's girlfriend, which still pisses me off.

you can have social links with the female party members. To start fuuka's you need max courage and i forget which date you can start it, To start yukari's you need max charm and can begin it after aigis joins the team and finally to start mitsuru's you need max knowledge and can start it in november (i forget if socring number 1 on a exam is a requirement for that one too). Also be careful Slinking multiple females since you date them all in them and there will be negative consequences if the other girls find out your two timing them


also i just want to note in P3P you can Slink the whole party if you pick the female protagonist
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Postby IronEvangelion » Fri Aug 28, 2015 7:48 pm

View Original PostFinal Messenger wrote:you can have social links with the female party members. To start fuuka's you need max courage and i forget which date you can start it, To start yukari's you need max charm and can begin it after aigis joins the team and finally to start mitsuru's you need max knowledge and can start it in november (i forget if socring number 1 on a exam is a requirement for that one too).

...Wow, those requirements are kind of absurd. Makes me glad they improved things in P4. Thanks for the info.

also i just want to note in P3P you can Slink the whole party if you pick the female protagonist

That's cool, I'll eventually be picking up P3P as well (along with the other Persona PSP remakes, hopefully they go on sale soon). Are you allowed to romance Aigis if you pick the female MC?
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Postby Final Messenger » Fri Aug 28, 2015 8:11 pm

View Original PostIronEvangelion wrote: Are you allowed to romance Aigis if you pick the female MC?

from what I recall the social link remains unchanged from the male version, so sort of i guess.
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Postby Dream » Wed Sep 02, 2015 6:26 pm

Not sure if related, but i thought it was a pretty cute doujin.

SPOILER: Show
Never knew i liked Rise/Naoto until i read this.
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Postby Sailor Star Dust » Thu Sep 03, 2015 12:25 am

Yep, P3P can be yuri route if you're FeMC. :lol: Good game, has some tweaks carried over from P4--and some Catherine references/character cameos.
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Postby Monk Ed » Tue Sep 15, 2015 4:56 am

Didn't know where to put this but it makes a lot more sense here than in RML or Currently Playing.

After four long years, tonight I finally, finally, beat Persona 2: Innocent Sin.

What a ride. I might have to make an entire separate, long post about my experience with the game itself -- there's just so much to cover. These characters have been with me for years, and through some pretty significant times in my life. I only ever played the game during summers and sparingly at that -- which is not the only reason it took this long; the game took me over 60 hours in total, half of it this summer alone because I was so determined to finally beat it -- but I've finally completed it. And man, I loved it. What little I'd heard about what happens towards the end served only to increase my enjoyment; sometimes you get lucky about which spoilers you come across (not that they were really spoilers so much as, I guess, appetizers?).

For good measure, after I beat it, I started a new game and just followed it for a while up until the gameplay really begins, when you reach the overworld map for the first time (as in, the city map). Some 90% of what I saw during that time, I had forgotten over the years, and it was quite a different experience to see it all having beaten the game and knowing as much as I did about the meaning behind it. I had no idea that so many elements were seeded that far back, but really, should I be surprised? :lol:

So much of this game is inherited by its sequels, which definitely do it better but this one definitely has its reasons to be played -- namely the story and characters, which is what we all play these games for in the first place. The odd quirks of its gameplay are forgivable in light of that experience.

Anyway, after that brief trip down memory lane, I decided to take at least a little peek at its quasi-sequel (or is it more like, its part 2?), Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. By the time I beat Innocent Sin, I had heard a lot about it, and I had no idea that nearly everything I'd heard applied to Innocent Sin alone -- its story went long past the point I thought the game would stop and transfer over to Eternal Punishment, and ultimately covered the entire story that I knew. In the end, it seems all I ever really knew about Eternal Punishment is that it would star Maya as the main character instead of Tatsuya who is the MC of Innocent Sin.

Needless to say for anyone who's played both (and I hope some of you are there and can help me), I found the experience of playing Eternal Punishment for the first time (however briefly) quite jarring. Innocent Sin tells an epic and complete tale; it ends where I thought Eternal Punishment would before I knew where the line between them actually lay. It covers what I thought both stories combined would cover -- so now I'm not sure what's left to cover, and even in just these first few minutes it seems like it's going right back over the same ground.

Another irksome thing is that after playing Innocent Sin for some 4 years with a particular translation patch, I popped in Eternal Punishment and found that the version of it I have is natively English (as in, unpatched) and therefore translated differently from my Innocent Sin experience. Maya is still called Maya and Fujii is still called Fujii, at least, but Yukino is called just Yuki for some reason (yet retains her nickname of Yukki) and Seven Sisters High is nicknamed "Seventh" instead of "Sevens". I worry about what other changes lie ahead and what differences might exist between it and the story I just experienced when translated through someone else's lens.

But I don't even remember where I got the translation patch I used for Innocent Sin from, nor whether a similar experience exists for Eternal Punishment!

That's really the far bigger reason I'm hesitant to even begin it -- I feel just a little bit alienated. It's not even just that, either -- the art seems just slightly different as well. The font, too, and I expect that out of a domestic release vs a translation patch but it's still irksome. Everything just feels ... off, very slightly, like they even used the same art assets but everything's resized just a little for some reason or was put through a sharpener or something. It's not drastic, yet off-putting all the same, like a subtle uncanny valley effect.

It also doesn't help that Tatsuya now talks and Maya has been transformed into a silent protagonist, compared to the reverse being true in Innocent Sin. It's not entirely true -- Maya's personality still shows through in the choices you are given -- but it's just not the same, you know? And outside of those choices she is not depicted talking at all, so she comes across more similarly to Tatsuya despite having an established (and talkative!) personality.

Anyway, I'm glad that I beat this when I did, because now I can focus more on Persona 4, which has me gripped like no other before it including this one. I've played P4 very diligently over the course of this summer but kind of let it languish in recent weeks in favor of P2, and I felt I made the right choice because I plan on this being the last summer I play P4 as well -- I'm going to try to keep it "up to date" with the real month and day, if not much further along when I can, so one way or another I'll have it done before next summer. And then it's on to P4A (or whatever version of it is recommended now that's come out since the original), and probably by then I'll have Persona 5 waiting for me. :lol:
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Postby Monk Ed » Wed Sep 16, 2015 11:25 pm

Update: My little taste of Eternal Punishment and its change in direction kept eating at me so I just took the plunge and spoiled the ending for myself. And I'm glad that I did. (The reason is not necessarily negative.)

Vague ending spoilers  SPOILER: Show

As I suspected, Eternal Punishment doesn't really need to exist. Depending on your interpretation you could say it undoes the ending of Innocent Sin but more charitably you could say it completes it and ends on a hopeful note despite its somber tone. (Sound familiar to the ending of a certain anime series we all love?)

Specific ending spoilers  SPOILER: Show

In short, Eternal Punishment is predicated on the idea that Tatsuya refused to adhere to his part of Phillemon's bargain and thus did not forfeit his memories. In the end, Tatsuya gives up his memories to set things right, preventing the world where the surface of the Earth was destroyed from erasing the new timeline that was created where the event that set in motion the events of Innocent Sin never happened.

The chief thing I was worried about was whether EP would undo IS's final happy moment where the party all meets again. Essentially it does, but all it really does is supplant it with an ending that would have done just as well in its place and communicates the same ideas. In the final ending sequence of EP, when Maya sees Tatsuya on his motorcycle as she's crossing a street, there is that flicker of recognition from her, and she also turns and smiles at him as he goes on. Furthermore, the other three members of the party from IS meet at the shrine where the titular "innocent sin" took place, saying they feel some kind of void and clearly indicating some flicker of memory in the deep recesses of their minds.

There is a hint there, at least to me, that perhaps the characters will still be able to meet some day and get to know each other again, just this time under different circumstances and without the same shared history that they had in IS, which was introduced late into the plot of that game as resurfaced memories anyway. In other words, these kids never needed that shared history to meet up as you do in IS, so there's really nothing stopping them from all meeting up again and being as they were at the beginning of IS.

So on the negative side, the ending really changes nothing, but on the plus side it changes nothing, which ultimately means that on the negative side it didn't need to exist in the first place but on the positive side I guess I'm just happy that there was an ending that I could hold on to where hope still exists and that the worst thing that could result is that Tatsuya never happens to meet up with them again (and I really like Lisa and Tatsuya as a couple), even though the other three all meet up just fine.


I now know the reason why everything felt a little bit off in Eternal Punishment and if I had known it ahead of time I don't think I would have pursued it as I had: I originally thought IS and EP were released together and served as disc 1 and disc 2 of a single game, devised and titled as two for artistic reasons. In truth, EP was released the following year; IS was its own complete story the whole time, and that time lag also explains why the assets are a little touched up in EP.

I don't feel like EP is worth playing, not for me at least. Watching the ending I figured out why Yukino is called Yuki: The PS1 EP that's available in English uses the names from the English release of Persona 1, which changed many of them. There's a fan translation patch in the works for the PSP version of the game but I'm still not sure I care enough to experience what seems like just a long epilogue to the complete story that was Innocent Sin.
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Postby Ray » Mon Sep 28, 2015 2:03 am

A had a fan theory about Yukari when playing P3P the first time.

The theory was that the reason she wore that choker all the time was because she attempted suicide by cutting her throat, and wore the choker to hide her scars.

This was disproven in spades when the shower scene happened.

I don't know why I brought this up, I just felt like sharing it.

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Postby Monk Ed » Mon Sep 28, 2015 5:45 am

That is an awesome fan theory. It at least follows what Persona 3 seemed to be getting at with all the suicide imagery, which I felt wound up going very significantly to waste.
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Postby Ray » Fri Oct 02, 2015 4:25 pm

There was another fan theory surrounding Persona 3 that might be a little more ambiguous.

The theory was that Fuuka is a cancer survivor. Which is why she's always described as sickly. She had to undergo chemotherapy as a child, and all the time spent in the hospital was responsible for her lack of social skills. Also, it explains why sometimes her hair doesn't seem to line up on her head correctly (this was likely just an error on the artists part but still) ; she's either wearing a wig or recovering from hair loss.

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Postby IronEvangelion » Mon Oct 05, 2015 9:15 pm

View Original PostRay wrote:Also, it explains why sometimes her hair doesn't seem to line up on her head correctly (this was likely just an error on the artists part but still)

I always thought that was odd. Fuuka's a strange one alright, I was kinda thinking she had cancer when I first saw her too.



Anyhow, SMT IV is getting a re-release on 3DS called Shin Megami Tensei IV: Final.

http://gematsu.com/2015/10/shin-megami-tensei-iv-final-announced-3ds

Due out February 10th in Japan. No word yet on what's changed from the original version.

I've been interested in the main SMT series for a while now. The old PS2 games are up on PSN for $10 each, so I'll probably buy the first one soon and try it out. From what I understand it's supposed to be a darker, grittier Persona with demons instead of shadows.
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Postby Monk Ed » Mon Oct 05, 2015 9:26 pm

View Original PostIronEvangelion wrote:From what I understand it's supposed to be a darker, grittier Persona with demons instead of shadows.

Shadows as the main enemy are new as of Persona 3. Before that game, the only enemies called shadows were special boss characters, whereas the run-of-the-mill enemies were called demons. Doesn't mean that's not a fair description considering that the Persona series was effectively rebooted with 3 which defined a new normal, I'm just putting that information out there.
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Postby Ray » Mon Oct 26, 2015 6:37 pm

ATLUS has a vendetta against Youtube Channels doing Lets Plays of Persona 4 Dancing All Night.
http://kotaku.com/atlus-keeps-hitting-tiny-youtube-channels-with-copyrigh-1738751541

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Postby Sailor Star Dust » Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:23 pm

Sadly not too different from companies doing copyright claims for people's AMVs. (Which I'm still bitter about/pretty paranoid about reuploading my NGE one from several years ago, thanks Khara!)

A lot of this can be boiled down to Japanese companies not understanding Western attitudes. From everything I've seen (which granted is limited), the U.S. division of Atlus is pretty friendly and fun.
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Postby IronEvangelion » Mon Oct 26, 2015 11:51 pm

Sad to hear ATLUS is sinking to Nintendo levels of WTFery. Hopefully after it's been out for a while they'll ease up, but it's still ridiculous.
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Postby TehDonutKing » Tue Oct 27, 2015 5:20 pm

View Original PostRay wrote:ATLUS has a vendetta against Youtube Channels doing Lets Plays of Persona 4 Dancing All Night.
http://kotaku.com/atlus-keeps-hitting-tiny-youtube-channels-with-copyrigh-1738751541

I Googled, and kotaku is the only site to mention this, and considering kotaku and Atlus's track records, i'm disinclined to believe them.
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Postby Sailor Star Dust » Tue Oct 27, 2015 7:13 pm

The comments complain about it too, though...
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