As a lot of people in the comments are saying, starting personas are intentionaly limited and this is fine, but I also think would be cool to see some story events powering up your starting persona and even giving it an "signature skill", like Cadenza from Orpheus, Cross Slash from Izanagi or Abyssal Wings from Arsenè
abysal wings is tsukuyomi's signature attack in p5, not any of joker's oficial personas. But i agree with you, it would be cool to have the starting personas until later in the game, their designs are more detailed and fit with the theme of the games a lot more than just about any persona until endgame. Maybe they should make it a separate persona you can't fuse away but gets stronger by other means like the main characters in smt or maybe make better evolved versions of the initial persona in more parts of the game besides endgame, no need for any cosmetic change, just different movesets and higher starting level. Of course, they still have to give players a good reason to fuse personas away so maybe at the actual begining of the game you are forced to fuse other personas just for super effectives, resistances and different moves.
While it could be better integrated with the story, the ultimate personas are upgraded version of the starters (with the exception of joker's), or they could do something like super pixie
True but not intentionally. Izanagi is the strongest starting Persona of 3/4/5 by far. He only has 1 weakness, gets a resist, AND nulls dark innately. Plus having Rakunda as an innate skill. That's really fucking good. And on top of that, Persona 4 lets you get Resist Physical in the first dungeon, which is a bit ridiculous but also means you're pretty much immortal even with Izanagi only. And that's ignoring how easy Shuffle Time makes it to get strong skills and put them on him.
persona 5 Strikers did fix this, Arsene only stops learning skills at level 95 or so, and his skills reflect his character, he gets the passive Rebel Will to represent his flashy nature, he gets a lot of good Curse attacks, giving him a good niche to fill, he learns Survival Trick to symbolize Arsene's crazy scape anticks, and he learns cleave and a bunch of good gun attacks, because, well, he is a thief lol
He's also one of the few personas in the game with Maeigaon as his combo special, so he's actually a really solid endgame Curse persona too if you're able to level him up enough.
In persona 2, the characters got Gaia forms of their original persona which were powered up versions of them until their second awakenings. They could do something similar again if they want to bring back old elements.
Starting Personas for the Protagonist are bad intentionally, it's not a problem that needs to be fixed it's an extremely important design choice. The narrative thing is adjacent, but not the actual purpose. Having the starter Persona still be around in a meaningful role doesn't detract from the thematic of becoming stronger through bonds. The Persona 3 movies use Orpheus extensively through to the end despite Makoto's recharacterization in those movies, and Yu's go-to is always Izanagi in the Persona 4 anime. Having them there doesn't take away from anything. Even the Arena games that take place after Persona 4 (and are confirmed canon) show Izanagi using moves like Ziodyne that he can't usually learn in game, implying the in-game cap has nothing to do with the actual power of the Personas in the narrative, unless Yu was just constantly re-fusing Izanagi over and over again every episode of the anime to get better skills. The main reason is, as you said yourself, to incentivize people to actually use the Velvet Room. There's a natural inclination to "do a Pokemon" and just stick with your initial Persona as long as possible. Practically everyone I've seen play a Persona game for the first time sticks with their starter until they get to a point where the effort they're putting in to drag them along is no longer worth it. Over-reliance on the starter for comfort and familiarity is a massive issue for people trying these games for the first time because it cuts off large parts of the game's content and massively limits their engagement with the gameplay both in and out of dungeons. If you don't have any reason to actually think about fusion because your starter is strong enough you don't have to, then most people just *won't* and by midway through the game they're suffering because of it. Getting them "independent" of their starter early is important for getting them to actually engage with the fusion system and its supporting pillars like social links, without that connection there's little link between the daytime and dungeon activities, and you end up with people going "what is the point of hanging out with Tanaka, I don't need any Devil Personas, Orpheus is good enough already".
Yep if just keeping a single person would be a viable strategy, everyone would just turn into that kid that over levels their starter Pokémon and uses nothing else. There could be added mechanics that allow your persona to catch up like a version of the P5 sacrifice fusion, which is more of a mid game to late game feature for those that really want it. But keeping the starter viable would just ruin fusion as a concept
What I do is is the the only persona I Main would be Arsene All jack frosts Pyro jack/jack-lantern Alice and on P4 instead of arsenide I put izanagi as my main lightning persona
@@frankwest5388 thats different though. you can make any persona as strong as any other. you can make a pixie as good as a satanael if you know what youre doing and how to fuse them. Pokemon are always locking into their stats, so no matter what you do to a pokemon itll be worse to other options
@@pewpewpew7824 That’s why calling a persona “good” or “bad” based on a maxed out version is not smart. Wether a Persona is good or not, is mainly based on in game performance, for the. So a Persona that is good for like two or three dungeons and without much investment handle a boss or two, is going to be really good. Same if they have access to an otherwise hard to get, powerful skill early on. Like take P5Rs Shiki Juji (no idea how to write that name). Outside of the dlc personas it is universally agreed that he is the best persona, despite being only at lvl 18 when you get it. The reason? His natural resistances make him very safe into almost any enemy that you encounter. That combined with his skills make him a top 3 choice into the next 3 major boss fights, which he trivializes. All of that, while having to not invest anything into it. However some higher level personas aren’t as good, either because they have many weaknesses or not very useful skills, like Partvati, who is borderline useless when you get her and requires a ton of investment to do anything useful. In short a Persona’s quality mainly comes from the amount of investment and how long they are useful, not it’s stats if artificially maxed out.
They peaked with Izanagi. Reload Orpheus is also pretty good. I will say, Strikers did a good job with Arsene's skillset. He stops learning skills till 60 or so
i think strikers arsene had a normal level up skillset until around the level in the end of the first chapter, then he gets skill updates to higher tiers but it takes more than 10 levels in between new skills, sometimes close to 20 levels.
@@gab4198 yeah, his skill progression is slower, but at least they made him useful. Plus you get skill cards along the way you can give him to make him more versatile before he learns his best stuff
P4's starter persona left the biggest impression because he just kept showing up in the story, with Adachi's Magatsu-Izanagi and Izanagi-no-Okami. Memory is fuzzy but I don't remember P3 and P5's starter persona's appearing again until approaching the end of their stories. I think the fix is not to buff starter personas so they get higher skill caps, but to have evolutions or variations of them in the fusion system. Of course if they can integrate it into the stories and characters it would be a super plus, but after the brilliant foil in the form of Adachi - I don't know if they can go that route for a villain again.
In p5 arsene does this big speech when you first use him to fuse, plus they gave him a “evolution” in the form of Raul. I think it would be cool if after unlocking all allies there is a optional dungeon that exists only to make your starter persona evolve. This way all characters can have a big evolution to their true persona.
i 100% feel the mainline series should DEFINITELY adapt the sub-persona system from Persona Q/Q2 and Tactica. those, and many other spinoffs, really know how iconic the main Personas are, so while they make the story of each game canon, also imply that the main character never ever left their main Persona like an actual player playing the games would be encouraged to do. Like, there is never any dialogue with the main character thinking to themselves "Wait, why do I still have Arséne? I thought I left him ages ago!" or anything, so it truly feels like in the canon, the main Persona stays constant. The sub-Persona system could make the main Persona stay permanent, becoming as iconic as the marketing and stuff makes it to be, while still allowing for other Personas to be equipped alongside it, which THEY can be swapped as necessary.
@@DeathByAnvil eh, who knows? i didn't mean it as in they should do it the exact same as the spinoffs do. i meant more the general idea of keeping your main Persona at all times while having other Personas alongside it. they could definitely implement it differently and think of a better way to balance it that isn't to limit the amount of abilities the main Persona can use - like i dunno, maybe the ones that are limited are the secondary Personas? or maybe they do have 8 ability slots but you gotta select like, three skils and only be able to use those three until you select different ones, or something? just thinking of ways to implement it. but im not a game designer so this specific thing i came up with was probably a terrible idea lol - still, trust the people who make Persona games to find a way
I dissagree i always saw sub persona's as the reason that made these spinoffs even their own thing gameplay wise. Bringing it into mainline would break the game before you reach level 10. But hey, that is just my opinion.
i like how they did it with persona 3 when the starter persona comes back to fuse messiah along thanatos, or Orpheus Telos, P5R has Raoul but they didn't made anything special bruh
even tho it's a somewhat unique idea to have the initial persona catch up on itself, i don't really agree with it purely because it kinda makes newer players just use that persona and not even touch the fusion system, which is a staple on the SMT/Persona franchise. And besides, if most RPGs already makes this as a norm, why would Atlus do it for 3 main Persona games and the whole mainline SMT games? IMO, the perfect balance of initial persona is the one that can provide good skills but also limited growth, for example Izanagi, who have the most buff/debuff but lack of stat to make him worth using for more than 8 levels, perfect candidate for fusions. Although some cool ways to make the initial persona less forgettable than just fusion fodder are what P3 did for orpheus, which have a fusion spell/theurgy, a second story-relevant persona (thanatos), and if you fused both of them, it will become the mc ultimate persona, not to mention the OP orpheus telos.
I think the starter persona should get stronger after hitting different milestones of social links to help represent you improving by forging more bonds and strengthening them. Like, maybe after getting 1 or social link to 10, you get your first upgrade to introduce the mechanic. Then you need 4 more to get the next so you’re not outpacing the other persona too badly. The number of maxed out social links needed would increase again after that until you get them all.
Honestly, I feel that persona should make it unable to fuse the initial Persona and making something like when mastering a persona, making you able to give a not unique skill to your first persona At least P3P made Orpheos viable if you using LVL Ups with Skill and Stat Cards
I feel like having a broken move on your starting persona from the beginning of the game would be a really cool emergency measure, at the cost of half your SP
You have to remember that Persona is a MegaTen game. MegaTen (while it gives you the tools to do not do so) incentives you to rotate your party constantly as most demons have a very short list of level-up skills and fusion provides it with experience to quickly level-up. Plus the recuitable demons in a given area are usually either designed to handle to upcoming area/boss or provide the skills you need via transfer to that area's available fusions.
Persona games kinda have their own identity by this point tho. Sure, they have their roots in MegaTen games, but you can't fairly compare what are basically separate series now.
I think they could allow the starter personas to learn a fair amount of weak skills quickly like normal until level 12 or 13, then have a gap of 12 or 13 levels before picking up some higher power skills for a few levels, and so on, allowing them to grow in power at certain checkpoints like the level you should be at to take on the second boss. Lets take Izanagi for example. The boss of the second dungeon is level 25, so maybe having Izanagi pick up Gale Slash, Mazionga, and Marakunda at level 24, 26, and 29 respectively. Additionally/alternatively, starter personas could obtain skills that would otherwise be difficult to get if in your stock while completing certain social links like how party members can sometimes learn skills when ranking up in P4. Back to the Izanagi example, reaching rank 3 with Yoske could grant him Evade Wind, rank 4 with Chie could give some sort of counter skill, bonding with Yukiko could yield a fire or healing skill, and so on. The persona would evolve and adapt as you bond with and learn from your party.
i liked the way P5S handled this. Arsene there is just as weak at the start of the game and have awful stats even at level 99, but he gains a lot of useful skills up to lvl 95, so if you really want to make him work you have the tools to do so, but it takes a lot of work. So the use of the velvet room is still encouraged, but you can also unleash the potential of the starter persona if you want to.
They could make starter personas a permanent stay in your lineup and make them improve stats with XP but learn new skills through ranking up social links. Goes with the theme of your bonds making you stronger too. Let's say your starter persona has Garu, and the next skill you get is Garula, but you need 5 social link rank-ups, with any social link, to unlock the skill. Now you have even more incentives to see your social links because you get the arcana boost for all your other personas and they unlock skills for your starter persona so it doesn't lag behind.
They should take a note from smt again and add mutations, where when leveling up with a percent chance has you learn new skills, so it still incentives fusion while keeping the persona
I always assume that the initial personas are the main physical manifestation of "You", how you perceive yourself as a person and how your experiences in your life can have a direct effect on you and your persona since they are a mirror of your subconscious. I do agree with you that atlus for the narrative of the main story, tends to discard the MCs initial persona very early in the game. What i think they could do is design a system in which your initial persona would be your main persona that has the most power, and the other personas would be use as support in order to aid you in battle. Maybe this time they would stay longer and would gain more skills as the story progresses.
i think the starter personas should remain available at all times but you really have to work to make them good. like how in an fps if you run out of ammo you always have a knife to fall back on. you COULD play the game only using the knife if you try hard enough but it’s not going to be easy make the starter persona always have access to a weak almighty attack (and by that i mean as weak as a regular attack with your weapon) so it’s never possible to wind up in a fight where you can’t do damage, maybe have a level cap / stat cap on the starter like how you can’t go past certain points in tartarus or mementos until the game is ready for you to. stuff like that
No absolutely not, the starting persona being weak is to force you to use the velvet room to get stronger, if this could be substituted in any regard like for instance making the main persona consistently viable it undermines the importance the velvet room is supposed to have in the gameplay loop. This would also make every persona with the same element hold far less value unless their stats are higher which just creates the same plot inconsistency problem but later in which just makes the whole making them stronger pointless, early persona’s have to fall off and the game balance is healthier for it. It should also be noted that every powerful persona you get in these games have to be made by engaging with the gameplay loop, the dlc persona’s feel cheep for the same reason a powerful stater persona would, because you never earned them through engaging with the game and thus undermine player agency. Simply put I do not believe making the starter persona useable long term would be a good idea for game feel as I believe it would diminish the importance of the velvet room or would just push forward where they fall off which ultimately produces the same issues with the weak starters.
A personal idea of mine is have the growth of your starter Persona be tied to story completion. Like, when you beat Kamoshida, Eiha and Dream Needle evolve into Maeiha and Double Shot on Arsène.
I’d love for a separate series kinda like they are doing with Metaphor but I’d like to have just one persona with different paths for it to evolve based on choices you make like what you choose to do in a day who you spend time with etc.
I think that an easy way to make the initial Persona useful throughout the game but without breaking it would be through the social link Random example, let's say you get skills based on the level of the social link and the magician gives you Mastery in magician, the lovers Diarahan etc etc. I am sure that when you unlock it and when you max it out, it gives you these skills.
I personally like how both Royal and Reload have a higher tier version of the starter persona with Raoul and Orpheus Telos respectively. I think that's a good way to balance the cool designs of the starter personas while still keeping them intentionally weak to encourage fusion.
I mean, raoul is supposed to be the third tier persona for joker, a mix of arsene and satanael Orpheus telos in my opinion is just a completion bonus, Makoto's real 2nd and 3rd tier personas are thanatos and messiah. Thanatos reflects the protagonist accepting death as a possibility with the resurrection of nyx and messiah his resolve to save the world after reaching the upper levels of tartarus and seeing hope, those are the personas that truly show growth for him, while orpheus telos is more of the protag reaching his true potential as a persona user, not a person And finally Yu Narukami has izanagi no okami, I think it's a shame that he doesn't have a persona inbetween that shows growth through the mid game, but izanagi no okami showcases the desire of Yu Narukami to reach out to the truth and defeat izanami
They’re only weak if you don’t refuse them and use every gameplay mechanic to ensure that they are godly personas. I did it for Arsen and Izanagi and they basically hard carried. They’re mainly garbage because it encourages you to utilize the velvet room to fuse new personas so it makes sense. Though I feel like they could give those personas an awakening like part members. Like imagine arsen becoming Raoul when you reach the casino escape from Sae’s palace instead of him just showing up then dipping. It would be interesting to see it if you ask me.
Yeah, I definitely think having the starter Persona being a staple of the team should be an option. After all, in the theme of having different personas and developing over time, there are some traits and characteristics that don’t change and make up the core of your character. They stay with you and can slightly change or develop over time but still be the same. I don’t think there will be too much of an issue with becoming too overpowered since they did a good job at keeping Persona level growth low (in my experience, making a new one would be far faster and easier than keeping one and leveling it forever). Maybe you could change the affinity of the original Persona over time so it can learn new skills? That could make functions/shops that relearn skills be more useful (I never used it). Or to prevent the original persona from falling behind, at certain compendium milestones, it unlocks skills for the persona? There’s just a lot of potential in this idea, so I do hope they consider it (if not in 6 then in 7)!
Pokemon starters: Meta defining and shaped each of their respective generations while still remaining iconic. Persona Starters: Who? Siegfriend, Yoshistune, and Izanagi-no-Okami goes brrr!
the whole point is that teammates get one persona with many skills while the protagonist gets many personas with few skills. Satanael may be a much better persona than Arsène. but when you get down to it, both of them only learn 5 moves via level up.
Nah bro, it wouldnt be fun to grind them as a challenge, at least we got things like skill cards, persona training and incenses, that is a dream for young me playing p4 in the ps2...
I normally use the skill cards I get to make the starter personas better. They are the main persona of the protagonists so of course they are gonna have special places in our hearts. I just wish the starter personas would level up and gain skills like the other members of the group but I guess it makes sense they don’t since you have the ability to swap personas
I think there should be some sort of incentive for strengthening the initial persona through the VR, like if it got a buff for using moves it doesn’t learn or smth
Just increase the difficulty to increase their power. That way if you commit their still one of the best personas in the game Or At or after critical moments of the game you gain an item that will allow you push your starter persona past their limit. allowing it to continue learning skills and gaining power
there is definitely a need for the starter persona to be a viable of the player's kit, imo the ideal state of a starter is like in pokemon, rare, fine in battle while allowing you to grow other powerful members. one way i think this could be applied is to ignore the midgame moveset giving your starter persona a starting move set of 8 or 9 moves, ignoring the middle and then whole kit upgrade in the end game. another possible solution is to give the starter persona a new skill per fully complete confidant. both of these emphasize how there is only so far you can go and grow alone by making you weaker past a certain point but pushing you past that during the end where by then you needed to rely on others for the journey.
they could do something like arsene p5s, where he learns skills past lv 10 but takes a long time to level up. but hopefully they would do it better than a new skill every 20 levels and actually add mid strength skills 💀
I feel like having a base persona that carries through the whole game would just disencentivize a lot of stuff, like using fusion, negotiating, etc. It would be like Persona 2 IS, where there is this deep system for obtaining Personas and arcana cards and all this neat stuff most players literally never interact with cause the main personas carry the whole game, especially with Primes. Fusion is such a deeper core part of Persona that a singular Persona that i dont like the thought of just obseleting most of them from the very beginning of the run. It also undermines the power of the Wild Card when just using your one starter like every other character is better. And it isnt like you cant build OP starter personas. It takes a specific type of downfusing and effort and playstyle thats uniqueness would also be lost. I like the unique aporoach that is required to make a busted Izanagi and it makes playing with said Izanagi so much more satisfying. Please dont turn Starting Personas into Pokemon starters that deligitimize the entire experience with little effort.
I get that the devs want to make the Velvet Room important and all that, so why make a really epic looking starter persona that you toss away ASAP, only to toss them back in during the final fight to evolve into the god slaying persona. It's like we skipped every single moment of growth we could of had with the starter persona and jumped straight to the end. I would be fine if say we didn't just toss Arsene away, but when we fuse him he gains some attributes of say Slime or Pixie. At least it's still Arsene, but changed to reflect growth.
he always has been, he just doesn't have the range of possible personas that joker does. so it's like if joker just had arsene and satanael and fused raoul. there's no rule a wild card can't have only one persona at a time, just that they have the ability to weild multiple, which akechi does, even if not to the same extent as joker
The comments in this video are really making me feel that Persona fans have no creativity. You are all acting as if the only way to make the starter persona viable would be to have it constantly learn good moves and be as good or better than other Personas. While this is the simplest way to do it, there are inumerous ways they could involve the starter in gameplay and story while still incentivizing fusing new Personas and leveling social links/confidants. Of the top of my head, starting from the simplest to the most complex. Pick whichever combination of features would be to your liking They could allow you to always summon your starter without a cost. They could make it weaker than average and more limited, but make it so you can swap to it without having yo have it in your stock. They could give bonuses to its stats level/abilities/stats based on your social link levels, and maybe even bar or restrict other forms of strengthening your persona for it, so you cant easily make it overpowered. They could make it so yhe only way to teach it new skills and power it is by fusing other Personas, or having them on your team. You could make it so your starter persona has a special Trait and abilities that power up and change as you use the other Personas in combat, maybe changing the potency and affinity of its attacks of other Personas, making it stronger when powered up, but it powers down after use, making you have to fuse a robust team to support it. Make it so it functions as the Theurgy of the game even if you dont have it equipped, forcing you to charge a gauge as you use other Personas before allowing you to unleash a special attack with it, which could be customizable and based on SL or Story Progression. If you dont want the Starter Persona to have the role of using the OP abilities or simply dont like theurgy, you could make it so its abilities are kinda standard in power level and filling the gauge just allows you to act with one of these abilities and always get a one more so you can still act with your regular persona after using your starter, basically giving you 2 turns. If you want the focus to be on fused Personas, you can make it so the starter persona buffs the persona that acts in the one more turn. I am not trying to convince of any particular solution and I know that you can probably find problems with most of the options I presented, I am just trying to convince you that there is a solution, that there is a way yo allow you to make the starter present while still making fusions and SL crucial and worthwhile. While you can make any Persona OP, doing so takes a great deal of effort that most players simply wont bother with, since the Starter Persona is almost always one of the weakest options to invest in. And while it is fun to do so anyways, I think more casual players should have a way to interact and experience the very cool looking flagship persona of the game beyond the very beginning and ending of the game. While making it work require some new systems to be added and others changed, the Persona series can and should be doing so anyways with each new title
This like saying that all mainline and other SMT spinoff protags should have a Pixie with better starting stats, which I do not really agree with. It will take away the necessity of using the fusion system, negotiation and the compendium. Skill issue, just git gud.
Starting personas are always canon fodder to make stronger personas endlessly sacrificing countless stronger personas until your starter persona comes back in their evolved form eventually to you.
No way. Listen. All the "issues" you have given are there for balancing reasons and to engage the player more into the fusion system. Otherwise the player would just use their starter persona for the whole run.
So? What's wrong with keeping the starter persona throughout the game? You have like ten persona slots by the end of the game, so there's still plenty of reason to fuse and rotate other personas as you go along. It's not like they have infinite skill slots either. You still need other personas to cover different elements and fit specific situations. As for balance, it's really as simple as making the starter persona's progression dip in the early game to give you a reason to mess around with fusion, then give them skills to learn mid-late game once the player is comfortable with the system. They could also build their weaknesses and resistances with the enemies in each dungeon in mind. For example, if the starter persona's weakness is showing up often, they're more likely to equip a different one to avoid getting their weakness sniped.
@@robo-raven2157the problem there comes from equipment, because starter personas have one weakness and you could just put a skill card or equip an accessory to nullify that weakness And it detracts from engagement because one of the biggest rewards from Social Links/Confidants is the persona you get at rank 10. If Arsene kept getting skills til endgame, why hang out with Takemi to get Alice?
@@robo-raven2157it's the fun of the game? Rotating your team over and over again is part of a Megami Tensei game's core game design, the game NEEDS a reason for you to fuse away your starter because if the player gets over reliant on a starter persona, they won't attempt to get stronger personas and thus, not interact with fusion mechanics, and most likely not with a good bit of social links in the game
@@shamussarrazine6623 Because other personas can learn skills that the starter persona can't? Alice is worth getting because she has an overpowered instakill curse skill that's unique to her. Arsene literally cannot learn it without cheats, and there are plenty of other personas with worthwhile unique skills in the game as well. Plus, there's only one piece of equipment that outright removes weaknesses early game, and that one is a bonus rewards that you can only get in the Royal version of P5. Otherwise, you won't be removing weaknesses until the mid-late game, and by then, a single persona like Arsene just won't cut it for a player going through the game blind.
@@robo-raven2157the problem with this statement is the new players. They wouldn't know "Alice with op instakill skill" exists unless they open a guide or smth. This leads to them using arsene extensively until the end of the game, because they think arsene is good, maybe better than other personas of the current level. For example, in comparison to all the mid game personas, arsene with viable-till-endgame strat is very tempting to use, thus negating the need of other arcanas = less reason to level social links. But I do like starter personas to be better than now tho. Atlus could try to find some way to have both needs met.
I mean, it's not like they can't do it, they did exactly that in persona 5 strikers. In Persona 5 strikers Arsene has a full skillset that has him learning skills well into the 90's like everyone else.
In my opinion the fact that initial Protagonist persona is "weak" has to do with the wild card power, wild card users can develop multiple personas with various aspects, and, to be able to do so, their personality is... Bland, or husk most of the time, like a silent Protagonist must behave(most of the time), this huskness is necessary so he can adapt his inner self to use any persona he wants, however, a side effect of this, is the fact his persona is weak and limited compared to any other persona user. So, if a persona lead character were to have a better persona, I think he shouldn't be a wild card user, nor a silent Protagonist. Maybe an spin off? Dunno.
I just think that Persona 6 should allow you to get all the basic skill cards via itemization. In 5 and 5 royal a lot of them are only possible via a random malfunction chance, which just feels awful when you are trying a specific build.
Persona 5 Royal already allows what you're asking for. The only skill cards you can't get from itemization without random chance are curse boost/amp, multitarget severe skills, magic ability, and multitarget heavy curse and bless damage.
So in other words it does not allow what I am asking for even with just your examples lol. You can check on Persona 5 Royal calculator and there are a lot of non-unique skills that you can't itemize in any way and you have to save scum during strengthening to get them inherited. It's just a pain in the ass. Make Persona traits all unique and have every single last skill and passive obtainable via skill cards.
@@lite4998 that would take a good chunk of depth out of the fusions (and make it extremely easy to get broken almighty builds.) downfusing stronger skills onto weaker personas is like half the fun of it.
I think that P3 was the closest out of the Hashino trilogy to making the starter personas viable Well, I wouldn’t say that it really made the starter persona better, but it was able to make it relevant throughout the narrative. It evolved the persona, from Orpheus to Thanatos, and then finally to Messiah.
But you can still use them, just downfuse into them....which has always been a thing. I hate to say it, but Persona/SMT is basically just pokemon, Build, and Use what you Like. For the party members, allow them a wider pool of schools or for the more tolerant players like they did in SH2 allows use to put fused personas on our party members.
Nah. It doesnt need fixing. The game encourages you to explore fusion mechanics. To not be stucked in just the same persona throughout the game. . Anyway, If you really like a persona, you can downfuse into them. It's easy using a calculator. . The one thing i hope would be in future persona games is the ability to sacrifice other persona to level up your mains. Or like in strikers, there's a bonus stat increase everytime you fuse so downfusing wouldnt be wasteful.
I don’t care how hard it is, I will continue to use the starter persona! And in the case of Persona 5 Royal and Persona 3 Reload it makes the game approach anything even halfway close to difficult.
Skill cards exist I still use Jack Frost and his whole bloodline they’re trashy as hell besides on p4 he come with a resist fire and concentrate I made them good with skill cards so if you want the starter to be good just use skill cards amazing gameplay feature tbh
I completely disagree, The actual stating ones are bad so that you use the fusion mechanic which is kinda important with it being one of the main mechanics of persona/SMT, and with the exception of joker the ultimate persona in each game is an upgraded version of the starter, a return to the start now that you've grown strong, that would kinda be like if etrian made the easiest skill to unlock the best without needing later skills to make team good. Unlike pokemon where your not expected to swap your team much, persona very directly wants you to so the starter power has to match the gameplay expectations of the game
Any persona is good if you invest in them, the best personas are the ones you don’t invest in, or have unique qualities that make them irreplaceable despite requiring investment, like yoshitsune, Alice, (sometimes) and insert powerful almighty user signature to the game and or franchise
@@Joker3180Z Yeah, but any other Persona covers those affinities better anyways and thus won't need to waste slots on those passives. You *can* make anything work, but that doesn't make it good at all. Also funny to mention Null and Drain since Repel is just objectively better in P5
While the point is to buff starter persona, i dont mind starter persona sucks.. reason being: they will ALWAYS have an upgraded version, like Izanagi no Okami etc.. one thing i like about persona game is that i can have fun creating weak persona with strong skill combinations.. and to just have it fit the persona themselves.. for example, i once gave izanagi Ziodyne the boost and amp, and Brave Blade, while trying to max his stats to lv 99 or making Jack Frost with Bufudyne (and Ma-) with Boost and Amp, and all of the thing that is possible.. heck most of my playthroughs are always in the Velvet room, until that BGM stuck in my head
Think of the theme of the game. The theme is all about growth, change, adaptation and evolution. Starter personas are meant to cap off early so that players can utilize the fusion system and give them an incentive to reach out to social links. Thematically, having the starter persona cap of early and have them rely on another persona to progress shows to us that the MC can't everything by themselves. They need to eventually change as the current mask they're wearing won't be enough to solve their problems. There's a reason why we are incentivized to match the tarot of the SL. By matching their tarot, we match the vibe, energy and the perspective of the SL which means we get closer to them rather than by just sticking to one mask. At the end of the game, the majority of players won't have Arsene, Izanagi, nor Orpheus in their arsenal. Instead, it's mostly endgame personas like Alice, Satan, Messiah, etc. And this is fine. This showcases that the protag is different from when he started his journey. The power of all the other Arcanas are now within their control and the Fool is now ready to face the World forever changed. There's a reason why Telos, No-Okami, and Satanael are exclusive to NG+ or has like 1 month remaining before the game ends. These persona evolutions represent the Fool (22) or World (21) for they are a reminder that the protag has completed the journey before and is now ultimately capable of doing it all over again, even when alone. The other comments are right. For this "issue" to be fixed, means that Atlus needs to change everything about the franchise. So no, I simply have to reject your suggestions about the starter personas.
Also, don't compare how the starters are used in the anime vs. The game. The anime only has little runtime so they have to make sure they use the starters as frequent as possible to create familiarity and attachment for the audience to latch on. It reminds them that this persona IS integral to this character. For the game? We can spend like 1-5 hours using them until we realize that they can't hold their own anymore and we have to fuse them to progress. Its a "letting go of the old self" ritual as we fuse it to become a better version of the protagonist that is more equipped for the challenges ahead.
I understand what you're saying, but I feel the game is designed to have you use the mechanics. The issue you feel about the starters are handled by using the mechanics the game offers. You can increase the power and give the starter skills by using the mechanics. These mechanics you gain as the story progresses and as you develop your relationships. The way the game is currently designed may slow you down, but in reality, it is far more of a fitting way to buff the starters than just making it a linear story based progression.
I'm back and forth on the starter being a wild card sort of persona for relationship advancement. I think if you made it to where all persons had an affect that made them special outside of the dungeon crawling, then yes, cool idea. If it's just this skill and only the starter gets a bonus outside of the dungeon, then no. Adding out of dungeon skills or effects would create interesting gameplay. And if the player wanted to min-max, they could, most would find a few and rotate through those. For example, a persona that heavily increases the chances that buying from a vending machine would give you two of the items. Or one that makes a particular stat increase faster, like charm. Or one that makes more money at certain jobs, or one that makes a little bit more money at all jobs. A persona that eliminates 2 wrong answers on test and school questions. Or another thar has a 33% chance of giving you the answer to the question. Maybe a person that increase the rank up points with a particular arcana and another that highlights the best response to give for that arcana. Of course you would have to have these persona's equipped and the one you want the effect from active.
Meh, fusion isn't the only thing to make starter Personas op. In P5, I made Arsene so op everybody around me is like "How'd you taught him that?!" I have proof too! ~
Wording this as the starter persona need to be “fixed” and that they “should be more viable” is why I’m personally not going to agree with you. Nothing is wrong with the starting persona, it’s a starting persona for a reason, also if you’d like the starting persona to be more viable just use skill cards and the broken stat raising mechanics in every recent persona game, people do challenge runs of only using the starting persona and the challenge tends to be a joke because of the mechanics that the game has in place.
I think the point they are trying to make is that it would be cool to see a Starter Persona be viable for a majority of the game without needed to rely on outside assistance such as Skill Cards or Stat Boosting.
Honestly you shouldn't be forced to choose another persona or have to fuse your starter again to actually make it useful. I mean for such big variety in choices, this is weirdly like the one thing where your forced to give up a starter only run
This is literally the same thing as developing a new Pokémon game and making so the starters suck and they don’t learn any new move after Tackle and Ember. Because the developers want you to catch new one. Like, no?? How about letting the player play the way they want?
The entire point of SMT is that the demons/personas are not your friends, they are tools, things that are disposable the moment they aren't useful. You're not supposed to be dragging Pixie to bosses well beyond you get them. Pokémon is in part you're supposed to be bonding with them so it makes sense to make the starter at least be able to be somewhat usable.
You can still make these Personas/Demons usable through the use of items such as incense or skill cards, it’d take more work but you can do it. Plus, SMT and Pokémon have wildly different philosophy’s and gameplay styles. The point of Pokémon is that you can be successful with any Pokémon you like (Excluding competitive play) whereas SMT is all about disposing your monsters for the sake of stronger ones. Also, Pokémon already does sorta do the same thing just for a different mechanic. Think about it, how many people actually beat Pokémon games with unevolved starters? How many people have beaten Pokémon with a Squirtle or Torchic that has not once evolved into a Combusken or a Wortortle? Pokémon, actually, does the exact same thing as Persona but the difference is that Pokémon wants you to evolve your starter as opposed to SMT that wants you to fuse it into something new. At the end of the day, in both scenarios the game is forcing you to swap out a weak monster for a stronger one. The only real difference is that one feels like the monster is growing while the other feels like you’re sacrificing a monster for a stronger one. Also, you can still have unevolved Pokémon starters be useful but you need to put the work in to make them useful through items, just like in SMT.
Well you can do that. Who said that you couldn't? You can drag your starter persona all the way up and level it up RAW, put in skill cards if you want, and boom you can do it? I don't understand the complaint here. It's just that the starter persona no longer has any more moves to learn past its limits. Even pokemon does this with evolutions. You can just tell the pokemon to not evolve everytime and it will no longer learn any new moves unless you put in discs. Your complaint is totally benign. The comment above me explains it in more detail.
As a lot of people in the comments are saying, starting personas are intentionaly limited and this is fine, but I also think would be cool to see some story events powering up your starting persona and even giving it an "signature skill", like Cadenza from Orpheus, Cross Slash from Izanagi or Abyssal Wings from Arsenè
abysal wings is tsukuyomi's signature attack in p5, not any of joker's oficial personas.
But i agree with you, it would be cool to have the starting personas until later in the game, their designs are more detailed and fit with the theme of the games a lot more than just about any persona until endgame. Maybe they should make it a separate persona you can't fuse away but gets stronger by other means like the main characters in smt or maybe make better evolved versions of the initial persona in more parts of the game besides endgame, no need for any cosmetic change, just different movesets and higher starting level.
Of course, they still have to give players a good reason to fuse personas away so maybe at the actual begining of the game you are forced to fuse other personas just for super effectives, resistances and different moves.
@@gab4198 abyssal wings is way more fitting on Arsene and Raoul than Tsukuyomi. I don't even remember seeing it used in p4au.
While it could be better integrated with the story, the ultimate personas are upgraded version of the starters (with the exception of joker's), or they could do something like super pixie
Abyssal wings is minazuki's double quarter circle forward super and the only one he has while not in awakening@@bct2308
Izanagi only is a fun playstyle in 4
Not in the original PS2 release(i really hate Kanji boss fight).
because the shuffle time of p4 is OP
True but not intentionally. Izanagi is the strongest starting Persona of 3/4/5 by far. He only has 1 weakness, gets a resist, AND nulls dark innately. Plus having Rakunda as an innate skill. That's really fucking good. And on top of that, Persona 4 lets you get Resist Physical in the first dungeon, which is a bit ridiculous but also means you're pretty much immortal even with Izanagi only. And that's ignoring how easy Shuffle Time makes it to get strong skills and put them on him.
persona 5 Strikers did fix this, Arsene only stops learning skills at level 95 or so, and his skills reflect his character, he gets the passive Rebel Will to represent his flashy nature, he gets a lot of good Curse attacks, giving him a good niche to fill, he learns Survival Trick to symbolize Arsene's crazy scape anticks, and he learns cleave and a bunch of good gun attacks, because, well, he is a thief lol
He's also one of the few personas in the game with Maeigaon as his combo special, so he's actually a really solid endgame Curse persona too if you're able to level him up enough.
I fought nail and tooth to get my Arsene as canonically broken as he should have been.
I remember Thanatos coming out of Orpheus during the first awakening in persona 3. I fell in love that very moment
In persona 2, the characters got Gaia forms of their original persona which were powered up versions of them until their second awakenings. They could do something similar again if they want to bring back old elements.
Doesn't it's partially brought back on Persona 3 (except the vanilla) with Orpheus Telos?
@@muhamadrizkyananda Orpheus Telos (Orpheus Kai) is a reference to the Prime (Kai) Personas of the Persona 2 duology, yes.
Something like that would be the best way to have starter personas remain relevant.
Starting Personas for the Protagonist are bad intentionally, it's not a problem that needs to be fixed it's an extremely important design choice.
The narrative thing is adjacent, but not the actual purpose. Having the starter Persona still be around in a meaningful role doesn't detract from the thematic of becoming stronger through bonds. The Persona 3 movies use Orpheus extensively through to the end despite Makoto's recharacterization in those movies, and Yu's go-to is always Izanagi in the Persona 4 anime. Having them there doesn't take away from anything. Even the Arena games that take place after Persona 4 (and are confirmed canon) show Izanagi using moves like Ziodyne that he can't usually learn in game, implying the in-game cap has nothing to do with the actual power of the Personas in the narrative, unless Yu was just constantly re-fusing Izanagi over and over again every episode of the anime to get better skills.
The main reason is, as you said yourself, to incentivize people to actually use the Velvet Room. There's a natural inclination to "do a Pokemon" and just stick with your initial Persona as long as possible. Practically everyone I've seen play a Persona game for the first time sticks with their starter until they get to a point where the effort they're putting in to drag them along is no longer worth it. Over-reliance on the starter for comfort and familiarity is a massive issue for people trying these games for the first time because it cuts off large parts of the game's content and massively limits their engagement with the gameplay both in and out of dungeons. If you don't have any reason to actually think about fusion because your starter is strong enough you don't have to, then most people just *won't* and by midway through the game they're suffering because of it. Getting them "independent" of their starter early is important for getting them to actually engage with the fusion system and its supporting pillars like social links, without that connection there's little link between the daytime and dungeon activities, and you end up with people going "what is the point of hanging out with Tanaka, I don't need any Devil Personas, Orpheus is good enough already".
Yep if just keeping a single person would be a viable strategy, everyone would just turn into that kid that over levels their starter Pokémon and uses nothing else. There could be added mechanics that allow your persona to catch up like a version of the P5 sacrifice fusion, which is more of a mid game to late game feature for those that really want it. But keeping the starter viable would just ruin fusion as a concept
What I do is is the the only persona I Main would be Arsene All jack frosts Pyro jack/jack-lantern Alice and on P4 instead of arsenide I put izanagi as my main lightning persona
@@frankwest5388every persona is good cause of skill cards
@@frankwest5388 thats different though. you can make any persona as strong as any other. you can make a pixie as good as a satanael if you know what youre doing and how to fuse them. Pokemon are always locking into their stats, so no matter what you do to a pokemon itll be worse to other options
@@pewpewpew7824
That’s why calling a persona “good” or “bad” based on a maxed out version is not smart.
Wether a Persona is good or not, is mainly based on in game performance, for the. So a Persona that is good for like two or three dungeons and without much investment handle a boss or two, is going to be really good. Same if they have access to an otherwise hard to get, powerful skill early on.
Like take P5Rs Shiki Juji (no idea how to write that name). Outside of the dlc personas it is universally agreed that he is the best persona, despite being only at lvl 18 when you get it. The reason? His natural resistances make him very safe into almost any enemy that you encounter. That combined with his skills make him a top 3 choice into the next 3 major boss fights, which he trivializes. All of that, while having to not invest anything into it.
However some higher level personas aren’t as good, either because they have many weaknesses or not very useful skills, like Partvati, who is borderline useless when you get her and requires a ton of investment to do anything useful.
In short a Persona’s quality mainly comes from the amount of investment and how long they are useful, not it’s stats if artificially maxed out.
They peaked with Izanagi. Reload Orpheus is also pretty good. I will say, Strikers did a good job with Arsene's skillset. He stops learning skills till 60 or so
i think strikers arsene had a normal level up skillset until around the level in the end of the first chapter, then he gets skill updates to higher tiers but it takes more than 10 levels in between new skills, sometimes close to 20 levels.
@@gab4198 yeah, his skill progression is slower, but at least they made him useful. Plus you get skill cards along the way you can give him to make him more versatile before he learns his best stuff
P4's starter persona left the biggest impression because he just kept showing up in the story, with Adachi's Magatsu-Izanagi and Izanagi-no-Okami. Memory is fuzzy but I don't remember P3 and P5's starter persona's appearing again until approaching the end of their stories. I think the fix is not to buff starter personas so they get higher skill caps, but to have evolutions or variations of them in the fusion system. Of course if they can integrate it into the stories and characters it would be a super plus, but after the brilliant foil in the form of Adachi - I don't know if they can go that route for a villain again.
In p5 arsene does this big speech when you first use him to fuse, plus they gave him a “evolution” in the form of Raul.
I think it would be cool if after unlocking all allies there is a optional dungeon that exists only to make your starter persona evolve. This way all characters can have a big evolution to their true persona.
i 100% feel the mainline series should DEFINITELY adapt the sub-persona system from Persona Q/Q2 and Tactica. those, and many other spinoffs, really know how iconic the main Personas are, so while they make the story of each game canon, also imply that the main character never ever left their main Persona like an actual player playing the games would be encouraged to do. Like, there is never any dialogue with the main character thinking to themselves "Wait, why do I still have Arséne? I thought I left him ages ago!" or anything, so it truly feels like in the canon, the main Persona stays constant.
The sub-Persona system could make the main Persona stay permanent, becoming as iconic as the marketing and stuff makes it to be, while still allowing for other Personas to be equipped alongside it, which THEY can be swapped as necessary.
If they did this they’d prob let you have less skills on your main persona though and I’m not very fond of part of my kid being forced on to the mc
@@DeathByAnvil eh, who knows? i didn't mean it as in they should do it the exact same as the spinoffs do. i meant more the general idea of keeping your main Persona at all times while having other Personas alongside it. they could definitely implement it differently and think of a better way to balance it that isn't to limit the amount of abilities the main Persona can use - like i dunno, maybe the ones that are limited are the secondary Personas? or maybe they do have 8 ability slots but you gotta select like, three skils and only be able to use those three until you select different ones, or something? just thinking of ways to implement it. but im not a game designer so this specific thing i came up with was probably a terrible idea lol - still, trust the people who make Persona games to find a way
I dissagree i always saw sub persona's as the reason that made these spinoffs even their own thing gameplay wise. Bringing it into mainline would break the game before you reach level 10.
But hey, that is just my opinion.
Imo thats a pretty bad idea
Yeah this would just break the mainline games I’m afraid
i like how they did it with persona 3 when the starter persona comes back to fuse messiah along thanatos, or Orpheus Telos, P5R has Raoul but they didn't made anything special bruh
even tho it's a somewhat unique idea to have the initial persona catch up on itself, i don't really agree with it purely because it kinda makes newer players just use that persona and not even touch the fusion system, which is a staple on the SMT/Persona franchise. And besides, if most RPGs already makes this as a norm, why would Atlus do it for 3 main Persona games and the whole mainline SMT games? IMO, the perfect balance of initial persona is the one that can provide good skills but also limited growth, for example Izanagi, who have the most buff/debuff but lack of stat to make him worth using for more than 8 levels, perfect candidate for fusions. Although some cool ways to make the initial persona less forgettable than just fusion fodder are what P3 did for orpheus, which have a fusion spell/theurgy, a second story-relevant persona (thanatos), and if you fused both of them, it will become the mc ultimate persona, not to mention the OP orpheus telos.
If I learned anything from persona 1&2 and P3R. too much Freedom is a bad thing. I 100% agree with you
im using izanagi untill lvl 25 or so just to realize he doesnt learn any new skill
The frustrating part is that the starter Personas look so cool and you kind of get attached to them.
I think the starter persona should get stronger after hitting different milestones of social links to help represent you improving by forging more bonds and strengthening them. Like, maybe after getting 1 or social link to 10, you get your first upgrade to introduce the mechanic. Then you need 4 more to get the next so you’re not outpacing the other persona too badly. The number of maxed out social links needed would increase again after that until you get them all.
Honestly, I feel that persona should make it unable to fuse the initial Persona and making something like when mastering a persona, making you able to give a not unique skill to your first persona
At least P3P made Orpheos viable if you using LVL Ups with Skill and Stat Cards
I feel like having a broken move on your starting persona from the beginning of the game would be a really cool emergency measure, at the cost of half your SP
You have to remember that Persona is a MegaTen game. MegaTen (while it gives you the tools to do not do so) incentives you to rotate your party constantly as most demons have a very short list of level-up skills and fusion provides it with experience to quickly level-up. Plus the recuitable demons in a given area are usually either designed to handle to upcoming area/boss or provide the skills you need via transfer to that area's available fusions.
Persona games kinda have their own identity by this point tho. Sure, they have their roots in MegaTen games, but you can't fairly compare what are basically separate series now.
I think they could allow the starter personas to learn a fair amount of weak skills quickly like normal until level 12 or 13, then have a gap of 12 or 13 levels before picking up some higher power skills for a few levels, and so on, allowing them to grow in power at certain checkpoints like the level you should be at to take on the second boss. Lets take Izanagi for example. The boss of the second dungeon is level 25, so maybe having Izanagi pick up Gale Slash, Mazionga, and Marakunda at level 24, 26, and 29 respectively.
Additionally/alternatively, starter personas could obtain skills that would otherwise be difficult to get if in your stock while completing certain social links like how party members can sometimes learn skills when ranking up in P4. Back to the Izanagi example, reaching rank 3 with Yoske could grant him Evade Wind, rank 4 with Chie could give some sort of counter skill, bonding with Yukiko could yield a fire or healing skill, and so on. The persona would evolve and adapt as you bond with and learn from your party.
i liked the way P5S handled this. Arsene there is just as weak at the start of the game and have awful stats even at level 99, but he gains a lot of useful skills up to lvl 95, so if you really want to make him work you have the tools to do so, but it takes a lot of work. So the use of the velvet room is still encouraged, but you can also unleash the potential of the starter persona if you want to.
They could make starter personas a permanent stay in your lineup and make them improve stats with XP but learn new skills through ranking up social links. Goes with the theme of your bonds making you stronger too. Let's say your starter persona has Garu, and the next skill you get is Garula, but you need 5 social link rank-ups, with any social link, to unlock the skill. Now you have even more incentives to see your social links because you get the arcana boost for all your other personas and they unlock skills for your starter persona so it doesn't lag behind.
I assume they don't want you using only the starting persona. Hell, P5R requires you to fuse it almost right away lol
You actually don’t *have* to fuse Arséne, but it is very likely a new player will miss a second persona to avoid fusing Arséne.
@@Hewasnumber1 at least any persona can be built eventually with skill cards and incense lol
If I were Atlus, I’d just give the Starter Persona some sort of busted signature move that can’t be passed down through fusion.
They should take a note from smt again and add mutations, where when leveling up with a percent chance has you learn new skills, so it still incentives fusion while keeping the persona
I always assume that the initial personas are the main physical manifestation of "You", how you perceive yourself as a person and how your experiences in your life can have a direct effect on you and your persona since they are a mirror of your subconscious. I do agree with you that atlus for the narrative of the main story, tends to discard the MCs initial persona very early in the game. What i think they could do is design a system in which your initial persona would be your main persona that has the most power, and the other personas would be use as support in order to aid you in battle. Maybe this time they would stay longer and would gain more skills as the story progresses.
i think the starter personas should remain available at all times but you really have to work to make them good. like how in an fps if you run out of ammo you always have a knife to fall back on. you COULD play the game only using the knife if you try hard enough but it’s not going to be easy
make the starter persona always have access to a weak almighty attack (and by that i mean as weak as a regular attack with your weapon) so it’s never possible to wind up in a fight where you can’t do damage, maybe have a level cap / stat cap on the starter like how you can’t go past certain points in tartarus or mementos until the game is ready for you to. stuff like that
No absolutely not, the starting persona being weak is to force you to use the velvet room to get stronger, if this could be substituted in any regard like for instance making the main persona consistently viable it undermines the importance the velvet room is supposed to have in the gameplay loop. This would also make every persona with the same element hold far less value unless their stats are higher which just creates the same plot inconsistency problem but later in which just makes the whole making them stronger pointless, early persona’s have to fall off and the game balance is healthier for it. It should also be noted that every powerful persona you get in these games have to be made by engaging with the gameplay loop, the dlc persona’s feel cheep for the same reason a powerful stater persona would, because you never earned them through engaging with the game and thus undermine player agency. Simply put I do not believe making the starter persona useable long term would be a good idea for game feel as I believe it would diminish the importance of the velvet room or would just push forward where they fall off which ultimately produces the same issues with the weak starters.
A personal idea of mine is have the growth of your starter Persona be tied to story completion. Like, when you beat Kamoshida, Eiha and Dream Needle evolve into Maeiha and Double Shot on Arsène.
I’d love for a separate series kinda like they are doing with Metaphor but I’d like to have just one persona with different paths for it to evolve based on choices you make like what you choose to do in a day who you spend time with etc.
I think that an easy way to make the initial Persona useful throughout the game but without breaking it would be through the social link
Random example, let's say you get skills based on the level of the social link and the magician gives you Mastery in magician, the lovers Diarahan etc etc. I am sure that when you unlock it and when you max it out, it gives you these skills.
I personally like how both Royal and Reload have a higher tier version of the starter persona with Raoul and Orpheus Telos respectively. I think that's a good way to balance the cool designs of the starter personas while still keeping them intentionally weak to encourage fusion.
I mean, raoul is supposed to be the third tier persona for joker, a mix of arsene and satanael
Orpheus telos in my opinion is just a completion bonus, Makoto's real 2nd and 3rd tier personas are thanatos and messiah. Thanatos reflects the protagonist accepting death as a possibility with the resurrection of nyx and messiah his resolve to save the world after reaching the upper levels of tartarus and seeing hope, those are the personas that truly show growth for him, while orpheus telos is more of the protag reaching his true potential as a persona user, not a person
And finally Yu Narukami has izanagi no okami, I think it's a shame that he doesn't have a persona inbetween that shows growth through the mid game, but izanagi no okami showcases the desire of Yu Narukami to reach out to the truth and defeat izanami
They’re only weak if you don’t refuse them and use every gameplay mechanic to ensure that they are godly personas. I did it for Arsen and Izanagi and they basically hard carried. They’re mainly garbage because it encourages you to utilize the velvet room to fuse new personas so it makes sense. Though I feel like they could give those personas an awakening like part members. Like imagine arsen becoming Raoul when you reach the casino escape from Sae’s palace instead of him just showing up then dipping. It would be interesting to see it if you ask me.
to be fair there are evolved versions of the starter personas like orpheus telos tho sadly persona doesnt have the evolve mechanic smt 3 and 4 did
Yeah, I definitely think having the starter Persona being a staple of the team should be an option. After all, in the theme of having different personas and developing over time, there are some traits and characteristics that don’t change and make up the core of your character. They stay with you and can slightly change or develop over time but still be the same.
I don’t think there will be too much of an issue with becoming too overpowered since they did a good job at keeping Persona level growth low (in my experience, making a new one would be far faster and easier than keeping one and leveling it forever).
Maybe you could change the affinity of the original Persona over time so it can learn new skills? That could make functions/shops that relearn skills be more useful (I never used it).
Or to prevent the original persona from falling behind, at certain compendium milestones, it unlocks skills for the persona?
There’s just a lot of potential in this idea, so I do hope they consider it (if not in 6 then in 7)!
Pokemon starters: Meta defining and shaped each of their respective generations while still remaining iconic.
Persona Starters: Who? Siegfriend, Yoshistune, and Izanagi-no-Okami goes brrr!
I was warching rhis on mobile and the moment you said to like, the like button glowed up, that was sick!!
the whole point is that teammates get one persona with many skills while the protagonist gets many personas with few skills. Satanael may be a much better persona than Arsène. but when you get down to it, both of them only learn 5 moves via level up.
Nah bro, it wouldnt be fun to grind them as a challenge, at least we got things like skill cards, persona training and incenses, that is a dream for young me playing p4 in the ps2...
I normally use the skill cards I get to make the starter personas better. They are the main persona of the protagonists so of course they are gonna have special places in our hearts. I just wish the starter personas would level up and gain skills like the other members of the group but I guess it makes sense they don’t since you have the ability to swap personas
I think there should be some sort of incentive for strengthening the initial persona through the VR, like if it got a buff for using moves it doesn’t learn or smth
Just increase the difficulty to increase their power.
That way if you commit their still one of the best personas in the game
Or
At or after critical moments of the game you gain an item that will allow you push your starter persona past their limit. allowing it to continue learning skills and gaining power
there is definitely a need for the starter persona to be a viable of the player's kit, imo the ideal state of a starter is like in pokemon, rare, fine in battle while allowing you to grow other powerful members.
one way i think this could be applied is to ignore the midgame moveset giving your starter persona a starting move set of 8 or 9 moves, ignoring the middle and then whole kit upgrade in the end game.
another possible solution is to give the starter persona a new skill per fully complete confidant.
both of these emphasize how there is only so far you can go and grow alone by making you weaker past a certain point but pushing you past that during the end where by then you needed to rely on others for the journey.
they could do something like arsene p5s, where he learns skills past lv 10 but takes a long time to level up. but hopefully they would do it better than a new skill every 20 levels and actually add mid strength skills 💀
it'd be cool if arsene evolves to raoul automatically after lv 80+
I feel like having a base persona that carries through the whole game would just disencentivize a lot of stuff, like using fusion, negotiating, etc. It would be like Persona 2 IS, where there is this deep system for obtaining Personas and arcana cards and all this neat stuff most players literally never interact with cause the main personas carry the whole game, especially with Primes.
Fusion is such a deeper core part of Persona that a singular Persona that i dont like the thought of just obseleting most of them from the very beginning of the run. It also undermines the power of the Wild Card when just using your one starter like every other character is better.
And it isnt like you cant build OP starter personas. It takes a specific type of downfusing and effort and playstyle thats uniqueness would also be lost. I like the unique aporoach that is required to make a busted Izanagi and it makes playing with said Izanagi so much more satisfying.
Please dont turn Starting Personas into Pokemon starters that deligitimize the entire experience with little effort.
In Persona 5X Jánošík starting Persona because gacha Max Level equals account Level and you can farn skills to inherit
Making starting personas better kinda goes against the entire thing that not only persona but megami tensei itself has going for with is demon fusion
I get that the devs want to make the Velvet Room important and all that, so why make a really epic looking starter persona that you toss away ASAP, only to toss them back in during the final fight to evolve into the god slaying persona. It's like we skipped every single moment of growth we could of had with the starter persona and jumped straight to the end. I would be fine if say we didn't just toss Arsene away, but when we fuse him he gains some attributes of say Slime or Pixie. At least it's still Arsene, but changed to reflect growth.
In P5S Arsene learns a lot of stuff.
If Akechi Robin hood and Loki fuse in hereward. is he still a wild card? Or not
he always has been, he just doesn't have the range of possible personas that joker does. so it's like if joker just had arsene and satanael and fused raoul. there's no rule a wild card can't have only one persona at a time, just that they have the ability to weild multiple, which akechi does, even if not to the same extent as joker
You can upgrade them with cards and stuff
The comments in this video are really making me feel that Persona fans have no creativity.
You are all acting as if the only way to make the starter persona viable would be to have it constantly learn good moves and be as good or better than other Personas. While this is the simplest way to do it, there are inumerous ways they could involve the starter in gameplay and story while still incentivizing fusing new Personas and leveling social links/confidants.
Of the top of my head, starting from the simplest to the most complex. Pick whichever combination of features would be to your liking
They could allow you to always summon your starter without a cost. They could make it weaker than average and more limited, but make it so you can swap to it without having yo have it in your stock. They could give bonuses to its stats level/abilities/stats based on your social link levels, and maybe even bar or restrict other forms of strengthening your persona for it, so you cant easily make it overpowered. They could make it so yhe only way to teach it new skills and power it is by fusing other Personas, or having them on your team. You could make it so your starter persona has a special Trait and abilities that power up and change as you use the other Personas in combat, maybe changing the potency and affinity of its attacks of other Personas, making it stronger when powered up, but it powers down after use, making you have to fuse a robust team to support it. Make it so it functions as the Theurgy of the game even if you dont have it equipped, forcing you to charge a gauge as you use other Personas before allowing you to unleash a special attack with it, which could be customizable and based on SL or Story Progression. If you dont want the Starter Persona to have the role of using the OP abilities or simply dont like theurgy, you could make it so its abilities are kinda standard in power level and filling the gauge just allows you to act with one of these abilities and always get a one more so you can still act with your regular persona after using your starter, basically giving you 2 turns. If you want the focus to be on fused Personas, you can make it so the starter persona buffs the persona that acts in the one more turn.
I am not trying to convince of any particular solution and I know that you can probably find problems with most of the options I presented, I am just trying to convince you that there is a solution, that there is a way yo allow you to make the starter present while still making fusions and SL crucial and worthwhile. While you can make any Persona OP, doing so takes a great deal of effort that most players simply wont bother with, since the Starter Persona is almost always one of the weakest options to invest in. And while it is fun to do so anyways, I think more casual players should have a way to interact and experience the very cool looking flagship persona of the game beyond the very beginning and ending of the game. While making it work require some new systems to be added and others changed, the Persona series can and should be doing so anyways with each new title
This like saying that all mainline and other SMT spinoff protags should have a Pixie with better starting stats, which I do not really agree with. It will take away the necessity of using the fusion system, negotiation and the compendium. Skill issue, just git gud.
Starting personas are always canon fodder to make stronger personas endlessly sacrificing countless stronger personas until your starter persona comes back in their evolved form eventually to you.
No way.
Listen. All the "issues" you have given are there for balancing reasons and to engage the player more into the fusion system.
Otherwise the player would just use their starter persona for the whole run.
So? What's wrong with keeping the starter persona throughout the game? You have like ten persona slots by the end of the game, so there's still plenty of reason to fuse and rotate other personas as you go along. It's not like they have infinite skill slots either. You still need other personas to cover different elements and fit specific situations.
As for balance, it's really as simple as making the starter persona's progression dip in the early game to give you a reason to mess around with fusion, then give them skills to learn mid-late game once the player is comfortable with the system. They could also build their weaknesses and resistances with the enemies in each dungeon in mind. For example, if the starter persona's weakness is showing up often, they're more likely to equip a different one to avoid getting their weakness sniped.
@@robo-raven2157the problem there comes from equipment, because starter personas have one weakness and you could just put a skill card or equip an accessory to nullify that weakness
And it detracts from engagement because one of the biggest rewards from Social Links/Confidants is the persona you get at rank 10. If Arsene kept getting skills til endgame, why hang out with Takemi to get Alice?
@@robo-raven2157it's the fun of the game? Rotating your team over and over again is part of a Megami Tensei game's core game design, the game NEEDS a reason for you to fuse away your starter because if the player gets over reliant on a starter persona, they won't attempt to get stronger personas and thus, not interact with fusion mechanics, and most likely not with a good bit of social links in the game
@@shamussarrazine6623 Because other personas can learn skills that the starter persona can't? Alice is worth getting because she has an overpowered instakill curse skill that's unique to her. Arsene literally cannot learn it without cheats, and there are plenty of other personas with worthwhile unique skills in the game as well.
Plus, there's only one piece of equipment that outright removes weaknesses early game, and that one is a bonus rewards that you can only get in the Royal version of P5. Otherwise, you won't be removing weaknesses until the mid-late game, and by then, a single persona like Arsene just won't cut it for a player going through the game blind.
@@robo-raven2157the problem with this statement is the new players. They wouldn't know "Alice with op instakill skill" exists unless they open a guide or smth. This leads to them using arsene extensively until the end of the game, because they think arsene is good, maybe better than other personas of the current level. For example, in comparison to all the mid game personas, arsene with viable-till-endgame strat is very tempting to use, thus negating the need of other arcanas = less reason to level social links.
But I do like starter personas to be better than now tho. Atlus could try to find some way to have both needs met.
I mean, it's not like they can't do it, they did exactly that in persona 5 strikers. In Persona 5 strikers Arsene has a full skillset that has him learning skills well into the 90's like everyone else.
In my opinion the fact that initial Protagonist persona is "weak" has to do with the wild card power, wild card users can develop multiple personas with various aspects, and, to be able to do so, their personality is... Bland, or husk most of the time, like a silent Protagonist must behave(most of the time), this huskness is necessary so he can adapt his inner self to use any persona he wants, however, a side effect of this, is the fact his persona is weak and limited compared to any other persona user.
So, if a persona lead character were to have a better persona, I think he shouldn't be a wild card user, nor a silent Protagonist. Maybe an spin off? Dunno.
I just think that Persona 6 should allow you to get all the basic skill cards via itemization. In 5 and 5 royal a lot of them are only possible via a random malfunction chance, which just feels awful when you are trying a specific build.
Persona 5 Royal already allows what you're asking for. The only skill cards you can't get from itemization without random chance are curse boost/amp, multitarget severe skills, magic ability, and multitarget heavy curse and bless damage.
So in other words it does not allow what I am asking for even with just your examples lol. You can check on Persona 5 Royal calculator and there are a lot of non-unique skills that you can't itemize in any way and you have to save scum during strengthening to get them inherited. It's just a pain in the ass. Make Persona traits all unique and have every single last skill and passive obtainable via skill cards.
@@lite4998 that would take a good chunk of depth out of the fusions (and make it extremely easy to get broken almighty builds.) downfusing stronger skills onto weaker personas is like half the fun of it.
I think that P3 was the closest out of the Hashino trilogy to making the starter personas viable
Well, I wouldn’t say that it really made the starter persona better, but it was able to make it relevant throughout the narrative. It evolved the persona, from Orpheus to Thanatos, and then finally to Messiah.
But you can still use them, just downfuse into them....which has always been a thing. I hate to say it, but Persona/SMT is basically just pokemon, Build, and Use what you Like. For the party members, allow them a wider pool of schools or for the more tolerant players like they did in SH2 allows use to put fused personas on our party members.
Tbf they had that last one in P1 and P2, soul hackers 2 feels like what a modern P2 would play like
Nah. It doesnt need fixing.
The game encourages you to explore fusion mechanics. To not be stucked in just the same persona throughout the game.
.
Anyway, If you really like a persona, you can downfuse into them. It's easy using a calculator.
.
The one thing i hope would be in future persona games is the ability to sacrifice other persona to level up your mains.
Or like in strikers, there's a bonus stat increase everytime you fuse so downfusing wouldnt be wasteful.
I don’t care how hard it is, I will continue to use the starter persona! And in the case of Persona 5 Royal and Persona 3 Reload it makes the game approach anything even halfway close to difficult.
Bring back Persona 1 and 2 balancing
That's it
Not necessarily, just persona 1 and 2 concepts such as water spells, earth spells, maybe gravity spells, and fusion spells
Atlus encourage players to use and switch other persona, i see no problems
I started from persona Q
Skill cards exist I still use Jack Frost and his whole bloodline they’re trashy as hell besides on p4 he come with a resist fire and concentrate I made them good with skill cards so if you want the starter to be good just use skill cards amazing gameplay feature tbh
So you wanna play Pokémon?
Ehhh, the video is a whole lot of nothing. You literally answered your own question in the middle of the video.
Wanna make your starter good? Proper fusion, skill card, and in the case of P5 sacrifice fusion
Bro thinks this is pokemon😭😭😭 you are supposed to get rid of your starter and starting p5 they literally force you to get rid of it too
Bro did not watch the video
I completely disagree,
The actual stating ones are bad so that you use the fusion mechanic which is kinda important with it being one of the main mechanics of persona/SMT, and with the exception of joker the ultimate persona in each game is an upgraded version of the starter, a return to the start now that you've grown strong, that would kinda be like if etrian made the easiest skill to unlock the best without needing later skills to make team good.
Unlike pokemon where your not expected to swap your team much, persona very directly wants you to so the starter power has to match the gameplay expectations of the game
There is a progressive arsene mod
Arséne is really good if you use fusions Properly
Any persona is good if you invest in them, the best personas are the ones you don’t invest in, or have unique qualities that make them irreplaceable despite requiring investment, like yoshitsune, Alice, (sometimes) and insert powerful almighty user signature to the game and or franchise
He has two weaknesses and no conceivable upsides lol, he's an objectively bad Persona and that's a good thing
@@ShioSatou null/drain Skills
@@Joker3180Z Yeah, but any other Persona covers those affinities better anyways and thus won't need to waste slots on those passives. You *can* make anything work, but that doesn't make it good at all. Also funny to mention Null and Drain since Repel is just objectively better in P5
@@ShioSatou skill Cards
While the point is to buff starter persona, i dont mind starter persona sucks..
reason being: they will ALWAYS have an upgraded version, like Izanagi no Okami etc..
one thing i like about persona game is that i can have fun creating weak persona with strong skill combinations.. and to just have it fit the persona themselves..
for example, i once gave izanagi Ziodyne the boost and amp, and Brave Blade, while trying to max his stats to lv 99
or making Jack Frost with Bufudyne (and Ma-) with Boost and Amp, and all of the thing that is possible..
heck most of my playthroughs are always in the Velvet room, until that BGM stuck in my head
Or you could just play the q games where you have your base starter persona locked and a secondary one
Think of the theme of the game.
The theme is all about growth, change, adaptation and evolution.
Starter personas are meant to cap off early so that players can utilize the fusion system and give them an incentive to reach out to social links.
Thematically, having the starter persona cap of early and have them rely on another persona to progress shows to us that the MC can't everything by themselves. They need to eventually change as the current mask they're wearing won't be enough to solve their problems.
There's a reason why we are incentivized to match the tarot of the SL. By matching their tarot, we match the vibe, energy and the perspective of the SL which means we get closer to them rather than by just sticking to one mask.
At the end of the game, the majority of players won't have Arsene, Izanagi, nor Orpheus in their arsenal. Instead, it's mostly endgame personas like Alice, Satan, Messiah, etc. And this is fine. This showcases that the protag is different from when he started his journey. The power of all the other Arcanas are now within their control and the Fool is now ready to face the World forever changed.
There's a reason why Telos, No-Okami, and Satanael are exclusive to NG+ or has like 1 month remaining before the game ends. These persona evolutions represent the Fool (22) or World (21) for they are a reminder that the protag has completed the journey before and is now ultimately capable of doing it all over again, even when alone.
The other comments are right. For this "issue" to be fixed, means that Atlus needs to change everything about the franchise. So no, I simply have to reject your suggestions about the starter personas.
Also, don't compare how the starters are used in the anime vs. The game.
The anime only has little runtime so they have to make sure they use the starters as frequent as possible to create familiarity and attachment for the audience to latch on. It reminds them that this persona IS integral to this character.
For the game? We can spend like 1-5 hours using them until we realize that they can't hold their own anymore and we have to fuse them to progress. Its a "letting go of the old self" ritual as we fuse it to become a better version of the protagonist that is more equipped for the challenges ahead.
I’m convinced p6 isn’t happening
No take it back
@@afuoverthisuser2145 I feel atlus could be struggling with the next persona manifestation. That’s just my guess tho
@@SoarRngI like the mirror theory that has been going around for summoning persona
They're literally confirmed to be in development
I understand what you're saying, but I feel the game is designed to have you use the mechanics.
The issue you feel about the starters are handled by using the mechanics the game offers. You can increase the power and give the starter skills by using the mechanics. These mechanics you gain as the story progresses and as you develop your relationships.
The way the game is currently designed may slow you down, but in reality, it is far more of a fitting way to buff the starters than just making it a linear story based progression.
I'm back and forth on the starter being a wild card sort of persona for relationship advancement.
I think if you made it to where all persons had an affect that made them special outside of the dungeon crawling, then yes, cool idea. If it's just this skill and only the starter gets a bonus outside of the dungeon, then no.
Adding out of dungeon skills or effects would create interesting gameplay. And if the player wanted to min-max, they could, most would find a few and rotate through those.
For example, a persona that heavily increases the chances that buying from a vending machine would give you two of the items. Or one that makes a particular stat increase faster, like charm. Or one that makes more money at certain jobs, or one that makes a little bit more money at all jobs.
A persona that eliminates 2 wrong answers on test and school questions. Or another thar has a 33% chance of giving you the answer to the question.
Maybe a person that increase the rank up points with a particular arcana and another that highlights the best response to give for that arcana.
Of course you would have to have these persona's equipped and the one you want the effect from active.
Meh, fusion isn't the only thing to make starter Personas op. In P5, I made Arsene so op everybody around me is like "How'd you taught him that?!"
I have proof too! ~
Wording this as the starter persona need to be “fixed” and that they “should be more viable” is why I’m personally not going to agree with you. Nothing is wrong with the starting persona, it’s a starting persona for a reason, also if you’d like the starting persona to be more viable just use skill cards and the broken stat raising mechanics in every recent persona game, people do challenge runs of only using the starting persona and the challenge tends to be a joke because of the mechanics that the game has in place.
I think the point they are trying to make is that it would be cool to see a Starter Persona be viable for a majority of the game without needed to rely on outside assistance such as Skill Cards or Stat Boosting.
partly agree with you, I think a middle ground is to have the starter persona get powerful at the late-game
Honestly you shouldn't be forced to choose another persona or have to fuse your starter again to actually make it useful. I mean for such big variety in choices, this is weirdly like the one thing where your forced to give up a starter only run
Its a literal design choice to make you fuse personas, thats the entire point of the combat
This is literally the same thing as developing a new Pokémon game and making so the starters suck and they don’t learn any new move after Tackle and Ember. Because the developers want you to catch new one.
Like, no?? How about letting the player play the way they want?
The entire point of SMT is that the demons/personas are not your friends, they are tools, things that are disposable the moment they aren't useful. You're not supposed to be dragging Pixie to bosses well beyond you get them. Pokémon is in part you're supposed to be bonding with them so it makes sense to make the starter at least be able to be somewhat usable.
Pokémon and Persona are wholy different games
But the whole point is that they want you to fuse personas so no
You can still make these Personas/Demons usable through the use of items such as incense or skill cards, it’d take more work but you can do it. Plus, SMT and Pokémon have wildly different philosophy’s and gameplay styles. The point of Pokémon is that you can be successful with any Pokémon you like (Excluding competitive play) whereas SMT is all about disposing your monsters for the sake of stronger ones. Also, Pokémon already does sorta do the same thing just for a different mechanic. Think about it, how many people actually beat Pokémon games with unevolved starters? How many people have beaten Pokémon with a Squirtle or Torchic that has not once evolved into a Combusken or a Wortortle? Pokémon, actually, does the exact same thing as Persona but the difference is that Pokémon wants you to evolve your starter as opposed to SMT that wants you to fuse it into something new. At the end of the day, in both scenarios the game is forcing you to swap out a weak monster for a stronger one. The only real difference is that one feels like the monster is growing while the other feels like you’re sacrificing a monster for a stronger one. Also, you can still have unevolved Pokémon starters be useful but you need to put the work in to make them useful through items, just like in SMT.
Well you can do that. Who said that you couldn't? You can drag your starter persona all the way up and level it up RAW, put in skill cards if you want, and boom you can do it? I don't understand the complaint here. It's just that the starter persona no longer has any more moves to learn past its limits. Even pokemon does this with evolutions. You can just tell the pokemon to not evolve everytime and it will no longer learn any new moves unless you put in discs. Your complaint is totally benign.
The comment above me explains it in more detail.
no
I hope we get a female protagonist and persona 6 and have a Yuri romance