Two Things: 1. I've gotten a number of comments wondering why I didn't mention the Press Turn system. I wanted to judge the One More System in a vacuum and what it tries to accomplish in the games it is used in. I felt as though that would be the best way to look at One More in the most fair way possible without plainly saying "It's Better/Worse than X system because XYZ". A lot of the times when I see One More discussed, I see it described flatly as "worse Press Turn" when I think that's a bit of a reductive way to look at it, and that by bringing that notion to attention that it would be time that could have been spent better on what One More IS rather than what it is not. And as much as I *did* want to make this video longer, I didn't think that there'd be nearly as many people as there are who were interested in this topic. Which I appreciate a ton! If you want to hear my thoughts on Press Turn, I have a video on it from a couple of years ago you can see here(Warning: Massive Audio Quality difference lol, maybe I'll remake this down the line now that I've played Apocalypse and V and can discuss Smirk and Magatsuhi in fuller detail): ruclips.net/video/fprhqsciYWg/видео.html 2. There's quite a number of things I'd probably change had I been given more time on this. While I still agree with my main thoughts, there are details that I ignored, overhyped, or got flat out wrong. Such as the accuracy of bows(which had gotten mixed with fist weapons in my head), the explotability of the jazz club in P5R, and the absence of indepth discussion on each individual title(Portable + base P4 + base P5). As I usually work solo on scriptwriting, I'm pretty prone to making blunders such as these. My bad on that and I'm thankful for the people pointing these out!
I think maybe making it so that when you activate one more, you get a small damage boost for every turn you can activate one more on a single character, but when you activate one more, it disables the move and the passives it took advantage of.
honestly, fair enough, I absolutely love press turn, it is my favorite combat system in any game honestly. But I don't think one more is necessarily worse, so I tend to describe it as a simpler version of press turn because press turn can absolutely be very complicated, especially if it's your first time using it
It's a great way to frame your points, I love discussion like this. I think especially in the gaming community at large, I've been noticing lately that a lot of people get really hung up over what can often be very shallow comparisons instead of judging something solely based on its own merits and shortcomings, or otherwise trying to glean some of the logic that the developers may have put into an idea or system, regardless of how they may feel personally about something, or how well or how poorly it may have been implemented. Also, while I get that you may have wanted to go more indepth on individual titles, and talking shop with youtube commenters isn't exactly the best way to inform your video-creation decisions, to throw in my own two cents; I think the video as it is strikes a good length. imo there's nothing wrong with not being completely exhaustive if what you've already got illustrates your position well enough. I often see videos going up to and over the 2-hour mark trying to make a point that they could have easily illustrated in 10-20 minutes or less with more focus, and while retention on long-form content is, or at least was at one point a good way to build a profitable audience on youtube I think valuing not only other people, but also your own time is just as, if not more important.
It would only make sense; if I can do it, why can't they? Recently Persona games have been getting easier and easier with new ways of gaining advantage over the enemies, but they have nothing aside from boss gimmicks. All I want is a fair fight, not one I can just snowball on every single encounter.
@@Oreca2005 You can say that about literally any modern game that has had a series. The point is if you keep making excuses for why devs should adapt their game for you instead of you adapting through proper adversity then you're asking for inferior content for the same price.
21:20 i agree 100% persona 4 shuffle time is way too overpowered bc of the stat bonuses. i just finished my first playthrough of p4g a few days ago, i tried playing normally like a year ago but got stuck at the void quest boss. this time i literally stuck with izanagi and farmed for stat increases and skill cards and didn't use any other persona a single time. by nations dungeon izanagis stats were all 80+ and the rest of my party averaged like 40. don't get me wrong it was still extremely fun to play like this it just made it way too easy
also completely unrelated but i hate the dlc personas in p5r they completely take the fun out if you use them right away, i wish the dlcs gave you a boost with confidants or something like anything to make progressing more fun and not just insanely easy
After my time with smt nocturn and 5, i feel like the the one more system is a lot more engaging, im thinking a lot more when im doing it. Not that i think its more COMPLEX i just auto pilot less.
@@makotonaegi4419 because all I have to do is know what the enemy hits with and be immune to it which is incredibly easy in smt. I just make them waste turns..
@@e-gothvods4538 you can do make the same argument for persona because you can make a persona that is immune to the neemy attack and they can't do anything yrf not factoring in what the enimies are immune too and their stats or buffs.
@@makotonaegi4419 except that in persona it's way later game before you're making any personas that have those kinds of immunities and enemies arent punished for hitting your resistances. They still get their turns. You have to keep them in check by knocking them down and one miss can cause a chain reaction. It's more about offense compared to smts defense. I didn't take into account buffs and debuffs because the same buffs and debuffs are present in both games, that isn't relevant.
30:39 Maybe in a vacuum, but Royal doesn't require deep mechanical interaction for most of the game because the numbers are heavily put into the players' favor. This section also doesn't talk about persona affinities and buffed attack items. As for persona 3, party members are very unbalanced. Junpei gets outshined by Aigis because she learns all 3 party-wide buffs, has Samarecarm/Diarahan, and doesn't stumble with her weapons. Mitsuru's ice damage output is only okay, and mind charge is an active nerf in persona 3 because it only increases damage by 80%. Koromaru has no real utility other than Sukukaja and Shinjiro went out for milk.
Doesn't Junpei learn Vorpal Blade? That should be best AoE slash damage skill if your condition is "Great". Aigis's offensive capability doesn't outshine his.
Very true I'm at the 20's in July so I'm not sure but I'm hoping Reload is going to rebalance the party better to keep them more tight knit (Akihiko is my boy but there's no reason he needs to be a tier or 2 above everyone else) Like say giving Junpei charge, or Giving Aigis more useful skills before her multi target buffs.
An interesting thing about the additions in Persona 5 are that quite a few of the additions were only added in the Royal rerelease. 1. Baton passes couldn't be used with a certain party member until you ranked their confidant high enough. 2. The different tiers with baton pass didn't exist with the vanilla release. 3. Technical damage wasn't as easy as in Royal. 4. Persona traits also weren't added until Royal. 5. The twins' rank 5 perk allowing you to fuse higher level personas was originally the rank 10 perk.
@@samuelmartinez8106 You are right, the changes in P5R make the game so easy to the point where an encounter in the original game that may have been challenging ends before you can finish a baton pass chain. Easily the best way to experience the story, but once I 100% it, I'm going back to the original because I like feeling I'm actually putting effort into a game that I'm playing on the hardest difficulty.
@samuelmartinez8106 They definitely threw a ton of mechanics at the player to guage community feedback to each one. But with how hard you can min max synergies and you just become Shido's abusive step father.
Merciless difficulty 3x damage multiplier should've only been given to the enemies, not the player lol. That difficulty definitely did not live up to its name
@@samuelmartinez8106 oh yea it was super easy u dont have to think at all to beat majority of bosses just use an aoe physical attack with a persona that has a trait for physical attack (pretty easy to get) and u beat basically beat the entire game except for certain enemies/bosses that repel/drain/block physical attacks
an aspect of Junpei people tend to overlook is that his Physical skills are Pierce and Bash while his sword deals slash. So between that and his Agi skill he covers 4 out of the 7 elements in the game.
Bosses universally being immune to various Status conditions tend to be what makes players not mess with them. It's an issue in EVERY RPG as well, with stuff like Freeze Charm Static and Burn being limited to trash mobs or mini-bosses. The Persona series in general has a better track record about allowing it.....but there's still no real way to test who is immune to what without basically commiting a Game Over to probing. I think Persona 5 is the first RPG I've played that dedicates a mini-boss to teaching you status isn't worthless against bosses. The fact a no-weakness enemy can get Dizzy'd, and then following bosses also can, is a HUGE change. Now if only they can commit to it more...
As someone that played P3 Fes on hard, I'm okay with the changes they made to one more and allowing the user to just straight up control all the allies. It was freaking punishing to play for 2 hours in tartarus, run into a normal fight, get down to the last enemy, have Mitsuru cast tentafroo instead of bufula, and then the enemy straight up kills the MC with like hama or mudo. It was rough. The one more system the only way to survive that mode because not downing all the enemies and finishing them off resulted in death a lot of the times. To be fair, that was an extreme where the one more system was your lifeline when constantly straddling the precipice of death, but after that it makes sense they would simplify things for people to just enjoy the game.
P3 Fes on hard was a whole different experience, where every single hallway fight could just insta kill you, iam quite happy with the changes made, if anything i wish knocked down targets still lost their turn, i absolutely loved that constant opportunity cost analyzes i had to make
@@TectonicImprov Mot is the only boss in Nocturne that gains press turns at random. It's entirely possible to fight him without seeing him use Beast eye once or he can keep doing it even after he's passed the press turn limit for no reason.
The stat increases from the jazz club is fine it would require about 10 new game plus runs just dedicated to maxing all the parties stats at level 99 even just accounting for min maxing their best and most useful stats thats five new game plus runs
Yea I definitely overplayed it and regret doing so. I do think the ability to raise party stats directly makes it easy to make characters whatever you want them to be and can potentially break them out of their role(Ex: Making Makoto, a support character balanced out by her average damage output if she's not dealing technical damage, into a strong magic user with Concentrate + Boosted Magic Stat). But it's not like you could make this a thing for everyone unless NG+ in which case who cares or unless you found out about it early enough and invested in characters like Ryuji/Ann with already high St/Ma stats and tried to make those 99.
I think another problem is also that ambushes are very strong and easy to do and give you massive advantages, and that battles tend to have only 2/3 weaknesses so the MC can solve battles on his own if you just start and hit the first weakness, switch persona and hit the other weakness and AoA. Like I remember in 4 Golden mostly being halfway through the dungeon and MC was the only one who had really spent SP. I think the more interesting battles in 5 Royal where against Fafnir who was just immune and resistant to stuff, so going with status was the way to go, but if you want weaknesses you could have an enemy cover their weakness with a Wall skill when the battle begins so this makes breaks actually have a use or you have to wait out the turns to be able to more easily dispatch it.
Persona 5 solved the thing of just the MC changing personas and 1 turn the fight by making so that he can only swap in his own turn. I am pretty sure that once you use a skill, you are locked into that persona until you get your own turn or until someone baton passes to Joker.
@masterblaster38 you can use your initial Persona, and if you switch Persona and then use a Persona action, you're locked in. It might also apply to Gun and the standard Attack locking you in, but I don't know
@@furiouscorgi6614 Yeah. I think It is just from the moment you use a persona skill that you are locked into that persona. That's why sometimes is important to get a persona with multiple elemental skills. I THINK that using your gun and knife doesn't lock you in the persona except if you use a physicall/gun skill to get that one more. That doesn't happen in the original P3 and P4 + P4G where if you changed your Persona at all you were inmediadly locked.
@@Xeroxthebeautiful Yeah, that makes sense. This actually makes you have a reason to have a persona with multiple elemental attacks instead of just one for each ig. I have been doing NG+ in P5R now and because I have only personas with 1 element cover, I can't hit every weakness turn 1.
Bruh no it's like the core gameplay loop. I love this system and I don't want them to remove it. Game was still plenty difficult for me and I think plenty of enemies are balanced for it, Mostly bosses of course but I don't think it's broken in the least.
Never gonna forget spending two hours on the final boss of p3 bc i decided to run ken, yukari, mitsuru. Having no JRPG experience I figured "if everyone has support skills everything will work out"
This was a way better analysis of Persona 3-5 combat than I expected. You managed to put a lot of the feelings I had for each game into words. Personally P3FES still has my favorite combat in the series, even over P5 (though I haven't played Royal). On top of what's stated in the video, I also like that it mechanically ties the combat into the narrative of SEES not really liking each other at first but growing closer together over the course of the game. Tactics, in combination with Fatigue and SL Breaking/Reversing, did a lot to make the characters actually kind of feel like their own people, and not just puppets controlled by the MC. I do understand why some people didn't like it though. I wouldn't want every game to use AI party members, but I think it worked really well in P3 and I wish the remake kept it in as an option.
I have to agree. Breaking/Reversing is cool, especially if we have the option not to date everyone but choose to. An Issue OG P3 had was you HAD to date to progress which was an issue, but having the ability to be friends and progress is huge. As well as Fatigue I see as interesting but also could see as hit or miss. Tactics as a whole is a really cool and fascinating idea. It reminds me of say The Battle Frontier where you suggest what your pokemon does. It can lead to depth and feel more like besides you acting you are a leader. The issue is the lack of depth of it or issues with it as a whole and the AI. I think it'd be something awesome to see revisited with a better AI as a whole. Maybe even make how smart an AI is tied to character, like someone who is more physical focuses on physical weaknesses over magic, etc
I am part of the rare 1% of players who prefers the AI on and hearing that P3R doesn't even have it as an option like 4 and 5 did really turns me off of what was previously my series favorite. That's a real shame. I think altering your tactics around what you think the AI is going to do (I don't even tell them 'conserve sp' or 'all out attack', it's always set to act freely) adds a layer of challenge to the game that just straight up isn't there when you can control all four party members. YOU are the commander. YOU are the buff machine. YOU are debilitating the enemy so that you can put the other pieces in position to do their jobs. Also, it speeds up combat a lot: your allies auto-inputting commands makes fights that would be far more tedious a lot smoother. The only time I ever put on commands was when it was literally impossible to win a fight without it: Shadow Teddie in P4. The AI can guard in P5, but for some reason it can't in P4.
@@myyoutubeaccount4167 yoooo that's still really good news! I don't mind it being the P4/5 optional kind, I just wanna turn the AI on during fights and if that's available I'm down. Thanks for the info!
smirk kinda sucks but it was mostly fixed in apocalypse and the enemies/bosses can use it easily too, whilst bosses in persona can't use Baton Passes and the like
first time playing, missing the initiation, and proceeding to lose my party of lvl 10s to 2 lvl 6 chagrins smirking like psychopaths in a single turn to zio because i didnt intend on fighting them was what made me go, "ok. this is a good game."
@@mikeysaurlol It was actually really BS overpowered in IV. It treats you as if you're at max attack buff, you have 100% accuracy, and of course, increases your evasion. Two of these were removed for IVA, and they instead added that the hit you perform while Smirking has 100% crit rate, even if it is magic
12:30 I never saw an issue with this change, enemies in p3 were able to gain a one more if they hit one person's weakness with an aoe. This change felt like it was evening the playing field.
This is littérally misinformation the enemies act in the same way as the player The clip at 8:09 has the enemy score a crit but not get a one more with an AoE
@@canasnewell3089 To my understanding, getting a physical critical hit on one target out of multiple isn't the same as hitting the weakness of one target out of multiple barring specifically being weak to melee. I need to test it but I don't remember a physical aoe giving a once more just from critting, unless maybe if it managed to crit every target?
@@psoffxifan4904 it's just... Not a thing. Enemies don't get one more from weaknesses or crits in a way that differs from the player in Persona 3. That would be really stupid though.
The bigger issue is with physical skills. In groups of 3, you can reliably manage your crit chance to hit 1 of them on average, giving you 3-4 massive AoE attacks per turn.
By any chance, were you playing the Portable or Reload version of Persona 3? In these two versions, all you need to do to score a one-more is to knock down at least one enemy. This differs from OG and FES. In these two versions, you must knock down all enemies you attempt to attack in order to score a one-more. In all versions of Persona 3, the way in which shadows score a one-more never differs from the way in which players score a one-more, so there is no "evening of the playing field" going on here.
Actually you can beat teh reaper even more earlier than you're supposed to Thunder call's fusion spell also inflicts 100% shock and if you have a good amount of sp healing items All you need to do is put all characters except the last one on conserve sp and the last one on knock down tactic Since while on knock down tactic , if you choose to not do an all out attack The party member ai will skip it's turn just so the enemy is kept on the ground
Also a bit of a tangent but this could relate to the Persona games as well; too many RPG's and JRPG's reward being prepared for something with pretty much being able to coast through with minimal difficulty. I think that being well prepared for a dungeon or boss fight or whatever should merely mean that you "have a fair shot" at winning or succeeding/doing well. It should still be a challenge even when you are prepared. This issue is largely fixed by increasing the damage output and HP values of enemies, or giving them more powerful attacks, etc. But it's very very rare where I go into a dungeon or boss fight prepared for it (by "prepared" I mean having good healing items, up to date gear or personas in this case, a good idea of enemy weaknesses and skills to have, etc) and come out feeling challenged or like I barely scraped by. It feels like developers either completely underestimate their playerbase, or want to reward you merely for being prepared.
Yeah but I feel a lot of the time games doing that are just making players level grind for hours rather than doing something meaningful to adapt to a fight to "be prepared". Persona still makes you grind sometimes but most of it comes down to having the right personas fused and making it "too easy" is more a matter of if you min maxed something. You could be overleveled with the wrong demon equipped and still die to weakness attacks especially on hard/merciless. I think its a good middle ground between handholding entirely and something like SMT3's punishing press turns.
I strongly disagree with the principle of increasing the hp of enemies. It shouldn't take 10 minutes for me to prove that I have a winning strategy. Most fights I go into underleveled because even though I fight nearly every enemy I come across, I really don't like grinding. I can compensate for this however by using buffs/debuffs and good strategy. Instead of this feeling rewarding when I'm able to beat the boss, even though I have a harder time doing it, it's just a slog
@puffmain3276 Yes but my point is that no RPG's even require a good strategy, you can just go in, coasting through and get by with the level you're currently at and the items you already have. There's no engagement or feeling of needing to be prepared. And if I do try to get prepared, then I know it's going to be a joke.
@@BearsDenGaming Merciless mode hurts the game for other reasons. The insane bonus damage of weakness hits makes merciless a joke 90% of the time, unless you're fighting a boss. Hard is the best mode for challenge, but I still find myself unsatisfied with it much of the time, especially with these re-releases giving players more tools than ever but not giving the enemies anything to keep up.
@@puffmain3276 Also I agree that regular enemies shouldn't take super long to take out, but I also believe that wiping out a group of enemies before they even have a turn should be an incredibly rare occurance.
@@WKCamperer Don't be a smug prick. You are still a Persona fan, the SMT purists would say the same to you. I think my issue with this video is that it ignores the obvious "why", these mechanics are not just dumped down, it's that with more options and game knowledge you start to optimize. The fact you can create "nuke" character and a dominant strategy is a universal truth, and you can spend time complain about PS3, in that regard as well. The Super Boss would be no issue if it couldn't cheat against you. I also don't think it is fair to take out time to complain about it's a shame that Naoto doesn't work for bosses if the same amount of time of character critic was not given to the P3 cast, Ken suffers from the exact same thing. The "problem" also only exist if you only look at boss fights as the only thing to think about and not SP costs and changing characters mid-exploration. -and that is all the time I have.
Oh, Royal added the trait system? Neat. That wasn't in the original. I think what makes the Persona titles is that they're all unique in their own ways. So you can 100% understand why someone would have a favorite over the others. Well, except for Persona 1.
To enjoy p1 you should play persona revelations with the localization fix mod instead of the psp port. Revelations has the best atmosphere in the series, and it using the funky sound system of the ps1 made for very satisfying moments. Its not my favorite but its definitely undervalued (and id say better than p4)
P1 isn’t close to being my favorite (it’s probably 5th place when ranking the mainline titles. Or 4th if you count P2’s as one for some reason.) but I can see how it be someone’s favorite when it comes to the story and atmosphere. The game has to be one of the most unique games I’ve played personally.
One thing about p3p people who haven't played it may fail to take away from this video is that it adapts persona 4's one more system and party control without meaningfully changing the actual design of the boss encounters. This means that certain early bosses where (I feel) the game encouraged the player to learn about stun locking and having patience now need alternate solutions. It also means certain enemy groupings that emphasized the risk reward of multi-target skills are now just plain easy. Also, while scanning in fes would tell the AI if a boss was susceptible to an ailment or not, it doesn't tell you. And since you control the party in portable, there's no way to actually know when and what status ailments are actually smart plays. This can lead to people who experience persona 3 through portable to think of its combat and boss solutions as the same as 4, even when it was never meant to be approached that way.
Persona 3's different versions make for an interesting case study on how the different gameplay styles interact with the same enemy design. That moreso goes for FES v Portable as Reload has mostly different/redesigned bosses that are more built for Reload's mechanics with some of the old ones being optional. But I think it could still fit into a discussion.
Every new game I miss standing from knock down taking a turn, Hard Mode NG P3FES runs made me realize how much I love that as a mechanic, dizzy feels too random to be a good replacement for it.
I haven't even watched the entire video yet, but thank you for summarizing the exact same problems I had with P4 mechanically back from playing the Vanilla version in 2020. Seeing that none of it was addressed in Golden is just sad really
The best way to innovate Persona combat is to do what Tokyo mirage sessions did. Reworked all out attacks into a series of individual blows done by all party members. This reveals nearly all of an enemies elemental resistances/weaknesses in a single turn. The game isn’t over when the protagonist dies. Party switching is free and available immediately. Implements the fire emblem weapon triangle. Where swords beat axes, etc. Allies and enemies alike are all affected by it. Allowing you to immediately deduce at least one enemy weakness by their weapon type. From there, you can use a weakness into a session attack and find all enemy affinities, like above. Additionally, this also gives all party members defining weaknesses and resistances to increase diversity. Physical elemental attacks. And this is just scratching the surface on the great gameplay of TMS. The progression and dungeon designs are also top notch.
Aside from the global problem of protag death = game over, my only problem with 3's tactic system is I wish buff/debuff was a separate option from heal. Other than that I actually prefer the more volatile ^risk^reward combat of 3 over 4 and 5 (though 5's baton pass system compensates to pretty much tie it with FES for me.)
@@samuelmartinez8106he's saying that he would prefer if the Heal/Support tactic in FES would be split in 2, so it would be 1 tactic which only encompasses healing, and another who encompasses buffs and debuffs, like tarunda/tarukaja.
Yeah, not having full control over party members while also having a "protag/leader falls, then you fail" mechanic doesn't add up well tbh.... Looking at you FF13......
I started on the original Persona 3, and I liked it the best. I never found lack of control of party members a problem and I enjoyed stun locking the enemies.
ngl this felt more like a video about persona's combat in general than just the one more system also I'm fairly sure I saw this same video in my recommended a while ago under a different title, interesting
I know this is persona but I love SMT's version of it where you have press turn icons instead. Allowing for strategic use of attack AND DEFENSIVE maneuvers.
Screw shadows. In persona 6 i want some opponents to be groups of 1-4 persona users who are just as fragile and weak as you (same health and damage scaling), but leverage 1 mores, baton passes, and all out attacks (alongside some team synergy) to absolutely whomp you if you aren't prepared (will probably need to balance the system to not OHKO too many times without massive set-up/preparation). This hopefully utilizes the age-old trick of balancing out strong player mechanics by making the opponents use them just as much or at least threaten to use them just as much.
It's funny because 1 More and Baton Pass (or Shift in P3R) are the sole reasons why I think Persona games have the best turn-based combat, especially P5R.
This video is really funny to me, because for a while, I considered Persona 4 to actually have the best implementation of the One More system, and felt especially so after playing Persona 5 (vanilla). This was a write-up I did during a discussion regarding the merits of P3 vs P4's battle systems: "I definitely really like P3's battle system. I wouldn't call Persona 3 my favorite game ever if that wasn't the case. I like the narrative purpose for the tactics menu and outside of a few circumstances, was usually able to use tactics to get what I wanted from a party member. That said, I'm not necessarily sure I agree with your conclusion that Persona 3's battle system is more balanced than Persona 4's, and in that regard, I'm specifically referring to how knockdown works. While I do agree that the stricter requirements for getting a 1-More balances out with how being knocked down skips a turn, I still find the system a little too exploitable, not so much from the enemy's angle, but from the player's. If the player so wishes, they can use the fact that being knocked down skips a turn to keep troublesome enemies from acting at all, and use the given leeway to regroup, buff the party, debuff the enemies, heal, whatever. The chance that your next targeted spell might miss always exists, but when your agility's up and their's is down already, that's hardly an issue worth worrying about. This isn't to say that battle can't randomly end up heavily in the enemy's favor, especially if they have an instant kill spell, but the system always makes me feel like I'm kind of cheating. That said, it's worth noting that this is probably why my favorite boss in the Persona franchise from a mechanical perspective (not a narrative one) is Conceited Maya, who takes the strategy the player has been using to play the entire game and turns it against them, fully exploiting the battle system just as the player has. I wish more storyline bosses took as much advantage of their respective game's battle system as this one did (though I hear the fight against Caroline and Justine in P5 also does this? Haven't fought them so I'm not sure.) This is exactly why I love what Persona 4 did with the dizzy system. Aside from removing the pain involved in getting knocked down and having to spend a turn getting back up only to get knocked back down again, it turns downing enemies into its own risk-reward scenario. Enemy comps in P4 will often have groups that cover each other's weaknesses, so using a multi-hit skill might knock one enemy down while reflecting or healing another's. Knowing that, knowing an enemy can wipe your party if they're allowed to attack on their next turn means you have to constantly weigh whether you should try to ensure a dizzy on a downed opponent or to go for more guaranteed damage on another is in the back of your mind. On a side note, I also appreciate how it streamlines weaknesses, so enemies weak to light will always get killed by a hama skill, versus other games where there's only a slightly more likely chance that they'll succumb to it. It does somewhat devalue higher-level instant kill skills, but honestly, I never used hama or mudo skills that often to begin with, so that might just be more of a personal quibble. Just so long as we can agree that P5 has the most boring battle system for making knockdowns mean absolutely nothing aside from being closer to getting a hold-up, and its only redeeming factor is baton pass, then we're good." Royal definitely did do a lot to alleviate P5's weaknesses though, and I could tell that was the case almost as soon as I started playing it. The improvements to baton pass and the technical skills definitely do make it more strategically interesting. That said though, I do still have to give P5R shit because in spite of that depth, the game is so easy even on Merciless that you barely even have to pay attention to the complexities of the system. I got by using primarily P4-tier strategies combined with baton pass and got through without breaking a sweat. I do wish that the main game itself forced me to use these strategies more, as I'd probably come away with a much more positive opinion of P5R otherwise. I recognize that the extra fights found in the Velvet Room do alleviate this, but the fact there's no easy way to know when to do it (especially since there's no "post-game" to speak of) makes its strengths likewise seem muddied.
Another great video! I love a lot of the battle mechanics the megaten games have it sets them apart from other turn based rpgs but I really think they need tweaking, they're easily exploitable on one hand and on the other you can be punished for just being unlucky with nothing you can do
Turn base is just straight up outdated at this point and easily exploitable. I think they're just no direction to go for this battle system now, The last time a Turn base gave me difficulty is Darkest dungeon 1 which isn't going to fit any SMT games at all. The best they could do is upgrade to a action turn based system like FF 7 Remake and go from there.
In any jRPG you're absurdly overpower by the endgame if you do anything the game has to offer. Sephirot in FF7 is super easy one you get the Knights of the Round materia, in FF10 when you get the ultimate wepons they break the 9999 damage barrier. In this games if weren't for ofpheus Messiah or Satanael they would not be motivation to certain absolute boring social links (taking to you TV host and Gourmet King)
I don't enjoy extremely difficult old school jRPG's like SMT nocturne at default difficult, I remember FF12 being punishing with some bosses, Legend of legaia was one of those. Mainly because the scarcity of healing items between battles. Most of times I just want to play Persona games for the story, not the difficulty.
On paper, it isn't a bad fight, but I find the way sacrifice order works to be too punishing. IMO, if it were a little less punishing it would be perfectly fine
I know this is an unpopular opinion but I actually like P3/FES's fully AI party members with lots of tactical options rather than just 3 (4 if you count Direct Command). Not being able to change Tactics on the party member's turn was the frustrating part. I'd really wish that they expand further with their original design concept; "You're not meant to make your friends work FOR you, you're meant to work WITH them."
I think this is why I really like Persona's combat mechanic, I think the 1 more system is a really good mechanic, probably the persona games are the first turn based rpgs I enjoyed playing because of it. Especially with P5, the first time I experienced 1 more and baton passes, I always fight the shadows I see
Looking at this is definitely a reason for why Persona 4s battle system needs an improvement. of course, its not gonna happen soon since it still holds up. But give it years.
I'm confused. He likes the Persona 5 system really well but it falls apart in many of the same ways as Persona 4. Some of which he mentioned in Persona 4 and didn't say how it was rectified in Persona 5. Such as: 1. Characters not losing a turn when knocked down 2. All attacks are only required to hit one enemy that's weak to get a one more 3. Honestly, bosses still take a while. To me that's enjoyable though, in both games, they change strategies as they go through their phases. But it was a negative to him in Persona 4. 4. Something he does hit on but Persona 5 is too easy, regardless of difficulty with the exception of the 5th Palace Boss. Why should I care about getting stronger and experimenting? I can destroy everything without doing that. Also, Chie is better than Kanji. And I play P4 Golden on Hard. She crits, amazing for Gold Hands and she has Power Charge, which Kanji is missing, to make her a great boss killer.
a simple way to make persona somewhat challenging would be to just get rid of the ambush mechanic so that enemies actually have a chance to do something
IMO the biggest failure of modern Persona combat is the party members. Straight up I just think SMT's system of every party member having jts own demon is better. I'd be really down for a return of the vintage Persona games letting you change every character's personas (with limitations iirc)
Idea with persona 3s tactics option When a character is going to do an action, there is a whole second or 2, in which the player has the opportunity to interrupt it, and change it to something they’d like.
This comment gave me an idea… You know how you can switch to RUSH/Auto Battle mode on the fly in these games? I feel like a good workaround to not being able to change tactics on other turns would be to add a “priority system” where, on the leaders turn, you set a party member’s first priority action, as well as a second priority action that can be switched to into and out of in a manner similar to using the RUSH/Auto Battle function.
The big problem is that I don't really care about Persona's combat system at all. The boss fights are decent enough, but pretty much everytime I'm forced to enter a dungeon, it's just content that I'm FORCED to slog through until I get back to the parts of the game that I actually enjoy. I'm not playing Persona for it's combat. There's a reason I have little interest in Shin Megami Tensei. The appeal of Persona are the life sim elements. An opinion that I'm pretty sure most people agree with. After all, Persona only really turned into a massive success after Persona 3, the game to add those elements into the game. Hell, Persona 3 itself even references just how poorly Persona 2 performed in the Hermit social link Sure, the One More system is very abusable and makes combat fairly easy, but it's satisfying. And it fits the game.
I guarantee you there's plenty of people that do care and enjoy persona for it's combat. Case and point, look at how many challenge run videos that target specifically the combat of the games there are, and how popular they tend to be. Or even the fact that this entire video exists, contrary to what one might think, most ppl don't go into persona expecting it to be a dating sim, they go into it expecting a rpg with dating sim elements.
@@mizzix even then, it does integrate both very well into each other. different balancing between all the persona games that had the life sim part sure, but you honestly can't ignore one without the other or it'll DRASTICALLY change the pace of the game since it'll weaken you in some way overall
@@mizzixI disagree, most people go into Persona for characters, not the systems. Or because everyone else is trying it out and it was popular, and they stayed for the characters. Or maybe all of us are right and Atlus has to find a way to make a Persona game to impress all parties.
FYI, i know you say in the desc it's P5 Royal, but I want to stress a lot of these features are in P5 Royal and not base Persaon 5. Normal P5 lacks the challenge room, and Ryuji's ability becomes a liability (hah!), because you don't get any exp or cash from using it. Also the Okumura fight is completely different, as are most boss fights. The Okumura fight is way less challenging in base Persona 5. I felt that in Royal, I had to change difficulty to Merciless just so I could pull off enough damage on the robots. And the Baton Pass system can't be unlocked until later in the game, because you need high academics to get the chess girl to hang out with you. I played through the entirety of base Persona 5 NEVER UNLOCKING Baton Pass... The schedule in this game is awfully tight, because unlike in Persona 3, you need to have SO many friends, and you can only do stuff in the day (unless again you unlock a different characters social link). I also feel that Makoto is outclassed by the end of the game, even her special ability in Royal is to cause a mass debuff, but like... enemies are resistant to debuffs and if you're fighting a boss it's a big waste of SP to use her skill instead of the single target skill, or another character's ability. Her ailment boost is great but I'm not sure if it outclasses what is lost.
Vanilla P5 starts off reasonably hard (due to SP limitations), then gets easier later on, so about the typical power curve for Persona. No Ryuji IK farming and the Strength link fusion cheat being locked behind a later rank push the usual Persona "break the game completely open" phase back to the endgame as well, though there was the Reaper flu season trick. The endgame is shorter by a month as well with no 3rd semester, so there was no real "playground" for you to bring out the busted endgame builds. Royal made the early game much easier (will seed SP refund helps a lot), nerfed Madarame which was probably the hardest boss in the game in vanilla bar Twins given the expected level to fight him at, and made Wakaba a scripted fight. Okumura is harder than Vanilla, but a lot of people's struggle came from the game being so easy up until that point, that they never learnt to play the game or make use of what was given to you. Baton Pass is the mechanic to pass your 1 more to another party member, (and unlocked at a certain rank of their Social Link) you're thinking of Hifumi's party swap. Which is a nice feature but by lategame the game is so piss easy you don't actually need it, and early on as you said the requirement to unlock her link is rather high so a lot of people end up working on someone else instead. Persona 3 is also significantly harder to schedule around than 5, in 3 a significant amount of your links are in school, and you lose access to them completely during the multiple holiday periods, as well as the week before exams. If you don't know/remember this before hand and you prioritize links outside of school, you're going to end up running out of stuffs to do 2/3rd of the way through the game for most days, and not enough school days for everyone remaining. Makoto's strength is that she's absurdly strong during the part of the game where there's still some form of difficulty left. Healing, solid damage, defense buffs means that she outclasses Morgana completely as a healer. Endgame, it doesn't even matter when Joker can legit do everything and one shot nearly everything with a juiced up Yoshitsune.
One More system is just a budget Press Turns. I genuinely can't go back playing persona games after playing SMT who made by the same developer and made at the same time.
@@pn2294 I can't believe anyone want the water down version. One more/extra turn or any version of it, it's not controllable, while press turn the player will always be in control, cost half a turn was a simple and amazing game mechanic, especially when the enemies AI also has the same press turn ability, making it feels like I'm playing another player at every boss fight since player and enemy share the same mechanic/ability. While the water down version is just downgrade when it's not fully a controllable mechanic. But I guess not everyone agree with it apparently.
@@pn2294 have you played any SMT series games other than persona? That game was so hard, because the enemies and boss battles are abusing the press turn system, the first ever boss fight the AI cheese the press turn system, every single first roadblock boss fight teaches player how to cheese and exploit press turn mechanics. That's why it's fun to replayed SMT games because it offer so much freedom how the player can exploits the controllable press turn mechanics. I'm not the only one who has an demon ally in my team just to do press turns, the game was designed for it.
@@pn2294 Compared to infinite one mores in persona 3? Or triple baton pass enemy down aoe in persona 5? Both of those make it a joke once you know weaknesses and there's less depth than the concept of press turns, other than near random turn order
5:34 "on the other hand bows and guns have a bigger accuracy" Yukari - Oh yeah? Let me show you a pro gamer move(misses every single shot on the battle)
I feel like they should make merciless actually incredibly hard. Not just increased numbers but increased sp cost, higher prices, more shadow variety (even just inverted colors with type effectiveness turned on it’s head could create fun moments) reaper showing up faster and disabling pause fast travel. Changes like that which don’t remove mechanics but force better gameplay from the player would be fantastic for dedicated players who want to master all the systems in game. You can even think of added optional parts of a boss being added like if kamoshida had more students give him his volleyball spike forcing you to heal more, guard more, and divert your attention to the student while trying to keep kamoshida distracted. One simple change can dramatically increase the difficulty and even if they don’t make merciless into that maybe they can add a difficulty that only unlocks when you beat the game. Doesn’t carry over NG+ benifits but saves data from it, can’t back down to a lower difficulty, it’d be fantastic and the more brutal the better for those who want a challenging persona game who’s challenge is based mostly on skill, and not on dodges and crits.
masterpiece video! i disagree with you with some aspect, but i lam surprised by the fact that there is someone who appreciate persona gameplay in depth without judging from just loving/hating without a reason to this love or hate. thanks for this great video!
So, respectively. It kinda feels like you're missing the forest for the trees here. Most of your issues are more in line with the series over simplification and over tuning than the 1 More system itself.
I see what you mean. However, I think that a combat system is only successful as the factors surrounding it, which is why I went into so much details on those topics as they are integral to a discussion on the system. If factors such as the enemy design and player options(ex: party customization) do not work together to uplift and show the strengths of the system, it can impact the amount of enjoyment and desire people have to engage with those systems. Hence the fragility or dependence of the system in my eyes. This dependency isn't wholly unique to just P3-5 amongst the many other turn based RPGs, this is just the one I'm most familiar with and had a lot to speak on.
@@TatsuHavenbut shouldn't you make your title reflect the broadness of your thoughts on the combat of these games? The video's title suggests that you are focusing on a single mechanic which is not the case.
Im not sure which came first, but Digital Devil Saga had a mechanic thst was functionally similar to one more even though it wasnt called that. It also had limits because you could only trigger itba certain number if times per turn.
That's the "press turn" system that was introduced in SMT nocturne and most smt games after it use it or a system inspired by it, like the mentioned "one more" system or the "extra turn" system from devil survivor
The Okumura boss fight would be a lot of fun if they took out the part where the enemies flee if you don't defeat them fast enough. Because you have to defeat all the robots at once in order to move on to the next stage, them escaping completely negates all the progress you've made on that stage and you have to start all over. And there's no way to stop them from running away. The only way I was able to beat the fight was by switching the difficulty to Merciless, so my party members would have enough attack power to take out the robots before they escaped. When the player has to INCREASE the difficulty to defeat a boss, that's definitely a design flaw.
I did the same. And I didn’t just switch to Merciless after a couple losses. I rammed my head against that boss for like 2 entire evening sessions. That fight was tough but doable in vanilla Persona 5, but for some reason the devs decided to make the robots much more tankier in Royal.
My problem with Persona's system isn't 1-more, but that hitting null/absorb/repel elements does nothing for the flow of battle. Press Turn, you can cause the enemy team to lose some/all their actions if you can get them to strike null/absorb/repel. Also prior to Shift Turn in Reload or Baton Pass in P5, you couldn't use the extra action to further expand your strategy or help stabilize the team if things are looking dire. This makes me still prefer Press Turn if only because you can turn the battle with defense as well as offense by grabbing momentum from the enemy losing their actions. And, of course, it makes you worry about mixed-element parties. Like I couldn't just have Koromaru use Maragion to hit two enemies weak to Agi if the third is null Agi. The team would lose their turns. This gives single-target damage some use. As far as eliminating weaknesses - I don't see that as being "too easy", but just good strategy. I know in SMT - I would do my best to have a team with few weakness, even if that demon wasn't as much as a powerhouse. It's like keeping -kaja and -unda around.
There's nothing wrong with Insta Kill or especially the jazz club. They're all optional. The only problem I have with the jazz club is that it the game doesn't give you enough time to really use it. There are so many options in this game fir spending your time that most people probably don't use the jazz club that often.
I'm personally been trying to beat the twins and Lavenza for a while now and the jazz club makes your teammates stronger and those bosses are not pushovers so it's not OP in that regard.
This is a great analysis. I would like to chime in here that, after almost finishing Persona 3 Reload, I don't think Atlus has learned the lessons they should. The Theurgy system looks cool and makes sense thematically, but none of your enemies ever take it directly into account when opposing you. This means you can build Siegfried or any strength persona into a crit monster and completely break the game with magic/physical theurgies that bypass resistances. Theurgy is just an OP win button, and it doesn't even matter who's theurgy you are using. Yukari gets healing skills at half sp cost very early on, and Fuuka gives you full/majority HP/SP restore every time your squad is low. There was never a moment I had to leave Tartarus because of low SP, it was only ever because of my own boredom (though that's not to say I dislike Tartarus, I love it). Not only are you better off getting the vanilla Persona 3 experience by disabling direct commands to party members, you're also better off deliberately choosing to not engage with the Theurgy system at all. I'm wondering about Persona 6 because basically everything Atlus has added to the combat of Persona since Persona 3 has made it piss easy. Considering that I didn't particularly love Persona 5's story on repeat playthroughs, they might be running out of solid core systems to rely on.
I think one-more works well enough for persona, but it's asymmetrical nature makes it closer to "baby's first press turn" than an equal to mainline's battle systems
Awesome video man! And I agree with basically everything mentioned, Persona 5 is by far the easiest but honestly it is the most fun for combat, and tech hits are pretty fun too, I really like the combat in reloaded, I feel like they took the good elements of p5 and made them a bit more challenging but still helpful. The baton pass stat buffs are gone, but you can still swap to any party member if you hit a weakness, along with technical being removed, but instead vastly increasing critical hits, P4 had mid combat, p5 had super easy but fun combat, and p3R has a mixture of difficulty but kept the fun stuff from 5. Also if Atlus wants to keep confidant perks, it should be rank 10 only, jesus they are too OP
i've always thought 4's combat was a downgrade from 3. a big part of it for me is that instead of actually trying to improve or polish the systems of 3, 4 just removed stuff because people complained about it and even removed stuff literally no one took issue with just to make it more "approachable". feels like they just swept the criticism under the rug instead of actually addressing it.
Everyone seems to play Persona 3 by using every character and swapping around members for every different battle. Am I the weird one for just picking 3 and sticking with them the whole game? Like, yeah sure it makes some battles a bit more difficult sometimes, but overall they'll be better leveled than the spread exp. Oh, and I guess because I never used Ken or Koromaru so I never worried about instant kill weaknesses.
@@Elsuya_Milo I don't like characters weak to instant kill. Last thing I need is someone guarenteed to die if an enemy casts Hama or Mahama, or Mamudo etc. I've actually never used Ken or Koro for this reason. I've never *needed* them either, if I need heals Yukari is there, if I need Zio Akihiko is there, if I need Agi Junpei is there. But yeah instead of having the whole team be for example level 50 your main 3 you stuck with the entire time might end up being 70. It's a matter of specializing vs hedging.
Feels incomplete to omit Press Turn system and SMT3 from a video like this. In PS2 P3 you can turn on autobattle midturn to give some extra control over the party members. I actually prefer playing with party AI on. There's hardly any meaningful choices to make when your party members can't switch Personae.
Hopefully persona 6 will add a classic SMT mode option that can be played at any difficulty so people who want a much harder challenge can play that on whatever difficulty. Sure, the one more system can be disgustingly powerful when used properly, but I don’t think there’s an issue with it. I just think a different mode that removes these features or tones them down should be added for those who want a harder challenge while not punishing those who want an easier time by making it harder by default.
I think skiping the turn after recovering from being knocked down was a nice idea, I mean, why would I not perform an all out attack that, most of the times does more damage than any of my other attacks if the enemy can act after recovering anyways? I think it added a bit more strategy to the combat, do I go for the all out attack for a big burst of damage and instantly recover the enemy or do I not do an all out attack to heal my party for example problem always came from your side, for the system to be fair it has to affect you as well, but the enemy gets way more advantage from you not acting one turn, it's a volatile system, yes, but I think it was also an interesting system that, with some tweaks, could've worked really well and actually in persona 3 reload I think there's a system like that, don't really know what triggers it yet, but sometimes an enemy that is knocked down goes into some sort of daze and won't act for a turn, this also means you won't be able to use an all out attack if you hit his weakness, but it means that you have a free turn to wail on it or to heal your party
The thing with All Out Attacks too though that's interesting it that there ARE some enemies/ minibosses /bosses that have undisclosed resistances to almighty/all out attack damage so it's not as easy to just down and all attack them because you'd actually be doing less damage and getting them back up than if you cancel it and use a normal ability, especially if you have an ability that does bonus dmg to an enemy that's down.
Because is a lot of scenarios it is better to CC an enemy then get extra damage on it. For example late game tarturus guardians are tanky a single all out attack is not going to kill them. So instead of all out attacking you can hit them with the weakness while they are down and make them dizzy you can buy precious time to buff,heal, and more. All out attacks are great for regular mobs but for bosses...ehh...not so much.
At 3:45 When SP is low, the AI will use medicine instead of healing skills, which I assume is done to save SP for offensive skills. Havent played The Answer yet so idk if it changes anything from The Journey, but from what I've played each party member only carries 1 medical powder unfortunately (party members have their own inventory in P3Fes), and since the AI considers her SP low, this was deemed her best option by the AI.
9:12 yes I feel this too, that’s why in reload I made the unlimited equipment to be more offensive then defensive even tho I often go for defensive. Like t.ex. Jumpei with auto rebellion, akihiko with strike amp, Aigis with pierce amp (stacks with physical amp) or mitsuru with ice boost as it frees one skill slot and I already have amp from the whip to keep more status ailment skills as it’s her thing and the only character in the franchise that has it. Besides they already has high chance of resisting magic damage, and triple evasion against anything from Ali dance from the shoes of light. The low low chance a weakness hit is not worth nullifying it and it removes a core part of the game
Reload is fun, but I felt like it has all the problems of Royal without Royal's strong point like Technicals. Physical just bust the game wide open past the halfway point, with Siegfried being the prime offender because he also unlocks the Scarlet Havoc theurgy, but Mada (Strike Siegfried) and Bishamonten (Pierce SIegfried) are also viable options that comes just a couple of levels later. The party characteristic are fun to play around (crit Junpei and Theurgy-spam Aki pops off hard once you've unlocked their traits and grab some gear to enable them like the Dragon boot and the Apt Pupil/Strike Amp/Elec Amp gear), but they stopped mattering the moment you could buff stack charge Scarlet Havoc your way through the rest of the game (until Armageddon). It gets worse with the ambush buff from the underground website because triggering despair (guaranteed crit) on ambush just set up for oneshots even easier, eliminating the point of Mitsuru entirely.
The one thing I dislike about Persona combat is the existence of Almighty attacks. I get why they exist, but late game when enemies have no weaknesses, it's just spam Almighty attacks for your strongest magic attackers & it feels so boring. I do like One More, even when missing 1 enemy in a group attack though. If I get an extra turn knocking down 1 enemy, I should get one for knocking down 3 as well. I agree with multiple physical types being way better than physical being just one thing though. P3 feels way better because of that.
Ayyyy, I love your analysis of the one more system in this video! Maybe if you could branch out, maybe you could talk about the different boost systems or ailments in Etrian Odyssey? There are alot of games tho, so it's fair if you don't want to play all of them just for that XD
Honestly, for P6, I would like to see them continue adding perks for advancing the confidants/social links. However they should give you the option to toggle whether you want the perk or not. The best example I could think of is Smash Ultimates adventure mode. You can use points to buy a perk like extra damage using projectiles but you have the option to disable that perk. I think that alone would help persona as you get to fine tune your difficulty accurately. The choice in disabling double XP and Ryugi’s insta kill ability would make the game a bit more challenging.
i nearly got one more'd into the ground by a mini boss with the spiked clubs as it's arms, to counter it to death with my team one moring it into the ground. I love this batshit shenanigans fest.
Seriously, anyone who had issues with Okumura, P5 and/or P5R, had no idea what they were doing, they didn't pay attention at all to the enemies throughout the palace, it was a breeze.
I'm fine with the stuff in persona 5 as long as they actually make the game difficult lol. It seems like they listened to the criticism though as the baton pass is nerfed in reload and you also can't just dizzy the enemies on command anymore. In fact reload is straight up the hardest game on merciless because all the cheese has been removed which is awesome. No dizzy lock, no powered up baton pass, no party wide -karn skills, even the dlc is somewhat tame. Hopefully they stick with this direction
I am playing through P5R right now and personally, I enjoy having my party all on act freely as I enjoy strategizing around what my teammates and enemy will do
Personally p4 combat more than 3 just because of the follow up. It makes the fights more fun and builds a bond between you and the characters. Generally i don't play persona games for difficulty, I play to quickly knock down enemies and manage your sp but that's just me. But i also agree that p5 has the best combat... until i played p3r
man once more system can be abserdly volatile, every time i start a new game in at least the RPG ones i will always have 1-3 literaly instant deaths that was purely based on enemy AI RNG from them getting a crit on MC and then aiming at the MC again instant killing them, without fail this happens from the sheer amount of battles that happen and doesnt happen later in the games from just having enough stats to actually live 3-4 attacks. i would argue that because the fact its game over with MC dying despite other party members having the ability to revive others is the reason why it is, if someone nukes a party member with once more its not a absolute lose situation. but this is the downside for having infinite potentiol on MC. also side story i got for P5(not royal) is one boss had a 1-3 hit move with crit rate enhance and if it crits and lands 3 hits it will 1 shot, i got instant killed by this guy twice
While I definitely agree P5R added quite a few amazing systems, Royale in particular broke the difficulty curve of the game too much. Legitimately, even on Hard I don't think I ever died once even without grinding through awhile 100h game playthrough. This is without grinding too, nothing really even required any thought or execution. The numbers are just too tilted in the players favour. I also totally think baton passing is amazing, but it really should not have come with a damage bonus + recovery. Team mates also too frequently saved the MC from death or status effects, and you could easily get 2-3 show time attacks in a single boss fight. While I think the party members throughout the mid game was pretty balanced, once you unlock their final skills the balance starts to break. Ann in particular, being able to focus the whole team basically breaks the game. Sure it cost a lot of SP but you'll able to wipe anything out before that's an issue. This again is exasperated by having too much access to SP items.
Heavily disagree with the persona 4 section. Especially the point about the status ailments. I made a lot of use of status ailments like forget to deal with the non story bosses
Thanks for sharing! I found them to be pretty useless and that I'd just be better off overpowering the enemies, but I like to hear that people found uses for ailments that I didn't!
Persona 3 Reload managed to provide a fast-paced feel to the Persona combat system while still being strategic and 100% turn-based. I have been playing Persona 4 Golden recently after completing Persona 3 Reload. It is jarring not having that Shift mechanic or actions assigned to buttons on the controller versus a scrollable action menu. Also, changing Personas in battle is a bit annoying as you cannot look at what skills you have if you have forgotten what they do or want to kniw how much SP or HP certain attacks cost before choosing a Persona. Plus, after changing to a Persona, even if you have not done any other action, locks you into using only that Persona for the rest of the MC's turn. Also, those little king/prince enemies? Burn in a fire, especially the big one in Yukiko's Castle.
Been on P3R, it's nice to have the three types of physical damage again, on an offensive and defensive spectrum (as opposed to 4 and 5 where despite gun existing in 5, it's all just "repel phys null phys etc") I'd heard a lot about Siegfried a mostly lategame persona (54 requirement) who is mad good (yes yes he is), then I ran into a boss that nulled slash in the pack. Then the "changed feature involving doors" had one who, repelled all physical damage and the next 2, repelling only slash. It lead to there being less of a be all end all with Siegfried than I was expecting. (other game stuff) P4G has a major issue and that is my catman with 99 in every stat and was unable to get resist dark for a very long time. P4G Luckily gave Kanji Power Charge, the thing that was truly separating him on "raw number go up". P5R Sadly doesn't allow GUN Haru to completely shine due to her joining post Charges drink day (I think it's a very, very short number of days too)
Unless I'm mistaken, there's a will seed item that lets one party member cast a charge/concentrate on another, right? Not exactly optimal but it's something. Unless that's a super late game will seed and I'm considering this from the NG+ perspective, which is entirely possible.
Two Things:
1. I've gotten a number of comments wondering why I didn't mention the Press Turn system.
I wanted to judge the One More System in a vacuum and what it tries to accomplish in the games it is used in. I felt as though that would be the best way to look at One More in the most fair way possible without plainly saying "It's Better/Worse than X system because XYZ". A lot of the times when I see One More discussed, I see it described flatly as "worse Press Turn" when I think that's a bit of a reductive way to look at it, and that by bringing that notion to attention that it would be time that could have been spent better on what One More IS rather than what it is not. And as much as I *did* want to make this video longer, I didn't think that there'd be nearly as many people as there are who were interested in this topic. Which I appreciate a ton!
If you want to hear my thoughts on Press Turn, I have a video on it from a couple of years ago you can see here(Warning: Massive Audio Quality difference lol, maybe I'll remake this down the line now that I've played Apocalypse and V and can discuss Smirk and Magatsuhi in fuller detail):
ruclips.net/video/fprhqsciYWg/видео.html
2. There's quite a number of things I'd probably change had I been given more time on this. While I still agree with my main thoughts, there are details that I ignored, overhyped, or got flat out wrong. Such as the accuracy of bows(which had gotten mixed with fist weapons in my head), the explotability of the jazz club in P5R, and the absence of indepth discussion on each individual title(Portable + base P4 + base P5). As I usually work solo on scriptwriting, I'm pretty prone to making blunders such as these. My bad on that and I'm thankful for the people pointing these out!
Thanks Haven (GOAT)
when i read i read the press turn system my mind remembered Mot shenanigans and went *B E A S T E Y E* kek
I think maybe making it so that when you activate one more, you get a small damage boost for every turn you can activate one more on a single character, but when you activate one more, it disables the move and the passives it took advantage of.
honestly, fair enough, I absolutely love press turn, it is my favorite combat system in any game honestly. But I don't think one more is necessarily worse, so I tend to describe it as a simpler version of press turn because press turn can absolutely be very complicated, especially if it's your first time using it
It's a great way to frame your points, I love discussion like this. I think especially in the gaming community at large, I've been noticing lately that a lot of people get really hung up over what can often be very shallow comparisons instead of judging something solely based on its own merits and shortcomings, or otherwise trying to glean some of the logic that the developers may have put into an idea or system, regardless of how they may feel personally about something, or how well or how poorly it may have been implemented.
Also, while I get that you may have wanted to go more indepth on individual titles, and talking shop with youtube commenters isn't exactly the best way to inform your video-creation decisions, to throw in my own two cents; I think the video as it is strikes a good length. imo there's nothing wrong with not being completely exhaustive if what you've already got illustrates your position well enough. I often see videos going up to and over the 2-hour mark trying to make a point that they could have easily illustrated in 10-20 minutes or less with more focus, and while retention on long-form content is, or at least was at one point a good way to build a profitable audience on youtube I think valuing not only other people, but also your own time is just as, if not more important.
"However, enemies cannot perform All-Out Attacks."
*Caroline and Justine laughing in the distance*
Unioronically though. A "reveal" like that would never work if all enemies could just All-Out Attack.
The game would just feel unfair
It would only make sense; if I can do it, why can't they? Recently Persona games have been getting easier and easier with new ways of gaining advantage over the enemies, but they have nothing aside from boss gimmicks. All I want is a fair fight, not one I can just snowball on every single encounter.
@@KaitoverMoonif you want an actual story explanation it's because shadows don't have much of a brain
@@KaitoverMoonor you know
Play smt
Persona is a lot more casual oriented
@@Oreca2005 You can say that about literally any modern game that has had a series. The point is if you keep making excuses for why devs should adapt their game for you instead of you adapting through proper adversity then you're asking for inferior content for the same price.
It's all jokes and party, until the enemy acomplishes 1 more
After that, if it was you, pray to God that they go after someone else
@@sincere9222 in the OG persona 3 that was sinonimous to game over
@@kimmik3602i think i had a stroke reading this
@@elitericeeater I think you realized but he means the game's practically over
@@elitericeeater
He only messed up 1 word though
Synonymous
what if instead of one more it was called one two buckle my shoe that would be pretty crazy i think
21:20 i agree 100% persona 4 shuffle time is way too overpowered bc of the stat bonuses. i just finished my first playthrough of p4g a few days ago, i tried playing normally like a year ago but got stuck at the void quest boss. this time i literally stuck with izanagi and farmed for stat increases and skill cards and didn't use any other persona a single time. by nations dungeon izanagis stats were all 80+ and the rest of my party averaged like 40. don't get me wrong it was still extremely fun to play like this it just made it way too easy
and then it'll go three four buckle some more and I can obliterate Jack Frost with a max Baton Pass
@@stinkysangwoo222facts
also completely unrelated but i hate the dlc personas in p5r they completely take the fun out if you use them right away, i wish the dlcs gave you a boost with confidants or something like anything to make progressing more fun and not just insanely easy
That was really unfunny
I think it's mostly servicable as the Press Turn System We Have At Home
After my time with smt nocturn and 5, i feel like the the one more system is a lot more engaging, im thinking a lot more when im doing it. Not that i think its more COMPLEX i just auto pilot less.
@@e-gothvods4538how are thinking less with press turns unless ur in end game or some your have to think mire wuth press turns.
@@makotonaegi4419 because all I have to do is know what the enemy hits with and be immune to it which is incredibly easy in smt. I just make them waste turns..
@@e-gothvods4538 you can do make the same argument for persona because you can make a persona that is immune to the neemy attack and they can't do anything yrf not factoring in what the enimies are immune too and their stats or buffs.
@@makotonaegi4419 except that in persona it's way later game before you're making any personas that have those kinds of immunities and enemies arent punished for hitting your resistances. They still get their turns. You have to keep them in check by knocking them down and one miss can cause a chain reaction. It's more about offense compared to smts defense. I didn't take into account buffs and debuffs because the same buffs and debuffs are present in both games, that isn't relevant.
30:39 Maybe in a vacuum, but Royal doesn't require deep mechanical interaction for most of the game because the numbers are heavily put into the players' favor. This section also doesn't talk about persona affinities and buffed attack items.
As for persona 3, party members are very unbalanced. Junpei gets outshined by Aigis because she learns all 3 party-wide buffs, has Samarecarm/Diarahan, and doesn't stumble with her weapons. Mitsuru's ice damage output is only okay, and mind charge is an active nerf in persona 3 because it only increases damage by 80%. Koromaru has no real utility other than Sukukaja and Shinjiro went out for milk.
Doesn't Junpei learn Vorpal Blade? That should be best AoE slash damage skill if your condition is "Great". Aigis's offensive capability doesn't outshine his.
@stanleya.8805 true, but Junpei's accuracy is trash, roughly the same as Aigis'
Very true I'm at the 20's in July so I'm not sure but I'm hoping Reload is going to rebalance the party better to keep them more tight knit (Akihiko is my boy but there's no reason he needs to be a tier or 2 above everyone else) Like say giving Junpei charge, or Giving Aigis more useful skills before her multi target buffs.
@spinballproduction9678 Reload does rebalance everyone. Probably least changed is Junpei I'd say.
@@rcole7274 Yeah sadly that seems to be the case so far.
"Local Man Hits Very Hard" is the best way to describe Shinjiro's moveset, bravo.
An interesting thing about the additions in Persona 5 are that quite a few of the additions were only added in the Royal rerelease.
1. Baton passes couldn't be used with a certain party member until you ranked their confidant high enough.
2. The different tiers with baton pass didn't exist with the vanilla release.
3. Technical damage wasn't as easy as in Royal.
4. Persona traits also weren't added until Royal.
5. The twins' rank 5 perk allowing you to fuse higher level personas was originally the rank 10 perk.
I hasn't play royal yet but wit all the shit that they added I feel like they become a game that it was already pretty easy on a even easier game.
@@samuelmartinez8106 You are right, the changes in P5R make the game so easy to the point where an encounter in the original game that may have been challenging ends before you can finish a baton pass chain. Easily the best way to experience the story, but once I 100% it, I'm going back to the original because I like feeling I'm actually putting effort into a game that I'm playing on the hardest difficulty.
@samuelmartinez8106 They definitely threw a ton of mechanics at the player to guage community feedback to each one. But with how hard you can min max synergies and you just become Shido's abusive step father.
Merciless difficulty 3x damage multiplier should've only been given to the enemies, not the player lol. That difficulty definitely did not live up to its name
@@samuelmartinez8106 oh yea it was super easy u dont have to think at all to beat majority of bosses just use an aoe physical attack with a persona that has a trait for physical attack (pretty easy to get) and u beat basically beat the entire game except for certain enemies/bosses that repel/drain/block physical attacks
Is it broken? Yes. Is it fun? Yes.
_laughs in mabufu_
@@Unk0wn_stalk3r
I'm on Day 3 in Devil Survivor and this word scares me now.
@@myyoutubeaccount4167 *laughs in mabufudyne*
an aspect of Junpei people tend to overlook is that his Physical skills are Pierce and Bash while his sword deals slash. So between that and his Agi skill he covers 4 out of the 7 elements in the game.
Doesn't he do Slash and Bash skill instead? Pierce was mostly Aigis'
@@ronny_innor he keeps Torrent Shot for the vast majority of the game.
Bosses universally being immune to various Status conditions tend to be what makes players not mess with them. It's an issue in EVERY RPG as well, with stuff like Freeze Charm Static and Burn being limited to trash mobs or mini-bosses. The Persona series in general has a better track record about allowing it.....but there's still no real way to test who is immune to what without basically commiting a Game Over to probing.
I think Persona 5 is the first RPG I've played that dedicates a mini-boss to teaching you status isn't worthless against bosses. The fact a no-weakness enemy can get Dizzy'd, and then following bosses also can, is a HUGE change. Now if only they can commit to it more...
As someone that played P3 Fes on hard, I'm okay with the changes they made to one more and allowing the user to just straight up control all the allies. It was freaking punishing to play for 2 hours in tartarus, run into a normal fight, get down to the last enemy, have Mitsuru cast tentafroo instead of bufula, and then the enemy straight up kills the MC with like hama or mudo. It was rough. The one more system the only way to survive that mode because not downing all the enemies and finishing them off resulted in death a lot of the times. To be fair, that was an extreme where the one more system was your lifeline when constantly straddling the precipice of death, but after that it makes sense they would simplify things for people to just enjoy the game.
P3 Fes on hard was a whole different experience, where every single hallway fight could just insta kill you, iam quite happy with the changes made, if anything i wish knocked down targets still lost their turn, i absolutely loved that constant opportunity cost analyzes i had to make
20:06 "get a bunch of one mores and then cap it all off with a megidolan"
MOT wants to know your location
Iirc he'll only do that if you try to debuff him
@@TectonicImprovhe does that if you DO NOT use debuff, as he will be busy using Dekunda and waste a turn
@@TectonicImprov Mot is the only boss in Nocturne that gains press turns at random. It's entirely possible to fight him without seeing him use Beast eye once or he can keep doing it even after he's passed the press turn limit for no reason.
The stat increases from the jazz club is fine it would require about 10 new game plus runs just dedicated to maxing all the parties stats at level 99 even just accounting for min maxing their best and most useful stats thats five new game plus runs
Yea I definitely overplayed it and regret doing so.
I do think the ability to raise party stats directly makes it easy to make characters whatever you want them to be and can potentially break them out of their role(Ex: Making Makoto, a support character balanced out by her average damage output if she's not dealing technical damage, into a strong magic user with Concentrate + Boosted Magic Stat).
But it's not like you could make this a thing for everyone unless NG+ in which case who cares or unless you found out about it early enough and invested in characters like Ryuji/Ann with already high St/Ma stats and tried to make those 99.
I think another problem is also that ambushes are very strong and easy to do and give you massive advantages, and that battles tend to have only 2/3 weaknesses so the MC can solve battles on his own if you just start and hit the first weakness, switch persona and hit the other weakness and AoA. Like I remember in 4 Golden mostly being halfway through the dungeon and MC was the only one who had really spent SP.
I think the more interesting battles in 5 Royal where against Fafnir who was just immune and resistant to stuff, so going with status was the way to go, but if you want weaknesses you could have an enemy cover their weakness with a Wall skill when the battle begins so this makes breaks actually have a use or you have to wait out the turns to be able to more easily dispatch it.
Persona 5 solved the thing of just the MC changing personas and 1 turn the fight by making so that he can only swap in his own turn. I am pretty sure that once you use a skill, you are locked into that persona until you get your own turn or until someone baton passes to Joker.
@masterblaster38 you can use your initial Persona, and if you switch Persona and then use a Persona action, you're locked in. It might also apply to Gun and the standard Attack locking you in, but I don't know
@@furiouscorgi6614 Yeah. I think It is just from the moment you use a persona skill that you are locked into that persona.
That's why sometimes is important to get a persona with multiple elemental skills.
I THINK that using your gun and knife doesn't lock you in the persona except if you use a physicall/gun skill to get that one more. That doesn't happen in the original P3 and P4 + P4G where if you changed your Persona at all you were inmediadly locked.
@@masterblaster38 It's the same as in P3 and P4. You can swap Personas once per turn but you aren't locked in until you use a Persona skill.
@@Xeroxthebeautiful Yeah, that makes sense. This actually makes you have a reason to have a persona with multiple elemental attacks instead of just one for each ig. I have been doing NG+ in P5R now and because I have only personas with 1 element cover, I can't hit every weakness turn 1.
Bruh no it's like the core gameplay loop. I love this system and I don't want them to remove it.
Game was still plenty difficult for me and I think plenty of enemies are balanced for it, Mostly bosses of course but I don't think it's broken in the least.
Never gonna forget spending two hours on the final boss of p3 bc i decided to run ken, yukari, mitsuru. Having no JRPG experience I figured "if everyone has support skills everything will work out"
two hours.....the final boss can take TWO HOURS!!!!!!
@@channel45853 on normal too, i blew it that badly LMAO
@@channel45853 yea i did the fight on hard and every attempt took upwards of an hour and a half
This was a way better analysis of Persona 3-5 combat than I expected. You managed to put a lot of the feelings I had for each game into words.
Personally P3FES still has my favorite combat in the series, even over P5 (though I haven't played Royal). On top of what's stated in the video, I also like that it mechanically ties the combat into the narrative of SEES not really liking each other at first but growing closer together over the course of the game. Tactics, in combination with Fatigue and SL Breaking/Reversing, did a lot to make the characters actually kind of feel like their own people, and not just puppets controlled by the MC.
I do understand why some people didn't like it though. I wouldn't want every game to use AI party members, but I think it worked really well in P3 and I wish the remake kept it in as an option.
I have to agree. Breaking/Reversing is cool, especially if we have the option not to date everyone but choose to. An Issue OG P3 had was you HAD to date to progress which was an issue, but having the ability to be friends and progress is huge. As well as Fatigue I see as interesting but also could see as hit or miss.
Tactics as a whole is a really cool and fascinating idea. It reminds me of say The Battle Frontier where you suggest what your pokemon does. It can lead to depth and feel more like besides you acting you are a leader. The issue is the lack of depth of it or issues with it as a whole and the AI. I think it'd be something awesome to see revisited with a better AI as a whole. Maybe even make how smart an AI is tied to character, like someone who is more physical focuses on physical weaknesses over magic, etc
I am part of the rare 1% of players who prefers the AI on and hearing that P3R doesn't even have it as an option like 4 and 5 did really turns me off of what was previously my series favorite. That's a real shame. I think altering your tactics around what you think the AI is going to do (I don't even tell them 'conserve sp' or 'all out attack', it's always set to act freely) adds a layer of challenge to the game that just straight up isn't there when you can control all four party members. YOU are the commander. YOU are the buff machine. YOU are debilitating the enemy so that you can put the other pieces in position to do their jobs. Also, it speeds up combat a lot: your allies auto-inputting commands makes fights that would be far more tedious a lot smoother.
The only time I ever put on commands was when it was literally impossible to win a fight without it: Shadow Teddie in P4. The AI can guard in P5, but for some reason it can't in P4.
@@DetectiveGrey
P3R does have it as an option though (but it is the p4/p5 version of the Tactics).
@@myyoutubeaccount4167 yoooo that's still really good news! I don't mind it being the P4/5 optional kind, I just wanna turn the AI on during fights and if that's available I'm down. Thanks for the info!
@@DetectiveGrey
No problem man
Don`t tell him about damn smirk system from smt iv
that shits op
smirk kinda sucks but it was mostly fixed in apocalypse and the enemies/bosses can use it easily too, whilst bosses in persona can't use Baton Passes and the like
Smirk in SMTIV was a genuinely unhinged mechanic but it was funny so I can't help but love it.
first time playing, missing the initiation, and proceeding to lose my party of lvl 10s to 2 lvl 6 chagrins smirking like psychopaths in a single turn to zio because i didnt intend on fighting them was what made me go, "ok. this is a good game."
@@mikeysaurlol It was actually really BS overpowered in IV. It treats you as if you're at max attack buff, you have 100% accuracy, and of course, increases your evasion. Two of these were removed for IVA, and they instead added that the hit you perform while Smirking has 100% crit rate, even if it is magic
12:30 I never saw an issue with this change, enemies in p3 were able to gain a one more if they hit one person's weakness with an aoe. This change felt like it was evening the playing field.
This is littérally misinformation the enemies act in the same way as the player
The clip at 8:09 has the enemy score a crit but not get a one more with an AoE
@@canasnewell3089 To my understanding, getting a physical critical hit on one target out of multiple isn't the same as hitting the weakness of one target out of multiple barring specifically being weak to melee. I need to test it but I don't remember a physical aoe giving a once more just from critting, unless maybe if it managed to crit every target?
@@psoffxifan4904 it's just... Not a thing. Enemies don't get one more from weaknesses or crits in a way that differs from the player in Persona 3.
That would be really stupid though.
The bigger issue is with physical skills. In groups of 3, you can reliably manage your crit chance to hit 1 of them on average, giving you 3-4 massive AoE attacks per turn.
By any chance, were you playing the Portable or Reload version of Persona 3? In these two versions, all you need to do to score a one-more is to knock down at least one enemy. This differs from OG and FES. In these two versions, you must knock down all enemies you attempt to attack in order to score a one-more.
In all versions of Persona 3, the way in which shadows score a one-more never differs from the way in which players score a one-more, so there is no "evening of the playing field" going on here.
Actually you can beat teh reaper even more earlier than you're supposed to
Thunder call's fusion spell also inflicts 100% shock and if you have a good amount of sp healing items
All you need to do is put all characters except the last one on conserve sp and the last one on knock down tactic
Since while on knock down tactic , if you choose to not do an all out attack
The party member ai will skip it's turn just so the enemy is kept on the ground
Yeah, it could be.
It could be Press-Turn instead, which is infinitely better.
Also a bit of a tangent but this could relate to the Persona games as well; too many RPG's and JRPG's reward being prepared for something with pretty much being able to coast through with minimal difficulty. I think that being well prepared for a dungeon or boss fight or whatever should merely mean that you "have a fair shot" at winning or succeeding/doing well. It should still be a challenge even when you are prepared. This issue is largely fixed by increasing the damage output and HP values of enemies, or giving them more powerful attacks, etc. But it's very very rare where I go into a dungeon or boss fight prepared for it (by "prepared" I mean having good healing items, up to date gear or personas in this case, a good idea of enemy weaknesses and skills to have, etc) and come out feeling challenged or like I barely scraped by.
It feels like developers either completely underestimate their playerbase, or want to reward you merely for being prepared.
Yeah but I feel a lot of the time games doing that are just making players level grind for hours rather than doing something meaningful to adapt to a fight to "be prepared". Persona still makes you grind sometimes but most of it comes down to having the right personas fused and making it "too easy" is more a matter of if you min maxed something. You could be overleveled with the wrong demon equipped and still die to weakness attacks especially on hard/merciless. I think its a good middle ground between handholding entirely and something like SMT3's punishing press turns.
I strongly disagree with the principle of increasing the hp of enemies. It shouldn't take 10 minutes for me to prove that I have a winning strategy. Most fights I go into underleveled because even though I fight nearly every enemy I come across, I really don't like grinding. I can compensate for this however by using buffs/debuffs and good strategy. Instead of this feeling rewarding when I'm able to beat the boss, even though I have a harder time doing it, it's just a slog
@puffmain3276 Yes but my point is that no RPG's even require a good strategy, you can just go in, coasting through and get by with the level you're currently at and the items you already have. There's no engagement or feeling of needing to be prepared. And if I do try to get prepared, then I know it's going to be a joke.
@@BearsDenGaming Merciless mode hurts the game for other reasons. The insane bonus damage of weakness hits makes merciless a joke 90% of the time, unless you're fighting a boss. Hard is the best mode for challenge, but I still find myself unsatisfied with it much of the time, especially with these re-releases giving players more tools than ever but not giving the enemies anything to keep up.
@@puffmain3276 Also I agree that regular enemies shouldn't take super long to take out, but I also believe that wiping out a group of enemies before they even have a turn should be an incredibly rare occurance.
DONT CARE ITS HELLA SATISFYING
Average RPG fan:
@@WKCamperer Don't be a smug prick. You are still a Persona fan, the SMT purists would say the same to you.
I think my issue with this video is that it ignores the obvious "why", these mechanics are not just dumped down, it's that with more options and game knowledge you start to optimize. The fact you can create "nuke" character and a dominant strategy is a universal truth, and you can spend time complain about PS3, in that regard as well. The Super Boss would be no issue if it couldn't cheat against you. I also don't think it is fair to take out time to complain about it's a shame that Naoto doesn't work for bosses if the same amount of time of character critic was not given to the P3 cast, Ken suffers from the exact same thing. The "problem" also only exist if you only look at boss fights as the only thing to think about and not SP costs and changing characters mid-exploration. -and that is all the time I have.
THAT'S WHAT IM SAYING
@@plvto1 Interesting, my message is gone. Somebody here likes to delete comments, I guess. Super confused because I only see some response to nothing.
@@WKCamperer
Rule of Cool is the most important rule in my opinion.
Oh, Royal added the trait system? Neat. That wasn't in the original.
I think what makes the Persona titles is that they're all unique in their own ways. So you can 100% understand why someone would have a favorite over the others. Well, except for Persona 1.
To enjoy p1 you should play persona revelations with the localization fix mod instead of the psp port. Revelations has the best atmosphere in the series, and it using the funky sound system of the ps1 made for very satisfying moments. Its not my favorite but its definitely undervalued (and id say better than p4)
P1 is pretty fun to break lol
P1 isn’t close to being my favorite (it’s probably 5th place when ranking the mainline titles. Or 4th if you count P2’s as one for some reason.) but I can see how it be someone’s favorite when it comes to the story and atmosphere. The game has to be one of the most unique games I’ve played personally.
@@noobnoob8382revelations just has very slow combat imo
One thing about p3p people who haven't played it may fail to take away from this video is that it adapts persona 4's one more system and party control without meaningfully changing the actual design of the boss encounters. This means that certain early bosses where (I feel) the game encouraged the player to learn about stun locking and having patience now need alternate solutions. It also means certain enemy groupings that emphasized the risk reward of multi-target skills are now just plain easy. Also, while scanning in fes would tell the AI if a boss was susceptible to an ailment or not, it doesn't tell you. And since you control the party in portable, there's no way to actually know when and what status ailments are actually smart plays.
This can lead to people who experience persona 3 through portable to think of its combat and boss solutions as the same as 4, even when it was never meant to be approached that way.
Persona 3's different versions make for an interesting case study on how the different gameplay styles interact with the same enemy design. That moreso goes for FES v Portable as Reload has mostly different/redesigned bosses that are more built for Reload's mechanics with some of the old ones being optional. But I think it could still fit into a discussion.
Every new game I miss standing from knock down taking a turn, Hard Mode NG P3FES runs made me realize how much I love that as a mechanic, dizzy feels too random to be a good replacement for it.
As someone who HATES battle turn games, this system made them game bearable enough so I could attack enough times to keep me entertained.
I haven't even watched the entire video yet, but thank you for summarizing the exact same problems I had with P4 mechanically back from playing the Vanilla version in 2020. Seeing that none of it was addressed in Golden is just sad really
The best way to innovate Persona combat is to do what Tokyo mirage sessions did.
Reworked all out attacks into a series of individual blows done by all party members. This reveals nearly all of an enemies elemental resistances/weaknesses in a single turn.
The game isn’t over when the protagonist dies.
Party switching is free and available immediately.
Implements the fire emblem weapon triangle. Where swords beat axes, etc. Allies and enemies alike are all affected by it. Allowing you to immediately deduce at least one enemy weakness by their weapon type. From there, you can use a weakness into a session attack and find all enemy affinities, like above. Additionally, this also gives all party members defining weaknesses and resistances to increase diversity.
Physical elemental attacks.
And this is just scratching the surface on the great gameplay of TMS. The progression and dungeon designs are also top notch.
Aside from the global problem of protag death = game over, my only problem with 3's tactic system is I wish buff/debuff was a separate option from heal.
Other than that I actually prefer the more volatile ^risk^reward combat of 3 over 4 and 5 (though 5's baton pass system compensates to pretty much tie it with FES for me.)
I don't get what you mean with the buff thing
@@samuelmartinez8106he's saying that he would prefer if the Heal/Support tactic in FES would be split in 2, so it would be 1 tactic which only encompasses healing, and another who encompasses buffs and debuffs, like tarunda/tarukaja.
@@asafesseidonsapphire Oh yeah. Totally agree
Yeah, not having full control over party members while also having a "protag/leader falls, then you fail" mechanic doesn't add up well tbh....
Looking at you FF13......
@@asafesseidonsapphire You got everything except my pronouns right. I'm a she, but otherwise you nailed it.
I started on the original Persona 3, and I liked it the best. I never found lack of control of party members a problem and I enjoyed stun locking the enemies.
ngl this felt more like a video about persona's combat in general than just the one more system
also I'm fairly sure I saw this same video in my recommended a while ago under a different title, interesting
Yea the title changed some time ago.
Props to my man adding Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky combat music. That stuff doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
I am counting the days until I can talk about trails/kiseki on this channel
0:45 enemies TRIPPING when you evade an attack is so hilarious for me
XD
Knowing it can happen to ME makes me do basic attacks MUCH LESS...
Join the bow gang. Miss into knockdown? What's that?
@@dde8721 Naoto: INDEED [K-CHK]
@@Ramsey276oneAigis: Heavy fire power engaged. *BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*
(P4 doesn't have the same problem, it's just P3)
I know this is persona but I love SMT's version of it where you have press turn icons instead. Allowing for strategic use of attack AND DEFENSIVE maneuvers.
Yeah press turn is better in pretty much every way compared to persona combat imo. Wish persona would just adapt it.
I think its up to us to not send party members who will be weak agaisnt that one big bad boss. Anything else is managable
Screw shadows. In persona 6 i want some opponents to be groups of 1-4 persona users who are just as fragile and weak as you (same health and damage scaling), but leverage 1 mores, baton passes, and all out attacks (alongside some team synergy) to absolutely whomp you if you aren't prepared (will probably need to balance the system to not OHKO too many times without massive set-up/preparation). This hopefully utilizes the age-old trick of balancing out strong player mechanics by making the opponents use them just as much or at least threaten to use them just as much.
It's funny because 1 More and Baton Pass (or Shift in P3R) are the sole reasons why I think Persona games have the best turn-based combat, especially P5R.
This video is really funny to me, because for a while, I considered Persona 4 to actually have the best implementation of the One More system, and felt especially so after playing Persona 5 (vanilla). This was a write-up I did during a discussion regarding the merits of P3 vs P4's battle systems:
"I definitely really like P3's battle system. I wouldn't call Persona 3 my favorite game ever if that wasn't the case. I like the narrative purpose for the tactics menu and outside of a few circumstances, was usually able to use tactics to get what I wanted from a party member.
That said, I'm not necessarily sure I agree with your conclusion that Persona 3's battle system is more balanced than Persona 4's, and in that regard, I'm specifically referring to how knockdown works. While I do agree that the stricter requirements for getting a 1-More balances out with how being knocked down skips a turn, I still find the system a little too exploitable, not so much from the enemy's angle, but from the player's. If the player so wishes, they can use the fact that being knocked down skips a turn to keep troublesome enemies from acting at all, and use the given leeway to regroup, buff the party, debuff the enemies, heal, whatever. The chance that your next targeted spell might miss always exists, but when your agility's up and their's is down already, that's hardly an issue worth worrying about. This isn't to say that battle can't randomly end up heavily in the enemy's favor, especially if they have an instant kill spell, but the system always makes me feel like I'm kind of cheating. That said, it's worth noting that this is probably why my favorite boss in the Persona franchise from a mechanical perspective (not a narrative one) is Conceited Maya, who takes the strategy the player has been using to play the entire game and turns it against them, fully exploiting the battle system just as the player has. I wish more storyline bosses took as much advantage of their respective game's battle system as this one did (though I hear the fight against Caroline and Justine in P5 also does this? Haven't fought them so I'm not sure.)
This is exactly why I love what Persona 4 did with the dizzy system. Aside from removing the pain involved in getting knocked down and having to spend a turn getting back up only to get knocked back down again, it turns downing enemies into its own risk-reward scenario. Enemy comps in P4 will often have groups that cover each other's weaknesses, so using a multi-hit skill might knock one enemy down while reflecting or healing another's. Knowing that, knowing an enemy can wipe your party if they're allowed to attack on their next turn means you have to constantly weigh whether you should try to ensure a dizzy on a downed opponent or to go for more guaranteed damage on another is in the back of your mind. On a side note, I also appreciate how it streamlines weaknesses, so enemies weak to light will always get killed by a hama skill, versus other games where there's only a slightly more likely chance that they'll succumb to it. It does somewhat devalue higher-level instant kill skills, but honestly, I never used hama or mudo skills that often to begin with, so that might just be more of a personal quibble.
Just so long as we can agree that P5 has the most boring battle system for making knockdowns mean absolutely nothing aside from being closer to getting a hold-up, and its only redeeming factor is baton pass, then we're good."
Royal definitely did do a lot to alleviate P5's weaknesses though, and I could tell that was the case almost as soon as I started playing it. The improvements to baton pass and the technical skills definitely do make it more strategically interesting. That said though, I do still have to give P5R shit because in spite of that depth, the game is so easy even on Merciless that you barely even have to pay attention to the complexities of the system. I got by using primarily P4-tier strategies combined with baton pass and got through without breaking a sweat. I do wish that the main game itself forced me to use these strategies more, as I'd probably come away with a much more positive opinion of P5R otherwise. I recognize that the extra fights found in the Velvet Room do alleviate this, but the fact there's no easy way to know when to do it (especially since there's no "post-game" to speak of) makes its strengths likewise seem muddied.
Another great video! I love a lot of the battle mechanics the megaten games have it sets them apart from other turn based rpgs but I really think they need tweaking, they're easily exploitable on one hand and on the other you can be punished for just being unlucky with nothing you can do
Turn base is just straight up outdated at this point and easily exploitable. I think they're just no direction to go for this battle system now, The last time a Turn base gave me difficulty is Darkest dungeon 1 which isn't going to fit any SMT games at all. The best they could do is upgrade to a action turn based system like FF 7 Remake and go from there.
@@NinjapowerMS No.
@@NinjapowerMSno
In any jRPG you're absurdly overpower by the endgame if you do anything the game has to offer. Sephirot in FF7 is super easy one you get the Knights of the Round materia, in FF10 when you get the ultimate wepons they break the 9999 damage barrier. In this games if weren't for ofpheus Messiah or Satanael they would not be motivation to certain absolute boring social links (taking to you TV host and Gourmet King)
I don't enjoy extremely difficult old school jRPG's like SMT nocturne at default difficult, I remember FF12 being punishing with some bosses, Legend of legaia was one of those. Mainly because the scarcity of healing items between battles. Most of times I just want to play Persona games for the story, not the difficulty.
I unironically think that okumura is the most interesting and fun boss fight in the entire persona series
On paper, it isn't a bad fight, but I find the way sacrifice order works to be too punishing.
IMO, if it were a little less punishing it would be perfectly fine
Sounds like you want the Press Turn System in the modern Megaten games. If you haven't played those yet, I HIGHLY recommend them.
He has a video about press turn lol
I know this is an unpopular opinion but I actually like P3/FES's fully AI party members with lots of tactical options rather than just 3 (4 if you count Direct Command).
Not being able to change Tactics on the party member's turn was the frustrating part.
I'd really wish that they expand further with their original design concept;
"You're not meant to make your friends work FOR you, you're meant to work WITH them."
Then why appoint the player as a leader?
@@loserinasuit7880he tells the team the idea, not exactly each move
@@pre-violetmelain2984 What is the difference? They are all archetypal.
@@loserinasuit7880 Because he's the hero.
@@loserinasuit7880 It's the difference between;
"Focus on healing/Take that enemy down."
&
"Okay, Yukari! Use Thundershock!"
I think this is why I really like Persona's combat mechanic, I think the 1 more system is a really good mechanic, probably the persona games are the first turn based rpgs I enjoyed playing because of it. Especially with P5, the first time I experienced 1 more and baton passes, I always fight the shadows I see
Looking at this is definitely a reason for why Persona 4s battle system needs an improvement. of course, its not gonna happen soon since it still holds up. But give it years.
I'm confused. He likes the Persona 5 system really well but it falls apart in many of the same ways as Persona 4.
Some of which he mentioned in Persona 4 and didn't say how it was rectified in Persona 5. Such as:
1. Characters not losing a turn when knocked down
2. All attacks are only required to hit one enemy that's weak to get a one more
3. Honestly, bosses still take a while. To me that's enjoyable though, in both games, they change strategies as they go through their phases. But it was a negative to him in Persona 4.
4. Something he does hit on but Persona 5 is too easy, regardless of difficulty with the exception of the 5th Palace Boss. Why should I care about getting stronger and experimenting? I can destroy everything without doing that.
Also, Chie is better than Kanji. And I play P4 Golden on Hard. She crits, amazing for Gold Hands and she has Power Charge, which Kanji is missing, to make her a great boss killer.
a simple way to make persona somewhat challenging would be to just get rid of the ambush mechanic so that enemies actually have a chance to do something
IMO the biggest failure of modern Persona combat is the party members. Straight up I just think SMT's system of every party member having jts own demon is better. I'd be really down for a return of the vintage Persona games letting you change every character's personas (with limitations iirc)
Haven't played classic persona yet but this take is interesting to me
Idea with persona 3s tactics option
When a character is going to do an action, there is a whole second or 2, in which the player has the opportunity to interrupt it, and change it to something they’d like.
This comment gave me an idea…
You know how you can switch to RUSH/Auto Battle mode on the fly in these games?
I feel like a good workaround to not being able to change tactics on other turns would be to add a “priority system” where, on the leaders turn, you set a party member’s first priority action, as well as a second priority action that can be switched to into and out of in a manner similar to using the RUSH/Auto Battle function.
The big problem is that I don't really care about Persona's combat system at all. The boss fights are decent enough, but pretty much everytime I'm forced to enter a dungeon, it's just content that I'm FORCED to slog through until I get back to the parts of the game that I actually enjoy.
I'm not playing Persona for it's combat. There's a reason I have little interest in Shin Megami Tensei. The appeal of Persona are the life sim elements. An opinion that I'm pretty sure most people agree with. After all, Persona only really turned into a massive success after Persona 3, the game to add those elements into the game. Hell, Persona 3 itself even references just how poorly Persona 2 performed in the Hermit social link
Sure, the One More system is very abusable and makes combat fairly easy, but it's satisfying. And it fits the game.
I guarantee you there's plenty of people that do care and enjoy persona for it's combat. Case and point, look at how many challenge run videos that target specifically the combat of the games there are, and how popular they tend to be. Or even the fact that this entire video exists, contrary to what one might think, most ppl don't go into persona expecting it to be a dating sim, they go into it expecting a rpg with dating sim elements.
@@mizzix even then, it does integrate both very well into each other.
different balancing between all the persona games that had the life sim part sure, but you honestly can't ignore one without the other or it'll DRASTICALLY change the pace of the game since it'll weaken you in some way overall
@@mizzixI disagree, most people go into Persona for characters, not the systems. Or because everyone else is trying it out and it was popular, and they stayed for the characters.
Or maybe all of us are right and Atlus has to find a way to make a Persona game to impress all parties.
I can't wait to hear your thoughts on Reload :)
FYI, i know you say in the desc it's P5 Royal, but I want to stress a lot of these features are in P5 Royal and not base Persaon 5. Normal P5 lacks the challenge room, and Ryuji's ability becomes a liability (hah!), because you don't get any exp or cash from using it. Also the Okumura fight is completely different, as are most boss fights. The Okumura fight is way less challenging in base Persona 5. I felt that in Royal, I had to change difficulty to Merciless just so I could pull off enough damage on the robots.
And the Baton Pass system can't be unlocked until later in the game, because you need high academics to get the chess girl to hang out with you. I played through the entirety of base Persona 5 NEVER UNLOCKING Baton Pass... The schedule in this game is awfully tight, because unlike in Persona 3, you need to have SO many friends, and you can only do stuff in the day (unless again you unlock a different characters social link).
I also feel that Makoto is outclassed by the end of the game, even her special ability in Royal is to cause a mass debuff, but like... enemies are resistant to debuffs and if you're fighting a boss it's a big waste of SP to use her skill instead of the single target skill, or another character's ability. Her ailment boost is great but I'm not sure if it outclasses what is lost.
Vanilla P5 starts off reasonably hard (due to SP limitations), then gets easier later on, so about the typical power curve for Persona. No Ryuji IK farming and the Strength link fusion cheat being locked behind a later rank push the usual Persona "break the game completely open" phase back to the endgame as well, though there was the Reaper flu season trick. The endgame is shorter by a month as well with no 3rd semester, so there was no real "playground" for you to bring out the busted endgame builds.
Royal made the early game much easier (will seed SP refund helps a lot), nerfed Madarame which was probably the hardest boss in the game in vanilla bar Twins given the expected level to fight him at, and made Wakaba a scripted fight. Okumura is harder than Vanilla, but a lot of people's struggle came from the game being so easy up until that point, that they never learnt to play the game or make use of what was given to you.
Baton Pass is the mechanic to pass your 1 more to another party member, (and unlocked at a certain rank of their Social Link) you're thinking of Hifumi's party swap. Which is a nice feature but by lategame the game is so piss easy you don't actually need it, and early on as you said the requirement to unlock her link is rather high so a lot of people end up working on someone else instead. Persona 3 is also significantly harder to schedule around than 5, in 3 a significant amount of your links are in school, and you lose access to them completely during the multiple holiday periods, as well as the week before exams. If you don't know/remember this before hand and you prioritize links outside of school, you're going to end up running out of stuffs to do 2/3rd of the way through the game for most days, and not enough school days for everyone remaining.
Makoto's strength is that she's absurdly strong during the part of the game where there's still some form of difficulty left. Healing, solid damage, defense buffs means that she outclasses Morgana completely as a healer. Endgame, it doesn't even matter when Joker can legit do everything and one shot nearly everything with a juiced up Yoshitsune.
I'm a simple man. I hear Trails music, I subscribe.
One More system is just a budget Press Turns. I genuinely can't go back playing persona games after playing SMT who made by the same developer and made at the same time.
Honestly, the Press Turn System is really boring. Watering it down was the right decision.
@@pn2294 I can't believe anyone want the water down version. One more/extra turn or any version of it, it's not controllable, while press turn the player will always be in control, cost half a turn was a simple and amazing game mechanic, especially when the enemies AI also has the same press turn ability, making it feels like I'm playing another player at every boss fight since player and enemy share the same mechanic/ability. While the water down version is just downgrade when it's not fully a controllable mechanic. But I guess not everyone agree with it apparently.
@@FaizalKuntz that’s precisely why it’s bad. It’s too easy to cheese which takes all of the difficulty out of the game
@@pn2294 have you played any SMT series games other than persona? That game was so hard, because the enemies and boss battles are abusing the press turn system, the first ever boss fight the AI cheese the press turn system, every single first roadblock boss fight teaches player how to cheese and exploit press turn mechanics. That's why it's fun to replayed SMT games because it offer so much freedom how the player can exploits the controllable press turn mechanics. I'm not the only one who has an demon ally in my team just to do press turns, the game was designed for it.
@@pn2294 Compared to infinite one mores in persona 3? Or triple baton pass enemy down aoe in persona 5?
Both of those make it a joke once you know weaknesses and there's less depth than the concept of press turns, other than near random turn order
That's like the defining mechanic for the series tho...
I think SP recovery limitations balance it out pretty well in Persona 3 Reload.
5:34 "on the other hand bows and guns have a bigger accuracy"
Yukari - Oh yeah? Let me show you a pro gamer move(misses every single shot on the battle)
When the enemy crits more than once:
Great video, love the Trails ost too LOL
I feel like they should make merciless actually incredibly hard. Not just increased numbers but increased sp cost, higher prices, more shadow variety (even just inverted colors with type effectiveness turned on it’s head could create fun moments) reaper showing up faster and disabling pause fast travel. Changes like that which don’t remove mechanics but force better gameplay from the player would be fantastic for dedicated players who want to master all the systems in game. You can even think of added optional parts of a boss being added like if kamoshida had more students give him his volleyball spike forcing you to heal more, guard more, and divert your attention to the student while trying to keep kamoshida distracted. One simple change can dramatically increase the difficulty and even if they don’t make merciless into that maybe they can add a difficulty that only unlocks when you beat the game. Doesn’t carry over NG+ benifits but saves data from it, can’t back down to a lower difficulty, it’d be fantastic and the more brutal the better for those who want a challenging persona game who’s challenge is based mostly on skill, and not on dodges and crits.
masterpiece video!
i disagree with you with some aspect, but i lam surprised by the fact that there is someone who appreciate persona gameplay in depth without judging from just loving/hating without a reason to this love or hate.
thanks for this great video!
Bow = High accuracy ?!
Yukari begs to differ
ngl think I mentally flipped Yukari and Akihiko's accuracies 💀
So, respectively. It kinda feels like you're missing the forest for the trees here. Most of your issues are more in line with the series over simplification and over tuning than the 1 More system itself.
I see what you mean. However, I think that a combat system is only successful as the factors surrounding it, which is why I went into so much details on those topics as they are integral to a discussion on the system. If factors such as the enemy design and player options(ex: party customization) do not work together to uplift and show the strengths of the system, it can impact the amount of enjoyment and desire people have to engage with those systems. Hence the fragility or dependence of the system in my eyes. This dependency isn't wholly unique to just P3-5 amongst the many other turn based RPGs, this is just the one I'm most familiar with and had a lot to speak on.
@@TatsuHavenbut shouldn't you make your title reflect the broadness of your thoughts on the combat of these games? The video's title suggests that you are focusing on a single mechanic which is not the case.
Im not sure which came first, but Digital Devil Saga had a mechanic thst was functionally similar to one more even though it wasnt called that. It also had limits because you could only trigger itba certain number if times per turn.
That's the "press turn" system that was introduced in SMT nocturne and most smt games after it use it or a system inspired by it, like the mentioned "one more" system or the "extra turn" system from devil survivor
The Okumura boss fight would be a lot of fun if they took out the part where the enemies flee if you don't defeat them fast enough. Because you have to defeat all the robots at once in order to move on to the next stage, them escaping completely negates all the progress you've made on that stage and you have to start all over. And there's no way to stop them from running away. The only way I was able to beat the fight was by switching the difficulty to Merciless, so my party members would have enough attack power to take out the robots before they escaped. When the player has to INCREASE the difficulty to defeat a boss, that's definitely a design flaw.
I did the same. And I didn’t just switch to Merciless after a couple losses. I rammed my head against that boss for like 2 entire evening sessions. That fight was tough but doable in vanilla Persona 5, but for some reason the devs decided to make the robots much more tankier in Royal.
My problem with Persona's system isn't 1-more, but that hitting null/absorb/repel elements does nothing for the flow of battle.
Press Turn, you can cause the enemy team to lose some/all their actions if you can get them to strike null/absorb/repel. Also prior to Shift Turn in Reload or Baton Pass in P5, you couldn't use the extra action to further expand your strategy or help stabilize the team if things are looking dire.
This makes me still prefer Press Turn if only because you can turn the battle with defense as well as offense by grabbing momentum from the enemy losing their actions.
And, of course, it makes you worry about mixed-element parties. Like I couldn't just have Koromaru use Maragion to hit two enemies weak to Agi if the third is null Agi. The team would lose their turns. This gives single-target damage some use.
As far as eliminating weaknesses - I don't see that as being "too easy", but just good strategy. I know in SMT - I would do my best to have a team with few weakness, even if that demon wasn't as much as a powerhouse. It's like keeping -kaja and -unda around.
Based on beta screenshots, SMT IV was going to work off of One More. I'm very glad they went back to Turn Press.
There's nothing wrong with Insta Kill or especially the jazz club. They're all optional. The only problem I have with the jazz club is that it the game doesn't give you enough time to really use it. There are so many options in this game fir spending your time that most people probably don't use the jazz club that often.
I beat the game and never knew it did anything, I always thought it was just for that one S.Link
I'm personally been trying to beat the twins and Lavenza for a while now and the jazz club makes your teammates stronger and those bosses are not pushovers so it's not OP in that regard.
and without looking it up you wouldn't know when to go to the jazz club for the best abilities
If it gave you more time, then the game would be completely broken.
@@pn2294 no random person with no pic. Do y'all nobodies really even know what these words mean that y'all use? I'm getting tired of y'all for real.
This is a great analysis. I would like to chime in here that, after almost finishing Persona 3 Reload, I don't think Atlus has learned the lessons they should. The Theurgy system looks cool and makes sense thematically, but none of your enemies ever take it directly into account when opposing you. This means you can build Siegfried or any strength persona into a crit monster and completely break the game with magic/physical theurgies that bypass resistances. Theurgy is just an OP win button, and it doesn't even matter who's theurgy you are using. Yukari gets healing skills at half sp cost very early on, and Fuuka gives you full/majority HP/SP restore every time your squad is low. There was never a moment I had to leave Tartarus because of low SP, it was only ever because of my own boredom (though that's not to say I dislike Tartarus, I love it). Not only are you better off getting the vanilla Persona 3 experience by disabling direct commands to party members, you're also better off deliberately choosing to not engage with the Theurgy system at all.
I'm wondering about Persona 6 because basically everything Atlus has added to the combat of Persona since Persona 3 has made it piss easy. Considering that I didn't particularly love Persona 5's story on repeat playthroughs, they might be running out of solid core systems to rely on.
I think one-more works well enough for persona, but it's asymmetrical nature makes it closer to "baby's first press turn" than an equal to mainline's battle systems
Awesome video man! And I agree with basically everything mentioned, Persona 5 is by far the easiest but honestly it is the most fun for combat, and tech hits are pretty fun too, I really like the combat in reloaded, I feel like they took the good elements of p5 and made them a bit more challenging but still helpful. The baton pass stat buffs are gone, but you can still swap to any party member if you hit a weakness, along with technical being removed, but instead vastly increasing critical hits, P4 had mid combat, p5 had super easy but fun combat, and p3R has a mixture of difficulty but kept the fun stuff from 5.
Also if Atlus wants to keep confidant perks, it should be rank 10 only, jesus they are too OP
mom can we get press turn? no honey we have press turn at home.
i've always thought 4's combat was a downgrade from 3. a big part of it for me is that instead of actually trying to improve or polish the systems of 3, 4 just removed stuff because people complained about it and even removed stuff literally no one took issue with just to make it more "approachable". feels like they just swept the criticism under the rug instead of actually addressing it.
Everyone seems to play Persona 3 by using every character and swapping around members for every different battle.
Am I the weird one for just picking 3 and sticking with them the whole game? Like, yeah sure it makes some battles a bit more difficult sometimes, but overall they'll be better leveled than the spread exp. Oh, and I guess because I never used Ken or Koromaru so I never worried about instant kill weaknesses.
First time I beat Persona 4, was with Yosuke, Chie and Yukiko in my party, and I never switched them out either lol
Variety? Diffrent weaknesses coverage? Yeah, MC can do all that, but idk, seems weird to me to leave someone behind tbh.
@@Elsuya_Milo I don't like characters weak to instant kill. Last thing I need is someone guarenteed to die if an enemy casts Hama or Mahama, or Mamudo etc. I've actually never used Ken or Koro for this reason. I've never *needed* them either, if I need heals Yukari is there, if I need Zio Akihiko is there, if I need Agi Junpei is there. But yeah instead of having the whole team be for example level 50 your main 3 you stuck with the entire time might end up being 70. It's a matter of specializing vs hedging.
Sophisticated Fight song repping the Trails series. :)
Feels incomplete to omit Press Turn system and SMT3 from a video like this.
In PS2 P3 you can turn on autobattle midturn to give some extra control over the party members. I actually prefer playing with party AI on. There's hardly any meaningful choices to make when your party members can't switch Personae.
Hopefully persona 6 will add a classic SMT mode option that can be played at any difficulty so people who want a much harder challenge can play that on whatever difficulty. Sure, the one more system can be disgustingly powerful when used properly, but I don’t think there’s an issue with it. I just think a different mode that removes these features or tones them down should be added for those who want a harder challenge while not punishing those who want an easier time by making it harder by default.
out of curiosity, do you mean press turn or the combat system of the pre-nocturne games. I'd love to see how press turn would translate to persona.
Yeah
Let's change one of the signature stuff in the game ti make a harder challenge instead of only making the game harder
I think skiping the turn after recovering from being knocked down was a nice idea, I mean, why would I not perform an all out attack that, most of the times does more damage than any of my other attacks if the enemy can act after recovering anyways? I think it added a bit more strategy to the combat, do I go for the all out attack for a big burst of damage and instantly recover the enemy or do I not do an all out attack to heal my party for example
problem always came from your side, for the system to be fair it has to affect you as well, but the enemy gets way more advantage from you not acting one turn, it's a volatile system, yes, but I think it was also an interesting system that, with some tweaks, could've worked really well
and actually in persona 3 reload I think there's a system like that, don't really know what triggers it yet, but sometimes an enemy that is knocked down goes into some sort of daze and won't act for a turn, this also means you won't be able to use an all out attack if you hit his weakness, but it means that you have a free turn to wail on it or to heal your party
The thing with All Out Attacks too though that's interesting it that there ARE some enemies/ minibosses /bosses that have undisclosed resistances to almighty/all out attack damage so it's not as easy to just down and all attack them because you'd actually be doing less damage and getting them back up than if you cancel it and use a normal ability, especially if you have an ability that does bonus dmg to an enemy that's down.
Because is a lot of scenarios it is better to CC an enemy then get extra damage on it. For example late game tarturus guardians are tanky a single all out attack is not going to kill them. So instead of all out attacking you can hit them with the weakness while they are down and make them dizzy you can buy precious time to buff,heal, and more. All out attacks are great for regular mobs but for bosses...ehh...not so much.
At 3:45
When SP is low, the AI will use medicine instead of healing skills, which I assume is done to save SP for offensive skills.
Havent played The Answer yet so idk if it changes anything from The Journey, but from what I've played each party member only carries 1 medical powder unfortunately (party members have their own inventory in P3Fes), and since the AI considers her SP low, this was deemed her best option by the AI.
Basically she would’ve been more likely to use Diarahan or Mediarahan if she had more SP.
9:12 yes I feel this too, that’s why in reload I made the unlimited equipment to be more offensive then defensive even tho I often go for defensive. Like t.ex. Jumpei with auto rebellion, akihiko with strike amp, Aigis with pierce amp (stacks with physical amp) or mitsuru with ice boost as it frees one skill slot and I already have amp from the whip to keep more status ailment skills as it’s her thing and the only character in the franchise that has it.
Besides they already has high chance of resisting magic damage, and triple evasion against anything from Ali dance from the shoes of light. The low low chance a weakness hit is not worth nullifying it and it removes a core part of the game
Reload is fun, but I felt like it has all the problems of Royal without Royal's strong point like Technicals. Physical just bust the game wide open past the halfway point, with Siegfried being the prime offender because he also unlocks the Scarlet Havoc theurgy, but Mada (Strike Siegfried) and Bishamonten (Pierce SIegfried) are also viable options that comes just a couple of levels later. The party characteristic are fun to play around (crit Junpei and Theurgy-spam Aki pops off hard once you've unlocked their traits and grab some gear to enable them like the Dragon boot and the Apt Pupil/Strike Amp/Elec Amp gear), but they stopped mattering the moment you could buff stack charge Scarlet Havoc your way through the rest of the game (until Armageddon). It gets worse with the ambush buff from the underground website because triggering despair (guaranteed crit) on ambush just set up for oneshots even easier, eliminating the point of Mitsuru entirely.
The one thing I dislike about Persona combat is the existence of Almighty attacks. I get why they exist, but late game when enemies have no weaknesses, it's just spam Almighty attacks for your strongest magic attackers & it feels so boring.
I do like One More, even when missing 1 enemy in a group attack though. If I get an extra turn knocking down 1 enemy, I should get one for knocking down 3 as well.
I agree with multiple physical types being way better than physical being just one thing though. P3 feels way better because of that.
This man made a video recommended to me, praising P3 and P5, while dogging on P4. I could not be more pleased to add to my subscriptions 😂😂😂
Ayyyy, I love your analysis of the one more system in this video!
Maybe if you could branch out, maybe you could talk about the different boost systems or ailments in Etrian Odyssey? There are alot of games tho, so it's fair if you don't want to play all of them just for that XD
Honestly, for P6, I would like to see them continue adding perks for advancing the confidants/social links. However they should give you the option to toggle whether you want the perk or not. The best example I could think of is Smash Ultimates adventure mode. You can use points to buy a perk like extra damage using projectiles but you have the option to disable that perk. I think that alone would help persona as you get to fine tune your difficulty accurately. The choice in disabling double XP and Ryugi’s insta kill ability would make the game a bit more challenging.
this makes me wonder
how would the first 2 games be like if they had one more too
I like direct command but shit man theres an unexplainable joy I feel when I only really control myself and the others act freely
you summarized really well why i feel battling in p5 is much more comfortable than the rest of the series.
i nearly got one more'd into the ground by a mini boss with the spiked clubs as it's arms, to counter it to death with my team one moring it into the ground. I love this batshit shenanigans fest.
Seriously, anyone who had issues with Okumura, P5 and/or P5R, had no idea what they were doing, they didn't pay attention at all to the enemies throughout the palace, it was a breeze.
I think people had an issue with it being harder on Hard difficulty and easier on Merciless because of the increased technical damage
@@luma6733 from what i remember the were saying it was to hard even on normal
Nah it was just bs. If they stayed around for a single turn longer, then it wouldnt be so bad
I'm fine with the stuff in persona 5 as long as they actually make the game difficult lol. It seems like they listened to the criticism though as the baton pass is nerfed in reload and you also can't just dizzy the enemies on command anymore. In fact reload is straight up the hardest game on merciless because all the cheese has been removed which is awesome. No dizzy lock, no powered up baton pass, no party wide -karn skills, even the dlc is somewhat tame. Hopefully they stick with this direction
Technically speaking, there is a party wide -karn skill, but you cannot spam it.
I am playing through P5R right now and personally, I enjoy having my party all on act freely as I enjoy strategizing around what my teammates and enemy will do
0:30 That was an epic cut
Personally p4 combat more than 3 just because of the follow up. It makes the fights more fun and builds a bond between you and the characters. Generally i don't play persona games for difficulty, I play to quickly knock down enemies and manage your sp but that's just me. But i also agree that p5 has the best combat... until i played p3r
How much did they improve in p3r?
man once more system can be abserdly volatile, every time i start a new game in at least the RPG ones i will always have 1-3 literaly instant deaths that was purely based on enemy AI RNG from them getting a crit on MC and then aiming at the MC again instant killing them, without fail this happens from the sheer amount of battles that happen and doesnt happen later in the games from just having enough stats to actually live 3-4 attacks. i would argue that because the fact its game over with MC dying despite other party members having the ability to revive others is the reason why it is, if someone nukes a party member with once more its not a absolute lose situation. but this is the downside for having infinite potentiol on MC.
also side story i got for P5(not royal) is one boss had a 1-3 hit move with crit rate enhance and if it crits and lands 3 hits it will 1 shot, i got instant killed by this guy twice
While I definitely agree P5R added quite a few amazing systems, Royale in particular broke the difficulty curve of the game too much. Legitimately, even on Hard I don't think I ever died once even without grinding through awhile 100h game playthrough. This is without grinding too, nothing really even required any thought or execution. The numbers are just too tilted in the players favour. I also totally think baton passing is amazing, but it really should not have come with a damage bonus + recovery. Team mates also too frequently saved the MC from death or status effects, and you could easily get 2-3 show time attacks in a single boss fight. While I think the party members throughout the mid game was pretty balanced, once you unlock their final skills the balance starts to break. Ann in particular, being able to focus the whole team basically breaks the game. Sure it cost a lot of SP but you'll able to wipe anything out before that's an issue. This again is exasperated by having too much access to SP items.
Heavily disagree with the persona 4 section. Especially the point about the status ailments. I made a lot of use of status ailments like forget to deal with the non story bosses
Thanks for sharing! I found them to be pretty useless and that I'd just be better off overpowering the enemies, but I like to hear that people found uses for ailments that I didn't!
Persona 3 Reload managed to provide a fast-paced feel to the Persona combat system while still being strategic and 100% turn-based.
I have been playing Persona 4 Golden recently after completing Persona 3 Reload. It is jarring not having that Shift mechanic or actions assigned to buttons on the controller versus a scrollable action menu. Also, changing Personas in battle is a bit annoying as you cannot look at what skills you have if you have forgotten what they do or want to kniw how much SP or HP certain attacks cost before choosing a Persona. Plus, after changing to a Persona, even if you have not done any other action, locks you into using only that Persona for the rest of the MC's turn.
Also, those little king/prince enemies? Burn in a fire, especially the big one in Yukiko's Castle.
You can look at the skills your persona has before selecting it in P4G.
You have to press “show info” before you select your Persona.
Been on P3R, it's nice to have the three types of physical damage again, on an offensive and defensive spectrum (as opposed to 4 and 5 where despite gun existing in 5, it's all just "repel phys null phys etc")
I'd heard a lot about Siegfried a mostly lategame persona (54 requirement) who is mad good (yes yes he is), then I ran into a boss that nulled slash in the pack.
Then the "changed feature involving doors" had one who, repelled all physical damage and the next 2, repelling only slash.
It lead to there being less of a be all end all with Siegfried than I was expecting.
(other game stuff)
P4G has a major issue and that is my catman with 99 in every stat and was unable to get resist dark for a very long time.
P4G Luckily gave Kanji Power Charge, the thing that was truly separating him on "raw number go up".
P5R Sadly doesn't allow GUN Haru to completely shine due to her joining post Charges drink day (I think it's a very, very short number of days too)
Unless I'm mistaken, there's a will seed item that lets one party member cast a charge/concentrate on another, right? Not exactly optimal but it's something. Unless that's a super late game will seed and I'm considering this from the NG+ perspective, which is entirely possible.