Well I haven't played Golden but like you said Naoto's downsides in the original were her high SP usage and her lack of a decent damage dealing spell. (Aside from mindcharged almighty damage) Seems like Golden has removed both of those almost entirely, so I could see her basically sweeping every single enemy you come across.

With all of the new skills and mechanics they introduced, to the already lenient ones they introduced in vanilla P4, I can see why you're breezing through the game, it seems even easier than it was before. If you're getting bored you could try switching up your party, put Kanji in instead of Naoto maybe.

@grantheaslip: I can see how some of the changes in Golden could make the game easier. Maybe you could just not take advantage of that? Make the game a little more challenging by switching things up a bit?

The original wasn't easy; it was just rather moderate difficulty with moments of decent difficulty. From what I've seen, Golden offers the ability for it to be easier, and that's probably the problem you're having here.

The random encounters are never very hard, no matter which party you have. Being able to walk over over them just keeps them from being annoying. I often have gotten bored with the random encounters, even with relatively-weak parties.

Naoto didn't use to get any spells other than physical stuff, Light/Dark, and Almighty (at least, I don't think so), but I guess she does now? I've only played through Golden once and haven't used her yet. She sounds like she could be pretty good; the main problem would be fitting all the stuff she can get into only eight skills. You don't get her until pretty late in the game, so I guess it isn't really THAT much of a concern?

I haven't played Golden, but in P4 the bigger problem with Naoto was her damage output moreso than spells costs. Hama/Mudo was good for taking out mobs, but worthless against boss. Her physical skills were pretty meh. Megidolaon only did respectable damage with Mind Charge, but with no Boost and Amp skills for almighty the damage was unremarkable. The game isn't hard enough for it to really matter, but she was generally the least versatile character.

I've never played P4 on anything besides hard though, and honestly I think the difficulty is about perfect there, for the most part. But even on hard the difficulty eases up near the end, since the game doesn't quite account for all the ways you can make your character stronger. If anyone breaks the game it would be the MC. Fusing someone like Yoshitsune, along with anything that has Debilitate, pretty much means you win the game.

@grantheaslip:

Persona 3 on Hard (which is only in the Portable and FES versions) is almost staggeringly difficult. You can get a game over on any random encounter if you fail to get player advantage, and a lot of the early bosses you basically have to grossly abuse game mechanics you probably would not have a grasp on yet at that point of the game. I would rank Persona 3 up there with Nocturne and Strange Journey in SMT difficulty. There is also the "challenge" of on Hard the Persona Compendium prices are jacked up by a factor of four. Have fun trying to pull out a level 2 Pixie for 12,000 yen. My end-game Persona in Persona 3 cost 2.5 million yen to pull out.

That being said, I felt like the back 15-20% of the fighting except for some select bosses (and the final boss) were a breeze. It gets to a point where MC is so ridiculously powerful that, as long as you got player advantage, you would win every fight on your first attack.

@grantheaslip: Normal on P3 is going to be tougher than your time with P4G on normal, yes. Hard is... pretty hard.

To stay on topic, @grantheaslip , since they reduced the SP cost of a bunch of Naoto's spells in Golden my short answer is (depending on the rest of your team) yes, yes she is game breaking.

Even on Risky, she pretty much clears the floor of any dungeon sans only a couple of enemies. For boss fights, give her Heat Riser and she can be your primary buffer in late game - the first time I beat Margaret (the optional boss for P4) in Golden, my team was Yosuke, Yukiko and Naoto. Since then she's become a staple of my teams, especially once you get her final skill (by maxing her s-link and hanging with her after new years), as it makes your party invincible for 1 turn which definitely helps against low-health Margaret (ie, Hassou Tobi).

Give her any item to help her with SP and you're good to go.

For reference, my favourite team I ended up with in Golden was Yosuke, Teddy and Naoto.

As to the rest of your questions, the final dungeon has a higher quantity of enemies who repel or resist Light / Dark, but she still ends up being hella helpful for most of it. *shrug* As has been rightly stated, the dungeon crawling isn't really the best part of P4 anyway - but if you want a challenge, Risky is where it's at.

@grantheaslip said:

Yup, or you can take Naoto to the hot springs, select the "talk about the past" option and you can elect to rejigger her skills. I'd say ditch Invig 3, give her that half-SP ring you get for beating the optional boss of Heaven and call it a day.

In the end, there's just so many ways of building your party out it barely even matters though.

@grantheaslip:

To be honest, I still can't decide whether I prefer Normal or Hard in P3. On the one hand I think the combat difficulty is overall more satisfying on hard, especially the boss battles, which can often feel disappointingly easy on normal. On the other hand, hard mode adds some things that feel more like artificial difficulty that I don't particularly like. The major one being the fact that you can be ambushed by the enemy even if you hit them first, which can really screw you over on hard. (I remember it happening once in the last dungeon and an enemy used Megidolaon on me, killing my whole party before I could do anything.) However, you still get a guaranteed preemptive strike if you hit them from behind, and it's quite easy to hit shadows from behind if you're patient, so it basically just means you're waiting for every enemy to turn around and then killing them before they can actually do anything to you.

@selfconfessedcynic: She can get Heat Riser in P4G? Okay, that is pretty broken.

@zeik said:

Oh yeah - Kanji gets Power Charge now, too.

Everything was totally touched up and rebalanced in P4G - but, the old pub stomping team of Kanji, Chie, Yukiko isn't what it was as there are some pretty important bosses which are immune or reflect physical now.

She only started with Megidoloan because you were overleveled the fuck out by time you got her. Normally she'd start with Megidola, Hameon, Modoon (single target), and no invigorate.

i Went Naoto/Kanji/Yukiko on my first playthrough and she basically steamrolled everything.

Don't think i'll use her again till the day I do a very hard run.

P3 is pretty hard. I even tried P3P on beginner one time and the 1st boss got lucky and killed me once and I lost a Plume of Dusk. besides that it doesn't have most of the stuff that makes P4 easier to handle. there are floors of tartarus that are pitch black so you don't know if your running into an enemy. the shadows in the game don't have to turn to chase after you they just run straight so it is almost impossible to dodge them if they see you. plus unless it is P3P you can't control your team so they do stupid things sometimes like the "marin karin" problem.

but P3 is a game that gets really really easy at the end. you only have to be about lvl70 to kill the final boss and most people will get way beyond that thanks to the game's December and january. o and the bonus dungeon that's just a exp farm. i'm currently doing a Hard NG+ run and thanks to keeping my lvl and the bonus dungeon I just needed to beat 3 of this one shadow that gives you tons of exp and both Junpei and yukari jumped from lvl1 to lvl36 before the train boss which ended up being a rush 1 hit KO. lol

P3 is challenging, but certainly not hard. P4:G is a breee though. I kinda regret not playing it on the hardest difficulty this run.

@spunkydragonwithdeadlylegs: That's one hell of a username and also explains why a bunch of Persona 4 stuff is coming up in the recent activity feed on the forums. Welcome, by the way.

Also, I didn't think P3 Fes was hard (Never played P3P), but Golden was ridiculously easy. Pretty much everybody in that game was game-breaking.