I haven't played any previous Persona games but I have seen the endurance run. There were elements, like the social links and the card combinations, that seemed really fun, but the dungeons looked like such a slog (with poor level design) that I never seriously considered playing P3 or P4. Anyone know if improving these is a priority for the devs this time around?

There is no info on anything in P5 except that trailer they put out at their pre-TGS thing.

They haven't said much of anything about the game. Perhaps we'll find out at TGS.

I didn't really mind the dungeons of 4, music and combat was enough to keep me going. My only real issues are the long hallways that are needlessly long. I wish the MC had a faster movement speed through them.

Guys, what if it's just a social sim, with zero combat?

I'd still buy it

So would I, but I'd definitely be disappointed. I know some people don't particularly like the grind (especially the endless floors of Tartarus in P3), but I really enjoy the combat of Persona.

The dungeon crawling and combat is a big reason these games are actually worth playing and enjoyable for 100+ hours. The social sim elements alone are not enough to carry these games. The dungeon design in P4 may have been simplistic and generic, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an enjoyable part of the game. (In fact it's usually the part of the game that keeps me going on my second/third/fourth playthough of the game.) To be honest, I greatly prefer P3/P4's dungeons to P2's labyrinthine dungeon design, even though that game had custom built dungeons. They were just tedious to navigate by comparison.

Who knows how they will handle the dungeon design in this game, but given that the core design of the series is based around first person dungeon crawlers I wouldn't be that surprised if the dungeon layouts remained similar, and I would be okay with that. More detailed dungeon design would be nice, but I don't think it's the most important thing they could do to improve the game.

For what it's worth, Persona 4's dungeons were fucking incredible compared to the Tartarus hikes from Persona 3. It's amazing how much better P3 would have been if the Full Moon missions were longer and more involved, and Tartarus was a good 50~75 floors shorter. They'll probably do even better with 5.

I'd like to see static dungeons. Full-on levels with save points that you can teleport between and that you need to finish by a certain date, no more of this "random" stuff.

I enjoy the combat in Persona 4 a whole lot and because of that, I think the dungeons are good. Still, some good puzzles and interesting segments would be much appreciated. P4 did a few things to that end with bosses, a handful of floors that are the same every time, etc., but it's not really enough to make the dungeons themselves any more than the same tiles randomly placed to make a path to an exit.

To make it clear, I'll be fine if the dungeons are random like Persona 4's. There's pretty much no doubt that the combat will be good, Shin Megami Tensei games rarely have bad or bland combat (yes, I did play through all of P3FES and enjoyed it, why do you ask?), but more interesting levels would be a big plus.

This pretty much how I feel as well. I'd absolutely love it if Persona 5 had more in-depth, hand crafted dungeons, but the combat is good enough that I'd be fine with (if a bit disappointed by) more of what Persona 4 did in terms of dungeons.

I wouldn't call it design even. Its just "pick right or left, keep doing that till you hit the boss" like any other mouse maze. But factor in physically seeing the bad guys, its good enough I feel like. As long as its visually interesting and not overlong Im fine with mouse mazes.

I agree with this. Dungeons are just a means to an end in Persona, except for the rare special mechanics (the camera-switching floor/teleporters in the game dungeon, the backtracking to get the key item in naoto's dungeon).

@veektarius: I thought they improved the dungeons by leaps and bounds from Persona 3 to Persona 4 so I think they're aware that it's something important to the overall game play and I would expect for them to be improved. Then again do we even know how the game is going to play at this point? Are turn based battles coming back?

THE DUNGEONS ARE PERFECT

DONT YOU TAKE MY DUNGEONS AWAY

@heyguys: Almost certainly turn-based battles are coming back. SMT generally doesn't drastically change its gameplay formula amongst an individual subseries. When they want to try a new gameplay idea, they usually introduce a new subseries (see Persona for social stuff, Digital Devil Saga for traditional RPG with no demon summoning, Devil Summoner for action RPG, Devil Survivor for tactical RPG)

I think more dungeons that are smaller and with some that are optional would be the way forward. The most efficient way to play is to play through as much of each dungeon without leaving as you can which often breaks up the otherwise well paced tempo of the game. Smaller dungeons could fix that. I suppose there could be small character themed dungeons as well as one big sprawling dungeon to grind through should you want to in between story dungeons.

I can't honestly recall Persona 4 feeling like a grind, mind. Like you have a dummy run to see what lies ahead and then taking a proper shot at the eleventh hour. I probably need to replay it, though. I never got the true ending.

The dungeons have always been the worst part of the series. In Persona 3 they were literally randomly generated, but the problem was that nothing interesting ever came about it. Which the point of random generation is to create new and interesting experiences each time. But in Persona, you can tell it was just the developer's unwillingness to spend time to craft actual dungeons and instead allowed a computer to do the work for them.

Persona 4 fared better, but that's only because they were so simple to navigate that you never spent too much time in them.

Really hope they fix it for Persona 5.

Oh, hey, this thread got bumped!

Devil Summoner started out as a first person dungeon crawler like all of the other games.

I like the combat so much that the grind is as much a reason for playing as the social linking and story stuff.

That said, not every floor in Persona 4 gives you exactly the same enemies. Floor 1 gives you a few different groupings, floor 2 uses those groupings and maybe one or two more, floor 3 does the same, and by the time you get near the boss door, the enemies and combinations of enemies you're up against are a lot more difficult than what you were fighting way down at the bottom. It's not so much a grind as it is a slow buildup of mechanics and a really good sense of pacing. P3 does the same thing but isn't nearly as effective at it.

As much as I like Persona 3, the dungeons were a step back from Persona 2 to me. Persona 4 was definitely an improvement from the previous game's dungeons but I believe there's room to better integrate with the rest of the game. Overall all of Persona 4 current formula can get even better. Many things felt like hardware limitations. The kind that I don't see like an obstacle for the ps3/ps4.

I think it would be a good idea to take a page out of the Dark Souls book and have a static open world to explore in the shadow world. With the twisted version of the real world thing they usually do, they could do some really cool stuff with it.

Whoops. There goes my cred.

That would be cool. My biggest problem is that the turn based fighting system is too simple for games this long and that is the main reason why dungeons are boring grind.

My biggest problem is the dungeon design. The systems and the combat itself is almost perfect save for a few things like managing buffs and debuffs for instance. The problem is none of the dungeons feel distinct other than a texture swap.

You what? When the dungeons were linked to a companion's psyche?