@selvar: I would love to be able to do shit those nights. You could get so much more done. I've beat every dungeon as fast as the game would allow (basically one day for the entire dungeon slog) and that left me with literal weeks of zero main story development, and it was fantastic. Just weeks of hanging around with people and learning their stories. The most main story you get during that downtime are the group chats that say basically the exact same thing over and over.

I understand why they keep it moving, but they could've just faded it to black when you "went home", let you save, then faded in during the day change screen, instead of loading you into a room and be unable to do anything except start another loading screen. I feel like I remember P4 doing the fade thing? It's been a while so I'm not sure. I do remember being "too tired" to do stuff, but that seemed almost exclusively set for after you leave the TV and like, field trips and stuff that made sense. But again, it's been a while so I can't be 100% sure on it.

Definitely looking forward to NG+ though, since I won't have to waste so much damn time raising stats. That alone should free up enough time to easily get all the Confidants done. I'm pretty high with the majority of them now and have 5 or 6 maxed out, but there's 4 or so that haven't even started. Also I didn't figure out the whole gifts thing for a long time.

The reason they give control just to interact with bed instead of transitioning to the next day automatically is so you can save. There are moments when the story encompasses many days in a row and probably close to an hour of real wold time. It would pretty frustrating if you were looking for a point to save and stop playing for the day and it simply didn't happen for an extended period of time.

I don't think that solves the problem. When I play Persona games, there are two versions of myself. The one that wants to take in and enjoy the story, and the one that wants to be super efficient with managing the calendar and trying to min/max every s-link and social stat. If there is an open time slot to do an activity, I'm never not going to do something, even if it's in the middle of a bunch of story development and makes the pacing feel weird.

When the game forces you to go to bed, it's basically telling "you're in story mode right now, don't worry about min/maxing for the moment, just enjoy the story." I appreciate that design choice, it allows me to devote my full attention to the story without getting hung up on managing the calendar.

There are a few places in the game where they give you a save prompt on a menu in between scenes; it would've been far less frustrating for players to just have that save prompt pop up and then go directly into the next day than loading into a room where they can't do anything even though they feel as though they should be able to while the game doesn't justify the reason that they aren't.

I also think people would've been less annoyed by it if it was just a thought bubble instead of the cat constantly being the one to tell you that you can't do anything.

its been like this for every game in the series. its for pacing.

I half see the point but its really not a big deal.

That part with throwing you back in room makes sense because you can do tv quiz, care for your plant plus there is later part where you can regain strength after visiting dungeon and do other activity.

I even stated that first bit! Just fade to black, let you save, continue on. I think P4 did that quite a lot, unless I'm mis-remembering.

It does make for a hard stopping point if you need to stop - I'll definitely agree with that, but if it did the cut-to-black saving thing, you could also just quit out before the next scene or on the first line of dialogue or something, and just load into that later. Heck, that's how a lot of the first Endurance Run episodes stopped and started if I'm remembering right (poor Yosuke rolled in that trash can for an entire day as Charlie sat there and watched, the sick bastard).

It's not a huge deal for me, but I'm just not a fan of how they handled that particular aspect of the game. It just makes it feel like they're arbitrarily taking nights from you and straight-up not bothering to give an excuse. All we did was talk for five minutes today, why can't I make a lockpick or make coffee? "Because reasons" isn't a good answer, but more often than not it's the one you get. Could've stated that you and the crew talked about whatever issue until it was late. Or that you needed sleep to do that the next day.

I'd prefer P4's "You feel tired from the long day, you should go to sleep." internal note. At least then it wouldn't be your Cat Overlord commanding you.

I will say it truly is just a big nitpick for me, as I'm enjoying the game tremendously.

Edit: @danteveli - I...never knew about the TV quiz thing...is it the one downstairs? Mine upstairs only ever tells me the news. Also the house plant thing is a good point, but every time I tried it was still healthy from the last care. And yeah, I got that post-dungeon activity thing and it's pretty cool, though it only adds a few nights since I blow through the dungeons in one run. Still, it does make up for Mementos escapades.

You can do it on the upstairs TV as well, but it's only on, like, 10-15 specific days throughout the game.

Plant is ~16 days to need nutrients again, and there was a section of the game where I was unable to go buy more nutrients for my dying plant for 12 days because they kept railroading me with plot events so hard, which was frustrating. It let me walk around in the room and be yelled at by the cat about letting my plant die, but it wouldn't let me go to the store to buy more nutrients for it :(

Then this whole game structure has inherent problems if they can't be allowed to let players think for themselves in it for fear of diluting their story.

Only thing I don't like is that when you clear a Palace your team shuts down and nobody wants to hang out until you send the Calling Card. I had a few "wasted" days because I didn't realise this immediately.

@ajamafalous: Ahh, thanks for the info. And yeah that plant thing sounds annoying. Luckily I just maxed out both Kindness and Charm, so I never need to worry about a chunk of stuff like that again. Also I still have like 25 of the best plant stuff anyway since I did the confuse money thing in Mementos and am just loaded with cash. I just started my next palace and already can't wait to get it over with, because the story just kept going day after day leading up to it. I wanna continue the like 3 social links I just got the charm/kindness for, dangit!

I don't get the "pacing" explanation some people give since the pacing is terrible. It all feels way too drawn out, with conversations that circle the drain and piecemeal revelations that could've been given to the player much faster. Also, way too many tutorials in the first 15-20 hours of the game, though I'm hoping that goes away at some point? And it just doesn't make sense from a narrative perspective, either. Watching a DVD or reading a book in the evening is apparently impossible if you want to be rested enough for an art exhibition the next day? WHAT? The DVD is a good example, actually. I rented one, which gives you a week to watch it. Welp, the week I rented it I got exactly two opportunities to watch it in the evening because the rest was filled with entire exposition days and forced dungeoneering among other things.

In any case, I feel like I'm barely in control of the game outside of dungeons. Of course I only finished the second one and June just started, so maybe all of that will change at some point.

I would say that June is where the game starts to open up, yeah.

I also agree that saying the pacing "would be" ruined doesn't hold much water. The pacing doesn't bother me, but I also wouldn't say it's good, considering that, if you clear a dungeon early, you end up with 2-3 weeks of zero plot happening other than being sent the same group text four different times.

I can also focus on more than one thing at once. As a human being, I'm capable of spending time with a friend at night and still remembering what happened yesterday at my job/in class the next day. I'm certainly not going to forget our 'hey, we should probably go after this evil artist guy' revelation if I happen to spend the evening after that training with my track friend Ryuji.