Demon negotiations were always my least favourite part of SMT games. That's part of why I loved the first Kuzunoha game so much, and Persona 3-4, and Devil Survivor. I am a very literal-minded person, and the obtuse, confusing, unpredictable demon negotiations in SMT games for me just exemplify the parts I like the least about ordinary human interaction.

Just from dabbling in the first hour or so of P5 I got the feeling that this was the most SMT-ass Persona game yet - at one point I swear I heard the guitar riff from Nocturne! Now I hear those fiddly negotiations rear their ugly heads. I did not expect that. So - are they as bad as before? Or have they been streamlined a bit?

The negotiations aren't good, but if you get the enemy down to his last like ~10%, sometimes they'll start talking to you and at that point you instantly get them, if you select "lend me your power".

Every shadow has a personality type, and that personality type likes certain kinds of answers. It's still pretty vague, but in the tutorial section, there's some stuff about "Shadow Personalities". So it's not completely random, which is something. For reference, there are four personalities and four types of answers, and they match up thusly;

Upbeat–>Jokes

Timid–>Kind

Irritable–>Serious

Gloomy–>Vague

Ok if it is that reductive, I can live with it. Thank you for the info!

So much better than random card games and games of luck/roulette stuff. Even if, as it sounds like, you have no interest in the narrative payload of the dialogue then this still is something I'm really glad has come over from the mainline. No more following cards on the screen or just lucking out from a spinning loop of cards.

Just the added mechanical complexity of knocking everyone down and having to pick to not finish the fight early (with a free extra attack) by risking the capture is inherently adding interesting choices to combat that aren't there in P3/P4.

@shivoa: I'm also glad this mechanic is back. Can it be fleshed out more? Sure, but as you said it's better than the roulette/card stuff they had for P3 and P4. The personas feel earned once again and not just handed to me by mere luck.

I like it. Liked it in the older Persona games, like it in 5. It adds an extra thing to the fights and once you know the personality match ups that were posted above it becomes easy.

Yeah, I like this a lot better than the random card game thing.

I was worried about it too but it's not nearly so awful as in P2. They actually stay sort of consistent with the answers they like.

I actually really hate them and it's one of my few complaints about the game; I know about the tutorial screen that tells you which personality likes/hates which type of answer, but my problem is that my read on which answer is supposed to be 'serious'/'vague' seems to be wildly different than that of the demon's; I probably failed more negotiations than I succeeded at in the first dungeon because so many of them were Irritable (the other personality types are all trivially easy).

As someone who has never played a SMT game, this thread is fucking weird to read.

I love it. I love that it's obtuse. I think it makes random battles more interesting because it's an extra thing to puzzle out. Keeps grinding from being mindless.

lf only you could talk to the monsters...

I never really liked this guessing game either. At least in SMT IV Apocalypse it was occasionally so ridiculous that it got me to laugh. I'd still rather have the card system from Persona 4.

I've played a lot of SMT games, though, and this one little aspect has never really bothered me that much, so it's not going to stop me now.

I love demon negotiations in this game. I think it might be one of the best implentations of the concept within the franchise. Definitely within the Persona series. The implentation was mediocre at best in P1 and P2.

It adds so much more complexity to your combat choices and is frankly a godsend on hard where tough enemies can murder you in the blink of an eye, but instead you can instantly end the fight by asking for money or items. (Which is instant and doesn't require any dialogue options.) I actually don't find myself negotiating for new Persona that often, most of them come from begging for their life, which also skips the negotiation. And if you've ever obtained a certain Persona before you can skip the negotiation if you need them again. (It's also a hell of a lot easier/cheaper to just track down the Persona you need for fusion than pray for the random card you need or fuse manually.)

But in those cases where you do need to negotiate giving them all clearly labeled personality types with specific response type preferences helps a lot in cutting down on the wild guessing to figure out what they like to hear. The responses can still be vague enough that the right choice is still not always obvious, but the odds are more in your favor. And I've always liked the extra flavor those negotiations add to the enemies. Nocturne's negotiations were deeply disappointing because they cut most of that out and just made you throw items at them until they were satisfied.

I'm glad its back.

I'm just glad they give you that chart for what responses they like, which I found online and in the game manual. I was trying to talk to them without it and it was pretty tough. It was fun for a bit though but I don't know if I could go through the whole game fumbling my way through those negotiations.

For everyone who hates them, you can eventually minimize their important through something else. Keep an eye out for it!

SMTIV was my introduction to the demon negotiation system and I didn't like it very much. I prefer the Persona 4G "Shuffle Time" where you are guaranteed to get at least something if you do an all-out attack, be it new Personas, stat/exp/money bonuses, treasure keys, etc. Although to be fair once you're fairly far into the game battles become quite trivial when you can get all your HP/SP back if you're lucky on the cards. Still, it made me look forward to battling cause the rewards are like a carrot on a stick.

@probablytuna: Honestly I think the worst thing about P3 and P4's combat mechanics is that All-out-attacks were the be-all and end-all 99.9% of the time. There was no risk/reward. It was super easy, usually an instant win button, followed by nearly guaranteed rewards.

Regardless of what one may think of the actual negotiating, forcing the player to consider alternative tactics to maximize rewards and resources is one of the best things P5 did with the combat. I'm enjoying the combat so much more now.

@zeik: This is probably true for higher difficulties but literally every fight I'm in right now is 'Hey Ryuji use Swift Strike'.

It's super effective.

@efesell: Well I am playing on hard, but I did the same for P3 and P4 and there's still a clear difference.

But my point is, even if you do find a tactic to abuse for easy wins, if you ignore negotiations you ignore a good source of money, items (ex. skill cards), and fusion material. In P3 and P4 you could use the same simple strategy for everything and still get all the best possible rewards.

But that's why they put RNG in Shuffle Time so you're not always guaranteed to get something good. You might end up worse off if you were stuck with the penalty cards. I'm talking about P4G's Shuffle Time specifically though cause that's the one I'm most familiar with.

I just find that the demon negotiation stuff, on top of the low SP and high damage-dealing enemies are making the early game really hard to progress, even on Normal difficulty.

@probablytuna: You may not be "guaranteed" the best rewards every shuffle time, but you are guaranteed the same chance at those rewards regardless of how you win, so there's no reason not to mindlessly spam all-out attacks for easy wins throughout the whole game. (Personally I found all the shuffle times except the slot roulette to be very easy to get exactly what you want anyway.) That's my point. The game very rarely promoted alternative tactics outside of bosses. The most OP choice was almost always the safest and most rewarding option.

Negotiating is precisely how you deal with high damage enemies and conserve SP in this game. There are at least a few enemies every dungeon that hit way harder and take way more resources to kill through traditional combat than their rewards justify, so instead negotiate for some money or items and you'll save yourself a lot of hp/sp and usually come out of it with better rewards at that. If it's just money or items there's no risk of failure. Unless you get greedy and ask for more.

Most of the enemies I would like to skip via negotiation have no weaknesses anyway so it has not really been very useful in that regard.

I guess I'm just finding it a totally inoffensive system this time around but also just not seeing any real improvement.

@efesell: I can only think of two off the top of my head, the Oni in dungeon 3 and Anubis in dungeon 4. Almost everything else has had a weakness so far. I definitely used that trick a lot against the Nue in dungeon 2 or the Shiki-Ouji in dungeon 3, for example.

But even if they don't, they usually aren't immune to crits. Rebellion/Apt Pupil + Physical attacks is handy there. My Yusuke recently learned Tempest Slash, which hits 3-5 times, and is pretty amazing for that.

Couldn't disagree more. I like this so much better than the card system. Its more traditional to smt games.

@xanadu: Which is why it's kind of odd though because it felt like Persona was trying to get away from the days when it was just a different flavor of SMT. Feels odd to go back to the well.

I'm glad it's here because it's much more interesting than weird card mini-games.

Plus, they indicate the shadow personalities so it's not entirely random!

I kind of like it, but then again I haven't really had any trouble with recruiting, with the exception of one type of demon I just couldn't convince. I didn't even know you could see their personality, I just guessed.

@shivoa: I was hot fire at those random card games.

Though I can understand why others might hate 'em.

No point in being different just for difference sake if it's not adding anything meaningful to the experience. Unlike S. Links/Confidants I doubt anyone looks at shuffle time and considers it a defining characteristic of Persona. Whereas demon negotiation is definitely a defining characteristic of MegaTen. Besides, hold ups are still a fairly unique twist on that system compared to other games, like the Once More system is to Press Turn, etc. None of the games require you to knock all the enemies down before talking to them, and letting you earn negotiation based buffs from leveling Confidants feels very Persona.

I was apathetic to negotiation in SMTIV due to demons being more way more random in what they wanted from you and sometimes flat out draining you of resources and giving nothing in return.

In Persona 5 they feel more consistent and less weighted against the player, so I'm actually enjoying the implementation this time around.

Ok, so I'm having a break from The Gutter in DS2 and putting some time into P5. Negotiations really are trivially simple once you keep those 4 personality types in mind. Huge relief! Also, Kamoshida is a shitheel of the first order.

@_brojangles_: I'm dabbling in SMT IV too, and as soon as I figured out how effective "end negotiaton" can be, I haven't had any real problems. Give them lifestone or HP 2-3 times, then end. They will come around more often than not.

I didn't like it much. It was interesting, I suppose, but I preferred Shuffle Time (specifically, Golden's). They also felt semi-pointless. I could get a random (mostly useless it seemed?) item, anywhere from way less to slightly more than usual the amount of money if I had just killed them instead, or a new persona. I always went for the Persona. Near the end of the second palace I would just all-out-attack them if I already had them.

I didn't know about the personality thing until about halfway through the game, and by then I had like 5 things / abilities that made negotiations disappear almost entirely from my gameplay experience.

I did like the whole naming thing though. Some weird named based on their looks until you got 'em yourself.

@capum15: Yes, "give item" and "give money" seem to be entirely useless and included more for SMT-nostalgia reasons than anything else. You should always either recruit or do an all-out attack so far as I can see.

@joques: You should get the sun arcana leveled up. It changes things considerably, the money negotiation gives you an absurd amount of money once you have the push for more money skill. You can also kill them after so you get that money as well.

Give item or money can be useful if you are fighting a strong enemy above your level and want to end the fight. That is more applicable on hard difficulty, where allowing an enemy to attack often means losing a party member.

Love it; surprising amount of nuance to it the deeper you get into the game.

Like how a demon's active status effects can alter your options for talking to it.

I like this, honestly; its a SMT thing that I enjoy.

Question: Is there any point in negotiating with a Shadow after you've already recruited it once? Like is there a point to going through the dialogue choices a second time? It would be cool if that got you the version of the Persona in the Compendium, but I've never tried so idk if that's a thing.

If you got rid of them then it's easier to recruit them/get money or items a second time around. Also Personas you recruit are automatically added to the Compendium when you put them in your party so feel free to just dump new ones for newer ones.

Yeah, so the question I'm asking (and I'm sorry for being unclear here) is that if I recruit a Persona and fuse it away/dump it and try to recruit it again, it asks if I want to go through the dialogue tree again or just straight up recruit it. Is there any point to going through the dialogue tree again or is it just for "fun"?

It gets better when you get your confidants rank up, they can help you out if you pick the wrong thing.

Level up Sun; it quickly makes asking for money the best option (unless you're going for rare skill cards, in which case you should ask for items). I also thought those options seemed worthless at the start but that quickly changed after the first dungeon.

Yeah, there's no reason to.

I'd much rather have the light puzzle of P4G's system than this RNG, but at least you can just fuse the personas before you fight them and circumvent the entire system altogether. It does add some more strategy to how you choose to eliminate your enemies so it's not all bad, just mostly bad.

@ajamafalous said:

Oh right I forgot about Sun! I maxed everything but Tower and Hanged, and Sun was one of the first along with Death. That was helpful at the beginning. Around the start of Palace 3 I got Pulpina and Confuse Boost on something and farmed some Mementos bosses for money and never had to worry about money again. They can throw out a solid 39-50k at early levels per wasted turn, if they throw away money. I saw some throwing out about 80k later on. That's probably why I forgot Sun's bonuses entirely, haha.

Alright so yeah the money boost from Sun is useful if you don't cheese the game like I did. And I suppose the "conserving HP/SP" thought is good too if you haven't gotten Death up.

That being said I don't think I ever used negotiations after Palace 5. I also only fought like maybe 10 non-forced enemies after that (due to me fucking up stealth), because there are some real great abilities in the game.