AtheistPreacher

Just curious, is there a third blog on these forums about DD2 that somehow isn't displaying for me? Because I only see this one and mine.

The Warfarer implementation does seem really disappointing. It would have been a really cool class if you could have a discrete set of skills for each equipped weapon, even with needing to sacrifice your fourth skill for the weapon switch command and not being able to use ultimate/maister skills. Instead you're still only allowed four skills, period, and most of them can only be used with one weapon (the only exception I can think of is some spells that can be used with both staves and archistaves). Generally speaking it's just not that worthwhile. The only useful application is the one you've already mentioned... being able to switch to a staff for when you have to float somewhere. I did that a lot when I was looking for Seeker's Tokens. It does also let you equip any armor, which is nice, but not really worth the negatives.

@ben_h: The funny thing about P5R, and I know I've said this somewhere on these forums before, is that I don't actually like the extra month added on to the end and the way they retconned the original ending. While that last month is OK when considered in isolation, they didn't need to make a long game even longer, and I thought the new conclusion was less satisfying than the original one. However, they added so much other new stuff into P5R that I still consider it the vastly superior version. The original P5 now feels barren by comparison, just in terms of the stuff you can do within the original calendar and all the new systems.

And as I know I've said in this thread already: I really don't care about the challenge aspect for these games, so the fact that you get really overpowered in the end just doesn't bother me the way it's going to bother other people who are looking for challenge. I want challenge in action games, but usually not in turn-based JRPGs. I'm more in these games to catch 'em all (the personas, that is) and craft all the best gear while experiencing the story and social links/confidants. So I think it's just a difference in what we were each looking to get out of the game.

No joke, I was worried it was about to happen again to me for P3R. I first got interrupted by Helldivers 2, then Dragon's Dogma 2. Then yesterday the second DLC for Remnant 2 was released. Knowing that was coming, I was hoping I could finish P3R beforehand. Finished just in time...

@ben_h: I did not leave the game idling for any appreciable amount of time, no. I just grind a lot in these games. Typically I would only go to Tartarus once per month (save the last month), and stay there for about four hours each time. And I agree that the top-tier gear really isn't *necessary*, it's just something I was looking to do for completionist purposes, because it's typically a thing I've done.

But aside from thinking that gathering all those mats sounded terrible, the "slog" feeling did not come from the dungeon crawling for me. Again, I feel like it came from the fact that there's almost no story before the last quarter of the game, and so there was nothing driving me forward to see what happened next. The large shadows you killed every month were not interesting characters with personalities like the palaces/TV world, there was no story there. It was sheer routine for the first three-quarters of the game, and it was never clear what you were actually accomplishing. And then of course (spoilers!) it turned out that killing those twelve shadows was actually bringing about the end of the world. So doing it was, in fact, worse than useless, and was really uninteresting to boot. One shadow was the same as the next. No emotional impact and no story moving forward, really.

I agree that Mementos in P5 was really boring, very similar to Tartarus from OG P3, but I didn't particularly mind the catbus solution to it in P5R. It accomplished making it shorter, and I'm not sure what other solution they could have enacted.

@av_gamer:I suppose that does make a certain amount of sense, had never thought about it that way before. Still feels weird how little of a presence the school side is. Like Joker is in college and rarely goes to class.

So I finally rolled credits on this. I ended up at 115 hours. These games remain really long. Anyway, some additional thoughts after finishing:

• One thing I forgot to mention in my post from a week ago is that I appreciate that a lot of P3's S.Links actually having you interacting with other high students in and around school, doing schooly things. You hang out with a person in the art club, another in the fashion club, two on student council, and two on the track team. Compare that to P5, in which, outside of the first month of dealing with Kamoshida and starting most days from your homeroom, you'd hardly know that you were in high school at all. Joker isn't in any school clubs, and the only Confidants that see you hanging out anywhere near school are Ryoji (sort of, after running with him) and Maruki for counciling sessions. For a character who ostensibly sends half his waking life being a student, there is almost nothing of school life in P5. That seemed weird to me when I first played it and it still seems strange now.
  
  
• I was disappointed when I beat the Reaper and discovered that doing so no longer unlocks a discrete Monad dungeon at the base of Tartarus. I'd thought that the new Monad doors on the upper floors were an addition rather than a replacement. Too bad, because I like extra secret dungeons like that on principle, and taking it away also makes it feel like beating the Reaper just doesn't really matter anymore. Yes, there's an achievement for it, and yes, it's an Elizabeth request. But it used to really matter for unlocking Monad, and it just doesn't anymore.
  
  
• Normally in these games I like to get everybody's ideal equipment for a next cycle, but then I got to the end and discovered that end-game gearing is really obnoxious in this game. The big thing was that crafting all the best accessories (Spell Master, Arms Master, Ali Dance) requires a mat called a "Dead Moon's Husk," which can only be found in the January dungeon. You're only guaranteed two or three of these from one-time bosses, and the rest come randomly from green chests. You need something like 17 of them to fully gear everyone. But since chests don't respawn within the same night, and there are only a few green chests per run, and the drop rate for them is low on top of that... you end up needing to enter Tartarus a dozen separate times and save-scumming the green chests until you get the mat you need. When I saw how annoying this was going to be, I threw up my hands and said, "Fuck it, I guess I'm just not going to gear everyone." I honestly don't remember how exactly the OG P3, FES, and Portable approached end-game gearing, it's been too long, but I don't remember it being quite this bad. By contrast, P5R just wants you to itemize personas for this stuff, meaning that you never needed to worry about mats as long as you had enough cash to keep summoning from the compendium.
  
  
• The main story was still good—though all the action really only happened in the last three months of the game. I'd remembered the really broad strokes but forgotten a whole lot of the details. It feels more... straightforward?... than the later games. More direct. P5's theme is basically: power corrupts. A timeless theme, sure, but P3's is: everything/everyone dies. Which, well. There's certainly plenty of material there. And P3's story still has some powerful emotional beats, even while much of it ain't exactly original.
  
  
• I think the single thing that made me smile the most in this game was watching Ms. Toriumi freak out when she discovered who she'd been playing that online game with. I kept expecting it to end and she just kept freaking out, and it was magnificent and hilarious. Video link FWIW.
  
  
• Music overall was fine, but not much of it stood out to me. I did really like the opening theme (I liked the opening in general and tended to watch it before each play session). The other standout for me was "Changing seasons," which was the song that played at school around the second half of the game.
  
  
• Final parting shot: guys, did you really need to put ten-minute-long unskippable credits in the middle of your ending? Really? I get that you all worked hard on this game, but making the credits unskippable just doesn't accomplish anything. The people who would've skipped over it are just going to be annoyed with you and still not read them. They may even walk out of the room to make themselves a sandwich while those credits run and miss the end of the story. Just why?

Anyway, P3R will almost assuredly end up on my top 10 GOTY list when all is said and done, I did enjoy my time with it overall... but everything I wrote a week ago still applies. I still think that it started to feel like a bit of a slog after a while, and that a lot of this comes down to there being too little main story stretched across more than a hundred hours. I don't think I'll be replaying it anytime soon, if ever... certainly not before we've reached a point where it's clear Atlus isn't going to be releasing a new version a few years down the line like they've done for every other one of these. If they do, and if it has Fem MC, then I will probably play that one, at least, and perhaps I'll like it better the second time around. What can I say, P3 used to be my favorite, and I really wanted to like this game more than I actually did.

@nodima: Yeah, that's this game. Intending to be/go one place, end up somewhere else entirely. Which will annoy you intensely for a while until you get your head out of the mentality of needing to efficiently do the checklist thing and just enjoy what it gives you. I mean, talk about an epic battle.

BTW you probably figured this out, but that carriage you were waiting for shows up if you just sleep until nightfall. You could've used one of the campsites that was right nearby.

I did think that "hentai fever dream" was a very memorable phrase. ;-D

I'm definitely really looking forward to Hades II, but I think I'm also in a place where I may want to wait for it to be more complete before diving in rather than begin by playing a half-finished version. But I dunno. Maybe I won't be able to restrain myself. I certainly have no doubt that it'll end up being an excellent game.

@zombiepie: Yeah, the title of the blog post was supposed to be more central than it turned out to be, because I had too hard a time wrangling it around that theme, gave up and turned it into a glorified bullet list.

But not the first time Jean-Luc and I have agreed on something. Last year during Extra Life he was talking about his advocacy for Hitman: World of Assassination being 2023 GOTY or at least top 10 for Gamespot. I had made it my own GOTY ten days earlier. Great minds, etc.

@undeadpool: I wish I could remember other past instances of games that had "armor that makes a character look more naked than just removing everything." It really would be a fun and stupid wiki category. But it's one of those things that I know I'd seen prior to DD2, yet really can't recall now what the specific games were. Oh well!