I started up a file a few days ago, and so far I've been basing a lot of my decisions regarding things like social links and club activities on what Jeff and Vinny on a couch would do in said situation. Sould like a solid plan of action?

Also, should I swap out not-Yosuke as soon as not-Kanji becomes available (assuming he does, at least)? As it is, I'm pretty content with not-Chie (though as her name suggests, she's certainly no Chie).

"What Would Charlie Do" is an excellent way to live your life, let alone play a video game.

I think playing the game in that fashion would be a disservice to Persona 3. It's been a while but I remember the characters in P3:FES being a lot different, and in a lot of cases, better than their P4 counterparts. "Not-Yosuke" in particular is easily one of the most like-able characters in that game and evokes the most emotional response during the course of the 80+ hours you'll spend playing P3. Also, there is no Kanji equivalent in Persona 3, sorry.

I, like yourself, was introduced to Persona through Giantbomb's endurance run and thoroughly enjoyed it, obviously. However, I would suggest that you just watch the Persona 4 ER again if you're just going to try and mimic that experience in Persona 3. I'd try to put on the blinders as much as you can while playing so as to have a wholly unique experience all your own; that's the best way to play that game in this post-ER world and it will allow you to judge Persona 3 on its own merits.

Food for thought, I'd skip "The Answer" if I was you. I know that'll be nigh impossible after how that game ends but you'll be all the better for it, I promise.

Get Not-Yosuke out of your party asap bro. Not-Kanji is way better.

That said, I think the characters in P3 are really good. Aside from one or two they are all very likable. :D

That's the wrong question. You should be asking:

@respighi: You make a lot of very good points. I probably should have been clearer about WWCD meant for me and what the alternative would be. By taking a WWCD approach, I meant making decisions more with a role-playing and "what would be cool to do" slant than with a min-max focused "which clubs do I need to join and in what order do I join them to build the strongest personas" bias. So far this has meant not immediately joining a sports club at the first chance in favor of seeing where this "plan" of Kenji's is going.

And you are right that the characters do have their own personalities, I was just going by my initial gut-reaction to meeting spunky girl classmate, confident but a little dumb boy classmate, and gray-haired tough guy classmate.

For my money, the best party is not-Chie, not-Kanji, and uh, not-whoever-Aigis-parallels to. Though if you're going solely based off of what they do in a battle, Yukari is really more of the not-Yukiko and Aigis is the not-Chie. For certain reasons, it's not a great idea to leave any one of the party members super under-leveled, but there probably is a "best" party set up for the optional end game stuff. But yeah, you should totally just have fun with the social links if you aren't one of the people afflicted with the neuroses that requires you to 100% video games you really like.

I just need to know that I won't COMPLETELY fuck myself over by not doing things "correctly" all the time. So far the game has been pretty heavy-handed when it comes to hints of what to do next (e.g. "hey, do you like video games? Because there's a new online game out and we just got the internet and tomorrow is a holiday and here's a disk, so maybe you should play it tomorrow!")

I would be upset if I had ended up locking myself out of most/all of the clubs/sports teams by hanging out with Kenji for a few afternoons before registering.

WWCD

Who is "not-Kanji"? I think of Shinji as the closest parallel to Kanji, but I guess people mean Akihiko?

That's what I'm guessing. They're both brawlers with an affinity for lightning. Also, Akihiko isn't gay.

What if Charlie would have acted differently if a creepy child apparition kept visiting him in the night with apocalyptic tidings? Maybe the better way to play it would be WWCDIACCAKVHITNWAT

I would more suggest that you try to get in to game and characters as they are and go from there. If your natural reaction is WWCD, then go with that. I just hope that you get the best experience you can out of what I think is a pretty wonderful game :D

@video_game_king said:

For the record, I did mean Akihiko. I'm still fairly early in the game, so all I really know about Akihiko is that he looks kind of like Kanji and that he's good at punching dudes.

And I guess my approach to the game isn't as much "What Would Charlie Do?" as it is "What Would Vinny and Jeff Making an Endurance Run Video Do?"

In this game, much more so than Persona 4, you're going to want to keep everyone leveled. There's situations where it requires you to use certain members (i.e. during "full moon" sequences.) Since Tartarus isn't directly tied to the progression of the story it's a bit different structurally.

Also my character's name is Yuuji Miyamoto. I guess I just pulled that from a mix of NES developer names.

I keep expecting the mysterious kid in the striped pajamas to say something like "the full moon is coming, be bear-y careful!"

P.S.: I don't know if there's actually any plot-similarities between the two, I just think they sound kind of similar.

@bbalpert: He's played by Yuri Lowenthal, same guy that voices Yosuke.