This game would have been so much better without calendar and confidants

[Sombrero]

Am I the only one who thinks that this game would be so much better without all the BS around calendar and confidants (and virtues actually).

At first I kept an open mind thinking maybe it can work. But nope, it's just like in every Persona since 3. You always finish everything you have to do with 10+ days left on the calendar and you just speedrun as best as you can the last days painfully grinding stats and confidant ranks with the most boring and horribly paced dialogs the game has to offer.

I really love the universe and the story of the game so far but genuinely all of the persona elements are just making the game worse as a whole. And I'm not a Persona hater or anything, I am burned out on them but it's mostly because of these issues that have gotten only worse with each entry (and P5R made it even worse with the over-use of the phone imo).

It feels really jarring when playing other JRPGs with better pacing like Visions of Mana or even the demo of the Romancing Saga 2 remake. I'm happy to learn about the characters' backstory but have it abritrarily cut in 8 ranks over the course of the game just makes their evolution so unnatural, slow and tedious.

It's a good game so far, but it's really not a great cold classic like a lot of people are trying to say.

Compare this to a Final Fantasy X the story, characters and pacing is a LOT better in FFX in comparison and it feels like a much better package. And it's frustrating because I really love the universe they made for Metaphor and the entire cast (except for MC and Gallica which are respectively very bland/boring and unsufferable just exactly like Joker and Morgana was which is a real bummer because every other party member is genuinely great this time around).

Hopefully Atlus wakes up and stop going down that path I would hate for P6 to get even worse in that direction.

[hush]

I'm not sure if atlus will reverse in this path. I mean confidants and calendar are the selling point of the persona team games.

[Sombrero]

Originally posted by hush:

I'm not sure if atlus will reverse in this path. I mean confidants and calendar are the selling point of the persona team games.

They don't need to reverse completely. But they could find ways to make them more realistic/immersive.

In Metaphor in particular most deadlines are super farfetched and you really feel they had to create really bizarre excuses to make the calendar work.

In P5 it was fine but it felt really still strange. I feel that only P3 and P4 had solid explanations with it being tied to the weather/moon cycles.

I'm fine with the systems existing as long as they don't feel like the most arbitrary videogame feature ever. Some supporter dialog in Metaphor feel so superficial just to have an excuse to have enough ranks and you can clearly guess what you will do in the next 1-2 ranks. It's just frustrating when it happens and so far it has happened to me on at least 6 of them (not even mentionning the automatic ones or special ones like Igor/Velvet room assistants in P and here we have More).

To me it's like Atlus does not get why their game has become popular. Since SMT Nocturne they never really re-captured the magic and for example thought that an open world and 0 dungeon was a great idea for SMTV when honestly it kind of made the game way worse. And with Persona what people cared the most was the cast of character and the "realistic" setting in Japan. Not spending half of your playtyme doing the most boring chores possible and mashing through copy-pasted dialog boxes to tell you that you had a great bath or whatever.

[FORTUNE_COOCHIE]

Ya'll are bothered about the calender and confidants, but not about the fact that we cannot MUTE the constant yapping of Gallica. smh

[Sombrero]

Originally posted by FORTUNE_COOCHIE:

Ya'll are bothered about the calender and confidants, but not about the fact that we cannot MUTE the constant yapping of Gallica. smh

Trust me I hate Gallica with a passion. I'm holding judgement on her until the end of the story. She can be redeemed if she somehow becomes plot relevant or stop being so annoying. But if she stays like that the whole game she will be by far the worst element of this game.

It's really weird because Atlus was clearly aware of how Morgana was unsufferable in original P5 and made him slightly less intrusive in P5R but somehow Gallica is worse than original Morgana and in english has a very similar voice too. I swear when she says "All right Strohl took one out" she sounds exactly like Morgana saying "All right Joker took one out". It's morgana PTSD all over again.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Wow, people can dislike Gallica?

Either ways, I never play in-deep the Persona with calendar system, so this system is new to me I guess, I like games with a certain mode of urgency.

I do feel it's overly forgiving though, 10 days is a bit much.

[Sparhawk122]

The time management system has me using a guide. And it is not as fun playing a game having to constantly check a guide.

[Aldroen]

I think the calendar system is a fine idea but it would have been better if Atlus provided bit more freedom in that regards like adding maybe extra 5-7 days in each dungeon cycle so you have more freedom to do what you want without feeling that you are wasting in game time.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Originally posted by Aldroen:

I think the calendar system is a fine idea but it would have been better if Atlus provided bit more freedom in that regards like adding maybe extra 5-7 days in each dungeon cycle so you have more freedom to do what you want without feeling that you are wasting in game time.

You have like 10 days for a first dungeon, 2-3 days per a dungeon is fine IMO, some people even try to 1 day it.

[Aldroen]

Originally posted by REBirthTheEdge:

Originally posted by Aldroen:

I think the calendar system is a fine idea but it would have been better if Atlus provided bit more freedom in that regards like adding maybe extra 5-7 days in each dungeon cycle so you have more freedom to do what you want without feeling that you are wasting in game time.

You have like 10 days for a first dungeon, 2-3 days per a dungeon is fine IMO, some people even try to 1 day it.

First dungeon yes, second not so much with how much starts to unlock and even if you clear it in one day (Which I did) you will start feeling that you are falling behind and forced to do things in optimal way rather than experiment and explore.

I am fine as it is but wish I had bit more freedom in game without limiting factors.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Originally posted by Aldroen:

Originally posted by REBirthTheEdge:

You have like 10 days for a first dungeon, 2-3 days per a dungeon is fine IMO, some people even try to 1 day it.

First dungeon yes, second not so much with how much starts to unlock and even if you clear it in one day (Which I did) you will start feeling that you are falling behind and forced to do things in optimal way rather than experiment and explore.

I am fine as it is but wish I had bit more freedom in game without limiting factors.

Hmm, I'm now costing like 3 days for the first dungeon, I'm interested to see how time for the 2nd one.

[ShockedHearts]

I disagree BUT I think this game was the PERFECT opportunity to give us a "post game" for once in their games where we can just enjoy the world and game without the stress of a timelimit.

imagine being able to explore dungeons go around various towns etc without having to strategize about the calender etc. give us that freedom atlus!!! its post game!!! PLEASE!!! I JUST WANNA RUN AROUND AND HAVE FUN!!!

but no, I think the main story being based around a calender system makes it a lot more strategic and especially with this game makes your journey feel fluid and natural.

[Sombrero]

I don't know how you guys can feel like you need a guide to do everything in this game. I mean there's probably very easy to miss things, golden beetles being a simple example of that. But spending time during days and nights in this game is super easy. You always rank up your supports which makes it super easy to take care of them, all the quests are very clearly logged in the quest journal and you know exactly how many days you spend for them. I finished the three first hubs with 6 to 10 days left after doing side + main quests. The third hub was particularly silly as I had 10 days and nothing to do beyond supports and virtues (luckily it also unlocks a new side activity whcih consumes day time so that helps a little, even though that activity is also a very silly way to spend a day in terms of immersion).

There's just nothing more frustrating than having done everything and having to slowly grind stats for in-game days to wait for the plot to move forward. And I can sympathize with people that don't like being stressed by deadlines (even if they are somehow lenient in this game).

There's also very few supports in total to rank and seemingly only 8 ranks per, with the party members being the easiest I find as they are very often available and don't seem to require high virtues for a while (maybe their latest ranks, I haven't finished everything yet and I barely got the 5th party member).

It's also very dumb how the late recruits get no archetype progression beyond their starting one being very low level. They have dozens of thousands of Magla not invested in them compared to the 3 first characters at this point it's very weird they haven't found a way to balance that properly.

I much prefer archetypes over Personas (especially since the protagonist isn't a god now and is equal to others, more or less) but the Magla being one pool shared by the entire party is a very strange decision. I feel it would have been a lot better if each party member has their pool of magla to use for archetypes.

[EldritchErin]

Originally posted by Sombrero:

It's also very dumb how the late recruits get no archetype progression beyond their starting one being very low level. They have dozens of thousands of Magla not invested in them compared to the 3 first characters at this point it's very weird they haven't found a way to balance that properly.

I much prefer archetypes over Personas (especially since the protagonist isn't a god now and is equal to others, more or less) but the Magla being one pool shared by the entire party is a very strange decision. I feel it would have been a lot better if each party member has their pool of magla to use for archetypes.

Yeah it's probably my biggest issue, along with Archetypes feeling really slow to level overall that it discourages experimenting

[Scyris]

Originally posted by hush:

I'm not sure if atlus will reverse in this path. I mean confidants and calendar are the selling point of the persona team games.

They never used to be, persona 1 and 2 never had these game systems, they were first introduced in persona 3, and I personally still do not like them, just feels like a cop out to save on dev time, since they only have to make a few dungeons instead of like 20-30. i did hear its toned down in Metaphor thou, like you don't need proper archetype, what you say to their questions does not effect the result, you just need to spend enough time with them to rank them up so they took alot of the effort out of it.

I mostly hate the time limit stuff, I don't care how generious it might be, I just don't like that hanging over my head, its the biggest thing I dislike in P3-5 and Re:Fantazio Metaphor, as it makes me feel like I NEED to use a walkthru to optimize my time, I like to try to 100% a game on the first playthru or do as much of it as I can, which in this game apparently other than 1 achievement you can do everything else on the first playthru. The thing you can't is most likely a secret boss or area in NG+, as its usually either that or there is a special persona fusion you have to be on NG+ to fuse. Since this doesn't have persona's my guess is its a secret boss/extra dungeon or something.

Playing thru it a 2nd time is boring as you mostly just waste the days away, so I prefer to do it all on the first playthru.

[Sombrero]

Originally posted by Scyris:

Originally posted by hush:

I'm not sure if atlus will reverse in this path. I mean confidants and calendar are the selling point of the persona team games.

They never used to be, persona 1 and 2 never had these game systems, they were first introduced in persona 3, and I personally still do not like them, just feels like a cop out to save on dev time, since they only have to make a few dungeons instead of like 20-30. i did hear its toned down in Metaphor thou, like you don't need proper archetype, what you say to their questions does not effect the result, you just need to spend enough time with them to rank them up so they took alot of the effort out of it.

I mostly hate the time limit stuff, I don't care how generious it might be, I just don't like that hanging over my head, its the biggest thing I dislike in P3-5 and Re:Fantazio Metaphor, as it makes me feel like I NEED to use a walkthru to optimize my time, I like to try to 100% a game on the first playthru or do as much of it as I can, which in this game apparently other than 1 achievement you can do everything else on the first playthru. The thing you can't is most likely a secret boss or area in NG+, as its usually either that or there is a special persona fusion you have to be on NG+ to fuse. Since this doesn't have persona's my guess is its a secret boss/extra dungeon or something.

Playing thru it a 2nd time is boring as you mostly just waste the days away, so I prefer to do it all on the first playthru.

Yes in Metaphor there's no bad answer everything is guaranteed. If you answer "right" you gain more points used to learn new archetypes or transfer skills from them to other learned archetypes on the character. That's a huge improvement but it doesn't solve the core issues in my opinion.

I think that if Persona 2 was released nowadays with modern graphics and everything it would be a smash hit honestly. Everybody assume that Persona is popular because of the social sim elements but I think it's despite of them. It's successful because the writing and cast are charming and to some extent relatable. But so they were in Persona 2 without all the arbitrary pacing.

I still hope they finally remake the Persona 2 duology with a good budget and that people realize that Atlus games can be great without social sim (I mean SMT is pretty much that but they really missed the mark on SMTV I feel, for completely different reasons though).