Thanks fellas. Ilk wait on the next great game to drop
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Thanks for that write up. I'm playing normal, is there really just anything I can do to screw myself that I can avoid that you can think of? My time is precious and I don't want to waste time doing something dumb.You'll get the full rundown once you get a ways into the game (and there's a load of info you can bring up and look at anytime), but here's the basic idea...
Personas are the things that fight for you in this game - they all have different abilities and different strengths and weaknesses. They're also grouped into arcanas which tell you more or less what type of persona it is. For instance, Magician arcanas often have high magic ratings and good spells, while Strength arcanas are more about physical attack. Some of the others like Hierophant or Justice follow their own patterns too, but they're not quite as obvious as those two. You just kind of pick up what each arcana's specialty is as you play around with them. But personas' specific abilities still vary widely, even if they're the same arcana. Some use fire attacks, some ice, some physical, etc. Also, personas affect your character's stats and performance in battle - if you have a low STR persona equipped, your regular attack won't do much damage. And a high EN (endurance) persona is tougher and takes less damage than a lower EN one. The main character has the ability to switch personas in mid-battle, so knowing the vitals of your personas is pretty important if you want to maximize your damage.
You do acquire personas through battle spoils, but they're usually not all that powerful in the beginning. That's where fusion comes in. You combine 2 or more personas to make a new one. These fused persona have the potential to be much more powerful for a couple of reasons. They can inherit the abilities of the original personas (you get to choose which abilities, although it's limited somewhat by type - you usually can't have a fire-weak persona inherit Agi, for example). But what really makes them more powerful are Social Links.
As big a part of the dungeon-grinding in this game is this - you also carry on the life of a high school student, and have interactions with people around the town. Some of these will lead to a social link being formed that corresponds to one of the arcanas. When you have a Social Link of a certain arcana, any persona you create of that arcana gets an EXP boost at creation. It's not much in the beginning, but Social Link levels can go up to 10, and every time it goes higher, the EXP boost increases. Even a 2 or 3 level increase can make a big difference with a newly-created persona, and at Social Link 10 you could probably expect 5 levels.
Thing is, you can't just do all this stuff at one time. Most Social Link interactions cause time to progress in a day, limiting what you can do. So IMO, it's best to focus on a couple of social links at one time - going out and making friends with the whole town isn't going to allow any of them to give you a really high EXP bonus - you simply won't have enough time to balance that AND the dungeon explorations (which also take time). The time management aspect is one of the most interesting things about this game, and it forces you to make choices on how you want to play through the game.
As much as that is, I'm REALLY just scratching the surface here. Couple more just general tips:
- Protect yourself above all else. It's like FFXIII (although this predated it by many years) - your main character dies and it's game over, regardless of the rest of your party. Guarding is pretty effective and keeps you from being knocked down, so don't be afraid to use it if you're in a tough spot. And yes, because of the way this is, dying can be extremely frustrating. It's best to allow as few enemies to attack as possible so you don't get ganged up on.
- Press square if you don't know what an ability does, everything has some unusual names in this series. Especially the stat boosting/decreasing ones - even after playing P3 (which had the same names) I still have to look at the help to know what they do.
- Once you have other party members, they'll fight on their own. For the most part, the AI is good enough in regular fights as long as the characters are strong enough to handle it. But for some fights, particularly bosses, you'll probably want to issue specific commands. That option is in the tactics menu, in battle. Personally I find that the first rescue boss battle is very difficult without the direct commands, and the second is damn near impossible. I think it was designed that way.
Thanks
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Re: Sony PSVITA Discussion
Hmm...it's pretty hard to ruin yourself for any good length of time. But you can end up making things tougher on yourself in the short term if you go too crazy on fusions. Of course, you lose the original 2 (or more) personas that are fused together to make a new one, so you could leave yourself with very limited persona choices in battle.
This is a short term problem though, because as long as your register your personas to the compendium in the Velvet Room, you can recall them at any time for a cost. For that reason, If there's a persona I need to fuse but don't really want to lose, I like to have some money on hand before fusing. That way I can just bring back the original after the fusion.
In case you're wondering, you can't really screw yourself by failing the rescues. If you do fail it (go past the day that person can be rescued), the game gives you a choice of going back in time a week or back to the title screen. It hasn't actually happened to me, so I'm not sure if you keep your levels gained during the previous week or not, but I've not seen one rescue that took more than 7 days to go start to finish.
P3 was a bit nastier in that regard - it had preset events occur on certain days, and if you weren't strong enough to beat them, well.....tough.
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Re: Sony PSVITA Discussion
I guess what I have bolded above confuses me a bit. How should I know that I need to fuse two personas together? It just seems kind of random (although I haven't done it yet for fear of doing something dumb) although I have registered all my personas in the compendium.Hmm...it's pretty hard to ruin yourself for any good length of time. But you can end up making things tougher on yourself in the short term if you go too crazy on fusions. Of course, you lose the original 2 (or more) personas that are fused together to make a new one, so you could leave yourself with very limited persona choices in battle.
This is a short term problem though, because as long as your register your personas to the compendium in the Velvet Room, you can recall them at any time for a cost. For that reason, If there's a persona I need to fuse but don't really want to lose, I like to have some money on hand before fusing. That way I can just bring back the original after the fusion.
In case you're wondering, you can't really screw yourself by failing the rescues. If you do fail it (go past the day that person can be rescued), the game gives you a choice of going back in time a week or back to the title screen. It hasn't actually happened to me, so I'm not sure if you keep your levels gained during the previous week or not, but I've not seen one rescue that took more than 7 days to go start to finish.
P3 was a bit nastier in that regard - it had preset events occur on certain days, and if you weren't strong enough to beat them, well.....tough.Comment
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Re: Sony PSVITA Discussion
Guys, this week Gamestop has both Little Big Planet and Playstation All-Stars Vita for $19.99 brand new. I picked up LBP today, was a little tempted by All-Stars since it was so cheap.Comment
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I wish the sale foe for digital download too, starting to download all my games
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Re: Sony PSVITA Discussion
Perhaps "need" is a poor choice of words. You'll probably want to focus on creating personas that get Social link - powered XP bonuses instead of just fusing random ones together. That's the whole point of social links - to make personas stronger when they're first created. You start the Magician and Fool links very early (I know Fool is storyline and if Magician isn't I'd be surprised), so you might start by creating some personas of those two arcanas to see how it works. Nothing to lose really, as long as you're registering the ones you'll lose through fusion.Comment
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Re: Sony PSVITA Discussion
I have about 14 games on UMD for my PSP. I see that some of them (Burnout, GTA and NCAA Football, for example) may work on the Vita if I can transfer them from a PS3. My question is whether it is possible to transfer a UMD game by connecting a PSP to a PS3, then connecting the Vita to the PSP (or is only possible to transfer games purchased digitally?). Thanks for any thoughts!Comment
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