u/Gingerhaze12

I am considering applying to two jobs, one is in the same agency I currently work in and one is in a different agency.

When I switched from HRI to state my PTO got reset to 0 and I had to wait a month to get my first paycheck. If these are true when transferring agencies then I think I will try to stay with my same agency. And if it is true when starting any new role, I will just stay in my current job.

Also I think agency policy said I'm supposed to wait something like 6 weeks before I could start working from home? My manager told me I could start working from home immediately so I never had a waiting period. But if I temporarily lost my ability to WFH that would also be an issue

A bit of background about me- I'm in my 30s and when I was younger I LOVED JRPGs. I have many fond memories of sitting down to play a JRPG for 10+ hours at a time. However, the persona series was one I somehow missed. I think I played some of P3 at one point but the only thing I remember from it is how the characters summoned their personas. I watched the P4 anime.

As I got older, JRPGs became less appealing to me for a variety of reasons. Getting stuck in dungeons for hours. Not being able to save and quit whenever you wanted. Grinding. Random encounters. Needing to devote 60-100+ hours in order to finish the game. All of these were things I no longer had the time or mental space for. I put off playing P5R for so long, despite its high praise, because I knew it was a 100 hour JRPG and that felt exhausting to me. However, recently I have felt some of the passion I felt as a kid returning to me. I've been finding enjoyment in long video games again. Therefore, I decided to play P5R.

At first, P5R did felt like a very refreshing take on classic JRPG combat with all of the added mechanics that let you change the tempo of battle. If you use one more, baton pass, and all out attacks correctly your enemies could get zero turns. Or YOU could get zero turns.

However, it became quickly apparent that when these mechanics were combined with the weakness system, it became a massive issue. P5R uses pokemon-like elemental typing where all enemies have some kind of specific type weakness. If you hit an enemy's weakness they get knocked down and you can trigger a baton pass or an all out attack. You can basically *only* do damage to enemies by using attacks they are weak to. Any other type of attack does such a miniscule amount of damage, it's not even worth trying. Even a persona that is 50+ levels higher than the enemy won't do much damage to an enemy unless you are using an attack type the enemy is weak to. There are no limits on what level of persona you can use. Right off the bat, P5R gives you access to level 90 personas for *free*. The only reason this isn't as completely game breaking as it sounds is because they have very limited move sets and weakness is the *only* thing that matters. (For the record, I did not use these free personas untill level 40ish and I only used one to beat a very specific boss that was weak to curse damage)

Very early on in the game, you are given access to methods and personas that let you learn pretty much every elemental type in the game. This makes combat for the rest of the game EXTREMELY trivial. You end up spamming spells over, and over and over, AND OVER again. Almost every encounter is over in one or two turns. There is no challenge. No risk. No threat. Every combat ends up the same. You either insta kill all enemies or ,if you don't insta kill them in 1 turn, you baton pass and/or all out attack and then combat is over. I started out playing the game on normal but eventually switched to hard but I felt no increase in difficulty with the switch. All combats felt the same. (Hilariously the hardest difficulty setting, merciless, is somehow the easiest??)

On top of the combat being repetitive, the dungeons themselves, while visually interesting, posed no challenge in terms of puzzles or secrets. There were *some* puzzles and secrets but they were all very simple and your party members basically told you about them anyway. Literally they would say things like 'I think there is a secret near by!' or 'hmm I bet we need to do x to unlock this door'. On one hand, I like the departure from the days of having to buy (or look up a multi page guide on game faqs) in order to solve a puzzle. But there is such a thing as too much hand holding.

The simple dungeon designs combined with the repetitive game play AND the many combat animations that are not completely skippable, made the dungeons A COMPLETE SLOG.

By my third dungeon, the dungeons felt like an annoying side quest. An annoying task I needed to get done so I could get back to the ACTUAL game. They were not something you needed to prepare for or methodically make your way through. They were something to get over with as quick as possible, preferably in 1 in game day. And hilariously, it almost felt as if the game designers knew this because your party members will not hang out with you until a palace is finished. If you have a palace to complete, the only thing they will talk about is that palace. Palace? Palace? Are we going to the palace? If you finish a palace early then the remaining days are treated as free time you can use to level up your character's social stats or relationships with your party.

And THAT part, leveling your social stats and relationships, is the REAL game imo. *That* is the fun part. There are so many characters to hang out with and so many activities to do, you have to think very carefully how you want to spend your time. Most of the characters you meet have compelling story lines. Yes, some of them felt a little contrived, like why is this adult asking this kid for help? Or why are the phantom thieves constantly being brought up when they don't know you are a phantom thief. I was very fond of all the main characters by the end of the game. I quite honestly think the game would have been better if there was no combat and it was only a social sim.

That is not to say I think P5R is a bad game. I finished the game with ~110 hours played. There is a lot about the game I really enjoyed. The music is iconic. I've been listening to beneath the mask for years and I never knew it originated from this game until I played it. The art director of this game deserves a huge promotion. The game is such a vibe. It is clear they had a very strong, unique vision and they stuck to it. I liked the main plot and the over-arching theme (even though they kind of shove the theme in your face a lot). One of the only reasons I put up with those pesky palaces was so I could continue the plot. The other being so I could unlock more of the confidant's stories.

So, was it the modern take on a JRPG I was promised? Not really. There were some modernized aspects I appreciated. I liked how easy it was to pick up and put the game down for example. But JRPGs have always been- Great story but a bit of a slog. This game has a good story but is a bit of a slog.

Side note: I played on PC. Why on earth do I need to quit to main menu, watch an animation, press continue and then press another button just to exit the game??? Why is there no quit to desktop option in the in game menu?? The UI was generally pretty good but then you come across these very strange choices. There is no option to sort your inventory for example.