u/The-O-N

So whenever I see hopes/expectations for Revival, one of the most common responses I see is for Aika from the persona 4 anime to added, either as a cameo or even a social link, but I never really saw what the hype was about.

Going off of what we see in the anime, there isn't really all that much to her, she's a one note comic relief character whose whole schtick is that she's always working, and will always show up to deliver her food... And that's about it, I guess it could be her personality but all her dialogue is about her one joke and doesn't really say anything aside from that.

I guess it could be her design, I can see kinda see the appeal even though she looks extremely similar to one of the female Yasogami students just with a red hair clip, part of me thinks it is actually that since if the Aiya owner had a son with one of the male student designs with the exact same joke and personality there wouldn't be nearly as many people asking for his inclusion in revival.

Don't get me wrong however, even though I haven't exactly been positive about Aika, I don't hate her, I don't even dislike her, I just kinda see her as she was in the Anime, as a one note recurring joke, and that's all I really feel about her, I guess since there's so little there's a decent amount of potential but literally anything could have potential if there's so little to go off of, like the Mitsuru fangirl or half the characters in the fox's link, in fact the anime kinda did that where characters like Shu and Sayoko became fox requests. Again, I don't hate Aika, I just see her as a joke, so kinda funny sometimes but that's about it

So whenever I see someone criticize the changed lines, a common response I see is that Atlus said they're being faithful to the Japanese script, now whether or not you think being faithful is a good thing (which I'll talk about), something strange about that response is that I haven't actually seen Atlus say that they're trying to be more faithful.

Whenever I try to talk about how I feel about a game, I try to read interviews about the development process along with the thoughts behind the people who made it to see what they were trying to do and see if they were successful. But anyway, I've read pretty much all interviews with Atlus about revival and I haven't seen anything about them trying to be faithful, I even searched "staying faithful to the Japanese script p4r" into Google to see if I could find anything even on the subject and the closest thing I found was an Instagram account called "Persona news" (which I don't think is official since it covers leaks) boldly saying that it's gonna be 1-1 with the Japanese script using a line from Yosuke that was changed as proof, but from Atlus themselves I haven't seen anything

But what's even funnier is that as we've gotten more trailers, what I've seen is that the game isn't being 1-1 with the Japanese script, at least in the Yosuke and Yukiko trailers we've seen characters use idioms which never translate well to other languages, idioms like "second banana", or "feast for the eyes", granted you might say that since idioms don't translate well, they needed to replace their idioms with ones in English, but there's 2 things I gotta say about that, for one things like idioms show why being faithful to a script in a different language is incredibly stupid since many things just don't translate well, my take is that if the same thing is getting across in both versions and it's within character for the person to be said, then I'm perfectly fine if the line is different to flow better. My second point is that the idioms we see aren't even replacing idioms that don't translate well, the Yosuke line in the Japanese version has him say he knows he's a good follower, and the Rise line has her ask if seeing the girls in Yukatas makes Yu happy, those lines sound just fine to me, though the Rise line was originally an idiom but it was if seeing them makes your heart skip a beat, though both lines are fine but it also shows that Atlus can in fact take liberties.

This whole situation reminds me a lot of when Reload and the Answer came out where people were giving the script shit for all it changed and even that argument was stupid since Atlus cherry picked some of the more iconic lines to keep, showing that they were allowed to deviate, plus Japanese players also complained about script changes. Even then, regardless of what the original lines intended, it's the localizer's job to make sure that it's translated well, if it's not but faithful to the Japanese script, then it's still an issue.

But those are just my thoughts, when it comes to staying faithful I haven't seen Atlus say anything about that, and people saying that the script changes are because of that reminds me of when reload came out, even though both have shown they are willing to make deviations both good and bad. And even if you disregard all of that, it wasn't even faithful in the Japanese version of the game, you know, the version that they were being faithful to wasn't even faithful to itself

So as we all know, Persona is supposed to be half turn based dungeon crawler, half social sim but as the games have been going on, they've gotten easier and without many gimmicks, p5 was decent by being easy but still having mechanically interesting bosses, but it sucked in Reload since they added braindead mechanics while having also uninteresting bosses made it a fairly boring experience and if they keep bosses the same as they were in p4 along with new mechanics will make it a new reload since in my opinion, most bosses in p4 were a step down from p3

So I decided I'd add some gimmicks to the major bosses, trying to keep them in line with their gimmicks as bosses or when they become personas while also making them more mechanically interesting as some people have described p4 as the "white bread of persona combat" if I don't mention a boss or gimmick I think they're fine and don't need much changing

With shadow Yukiko I think she should start with the prince, while having the prince use the support skills shadow Yukiko uses like mind charging her or blocking her ice weakness, it might seem not that bad but it's the first major boss in the series

Shadow Kanji I think is already pretty good, though I think there should be 2 changes, let the nice guy and tough guy baton pass, this is mostly because I think it'll be funny but it also shows teamwork, the other idea is to give them the skill tetrakarn, if you remember shadow Kanji can enrage Chie and Yukiko so them attacking something with a physical shield up will deal a lot of damage to themselves, so you'll either need to get rid of the barrier with Yu or Yosuke or cure Chie and Yukiko of their rage

Teddie I think adding an eye that can take damage is an interesting enough gimmick as it adds a risk reward since time attacking the eyes could either be spent guarding or just dealing damage to Teddie, the reward I mentioned is if you blind him he'll be way less accurate for some time and if you blind him when he's charging Nihil hand, he'll be stunned and you'll get a couple turns to attack him

Mitsuo I think is already really good, I just wanna add 1 gimmick, whenever he gets a 1 more, he'll spend that extra turn rebuilding his outer shell, this will encourage you to not get hit with weaknesses by guarding

Naoto I think should be similar to the secret bosses where she'll cycle through each element in a fixed turn order since she has access to all magic types, she'll attempt to knock down the party by exploiting their weaknesses when she does knock someone down she'll use cruel attack which does more damage to knocked down characters, if she knocks down everyone she'll use megidolaon to deal massive damage

Adachi I mostly just wanted to turn into a 1v1 with Yu with Yin Yang as the boss theme, for symbolic reasons but also because I think it'll be awesome, on one hand I can't really make it more complex since you can't do much with a 1v1 and also since there's another boss after

Ameno Sagiri I gave the same gimmick as Teddie, 1 because they're fairly similar bosses but also because shadow Teddie IS Ameno Sagiri, I think the gimmick would also be better since Ameno Sagiri has way more charge attacks

With Iazanami, I thought I'd give her the Nyx treatment since it's awesome but instead of each Arcana (aside from the ones after death) for each phase after the first and before the last she'd get the gimmick of Kunino Sagiri, Ameno Sagiri and Marie's boss fights, I feel like this would fit well since those 3 are literally parts of her, and with how her theme is progressing how the song goes on I think it would be really cool, you might say that's too hard but it's literally the final boss.

Anyway that's how I'd try to change some of the major bosses, idk how this would actually turn out since I'm not a game dev, but I think those gimmicks would be better than nothing which is basically what reload did I think the only 2 bosses that got changed were the priestess, Nyx and Strega, despite having way more (sometimes really overpowered) mechanics but what do you guys think of my suggestions

So as we all know, Persona is supposed to be half turn based dungeon crawler, half social sim but as the games have been going on, they've gotten easier and without many gimmicks, p5 was decent by being easy but still having mechanically interesting bosses, but it sucked in Reload since they added braindead mechanics while having also uninteresting bosses made it a fairly boring experience and if they keep bosses the same as they were in p4 along with new mechanics will make it a new reload since in my opinion, most bosses in p4 were a step down from p3

So I decided I'd add some gimmicks to the major bosses, trying to keep them in line with their gimmicks as bosses or when they become personas while also making them more mechanically interesting as some people have described p4 as the "white bread of persona combat" if I don't mention a boss or gimmick I think they're fine and don't need much changing

With shadow Yukiko I think she should start with the prince, while having the prince use the support skills shadow Yukiko uses like mind charging her or blocking her ice weakness, it might seem not that bad but it's the first major boss in the series

Shadow Kanji I think is already pretty good, though I think there should be 2 changes, let the nice guy and tough guy baton pass, this is mostly because I think it'll be funny but it also shows teamwork, the other idea is to give them the skill tetrakarn, if you remember shadow Kanji can enrage Chie and Yukiko so them attacking something with a physical shield up will deal a lot of damage to themselves, so you'll either need to get rid of the barrier with Yu or Yosuke or cure Chie and Yukiko of their rage

Teddie I think adding an eye that can take damage is an interesting enough gimmick as it adds a risk reward since time attacking the eyes could either be spent guarding or just dealing damage to Teddie, the reward I mentioned is if you blind him he'll be way less accurate for some time and if you blind him when he's charging Nihil hand, he'll be stunned and you'll get a couple turns to attack him

Mitsuo I think is already really good, I just wanna add 1 gimmick, whenever he gets a 1 more, he'll spend that extra turn rebuilding his outer shell, this will encourage you to not get hit with weaknesses by guarding

Naoto I think should be similar to the secret bosses where she'll cycle through each element in a fixed turn order since she has access to all magic types, she'll attempt to knock down the party by exploiting their weaknesses when she does knock someone down she'll use cruel attack which does more damage to knocked down characters, if she knocks down everyone she'll use megidolaon to deal massive damage

Adachi I mostly just wanted to turn into a 1v1 with Yu with Yin Yang as the boss theme, for symbolic reasons but also because I think it'll be awesome, on one hand I can't really make it more complex since you can't do much with a 1v1 and also since there's another boss after

Ameno Sagiri I gave the same gimmick as Teddie, 1 because they're fairly similar bosses but also because shadow Teddie IS Ameno Sagiri, I think the gimmick would also be better since Ameno Sagiri has way more charge attacks

With Iazanami, I thought I'd give her the Nyx treatment since it's awesome but instead of each Arcana (aside from the ones after death) for each phase after the first and before the last she'd get the gimmick of Kunino Sagiri, Ameno Sagiri and Marie's boss fights, I feel like this would fit well since those 3 are literally parts of her, and with how her theme is progressing how the song goes on I think it would be really cool, you might say that's too hard but it's literally the final boss.

Anyway that's how I'd try to change some of the major bosses, idk how this would actually turn out since I'm not a game dev, but I think those gimmicks would be better than nothing which is basically what reload did I think the only 2 bosses that got changed were the priestess, Nyx and Strega, despite having way more (sometimes really overpowered) mechanics but what do you guys think of my suggestions

So whenever I see people rank or make tier lists of the books, I often see Rodrick Rules near the top, and whenever I see people describe why they like it so much it feels like they're just describing the movie, since Rodrick only takes up about a quarter of the pages but they describe him like he's there the whole time, or whenever they talk about Rodrick and Greg bonding, but also never mention that they only make up on the very last page and their relationship goes back to what it was in the very next book where he locks Greg out of their hotel room while he's in his underwear.

Rodrick Rules feels more like an extension of the first book which is one of the better ones though, but people usually don't rank them similarly

Just for the record, I like Rodrick rules, but I'd put it in the same tier as the first book which would probably be around a high B tier if it were a tier list and feel like the only reason a lot of people love the book are just loving it because the movie was so good

So one of my friends thinks Yosuke is a good party member because he's an all rounder that can fit into basically any team comp since he's got a bit of everything, I think he's pretty bad since almost anything he can do, Teddie does better. So I'm gonna give my thoughts on most of their differences

So Yosuke actually has a higher strength stat than Teddie, and since they both use physical that sounds like a good thing, but the devil is in the details since Yosuke is stuck with power slash until level 69, though his best physical skill and strength is better than Teddie, you're probably not using either of them for their physical skills since both Kanji and Chie exist. Also Teddie has a higher magic stat than Yosuke's physical

Evasion buffs are good yeah, but they're definitely the least useful buffs since you don't see the results nearly as much as attack and defense.

For healing I don't have much to talk about, Yosuke's best healing skills are either Diarahan or Youthful wind, the first is unlocked via 5 hot springs trips and Youthful wind is unlocked when you have 1 or 2 dungeons left, Youthful wind is also just Cadenza which is one of the first skills you unlock in p3, Teddie gets Diarahan at level 49 and he also gets Samarecarm.

Ailments are something that Yosuke has over Teddie, it's just that ailments suck since technicals didn't exist yet, and they don't work on bosses, I guess revival will fix that with how ailments seem to work in that game (hope it's balanced)

So yeah, all things considered I can't really see a reason to use Yosuke over Teddie, since the only things he does better is either outclassed by other characters, or his niche is really bad, granted I don't think Teddie is great either, he's probably the 5th best party member in P4 in my opinion, it's just that if you want an all rounder, you might as well pick the better one

Though I guess sometimes all we need in our life is the support of our loving partner, at least that's what Yosuke probably tells himself

So when the new cast was announced, some people said stuff along the lines of "well it wouldn't be easy to bring everyone back, especially people like Laura Bailey and Troy Baker" but if you look at each character on a case by case basis you'll see that it's not the hardest thing in the world, at most they'll need to splurge for 1 or maybe 2 actors (2 if you wanna bring back Troy). I don't really think it would be that hard since Xenoblade was willing to bring everyone back after 15 years for an update to record a couple lines including Jenna Coleman who's probably more expensive than anyone in P4

There aren't really any good images to show the voting, but every other Justice nominated either had a Senate controlled by the incumbent party or were struck down because they didn't have the majority (Merrick Garland)

Fun fact: Both Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley voted to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer

It really is the Stanley Parable adventure line, I remember people saying that it would be a Rise ability (even though we see this ability before she joins) or it leads you to golden hands (even though golden hands don't show up until dungeon 2) or how it would only lead you once you've found the stairs (even though we've seen it lead you to places that haven't been explored yet)

Idk what to really say about this other than Atlus (and some of you) must really not have much faith in the player to crawl around in a dungeon crawler

Here's context from the scene in case you forgot

The previous day the investigation team saw the midnight channel and as usual someone was on it, though it was at the point to where they couldn't tell who was on it, the next day they're discussing it like they always do but don't have any clues about anything, though Kanji says that they shouldn't worry about it because the killer had already been arrested by that point, he then brings up Naoto and a conversation they all had the other day with her, to which Yukiko acts confused since no one was talking about her at that point, to which Yosuke wonders if Kanji was out of it because of what she says and makes a joke about Kanji still being hung up over her (they still think she's a boy by this point), Kanji gets frustrated by the joke and storms out, Chie then responds with what she says in the image.

This was basically just showing that even though people say Yosuke doesn't get shit for what he says to Kanji even though he does, while I think it should've been said earlier, it shows that he actually did get pushback for what he said plus I'm pretty sure he stops making those kinds of jokes afterwards, it could've also been harsher but I don't think Yosuke really had any ill intentions with the joke. It can definitely be handled better in revival (I think what they do in Catherine full body would be a good example, and I'm probably gonna make a post about that in the future) I don't really think "making him more fitting for the world we live in now" is the best way to go about it, especially given the context the time and characters the game were written in

Maybe it's just me but the face buttons should be used for "Attack" "persona" "item" and "guard" but for some reason in Revival A is used for "Assist" and if you don't know, Assist is used to pick a skill for you and guard was swapped to RB, it's basically taking the decision making out of the game, even though decision making is the whole point of turn based games does Atlus really have no faith in the player to make their own choices in combat and have the game choose the best skills for them?

It's also worth noting that Atlus purposely moved the assist button from a footnote on screen in the earlier games to now being the confirm button (the button you're gonna be pressing the most in pretty much any game), was this what Atlus meant by "stress free experience".

Are they making a line to guide you to the stairs? You could say it's a skill or toggleable but if it wasn't supposed to be there it wouldn't be in every scene we have of the dungeon crawling

Are they making a line to guide you to the stairs? You could say it's a skill or toggleable but if it wasn't supposed to be there it wouldn't be in every scene we have of the dungeon crawling

Are they making a line to guide you to the stairs? You could say it's a skill or toggleable but if it wasn't supposed to be there it wouldn't be in every scene we have of the dungeon crawling

Footage from Nam's Compendium

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Hopefully Prime time is more balanced but given how the damage for theurgies looked fine in the trailers I don't have much hope

So I'm just gonna say it now, I don't like Theurgies, I think they throw the game's balance in the trash since they're free and pierce resistances while also just being boring to use. So when I saw prime time, I was initially worried that they were just theurgies with a new name but then I learned more about it and I think there's some potential as long as the game is balanced around it.

One idea is a lot easier which is scale up the enemies to make prime time an actual factor in battles unlike theurgies but I had an idea that would make combat in general more interesting and that would be balancing skills similarly to persona Q so I'll explain how the combat in Q works since we're persona fans and haven't actually played the games we claim to be experts on.

So in persona Q, if you get a critical hit or hit a weakness, that character gets the "boost" status, with the boost status that character's have priority in the next turn order and their skills are free, but to compensate for that, skills are really expensive when not boosted and the only way to restore sp is with items, skills or leaving the labyrinth that's being explored to pay Elizabeth to heal you,

I think if the sp economy was similar to Q with skill usage being more conservative, prime time could work really well since it'll become your opportunity to really do some damage

Another addition could be to make skills cheaper when you get a 1 more or baton pass, this will also make you think about whether or not it's worth it to use your best spells at a given moment, or you could get a 1 more with a weaker skill so you can cost the best ones at a cheaper price which will make it so you don't need to restore sp as much.

Also to clarify when I say skills I'm mostly talking about offensive skills, I think keeping buffs or debuffs on the cheaper side should be fine since it'll give the characters something to do other than attack or guard if they can't knock an enemy down.

Anyway those are just my thoughts, they aren't perfect but I think they could make you think in a turn based game since prime times could actually be worse if it's balanced like the original just with prime times on top of it, but what do you guys think?

This is just my opinion and probably not the biggest deal but a big part of persona 4 is the weather, and the og/anime did a decent job at making each weather look different where it's pretty vibrant when it's sunny but fairly muted when it's cloudy, plus I think the cloudy weather helped Inaba look "drab" or "boring" but would still find the player learning to like it overtime

Then golden came out and most of the dynamic lighting was gone and was made much more vibrant, apparently a reason for this was because the vita was significantly weaker than the PS2 so they had to compromise, while I think golden looks fine I still prefer the og's color palette since the game looks pretty different when the weather is.

When Revival got more footage the other day I was a bit disappointed to see that they went for Golden's more vibrant colors when remembering that golden's colors were the way that they are through compromise.

Again it's not that big of a deal but that's just how I feel, but given that budget and hardware are less of an issue I wished that they tried to recapture what I liked about the og since I have a harder time telling what the weather is without looking at the sky or looking at the icon