u/The-O-N

Maybe it's just me but I think I'd be a lot less critical of revival simply if they brought the old cast back, because even after I've warmed up to most of the new cast, seeing how the old one was treated still puts a bad taste in my mouth, especially with how many of them wanted to return or in Yuri's case begged. Or even with how many projects have their old cast reprise their roles simply for the love of it, like the Xenoblade remasters, Scott Pilgrim takes off, or Danganronpa 2x2

It's especially frustrating when Atlus gives excuses about how they couldn't get everyone back, even though the old cast confirmed that they were never even contacted and wanted to start from scratch with a new cast, only to then bring back one of them. It just feels disrespectful to people who helped make the game what it was

But those are just my thoughts, I still like most of the new cast and it's not their fault that any of this is happening

Something I've been having a hard time getting behind were the portraits for most of the characters, it's mostly the non existent lighting and the yellow tint a lot of them have that make them look like they have jaundice. Something I really liked from Reload was how the portraits matched the background, and now that they don't in revival, the flat coloring looks really strange

I know it's supposedly supposed to be a reference to Soejima's art though I always thought that specific art worked better in the abstract rather than the main representation we have of the characters.

What's annoying about the portraits is that some portraits (specifically Igor) have really good portraits with better shading and color gradients, though I guess in his case it's because his portrait was copy pasted from Reload. And with some looking really good and some looking really bad makes the art direction look really inconsistent

Those are just my thoughts though, but what do you guys think?

Here's a bingo card I made of "predictions" for 2x2, I haven't seen any leaks so idk if any of these are confirmed yet or not, some are more likely than others but that's usually how predictions work when you have a lot, but what do you guys think of them?

In turn-based games I believe that the loadout you come into a fight with should also be part of the strategy, if your team didn't have the skills, equipment or strategy prepared to handle the boss you should rethink it a bit. Most Atlus games are pretty good at that and they had some of my favorite games for team building like smt, p1 and the 2 duology or even metaphor.

Though in my opinion persona 3-5 has been a bit more disappointing in this regard, as long as you had a healer, made sure the boss wasn't immune to your party and weren't 20 levels underleveled, then there was almost no strategy involved since for most bosses, the strategy was just to keep doing damage and to top off on buffs, debuffs or healing. What made it worse was that most party members only specialized in 1 or 2 things with little room for customization, the only exception to my memory being Naoto

So I thought why not make the persona system work like it does in the older games or metaphor, either letting everyone use multiple personas or making their personas really customizable to encourage different strategies or playstyles and for some builds to work sometimes but not work other times, now there's some flaws with this but I'm gonna try to alleviate some of them

Characters will lose their individuality: I think a simple solution for this would be to look at a game like ff7 where pretty much every character can basically use every skill, but the characters still feel unique as their stat spreads will determine what kinds of skills and what roles you'll want them to have, you'll usually not want to make Aerith a tank or Barret a heavy magic user but the opposite, make Barret the tank and Aerith use magic. I also think it'd be interesting to have the skill affinity system from smt here as well, basically some demons would be really good with some skill types but really bad with others, for example pyro jack was great with fire but really bad with ice and the opposite was true for Jack Frost, having some characters be great with some skills, good with others and not so great with some adds another layer of customization, for example one character could be really good with wind and ice but really bad with utility, or have another he good with healing and buffs, but not as good with debuffs and offensive skills, this lets party members be good with multiple roles but not as good with others. Maybe they could even bring persona traits into the mix as well for another layer of personalization

The protagonist won't feel special: this one is also true though I think there's a fix for it, basically have them either be good with all skills, or they can let you build them however you want to make the protagonist be exactly how you'd like which would also help you feel attached, the other idea is to still let them swap personas while keeping your party members with the set of skills you give them before a battle, this would still make them the strongest party member to justify them being the leader and can also help them fill more roles.

Miscellaneous: so another thing I'd add is to make the game a lot more strict on enemy affinities, this encourages more diverse skill use and to swap party members more often. Also have status ailments actually be viable, technicals in p5 were one of its best features and I wish they used them more. Also have more interesting support skills, things like raising attack but lowering your defense or the opposite, or have a taunt skill that also raises your defense or evasion

Anyway those are just some ideas I had to make the combat more engaging while also encouraging more strategy, what do you guys think of them?

Just as a heads up, this question is mostly for people who went in completely blind, if you were spoiled in some way or knew details about his social link before playing through the game, this question isn't directed towards you

So some people say that Adachi being the culprit was really obvious though I find a lot of the reasoning kinda bad or non existent, so I'm gonna try and explain why Adachi is a pretty well kept secret by the game while also asking to people who went in blind what they thought

So the best defense Adachi had in my opinion was how he was literally with the investigation team the whole time during Rise's kidnapping, at that point of the story the characters think there's only 1 person who's killed 2 people and has tried to kill 2 others,

A lot of people point to his social link and it's strange mechanics but I think it's also important to ask how they learned about it, because if you're looking things up then you're bound to get spoiled in some way even if what you learned seems minor, even with the contents there isn't anything special to it, he's kinda cynical about life but that's nothing new for persona, there's a lot more to it then that but explaining that would need the hindsight of him being the culprit

Then there's also Namatame, when he kidnapped Nanako Adachi falls into the same category he did with Rise since he was there the whole time but it's done much better since there's also a culprit who went in the tv with Nanako, why would you be thinking about Adachi when a guy kidnapped someone really close to you

It's important to remember that to believe something you need to overcome that doubt first as believing without doubt is a lie, the doubt at that point in the game being that there're reasons he presumably can't be the culprit, though I guess if you just expected that there were 2 people throwing others into the tv then you just got some sorta brain I just can't handle, it sometimes feels like the people saying it's obvious are just larping really smart people but maybe that's just me. But yeah if you thought Adachi was obvious and that was only through stuff the game was doing then I'm curious to hear why

Keeping the title as spoiler free as possible, but Louis's plan involved Zorba swapping the real lance Forden had and giving him the fake one so that Louis could kill him without the king's magic stopping him, but the problem is that Zorba claims to have swapped the lance during his inspection of Louis's body but you can't exactly swap the lance since it's bigger than he is and can't easily hide it, I guess he meant he could've done it some other time but he still can't really hide it since it's natural to assume that Forden and the lance are heavily guarded, so is this a plot hole/lazy writing? Or am I missing something?

I met both of them at fanexpo, don't have a picture with Starr since I didn't have enough time to wait in line, but when I was chatting with my friend he showed up right next to me, and I blurted out that I really liked his performance in Warframe and he gave me a high five. I managed to get both of them to sign a custom Maelle Rapier I bought since my friend waited in line to meet Ben, but yeah both of them were absolutely lovely to meet and absolutely worth the money

I also told English that I picked the Maelle ending first and she replied with "correct"

So idk if it's a hot take to say I'm not really feeling any of the new songs, I think it has the same issue as reload where the new singer is basically doing a cover of a song that was sung by someone different or the composer adds or removes something that almost completely changes the song like really muffled guitar in unavoidable battle or the window wipers in 3/31 (no hate to either of them).

At this point there are plenty of remakes, remasters, ports etc that let us use the original soundtrack if we'd like, a lot of the older dragon quests, Xenoblade and even Atlus themselves have given the option before, at this point there's no excuse since adding it would be (as Atlus describe) all upside. And it would be kinda sad at this point if Atlus was outdone by Nintendo, heck maybe they should give us the option to use the original cast, I'd be fine if there weren't any new lines, but what do you guys think?

As much as I like great vegetables, I kinda wish it didn't completely overshadow fishing from the original p4, so with revival coming out, I had some ideas on how to rebalance both of them to give pros and cons of each, but there wasn't much needed so I also decided to add the fox since he could use some rebalancing too

I believe that time should be the most valuable recourse the player has, managing it well should reward you than someone who doesn't, and managing to do the dungeon in as few days as possible will ensure that you can spend the extra time improving your social links or social stats, the key to lasting as long as possible in the tv world should be proper sp/recourse management, and using items to restore hp/sp or using skills are a big help, and using fish restored hp and sp, although fishing had some cons to it, the biggest ones being how there was some rng to what you'd catch, catching fish took some skill, and fishing also took up your most valuable recourse that being time, while they were cons, there were also some pros to it, fishing was basically free, as most forms of bait didn't cost anything, being good manages to get you a lot, and it's upgradable with diligence to let you catch even more fish. So while it wasn't a perfect system, it had pros and cons and different people would get different levels of success from using it and I liked that, but then gardening came

So the biggest problem with great vegetables is how they take up no time at all, there's no skill required and you'll know exactly what you're getting. And with great vegetables being way more varied than fish, there's almost no reason to fish in golden outside of the fox quest, with that it becomes a lot easier to stay in the tv for as long as you want, and because of that completely overshadows fishing since as Atlus has described prime time, it's all upsides.

The Fox is another part of sp in p4, he's pretty simple since if you pay him 60 yen he'll restore 1 point of sp, with each rank reducing the cost by 5, and at rank 10 it'll be 10 yen per point, by the endgame sp is basically free, though you can complete the social link surprisingly quickly so not really.

So with all the issues with recourse management, I thought I'd make some improvements to make recourse management more of a thing in a game with limited time.

The first and biggest addition I would suggest is just to make gardening take up time, with that gardening would be comparable to fishing since with each having pros and cons, with fishing you'd get more if you're good at it while also having a variety of items despite being rng dependant, while gardening has less rng so you know what you'll get while not needing skill but it takes a couple days to get the goods.

The other idea I had was with the fox, either have him sell a limited quantity of healing items that can be cheaper or more plentiful as you rank him up, or have him still fully restore the party's sp but only a couple times per visit in the tv, doing either of these limits how much you can heal per visit meaning you'll need to still be efficient to get the most out of each visit.

Anyway those are just my ideas, they're mostly meant to reward good play so being efficient will get you further than someone who isn't as efficient. It's pretty long so thanks if you made it this far, what do you think?

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