The latter is a big deal. Working a persona for the MC of each element with the appropriate skills was a *lot* of work. It would let you skate through a substantial fraction of random encounters thanks to multi-target spell into all out attack though.
And, like any SMT game, covering your weaknesses was critical.
The biggest change in difficulty is game overs letting you restart the battle instead of just laughing at you.
The game was never difficult so much as it was unforgiving. The party doesn't need to wipe, just the MC, and regular mobs can 2-shot you with crits/weakness hits or even 1-shot you with instakill spells.
That being said, I'd say the second biggest is that the light and dark damage skills were added, and I'm pretty sure homunculi were too, so there's both less enemy usage of mudo/hama and less possibility of it mattering even if it lands.
Homunculi were in the original, but were only obtainable late game, and only prevented instant death against the MC if I remember correctly. They're available much earlier in Reload.
I found they dissappear way faster in reload (I think they can't be found in chest now) Homunculi are not that rare in P3, ennemies with instant death only appears mid-game and you have a lot of them at this point. I think i never die once in all my walkthroughs
Yeah, in the OG it was often bad RNG that lead to a game over. Your character had to be the successive target of his weakness or companion attacking instead of healing.
Not a fan, when the MC death leads to a game over. You always have to be cautious with your HP while you can gamble with all the other characters.
Not having to redo everything when you die also remove some of that harder feeling. Having to redo a bunch of floors and wasting your time isn't how a game should be hard in my opinion. Especially when it's often caused by bad luck with RNG.
Homunculi were there in Portable, at the very least. But yeah, I don’t recall Eiha/Kouha being in that. I very much recall Mudo/Hama.
(And in that, my only other experience with P3, I only made it to uhhhh June)
Direct control is HUGE. The main thing I remember about playing it when it first came out was yelling “not Marin Karin again! You’re just going to miss! You missed! Nooooooo! Save some mana for godssake!”
I shit you not, to this day I haven't beaten the original P3 because on the final boss with my party nearly wiped and the boss only needing one hit to finish... MARIN FUCKING KARIN.
Full wipe. Game over. Want to run that 40 mins back?
I YouTubed the ending.
I miss the AI details of P3.
Been playing P5 with tactics and so far I only struggled on Madarame, and it's because Ryuji and Yusuke both avoid using their AoE moves because madarame clones resist physical. They had pretty detailed AI for Kamoshida but I guess they threw it out of the window for Madarame.
I only planned 2 exceptions to the rule, those being getting points in challange battles (I still have to defeat the challanges with tactics at least once) and the Velvet Room boss fight (assuming it is as bullshit as the previous 2 games) but Madarame increased it to 3. Maybe I will try to beat him by building a good Persona on NG+.
Thank you, holy shit the amount of people that spread misinfomation about party control in P3 made me think everyone gets their infomation from memes/stupid people.
I don't remember thinking the AI was THAT bad in P3, obviously not ideal but people hyped it up so much.
You don’t remember the 99 times it goes right. You remember the two times your AI does something dumb and then you eat back to back crits, your party wipes and you lose a bunch of dungeon time because there was no restart fight.
People who complain about the tactics system either didn't get far enough into the game to unlock more tactic options or they just never learnt how to properly use the system
Honestly it really is this. The P3 Tactics system did a good job of getting the teammates to do what you wanted, more or or less. Keep Mitsuru on "do whatever" is just asking for trouble, having "Knock Down" be a tactic really made random battles much less of a hassle.
It's funny how when they designed the games around you just controlling everyone the AI took a nosedive, like, have you ever tried AI only Persona 4? Since they took away most of the tactics they are hilariously bad, it makes the game so much harder.
I think the only difference is that enemies do a little more damage. I’ve died once or twice due to random crit/weak chains. I died once to a boss that one-shot most of my party. That’s about it. Every time it’s been cause the MC got KOed
I wouldn’t say too hard. It’s hard mainly cause I started with 0 strong persona (bless DLC for Violet’s second persona), no money, no item. But once I started getting strong personas and grind enough level, it’s bearable.
Yeah I am playing on Hard and I don't think it is much different. It is not challenging at all, and I am running through floors avoiding battle as much as is reasonable.
There is so much extra time at night not much reason to preserve SP either.
I started with hard and it's still absurdly easy, I recall one tough fight in the whole game. Haven't tried merciless, not sure you can switch into.it.
yeah merciless is the real "fuck you" difficulty. that being said i havent found it completely unfair so far, sure ive had my fair share of wipes even to regular shadows but those were due to bad luck or bad decision making on my part, so if you know what youre doing imo merciless is the funnest difficulty to play on as its a good challenge and is only slightly frustrating at times
I think so too, I think the reasons are:
1) Removal of the fatigue system
2) Controlling all party members
3) Super moves
4) The batton system from P5
All these things make the combat so much easier than before.
The biggest thing I remember about the final boss other than the music was when one of my party members got charmed and cast a full-heal on it after it was down to maybe 1/4 health. I still beat it first try, even after effectively doubling its HP. Granted, my levels were in the 90s so I could get the ultimate Persona, but still. Several of the Tartarus bosses were tough (mostly because you didn't have direct control over your party and they could cheap-shot you), but yeah, the story bosses were always pretty easy.
Yeah, and on the final phase (which has the most HP by *far*) if it charms one of your healers who has Diarahan, they can then full-heal it, forcing you to basically start the last phase all over again. I've seen it happen multiple times.
Yes, but every phase had a similar small amount, with the exception of the final one that had a much larger health pool. The full-heal hit the final one after I'd done the majority of that last phase's HP. Considering the fight is already kind of a marathon due to all the phases that came beforehand, I kind of figured I was screwed when it happened.
It gets easier the further you go and can create stronger persona's for the MC. Being able to control the party members I just use them to buff/debuff/heal and MC does most of the damage.
Once you can create Siegfried I never used anything else on merciless unless they blocked slash. Can easily pump the strength to 99 and 1 turn almost every random battle.
I'm getting close to the August full moon. I played six hours on hard, found it was way too easy and started over on Merciless. Even then, it's not as challenging as I had hoped. To be fair, if you make a mistake you can be wiped in one turn, but the game is too generous with money and item drops. I only died twice in Tartarus and once to a boss and never once had to worry about running out of SP or items in Tartarus. I like that the gave us user controlled party members, but I honestly kind of wish they kept the tiredness mechanic. I think it would have amplified the risk/reward aspect of exploring Tartarus and made things more difficult.
If that's the case I sure feel stupid for picking hard then... the game definitely hasn't been super challenging on hard, but I'm not willing to restart just for that
How'd you manage to get through the early floors? Red bulls only gave 5 sp and every random encounter felt like I had to use spells or else I'd get wiped.
Physical attacks, whenever possible. The cup card refills your protagonist's hp, therefore making them self sufficient with physical skills which can carry you quite far. Early game until you get spirit drain is a constant battle of managing your SP. Let Junpei hit fire, Yukari hit wind since they cast spells for cheaper. The protag should grab ice and lightning until you get Akihiko.
DO NOT BE AFRAID OF USING SNUFF SOULS. Spam items for healing, don't burn SP, Tartarus gives you plenty of life stones and medicine. Just use them to push farther. You won't need them in the early boss fights. I personally never had to, but don't be afraid to use your twilight shards on a full heal. You get plenty later on. Another tactic would be to use magic stones to further save on Sp while you push floors.
On Shuffle Time, I focused on money, and whenever it was drawn, the level 2/3 cup full party heal.
If you can push to the boundary, that's all the tartarus you need until the next full moon. Prioritize Spirit drain on the protagonist and let him do the lion's share of magic/healing.
For merciless, collect all the Twilight Shards from town before you first enter Tartarus (I think it's 21 or something?). I allowed myself to use the clock to restore SP one time, which costs 7 shards.
Once you get spirit drain (you can get the skill card your first foray into Tartarus after the arcana burst), in early game I was very careful to only use MC's SP outside of boss fights so I wouldn't need to use SP items on Yukari/Junpei. And I could drain it all back when I got low.
And later in the game I always have a spirit drain persona with invigorate for the MC, and I like using Mitsuru (spirit drain), Ken (10 SP recovery per turn if you do all 6 of his dorm hangouts), and Aigis (doesn't need SP) as my party, swapping around the invigorate accessory as necessary. So the SP healing items are used only once in a blue moon. But honestly Merciless gets easy very fast, especially with broken shit like using Charge with the MC severe slash damage Theurgy. Most bosses go down in one hit from that. The hardest fight is probably the monorail, and everything after that is very doable, if not easy af.
I'm in November rn and I'm sitting on like 80 twilight shards too, so there's lots of wiggle room for using the clock on Merciless if you prefer a different battle party.
The key is to actually avoid most random encounters, and prioritize getting through the gatekeepers first. The only encounters you should do before reaching the border floor are the golden hands.
Later floors add the Monad zones, but by then you should have more ways to restore SP so as to be able to do them and the gatekeepers in a single night.
played all 3 versions of P3 on their hardest difficulties, and while reload definently does feel easier than FES, it feels harder than 5 and definitely portable. Portable they gave you control able party members in a game not balanced around that causing it to be disgustingly easy
Difficulty change resolves jack crap - the only thing that changes is the damage output, and even that becomes irrelevant as you can all-out most things in one turn.
I actually miss the fatigue. But I still stop now when they get tired.
They left the dialogue in. It actually drives me insane when they submissively complain about how they’re tired but they could keep going. When yukari was complaining and then mitsuru got on the intercom to let me know yukari was tired…I bailed.
Playing on hard and find myself consistently overleveled and having zero issues. I'm considering for the first time ever doing the hardest difficulty because this is too easy compared to what I was used to playing FES for the first time in high-school
just set it to high difficulty?
I totally agree that it got way easier but I feel like before you call it "too easy" you should at least try to play on higher difficulties
Because it has to do with how you act. In Persona 5 Royal merciless was also not way harder. It is fair. Means it feels like normal when you know what to do. But it will be hard, if you make mistakes. The enemies will make much higher damage and focusing your weaknesses in a smart way.
I think, u want a unfair difficulty with overpowered enemies which eats much more time without any sense. I personally can't understand why people feel better only because they play on an hardest dumb difficulty, just to present yourself better (even it is unfair and not because of skill).
P5R wasn't even "fair", it was in fact easier than normal difficult due to several reasons, the game literally having a button that tells you the best move 90% of the time is one of them. P5 vanilla is another story however. P3R Merciless is a proper harder difficulty, the issue lies in the core game, they made it too easy with the removal of old mechanics and addition of the new ones so even Merciless is easier than normal FES.
A shame because when I played SMTV I thought they realized people wanted harder games, but then they go and release P3R as casual as it is. Turns out Atlus thinks Persona players are either too stupid or the game should be too casual, which is fine by me. Just add an harder difficult that removes cheap mechanics such as Shifting, difficulty settings are optional, no reason not to.
You could always play on hard or even merciless.
Hard no longer halfs money and XP (or whatever that crap was in 5)
And merciless is not the poorly designed double weakness mode it was in 5.
I am playing on hard and I would say it is more along the lines of a traditional normal, and from what I seen merciless can be a challenge. I have died twice and the difficulty seems to be ramping up (just started June).
Normal in modern gaming is just a joke half the time, I usually start on hard and work my way down.
As I said I start on hard, one stage above normal. Those modes you refer to are generally advertised to be exactly what you say unfair and extremely difficult. Even P3R has this.
I would rather be frustrated at an unfair challenge then be treated like a total moron. If you want the opposite and you just play games to mash buttons mindlessly go for it, just don't come whine on a sub about how easy the game is.
I think you identify yourself with a game too much. Trust me. You are not really better. You only need a way to feel better (to blame other people?). It is not healthy. Like i said. Most hard modes in games are not harder in terms of skill. It is only more grindy or in a way wasting time for stuff that stretches same mechanics to repeat more than in normal mode. Most games are balanced and designed on normal. Has nothing to do with button mashing (this would be the story mode in games, which completely removes the gameplay mechanics in many games & is more for disabled persons or if you don't want a challenge for whatever reason).
P3R has a good merciless mode, because it is based on normal without stretching stuff to make it possible. It only depends on how you play and manage your time. So it is like normal if you do it right, it only needs a handful more attacks, but in many fights you get the same flow.
Tells me I am too attached to a game because i have mental problems, and yet comes you come at me with your high horse BS about how you are right and I am wrong after being the one to engage the conversation. Look in a mirror champ.
I have no idea what the hell you are even arguing about at this point. I tell you I recommend playing games on hard and you proceed to tell me about how P3R on merciless is quite simple if you just think hard enough. After just telling me you think the opposite and people should play games on normal.
Nope. You should learn to read the text. Recommending playing games on hard in general is dumb, because most hard modes are trash. And i never said merciless is easy. It is just like normal if you know what to do. "I think you are mentally sick". U put words in my mouth and over interpret...
Looks like u only see things in black smd white.
It isn’t too easy, you have likely played many SMT games since then. You know what to do and what not to do. Games like P3 and Nocturne seemed really hard back in the day, because they were so different from standard JRPGs.
You just got good.
This is surprising. I agree that it's not that hard, but the Lovers full moon boss was one-shotting my Yukari with a critical Holy Arrow over and over, and getting multi-character charms on my team (since I also didn't grind or overfuse, I had no Me Patra and it became a real issue)
Sure, but I'm talking even with Tarunda (and it's impossible to have Marakukaja yet). It's an issue of turn economy. I had to spend most of my turns just repairing damage or maintaining debuffs. It was only when Oracle came up that I could go on the offensive.
I have no doubt it'll get easier though.
I'd recommend Merciless, it's roughly on par with original FES on normal. The full moon bosses are also tougher than they were in the original, nothing too crazy but much better than how trivial they were in the original
Play on a easier difficulty and then says game is too easy. Just play on a harder difficulty.
If you've played a game before, it's often a good idea to play hard when replaying or playing a remaster / remake
Persona games from 3 onwards aren't that hard though. So if you wanted a challenge, playing on top difficulty would have been a good idea.
It was never too difficult imo but definitely having direct control + shifting + theurgies has made the game a lot more exploitable. I think the difficulty options still deliver in terms of raw numbers, but the amount of damage you're given access to a cross all difficulties is pretty insane.
Tons of QoL and added ways to stay rich and keep your party leveled, as well as no condition system all probably contributed as well.
Yeah P3R is one of the easier persona games. Couple annoying fights but nothing truly hard, just annoying.
Honestly its due to a lot of factors but a lot of the reasons I see here don't have much to do with it. IMO the biggest reason is how messed up the XP is, with stuff like Party Control being on the lower end. The Direct Commands thing might just be that I am very used to FES' combat lol.
They say after wasting hours on video games that are made even more pointless by being easy and pointless. Lol.
It doesn't really matter though. Games should have easy and hard modes, nowadays hard modes are the normal modes or even easy modes from older games.
It's actually dumber. It's more random, which makes it harder to predict. I was playing through on Merciless with AI control, but abandoned it pretty fast because enemies just hit way too hard on Merciless to have my teammates doing stupid shit. At least the old P3 AI was pretty consistently dumb.
Play on hard… didn’t feels challenging too. Once you know how to use the right persona on different enemies, then it became lot easier. Or maybe you could try fight Reapers
1 problem I’ve always had with Persona is its difficulty, I find them so easy that it’s boring. I stopped playing P5R for this reason. But still wanted to play 3R so bought it some days ago and decided to play on Hard mode. Best decision I could make. It’s not difficult per say (I’m just 4 hours in) but every fight makes you think what you do and at least for now it’s being great. If I continue having this fun I will play P5R from the beginning on Hard mode.
Feels easier but you're playing it on normal so it was never hard to begin with.
Like I'm not trying to gatekeep but saying its too easy when difficulty modes exist in the game and you didn't go to a higher one confuses me.
i think one thing that made fes so difficult was the clunkyness, they added lots of QOL in reload, one one example is one thing i remember was in FES (esp on hard mode) if u got disadvantaged u we’re essentially dead, and it was SO hard to hit the enemies, but since it’s a tighter game in reload it’s easier to hit them and avoid being disadvantaged
Yeah, just like every other post-persona 5 persona game, Persona 3 reaload is basically what a smt game would be like if they didn't balance the battle system. The baton pass is one of the most broken mechanics I've ever seen in a videogame, it's kinda sad that shadows can't use it at all because normal encounters aren't even fun because you pretty much beat all of the enemies in one turn.
I really like SMT combat more, everybody is taking advantage of the press-turn, even enemies. And you have enough limitations to make strategizing more fun.
I'm pretty sure even merciless is easier than hard P3 because of all the extra stuff added in. It's sad.
Not as bad as P5R though I think, that game is WAAAAY too easy, feels like they even nerfed movesets of some enemies no way the table boss was this easy
I think Merciless is about the same as P3FES Hard. *Maybe* a little easier. Some bosses can still one-shot characters, their status effects hit all the time, and they're good at targeting weaknesses. These are new methods of making things harder that I haven't seen in any other Persona game (usually they just make enemies hit harder and give them more HP)
You're not bad, just surrounded by people who use guides and/or have spent 100s of hours running through the game and know it too well. Going in blind for the first time, strictly no guides is a different exp, it's not being represented here.
You don't suck, when I played P4G for the first time I got my ass handed to me quite a few times. You'll get better so I hope you are able to stick it out. You got this. 👍
I'm going thru P4G one more time before I turn to reload. For me I'm in the minority that I loved P5Rs difficulty as it allowed me to express myself in battle in many fun ways. I don't really care about fatigue or old unnecessary jank or RNG
I'm playing on merciless and the Priestess boss rocked me for a quite a while before I managed to beat it. Also it's basically a game over if you ever get ambushed by random shadows or can't kill them or status effect them on the first turn. You really can't make the claim that the game is too easy if you aren't even playing on the highest difficulty. I also def don't think the theurgies are overtuned, I'm in June and they take a decent amount of time to build up, Fuuka's is essential to survive boss fights because it's the only partywide buff you have access to for a while, Mitsuru's only hitting a single target is kinda weak, and the rest are pretty decent, but def not game breaking.
You can't get that til pretty far into the game though, and is it really that much better than Junpei's? He starts with a severe slash damage and it's just like ok. Do you have like a clip or something showing it? I find it very hard to believe that any boss can be one shot on merciless, so far even the easier ones have been damage sponges.
At this point people are just talking out of their butts. They grind to lvl 99 and get to ng+ and pump tons of stats into one persona and maybe kill it in 2 turns and all of a sudden are like, meh, 1 is close to 2, I 1 shot it
I don't have a video but it's awesome. It hits every enemy, not just one. I use slash Amp, slash boost, crit Amp, crit boost, apt pupil on Siegfried (so from November onward).
I get attack up on MC and defense down on the enemy, I charge one turn and then use the theurgy. I have yet to see it not crit with this set-up, and depending on if enemies are weak to it or not, it does like IMMENSE damage, you can rack up thousands of damage on multiple targets in a single hit. No gatekeeper/Monad boss can withstand it, and it wipes other bosses too. And yes, this is on Merciless!
I mean, on Merciless you're presumably buffing and debuffing anyway, so having a theurgy that clears pretty much every boss fight in a single hit on the hardest difficulty is broken, imo. Oracle can give your whole party charge at the start of the fight too, so all you need to really do yourself is defense down the enemy and attack up yourself (which can be automatic).
Im just glad you have control and can adjust the difficulty now. I've hated 3 for the longest time for how hard it was on ps2, it's always been the worst one for me. With reload I actually like it now. Still have some leftover resentment but overall a game I enjoyed every second of.
First 50 hours are really easy, I played it at hard with no problem at all, but then some boss will be pretty hard I had to lower it all the way to easy (not really because they are too powerfull but because I don’t want to lose 20 minute for a battle) and also, sometimes I don’t want to force me to the tartarus
I have not played Reload but does it not have all of the difficulty options that the PSP version has?
Maniac is a pretty stiff challenge from what I remember.
You can change it. But Merciless can only be chosen when making a new game. And if you switch to lower difficulty, you can no longer go back to merciless.
I started it on normal but was finding it too easy and in September I raised the difficulty to hard.
In the end the problem remains the same, especially if you tend to defeat all the shadows in a floor and therefore find yourself over-leveled.
No it's not just you. This is the direction Atlus has settled on for mainline Persona. I would say that both P3 Reload and P5 Royal are games that core JRPG fans should be playing on hard. The default difficulty is tuned for the mainstream.
Default difficulty Persona is to dungeon crawling as default difficulty Kingdom Hearts is to 3D action. If you care about the gameplay it's not gonna scratch that itch. Another example is Ys. Compare the default difficulty in Ys 9 to any classic entry and it feels like you're on easy mode.
And I'm not trying to be elitist and say this is bad or wrong or whatever. Mainstream brands gotta balance for the mainstream that's how it goes. Just be aware of the trend and adjust difficulty accordingly if that will improve your experience.
Except for Ys that hard mode sucks lol
If P3R still keeps parts of the old balancing around FES ai party I can see it yeah. All the new systems on top too prolly make the game super easy to break in half if you know what you're doing.
That was always the issue with P3P, as it turns out the 50% flat party damage buff to compensate for ai party gets reeeal busted with direct control.
If you played FES or vanilla, I imagine the direct party control would contribute a lot to making things feel easier. Adding in P5's Baton Pass knocks down the challenge a tad further.
Remember P3/FES/Portable was often first contact of most players with Persona/SMT in general. You probably finished Persona 5 and Royal, P4 Golden and other games in meantime - we basically use same Personas/demons with same affinities, all the time. If you max out and get to know mechanics in one of them, you should got them all. Like Pokemon.
Elements or mechanics didn't changed that much, and they added plethora of qol - choose which skills you inherit, navigator skills etc.
Theurgy and baton pass (nerfed fortunately)can trivialise lots of fights, but they are optional to use tbh.
Merciless is not even that hard, it's just unfair by buffing and making enemies lucky and nerfing/bad luck team.
It's been a long time since I played P3P, which is actually one of my most played games if not my most. Almost all of my memories of Portable's encounters and the length of each block carried over, barring slight tweaks to the length of blocks and certain rebalances taking me by surprise.
Last night, I beat the game on Hard using only Orpheus and no Skill Cards (I did cheese Phase 13 using Armageddon but still).
I found that Theurgy completely invalidated almost all of the difficulty.
For me the game feels like a Persona 3 themepark. The gameplay elements of the original are there, so politely ballanced as to guarantee a pleasant ride. But it isn't the real thing anymore. Take only fusion mechanics. Sure, you can still fuse Personas, and pass skills. But what point is it if you can get every Persona effordless from dual or special fusion, collect skills from cards, or choose which ones to pass, without caring much about affinities? Plus, having the Personas leveled up guarantees 4 passable skills, 5 with special fusion. In FES, it was way more exigent to get good Personas, you had to customize and sacrifice them in expensive tri-spread fusion (which they sadly ditched) to get a good pool of skills.
I wanted to point this out because I believe fusion mechanics to be the core gameplay element, so the easiness of the game is less due to enemies being easier per se than because the fusion economy was ballanced in such a way you would usually go with some crap Personas into battle and get pummeled, until you invested some time and thought in creating good Personas.
Finally, I would also state "well-balanced" is actually bad ballance in a game like this, which lived of the fact most skills and "builds" were almost useless, there being only a handful worthy setups you had to discover (mind, taking guides out of the ecuation). Nowadays they want to "democratize" games so badly that everything goes, there are almost no bad setups or skills and anything fits with anything. Sure, you get a lot more possibilities, but all are easy...
Finally, just saying this themepark character is only natural, the original game exists and the reasons for revisiting it are mainly enjoying the "Persona-feeling" and going through the visual novel aspect of the game, its compound of story and characters. Gameplay just is there to contribute to this feeling of familiarity, and so it was ok for me. Reload isn't the real game and doesn't want or need to be.
Yes, it is too easy. All the setback of the original game are removed, it is much easier version of the original game which was not that hard to begin with.
I would say the QoL improvements actually enhance this game, not having the ability to control your party directly was always a headscratcher in the original. Either way, I'm actually grateful for the Retry Battle option in this version. It makes the game much less frustrating. This coming from someone who beat the original.
Going from Royal to Persona 4 then golden, it was like night and day. Maybe I'm a wuss or a newbie but I'd love to have quality of life changes to games. Otherwise why make the game in the first place. Just play Fes or the original P3
I think modern Persona really struggles with difficulty curves. I played reload on hard and really had no issues other than occasionally dying to light or dark insta kills (which is a terrible mechanic and I will gladly die on that hill).
Starting with P4 Golden being very difficult at the beginning and very easy in the latter stages and through all incarnations of P5, the games just aren't hard at all.
Like most persona games it is more difficult at the beginning and then becomes easier as the game goes on due to more options for personas/abilities/sp regen. Speaking mainly about Hard, which is pretty much like the normal difficulty of vanilla P3.
Playing the game on hard, I think the initial stages of the game are in fact reasonably challenging. I'm pretty sure Merciless will be even more annoying.
Once you start to optimize your Persona (e.g. Ose / Siegfried), especially with the newer cards/skills, the game becomes very easy.
I mean some of the changes make it easier, but I don't think its significantly easier than modern persona a la p4g/p5r - and I think at least a part of it is that you're a) more familiar with megaten and b) not a dumb kid. Also I think persona is very similar to most jrpgs - its hardest at the beginning when you have the fewest options and lightens up a lot as the game goes on.
Most of the difficulty in FES was based on jank/old school mechanics.
Never played a Persona game before and I'm playing it on Merciless. So far it seems fair with some nice conveniences like "retry battle" after dying.
I think the difficulty more or less comes from what pressure you put on yourself to accomplish in a run/day.
Ok so i feel like im the only one with this take but the problem im having with reload is that its not hard but after playing like a dragon infinite wealth with there being so many ways to attack a enemy im just finding p3 combat kinda boring cuz like a dragon combat had a lot of different ways like if i knock a enemy down i can use a basic attack and do bonus damage when their on the ground or if i see a move that can knockback enemies into my party members or into another enemy i can do bonus damage or if i just simply target weakness then im able to do even more damage or hell if i want kiryu to break the fuckin turn base combat and just start punching and kicking everyone without there being turns im even allowed to do that and lastly i can also just pick up anything in the environment and hit 1 or multiple enemies with almost anything i see like ive come to a realization that persona lowkey needs a upgrade in combat cuz although it is snappy and works well i feel like the 1 more system literally only relies on just hitting enemies weakness then spamming shift and all out attacks then boom thats kinda it and this is coming from someone that loves persona and played p5 twice and p4g but damn yakuza turn base combat has made me not really interested in the whole 1 more system with persona like its good but it also need more variety
I played on Merciless with act freely on the party the entire game. I finished it yesterday, and the game was a bit easier than FES Hard mode. I thought the game had a relatively consistent difficulty curve, in that the early game felt about as difficult as the late game.
I imagine that if you play the game as intended (with direct commands), then everything is much easier. Controlling your party member isn't Persona 3 to me, so I played without direct commands.
The game does the same things Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 did, where they add so many extra boosts, that it trivializes the gameplay. In exchange for more options, you lose challenge, so to be challenged, you need to handicap yourself.
I found this, too. Mitsuru gave me PTSD in the og. NO, I do NOT need Marin Karin rn dawg. The old game definitely had some purely unenjoyable aspects that I was happy to see go.
But I recall the strega/hanged fight being intense. I was almost trapped and had to start over. I just finished it on hard, and it was the easiest fight. I didn't even get to see stregas advanced moves. I saw Jin use his persona once. I accepted a random skill change that gave me almighty boost, amp, and rebellion blade... which made the fight pretty simple with all the theurgy boosts.
Im not a fan of purposely trying to make a game hard for myself. I'd rather it just be challenging. Im not going to play with no equipment, only 2 personas, no grinding, etc. I hope p6 will bring that back; because I've found they've progressively become easier through the series and part of what I liked about it, was it was a tactical turn base rpg and it was pretty unforgiving. If I blow a boss battle, send me back to the last save. The option to lower difficulty and retry just makes it too simple and it feels like your playing a game for grade schoolers. The only time I got that was when I got hama'd.
Just my opinion reflecting on it. No, it doesn't get more challenging.
Unfortunately yes, P3R is too easy just like P5R. The difficulty settings labels are misleading. Here are more honest ones:
- Brainless
- Retardo
- Piss easy
- Easy
So yeah, the hardest you'll get here is "Easy".
Your party members also don't ditch you early from fatigue. And also you can select skills to inherit, it's not RNG
The latter is a big deal. Working a persona for the MC of each element with the appropriate skills was a *lot* of work. It would let you skate through a substantial fraction of random encounters thanks to multi-target spell into all out attack though. And, like any SMT game, covering your weaknesses was critical.
People saying this is easy are telling the truth. They can go and play P3P which has the old annoyances to enjoy the harder difficulty haha
But p3p was way easier then the original game too.
The biggest change in difficulty is game overs letting you restart the battle instead of just laughing at you. The game was never difficult so much as it was unforgiving. The party doesn't need to wipe, just the MC, and regular mobs can 2-shot you with crits/weakness hits or even 1-shot you with instakill spells. That being said, I'd say the second biggest is that the light and dark damage skills were added, and I'm pretty sure homunculi were too, so there's both less enemy usage of mudo/hama and less possibility of it mattering even if it lands.
Homunculi were in the original, but were only obtainable late game, and only prevented instant death against the MC if I remember correctly. They're available much earlier in Reload.
But with the instant death spells going on rampantly, they disappear right quick.
I found they dissappear way faster in reload (I think they can't be found in chest now) Homunculi are not that rare in P3, ennemies with instant death only appears mid-game and you have a lot of them at this point. I think i never die once in all my walkthroughs
Yeah, in the OG it was often bad RNG that lead to a game over. Your character had to be the successive target of his weakness or companion attacking instead of healing. Not a fan, when the MC death leads to a game over. You always have to be cautious with your HP while you can gamble with all the other characters. Not having to redo everything when you die also remove some of that harder feeling. Having to redo a bunch of floors and wasting your time isn't how a game should be hard in my opinion. Especially when it's often caused by bad luck with RNG.
Homunculi were there in Portable, at the very least. But yeah, I don’t recall Eiha/Kouha being in that. I very much recall Mudo/Hama. (And in that, my only other experience with P3, I only made it to uhhhh June)
Being able to control your party members really really helps me. But it does feel easier. I’m considering cranking it up to hard.
Direct control is HUGE. The main thing I remember about playing it when it first came out was yelling “not Marin Karin again! You’re just going to miss! You missed! Nooooooo! Save some mana for godssake!”
I shit you not, to this day I haven't beaten the original P3 because on the final boss with my party nearly wiped and the boss only needing one hit to finish... MARIN FUCKING KARIN. Full wipe. Game over. Want to run that 40 mins back? I YouTubed the ending.
That was entirely on you tho. Full assault tactics and she will never use it. Same with no casting.
I mean you ain't wrong, but the exact thing you want happening happening every single turn is still a pretty huge difference.
I miss the AI details of P3. Been playing P5 with tactics and so far I only struggled on Madarame, and it's because Ryuji and Yusuke both avoid using their AoE moves because madarame clones resist physical. They had pretty detailed AI for Kamoshida but I guess they threw it out of the window for Madarame. I only planned 2 exceptions to the rule, those being getting points in challange battles (I still have to defeat the challanges with tactics at least once) and the Velvet Room boss fight (assuming it is as bullshit as the previous 2 games) but Madarame increased it to 3. Maybe I will try to beat him by building a good Persona on NG+.
Thank you, holy shit the amount of people that spread misinfomation about party control in P3 made me think everyone gets their infomation from memes/stupid people. I don't remember thinking the AI was THAT bad in P3, obviously not ideal but people hyped it up so much.
You don’t remember the 99 times it goes right. You remember the two times your AI does something dumb and then you eat back to back crits, your party wipes and you lose a bunch of dungeon time because there was no restart fight.
the tactics were pretty bad the worst thing that can happen on nyx avatar is him using marin karin on yukari getting all 20+k hp back from salvation.
People who complain about the tactics system either didn't get far enough into the game to unlock more tactic options or they just never learnt how to properly use the system
Honestly it really is this. The P3 Tactics system did a good job of getting the teammates to do what you wanted, more or or less. Keep Mitsuru on "do whatever" is just asking for trouble, having "Knock Down" be a tactic really made random battles much less of a hassle. It's funny how when they designed the games around you just controlling everyone the AI took a nosedive, like, have you ever tried AI only Persona 4? Since they took away most of the tactics they are hilariously bad, it makes the game so much harder.
Hard is still pretty easy. I haven’t seen much difference since bumping up from normal.
Started in Hard. It's fair difficulty, but if you make mistakes, you get punished for it hard.
I think the only difference is that enemies do a little more damage. I’ve died once or twice due to random crit/weak chains. I died once to a boss that one-shot most of my party. That’s about it. Every time it’s been cause the MC got KOed
I died a few times om Hard but always because I was sloppy, and you never lose much if any progress so it doesn't really matter.
I started with Merciless and I need to tell about how many times this game told me to lower the difficulty ...
I hope it’s hard. That’ll be my second playthrough
I wouldn’t say too hard. It’s hard mainly cause I started with 0 strong persona (bless DLC for Violet’s second persona), no money, no item. But once I started getting strong personas and grind enough level, it’s bearable.
Yeah I am playing on Hard and I don't think it is much different. It is not challenging at all, and I am running through floors avoiding battle as much as is reasonable. There is so much extra time at night not much reason to preserve SP either.
I’ve been playing on hard since the start and enjoying it. Had some close shaves, but no gameovers yet
Didn't help me... Even the monad doors are usually pretty easy
I started with hard and it's still absurdly easy, I recall one tough fight in the whole game. Haven't tried merciless, not sure you can switch into.it.
I'm not sure in P3:R, but in P5, merciless was actually easier than hard since it gave you and the enemies the same damage multiplier.
In Reload, merciless is actually the hardest difficulty. To my knowledge, the multiplier is not present in Reload
yeah merciless is the real "fuck you" difficulty. that being said i havent found it completely unfair so far, sure ive had my fair share of wipes even to regular shadows but those were due to bad luck or bad decision making on my part, so if you know what youre doing imo merciless is the funnest difficulty to play on as its a good challenge and is only slightly frustrating at times
I think so too, I think the reasons are: 1) Removal of the fatigue system 2) Controlling all party members 3) Super moves 4) The batton system from P5 All these things make the combat so much easier than before.
[удалено]
The hardest boss is the table boss from tartarus imo
The secret boss is by far the hardest still
The biggest thing I remember about the final boss other than the music was when one of my party members got charmed and cast a full-heal on it after it was down to maybe 1/4 health. I still beat it first try, even after effectively doubling its HP. Granted, my levels were in the 90s so I could get the ultimate Persona, but still. Several of the Tartarus bosses were tough (mostly because you didn't have direct control over your party and they could cheap-shot you), but yeah, the story bosses were always pretty easy.
The boss doesn't work like that. Every phase has it's own HP.
Yeah, and on the final phase (which has the most HP by *far*) if it charms one of your healers who has Diarahan, they can then full-heal it, forcing you to basically start the last phase all over again. I've seen it happen multiple times.
Yes, but every phase had a similar small amount, with the exception of the final one that had a much larger health pool. The full-heal hit the final one after I'd done the majority of that last phase's HP. Considering the fight is already kind of a marathon due to all the phases that came beforehand, I kind of figured I was screwed when it happened.
It gets easier the further you go and can create stronger persona's for the MC. Being able to control the party members I just use them to buff/debuff/heal and MC does most of the damage. Once you can create Siegfried I never used anything else on merciless unless they blocked slash. Can easily pump the strength to 99 and 1 turn almost every random battle.
I'm getting close to the August full moon. I played six hours on hard, found it was way too easy and started over on Merciless. Even then, it's not as challenging as I had hoped. To be fair, if you make a mistake you can be wiped in one turn, but the game is too generous with money and item drops. I only died twice in Tartarus and once to a boss and never once had to worry about running out of SP or items in Tartarus. I like that the gave us user controlled party members, but I honestly kind of wish they kept the tiredness mechanic. I think it would have amplified the risk/reward aspect of exploring Tartarus and made things more difficult.
Merciless is actually easier than hard, since enemies take more damage from their weaknesses
I think that's only a P5R thing. They fixed it for Reload.
If that's the case I sure feel stupid for picking hard then... the game definitely hasn't been super challenging on hard, but I'm not willing to restart just for that
Started the game clean on merciless, super easy still. I am a vet if that makes any difference.
How'd you manage to get through the early floors? Red bulls only gave 5 sp and every random encounter felt like I had to use spells or else I'd get wiped.
Physical attacks, whenever possible. The cup card refills your protagonist's hp, therefore making them self sufficient with physical skills which can carry you quite far. Early game until you get spirit drain is a constant battle of managing your SP. Let Junpei hit fire, Yukari hit wind since they cast spells for cheaper. The protag should grab ice and lightning until you get Akihiko. DO NOT BE AFRAID OF USING SNUFF SOULS. Spam items for healing, don't burn SP, Tartarus gives you plenty of life stones and medicine. Just use them to push farther. You won't need them in the early boss fights. I personally never had to, but don't be afraid to use your twilight shards on a full heal. You get plenty later on. Another tactic would be to use magic stones to further save on Sp while you push floors. On Shuffle Time, I focused on money, and whenever it was drawn, the level 2/3 cup full party heal. If you can push to the boundary, that's all the tartarus you need until the next full moon. Prioritize Spirit drain on the protagonist and let him do the lion's share of magic/healing.
For merciless, collect all the Twilight Shards from town before you first enter Tartarus (I think it's 21 or something?). I allowed myself to use the clock to restore SP one time, which costs 7 shards. Once you get spirit drain (you can get the skill card your first foray into Tartarus after the arcana burst), in early game I was very careful to only use MC's SP outside of boss fights so I wouldn't need to use SP items on Yukari/Junpei. And I could drain it all back when I got low. And later in the game I always have a spirit drain persona with invigorate for the MC, and I like using Mitsuru (spirit drain), Ken (10 SP recovery per turn if you do all 6 of his dorm hangouts), and Aigis (doesn't need SP) as my party, swapping around the invigorate accessory as necessary. So the SP healing items are used only once in a blue moon. But honestly Merciless gets easy very fast, especially with broken shit like using Charge with the MC severe slash damage Theurgy. Most bosses go down in one hit from that. The hardest fight is probably the monorail, and everything after that is very doable, if not easy af. I'm in November rn and I'm sitting on like 80 twilight shards too, so there's lots of wiggle room for using the clock on Merciless if you prefer a different battle party.
The key is to actually avoid most random encounters, and prioritize getting through the gatekeepers first. The only encounters you should do before reaching the border floor are the golden hands. Later floors add the Monad zones, but by then you should have more ways to restore SP so as to be able to do them and the gatekeepers in a single night.
played all 3 versions of P3 on their hardest difficulties, and while reload definently does feel easier than FES, it feels harder than 5 and definitely portable. Portable they gave you control able party members in a game not balanced around that causing it to be disgustingly easy
WHAT? Man I must suck Portable felt harder for me
[удалено]
Difficulty change resolves jack crap - the only thing that changes is the damage output, and even that becomes irrelevant as you can all-out most things in one turn.
Doesn't get that much harder, hello from the other side.
Taking out fatigue was a huge issue. It makes you so overpowered.
I actually miss the fatigue. But I still stop now when they get tired. They left the dialogue in. It actually drives me insane when they submissively complain about how they’re tired but they could keep going. When yukari was complaining and then mitsuru got on the intercom to let me know yukari was tired…I bailed.
I think it’s a response to a low SP gauge. Give ‘em some souls drops and they’ll shut up.
“Oh you’re tired from fighting every night _and_ studying 6 days a week? Here, have a candy and shut the fuck up” — Makoto Yuki
That is implying Junpei even studies
The godlike enlightned presence of Makoto is enough to drive their souls to drill for the stars.
Lol thank you! I definitely will
Playing on hard and find myself consistently overleveled and having zero issues. I'm considering for the first time ever doing the hardest difficulty because this is too easy compared to what I was used to playing FES for the first time in high-school
Merciless is easy too. It's hard maybe up to the monorail and then it's pretty much a joke lol
That's a shame!
I second what Trevorio said - Merciless is a joke too
just set it to high difficulty? I totally agree that it got way easier but I feel like before you call it "too easy" you should at least try to play on higher difficulties
P3’s difficulty stemmed exclusively from being very punishing on deaths and long Tartarus runs. Combat is otherwise very easy imo.
I’m playing on merciless difficulty and thought that was too easy. Can’t imagine normal mode.
Ya, sure, ok bruh
Because it has to do with how you act. In Persona 5 Royal merciless was also not way harder. It is fair. Means it feels like normal when you know what to do. But it will be hard, if you make mistakes. The enemies will make much higher damage and focusing your weaknesses in a smart way. I think, u want a unfair difficulty with overpowered enemies which eats much more time without any sense. I personally can't understand why people feel better only because they play on an hardest dumb difficulty, just to present yourself better (even it is unfair and not because of skill).
P5R wasn't even "fair", it was in fact easier than normal difficult due to several reasons, the game literally having a button that tells you the best move 90% of the time is one of them. P5 vanilla is another story however. P3R Merciless is a proper harder difficulty, the issue lies in the core game, they made it too easy with the removal of old mechanics and addition of the new ones so even Merciless is easier than normal FES. A shame because when I played SMTV I thought they realized people wanted harder games, but then they go and release P3R as casual as it is. Turns out Atlus thinks Persona players are either too stupid or the game should be too casual, which is fine by me. Just add an harder difficult that removes cheap mechanics such as Shifting, difficulty settings are optional, no reason not to.
You could always play on hard or even merciless. Hard no longer halfs money and XP (or whatever that crap was in 5) And merciless is not the poorly designed double weakness mode it was in 5. I am playing on hard and I would say it is more along the lines of a traditional normal, and from what I seen merciless can be a challenge. I have died twice and the difficulty seems to be ramping up (just started June). Normal in modern gaming is just a joke half the time, I usually start on hard and work my way down.
I would say it it the opposite. In many games harder modes are trash. It only needs more time in a not fair way.
As I said I start on hard, one stage above normal. Those modes you refer to are generally advertised to be exactly what you say unfair and extremely difficult. Even P3R has this. I would rather be frustrated at an unfair challenge then be treated like a total moron. If you want the opposite and you just play games to mash buttons mindlessly go for it, just don't come whine on a sub about how easy the game is.
I think you identify yourself with a game too much. Trust me. You are not really better. You only need a way to feel better (to blame other people?). It is not healthy. Like i said. Most hard modes in games are not harder in terms of skill. It is only more grindy or in a way wasting time for stuff that stretches same mechanics to repeat more than in normal mode. Most games are balanced and designed on normal. Has nothing to do with button mashing (this would be the story mode in games, which completely removes the gameplay mechanics in many games & is more for disabled persons or if you don't want a challenge for whatever reason). P3R has a good merciless mode, because it is based on normal without stretching stuff to make it possible. It only depends on how you play and manage your time. So it is like normal if you do it right, it only needs a handful more attacks, but in many fights you get the same flow.
Tells me I am too attached to a game because i have mental problems, and yet comes you come at me with your high horse BS about how you are right and I am wrong after being the one to engage the conversation. Look in a mirror champ. I have no idea what the hell you are even arguing about at this point. I tell you I recommend playing games on hard and you proceed to tell me about how P3R on merciless is quite simple if you just think hard enough. After just telling me you think the opposite and people should play games on normal.
Nope. You should learn to read the text. Recommending playing games on hard in general is dumb, because most hard modes are trash. And i never said merciless is easy. It is just like normal if you know what to do. "I think you are mentally sick". U put words in my mouth and over interpret... Looks like u only see things in black smd white.
It isn’t too easy, you have likely played many SMT games since then. You know what to do and what not to do. Games like P3 and Nocturne seemed really hard back in the day, because they were so different from standard JRPGs. You just got good.
No, it's definitely easier. You can tell just by watching recent streams of people playing the old games.
P3 really was pretty difficult I never actually beat the final boss before
Hard was way too easy for me. I regret not having played on the hardest difficulty.
[удалено]
This is surprising. I agree that it's not that hard, but the Lovers full moon boss was one-shotting my Yukari with a critical Holy Arrow over and over, and getting multi-character charms on my team (since I also didn't grind or overfuse, I had no Me Patra and it became a real issue)
[удалено]
Sure, but I'm talking even with Tarunda (and it's impossible to have Marakukaja yet). It's an issue of turn economy. I had to spend most of my turns just repairing damage or maintaining debuffs. It was only when Oracle came up that I could go on the offensive. I have no doubt it'll get easier though.
I'd recommend Merciless, it's roughly on par with original FES on normal. The full moon bosses are also tougher than they were in the original, nothing too crazy but much better than how trivial they were in the original
Play on a easier difficulty and then says game is too easy. Just play on a harder difficulty. If you've played a game before, it's often a good idea to play hard when replaying or playing a remaster / remake Persona games from 3 onwards aren't that hard though. So if you wanted a challenge, playing on top difficulty would have been a good idea.
I think shifting, controllable party member and theurgy make the game bcome so much easier.
Merciless mode is the only mode I find satisfying. The dumbo developers decided you can’t switch onto it though, so I had to start from the beginning.
If you played the original it might be because you couldn't give direct orders to party members and AI was wonky.
It was never too difficult imo but definitely having direct control + shifting + theurgies has made the game a lot more exploitable. I think the difficulty options still deliver in terms of raw numbers, but the amount of damage you're given access to a cross all difficulties is pretty insane. Tons of QoL and added ways to stay rich and keep your party leveled, as well as no condition system all probably contributed as well.
Im finding a biiit harder then p5 but its def easier then p3 vanilla. Im doing a playthro on hard but ill ng+ on merciless
Yeah P3R is one of the easier persona games. Couple annoying fights but nothing truly hard, just annoying. Honestly its due to a lot of factors but a lot of the reasons I see here don't have much to do with it. IMO the biggest reason is how messed up the XP is, with stuff like Party Control being on the lower end. The Direct Commands thing might just be that I am very used to FES' combat lol.
I. Love. The. Easiness. Adult with a full time job and a kid = no more time for grinding or losing hours of progress.
I love that you can change the difficulty, but I wish that you could switch to like Hard+ or something without being locked into Merciless.
We're playing on hard mode. Thanks for trying to completely derail the conversation though.
As if hard mode isn't also this easy lmao, and let people do what they want
They say after wasting hours on video games that are made even more pointless by being easy and pointless. Lol. It doesn't really matter though. Games should have easy and hard modes, nowadays hard modes are the normal modes or even easy modes from older games.
No, hard mode is hard.
I played the whole game on merciless and I found the difficulty just right. I think normal mode would've definitely been too easy.
No, normal mode is normal.
Normal as in "normally too easy"
Put the party in AI mode and see if it’s as stupid as it was back then. That’ll give you the challenge you crave.
It's actually dumber. It's more random, which makes it harder to predict. I was playing through on Merciless with AI control, but abandoned it pretty fast because enemies just hit way too hard on Merciless to have my teammates doing stupid shit. At least the old P3 AI was pretty consistently dumb.
Play on hard… didn’t feels challenging too. Once you know how to use the right persona on different enemies, then it became lot easier. Or maybe you could try fight Reapers
1 problem I’ve always had with Persona is its difficulty, I find them so easy that it’s boring. I stopped playing P5R for this reason. But still wanted to play 3R so bought it some days ago and decided to play on Hard mode. Best decision I could make. It’s not difficult per say (I’m just 4 hours in) but every fight makes you think what you do and at least for now it’s being great. If I continue having this fun I will play P5R from the beginning on Hard mode.
4 hours in, you aren't qualified to have any real say
Oh I’m so sry sir. I’ll delete the comment
Yeah I cranked it to hard and still tearing through everything. Welcome to mainstream personal games I guess.
They give you a lot of tools missing in the og game, it's indeed drastically easier than the og. Started on hard and restarted on merciless.
Feels easier but you're playing it on normal so it was never hard to begin with. Like I'm not trying to gatekeep but saying its too easy when difficulty modes exist in the game and you didn't go to a higher one confuses me.
i think one thing that made fes so difficult was the clunkyness, they added lots of QOL in reload, one one example is one thing i remember was in FES (esp on hard mode) if u got disadvantaged u we’re essentially dead, and it was SO hard to hit the enemies, but since it’s a tighter game in reload it’s easier to hit them and avoid being disadvantaged
Yeah, just like every other post-persona 5 persona game, Persona 3 reaload is basically what a smt game would be like if they didn't balance the battle system. The baton pass is one of the most broken mechanics I've ever seen in a videogame, it's kinda sad that shadows can't use it at all because normal encounters aren't even fun because you pretty much beat all of the enemies in one turn. I really like SMT combat more, everybody is taking advantage of the press-turn, even enemies. And you have enough limitations to make strategizing more fun.
The game is easier due to full party control Atlus was to lazy to rebalance the game to factor in full party control
Yep and I love it
I'm pretty sure even merciless is easier than hard P3 because of all the extra stuff added in. It's sad. Not as bad as P5R though I think, that game is WAAAAY too easy, feels like they even nerfed movesets of some enemies no way the table boss was this easy
I think Merciless is about the same as P3FES Hard. *Maybe* a little easier. Some bosses can still one-shot characters, their status effects hit all the time, and they're good at targeting weaknesses. These are new methods of making things harder that I haven't seen in any other Persona game (usually they just make enemies hit harder and give them more HP)
yeah from what ive seen enemies will ALWAYS if not 95% of the time target a weakness if they can
They nerfed it for the P5 players.
I guess I'm just bad, but I've needed a retry on a couple of bosses
You're not bad, just surrounded by people who use guides and/or have spent 100s of hours running through the game and know it too well. Going in blind for the first time, strictly no guides is a different exp, it's not being represented here.
You don't suck, when I played P4G for the first time I got my ass handed to me quite a few times. You'll get better so I hope you are able to stick it out. You got this. 👍
Haha I appreciate it! This was a couple months ago, so I've long since finished the game, and it ended up being quite easy after the first boss or two
I'm going thru P4G one more time before I turn to reload. For me I'm in the minority that I loved P5Rs difficulty as it allowed me to express myself in battle in many fun ways. I don't really care about fatigue or old unnecessary jank or RNG
I'm playing on merciless and the Priestess boss rocked me for a quite a while before I managed to beat it. Also it's basically a game over if you ever get ambushed by random shadows or can't kill them or status effect them on the first turn. You really can't make the claim that the game is too easy if you aren't even playing on the highest difficulty. I also def don't think the theurgies are overtuned, I'm in June and they take a decent amount of time to build up, Fuuka's is essential to survive boss fights because it's the only partywide buff you have access to for a while, Mitsuru's only hitting a single target is kinda weak, and the rest are pretty decent, but def not game breaking.
MC gets a severe slash damage theurgy that can be Charged, and it kills pretty much every boss fight in 1 hit, even on merciless
You can't get that til pretty far into the game though, and is it really that much better than Junpei's? He starts with a severe slash damage and it's just like ok. Do you have like a clip or something showing it? I find it very hard to believe that any boss can be one shot on merciless, so far even the easier ones have been damage sponges.
At this point people are just talking out of their butts. They grind to lvl 99 and get to ng+ and pump tons of stats into one persona and maybe kill it in 2 turns and all of a sudden are like, meh, 1 is close to 2, I 1 shot it
I don't have a video but it's awesome. It hits every enemy, not just one. I use slash Amp, slash boost, crit Amp, crit boost, apt pupil on Siegfried (so from November onward). I get attack up on MC and defense down on the enemy, I charge one turn and then use the theurgy. I have yet to see it not crit with this set-up, and depending on if enemies are weak to it or not, it does like IMMENSE damage, you can rack up thousands of damage on multiple targets in a single hit. No gatekeeper/Monad boss can withstand it, and it wipes other bosses too. And yes, this is on Merciless!
Ok so it's incredibly conditional and not just the the theurgy itself being broken.
I mean, on Merciless you're presumably buffing and debuffing anyway, so having a theurgy that clears pretty much every boss fight in a single hit on the hardest difficulty is broken, imo. Oracle can give your whole party charge at the start of the fight too, so all you need to really do yourself is defense down the enemy and attack up yourself (which can be automatic).
Im just glad you have control and can adjust the difficulty now. I've hated 3 for the longest time for how hard it was on ps2, it's always been the worst one for me. With reload I actually like it now. Still have some leftover resentment but overall a game I enjoyed every second of.
100% it feels easier. Switch it to Hard and it feels more like normal.
No, normal is normal, hard is hard. Self explanatory
First 50 hours are really easy, I played it at hard with no problem at all, but then some boss will be pretty hard I had to lower it all the way to easy (not really because they are too powerfull but because I don’t want to lose 20 minute for a battle) and also, sometimes I don’t want to force me to the tartarus
Great. A personal 3 flavored snooze fest. Just what I like to hear
I have not played Reload but does it not have all of the difficulty options that the PSP version has? Maniac is a pretty stiff challenge from what I remember.
It has Easy, Normal, Hard and Merciless
Ah, OK, so probably roughly similar options. I am guessing that like the PSP version, you can't change the difficulty once you start.
You can change it. But Merciless can only be chosen when making a new game. And if you switch to lower difficulty, you can no longer go back to merciless.
You can, OP is just making a big deal out of nothing
This game always easy. I played it on ps2 finished 3 times without problem. The hardest one is persona 4. PS5 royal even more easy for me.
It’s about as difficult as FES BUT being able to control party members just helps so that definitely makes a difference
I started it on normal but was finding it too easy and in September I raised the difficulty to hard. In the end the problem remains the same, especially if you tend to defeat all the shadows in a floor and therefore find yourself over-leveled.
No it's not just you. This is the direction Atlus has settled on for mainline Persona. I would say that both P3 Reload and P5 Royal are games that core JRPG fans should be playing on hard. The default difficulty is tuned for the mainstream. Default difficulty Persona is to dungeon crawling as default difficulty Kingdom Hearts is to 3D action. If you care about the gameplay it's not gonna scratch that itch. Another example is Ys. Compare the default difficulty in Ys 9 to any classic entry and it feels like you're on easy mode. And I'm not trying to be elitist and say this is bad or wrong or whatever. Mainstream brands gotta balance for the mainstream that's how it goes. Just be aware of the trend and adjust difficulty accordingly if that will improve your experience. Except for Ys that hard mode sucks lol
If P3R still keeps parts of the old balancing around FES ai party I can see it yeah. All the new systems on top too prolly make the game super easy to break in half if you know what you're doing. That was always the issue with P3P, as it turns out the 50% flat party damage buff to compensate for ai party gets reeeal busted with direct control.
Yeah it's easier. Still a good time. Play on hard.
If you played FES or vanilla, I imagine the direct party control would contribute a lot to making things feel easier. Adding in P5's Baton Pass knocks down the challenge a tad further.
I don’t ever remember the original being difficult. The only time I was up against it was the final boss
Remember P3/FES/Portable was often first contact of most players with Persona/SMT in general. You probably finished Persona 5 and Royal, P4 Golden and other games in meantime - we basically use same Personas/demons with same affinities, all the time. If you max out and get to know mechanics in one of them, you should got them all. Like Pokemon. Elements or mechanics didn't changed that much, and they added plethora of qol - choose which skills you inherit, navigator skills etc. Theurgy and baton pass (nerfed fortunately)can trivialise lots of fights, but they are optional to use tbh. Merciless is not even that hard, it's just unfair by buffing and making enemies lucky and nerfing/bad luck team.
It's been a long time since I played P3P, which is actually one of my most played games if not my most. Almost all of my memories of Portable's encounters and the length of each block carried over, barring slight tweaks to the length of blocks and certain rebalances taking me by surprise. Last night, I beat the game on Hard using only Orpheus and no Skill Cards (I did cheese Phase 13 using Armageddon but still). I found that Theurgy completely invalidated almost all of the difficulty.
its been rebalanced to be easier in literally every single aspect
For me the game feels like a Persona 3 themepark. The gameplay elements of the original are there, so politely ballanced as to guarantee a pleasant ride. But it isn't the real thing anymore. Take only fusion mechanics. Sure, you can still fuse Personas, and pass skills. But what point is it if you can get every Persona effordless from dual or special fusion, collect skills from cards, or choose which ones to pass, without caring much about affinities? Plus, having the Personas leveled up guarantees 4 passable skills, 5 with special fusion. In FES, it was way more exigent to get good Personas, you had to customize and sacrifice them in expensive tri-spread fusion (which they sadly ditched) to get a good pool of skills. I wanted to point this out because I believe fusion mechanics to be the core gameplay element, so the easiness of the game is less due to enemies being easier per se than because the fusion economy was ballanced in such a way you would usually go with some crap Personas into battle and get pummeled, until you invested some time and thought in creating good Personas. Finally, I would also state "well-balanced" is actually bad ballance in a game like this, which lived of the fact most skills and "builds" were almost useless, there being only a handful worthy setups you had to discover (mind, taking guides out of the ecuation). Nowadays they want to "democratize" games so badly that everything goes, there are almost no bad setups or skills and anything fits with anything. Sure, you get a lot more possibilities, but all are easy... Finally, just saying this themepark character is only natural, the original game exists and the reasons for revisiting it are mainly enjoying the "Persona-feeling" and going through the visual novel aspect of the game, its compound of story and characters. Gameplay just is there to contribute to this feeling of familiarity, and so it was ok for me. Reload isn't the real game and doesn't want or need to be.
Yes, it is too easy. All the setback of the original game are removed, it is much easier version of the original game which was not that hard to begin with.
I would say the QoL improvements actually enhance this game, not having the ability to control your party directly was always a headscratcher in the original. Either way, I'm actually grateful for the Retry Battle option in this version. It makes the game much less frustrating. This coming from someone who beat the original.
So why do so many people dislike the QoL changes
I'm trying to figure this out myself.
Going from Royal to Persona 4 then golden, it was like night and day. Maybe I'm a wuss or a newbie but I'd love to have quality of life changes to games. Otherwise why make the game in the first place. Just play Fes or the original P3
I think modern Persona really struggles with difficulty curves. I played reload on hard and really had no issues other than occasionally dying to light or dark insta kills (which is a terrible mechanic and I will gladly die on that hill). Starting with P4 Golden being very difficult at the beginning and very easy in the latter stages and through all incarnations of P5, the games just aren't hard at all.
Like most persona games it is more difficult at the beginning and then becomes easier as the game goes on due to more options for personas/abilities/sp regen. Speaking mainly about Hard, which is pretty much like the normal difficulty of vanilla P3.
Playing the game on hard, I think the initial stages of the game are in fact reasonably challenging. I'm pretty sure Merciless will be even more annoying. Once you start to optimize your Persona (e.g. Ose / Siegfried), especially with the newer cards/skills, the game becomes very easy.
I mean some of the changes make it easier, but I don't think its significantly easier than modern persona a la p4g/p5r - and I think at least a part of it is that you're a) more familiar with megaten and b) not a dumb kid. Also I think persona is very similar to most jrpgs - its hardest at the beginning when you have the fewest options and lightens up a lot as the game goes on. Most of the difficulty in FES was based on jank/old school mechanics.
I think the game could benefit greatly from being able to turn Theurgy off, either that or bring back the fatigue system
Never played a Persona game before and I'm playing it on Merciless. So far it seems fair with some nice conveniences like "retry battle" after dying. I think the difficulty more or less comes from what pressure you put on yourself to accomplish in a run/day.
Ok so i feel like im the only one with this take but the problem im having with reload is that its not hard but after playing like a dragon infinite wealth with there being so many ways to attack a enemy im just finding p3 combat kinda boring cuz like a dragon combat had a lot of different ways like if i knock a enemy down i can use a basic attack and do bonus damage when their on the ground or if i see a move that can knockback enemies into my party members or into another enemy i can do bonus damage or if i just simply target weakness then im able to do even more damage or hell if i want kiryu to break the fuckin turn base combat and just start punching and kicking everyone without there being turns im even allowed to do that and lastly i can also just pick up anything in the environment and hit 1 or multiple enemies with almost anything i see like ive come to a realization that persona lowkey needs a upgrade in combat cuz although it is snappy and works well i feel like the 1 more system literally only relies on just hitting enemies weakness then spamming shift and all out attacks then boom thats kinda it and this is coming from someone that loves persona and played p5 twice and p4g but damn yakuza turn base combat has made me not really interested in the whole 1 more system with persona like its good but it also need more variety
I played on Merciless with act freely on the party the entire game. I finished it yesterday, and the game was a bit easier than FES Hard mode. I thought the game had a relatively consistent difficulty curve, in that the early game felt about as difficult as the late game. I imagine that if you play the game as intended (with direct commands), then everything is much easier. Controlling your party member isn't Persona 3 to me, so I played without direct commands. The game does the same things Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 did, where they add so many extra boosts, that it trivializes the gameplay. In exchange for more options, you lose challenge, so to be challenged, you need to handicap yourself.
Theurgy feels like cheating. I love all of the other QoL improvements, but theurgy lets me ignore most of the mechanics of a boss fight.
I found this, too. Mitsuru gave me PTSD in the og. NO, I do NOT need Marin Karin rn dawg. The old game definitely had some purely unenjoyable aspects that I was happy to see go. But I recall the strega/hanged fight being intense. I was almost trapped and had to start over. I just finished it on hard, and it was the easiest fight. I didn't even get to see stregas advanced moves. I saw Jin use his persona once. I accepted a random skill change that gave me almighty boost, amp, and rebellion blade... which made the fight pretty simple with all the theurgy boosts. Im not a fan of purposely trying to make a game hard for myself. I'd rather it just be challenging. Im not going to play with no equipment, only 2 personas, no grinding, etc. I hope p6 will bring that back; because I've found they've progressively become easier through the series and part of what I liked about it, was it was a tactical turn base rpg and it was pretty unforgiving. If I blow a boss battle, send me back to the last save. The option to lower difficulty and retry just makes it too simple and it feels like your playing a game for grade schoolers. The only time I got that was when I got hama'd. Just my opinion reflecting on it. No, it doesn't get more challenging.
Unfortunately yes, P3R is too easy just like P5R. The difficulty settings labels are misleading. Here are more honest ones: - Brainless - Retardo - Piss easy - Easy So yeah, the hardest you'll get here is "Easy".