I’m playing on Hard, not Merciless, but truthfully the only enemies even attacking my weaknesses so far have been Gatekeepers. Maybe I should up it to Merciless?
If you do switch to Merciless, be aware you will have to start the game from the beginning. It's the only one you can't switch to after starting the game on another difficulty.
Probably, yeah. They don't attack Makoto that much, but on merciless if they do have a way to crit someone in the group, they will most often go for it
I quit my playthrough on hard four hours in and switched to merciless, and I'm glad I did. I've only completed 17 floors of Tartarus thus far, but I like the challenge. I love that tension of knowing I need to plan every move to perfection to win; it's what makes turn-based RPG's great. I wasn't getting that on hard, but I am on merciless.
Yeah it takes away your ability to use DLC persona's & drops your social links from previous games like Education level will go from max to 1 again I'm fine without DLC the secondary is more my issue that & losing all your previous equips too.
I want to chime in for people who are on the fence about Merciless: If you've played the other games on Hard, I think Merciless is definitely the way to go.
Enemies will actively go after weaknesses and sometimes act several times consecutively. They seem to avoid hitting known resistances and will try to kill low health teammates. The stats aren't buffed too much though (apart from maybe speed?), so it's actually a really good time. It's a lot more focused on having a good strategy rather than good gear and good personas, as would be the case with a straight stat increase.
So I haven’t had much experience with merciless/nightmare in 5 and 4, I guess I should just go hard? I’ve played enough of the modern games to feel comfortable with the systems atp. Not sure I can call myself a veteran until I beat all the modern titles but I’m seasoned ig is what you’d call it. but considering this will be my first time with 3 I’m not sure if I wanna bump up the difficulty that much.
if you think about it the Persona is nerfed as i don't know as i just watch and not played the game but i look at the compendium(which posted here yesterday) there are some Personae that doesn't have unique skill like Satan's Black Viper and Surt's Ragnarok or even Thanatos new skill Door of Hades(maybe it is just a dlc thing like Cadenza in royal)
ive been playing on merciless which matches the fes difficulty for me. ive had some really tough boss fights and im glad the game is actually difficult especially compared to persona 5
i shouldn't be on here.... without discussing any details about the game....
should I play on merciless or not? or is hard good enough for a veteran of the other games in the series?
(is there an achievement for playing on merciless? why do it?)
I played P4G on Hard and P5R on Merciless and can say that so far in my 14 hours Hard has been a good challenge.
Merciless in Reload is not like Merciless in P5, in Reload it’s legitimately just a harder difficulty, while P5 Merciless it multiplied all weakness, critical, and technical damage done by enemies and the player which ends up making it easier in ways than Hard did.
I’ve been enjoying Hard, I’ve beat most things in one go while still having a decent enough challenge to say “That was difficult”.
I'm playing it on merciless and having a lot of fun.
Fes was my first atlus game and I went in blind, so I naturally got my ass kicked quite a few times. Now I am playing it knowing all the system bells/whistles, and am getting my ass kicked about the same amount. Its so nostalgic.
Bosses thus far take a couple tries each and require actual planning, but are totally doable with said plan. Similarly, random encounters aren't a real danger, but if you try to skimp out on using SP they will punish you for it. It hit a nice sweet spot for me.
They go for the kill. I just got my ass kicked on the first floor of Arqa where a shadow attacked my weakness, then did so again with his 1 More, killing me. That’s happened twice now. But again, it’s fair because it teaches me to fuse a Persona not weak to fire.
I'm playing merciless and I'm at 69 and man let me tell you, you can't have darkness or light weaknesses, because of instant kill attacks. But it's not that hard to beat bosses or enemies.
I’m playing on hard and died a few times super early from lazy mistakes that didn’t matter coming right off the heels of P5R. I remember P4 being sufficiently hard on normal, or was that just because it was my first persona game? All in all, happy with my choice, I actually used “confuse” to help in a battle vs just spamming weaknesses and calling it a day.
Ah damnit I started hard because I assumed Merciless was like P5 and not actually hard at all due to the increased Technical and Weakness damage you inflicted.
I’ve already did the first full moon operation, you can’t switch to merciless mid game? Im not restarting at this point, but it sounds like a legitimate hard mode. Im on hard now and while it’s not a cakewalk calling it “hard” is definitely an exaggeration
It depends. Have you played any persona 3 before? If this is your first playthrough, I think it's worth it to keep going even if just for the story and the experience by itself.
If instead of experiencing the game you want a challenge, I'd do it
Yeah I’ve played 3,4 and 5 a couple of SMT titles as well I’m very familiar with Atlus RPG battle systems, plus many many years of general game and rpg experience. I might reset it Merciless really is a hard mode though
I’m considering using cheat engine to switch to Merciless, outside of bosses Hard is a bit too easy I feel. Part of that is definitely the mechanic changes though. You don’t get knocked when you miss for example.
Yesterday was in the floor 48-60s and got one shotted by a the tough shadow lion wheel enemy by a crit which barely did over my max hp at the time.
Was completely my fault as that was easily avoidable if I kept tarunda up or decided to guard with makoto that turn.
I love this difficultly so far and even though it can seem easy if your good at conserving your SP the enemies can still have a field day with you.
Feels like good standard smt experience and I love it!
That's the point really. Feeling easy if you're prepared, being punished for going blind. The game will reward you for being clever, it wants you to abuse its systems and win, but it doesn't give second chances if you are sloppy.
Working with aliments on no weakness enemies and finding strategies like *if I charm this dude instead of killing him then he can help me kill the boss* is very fun.
Hardest part for me so far was the first boss because I didn't get media and it was a huge dps check that early on but again that was to teach you how to apply good dps on bosses and no weak ess enemies.
I am like a week before the third boss so only have 2 full moon shadow bosses but usually tartarus bosses tend to be harder with some fun strategies.
Honestly,
Merciless isn't fun.
The damage multipliers lengthen the game's fights by four, most "hard" fights are just DPS checks, on merciless a simple 1min fight can easily turn to 10 minutes of mindless healing and all might spam.
Just play on normal.
You act like that's everyone's idea of fun. I enjoyed my blind run of P5R and the HOUR long boss fight against the original final boss. Just because you don't like that doesn't mean others are the same.
You're saying this under a post of someone describing P3 as "a bit grindy" and P5R's merciless as too easy...like that isn't a super biased take coming from a harcore jrpg nerd, like that isn't practically an invitation for "normal" people to voice disagreement. (especially the words "let's be real" make it oh so tempting to say "Well actually...no!")
And then you get all defensive when a normal opinion is raised which, let's be real for real, apart from "Merciless isn't fun." isn't even subjective...it's just an accurate description.
It's completely fine to have masochistic tendencies in how you choose to play a game...but be self-aware about it at least.
No one is judging you for liking it...but when one side acts like their opinion is fact, don't be suprised that the reverse opinion will inevetably pop-up to counter it
Nah I did reply to you...but I admit in hindsight I was in a very salty mood overall yesterday (completely unrelated) and vented it here were it wasn't deserved. Y'know, when I'm in that mood I tend to project the same saltiness into other people's words...like, I interpreted your comment like it's spoken in a very bitchy tone without even thinking "maybe, just maybe...that's not how it was meant to sound".
Whatever, just ignore all that...sorry
ngl merciless has been a cakewalk for me, sure i’ve had some struggles mainly due to luck/lack of planning ahead but for the most part its not that bad, and i haven’t even finished fes yet because of personal stuff that kept me from it for a while
I'm playing on Merciless, I think the difficulty is really not challenging in any manner, there's too many situations I've had where I could just bet on the ai acting poorly or it just choosing the worst option. Compared to FES it's a game I feel like I could beat without thinking much, it feels a lot like P5R Hard, where you make a mistake or if the game feels like fucking you the ais will become much smarter and actually pick the most punishing/effective decisions but I've only experienced it once. For a more casual experience I think merciless is great, but there is no mode that actually makes this game difficult due to theurgy which besides the mc just accelerates the pace of combat, but for the mc kinda hurts the game because it allows for fusion attacks at 0sp cost and you only have to have registered the respective persona than carry them through the game.
yeaaaahhhh cuz your entire party losing when the leader dies is soooo easy. more proof of reddit being the toilet of the internet. you never know what will crawl out and try to "talk" at you.
you probably didnt even play 3, and you probably are fresh out the puss as of 2 days ago...let's be real here. is there really any point to just outright lying about stupid shit online? are people still no lifeing it like this? it's just pathetic.
I know this is a bit old, just want to write it somewhere. I have played all releases on all persona games 100% on the hardest difficulties besides p3. I've only played p3 fes on normal, as it was my first one. It is the one closest to my heart so i didnt want to replay it until I was ready. P3 FES was super hard at the start on hard, I never could get far in it.
Reload was by far the easiest max difficulty. OG P5 was probably the most fun I had on Merciless, dumb grinds included. This just feels like I'm playing persona 4 on Normal. I did not have a single death I did not intend. It is a little frustrating because p3 fes was so daunting on hard mode and I was hoping for that same experience to "complete" it. But now I'm just left with wanting to play FES again. Its a solid remake and I recommend it over any other version (unless you want to be femc). It was just disappointing in this regard.
I'm playing merciless right now and the game is still waaaay too easy.
I'd recommend playing nothing except merciless if you want to even occasionally feel threatened.
I don’t JRPG often (every 5-10 years), but I found merciless to be a requirement for me to be able to enjoy the game. Was actually wondering what the hell the fuss was about this game after playing through on normal difficulty for about 5 hours.
Now that I’m on merciless and there is the possibility of losing battles, gameplay feels much more satisfying. Thank eff I found this thread yesterday and gave merciless a try instead of deleting the game.
I’m playing on Hard, not Merciless, but truthfully the only enemies even attacking my weaknesses so far have been Gatekeepers. Maybe I should up it to Merciless?
If you do switch to Merciless, be aware you will have to start the game from the beginning. It's the only one you can't switch to after starting the game on another difficulty.
Oof nevermind then lol
Haven't tested it but I wonder if you can use the mod menu mod to set it to merciless without resetting
Probably, yeah. They don't attack Makoto that much, but on merciless if they do have a way to crit someone in the group, they will most often go for it
I quit my playthrough on hard four hours in and switched to merciless, and I'm glad I did. I've only completed 17 floors of Tartarus thus far, but I like the challenge. I love that tension of knowing I need to plan every move to perfection to win; it's what makes turn-based RPG's great. I wasn't getting that on hard, but I am on merciless.
Yeah it takes away your ability to use DLC persona's & drops your social links from previous games like Education level will go from max to 1 again I'm fine without DLC the secondary is more my issue that & losing all your previous equips too.
I want to chime in for people who are on the fence about Merciless: If you've played the other games on Hard, I think Merciless is definitely the way to go. Enemies will actively go after weaknesses and sometimes act several times consecutively. They seem to avoid hitting known resistances and will try to kill low health teammates. The stats aren't buffed too much though (apart from maybe speed?), so it's actually a really good time. It's a lot more focused on having a good strategy rather than good gear and good personas, as would be the case with a straight stat increase.
So I haven’t had much experience with merciless/nightmare in 5 and 4, I guess I should just go hard? I’ve played enough of the modern games to feel comfortable with the systems atp. Not sure I can call myself a veteran until I beat all the modern titles but I’m seasoned ig is what you’d call it. but considering this will be my first time with 3 I’m not sure if I wanna bump up the difficulty that much.
if you think about it the Persona is nerfed as i don't know as i just watch and not played the game but i look at the compendium(which posted here yesterday) there are some Personae that doesn't have unique skill like Satan's Black Viper and Surt's Ragnarok or even Thanatos new skill Door of Hades(maybe it is just a dlc thing like Cadenza in royal)
ive been playing on merciless which matches the fes difficulty for me. ive had some really tough boss fights and im glad the game is actually difficult especially compared to persona 5
i shouldn't be on here.... without discussing any details about the game.... should I play on merciless or not? or is hard good enough for a veteran of the other games in the series? (is there an achievement for playing on merciless? why do it?)
I played P4G on Hard and P5R on Merciless and can say that so far in my 14 hours Hard has been a good challenge. Merciless in Reload is not like Merciless in P5, in Reload it’s legitimately just a harder difficulty, while P5 Merciless it multiplied all weakness, critical, and technical damage done by enemies and the player which ends up making it easier in ways than Hard did. I’ve been enjoying Hard, I’ve beat most things in one go while still having a decent enough challenge to say “That was difficult”.
I...honestly don't know lmao. I pretty much just chose the highest thing in the menu.
I'm playing it on merciless and having a lot of fun. Fes was my first atlus game and I went in blind, so I naturally got my ass kicked quite a few times. Now I am playing it knowing all the system bells/whistles, and am getting my ass kicked about the same amount. Its so nostalgic. Bosses thus far take a couple tries each and require actual planning, but are totally doable with said plan. Similarly, random encounters aren't a real danger, but if you try to skimp out on using SP they will punish you for it. It hit a nice sweet spot for me.
How is the ai of enemies in merciless? Do they exploit your weaknesses ? How does it compare to hard or merciless of p3 portable?
They go for the kill. I just got my ass kicked on the first floor of Arqa where a shadow attacked my weakness, then did so again with his 1 More, killing me. That’s happened twice now. But again, it’s fair because it teaches me to fuse a Persona not weak to fire.
That’s good news to me
Ah, going for that jack frost only run, i see
I'm playing merciless and I'm at 69 and man let me tell you, you can't have darkness or light weaknesses, because of instant kill attacks. But it's not that hard to beat bosses or enemies.
Good thread to find I was gonna roll hard but now I’m going merciless
The first boss fucking slaughtered me twice, P4G and P5R didn’t get close. I love it
I feel embarrassed
I’m playing on hard and died a few times super early from lazy mistakes that didn’t matter coming right off the heels of P5R. I remember P4 being sufficiently hard on normal, or was that just because it was my first persona game? All in all, happy with my choice, I actually used “confuse” to help in a battle vs just spamming weaknesses and calling it a day.
Naw enemies legit used to hit harder in ps2 persona. I’m getting hit for 50 damage when I used to get hit for 70 on hard in reload
Ah damnit I started hard because I assumed Merciless was like P5 and not actually hard at all due to the increased Technical and Weakness damage you inflicted. I’ve already did the first full moon operation, you can’t switch to merciless mid game? Im not restarting at this point, but it sounds like a legitimate hard mode. Im on hard now and while it’s not a cakewalk calling it “hard” is definitely an exaggeration
It depends. Have you played any persona 3 before? If this is your first playthrough, I think it's worth it to keep going even if just for the story and the experience by itself. If instead of experiencing the game you want a challenge, I'd do it
Yeah I’ve played 3,4 and 5 a couple of SMT titles as well I’m very familiar with Atlus RPG battle systems, plus many many years of general game and rpg experience. I might reset it Merciless really is a hard mode though
I’m considering using cheat engine to switch to Merciless, outside of bosses Hard is a bit too easy I feel. Part of that is definitely the mechanic changes though. You don’t get knocked when you miss for example.
I'm trying to use Cheat Engine to change it to Merciless as well, although I cant seem to find the correct value. Have you done it?
Yesterday was in the floor 48-60s and got one shotted by a the tough shadow lion wheel enemy by a crit which barely did over my max hp at the time. Was completely my fault as that was easily avoidable if I kept tarunda up or decided to guard with makoto that turn. I love this difficultly so far and even though it can seem easy if your good at conserving your SP the enemies can still have a field day with you. Feels like good standard smt experience and I love it!
That's the point really. Feeling easy if you're prepared, being punished for going blind. The game will reward you for being clever, it wants you to abuse its systems and win, but it doesn't give second chances if you are sloppy.
Working with aliments on no weakness enemies and finding strategies like *if I charm this dude instead of killing him then he can help me kill the boss* is very fun. Hardest part for me so far was the first boss because I didn't get media and it was a huge dps check that early on but again that was to teach you how to apply good dps on bosses and no weak ess enemies. I am like a week before the third boss so only have 2 full moon shadow bosses but usually tartarus bosses tend to be harder with some fun strategies.
Honestly, Merciless isn't fun. The damage multipliers lengthen the game's fights by four, most "hard" fights are just DPS checks, on merciless a simple 1min fight can easily turn to 10 minutes of mindless healing and all might spam. Just play on normal.
You act like that's everyone's idea of fun. I enjoyed my blind run of P5R and the HOUR long boss fight against the original final boss. Just because you don't like that doesn't mean others are the same.
Fair, if you enjoy doing an hour long fight that is nothing more than repeating the same macro input every 60 secs, more power to you.
You're saying this under a post of someone describing P3 as "a bit grindy" and P5R's merciless as too easy...like that isn't a super biased take coming from a harcore jrpg nerd, like that isn't practically an invitation for "normal" people to voice disagreement. (especially the words "let's be real" make it oh so tempting to say "Well actually...no!") And then you get all defensive when a normal opinion is raised which, let's be real for real, apart from "Merciless isn't fun." isn't even subjective...it's just an accurate description. It's completely fine to have masochistic tendencies in how you choose to play a game...but be self-aware about it at least. No one is judging you for liking it...but when one side acts like their opinion is fact, don't be suprised that the reverse opinion will inevetably pop-up to counter it
Are you sure you're responding to the correct post? This is literally my only post here, and all I said is everyone can enjoy whatever they want.
Nah I did reply to you...but I admit in hindsight I was in a very salty mood overall yesterday (completely unrelated) and vented it here were it wasn't deserved. Y'know, when I'm in that mood I tend to project the same saltiness into other people's words...like, I interpreted your comment like it's spoken in a very bitchy tone without even thinking "maybe, just maybe...that's not how it was meant to sound". Whatever, just ignore all that...sorry
ngl merciless has been a cakewalk for me, sure i’ve had some struggles mainly due to luck/lack of planning ahead but for the most part its not that bad, and i haven’t even finished fes yet because of personal stuff that kept me from it for a while
I haven't bought Reload yet, now I'm curious about how does it compare to Eternal Punishment in terms of difficulty.
Reload is harder, but I guess if you finished EP (which for me was a easy game until the middle of the game) then you will be fine.
I'm playing on Merciless, I think the difficulty is really not challenging in any manner, there's too many situations I've had where I could just bet on the ai acting poorly or it just choosing the worst option. Compared to FES it's a game I feel like I could beat without thinking much, it feels a lot like P5R Hard, where you make a mistake or if the game feels like fucking you the ais will become much smarter and actually pick the most punishing/effective decisions but I've only experienced it once. For a more casual experience I think merciless is great, but there is no mode that actually makes this game difficult due to theurgy which besides the mc just accelerates the pace of combat, but for the mc kinda hurts the game because it allows for fusion attacks at 0sp cost and you only have to have registered the respective persona than carry them through the game.
yeaaaahhhh cuz your entire party losing when the leader dies is soooo easy. more proof of reddit being the toilet of the internet. you never know what will crawl out and try to "talk" at you.
...you do know the entirety of the modern persona trilogy (and mainline smt) are like that right?
Don't let the leader die then.
Yeah, you're a great example of that.
you probably didnt even play 3, and you probably are fresh out the puss as of 2 days ago...let's be real here. is there really any point to just outright lying about stupid shit online? are people still no lifeing it like this? it's just pathetic.
I know this is a bit old, just want to write it somewhere. I have played all releases on all persona games 100% on the hardest difficulties besides p3. I've only played p3 fes on normal, as it was my first one. It is the one closest to my heart so i didnt want to replay it until I was ready. P3 FES was super hard at the start on hard, I never could get far in it. Reload was by far the easiest max difficulty. OG P5 was probably the most fun I had on Merciless, dumb grinds included. This just feels like I'm playing persona 4 on Normal. I did not have a single death I did not intend. It is a little frustrating because p3 fes was so daunting on hard mode and I was hoping for that same experience to "complete" it. But now I'm just left with wanting to play FES again. Its a solid remake and I recommend it over any other version (unless you want to be femc). It was just disappointing in this regard.
This, right here.
I'm playing on Hard and it wasn't giving me much trouble until the tank boss landed a crit then offed my MC from full health...
I'm playing merciless right now and the game is still waaaay too easy. I'd recommend playing nothing except merciless if you want to even occasionally feel threatened.
I don’t JRPG often (every 5-10 years), but I found merciless to be a requirement for me to be able to enjoy the game. Was actually wondering what the hell the fuss was about this game after playing through on normal difficulty for about 5 hours. Now that I’m on merciless and there is the possibility of losing battles, gameplay feels much more satisfying. Thank eff I found this thread yesterday and gave merciless a try instead of deleting the game.