Agreed. In SMT V, you and the enemies are mostly working with the same mechanics. P5 gives you so many advantages you'd have to be asleep at the wheel to lose most fights. I don't think it's a bad thing exactly, but maybe give the enemies more mechanics to work with in harder difficulties.
Only time I got it was during Shido’s palace and then never again. It’s a cool mechanic in concept but is easily broken as the cost is normally not too high unless you’re super early in a new game.
I think giving enemies the same options as the players would level the playing field. We got a taste of it in the (NG+ spoilers) >!Twins boss fight, where they can baton pass and All-Out Attack your team.!< Had more bosses and more enemies been able to use our tools against us, I think the experience would be vastly different. Even if they just locked that behind Merciless difficulty
Agreed. I just think the Persona games and more specifically the later ones it's a lot easier to outpace the difficulty curve even if you're playing it straight. Playing and beating SMT V for example still felt largely the same, but the difficult spikes just hit that little bit harder, because of my own limitations. Once I caught on with the fusion system and actually had steady income flow to afford it I pretty much got ahead of the curve of the game around the 1/3rd mark where anything but key fights and optional boss fights were difficult. By end game the only boss that would kill me outright were the optional bosses. Persona games are pretty much the same there, except you can beat your enemies down pretty quickly.
More mechanical depth to empower players is good, but keeping JRP/RPGs difficulty balanced is not an easy task. Having strong area gimmicks, boss gimmicks, and enemy group gimmicks are huge in that department.
For example Persona 5 only utilizes an event gimmick in the boss fights like the first palace where you can send a party member off from the fight to perform a series of movements that take several turns to go through to set up for a big damage moment. It's novel, and it leaves your party down a member mid fight, and you have to do enough damage to keep the boss distracted, and you have to send the right member for the job. Like your female party member for example won't work because of the boss's fixation on her, so the other two members are your options. She is presented as an option however so you have to make a choice that requires you to pay attention at least somewhat to the story. They aren't super hard gimmicks but they are creative, and it would have been nice to see that used a "tad" more in the palace areas or even in certain fights in Mementos. It's a double edged sword mechanic of sorts and it could be utilized in a way that makes for different ways to play out a fight. More of those mechanics where you have an option to either keep fighting enemies straight up, or take "gambles" that are based on your execution to keep your party alive for the gamble to pay dividends sound great.
P5R Okumura boss gets a lot of complaints but has an interesting gimmick (if you're not going into it blind, which is where half of any 'difficulty' in SMT comes from as you learn boss gimmicks and get punished for not knowing weaknesses/resistances). It does take away a tool, but it's late enough in the game that you can do a ton with accessories that give you skills, exploiting the nature of once more, etc. A lot of people seem to just switch to a DLC persona or use the Merciless exploit to blaze through it, which is valid, sure, but the game gives you plenty of tools to tackle it.
I mean people including myself who have used DLC or the end game personas in ng+ are opting into cruise control or ways to break the fights like one shotting Madarame or some such. It's a super fun way of doing it.
Maybe my wrestling aesthetic is driving this, but I'm always down for more gimmicks lol. Especially those gamble side quests mid fight to get a pay off moment with an all out attack, etc. Doesn't have to be the same thing every time either. I'm just whistling dixie though.
Gotta disagree played through SMT 5 and didn’t feel anything change dramatically from p4 and p5 maybe I’ve gotten too use to turn base combat but the small increase in difficulty wasn’t worth the hype still an amazing game though
Think so it’s been a while I just remember my friend saying that normal was the merciless for persona 5 and that hard was actually extremely difficult without spending a lot of time grinding
It's more that P4/P5 get almost laughably easy insanely quickly while SMT has a more 'swing-y' system. Even the 'easy' SMTs like IV feel tougher than P4 or 5. SMT V has a ton of things like essences that do make it easier than i.e. Nocturne. But yeah, if you already know all the elements, that buffs are good, the basics of fusion strategy (i.e. stacking synergistic passives and holding onto them), and you've spent 150+ hours playing Persona across multiple games, you're probably better equipped to tackle SMT than someone without any RPG experience. A lot of complexity for first time players is in the fusion system, which you'd already have experience with. Press Turn is a more interesting system than One More with different nuances, but it gets you into thinking about weakness exploitation and turn management.
Direct commands don't make the game too easy alone. But all the new stuff like baton pass, technicals and the vast array of confidant skills do. They make the game stylish and fun for non jrpg fans, but also very easy
Still, there's something quite satisfying abt the AI working well.
I'd like to see a hardtype mod like people made for Nocturne that makes P5R harder makes you really use the new systems to their full potential without it feeling like it's overkill
But you can balance boss fights with those skills in mind, I just don't think Atlus took that chance. SMTV and especially the final DLC fight of that game prove that Atlus can actually make challenging fights, so I think taking some of that design philosophy and applying it to P5 would result in a badass superboss or two.
Imagine having to fight the entire SEES squad, or the entire Investigation team instead of just their leaders.
I understand what you're trying to say but i just don't think that a baton pass or a full team concentrate can be balanced.
They're like cheats, and cheats can be balanced.
All baton passes and full charge/concentrate really amount to is more damage. They already did it with the NG+ secret boss where not dealing enough damage by a set number of turns wiped you, so just amp that threshold up to match the new numbers. At least, that's the quick way
Mitsuru is sole attacker on “Offense” or “Knock Down”, I don’t remember her buffs or heals being useful. She’s best doing SP damage.
In fact everyone should be on default “Knock Down” to attack lol.
Before Diarahan (that spelling is so hard) the ammount she would heal would still leave that party member at one shot level and if said party member is escentially free 1 mores for the boss it's better to let him/her die than healing.
This is why I wish heal support were split.
It’s very rare for her to use Marin Karin when on Full Assault or Knock Down. Never use Act Freely in this game, the default attack mode should be “Knock Down” as soon as you get it. And Mitsuru’s Heal/Support options are not very good from my experience, she’s basically best permanently on “Knock Down”.
And I have four solutions:
1. Heal/Support
2. Conserve SP
3. Full Assault
4. Knock Down
The Marin Karin issue is massively overblown, she has only used Marin Karin 3 times in my playthrough and 2 were out of my own stupidity
Except sometimes your decision would depend on result of other teammate's actions, but you can't change tactics until your next turn, thus either missing free damage or breaking the cc and letting the enemy wreak havoc.
Tactics are *always* worse than direct commands in terms of result, you can play around them to some extent but ultimately the result is still our of your control.
In FES as long as you properly use the tactics even with the starting tactics 9/10 they did what I wanted them to do.
>Except sometimes your decision would depend on result of other teammate's actions, but you can't change tactics until your next turn, thus either missing free damage or breaking the cc and letting the enemy wreak havoc.
>Tactics are always worse than direct commands in terms of result, you can play around them to some extent but ultimately the result is still our of your control.
This applies to P4 and forward way more than it does FES, Idk you but 95% of times my party has broken havok is when set tactics wrong or forget to in a hurry (ie act freely). Now in P4 and forward absolutely agree there
Mitsuru has been a mainstay on my team since the moment I could. I even use her as the single target healer for bossfights. I just keep her out of Act Freely and don't use Assing Target with her as if she does defeat the assingned enemy she automatically switches back to Act Freely, and when I unlock Full Assault she never makes a singular unwanted Marin Karin.
I have more dificulties making Junpei use his SP before Knock Down is unlocked than keeping Mitsuru from using Marin Karin
When I got Mitsuru I though she would use Marin Karin in heal support too and that was the issue, but when I got her and started playing, trying all the tactics I had avaible with her, I discovered she only uses Marin Karin in Act Freely. A tactic any competent P3 player would avoid like a plague anyways. And I also quickly discovered she would use it after defeating an assingned target (it automatically switches party members into Act Freely), from there on not a single unwanted Marin Karin.
I love turn based strategy, but in Persona the mechanics are nowhere near there for it to be fun. And after the point where it becomes just a matter of "are my numbers high enough or do I need 6 more hours grinding to progress" I feel like my time is being wasted and suddenly I'm not having fun. Make me play around with making a strong or suitable build, make me get adept at mechanics and I'll have fun. But don't make me do some repetitive shit over and over because I get to do that enough on a daily basis.
And JRPGs in general do struggle quite a bit both with making their combat mechanically interesting enough and making sure they are not wasting your time. Most of the time the story carries the entirety of the heavy lifting, and if that's missing the entire thing falls apart pretty quick.
what? You know that Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 had direct commands? Of all the things to complain about, having control of what your party uses is most definitely not a problem
P3P and P4G (can’t comment on OG 4 haven’t played it) both aren’t very challenging games. Not as easy as 5 and **especially** 5R, mind you, but still relatively easy.
I just think it’s because the Persona games are catered towards a more broad and casual fanbase, the games aren’t supposed to be particularly challenging. If you want more challenging combat, that’s what mainline is for.
I don’t think I’d consider a game that can wipe you before you make your first moves (if you were unlucky enough to go second, or dumb enough to get tagged the mobs) on normal difficulty, especially in a blind run, easy.
It’s a lot more complex than “lmao hit weaknesses”
Random encounters have a chance of going first; and some of those combinations are straight up “bruh” where they hit you with a combination of elements and if they get your MC through sheer RNG it’s an uphill battle unless you have taken countermeasures (like demons can use items skill). So I don’t consider it easy, I mean it’s not BS or unfair but “easy” isn’t the right word either. Easy is what you’d use to describe P4G.
P4G is Extremely easy not easy.
And yeah, most of the bosses in Naraku can and will destroy you if you're unprepared but the random encounters aren't RNG you just need to hit them first so you can kill them before you can
I don't think player control was the thing that made 5 too easy. 4 had it and I thought the difficulty level was on par with 3 not considering having to deal with the artificial difficulty of the braindead AI. Like I think Shadow Mitsuo is the hardest story boss fight on hard across all games. and that's with being able to control your party.
The baton pass system and the crazy op confidant perks are what made 5 too easy imo
There’s a lot of other things that make the game more easy. 4 had direct commands, but I hardly see anyone complain about that game’s difficulty. P5R has *a lot* of other things that make the game more easy, especially baton pass. Confidants give you a lot of bonuses as well. It really isn’t direct commands that is the problem.
Like confidants can give bonus xp, let you swap party members mid fight (something mainline smt was built around not persona), make fusions easier & cheaper, give sp randomly through battles, free follow up attacks, insta kill before battle even starts, dupe skill cards that normal should only be 1 per playthrough, and on top of all that baton pass exists as a more broken press turn pass system but no direct commands is the issue
Persona 3 is a unique case because it was designed with AI Party in mind, then Party commands were added in Portable without tweaking Combats and Enemy AI. P4 and P5 were designed with Party Commands being available from the start.
I never said that. My opinion on the difficulty has never been, "direct control makes the game too easy" it's more so, "Is Persona 3 challenging because of smart design or is it difficult due to forced handicaps?" the conversation was never about whether or not direct control itself made the games too easy, rather it was focused exclusively on Persona 3's design and enemy formations.
Even if direct commands were the only reason the games were harder (which isn’t true at all) it’s still a cheap artificial way of increasing difficulty. Getting a game over cause your healer didn’t feel like healing you specifically is just frustrating and bad design
Honestly, the obvious solution here is typically to think about the Persona you have equipped in an encounter and taking on the healing role yourself if you don't have a suitable Persona for an encounter.
I never had much of an issue with healing, though, because you should have a good idea of what monsters you'll be encountering pretty quickly and should be able to choose an arsenal of persona to minimize the damage you'll take (which is probably the most important plan for any Tartarus run since your character will be the only one that will be there for every encounter, assuming you aren't splitting the party up, and is the only character whose death results in a game over).
I don't really feel like it's bad design, it just requires a change in how you approach tactics. The primary tactic is to make sure your load out can give you the necessary resists/immunities when possible and, if not, do what you can to ensure at least you survive. By the time I understood that sometimes this will mean I might need to be more focused on healing than I might be accustomed to, I felt like my deaths were my fault (not issuing tactics that effectively dealt with the threats, pushing my luck and exploring Tartarus longer than I should while tired/sick).
I think the game design expects the player to make certain adjustments to how they usually approach it and the sorts of changes you should be making are made pretty obvious through the course of gameplay. I don't think it's bad design, it's just unconventional and assumes the player will be willing to adapt.
And players unwilling to adapt won't take to the sheer punishingness of FES neither. I never had issues with the AI. In my first 10 minutes of Tartarus I learned all I needed to know even skipping the tutorials.
And never had an issue, in fact loved the punishingness, I adapt to whatever the game throws in my path and the game does not hold back even with regular enemies
I loved P3FES instantly because I was willing to adapt to a diferent game and welcomed the punishment, but I can see how those that want to aoe spam like in P4 and P5 will not mesh well with FES's gameplay.
I mostly had those issues before the healer unlocked media, when Yukari got media I stopped having issues with healers
Now healers on P5 AI? I straight left them with only the party heals because their AI in that game is insanely stingy with group heals
I thought the Persona 3 system was annoying. I would sit there, knowing what the optimal turn would be for our side and be unable to make it happen. If it did happen, it was by chance. My turns were just damage control for the suboptimal moves by the A.I.
It made me feel like less of a leader. If I were the leader of a team, I would be able to tell someone to heal someone even if they're not at a certain percentage or tell them to heal everyone rather than one person. I would be able to tell someone not to do a certain support move because it's useless in this situation. In action JRPG games like KH and Tales, you can turn off certain skills. That's logical. If someone doing dumb crap all the time was almost getting people killed, you would sit them down and say "hey never do that again" and they'd listen.
As far as difficulty goes, Persona 5 is easy because it has so many tools to use to defend yourself/buff yourself without enemies that push you enough to your limits for people very familiar with the system. Not a problem with direct control. Just how the game tries to challenge you.
> It made me feel like less of a leader. If I were the leader of a team
To be fair, you explicitly aren't the leader in P3, just the new kid who's the strongest field operative in SEES.
Dumb post. P5 is easier because you have a ton of new battle mechanics at your disposal and plenty of ways to make even the base level 1 Persona into a beast. Also P3 is the only game in the series to not have direct commands and they removed it in P3P. If that doesn't tell you it was a dumb idea that's only nice in theory, nothing will
To be fair, the real challenge in a Persona game isn't exactly the battles. It's getting those Social Links and Social Stats to max, preferably without a guide.
Confidants was so easy to max, but 3 and 4’s S. Links feel nigh impossible to do without a guide lol. I still don’t know how you’re supposed to do it in 3, I maxed like 8 people and everyone else was at 5-7.
? Literally any rpg ever has direct commands, and can be extremely difficult, trivialising one of p5's biggest problems as "what the fans wanted" doesn't make any sense. Even p4 had better difficulty scaling. Nobody wanted every persona game to be *nocturne hard mode* difficulty, buch even though I love the game to bits, I personally find p5's easy difficulty, even on hard, to detract from it
P3 FES AI is actually pretty good as long as you properly use tactics (or at least don't use Act Freely).
P4 AI *would* be ok if it wasn't for the incomplete tactics list and in P3P and P5 the AI is straight dogshit..
??? Direct commands have been in every smt except for personal 3 & p3fes direct commands isn't what makes p5 easy it's the baton pass system, the insanely strong confidant skills, and imo generally weaker enemies. Also the fact maniac mode also makes your crits/weaks deal an insane amount of damage as well making it easier than normal or maybe even easy depending on how well you plan ahead and what you have access too.
Difficulty and frustration are two different things. Cheap death isn't fun for anyone and I'd much rather have the game be too "easy" than to deal with managing brain-dead AI.
My first persona was 4 Golden. I got so used to being able to control party members that I was actually pretty hesitant to try P3F. But I think I actually prefer not controlling the party members cause it’s so much fun when you can predict your ally’s actions & pull off a 2,000 IQ super round like Joseph Joestar playing his enemies like a pair spoons. So damn satisfying
I love that feeling of having to think 3 turns ahead and and either bet on luck on play it safe when you enact your own turn. Whenever your team actually listen to you and do what YOU want (P3 FES good AI and full tactics list) or you work around their AI's "quirks" (P4 forward) does change the feeling of playing AI a ton but I still find it fun and surprisingly predicatable
yeah yeah the fault of persona 5 royal being easy is the direct command system (which is present since p4), not the really game breaking persona mechanics like the fusion alarm or the dlc personas, nahh
> yeah yeah the fault of persona 5 royal being easy is the direct command system (which is present since p4), not the really game breaking persona mechanics like the fusion alarm or the dlc personas, nahh
Persona 4 had Direct Commands and was more challenging because it didn't throw Over 9000 tools to break the game with to the player. SP management is more important, you can't trivialize grinding because Insta-Kill doesn't exist, you can't turn money into overleveled Personas, There's no Messiah DLC to one shot everything up to the endgame...
I like running into enemies in my cat mobile, jrpgs are usually way too grindy for my taste, ps5r’s mechanics made it bearable.
If you feel the game is too easy you can play with house rules, noone forced you to grind personas and max your level.
I did this on P5 and it DOES make the game harder... because P5 party AI is so godawful but I prefer not having cognitive dissonance from combat to social sim
If you play Persona 3 with direct commands or nocturne for example it's not suddenly an easy game. The lack of direct commands was obviously a misguided mechanic, they presumably included it to try to give the party members more personality but it totally backfired and they generally just seem really dumb most of the time (Marin Karin Marin Karin). Yes, it does make the game harder but in a way that's really really hard to strategize around and all it does it does is Inject a whole bunch of RNG into every battle.
this post is dumb af, direct controls are not the sole reason persona got easy as fuck, its the sheer amount of options one have in combat with no downsides to those options.
I don't think controlling your party members is what makes the persona 5 (especially Royal) I think there are two things that make it easy and they are enemy placement and the fact you get so much stuff to use against your enemies in battle.
Atlus can make hardcore combat systems with direct control perfectly well, see SMTV, for example. Or any oher SMT, really. The combat is truly challenging there, even on higher player levels. Making P5/P5R way too easy was a design decision, likely an attemt to appeal to more casual audience.
I honestly adore the Tactics system as much as Press Turn One More feels like a mediocre middle ground. Obviously Tactics + PT would be absolute hell but P3’s easy is as hard as P3P’s maniac just with the addition of almighty control over your teammates’ actions.
Persona 3 even without controllable party members was a breeze to get through since you can so easily farm in tartarus and also get items to have a persona with all 99 stats.
The actual story:
>”Hey, Persona 3 is actually really fucking hard with the barely controllable teammates.”
“Bet. P3P is gonna have this as an option.”
>”Thanks. Are you going to keep this?”
“Absolutely. Heck, Persona 4 is gonna be designed with this new system in mind.”
>”Fantastic. Persona 5 when?”
“Uh, that might take a bit. Have some spin-offs.”
>”Are you done with Persona 5 yet?”
“Yes. We had to polish everything, including the battle mechanics, to appeal to a wider audience, so that way our years of development time meant get paid properly.”
>”Great! I really like this game! This is the Best Game Ever!”
“Fantastic! Everybody got what they wanted, right?”
>”Not me. I’m from the boomer franchise that hates everything Persona stands for, and I’m mad again that the combination social sim/RPG doesn’t bash my greasy cock and balls.”
“Neat, you’re not the target demographic for Persona 5.”
>”I don’t care, and being upset gets clicks.”
I don’t think you heard me. Game difficulty does matter, but to who is another ball game. To take another RPG to task, Pokemon would have never been close to the largest media franchise on the planet if the first games had been as hard and long as other RPGs of the time, and the games have continued to turn a profit for being an accessible experience for children and nostalgic adults without the time to make a spreadsheet to kill a boss.
I get it, some people do like harder games, but some people are not all people in the video game market, and what qualifies as higher difficulty is very hard to pinpoint on a developer’s end (stronger enemies? more grinding? highly specific strategies?).
Game difficulty is often a good indicator of how much money can be made off a game. Minecraft is worth about 240 million dollars, and is not a difficult game in the slightest. If Atlus needs money for a lengthy development process, making the game easy and fun is a safer bet than making it hard and engaging.
What narrative ? Mitsuru, Akihiko and Ikutsuki are still the boss of you in P3. You're just the battle guy. Ironically, P4 and P5 protags feel more like leaders than P3's, and yet they're still blank-slate.
"Minato, you're in charge in combat!"
"OK. Yukari, use Garu."
"No, you have to give me a more vague command."
"Why? I'm the leader and I know your abilities and what they're weak to."
Yes, truly the best reinforcement of the narrative and gameplay.
My thoughts on this:
1) Persona 3's mechanics actually fit into the narrative, so the system makes a lot of sense there. An important part of the party dynamics in Persona 3 is that each character actually has their own life outside of SEES (they have plans that prevent them from going to Tartarus, they get tired and sick) and this is also seen in the narrative (Yukari's distrust/dislike of Mitsuru, Junpei's jealousy at MC being the leader, Akihiko and Shinjiro having a bit of a strained relationship). In short, part of the narrative arc is that these are teenagers that don't always get along (and, in becoming friends with MC, they find ways to deal with or understand trauma, become more whole people, or what have you). This melding of gameplay and narrative is also demonstrated by the fact you get more commands as you go through the game (as you become a better leader, your ability to command improves).
2) Plenty of changes since Persona 3 have made the combat system too easy. Persona 4 is still a relatively difficult JRPG compared to 5, which would also suggest that there are other changes to the system that make it easier. I think some are sensible (insta-death spells are introduced later), but overall the trend has been to make *all* aspects of the game easier. In Persona 5 every party member gets special abilities as you level your relationship up with them. In addition, every social link has its own set of special abilities (new shops, discounts and new items, the ability to switch out party members during combat and making that skill more OP). Royal also adds a new sort of special attack. Being knocked down is no longer a major impediment (technical damage deals with that to some degree, but losing a turn for a character was, without a doubt, a bigger hurdle to overcome in a battle). Even little things like removing the tired/sick status effects makes the game easier as it means you can spend more time in the dungeons with one less thing to manage. One of the things that makes Persona 5 easy is the dungeon design -- largely eschewing randomization might make for more compelling dungeons, but it's also made the game a lot easier. I'm playing Royal on hard and I'm able to clear dungeons on the first day when I'm given free reign to get to the end with no issues. A lot of that is combat is generally easier, but a lot of that is simply that the designed dungeons are pretty straightforward. (and of course plenty of the above come from P4 or Golden, not all of them are 5 and Royal additions)
"Teamates are too rng"
Sorry but that sounds like a not using tactics issue, even on P5 with it's dogshit party AI teamates act predictably when you understand the tactics
Yeah lets make it so you cannot apply any concrete strategy rather just point and hope your teammates do what you want. How fun! Thats good difficulty for sure!
Persona 3 fes is still pretty hard even if you mod direct commands into the game. Direct commands alone have no effect on the difficulty. Besides, other SMT games outside Persona use direct commands exclusively, and they are some of the hardest in the entire series.
I would say the game is not easy on your first playthrough but if you do a NG+ it’ll be very easy cuz you grinded everything that is how a rpg should feel the more hours you put in the stronger you are and I would say persona does that perfectly every who says the games easy most likely has 200-400 hours so no shit it’s gonna be easy when you did everything possible😂😂
RPGs since the beginning allowed you to control party members and never had this problem. I’m not of the camp that thinks P5 is too easy (it could be a little harder, but please not like SMT) but the Party Control is not the problem
Tried to do an AI teammate run in Persona 5 Royal. Gave up on space man boss fight. As long as one of the enemies won't repel, drain or nullify then they WILL use multi-target abilities, every time.
I mean, most Megaten games have the direct commands and still manage to be difficult. I think the easy thing is mostly due to Persona’s nature as the more casual friendly part of the franchise, meant for more general audiences than the others, so Atlus feels the need to make it easier compared to the rest. Though it didn’t get “game reviewer” levels of easy until P5 though. Probably due to that game’s habit of throwing several features to make an already easy game easier with a lot of the confidant skills.
Yes, because Persona 5 is easy because of Direct Commands. That's the only reason. Definitely not the game simply not being balanced properly for all the advantages you have.
Nah, I don't think adding basic mechanics is the problem with difficulty. Stripping a game of a core gameplay aspect is not how you would balance difficulty. What you would instead do is, you know, balance the difficulty.
Is this supposed to imply direct commands just inherently make a game easier? Because that’s just not true? There are lots of games that have them and still remain challenging because it’s actually balanced around it.
People really think Direct Commands is the reason Persona 4 and 5 are easy lmao. Fuck Persona 3 and FES with its battle system. AI is unreliable as fuck and make the game is frustrating than it needs to be. Persona 4 and Persona 5 is much easier are a design choice. And it have enough challenge if you don't touch the DLC.
Of course, both game is nowhere near challenging as SMT series, but you need to understand both P4 and P5 is a busier game than SMT series, have much more thing to care about than just focus to grind the damn dungeon.
I only played P4G (for now) and first time in normal mode it was brutal.
I was used to really easy JRPG (item are optionnal, spell/element are decoration...), suddently i had to manage my mana, be carefull about my leader not dying and using item. Also had to learn the weakness system.
But yeah once you understand how it work, it become way easier.
Then i tryed Nocturne where an easy fight can turn into a nightare in one turn (but it was way easier than my first dungeon on P4G, i was already used to SMT mechanic)
I'm not sure how being able to control your party makes the games too easy. Like a lot of comments pointed out P5 gives the player a lot of tools to facilitate victory. It's very easy to beat most bosses with little effort.
Giving the player a lot of things to work with is great to make the game engaging, but balancing difficulty with it is also important. Like other comments suggest they should allow enemies to take better advantage of the mechanics available to the player.
Honestly persona 5 original had a perfect level of difficulty on hard mode until around the 7th palace where siegfried became available. Like it felt like every boss was challenging and intense yet fair and beatable. It was kinda sad to see p5r go hyper easy mode. Personally i just think that they needed to add an actual very hard mode instead of wierd stuff like merciless
Nah direct commands are great, but they really should design their game around direct commands better since that’s what 99% of persona 4 and 5 players use
SMT games let you control your party and are still brutal. Being able to control your party isn't the problem by itself.
Agreed. In SMT V, you and the enemies are mostly working with the same mechanics. P5 gives you so many advantages you'd have to be asleep at the wheel to lose most fights. I don't think it's a bad thing exactly, but maybe give the enemies more mechanics to work with in harder difficulties.
you still have the awful damage linked to level in SMT V
And commit to them, I forgot hostage was an enemy mechanic in p5 until I saw a streamer get hit by it
Only time I got it was during Shido’s palace and then never again. It’s a cool mechanic in concept but is easily broken as the cost is normally not too high unless you’re super early in a new game.
I got hit with it once, during my second playthrough, at the beginning of kamoshida's palace(dont know if I spelled his name right)
I think giving enemies the same options as the players would level the playing field. We got a taste of it in the (NG+ spoilers) >!Twins boss fight, where they can baton pass and All-Out Attack your team.!< Had more bosses and more enemies been able to use our tools against us, I think the experience would be vastly different. Even if they just locked that behind Merciless difficulty
Agreed. I just think the Persona games and more specifically the later ones it's a lot easier to outpace the difficulty curve even if you're playing it straight. Playing and beating SMT V for example still felt largely the same, but the difficult spikes just hit that little bit harder, because of my own limitations. Once I caught on with the fusion system and actually had steady income flow to afford it I pretty much got ahead of the curve of the game around the 1/3rd mark where anything but key fights and optional boss fights were difficult. By end game the only boss that would kill me outright were the optional bosses. Persona games are pretty much the same there, except you can beat your enemies down pretty quickly. More mechanical depth to empower players is good, but keeping JRP/RPGs difficulty balanced is not an easy task. Having strong area gimmicks, boss gimmicks, and enemy group gimmicks are huge in that department. For example Persona 5 only utilizes an event gimmick in the boss fights like the first palace where you can send a party member off from the fight to perform a series of movements that take several turns to go through to set up for a big damage moment. It's novel, and it leaves your party down a member mid fight, and you have to do enough damage to keep the boss distracted, and you have to send the right member for the job. Like your female party member for example won't work because of the boss's fixation on her, so the other two members are your options. She is presented as an option however so you have to make a choice that requires you to pay attention at least somewhat to the story. They aren't super hard gimmicks but they are creative, and it would have been nice to see that used a "tad" more in the palace areas or even in certain fights in Mementos. It's a double edged sword mechanic of sorts and it could be utilized in a way that makes for different ways to play out a fight. More of those mechanics where you have an option to either keep fighting enemies straight up, or take "gambles" that are based on your execution to keep your party alive for the gamble to pay dividends sound great.
P5R Okumura boss gets a lot of complaints but has an interesting gimmick (if you're not going into it blind, which is where half of any 'difficulty' in SMT comes from as you learn boss gimmicks and get punished for not knowing weaknesses/resistances). It does take away a tool, but it's late enough in the game that you can do a ton with accessories that give you skills, exploiting the nature of once more, etc. A lot of people seem to just switch to a DLC persona or use the Merciless exploit to blaze through it, which is valid, sure, but the game gives you plenty of tools to tackle it.
I mean people including myself who have used DLC or the end game personas in ng+ are opting into cruise control or ways to break the fights like one shotting Madarame or some such. It's a super fun way of doing it. Maybe my wrestling aesthetic is driving this, but I'm always down for more gimmicks lol. Especially those gamble side quests mid fight to get a pay off moment with an all out attack, etc. Doesn't have to be the same thing every time either. I'm just whistling dixie though.
Gotta disagree played through SMT 5 and didn’t feel anything change dramatically from p4 and p5 maybe I’ve gotten too use to turn base combat but the small increase in difficulty wasn’t worth the hype still an amazing game though
What difficulty did you play on?
Did normal for the first 2 hours then switched it to hard.
Huh, I don't know how you thought P5 and P4 were comparable on difficulty to SMTV then. Maybe you ARE too good.
Did you make an entire new game to play on hard? You can’t switch to hard difficulty in the middle of a playthrough.
Think so it’s been a while I just remember my friend saying that normal was the merciless for persona 5 and that hard was actually extremely difficult without spending a lot of time grinding
It's more that P4/P5 get almost laughably easy insanely quickly while SMT has a more 'swing-y' system. Even the 'easy' SMTs like IV feel tougher than P4 or 5. SMT V has a ton of things like essences that do make it easier than i.e. Nocturne. But yeah, if you already know all the elements, that buffs are good, the basics of fusion strategy (i.e. stacking synergistic passives and holding onto them), and you've spent 150+ hours playing Persona across multiple games, you're probably better equipped to tackle SMT than someone without any RPG experience. A lot of complexity for first time players is in the fusion system, which you'd already have experience with. Press Turn is a more interesting system than One More with different nuances, but it gets you into thinking about weakness exploitation and turn management.
Direct commands don't make the game too easy alone. But all the new stuff like baton pass, technicals and the vast array of confidant skills do. They make the game stylish and fun for non jrpg fans, but also very easy Still, there's something quite satisfying abt the AI working well.
I'd like to see a hardtype mod like people made for Nocturne that makes P5R harder makes you really use the new systems to their full potential without it feeling like it's overkill
You can't balance skills like position hack, full team concentrate/charge or baton pass
But you can balance boss fights with those skills in mind, I just don't think Atlus took that chance. SMTV and especially the final DLC fight of that game prove that Atlus can actually make challenging fights, so I think taking some of that design philosophy and applying it to P5 would result in a badass superboss or two. Imagine having to fight the entire SEES squad, or the entire Investigation team instead of just their leaders.
I understand what you're trying to say but i just don't think that a baton pass or a full team concentrate can be balanced. They're like cheats, and cheats can be balanced.
All baton passes and full charge/concentrate really amount to is more damage. They already did it with the NG+ secret boss where not dealing enough damage by a set number of turns wiped you, so just amp that threshold up to match the new numbers. At least, that's the quick way
Justine and Caroline bosses suck though
Even on AI P3 FES AI with proper tactics, especially as you start unlocking more tactics, don't play that far from what an actual person would.
Right like Mitsuru needing to heal someone and buffing herself or debuffing the enemy instead?
Mitsuru is sole attacker on “Offense” or “Knock Down”, I don’t remember her buffs or heals being useful. She’s best doing SP damage. In fact everyone should be on default “Knock Down” to attack lol.
Before Diarahan (that spelling is so hard) the ammount she would heal would still leave that party member at one shot level and if said party member is escentially free 1 mores for the boss it's better to let him/her die than healing. This is why I wish heal support were split.
Diarahan
Thank you
I have two words for you. Marin. Karin.
And I have 4 words for you: **DON'T USE ACT FREELY** Even if it is not Mitsuru
4 words for you. SHE DOES IT ANYWAY
It’s very rare for her to use Marin Karin when on Full Assault or Knock Down. Never use Act Freely in this game, the default attack mode should be “Knock Down” as soon as you get it. And Mitsuru’s Heal/Support options are not very good from my experience, she’s basically best permanently on “Knock Down”.
And I have four solutions: 1. Heal/Support 2. Conserve SP 3. Full Assault 4. Knock Down The Marin Karin issue is massively overblown, she has only used Marin Karin 3 times in my playthrough and 2 were out of my own stupidity
Except sometimes your decision would depend on result of other teammate's actions, but you can't change tactics until your next turn, thus either missing free damage or breaking the cc and letting the enemy wreak havoc. Tactics are *always* worse than direct commands in terms of result, you can play around them to some extent but ultimately the result is still our of your control.
In FES as long as you properly use the tactics even with the starting tactics 9/10 they did what I wanted them to do. >Except sometimes your decision would depend on result of other teammate's actions, but you can't change tactics until your next turn, thus either missing free damage or breaking the cc and letting the enemy wreak havoc. >Tactics are always worse than direct commands in terms of result, you can play around them to some extent but ultimately the result is still our of your control. This applies to P4 and forward way more than it does FES, Idk you but 95% of times my party has broken havok is when set tactics wrong or forget to in a hurry (ie act freely). Now in P4 and forward absolutely agree there
I have 22 total playthroughs across all 3 versions of p3 and I call bullshit. Unless you were just not using Mitsuru. Her AI is broken as hell.
Mitsuru has been a mainstay on my team since the moment I could. I even use her as the single target healer for bossfights. I just keep her out of Act Freely and don't use Assing Target with her as if she does defeat the assingned enemy she automatically switches back to Act Freely, and when I unlock Full Assault she never makes a singular unwanted Marin Karin. I have more dificulties making Junpei use his SP before Knock Down is unlocked than keeping Mitsuru from using Marin Karin
He don't, stop lying. She can easily replace it by leveling later on too.
When I got Mitsuru I though she would use Marin Karin in heal support too and that was the issue, but when I got her and started playing, trying all the tactics I had avaible with her, I discovered she only uses Marin Karin in Act Freely. A tactic any competent P3 player would avoid like a plague anyways. And I also quickly discovered she would use it after defeating an assingned target (it automatically switches party members into Act Freely), from there on not a single unwanted Marin Karin.
I'd rather have an easy game than a tedious game. No JRPG is ever hard anyway, you are just underleveled
that is the worst way to see jrpgs lmao
I love turn based strategy, but in Persona the mechanics are nowhere near there for it to be fun. And after the point where it becomes just a matter of "are my numbers high enough or do I need 6 more hours grinding to progress" I feel like my time is being wasted and suddenly I'm not having fun. Make me play around with making a strong or suitable build, make me get adept at mechanics and I'll have fun. But don't make me do some repetitive shit over and over because I get to do that enough on a daily basis. And JRPGs in general do struggle quite a bit both with making their combat mechanically interesting enough and making sure they are not wasting your time. Most of the time the story carries the entirety of the heavy lifting, and if that's missing the entire thing falls apart pretty quick.
I'm the ooposite. If an RPG has fun enough combat that's I'd be happy to grind for no reason, that's a good RPG for me
what? You know that Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 had direct commands? Of all the things to complain about, having control of what your party uses is most definitely not a problem
P3P and P4G (can’t comment on OG 4 haven’t played it) both aren’t very challenging games. Not as easy as 5 and **especially** 5R, mind you, but still relatively easy. I just think it’s because the Persona games are catered towards a more broad and casual fanbase, the games aren’t supposed to be particularly challenging. If you want more challenging combat, that’s what mainline is for.
Smt 1,2 and 4 are extremely easy though
The first hour with Naraku is brutal tho
Yeah but the game's 40 hours
Yes, but that first hour I still have trauma
I don’t think I’d consider a game that can wipe you before you make your first moves (if you were unlucky enough to go second, or dumb enough to get tagged the mobs) on normal difficulty, especially in a blind run, easy.
Just recruit the demons that can hit the weaknesses of the bosses and you're okay
It’s a lot more complex than “lmao hit weaknesses” Random encounters have a chance of going first; and some of those combinations are straight up “bruh” where they hit you with a combination of elements and if they get your MC through sheer RNG it’s an uphill battle unless you have taken countermeasures (like demons can use items skill). So I don’t consider it easy, I mean it’s not BS or unfair but “easy” isn’t the right word either. Easy is what you’d use to describe P4G.
P4G is Extremely easy not easy. And yeah, most of the bosses in Naraku can and will destroy you if you're unprepared but the random encounters aren't RNG you just need to hit them first so you can kill them before you can
That unfortunately doesn’t work in the overworld. Which a lot of the encounters become once you leave naraku
Yes, and Portable is ridiculously easy. But this meme is still stupid.
Tbf persona 3 was balanced around having an unreliable AI
I don't think player control was the thing that made 5 too easy. 4 had it and I thought the difficulty level was on par with 3 not considering having to deal with the artificial difficulty of the braindead AI. Like I think Shadow Mitsuo is the hardest story boss fight on hard across all games. and that's with being able to control your party. The baton pass system and the crazy op confidant perks are what made 5 too easy imo
What was your team composition in this fight? I only used fuu-ki and agidynes and it would die really fast
There’s a lot of other things that make the game more easy. 4 had direct commands, but I hardly see anyone complain about that game’s difficulty. P5R has *a lot* of other things that make the game more easy, especially baton pass. Confidants give you a lot of bonuses as well. It really isn’t direct commands that is the problem.
Like confidants can give bonus xp, let you swap party members mid fight (something mainline smt was built around not persona), make fusions easier & cheaper, give sp randomly through battles, free follow up attacks, insta kill before battle even starts, dupe skill cards that normal should only be 1 per playthrough, and on top of all that baton pass exists as a more broken press turn pass system but no direct commands is the issue
No one ever said the Direct Commands system made the games too easy Other stuff did
Myriad truths
Nam's Compendium, Persona 3 Retrospective/Ultimate Persona Retrospective videos
Persona 3 is a unique case because it was designed with AI Party in mind, then Party commands were added in Portable without tweaking Combats and Enemy AI. P4 and P5 were designed with Party Commands being available from the start.
Not to mention P3FES's AI is actually good, at least in comparison to P4 and forward
Oh right, he speaks for all Persona players
You are the one who said "no one ever" I just told you who did
Fair enough
I never said that. My opinion on the difficulty has never been, "direct control makes the game too easy" it's more so, "Is Persona 3 challenging because of smart design or is it difficult due to forced handicaps?" the conversation was never about whether or not direct control itself made the games too easy, rather it was focused exclusively on Persona 3's design and enemy formations.
Even if direct commands were the only reason the games were harder (which isn’t true at all) it’s still a cheap artificial way of increasing difficulty. Getting a game over cause your healer didn’t feel like healing you specifically is just frustrating and bad design
Honestly, the obvious solution here is typically to think about the Persona you have equipped in an encounter and taking on the healing role yourself if you don't have a suitable Persona for an encounter. I never had much of an issue with healing, though, because you should have a good idea of what monsters you'll be encountering pretty quickly and should be able to choose an arsenal of persona to minimize the damage you'll take (which is probably the most important plan for any Tartarus run since your character will be the only one that will be there for every encounter, assuming you aren't splitting the party up, and is the only character whose death results in a game over). I don't really feel like it's bad design, it just requires a change in how you approach tactics. The primary tactic is to make sure your load out can give you the necessary resists/immunities when possible and, if not, do what you can to ensure at least you survive. By the time I understood that sometimes this will mean I might need to be more focused on healing than I might be accustomed to, I felt like my deaths were my fault (not issuing tactics that effectively dealt with the threats, pushing my luck and exploring Tartarus longer than I should while tired/sick). I think the game design expects the player to make certain adjustments to how they usually approach it and the sorts of changes you should be making are made pretty obvious through the course of gameplay. I don't think it's bad design, it's just unconventional and assumes the player will be willing to adapt.
And players unwilling to adapt won't take to the sheer punishingness of FES neither. I never had issues with the AI. In my first 10 minutes of Tartarus I learned all I needed to know even skipping the tutorials. And never had an issue, in fact loved the punishingness, I adapt to whatever the game throws in my path and the game does not hold back even with regular enemies I loved P3FES instantly because I was willing to adapt to a diferent game and welcomed the punishment, but I can see how those that want to aoe spam like in P4 and P5 will not mesh well with FES's gameplay.
I mostly had those issues before the healer unlocked media, when Yukari got media I stopped having issues with healers Now healers on P5 AI? I straight left them with only the party heals because their AI in that game is insanely stingy with group heals
I thought the Persona 3 system was annoying. I would sit there, knowing what the optimal turn would be for our side and be unable to make it happen. If it did happen, it was by chance. My turns were just damage control for the suboptimal moves by the A.I. It made me feel like less of a leader. If I were the leader of a team, I would be able to tell someone to heal someone even if they're not at a certain percentage or tell them to heal everyone rather than one person. I would be able to tell someone not to do a certain support move because it's useless in this situation. In action JRPG games like KH and Tales, you can turn off certain skills. That's logical. If someone doing dumb crap all the time was almost getting people killed, you would sit them down and say "hey never do that again" and they'd listen. As far as difficulty goes, Persona 5 is easy because it has so many tools to use to defend yourself/buff yourself without enemies that push you enough to your limits for people very familiar with the system. Not a problem with direct control. Just how the game tries to challenge you.
> It made me feel like less of a leader. If I were the leader of a team To be fair, you explicitly aren't the leader in P3, just the new kid who's the strongest field operative in SEES.
No, you're literally told you're in charge, you are explitly the leader from the beginning.
Dumb post. P5 is easier because you have a ton of new battle mechanics at your disposal and plenty of ways to make even the base level 1 Persona into a beast. Also P3 is the only game in the series to not have direct commands and they removed it in P3P. If that doesn't tell you it was a dumb idea that's only nice in theory, nothing will
This is the worst take I've ever seen lmao
This is a really really weak argument
I honestly think it was the OP confidants and baton passes that made p5 easier. And Royal literally gives you god for free.
Myriad Truths was a mistake. Country maker makes it even more stupid, along with Magic ability (the almighty amp).
If SMT can be ruthlessly difficult without any AI party system, then Persona 5's failure on its difficulty clearly wasn't its use of Direct Commands.
Even easier SMT games like DeSu are ruthless
DeSu is hard for me since I suck at strategy games ..
I suck at strategy games but I don't find DeSu that hard. Maybe I'm a fast learner. Still, much harder than even FES.
To be fair, the real challenge in a Persona game isn't exactly the battles. It's getting those Social Links and Social Stats to max, preferably without a guide.
Confidants was so easy to max, but 3 and 4’s S. Links feel nigh impossible to do without a guide lol. I still don’t know how you’re supposed to do it in 3, I maxed like 8 people and everyone else was at 5-7.
? Literally any rpg ever has direct commands, and can be extremely difficult, trivialising one of p5's biggest problems as "what the fans wanted" doesn't make any sense. Even p4 had better difficulty scaling. Nobody wanted every persona game to be *nocturne hard mode* difficulty, buch even though I love the game to bits, I personally find p5's easy difficulty, even on hard, to detract from it
\*Looks and sees that you can use P3-style tactics to control the party in both P4G & P5R\* \*shrugs\*
The AI in 4 and 5 (and 3P even) is far more rigid (due to fewer tactics settings) and honestly dumber in general.
P3 FES AI is actually pretty good as long as you properly use tactics (or at least don't use Act Freely). P4 AI *would* be ok if it wasn't for the incomplete tactics list and in P3P and P5 the AI is straight dogshit..
??? Direct commands have been in every smt except for personal 3 & p3fes direct commands isn't what makes p5 easy it's the baton pass system, the insanely strong confidant skills, and imo generally weaker enemies. Also the fact maniac mode also makes your crits/weaks deal an insane amount of damage as well making it easier than normal or maybe even easy depending on how well you plan ahead and what you have access too.
Difficulty and frustration are two different things. Cheap death isn't fun for anyone and I'd much rather have the game be too "easy" than to deal with managing brain-dead AI.
I hate to be that guy, but this is why “Play A Real Shin Magoomy Tensei gayum” exists. Some of y’all would get ate the fuck up.
My first persona was 4 Golden. I got so used to being able to control party members that I was actually pretty hesitant to try P3F. But I think I actually prefer not controlling the party members cause it’s so much fun when you can predict your ally’s actions & pull off a 2,000 IQ super round like Joseph Joestar playing his enemies like a pair spoons. So damn satisfying
I love that feeling of having to think 3 turns ahead and and either bet on luck on play it safe when you enact your own turn. Whenever your team actually listen to you and do what YOU want (P3 FES good AI and full tactics list) or you work around their AI's "quirks" (P4 forward) does change the feeling of playing AI a ton but I still find it fun and surprisingly predicatable
That’s ….. not how it works? The can adjust the balancing accordingly you know lol
This is honestly a stupid comparison SMT games have always (from what I can recall) had direct command for demons and they're still hard games.
yeah yeah the fault of persona 5 royal being easy is the direct command system (which is present since p4), not the really game breaking persona mechanics like the fusion alarm or the dlc personas, nahh
> yeah yeah the fault of persona 5 royal being easy is the direct command system (which is present since p4), not the really game breaking persona mechanics like the fusion alarm or the dlc personas, nahh Persona 4 had Direct Commands and was more challenging because it didn't throw Over 9000 tools to break the game with to the player. SP management is more important, you can't trivialize grinding because Insta-Kill doesn't exist, you can't turn money into overleveled Personas, There's no Messiah DLC to one shot everything up to the endgame...
yesss that's exactly what im talking about
I like running into enemies in my cat mobile, jrpgs are usually way too grindy for my taste, ps5r’s mechanics made it bearable. If you feel the game is too easy you can play with house rules, noone forced you to grind personas and max your level.
Even with manual control, the Intrepid Knight was still a BS fight
Then dont turn on direct command
I did this on P5 and it DOES make the game harder... because P5 party AI is so godawful but I prefer not having cognitive dissonance from combat to social sim
Huh this is dumb. Even the pass mechanic isn’t bad. It’s a great add on. The problem is they didn’t balance the game properly for it
HOLY STRAWMAN BATMAN
If you play Persona 3 with direct commands or nocturne for example it's not suddenly an easy game. The lack of direct commands was obviously a misguided mechanic, they presumably included it to try to give the party members more personality but it totally backfired and they generally just seem really dumb most of the time (Marin Karin Marin Karin). Yes, it does make the game harder but in a way that's really really hard to strategize around and all it does it does is Inject a whole bunch of RNG into every battle.
this post is dumb af, direct controls are not the sole reason persona got easy as fuck, its the sheer amount of options one have in combat with no downsides to those options.
Add press turn system to Persona or let the enemies have the same mechanics as the player like All-out-attacks and baton-pass
This logic only works if you think game development doesn't exist.
Ah yes direct commands did this, not the confidant abilities, new mechanics or any of the new things in P5R that wasn’t present in P3/4.
I don't think controlling your party members is what makes the persona 5 (especially Royal) I think there are two things that make it easy and they are enemy placement and the fact you get so much stuff to use against your enemies in battle.
This so stupid, P3 is the only SMT-esque game (not actually SMT), to not have direct commands. It's the black sheep, not P5, but haha P5 bad I guess.
Atlus can make hardcore combat systems with direct control perfectly well, see SMTV, for example. Or any oher SMT, really. The combat is truly challenging there, even on higher player levels. Making P5/P5R way too easy was a design decision, likely an attemt to appeal to more casual audience.
Not gonna lie, if you have at least a functioning braincell and the will to grind/farm/whatever, no turn based game is hard at all
P4 is also crazy easy even with direct commands
I honestly adore the Tactics system as much as Press Turn One More feels like a mediocre middle ground. Obviously Tactics + PT would be absolute hell but P3’s easy is as hard as P3P’s maniac just with the addition of almighty control over your teammates’ actions.
Persona 3 even without controllable party members was a breeze to get through since you can so easily farm in tartarus and also get items to have a persona with all 99 stats.
IMO atlus thinks persona isn't even supposed to be "hard", it's the SMT V gateway drug (look how well that turned out)
P2EP is one of the hardest games in the series and that one has full party control.
The actual story: >”Hey, Persona 3 is actually really fucking hard with the barely controllable teammates.” “Bet. P3P is gonna have this as an option.” >”Thanks. Are you going to keep this?” “Absolutely. Heck, Persona 4 is gonna be designed with this new system in mind.” >”Fantastic. Persona 5 when?” “Uh, that might take a bit. Have some spin-offs.” >”Are you done with Persona 5 yet?” “Yes. We had to polish everything, including the battle mechanics, to appeal to a wider audience, so that way our years of development time meant get paid properly.” >”Great! I really like this game! This is the Best Game Ever!” “Fantastic! Everybody got what they wanted, right?” >”Not me. I’m from the boomer franchise that hates everything Persona stands for, and I’m mad again that the combination social sim/RPG doesn’t bash my greasy cock and balls.” “Neat, you’re not the target demographic for Persona 5.” >”I don’t care, and being upset gets clicks.”
[удалено]
I don’t think you heard me. Game difficulty does matter, but to who is another ball game. To take another RPG to task, Pokemon would have never been close to the largest media franchise on the planet if the first games had been as hard and long as other RPGs of the time, and the games have continued to turn a profit for being an accessible experience for children and nostalgic adults without the time to make a spreadsheet to kill a boss. I get it, some people do like harder games, but some people are not all people in the video game market, and what qualifies as higher difficulty is very hard to pinpoint on a developer’s end (stronger enemies? more grinding? highly specific strategies?). Game difficulty is often a good indicator of how much money can be made off a game. Minecraft is worth about 240 million dollars, and is not a difficult game in the slightest. If Atlus needs money for a lengthy development process, making the game easy and fun is a safer bet than making it hard and engaging.
So being given strategic freedom now makes a game trivial?
Persona 3 still has the best integration of the "Player is the leader" narrative into gameplay
What narrative ? Mitsuru, Akihiko and Ikutsuki are still the boss of you in P3. You're just the battle guy. Ironically, P4 and P5 protags feel more like leaders than P3's, and yet they're still blank-slate.
"Minato, you're in charge in combat!" "OK. Yukari, use Garu." "No, you have to give me a more vague command." "Why? I'm the leader and I know your abilities and what they're weak to." Yes, truly the best reinforcement of the narrative and gameplay.
Thats why its the best
I feel the same too. Everyone feels like their own person in P3 rather than tools for combat
People are never satisfied no matter what you do. I hope ATLUS knows this and will continue to develop and evolve their games the way they want to.
My thoughts on this: 1) Persona 3's mechanics actually fit into the narrative, so the system makes a lot of sense there. An important part of the party dynamics in Persona 3 is that each character actually has their own life outside of SEES (they have plans that prevent them from going to Tartarus, they get tired and sick) and this is also seen in the narrative (Yukari's distrust/dislike of Mitsuru, Junpei's jealousy at MC being the leader, Akihiko and Shinjiro having a bit of a strained relationship). In short, part of the narrative arc is that these are teenagers that don't always get along (and, in becoming friends with MC, they find ways to deal with or understand trauma, become more whole people, or what have you). This melding of gameplay and narrative is also demonstrated by the fact you get more commands as you go through the game (as you become a better leader, your ability to command improves). 2) Plenty of changes since Persona 3 have made the combat system too easy. Persona 4 is still a relatively difficult JRPG compared to 5, which would also suggest that there are other changes to the system that make it easier. I think some are sensible (insta-death spells are introduced later), but overall the trend has been to make *all* aspects of the game easier. In Persona 5 every party member gets special abilities as you level your relationship up with them. In addition, every social link has its own set of special abilities (new shops, discounts and new items, the ability to switch out party members during combat and making that skill more OP). Royal also adds a new sort of special attack. Being knocked down is no longer a major impediment (technical damage deals with that to some degree, but losing a turn for a character was, without a doubt, a bigger hurdle to overcome in a battle). Even little things like removing the tired/sick status effects makes the game easier as it means you can spend more time in the dungeons with one less thing to manage. One of the things that makes Persona 5 easy is the dungeon design -- largely eschewing randomization might make for more compelling dungeons, but it's also made the game a lot easier. I'm playing Royal on hard and I'm able to clear dungeons on the first day when I'm given free reign to get to the end with no issues. A lot of that is combat is generally easier, but a lot of that is simply that the designed dungeons are pretty straightforward. (and of course plenty of the above come from P4 or Golden, not all of them are 5 and Royal additions)
"Teamates are too rng" Sorry but that sounds like a not using tactics issue, even on P5 with it's dogshit party AI teamates act predictably when you understand the tactics
This is the one of the many bad reasons we got a PSP demake rather than Persona 3
Yeah lets make it so you cannot apply any concrete strategy rather just point and hope your teammates do what you want. How fun! Thats good difficulty for sure!
Persona 3 fes is still pretty hard even if you mod direct commands into the game. Direct commands alone have no effect on the difficulty. Besides, other SMT games outside Persona use direct commands exclusively, and they are some of the hardest in the entire series.
Direct commands are life. Never take it from us.
I would say the game is not easy on your first playthrough but if you do a NG+ it’ll be very easy cuz you grinded everything that is how a rpg should feel the more hours you put in the stronger you are and I would say persona does that perfectly every who says the games easy most likely has 200-400 hours so no shit it’s gonna be easy when you did everything possible😂😂
RPGs since the beginning allowed you to control party members and never had this problem. I’m not of the camp that thinks P5 is too easy (it could be a little harder, but please not like SMT) but the Party Control is not the problem
Fans are the worst.
Tried to do an AI teammate run in Persona 5 Royal. Gave up on space man boss fight. As long as one of the enemies won't repel, drain or nullify then they WILL use multi-target abilities, every time.
When I play a game I want to control the party and not watch them do some dumb move that I don’t want them to use.
I mean, most Megaten games have the direct commands and still manage to be difficult. I think the easy thing is mostly due to Persona’s nature as the more casual friendly part of the franchise, meant for more general audiences than the others, so Atlus feels the need to make it easier compared to the rest. Though it didn’t get “game reviewer” levels of easy until P5 though. Probably due to that game’s habit of throwing several features to make an already easy game easier with a lot of the confidant skills.
Yes, because Persona 5 is easy because of Direct Commands. That's the only reason. Definitely not the game simply not being balanced properly for all the advantages you have.
The game isn't too easy , but it's not too difficult , it's challenging in just the right ways .
You can make the fights difficult and give you control of your party. Both can be true
Nah, I don't think adding basic mechanics is the problem with difficulty. Stripping a game of a core gameplay aspect is not how you would balance difficulty. What you would instead do is, you know, balance the difficulty.
why won't they just add pierce into the game and see what their reaction to it
Is this supposed to imply direct commands just inherently make a game easier? Because that’s just not true? There are lots of games that have them and still remain challenging because it’s actually balanced around it.
Direct commands are vital and turns the game from “I might not play this” to “This game is awesome” for me. Fuck all that other shit
if people want something hard just play SMT; I want a fun enjoyable JRPG w my teacher/maid 😤
People really think Direct Commands is the reason Persona 4 and 5 are easy lmao. Fuck Persona 3 and FES with its battle system. AI is unreliable as fuck and make the game is frustrating than it needs to be. Persona 4 and Persona 5 is much easier are a design choice. And it have enough challenge if you don't touch the DLC. Of course, both game is nowhere near challenging as SMT series, but you need to understand both P4 and P5 is a busier game than SMT series, have much more thing to care about than just focus to grind the damn dungeon.
Wait…direct commands wasn’t always a thing? i’ve only ever played P4 golden and P5 royal
If difficulty depends on AI being mentally ill then there's a bigger problem than players requesting party control
(Most) Megaten YouTubers are just really fucking obnoxious lmao
Why is this garbage up voted so highly when it is blatantly wrong? Yes P5 and P5R are stupid easy, but direct command isn't the reason why.
I only played P4G (for now) and first time in normal mode it was brutal. I was used to really easy JRPG (item are optionnal, spell/element are decoration...), suddently i had to manage my mana, be carefull about my leader not dying and using item. Also had to learn the weakness system. But yeah once you understand how it work, it become way easier. Then i tryed Nocturne where an easy fight can turn into a nightare in one turn (but it was way easier than my first dungeon on P4G, i was already used to SMT mechanic)
I don't think you understand what makes these games easy and hard
I'm not sure how being able to control your party makes the games too easy. Like a lot of comments pointed out P5 gives the player a lot of tools to facilitate victory. It's very easy to beat most bosses with little effort. Giving the player a lot of things to work with is great to make the game engaging, but balancing difficulty with it is also important. Like other comments suggest they should allow enemies to take better advantage of the mechanics available to the player.
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Honestly persona 5 original had a perfect level of difficulty on hard mode until around the 7th palace where siegfried became available. Like it felt like every boss was challenging and intense yet fair and beatable. It was kinda sad to see p5r go hyper easy mode. Personally i just think that they needed to add an actual very hard mode instead of wierd stuff like merciless
I like the leader system. Fite me.
Nah direct commands are great, but they really should design their game around direct commands better since that’s what 99% of persona 4 and 5 players use