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So, what are you playing?
Well over a decade ago I watched Yahtzee's review of Catherine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_(video_game), a weird puzzle-platformer from the people who made Persona. Although Yahtzee was iffy on the game, I thought it sounded like it might be my bag, but at the time they hadn't released a PC port. I picked it up in a Steam sale a few months ago and started playing it last night.
I'm really liking it so far. It's very funny and quirky, the core gameplay is deceptively simple and much more challenging than I expected, and it's oozing with style.
Persona 5 Royal. I played the original game in 2019 and liked it quite a lot. This time around I find the writing much more laughable. The extra scenes and dialogue added by Royal probably don't help, as they bloat the game to its breaking point. So many conversations simply repeat what was just talked about in the last scene, or add absolutely nothing.
The game is also much, much easier. A lot of it comes from quality of life improvements — the game doesn't arbitrarily take as much time from you as in vanilla, so you have more opportunities to max out your social stats. The fusion alarm is straight up broken, though, and makes it trivial to snap the combat over your knee. A few trips to the gallows and your persona is going to be far stronger than anything you ever might fight. I'm having a lot of fun using all the mechanics to craft my optimized team though, so it's not all bad.
I'm nearing the endgame of the vanilla game, which I remember being excellent, with everything in Mementos being particularly haunting. Hopefully it holds up. And I am still coping that the brand new semester will be good, as I've yet to play that before.
So, I agree that Royal is easier than OG - but I'm also aware that when I played OG I was completely blind and very inefficient. Like, I never maxed Kawakami because I thought (incorrectly, from half-remembered information I'd read about Persona 3) that maxing a social link would require romancing them if they were romanceable and I was skeeved out. Going into Royal I knew what a colossal mistake that was so I maxed her ASAP and having those extra night timeslots back definitely made a difference. I was also more confident in my ability to stretch my resources to complete an entire palace in one shot, though again, Royal does have systems that make that more viable earlier in the game. I actually think the biggest relaxation in difficulty was the Mementos modifiers you get from Jose. I spent a real-time afternoon in there farming stamps and running over shadows with Ryuji's instakill and completely broke the late-game difficulty curve. (Speaking of which, don't miss talking to Jose after you collect all his stamps. I missed an achievement there.)
I don't entirely agree with you on dialogue bloat, but I do think that Yoshizawa's introduction scene in the casino was gratuitous and flow-breaking. Plus, if you think about it, how the heck did she know how to get there? Showtime attack unlocks do feel a little contrived I guess. This might just be down to personal taste. I do think that the more I play P5 the less I like Morgana.
I liked the new semester, I feel like it's a better resolution than the OG ending (mostly). There's a particular unlock in it that I believe is potentially missable if you don't hit certain dialog flags in the Justice confidant beforehand though.
Very true. I didn't prioritize Kawakami and even skipped Chihaya in my first run because I was so peeved about getting scammed by her, and this time around knowing who to prioritize made things go much more smoothly for me. Jose and Ryuji's reworked instakill make it trivial to farm money and XP. I'm not complaining too much as I like having the money to fuck around with Persona crafting, but I wish there was a way to only get the money so I wasn't overleveling the content so much.
The scenes introducing the new characters could be awkward, but I can accept why they had to be inserted in like that. Maruki was handled much better than Yoshizawa so far, and I agree with you that her scene in the casino was goofy and makes zero sense. For me, all of the followup phone conversations tacked on to every confidant or how the Phantom Thieves start a new groupchat every day to gush about how evil their current target is wore very thin.
Makoto was one of my favorites originally, but she really gets on my nerves now. She becomes the main character once she joins, and I wish the game didn't feel obliged to pretend that Joker is the leader since she it's so clear that she is. The way the Phantom Thieves are so thoughtlessly cruel to Mishima rubs me the wrong way too, since the narrative never acknowledges how hypocritical it makes them look. I still love Haru, Ryuji, Yusuke, Akechi, and my favorites from the first time around though.
I have high hopes for the new semester. I was spoiled ahead of time on the direction it takes and it seems quite interesting. I did follow a guide to make sure I wasn't missing any of the triggers for it, though.
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They did make Royal easier. Too easy IMO. But I hope you're not using those 0 yen "dlc personas". They're far too OP.
And yes, the December part is awesome.
Haha, I fused Izanagi and Kaguya in the early game before I realized how busted all of the DLC personas were and dropped them. It's a shame, because they have cool designs, but it feels like cheating to use them for combat or itemization. If they were a bit weaker it'd feel better to use.
My main squad is Jack Frost, Pale Rider, Titania, Seth, Bugs, and Alice. I'll say that having the means to keep personas you like relevant past the dungeon you fuse them is a great mechanic. Theorycrafting their movesets to cover every situation and going through the steps to get the builds online scratches a certain itch. I'm thinking of adding Metatron or training up Kaguya now that her ability isn't gamebreaking, but they won't be necessary to finish.
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I personally felt that Royal dramatically improved the pacing of the original. In the original game, basically everything from Shido's palace onwards was a bloated mess that I hated slogging through, and I was relieved when the game was finally over. Royal speeds up the vanilla content somewhat so that there's room for the new semester, which was a very welcome reprieve.
I'll have to see how Royal handles the original endgame content post-Shido to compare. I don't remember the original endgame being that bad, but the ideas in it definitely grabbed me so I could have overlooked any pacing flaws it had.
It's all the stuff Royal added to the original game that makes the pacing suffer for me. Like those pointless followup phone calls every confidant has where they repeat the ideas you just saw two minutes ago. The extra scenes for Kasumi, Akechi, and Maruki feel a bit out of place, but I like those characters enough that I don't mind too much.
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