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Pesmerga posted:I'm in September now, and I still feel that Ann gets a raw deal and pretty much fades into the background after summer. I don't think the game needed to be longer or anything, but I feel like Ann and Ryuji really compete for character space in a way that hurts both. They're distinct as characters, but since they both join at basically the same time, for basically the same reason, neither really gets a time to shine on their own. Ryuji is louder than Ann, so he feels more of a presence later, but it's mostly a negative one, where Ann can pretty easily fade into the background.
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May 1, 2020 19:31
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:Shes a teenage girl and Joker is quiet, tall, and hot. And generally not an rear end in a top hat either - I think most of your responses to her range from "neutral" to "wanna bone" basically. Honestly the problem with the romances isn't that all these people might be attracted to Joker, it's that no one is allowed to be queer. It's understandable that most folks are pretty happy to be hit on by the good-looking, clever, mysterious dude who just solved their biggest life problem through being Super Extra in some imaginary world.
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May 2, 2020 00:16
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Sure, fair enough. I guess my feeling is just that in a game about rebellion I don't mind if that kind of forbidden romance is in there as an option I won't engage with, but it does serve to make the lack of queer options really glaring, since it prevents a "strong social stigma" argument.
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May 2, 2020 00:24
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Might also explain how they toned down the homophobia in Royal, though I wish they'd just managed to remove it entirely, sigh.
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May 2, 2020 01:38
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So I am not a PS4 expert, but I didn't realize there was FreeLC for the P5 downloadables when I started my first game, and now even though I've downloaded it, I can't seem to get it to unlock. If I load my NG+ data it doesn't seem to be available, and if I choose New Game, it doesn't list it among all the DLC that's going to be used before asking me if I want to use the completion bonus. Do I need to start a new game and not load NG+ data? I don't care much about the costumes but I'd like to unlock the personas.
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May 4, 2020 02:03
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ChaosArgate posted:You gotta check the storage box in the Leblanc attic, the one right by the stairs. That will unlock it even if it isn't listed in the initial boot thing? Sounds good, thanks.
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May 4, 2020 02:10
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Yeah, the last section has (Green, I think?) alternating airlocks - half are open and half are closed and when you use one, it toggles all of them with the same symbol to the other state. ETA: The green are probably not distinguishable from the red to colorblind folks, yeah.
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May 6, 2020 17:49
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RevolverDivider posted:Yeah I do actually appreciate that detail a ton. While it still sucks that we back off incredibly hard from the game's themes at the last second it's a much better resolution for the characters to actually be clearly taking the steps to really live their lives the way they want to and makes it a much stronger rejection of Maruki's actions. More 3rd semester/Royal addition spoilers within: I wish they'd managed to come up with a way to have Maruki's stuff happen before the normal ending, rather than added at the end. I get that it'd be a much more complete overhaul and so probably not feasible but it just feels out of order to me. Both sort of thematically - I find "reject heaven -> kill god" to be better than the reverse - but also in terms of both the scope, and the specific beats they hit, especially the character beats for the Thieves. I like a lot of things about it, and I agree so much with your point about resolution, but other than the thematic thing, the ending of the original game was really strong, I thought. And the Satanael summon is just clearly the last thing that should happen. After that the Maruki thing theoretically works like the Scouring of the Shire, but one of the key things about the Scouring is that the heroes are ludicrously overpowered for it in obvious ways, and it's about showing off that growth. That doesn't happen with Maruki's Palace - not only does the game (reasonably, it's a game not a novel) make the shadows there more powerful and Maruki more powerful, it's also the fault of our heroes that it happens. And we have the third persona awakenings, which to me seem like the clear worst part of the semester; I think it's fine to have more development for the main cast, but in addition to not being voice acted, they're all basically the same - oh I took the easy route and should have known better. And to be honest, yes, I feel like at this point in the story, the characters should know better; this feels like a rehash of the scene where you find everyone in the Velvet Room, which already was too samey. Not that I dislike Royal or anything! I think it's clearly a huge improvement to the game overall, and I like the additions. It's just frustrating that the final semester starts off really weak with the unsatisfying and samey character beats of waking up your party + third awakenings, given that I do think it ends strong. Especially since I feel like they could have done some reordering to make it work a lot better, though maybe not within the budget/tech limitations. And it's frustrating that the moving on stuff by and large doesn't involve continuing to reform society, but as you say, that backing off is sadly pretty in keeping with the base game.
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May 11, 2020 01:21
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Clarste posted:While it's not perfect, I do think that taking revenge of the guy/god who is the cause of all your problems and then finally come to terms with and accept the tragedies of your past makes sense as a character arc. Basically, the Thieves are motivated to stop Shido/Yaldo out of pure rage, almost. They've accepted that their problems weren't their own fault, but instead (rightfully) displaced that anger onto the people and society that let those things happen. But that's not the same thing as moving on and looking forward, which was the point of the new arc. Once their rage settles, who are these people? What else do they want? To be fair, some of that is answered in their existing links, which is partly why the 3rd Awakening scenes were so redundant. That certainly could've been better integrated. That's fair, but sort of circles back to that sequencing working better for a novel than a game, I think. It's thematically linked to Maruki for sure, but it doesn't really sell me on why Maruki is a threat to the team after all they've been through. Plus, as you say, at least some of the S-Links are like that. I feel like extending the S-Links would be a better way to do that than tying it in to the plot, too, because again the issue is that it's really hard to buy that these characters would really eagerly accept what's going on. Especially since the butterfly/school sequence seems to imply that Joker's Wild Card is what lets him see through the situation (and Akechi being the other person who instantly does backs this up), but then the other Thieves act like they had a choice and should have been able to bust out of it themselves. But like, if that's true, some or all of them absolutely should have done that. Like forget the arc once she joins, listening to herself even when it's hard is Makoto's initial Persona awakening. I dunno, I just think the whole intro to the situation is really badly handled, but that it's easy to forget because the situation itself is interestingly nuanced and the highs are really high, like Akechi and the calling card, etc.
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May 11, 2020 02:13
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RevolverDivider posted:I don't feel like the other Phantom Thieves consciously got to make a choice during the creation of the dream world. Yeah, they were the ones with the power over Mementos at the time, but they didn't actually wish to change any of that to the new world. They just had normal thoughts of man those tragedies that happened to us sucked. I got the impression when Maruki's pushing the idea that they were responsible for this not him he's basically gaslighting them without realizing it to justify his own actions to himself. Joker and Akechi got to be conscious of it and actively reject it because they both had the power of the Wild Card but even Joker's wish that his bromance with Akechi didn't end tragically wasn't really a conscious thing he chose. That makes sense to me, but it also makes all the guilt they feel that leads to their third persona forms pretty meaningless/dumb. It'd be fine if they were like "oh man Joker thanks for using your protagonist powers to break me out of that, I have become enlightened as a result" (though differently unsatisfying since then it wouldn't really feel like their growth), but that's not what happens - they feel guilty about it and you can't really tell them that it isn't their fault they just got mind whammied, so it's not clear to me the game wants you to think it was out of their hands. I think that might have made sense, yeah, or even had the Muraki thing be a real epilogue that brought Joker back over the summer or something. That'd also make sense of how they installed Mementos Internet so quickly, though I guess maybe we're supposed to think that's magically created rather than something they built. But I suppose the downside of that is that it'd work weirdly with the extra semester and especially with Yoshizawa's link. Not that the pacing on it is great as is.
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May 11, 2020 04:28
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Clarste posted:I think it does make sense that the Thieves fell into Maruki's illusions because there's is literally nothing about the base ending or their base social links that would make us think that they believe it's a good thing that their parents were killed or friends were assaulted or whatever. In fact, they were unquestionably bad things and their motive throughout the whole game is to stop these bad things from happening in the future by punishing those responsible. I think it's even questionable whether stopping Maruki was even a good thing or not (if you can rewrite reality, is it really a bad thing to undo all tragedies throughout history?), although the story tried to make it more clear-cut by showing how fallible he was as a god. So even if his goals were correct, maybe he wasn't the best person to implement them. I dunno, I think it's pretty important that their specific suffering did in fact build their characters. I've had some poo poo times in my life and I'd love to prevent other people from going through that, but there's a huge difference between that and wanting to undo my own past. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the development of the characters there, but I think it should be a hard sell to forget everything they've done and achieved during that time. In any case I'm glad Maruki leads to so much discussion, but he's ultimately a totalitarian by his own definition. I don't think his fallibility is the problem there. His world makes it really hard to learn anything, or to change or grow, because he decides what's best for everyone. Even if he's right in the short term, figuring that poo poo out is really important and meaningful, as is letting it develop though your life. It'd be one thing if he were making an illusion or an alternate world, where folks could opt-in or not, but he's explicitly replacing the world with his vision, regardless of consent. That is super messed up and core to his goal.
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May 11, 2020 21:56
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AlternateNu posted:Uncultured swine. Leaving your teammates in the dust instead of subjecting yourself to a nightly ritual of listening to the same Jazz single over and over again. I really wanted to max out Makoto's stats on my NG+ playthrough just for screenshot value, but sadly I was a few points short because I didn't think of it quite early enough.
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May 14, 2020 02:58
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Zvahl posted:this is just obnoxious, because it's exactly like you said, but if that's true, then the only way to square the rest of how he behaves, especially in the ending, is just bad writing. I get that they like those big question marks in the ending, since it's implied the metaverse is still hot and kicking by him seeing himself as a phantom thief, but in the reformed world, what, did he just hide in the metaverse until the end of March? It's not clear to me why we think either version of Akechi would be more or less susceptible to Muraki's meddling? The whole point of that ending is that he's basically ascended to godhood, presumably he can do whatever he wants to cognative Akechi or real-boy Akechi?
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May 14, 2020 21:58
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MonsterEnvy posted:He was a toadey of Shido who got his job at the School because of his connections. Still sort of a weird situation, since it feels like if you sell your soul to a vast evil conspiracy you'd want better payment than "private school principal."
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May 15, 2020 03:33
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Deified Data posted:Dating Futaba is the most direct route to Sojiro being your dad, the merits of which can't be disputed. Maxing out his S-Link already has Sojiro being your dad, dating someone else just gets him an additional weirdo child, for extra value.
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May 22, 2020 23:37
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arisu posted:Haru's big money coffee chain is going to drive Sojiro out of business I get the pretty strong impression Leblanc is already money-negative and Sojiro has some government hush money or something he's just burning through running it as therapy. I'm not sure it's possible to drive him out of business.
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May 23, 2020 02:10
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Fojar38 posted:Joker is characterized as a genius I mean you can't figure that out from first principles and it's unlikely to have come up in school. It might occur to him to look it up but that can be difficult even for a smart highschooler, and he knows her family has a bunch of lawyers, too. It's not like, an egregious thing to take her word for or whatever.
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May 26, 2020 00:47
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Hunt11 posted:At least with Teddie it felt like it wasn't his only defining feature and didn't have him creepily obsess over a single character. Hey now, Morgana also gets in tiresome fights with Ryuji and polices your sleep schedule.
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Jun 1, 2020 02:47
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I like that Morgana is an actual cat outside the metaverse but they went way too hard on a couple of really unfortunate character notes for him, and not hard enough on reasons to like him. And I sort of suspect the only reason his thing for Ann isn't even more offensive is that the rest of the game is also really unfortunately horny for Ann, which isn't much of an excuse.
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Jun 1, 2020 04:53
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:I don't see a lot of horniness for Ann outside of a few scenes. Yusuke is weird about it, and he's approaching from some non sexual appreciation of beauty, and then when they're all in the monamobile in the desert. Otherwise I can't remember anyone else really bringing it up. Mona is just non stop horny about Ann and I find it well passes anything funny and right into creepy. I mean the game itself is horny towards Ann - her catsuit (that she hates), her "sexy technique", her victory poses. Wanting to have a Catwoman-type femme fatale in your game with heist-inspired characters is fine, but having her be the one you are introduced to in the context of sexual menace (and then has another non-consensual nude modeling plot!) and having her object to that treatment but have it happen anyway is not good. If she wanted to reclaim her sexuality and was really into her outfit and stuff that'd be a totally different thing, but that's not the game we have. I like Ann's overall character reasonably well and the game eventually gets better about treating her well (with a few exceptions), but my sister grabbed P5R recently and basically had to message me to ask if it ever got any better about Ann and her position was totally comprehensible to me.
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Jun 2, 2020 02:01
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loquacius posted:Hours of grinding (and some Treasure Traps) later, I have managed to fuse Satanael, and he is loving metal as hell, but I have a related question - some of the guides say he has a unique skill called Seven Sins Shell or something, but my version only has a top-end gun skill it shares with some other personas - Riot Gun I think. I got him to max level. Did I mess up the fusion or something, or is that a localization thing?
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Jun 9, 2020 04:08
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YaketySass posted:P4A's Yu was fun but I'm not sure if they should repeat that and make the respective protagonists the goofiest version of themselves in every anime adaptation. Dunno how else you'd make Ren more interesting though. I mean you could play up his trolling, his charm, or both pretty easily. Dude is a criminal mastermind who becomes the target of a national manhunt and substantial bounty but still forms a quite large conspiracy of folks who don't turn him in, despite having really spooky powers. You can do a lot with that even without diverging that far from what he does in the game, just adding a more lines and set characterization. He's basically the heist movie character that brings everyone together and talks them into the outrageous schemes, that should be a really fun character. Especially since he gets to go into the metaverse sometimes and take the disguise off (metaphorically of course). Joker is super extra in the game and contrasting that with his school persona could also be really fun.
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Jul 5, 2020 21:57
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Given current events, it seems to me even more correct that people would quickly decide the phantom thieves must be criminals and for the thieves to fear discovery. Making powerful scumbags who feel secure confess is an incredible threat to the status quo. (Even if the game doesn’t really follow through on it.)
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Jul 6, 2020 16:00
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DropsySufferer posted:There is nothing wrong with a junior dating a senior in high school. It’s been a long time since I decided to leave the pre-law track but last I knew this varies a lot by state, and there are plenty where no one but Kawakami would be breaking the law, some where everyone involved including Joker would be (though prosecution for teenagers getting it on is rare), and some where Joker would be by dating the younger girls. (Well, assuming there was anything sexual going on. Most of the US doesn’t try to legally police romantic but non sexual relationships.) I mean I didn’t end up becoming a lawyer so I could be wrong on some details but I’m quite confident it varies a lot by jurisdiction. I think the only one that’s generally illegal regardless of state is the teacher with the student. Oh, and a doctor dating their patient is probably against professional standards codes and at least would cost her her license. The rest vary a lot and plenty will be just really transgressive and socially frowned on. But I do think the transgressive part is intentional, even if I’m just going to date Makoto every time I play.
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Jul 11, 2020 16:27
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ApplesandOranges posted:Takemi isn't Joker's actual doctor though, is she? He's just some teenager who helps her with her drug tests and she sells him some medicine. I mean there's some level of breach of conduct there but it's not on the same level as Kawakami. It's not entirely clear, and I don't have much idea what medical regs are in the US, let alone Japan. But now that I think about it, it seems unlikely that the licensing board would approve of her giving self-developed medications to the high school student she's using for unregistered drug trials regardless, so probably whether she also sleeps with him is kind of immaterial.
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Jul 11, 2020 16:56
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Dawgstar posted:Maybe she'll meet Chie who also wanted to be the same and they can instead go on to become vigilantes who only trust their fists. (And legs.) She also has a long time to radicalize, it's a completely understandable move given her background. Thankfully we don't get a Harry Potter-style epilogue revealing she actually does it. Well, unless that's what Scramble is I guess, I am trying not to look into it until it's translated.
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Jul 11, 2020 17:34
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The Phantom Thieves and Investigation Team reunite as community watch and support teams in the wake of police abolition The true happy ending
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Jul 11, 2020 18:03
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She could also be one of those cops who is actually good and gets run out by the other cops, thus deciding the whole thing is too rotten to reform from within. I mean, it seems unlikely she’ll develop much between games as it seems like the past character cameos don’t work like that, but if you can overthrow god you can overthrow bad canon.
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Jul 12, 2020 06:33
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