What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age

[Yanagi]

Not that weird. Video games take inspiration from sacred texts and mystical stuff all the time.

Yeah but I'm talking about the subjective personal experience of not encountering something for three decades, yet still recognize the thing when it turns up in the context of the video game Destiny.

[Zevox]

With Sonic Mania finished, decided to play some shorter things until Persona 3 Reload's release next week. For the moment, that's Fire Emblem Warriors. Still have History Mode maps I can do, and special weapons to unlock the true power of. Not much to say about it though really, it's a Warriors game, just good, mindless fun.

In Granblue, "all characters to S rank or level 100" personal goal completed. Not counting the one DLC character they've released who I'm undecided on whether I'll pick up, anyway.

Soriz: As expected, he was pretty easy. He's the fisticuffs rushdown character of the game, a blunt force if ever there was one. Get close, use plus on block moves to pressure, make people hurt when you hit them. He does have some neat things about him, with his low-health super that rips off his clothes and puts him a special powered-up state (at no meter cost, apparently, which surprised the heck out of me, though the change is vulnerable enough you can't just do it whenever), but overall, he's in the "character I could play, but don't especially want to" category. Partially because I like others with a similar playstyle more, and partially because of how he's portrayed personality-wise - he's the dirty old man of the game, so that's always awkward.

Ladiva: The Zangief of the game. To be fair to her, there's things I like about her. Her character design is great - big beefy wrestler who looks extremely masculine (including a full beard), but is nonetheless a woman (I think trans, though the game is unclear on that point) who will strike very stereotypically feminine poses while fighting, including strutting like a runway model for her forward walk; and she's a pro wrestler who fights in the name of love in the cheesiest way possible, saying things like "Welcome to the love show!" while grabbing you for her super move where she hugs you and pins you to the mat for a dramatic three-count. Very fun. And to my surprise, she's actually quite good at combos - above-average among the cast, I'd say, as she gets notably better midscreen and anti-air combos than most, on top of being just as capable of corner combos as everyone else. Normally for a Zangief type I expect their combos to be short, simple, and not that damaging, because all of their strength is in their throws.

Those positives out of the way though, I don't like her, which is no surprise given the archetype. Playing her did help crystalize why for me though. While playing B-rank players with her, I was actually having a fine time - people at that rank didn't know what to do about her, so I could get in a do her stuff no problem, and once she's there she's similar to other characters I like playing, just with much scarier throws. The trouble is when you run into people who know that how you fight her is to keep her away from you. Once people start playing defensively, her bad speed and lacking normals compared to much of the cast, plus lack of any special move that really helps her get in, mean that she has to play defensively too, advancing slowly and blocking her foe's attacks. Since Granblue has a forward roll you can look for opportunities to use that to get in, so she's not as bad off as Zangief is in Street Fighter, but still, you end up with a situation where both players have to play cautiously and defensively, and that just feels awful to me, on either side of the equation. I did get her to S rank despite that, but I credit that to her high damage and most A rank players not being great at keeping her out yet.

Nier: The game's strongest character, though to be fair, not quite as easy to play as I expected. I did actually take a little longer to reach S rank with her than I did with Sigfried; but she's still the one I got there second quickest, and still pretty easy to pick up on the whole. She's an emo/goth kid who literally has Death as her companion - she looks like a puppeteer character on the surface as a result of using Death in combat, but she isn't. Death never truly acts independently of her, it's more like a Persona in Persona 4 Arena, where it's another entity that does her special moves for her, but Nier herself still has startup on all of Death's moves, which makes her a lot easier to play than a puppeteer since you're not learning to control two characters at once. What makes her ridiculously good is that she has some very powerful mechanics that no one else in the game gets: special-into-special cancels, and no cooldowns on her heavy special moves (which are, as usual for this game, just better than her light and medium ones, and quite potent in general). This is limited by a unique resource she has, heart points, which count down from 13 every time she does a special-into-special cancel or uses a heavy special move, and she loses access to Death for a while if it reaches 0; however, it rarely reaches 0 before a match is over. Thanks to these unique mechanics, she basically gets corner combos even when not in the corner, and has a safe-on-block, combo-on-hit meterless reversal, which are pretty overwhelming advantages.

All that said, I do kind of like her and would like to play more of her, I'm just inclined to wait until she gets nerfed, as she obviously will. There's plenty of other characters for me to play until then anyway.

So, at the end of all of this, where did I end up? The biggest surprises were Anre and Eustace, both of whom I'd written off at a glance, but who proved much more fun than I expected, and I will certainly play more of. Besides them, I'd say I intend to play more of Anila and Charlotta, and I've got a few additional maybes. And Nier once she's nerfed, but that was kind of my plan before anyway for her. Not surprising was that I did particularly poorly with Ferry and Metera, and really don't like the zoning playstyle they represent, and just reaffirmed that I don't like grapplers like Ladiva. Beyond that, mostly I found a bunch of characters I'm lukewarm on - could play them, they're fine, I just don't have as much fun as with others. Importantly though, I've learned things about every character I can use while fighting them, even if I never touch them again.

[Dawsnow]

I recently got back into warframe

[Grim Portent]

Bought a new laptop so I'm able to play my graphically demanding games again, which means finally trying out Darktide (my brother and I bought it for each other's Christmas presents this year, sadly his laptop is having trouble with it so we haven't been able to play together yet.)

Been running around as an ogryn, nearly hit level 30. It's fun, lot of things that I feel are nice improvements on the mechanics from Vermintide 2, gun play is fun, aesthetics and music are fantastic. Love the fact it let's you try to reconnect to a mission immediately if you lag out of it. Had more than a few sessions of online games that were wasted due to disconnecting, but the reconnect mechanic has stopped that from happening with Darktide so far.

[Beelzebub1111]

Started Palworld. It's honestly pretty great and I'm having a lot of fun. Reminds me a lot of Conan Exiles, but much simpler.

[Rynjin]

It's pretty great. I put like 30 hours into it over the course of like 3-4 days, so I'm taking a bit of a break now. Those survival/building games are almost as bad on the "just a little more, let me wrap up this one last thing...oops it's been an hour" factor as 4X games.

[T.G. Oskar]

Recently got a bunch of premium/collector's editions through mail (from Limited Run Games, in case you're wondering - I like having physical copies, mostly), and one of those was the collector's edition of Shadowrun Trilogy. I spent hours playing the game in PC (and even trying the Editor for UGC), so seeing it coming in the Switch was a godsend. Already did the first two campaigns (Dead Man's Switch, AKA the original campaign, and Dragonfall) and I'm about to finish the third (Hong Kong), meaning I'll be able to *finally* finish the expansion (Shadows of Hong Kong).

For one, it plays almost exactly like the original, though all games use the Hong Kong UI. It's buggy, I'll admit (there's one bug in DMS that might prevent you from progressing further), but for a cart that has all three games loaded in, it plays pretty well. The one thing that drives me nuts is that my only working Joy-Con has a pretty brutal drift that makes controlling an issue: stuff like trying to use Overwatch appropriately, aiming grenades on the right spot and, worst of all, the Matrix portions of Hong Kong (which rely on Watcher ICs that detect you if you step on their "watch" area and make the run more difficult) being a struggle because you're fighting with the character moving on its own.

Before that, though, I was trying Final Fantasy Renaissance, an indie project that remakes the entirety of Final Fantasy 1 on the PC (using the Unity Engine) and adds a TON of new content, specifically new classes. The old classes get new stuff (the Fighter, now the Warrior, has a buff to all allies' damage; the Thief now Mugs, dealing damage and stealing GP, and can search for hidden items; the Monk gets the ability to self-heal and spread out attacks by using Chi; White Mages heal better, Black Mages deal better damage and Red Mages are better at status effect spells), there's new weapons and armor (for both the old and new classes), a couple of brand-new enemies, class quests for most old and new classes, and a New Game+ that makes enemies more difficult but lets you start with the promoted classes from the get-go. It is a love letter to the original, keeping the sprites and some unexpected features (like the Peninsula of Power and the Hall of Giants) but rooting some of the original bugs (such as Intelligence being useless, Monk's Magic Defense dropping once you become a Master, the Critical Hit chance being based on the weapon's position on the list). It's not a ROM hack, but a game you can download and play on the PC natively. (And it's been a blast!)

[Cygnia]

Binged through a run of En Garde! this past weekend, which scratched my swashbuckling 7th Sea itch.

[Cespenar]

Trying out a doomlike by the name Turbo Overkill. Looks pretty fast-paced and fun so far. You have a leg-chainsaw that allows you to mow down mooks by sliding through them, so that's a big plus. Also apparently you can slide-jump and headshot-melee-cleave through people for even more damage (and fun), if that made any sense.

Binged through a run of En Garde! this past weekend, which scratched my swashbuckling 7th Sea itch.

Yeah, En Garde! was an enjoyable little action package, halfway between Batman and Souls. It also got a further plus in my book by being rather compact (~6 hours?). I guess it's comparable to Sifu, but Sifu's combat didn't click with me for some reason.

[Anonymouswizard]

Got a desire to play some Dragon's Dogma and restarted the game, planning to go Fighter->Warrior before maybe sidestepping to Mystic Knight. It's also how I found out about the upcoming sequel, but I'll need to build a whole new system for that.

I'd forgotten that not only does the game not level scale the world (not a bad thing, but annoying when quests give little indication of a suitable level), but that past the tutorial the game loves throwing packs of 10+ wolves at you while you're travelling, or groups of bandits, and forgetting to keep on top of weapon upgrades can really hamper your damage output.

But at the same time the combat is just fun, and the character customisation is deep enough that I really wish they made the infinite appearance editing easier to access. Also actual difficulty settings, even if normal is actually pretty fine, which is always better than none even in the darkest of fantasies.

[Rynjin]

I'd forgotten that not only does the game not level scale the world (not a bad thing, but annoying when quests give little indication of a suitable level), but that past the tutorial the game loves throwing packs of 10+ wolves at you while you're travelling, or groups of bandits, and forgetting to keep on top of weapon upgrades can really hamper your damage output.

Being honest, I'm kind of astounded you managed to forget that WOLVES HUNT IN PACKS, ARISEN!

[Anonymouswizard]

Being honest, I'm kind of astounded you managed to forget that WOLVES HUNT IN PACKS, ARISEN!

Oh I remember the packs, I just swear they were smaller. That line is stuck in my head forever. After all, they hold the advantage.

Also just how often the packs spawn, I've lost one fight due to forgetting to equip my new sword and another from a bandit fight managing to skirmish into the aggro range of a wolf pack.

Anyway, hit level 10 so I should probably actually go to Gran Soren.

[warty goblin]

Been lightly prodding at Achilles: Legends Untold, an indie combining Dark Souls stuff with Diablo stuff.

The upside is immediately obvious, most Diablo alikes have, how to put this, really boring combat. You click on the dudes, every once and a while you fire off an ability. If its a fancy modern one you occasionally need to not stand on the red spots. Adding dodging and blocking and light/heavy attacks is a definite improvement.

Unfortunately the downsides are also obvious. Soulslikes have, how to put this, really boring leveling. You don't get new moves or abilities or anything, you just put points in your chosen attribute and your weapon damage or HP or stamina or magic juice goes up.... very, very slightly. This is frankly tedious in an action game, it's absolutely crushing when mixed with an ARPG, where the entire thing is supposed to be about doing crazy things with bonkers abilities. Here you get two actual abilities to start off with, throwing your shield and kicking a dude. Maybe they can be upgraded or modified or swapped out later, but no sign of that yet.

The story is, as befits a fusion of these two genres, bad and nearly non existent. Which is fine, the plot of Sacred, a game I love unconditionally, is kill the big demon, I'm not asking for great literature here. But it also provides zero incentive to figure out what's going on. Everything is wrecked, oh no, this place I've never seen before and have no investment in is bad now, I guess.

So you end up with an ARPG with satisfying-ish combat, but very little reason to keep playing it. I'm not getting cool new abilities, I'm not finding awesome loot, the story is paper thin and devoid of any character, I'm just fast/heavy attacking dudes. Woo.

[Rynjin]

Unfortunately the downsides are also obvious. Soulslikes have, how to put this, really boring leveling. You don't get new moves or abilities or anything, you just put points in your chosen attribute and your weapon damage or HP or stamina or magic juice goes up.... very, very slightly. This is frankly tedious in an action game, it's absolutely crushing when mixed with an ARPG, where the entire thing is supposed to be about doing crazy things with bonkers abilities. Here you get two actual abilities to start off with, throwing your shield and kicking a dude. Maybe they can be upgraded or modified or swapped out later, but no sign of that yet.

Yeah, it's weird how a lot of Souls-likes kind of just ignore that any games after Dark Souls came out ever existed and don't learn any of the lessons the later games learned. On...anything, really, but this subject in particular.

That was kind of the entire point between expanding the magic system in Dark Souls 2, and adding Weapon Arts in Dark Souls 3 (later renamed Ashes of War in Elden Ring). You don't gain anything specific on level up, but it gives you more options for things you can equip, rewarding your exploration but gating it with levels. It works well, and hopefully they further refine it later (now that Ashes of War are a thing there's pretty much no reason to have 5 different weapons of each weapon class with different scaling; you could just have one eg. Katana weapon and then add Ashes and Infusions to get it to scale how you like).

And then the imitators usually take the DS1 route of just...having a bunch of same-y weapons and levelups only make you marginally stronger.

[Zevox]

Got bored of grinding FE Warriors, so I brought out Advance Wars 1+2 and have been doing War Room maps and the occasional Predeployed versus mode map. Much as I enjoy the game, I have to admit, the larger War Room maps are really a drag a lot of the time. They just end up taking so danged long to play, and the AI is usually handed such a big advantage in economy and position at the start that it becomes incredibly obvious you can only win because they're making stupid decisions. Which I mean, yeah, with the AI in these games being what it is compensating for it to make it a challenge is a good idea, it's just that after a certain point they've thrown so much to them that it becomes too obvious you'd be screwed if they didn't suck at the game and detracts from the experience, you know? Still, at least there's plenty that aren't like that, but boy does it make me not want to do the ones that are.

And in Granblue, having finished trying everyone I finally just settled into playing my main, Belial, for a while, and today managed to get him up to S+ rank! Was quite the challenge and I wound up learning a lot of little details with him I wouldn't have expected to in order to pull it off, so feels good. Rather than just trying to keep going higher and higher with him though, I'm thinking I'll move over to other characters I like and try to take them to S+ next. Not sure who first - maybe Grimnir since he's my second favorite, maybe Zeta since it's been the longest since I played her, maybe someone else (I am tempted to go right to Cagliostro, Anre, or Eustace, since they're more off the beaten path for me).

[tonberrian]

Thinking about starting up Divinity Original Sin 2 again. Who should i be/bring with me?

[Rynjin]

Fane is the obvious pick for "who should I be?" if this is your second run and you didn't play Fane the first time. And I think you can fit every Origin in your party if you want, right?

Lohse is a good second pick for PC. I played a Fane/Lohse Lone Wolf party once that was very fun.

Edit: Doublechecked, apparently D:OS2 is 4 characters without mods, not 6. I'm partial to Ifan as the 3rd slot myself, with the 4th slot being a tossup between Sybille and The Red Prince. I always found Beast kinda boring TBH.

[Anonymouswizard]

It's time, time to once again burn my bread. That's right, Persona 3 Reload is out!


...aw no FeMC, guess I need a new main character name. Okay, guess I'm going with... and the game froze on the name entry screen. Fine, restarting and I guess I'll go with the canon name for this run.

[Rodin]

Fane is the obvious pick for "who should I be?" if this is your second run and you didn't play Fane the first time. And I think you can fit every Origin in your party if you want, right?

Lohse is a good second pick for PC. I played a Fane/Lohse Lone Wolf party once that was very fun.

Edit: Doublechecked, apparently D:OS2 is 4 characters without mods, not 6. I'm partial to Ifan as the 3rd slot myself, with the 4th slot being a tossup between Sybille and The Red Prince. I always found Beast kinda boring TBH.

For DOS2 I usually recommend an OC for the first run along with Fane, Sebille, and Lohse, since those three have the most interesting storylines and suffer the most from the player taking them over. Then on a second playthrough you grab either Fane or Lohse and take Red Prince, Ifan, and Beast.

The two best things BG3 did were to provide you with a character designed to be a PC with the Dark Urge, and to allow you to take the full roster along with you so you can swap out the characters as needed and bring them along on quests which impact their personal story.

[Anonymouswizard]

So switching between Persona 3 Reload and Dragon's Dogma as the mood takes me, although I really need a new controller as the wire's come loose on mine. I'll probably get the same controller but with Bluetooth.

Reload might just be my favourite Persona game, Persona 3 was already probably the best, but reload is essentially P3 but better.

Meanwhile Dragon's Dogma is interesting. Fi ally getting the hand of notice board quests and switched to the Mystic Knight class, I'm honestly really enjoying it's more defensive play style.

[warty goblin]

Moving from one Souls influenced lower budget game to... another Souls influenced lower budget game, this week I'm messing with Scars Above.

Now Scars Above is definitely not a shameless copy of the Souls formula for two very distinct reasons. Number 1, you mostly use guns, and number 2, you don't gain XP by killing stuff. See, you play a lady scientist who gets sucked through some space weirdness to an alien planet, and as a scientist you don't gain Self Actualization Juice by murdering things and slurping up their life essence/currency in what can only be described as Vampire Capitalism, but by studying them. So you get XP for exploring and scanning new species, but this only seems to occur once per species. There's also alien brainwave cubes scattered around that give you XP, but these are a finite resource. This means that grinding is impossible, and the only way to progress is to keep pushing forwards, which gives it some real momentum.

But the real draw of the game is exploring the messed up alien world. There's a low key Alien/Prometheus sort of vibe, but in the unusual sense of being focused on a rapidly mutating alien ecology rather than just ripping off the Aliens aesthetic for the 800th time. And while a lot of the stuff is videogame nonsense - you 3D print an extender for your arc welder to let it shoot cryogenic grub ooze - there's a lot of really clever, more involving touches. For instance most of the predators in the first area are semi-aquatic ambushers, so you learn to minimize contact with water - no XP for fights means combat is best avoided whenever possible. In a genuinely delightful touch, there's a sort of miniboss enemy, a giant gorilla with stone armor type creature that's only really vulnerable to headshots and fire damage in its glowing weak spot on its chest. At first, they simply charge at you, but after taking some damage they learn to protect their heads with their impervious forearms whenever you raise your gun. That's just excellent, I can't really think of another game that has a detail like an enemy learning something while you fight it. I'm sure it's just a flag in the AI script and it isn't "really" learning, but it's an impressive commitment to the bit.

[MCerberus]

Both Palworld and P3 are on game pass, so I'll be busy for a bit I think. Just getting around to both so the only thing I really know is that Persona city themes drill straight into the happy centers of my brain.

[Anonymouswizard]

Both Palworld and P3 are on game pass, so I'll be busy for a bit I think. Just getting around to both so the only thing I really know is that Persona city themes drill straight into the happy centers of my brain.

The Persona games just kid of get the music right. Probably the best is the third term town music in P4G, but they're all fitting and generally catchy.

Even if the English is sometimes a bit rocky, I swear one of the Persona 4 songs includes 'I'm fishing'.

The best bit about Persona 3, and one I'm glad they didn't change, is that the prologue is short. I think it's 30-60 minutes, with Reload's being slightly longer due to a couple more roaming sections. The tutorial is also a lot more bearable, because it's all there at once and lets you figure most of it out before it comes up.

I'm also very glad that not only are the evokers still there, but that they still pull the old bait and switch with them.

But be warned: you will grow to hate Tartarus. It's like 240 floors of samey dungeon crawling with some very annoying bosses, and is pretty much mandatory to visit throughout the story.

[Zevox]

I've also been playing Persona 3 Reload - in fact, I've got the next week off work specifically to play it. Happens when you remake one of my favorite games of all time.

So far, it's very much in the "very faithful remake" category - almost too much so to an extent. I'm slightly disappointed by Tartatrus appearing to still be the same fully procedurally-generated dungeon it was, since that was one of the biggest things they improved about the series in P5, giving the Palaces unique dungeon designs instead of leaning on that. But hey, the game was already great despite that, and there's been a number of other modernizations that are good:

- The visuals, obviously. The game just looks great now, no question about it.
- Fully selectable inherited Persona skills, which I don't believe even P3P had implemented.
- The "Baton Pass" system from Persona 5, now just called "Shift," allowing you to pass a character's bonus turn to another party member.
- The Kouha (and presumably Eiha, though I haven't seen that one yet) skills from P5 have been brought in, so Light/Dark are no longer just restricted to Hama/Mudo instant kill spells.
- In a change relative to P3P that I appreciate, the three different physical damage types are back! Although for some reason the MC is locked to one-handed swords now, so he'll have to rely on party members or personas for bashing and piercing damage.
- In a first for the series, when registering Personas and selecting "register all," Elizabeth offers to just register Personas that are higher-level than your already-registered versions. No more needing to register everything individually to avoid overwriting a Persona you picked up a base version of from Shuffle Time!
- Rather than choosing between three sports clubs that all lead to the same social links, you now just join the track team to get the Chariot and Strength links going. I'm presuming the same will hold true for the culture clubs and Temperance.

One that I'm hoping is in but can't confirm yet is platonic social link routes for all of the potential romances. Seems like it should be a given, since they started doing that in P4 and had it for the female protagonist route in P3P, but still, I'm too early in the game, don't know yet.

Music is mostly remixes of the old it seems, but they're mostly as good as the originals or better. Though sadly one exception is Mass Destruction, the main fight theme, which I think got worse - and was already probably my least favorite Persona fight theme, so, yeah. On the upside there's also a new fight theme, It's Going Down Now, which is better, so it's nice when I get that instead. Not sure what triggers that or if it's just random. Also pre-ordering got me a download option to use P4G music instead, which I'm resisting because I want to stick to actual P3 music, but boy I can't say it isn't tempting to turn on Reach Out to the Truth.

One odd thing is that social links seem to be referred to themselves by their last names now? It's weird seeing Kenji referred to as "Tomochika" or Kaz calling himself "Miyamoto." Not sure why they did that. Are Yukari and Fuuka going to be calling themselves "Takeba" and "Yamagishi" in texts to you despite being close friends once you get those links going? That'd be extra weird. (I could see Mitsuru calling herself "Kiriijo," to be fair.) Still, it is a minor thing.

All in all, unless they screw something up later on, this game pretty much seems like it obsoletes FES*. I just hope they're smart enough to add the female protagonist route as DLC down the line so it can truly be a definitive version of the game at long last.

*Unless you really like The Answer, I guess. Personally I'd just recommend watching the cutscenes from that on Youtube rather playing through it though, it's way too grindy and tedious. Even as much as I love Persona, I have never been able to finish The Answer.

[Bohandas]

Recently beat both Ittle Dew games (although I still haven't beat the secret boss from Ittle Dew 2)

I'm also playing Zortch

[Anonymouswizard]

- In a change relative to P3P that I appreciate, the three different physical damage types are back! Although for some reason the MC is locked to one-handed swords now, so he'll have to rely on party members or personas for bashing and piercing damage.

That's how portable worked, all three physical elements but limiting the protagonist to swords/naginatas. I too was disappointed they didn't bring back the multiple weapons for Minato, but that's mainly because SEES doesn't do much in the way of Bash for regular attacks (IIRC it's just Akihiko and Shinjiro).

Platonic routes for the romance links have apparently also been confirmed, so hooray.

I'm hoping they changed the party member's Personas up a bit, especially Junpei who takes FOREVER to get a hit-all attack, and Shinjiro who should probably begin with an extra skill or two. Notably both are the 'all three physical elements' party members, which probably explains why the sequels crunched Phys down itno one/two. Junpei is by far the worst though, as he also has those nigh on useless fire and buff skills.

[Cygnia]

I'm probably gonna start The Sexy Brutale this week....

[Zevox]

That's how portable worked, all three physical elements but limiting the protagonist to swords/naginatas. I too was disappointed they didn't bring back the multiple weapons for Minato, but that's mainly because SEES doesn't do much in the way of Bash for regular attacks (IIRC it's just Akihiko and Shinjiro).

Really? I remember the protagonist being limited to the naginata (never played the male protag in Portable, didn't know whether they'd done the same to him), but I would've sworn that P3P reduced the physical damage types all down to just one, bringing it in line with how they've handled it from P4 onward. I remember being disappointed by that.

Platonic routes for the romance links have apparently also been confirmed, so hooray.

Hooray if so! No need to leave most of them at rank 5 anymore to avoid feeling bad about cheating on them.

I'm hoping they changed the party member's Personas up a bit, especially Junpei who takes FOREVER to get a hit-all attack, and Shinjiro who should probably begin with an extra skill or two. Notably both are the 'all three physical elements' party members, which probably explains why the sequels crunched Phys down itno one/two. Junpei is by far the worst though, as he also has those nigh on useless fire and buff skills.

Junpei's fire spells are still quite handy, hitting enemy weak points is more important than anything else. Against ordinary enemy groups anyway, obviously you stick to his physical skills against bosses.

As for Shinji, well, for obvious reasons I'm disinclined to use him in combat anyway.

[Anonymouswizard]

Really? I remember the protagonist being limited to the naginata (never played the male protag in Portable, didn't know whether they'd done the same to him), but I would've sworn that P3P reduced the physical damage types all down to just one, bringing it in line with how they've handled it from P4 onward. I remember being disappointed by that.

Nah, dropping the number kind of messes with Junpei and Shinjiro's skillets, as they're built around dishing out all three physical elements. But the lack of fists and spears/bows on the protagonist was annoying and made Akihiko an even better pick than he already was as the debuff master.

Hooray if so! No need to leave most of them at rank 5 anymore to avoid feeling bad about cheating on them.

Yeah, hoping I can stick to just one, P3P is really quite scummy in the other releases.

Junpei's fire spells are still quite handy, hitting enemy weak points is more important than anything else. Against ordinary enemy groups anyway, obviously you stick to his physical skills against bosses.

As for Shinji, well, for obvious reasons I'm disinclined to use him in combat anyway.

Junpei would be really good at plowing through mooks if he could use attack all Phys skills much earlier, especially on groups with a physical weakness in the mix. He doesn't even get the maragi line, meaning it'll sap his MP fast.

Shinji is stupidly good due to his resistances all being normal. But as you say there's little reason to see that.

[Sapphire Guard]

I now have a PS5. Not sure what to do with it, as there doesn't seem to be that many good games, but oh well. Is that because of the semiconductor shortage? Seems like very few games were released as PS5 exclusive.