Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Re: Mischief Maker would hate it

[quote name="FABIO"][quote name="Lizard_King"] When an analogy is the entirety of your counterargument, you need a better option. In this case, it's not some minigame or whatever, it's the 1/3 of the game. Balancing your Personas in a game called "Persona". Who'd have thought that? You have three people with you in most fights, all with a different element and potentially different type of attack, in addition to whatever you can bring to bear. That's quite a few windows for experimentation, and requires a comprehensive defense strategy while you feel out the enemy. And, again, I can't emphasize just experimenting with the breeding a bit after you've gotten an advance in an S-link and before you've gotten to a boss. Of course, you could opt to randomly hit buttons while cursing your god for having put you in this terrible bind, but I guess that turns most games into trial and error. [/quote] I'm not sure how many more ways I can say it. There was no planning, and "feeling it out" amounted to retries with 10-30 minutes of lost progress. You went into a new area or boss and crossed your fingers that the main character wouldn't get hit with an attack he was weak to, or hit with a status effect and disabled for 3 turns (in a game where enemies can kill you in 1 or 2), or falling down from a failed attack (don't dare ever make a physical attack, DONT YOU DARE), or just plain suffer a critical hit. Final full moon boss, the hanged man on the bridge. 5 minutes of unskippable cutscenes, 10 minutes throwaway fight, and 5 more minutes of cutscenes before you can fight him again. Has super attack that completely fucks your party unless you have defense against slash attacks, but there is zero indication that it's a slash attack, or even a physical attack at all ("heatwave" is pierce, not fire!). You die and get to redo those 20 minutes before getting to take another blind guess at what fucked you. How is the "boring delivery bullshit" you must redo in Grand Theft Auto not the exact same thing? [quote]All of which is made very easy by the unlocking of the Monad dungeon, which allows you to do all of your leveling and hunting in high risk/high reward environments once standard dungeons become trivial. [/quote] Monad! A place you want to reach in order to level faster, but in order to unlock it you must beat the reaper which requires lots of leveling, to the point where it becomes a snail's pace in the standard dungeon, and this is all after the game gives zero hint as to the mere existence of a secret dungeon. A secret dungeon mandatory for grinding to beat the main game, which you only find out about after beating what is for all the player knows just an optional side mission for aspies, but it won't appear if you do it the final night when fatigue doesn't apply and you're free to grind all you want. That's even getting into how the reaper himself was more bullshit unintuitive anti-planning. [/quote]