My Love-Hate Relationship With Persona 4 

Love this video. Sorry RU-vid algorithm screwing up its dissemination. Would love to hear your thoughts on Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Wonder how the characters compare to p4

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Great vid, man. I have split feelings on Persona 4 too. I’ll always be a Persona 3 man. I’m glad you ended the video on the game’s pluses, though…makes me want to replay it. I’m gonna subscribe. You ever tackle the Suikoden games? Whenever I want to re-experience the glory of ps2 I hop between the Personas, Suikoden III, FFX, and Dark Cloud 2

I found your video and MangaKamen's Persona 4 "Love/ Hate" video and watched them a few times each, thinking about style. Both of your editing styles are very different. His is more rapid and full of memes and Persona 5 comparisons, while yours is witty and thoughtful and not without its Persona 3 references. I enjoyed them both, and after replaying Persona 4 on PS2 and Persona 3 Portable for the NG+/FeMC features, it's clear I liked the Dungeons and social links of 3 over 4. Preferred the themes and story of P4 ultimately, but P3 hit harder, deeper with all its death and loss and grief. 3 had you earn trust over time, 4 had everyone close to begin with, and maybe that's to do with how urban island life wrought with midnight terrors contrast with small town life encased in mysterious murders. (Unrelated note: I maximized the social links in P3P just eyeballing it, barely unlocking Orpheos Telos at the last opportunity on 1/30, using guides for the dialogue choices and to mentally figure out what links to prioritize on different days, without using a step by step guide. I'm leaving that here only because I only have screenshots of it and no footage, but suffice to say walking the dog, save states, and Sunday phone calls were a lifesaver.)

​@@josephkokkinos9326a😊QA❤😊😊@!z, Q😊😊Q

I agree

This is not a downside, this is a victory

naoto stays winning.

There's really no reason for a war lol, most exchanges went like this for me back then: Someone, even including me: "P4 is the better game." Someone else, even including me: "P4 has Teddie." Someone, even including me: "... yah..."

Bruh lol I remember that haha

@@ZenKrio And now p5 had Morgana, a literally copy and paste of Teddie with just the opposite conclusion to his arc, (ya can't be human but it doesn't matter) and cheek clappers 2 had that dumbass owl thing, even if it was just a way to project another character. They want mascot characters, and it seriously undermines the tone of every single scene, game, image, everything they are involved in. Like, have a child or something like p3 did if you want a character that can say cringe cute shit. Even though said child was an actual character, and technically they're all children except for in P2-2, but still. It's literally never good and the trope has been satirized ad nauseam. I mean, Mr poopy butthole exists. I love persona, but these few glaring issues are why I'm an smt guy first except for with P2 one and two. They have their issues too, but at least they don't annoy me with Tokyo mirage cutesy shit. 70 hours in and I'm taking the lonely atmospheric demon fusion over, "aCtUaLlY wE sHoUlD SlEeP" any day of the week.

@@ZenKrio lmao

@@GG256_ Morgana doesn’t directly perv or grope someone and just simps for Ann.

Even though I knew who it was going in, I can definitely appreciate the game just straight up letting the player figure it out themselves rather than guiding them down a particular path.

My problem with this is that there was no evidence tying the villain to the crime; you basically narrow down the list to the 2 or 3 who you cannot rule out, click them, and essentially hope that the perp incriminates himself (which he does). Yes, the game does attempt to to use that one conversation with the diary as "evidence", but it is extremely weak and could have many alternative explanations. Persona 5 is a LOT better about providing definitive evidence to the traitor's identity.

The answer is absolutely Nanako Doujima!!

@@bakacdaz "You couldn't just quit while you were ahead, could you...big bro?" :)

The fact that Nanako was an option totally killed me.

yeah. honestly, i've stopped caring about the naoto gender discourse. regardless of which side people take, no one can replace the way the character resonated with you with a completely different narrative. really we should just stop putting each other down and just explain what the character means to each other.

Lol you don’t turn into a man you transition, the ignorance in your comment is staggering

And it’s 10 more than 10 years ago. People mindset are still less progressive than modern day.

Isn't it literally just she's a girl but only guys get taken seriously in the police

Not only is that mindset sexist, but it also mirrors the transphobic talking point of “we need to ban trans representation because otherwise girls who struggle under patriarchy will want to be boys instead!” It’s such a shallow idea of trans representation. Sure I want to see trans characters in media, but what I really want is seeing trans characters that are created with their trans identity in mind (preferably by trans writers) rather than attaching head cannons to existing characters while missing the whole point of the original arc

Incredible that you have two first Persona games.

@@harrisonfackrell lol

@@harrisonfackrell lol

did u play P3P or just P3?

@@rileyfreeman4096 P3 FES

Idk, Teddy for me is way way way worse because he sexually assaults everyone. Morgana on the other hand has a innocent crush on Ann and he never makes her uncomfortable (at least i don't remember)

​@@juliacondensadaNah, he doesn't and he's levelheaded when the situation is needed. Mementos dialogue shows that he can talk to Ann in a non-cringey way at times which is a step above Teddie.

@@juliacondensada Teddie doesn't "sexually assault" anyone...

@@noah2633 There are multiple scenes where teddy does. I can specifically think of a scene where Rise and Teddy are crying, then Rise immediately says "Where are you touching" before hitting him.

I agree. It dehumanizes the characters who are supposed to be the characters who learn to be human. Persona just treats women like crap in general. For example Junpei’s behavior, which is meant to be seen as him being a dumb kid, is downright creepy

All the kanji problems can be solved if it was just confirmed that he’s bi, people seem to forget that there’s an in-between …orrrrr you could just say he’s naotosexual (don’t blame him)

@@blackspy8331 But you're doing it again. You're saying he is one thing when the whole point is his struggle to accept that masculinity is not black and white and just because he liked crafts it didn't mean anything else. He felt that he had to be something he wasn't because of his interests, but he embraced his hobby and accepted that didn't make him less of a man.

@@bhume7535 see the thing is the game does that too. during the camping trip, the whole time yosuke kept asking what kanji's sexuality was and thats what personally bugs me about persona 4 is i feel like they try to deliver one message but their fanservice and humor cuts back their message. i dont care what sexuality kanji is, but the characters constantly indicating that there is something wrong with him for possibly liking men is kind of annoying. i know a lot of people chalk the humor to "it was the 2000s! it was a different time! and different cultural norms!" and while i do acknowledge japan's viewpoint on sexuality is different from other countries, it doesnt change the fact that the game's attempt at humor really can sour the message.

@@patty1418Exactly, people often strawman the fuck out of the criticisms that fans have for Naoto and Kanji but with Kanji especially they don’t even seem to treat it with respect. I get he has a masculinity issue but this is *pretty damn common for closeted gay/bi men to experience * and the way his dungeon is represented as a hyper sexual bathhouse where his shadow is the lispy gay stereotype….you can’t blame people for thinking the direction his arc was taken was a cop out from Atlus. At the point you engage with this you’re also under the assumption that the shadow is simply a representation of themselves that they’re refusing to acknowledge (the reveal it’s actually other peoples perspective of them makes this all nonsensical of course when he has been hiding his feminine traits for years at this point and this shouldn’t be how people see him, but also that entire reveal of as ridiculous imo and it retrospectively makes plot holes for other characters shadows).

@@patty1418 I agree! Whatever Kanji's sexuality is, doesn't change the fact that characters we are supposed to like sometimes act queer phobic towards him. There is also that scene later on when the guys enter the cross dressing contest and the audience yells out that it is disgusting and wrong. Events like this can extremely sour the experience.

Or the fact that all three should compliment each other, not be used by opinionated fans to crap on each other. Though on P5, I say it’s got the best first half pacing wise of the three but considering it starts off in the present and rewinds back to the past for the first arc; it can be an unfair comparison. P4’s just fine as is since the game is more scaled back in stakes compared to the other two and that’s okay; Inaba is Inaba.

What a coincidence, I also quit playing the game at that point. It's odd as I remember that I was enjoying it... I just suddenly lost all interest in playing the game. Same thing happened with Persona 5 and around when Haru joins. I quit playing for 3 weeks and had to force myself to come back and finish the game, though I am glad I did. I think the crux of the issue for me is just how repetitive Persona games become. Love/hate sums up my feelings for the entire series. I love them, but I always struggle to finish them, and tend to burn out at one point or another.

At least you dont have to take teddie home with you

@@noe4354 good point. It would have been agonizing for him to tell me to go to sleep.

Or that they're Koromaru and don't talk

Koromaru was great, cmon :(

No thanks. That would suck.

A really thorough comment that I like, what I will say is that semantically, non-binary people are generally somewhere on the transgender spectrum, as that process typically involves what we call social transitioning. The dichotomy is less of ‘is naoto trans, nonbinary or cis’ and is more ‘what kind of trans is naoto, if at all’

​@@iplayeddishonored2475 tbh I always found any discourse regarding this as funny because a game that tries so hard to show you that labels and social norms don't define a person, fans try their hardest to lock the characters into a label they're pushing into them.

I totally agree with all your points here!

@@Plasmacat1 exactly

@@iplayeddishonored2475 why do people wanna put naoto into a lgbtq spectrum so badly? Why can't she just be a girl that's different?

But that's just my opinion. I'm glad you get enjoyment out of it in your own way.

I'm like that way with persona 5 lmao. It was my first game and I have the huge bias and nostalgia, but all of the criticisms are valid and you can't really disagree with them. The positives FAR outweigh the negatives though. Both fantastic games. Love persona

The one thing I struggle with is how he took down morooaka and dragged him up that tower

​@@chaserseven2886The one thing I struggle to understand is that the incel can actually kill a grown man.

The thing is, the party members did get them in 3 (only girls in fes, guys added in p3p, don't know about vanilla ps2 release), the problem, in my eyes, was tying them getting their upraded personas to social links. P3 shown that when you go through some substantial personal growth, your persona evolves with you. This in P3 happened in main story, mostly when characters came to terms with someone's death. This way they could grow in the main story and have some more personal, smaller scale stories in social links. In P4 the big growth got pushed into the optional content, which seemed even lower stakes than in p3 (mostly just repeating character introduction).

when it comes to modern persona, even though 4 relies on the social links as a crutch at times it defiently has the best writing quality amongst the 3 at the same time, 3 even in p3p the social links can range from really good to really bad and 5 is like the most condescened where most range from good to meh. You could 4 as being more experimentation on characters being less tangled into a plot in favor of social links which for 4 I think does well and 5 tries to copy it though it's not as good as seemed like they were trying to a balancing act with it's story and social links

Persona 4 has a lot more character development as part of its story because of how it centers each arc/dungeon around a specific character. The issue with P3, despite it relegating the Persona evolutions to key story moments, is that most of the characters barring Junpei and to a lesser degree Yukari, are introduced and then not explored much if at all until October and beyond. Stuff like Ken's desire for revenge is more so treated like a twist than an opportunity to explore his character, and the subsequent follow-up is swiftly dealt with because P3 crams about 80% of its story/character in the last 20%. In P4 each dungeon gives you ample time with a future party member. It presents you with a character arc, fleshing out what initailly seems like a one-dimensional character, and on top of that ties it in creative ways to the core theme of Truth, presenting differing perspectives. Sometimes contrasting perspectives even, such as how Yukiko wants to escape her "birthright" with the Amagi Inn, while Naoto desperately wants to live up to hers as a detective of the Shirogane family. While the social links do further flesh them out, just their story involvement alone forms a very well-rounded character.

Personally i found the p3 party members didnt get nearly as much screentime as in p4 or p5 so i wish they had social links to flesh them out so i disagree

the fact that people keep getting butthurt about Kanji and Naoto means two things: one, we're way too deep in a cultural war debacle, and two, players keep missing the point about how much of life relies on actually leaving your house every once in a while

Nah with Kanji as the story progresses any semblance of his sexuality being ambiguous is gone and he’s just a straight dude that’s okay with his femininity (this isn’t a bad thing btw in a vacuum). The only references going forward to him maybe not being straight is when the game is being homophobic like when Yosuke is afraid that Kanji staying in the tent with him and Yu means that he might fucking assault them while they sleep.

some of yall act personally attacked when someone can think kanji might've been gay. Both sides are really toxic, and im sick of this being the only thing people talk about when it comes to persona 4

There’s enough evidence to say he is gay or at least I forgot the actual term but it’s when your attracted to someone because how they look and not because they are a boy girl trans or anything in between

@@chaserseven2886pansexual means being attracted to people regardless of gender

They really don't though, you're just saying that because they have themes to their look instead of P3 where Tartarus was more like an alien or featureless void. It looks more like a place that makes sense for Shadows to be in than 4

@@557deadpool Heaven doesn't fit an innocent child with a dead parent? A bath house doesn't fit a character led to be sexually ambiguous? (And should've stayed that way or at least came out in the game, but cultural barriers/different times.) A castle doesn't fit a character who literally calls herself a princess? Etc. Etc. They are all adjacent to their characters. Yes, I am just saying that because they actually have themes. They, to me, are a blast compared to null and void any day. I love both games, (P3 and 2-2 being my favorite of the Personas) but this was a welcome edition to the 2nd "trilogy" of games that 5r has obviously evolved into what we have today. To say visual style doesn't compliment what you play/keep players interested is a wild take that I see a lot today. (Not saying you said that.) I mainly play RPGs and fighting games. Visual and sound design are extremely important to both genres in certain ways, but I feel like RPGs get the short end of the stick here much too often, compared to my other favorite genre in particular. Games like Xenoblade have fantastic level design, and most of their entries simply have you walking and fighting. The environments and animations are a huge aspect of the entertainment factor of the game. No. I appreciate the care to actually design visual levels, even if what I am doing in said level is detached from the task.

@@557deadpool "you're just saying that because they have themes" um, yeah? that does seem to be the point of his comment. good job.

Eh I think that's surface level and not a massive difference personally.

@@sawtoothgrind1981I mean when doing further analysis on the characters their palace, naming, music and visually all play into their character at large, and when looking at preference those being there can massively impact perception of them, this is why some people (me included) thinks that Heaven is better than most palaces in P5/R despite being gameplay wise worse, you resonate with them more due to their depth

Personally, this doesn't seem like a big deal at all. Especially cause I found P4's story to be pretty weak, and villian kinda predictable

@@y2m3e.45Why do you personally think it was weak? Additionally I don’t think that it was obvious until Adachi slipped up towards the very end, I think calling him predictable is at all a correct description unless you had preconceived information lol

@@enchantingggg8399I’m not the person you replied to but I can tell you why I think it’s weak lol. Just finished it btw and maybe I am being a negative Nancy because it never met the expectations I had upon seeing people discuss it online. So generally I think the main story is exceptionally weak because of the formula of, midnight channel -> abduction -> dungeon of upcoming party member (usually) - no relevant info gained when they recover, repeated for Yukiko, Kanji, Rise, Naoto. We had two red herrings, one of which was the sidest of side characters with that brat of a kid whose motivations to kill the teacher I can’t even remember right now. Then we had Nanatame who at least was more compelling, I also hated the way they used him to set up a bad ending. I think the situation itself is extremely compelling where the gang is ready to effectively kill him while angered at Nanako’s death but I absolutely hate when the shadow version of him pops on tv to be a motivator behind this and we eventually find out it was because that’s how we viewed him. Nanako dying with this bad ending too is pretty dumb she dies just because this is meant to be bad ending, despite Nanatame’s fate being unrelated to her health. I think it would’ve been fine to even imply an apocalypse instead through text after some outlining some fun moments and how you were glad the murders were finally over or something. Hell even say the murders kept happening and the gang never got closer to the truth of why they didn’t stop. The shadow reveal of what they mean especially though I really did not like because of how it recontextualises Kanji’s shadow and kinda falls apart. It makes Kanji’s shadow even more nonsensical than it already was with the direction they took it, maybe I’m forgetting but hasn’t he rejected this feminine side of himself since he was pretty young so nobody should have perceived him as lispy gay stereotype never mind enough to make it a shadow of him, unless it was because that’s how he saw himself in which case….this is just a plot hole because of the shadow reveal opposing the idea we were originally led to believe that it was just a part of themselves they know is true to an extent but refuse to accept. Adachi I loved as a character until the reveal. Literally could not care less for his motivations, he was a loner that realised he gets a thrill from killing people and I guess he finally feels like it gives him power over people rather than being the one powerless. Eh. This being the main human antagonist was so underwhelming, I just thought “Wait that’s it? That’s why he did it all?” That’s without even getting into how he was just a pawn, which made me care even less for him as a final human villain, especially with how poorly the puppet master was set up. Anyway I think something like this can be done well too but imo here it just wasn’t. We spent like ten minutes with him and his mask off as he speedran how and why he did it all. I did however like the letter from prison, thought it was a nice touch. Still just a cherry on top to a shitty cake though. The fighting god stuff is whatever I don’t really have a problem with it but I’m not fawning over it either. It was kinda cool I guess. Marie was a cool character and I loved the idea behind her and her character arc, not much to really say here besides it was easily the most interesting part of the story to me. Dungeon was horrible though, not from a difficulty standpoint either, it was just boring to be stuck fighting such weak enemies with barely any items and the rewards were almost non existent. I just ran through and avoided them all when I could. Then we have the gas station employee reveal to be the otherworldly mastermind…god this was such a horrible reveal, a crumb of foreshadowing does not make up for how unimpactful the reveal was. Ending was super cute though, I cried lol, as mad as the game made me I did really feel a bone with the characters. Despite thinking the entire main cast is a mixed bag and Teddy, Chie and Rise being extremely annoying to me I still liked them lol. So yeah, I found the game to just be overall mediocre? Social links were easily the best part, but the flaws of the rest of the game stood out more when I was often impatiently waiting for it to be free time again whenever I was going through a dungeon or in some story related segment that bored me. If I sound really triggered it’s because I am xD I heard this was amazing and it just never hit those highs for me. It has great points but also so many terrible aspects, there’s great potential there too with the setting and characters but I felt like they rarely capitalised on it.

​@jo0rd73 that's a pretty vast oversimplification of adachi. His character is about the result of being isolated and disconnected from people and society. He grows jaded and bored from everything, and the event of gaining his power is something interesting that happened to him in his otherwise boring life. Since he's so bored and negative this event is just a game to him, and people's lives become entertainment. He is the opposite of the main character and also the rest of the team. Each person's shadow mirrors this throughout the game as they're all similar to adachi in some way. Boredom and waiting for something fun to happen, feeling like they're too good for the town like Yosuke. Jealousy of people perceived to be born with advantages they don't have like Chie. Feeling trapped and wanting to be rescued instead of putting in effort to change like Yukiko. Etc... To me this build up makes adachi a strong villain and a complex character to truly understand. I think the story wants you to see these mirrors, that's why it's kinda obvious adachi is the culprit, it's not really supposed to be that big of a mystery. Golden built on this by giving him that social link and making his warped character even more obvious since it's so in contrast to everyone else's link. It's a message that this is the danger of not having bonds or connections and becoming isolated.

​@@samoth5161I think the concept of his character are really good. but I feel hesitate to called him complex... why? his entire motivation are just go in and contain only in long monologue old fashion style of villain. it's not really that good execution to tell thesis of disconnection and isolation. I think that's Adachi having social link (in Doylist sense) are for people who already known about his reveal in original version. so it free to design eerie Social link like that. (well at least it give him more characterization than that horm of villain monologue. I thumb it up)

Honestly, as someone who steers more into the direction of ‘Atlus accidentally wrote a trans guy’, I really respect this opinion. Naoto is narratively neither completely one or the other

"Am I a boy? Am I a girl? Who knows!? But everyone finds me hot and that makes everyone gay" - Naoto prolly

yeah, that was basically the idea.

My main problem is that the writers have not improved and indeed have been worse in many ways.

Yet the writers still never improved on those subjects.

source?

@@bubbletea_ cd dramas for the og p3 has akihiko talking about protein pretty often, but not really annoying or anything like that, its just a joke between him and shinji maybe, to put it in prespective, if chie meat shit is like 100/100, akihiko is like 7/100

Source : trust me bro

I think the investigation team would stick, especially chie, yukiko, and yosuke who are already friends before you even join, but for sure I doubt anyone in the phantom thieves talks anymore, just ryuji and ann.

I hope it still based on Social Link but it can help another Social Like too. Like If I getting close to Yosuke he will helping me getting close to Chie easier too or something like that. Maybe Dual/team event would be nice too like going so out with 2 people at the same time too. (Like when Yu, Yosuke and Kanji try to hitting on the girls. But make it optimal as social link event.)

@@bluejay9638calling yosuke and chie friends seems like a stretch

@@Solarvortex7286 naaaah

it came out in 2017, but really started to amp up in presence in 2018.

@@bubbletea_ Note that I'll be editing this comment a lot as I keep watching.

Part 2: I agree with you that Golden's new slice of life events are very good, especially given how awful I found most of the vanilla ones. The beach, ski trip and band scenes were all really nice. We're also on the same page with Marie, I describe my feelings towards her exactly the same way you did: "I don't love her, I just don't hate her." The Hollow Forest is great, and she's not intrusive unless you do her Social Link. The main thing though is her existence adds foreshadowing for Izanami that wasn't in the original game, making the final boss less out-of-nowhere. "It might be kind of an Asian thing". That's why I like Shu's Social Link so much. It's a rare criticism of that study culture. Naoki is great, and I'm torn over whether he should've been more involved with the plot or not. The nurse, Uehara (who gets name-dropped in Takemi's P5 Confidant, actually)... I find her Social Link weird, since it flips between multiple angles and it feels like they couldn't decide on a consistent focus. It starts out with rumors of an affair with a patient, then it's about her being a workaholic, then there's guilt over a patient dying. It's like they were trying to write three different Social Links. I still love how Kanji has zero interest in Rise and how bothered she is by it. Chie's Social Link is mostly "eh", but I think her optional romance scenes are pretty nice, I like how surprised she is that you picked her, the most "normal" of the group's girls (she's got her weirdness but the others are even more so). There's just something nice about that. Teddie is.... he's terrible in spinoffs, and terrible in a lot of P4, but his scenes surrounding Nanako later on actually pretty good. "When the story gets good, it gets REALLY good" is how I'd sum up P4. I think P5's plot is more consistent, but its highs don't quite reach P4's highs. I still get chills during the Nanako kidnapping sequence. As for your conclusion, it's interesting. I often get turned away from some games due to HOW the fanbase treats and discusses them, it feels elitist but I guess... praising or criticizing them "for the wrong reasons". Like how it bothers me when people like Persona 3 for being dark and edgy. That's... really not the point of it, and P4 isn't all sunshine and rainbows. (Heck, the literal sunshine and rainbows dungeon is representative of the darkest leg of the story...) Overall I enjoyed this retrospective. I originally rejected P4 BECAUSE it hit too close to what I was going through at the time, or at least I thought it would. It was only later in life that I came to appreciate it.

Potentially after the Joker Smash Bros reveal, although that was later in the year. That's certainly what inspired me to pick up the game, as I thought the character design and style of the Smash Bros reveal looked sick af

Eh, I disagree. The PTs constantly text each other, and do hang out a lot. Even if it more focuses on the plot, they clearly do spend a lot of time together, and care for each other (besides the girls beating up ryuji for not dying). Sure, I agree that they have less chemistry than the IT, but saying they don't have a dynamic is a big stretch.

I think Yosuke's internalized homophobia makes more sense given unused voice clips imply he might have been a romance option at one point in development. While this absolutely doesn't justify the behavior, I've always interpreted Yosuke as a closeted bisexual and his homophobia is psychological projection.

I totally agree.

The Bathhouse dungeon in my opinion would have been better if it was the Textiles Shop instead and Kanji's Shadow was portrayed as a flamboyant fashion designer instead.

I know im late but have you ever talked to a teenage boy? They act pretty homophobic until they learn otherwise

So anime Yu then?

You would enjoy Spy x Family. It’s like P4G in the way it uses the filler to build bonds between characters, as well as subtly hint at important stuff that happens down the line. P4G and SxF really contribute to the thought that filler doesn’t really have to be bad, and it can even contribute to the greater story as a whole.

@@MysteriousMusician33 I *would?* Honey, I *do* enjoy Spy X Family.

I just recently played it for the first time, was spoiled by memes about who the culprit was, and I still enjoyed the game immensely. I feel like the plot is actually kind of secondary to the game's themes. Only Persona games I've played so far are Persona 5 Royal, which was my first and inspired me to go give the other ones a try, and I just finished Persona 4 Golden for the first time last night, and honestly I think I liked P4 a lot more than P5. So I wouldn't say it was ruined at all.

I think the mystery is just a means to an end, not the end goal.

I've been spoiled a LOT and I'm still enjoying it, particularly the characters (with the plot it's like there's a sense of dread in terms of "ohh but i know what happens after this"

If you haven't seen it already, the Persona 4 anime (original, I haven't watched Golden so I don't know what it does with this plot point) handles this infinitely better than the game. Basically, in the anime, Yu has Namatame like halfway shoved into the TV, but stops himself from killing him because it would make the Investigation Team no better than him. It's a little tropey, but hey, what can you do.

This comment is the problem in todays society.

@@omensoffate lol okay

@@omensoffateboth comments are. people can simply be without boxes and people can be assholes about it

thank you

Not to mention than even if it does happen, it gives itself away with a loud clack and doesn't even actually change your position on the map, which makes it straight up pointless. I generally like the dungeon gimmicks however.

I should add I'm also biased towards P5 as that one was my first "real" megaten game and it feels like I need its message every other week. I could very much be distorting what the game actually was supposed to be due to my own feelings towards it, but I also feel there has to be _some_ truth in how I feel the game was targetted at a very specific audience. I imagine that feeling of intent is especially so for younger Japanese P5 players.

let's goooo. i was waiting for someone from bangladesh to comment on that joke.

@@bubbletea_ omg ly content. i have been binging your vids today. keep up the good work

What did the crew do?

yes i can. i just did. i’ve played all 6 games as well. you can disagree all you want. i straight up said it’s an unpopular opinion.

Sorry to necro an old comment but I agree that Persona 4's dungeons feel emptier than persona 3's. To start off with, movement matters much more in FES than in Golden. Getting hit first by a shadow can always threaten an instant wipe due to the way that game handles knockdown and the "one more!" system. When a character uses a full turn just getting back up, especially in a game where you can't force other characters to use re patra, you're ALWAYS at risk of a wipe, especially getting hit by the opponent first. Tartarus also has physically more room to maneuver around shadows, with many shadows spawning in square rooms, usually with some kind of ledge for the player to retreat to. In persona 4, shadows spawn in those awful little hallways and corridors, which offer less opportunity for movement. Shadows also take longer to react to you in persona 4, making stealth, a huge part of sneaking up on enemies in persona 3, matter way less. Combined with the fact that you'll almost never see your main character get dizzy from a first strike, and if you did you could fix it with amrita, there's less tension in exploring persona 4's dungeons. I also think Persona 4 encourages badly paced exploration in dungeons. Every dungeon can be finished in a single day, and using multiple days for a dungeon wastes valuable S-Link time. So the most efficient strategy is to manage your SP resources and try to finish the whole dungeon in one straight shot. Contrast this with Persona 3, which encouraged multiple shorter tartarus sessions per month, AND had the player managing resources between teleporters, a much shorter endeavor with higher stakes due to how easily it was to die to random shadows, and you get a much more consistent dungeon crawling experience. Persona 3's "train sporadically the whole month in preparation for the full moon" encourages good pacing and creates ludonarrative harmony. The gameplay loop of 10-15 floor resources management segments leading nicely into a big flashy boss, usually accompanied by beautiful anime cutscenes and unique (sometimes explorable) locations make a much better payoff. Compare this to Persona 4, where its often most efficient to leave dungeoning to the end of the fog cycle or wait for a rainy day when you can't do social links. You're encouraging the player to allow a character to languish in a mental torture chamber for a week or two while you and the homies hang out at the corner store. Then you have to stop all the fun life sim gameplay and hit the dungeon for 3 hours straight before you can resume the life sim. The dungeoning doesn't fit as neatly into the wider game as persona 3's does. Persona 4's bosses definitely DO have great character moments, but the raw gameplay experience between the cutscenes where a character gets kidnapped and the cutscene where a character has an emotional resolution is worse designed than the gameplay in persona 3, in my opinion.

Blind hate ? You expecting it is the problem in todays society. Good on you for giving it a chance at least.

@@omensoffate You kinda misinterpreted my words but it's fine. I'm just extremely cautious about this kinds of vids in youtube