With the upcoming release of Atlas’ new IP Metaphor ReFantazio there’s a good chance many will be discovering the delights of an Atlas RPG for the first time. Consequently, delving back into some of their other masterworks.
Having recently completed Persona 3 Reload via Xbox Game Pass I have a few tips for anyone starting their angsty monster fighting Japanese school boy adventures.
Popular kid in school.
While school is in session always take the opportunity to engage in social links at the school.
There are plenty of after school activities to do before evening sets in. The ones you should prioritise are those with your classmates. There are a lot of them. And these will be unavailable during school holidays and during the many weeks of exams.
The weekends and evenings will give you plenty of time to social link with those outside of school. Make the most of the time you’re in school to attend to those such as Art club, student council, track team and others.
Don’t worry about money too much.
Further to the previous tip, your evening is better spent maxing out whatever social links are available. The café has it’s uses, I early on thought it was the best way to spend my time. Making money AND increasing charm, how could this not be the secret to success. But it turns out it’s much easier to earn money on a trip through Tartarus, plus you’ll gain experience to level up and Personas.
You will want to level up your social stats of course. However, the game will present plenty of opportunities to do this without missing out of social link time.
Fuse Personas as you go.
In the Velvet room you can fuse your personas into exciting new monsters. Sometimes these fusions will not be as powerful as those you’re combining. However, it’s worth doing it anyway.
Make sure to register your personas first, once this is done you can then summon them at a price of Yen. The persona you summon will be at the level of when you registered it, so long as this is done just before fusing, you won’t be losing your favourite monster.
The more personas you discover and fuse the easier your time will be later in the game when trying to fuse some of the most powerful personas’. When it comes to the ‘Special Fusions’, in which more than 2 need to be fused to make a powerful creation, if you have registered the ingredient Personas before hand then the Special Persona will show as available to create at a button press and it will purchase any you don’t currently have in your roster.
Your protagonist will also gain new Theurgy abilities when they have specific new personas discovered. Which are much more useful (cooler) than the default healing Theurgy you get.
Combat Weakness.
Like many turn-based combat games, elemental weaknesses are a thing. And in Persona they’re incredibly useful to exploit.
Hitting a weakness of an enemy will gift you a second turn with the same character, you can shift this bonus turn to one of your other characters. Who will then still get their own turn in usual order. A great use of this is to shift to your protagonist who will likely have a persona with staff buffs or debuffs so you can then unleash a powerful damage attack with their usual turn.
Or to perform a charge move in the shift turn, to then give more damage on usual turn.
4.2.
The weaknesses aren’t always going to be obvious, but they sometimes can be predicted. An enemy with purple colours on them may be strong to Dark. Hitting them with a Light attack could be their weakness. However, some of those rocking purple may also have white, and thus be immune to Dark and Light, this happens quite a bit. You can play these ones safe with an element attack.
Those who look armoured, such as literal tanks, may be immune to physical attacks. You will discover much of this yourself through your trials in Tartarus, be sure to pay attention to these patterns.
Social skills.
When you speak to a social link character it will ask you to confirm you want to spend time with them. If you have a Persona in your roster which matches the arcana of the character, you will gain more social points from the interaction, and it will tell you if this is the case when you speak to them. If you don’t get the message about this, consider heading to the Velvet room first to summon a matching arcana persona first. It takes a moment but will save you having fruitless social interactions.
5.2
For me Persona is a fun life sim with added combat, but that does not mean I’m above looking up the answers. Your social link interactions will present you with multiple choice responses, and while in real life just being yourself is enough to make friends, in Persona making friends has right and wrong answers.
Now this might not be how you want to play, it wont ruin your game to not pick the best choice each time, and you may have more fun just winging it. But this is a tips article, and if you want to spend your social links as efficiently as possible, it’s worth looking up the answers.
Here’s the list of social links to a great resource on RPGsite.net which helped me out greatly. Big love to them.
Teleport.
While battling up the endless floors of Tartarus there are a few things that will make your life easier.
At guardian boss levels you will have a two-way teleporter. Make use of this every time to head back to the ground floor. While there you should use the skills of Yukari to heal your whole squad. This works great if she’s not in your main team, as it will save you spending SP from squad mates on healing.
If you have picked up new personas, jump into the Velvet room and register them. As you’re bound to acquire more and if your roster is full, you’ll need to start dropping some. Do some fusing with the new find while here also, as per tip 3.
Take any items to boost your SP if you think you’ll need them.
And save the game. Not only might you want to reload after a particularly embarrassing defeat. But should the game crash, you won’t want to re-battle through floors already explored.
Get it out the way.
At some point during the month you will get a call from Elizebeth informing you of missing persons in Tartarus, personally I waited till this before going in, so to not need to spend too many evenings in combat. However, weather you do this or go straight in, it’s worth getting to the boarder floors right away.
By this I mean to sprint past the trash shadows and head up the stairs. You should only really need to battle the guardian bosses on the way to the top. If you don’t make it to the boarder floor before the end of the month…well nothing happens. But it’s still highly recommended that you do. As you will need to reach the top to finish the game and breaking it into chunks will save a slog later on.
If you can’t beat a guardian boss, you can always go back to a lower floor and do some grinding. But the guardian bosses and monad door booses give the most experience points, so fighting them should be sufficient to keep your characters at the right level to fight the full moon bosses.
Death.
I had my whole team at level 99 before the end of the game. This was only possible due to making Death my b***h. He’s not to be underestimated, however, your team will very much always make a bigger deal of him than he is.
Now, I first fought and beat him at around level 65, and it was tough. But with the huge exp boost from doing this, each subsequent time became easier.
To summon Death just wait around on the same floor for a few minutes. When you see him, try and get that first strike on them to S.E.E.S advantage.
This is a cheat move, but if your pride can take it, then drop it down to easy mode when planning to fight the big guy. You can change level at any time in settings. By being on Story mode your protagonist will not be able to drop below 1hp. Which of course means no game over possible.
Keep a healer on your team with whole squad heal, for me that’s Ken. Each round I would make sure my team is healed. Make sure enemy debuffs and squad buffs are in effect. And use charged attacks from protagonist.
Death has no weakness or immunities.
Once defeated you will get a card shuffle, pick the experience boost if available.
With this you’ll have the whole squad maxed out in no time.
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Hopefully you will find some of the above useful and make your time with Persona 3 even more enjoyable. I’ve loved this game and hope you will too. And I very much look forward to Metaphor ReFantazio when it releases.
If you have any tips you can add, let me know in the comments.
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GAMING. POSITIVITY. GOOD TIMES.
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