LogFAQs > #978885231

I'm not really good at breaking down my thoughts for stuff like this since a lot of it is just internal vibes, but I'll try.

Most noteable examples.

For the most recent one, Junpei. This one was definitely tainted by so many failed playthroughs over the years, since Junpei is, intentionally as part of the narrative, kind of unbearable for the first half of the game. However, back when it came out, I was a bit blinded by my lack of interest in the archetype. Now, man, does he ever land in the back half of this game. I think a lot of P3 characters suffer from kind of just being there for a lot of the game narratively (this is a bit of an issue for some characters in all 3 games, but usually it's made up for with fucking around filler moments I enjoy throughout), but Junpei has something active going on from the front to the back of the game. I REALLY like the Chidori stuff, I kind of wish there was a lot more of it? Time outside of the hospital before she leaves to Tartarus.

The rest for P3 is a bit superficial. Fuuka is way better now but that's just because of the voice actress, I never even tried to like her the first time because the VA work just didn't work for me (I also think the process of recruiting Fuuka is the only time in the game where it really feels like they even attempt to make someone joining the team matter). Shinji is still cool, but the extremely low amount of join time feels like a mistake (the major lack of any narrative within Tartarus itself definitely makes this worse....taking it the hangouts added in Reload away, he's barely even in the game after he joins).

P4, there's not really anyone I like less than I used to. There was a time BETWEEN playthroughs where I thought I like Yosuke more than I did, but both while playing and replaying In felt the same, lol. It's more who I didn't like before, which where Yukiko and Rise, two characters I didn't care about at all the first time through. In replay, they ended up being my favorite 2 girls in the game (Kanji is #1) and I have to attribute that to just being too tomboy focused at the time lol (which, you know, still a fan but my horizons have opened). Maybe my irrational, obsessive hate of Mendez' Chie hurt me there...Naoto I had a lot of confirmation bias for when I first played P4. I DECIDED Naoto was my favorite character before playing the game, and my main drive was to get to Naoto. When they shove you in the crappy video game dungeon between Rise and Naoto, I dropped the game for like a month out of frustration. When I played it again all those years later, I still really like Naoto, but her self appointed #1 spot didn't hold up.

P5 is the biggest, and it's noteable since that was only a 2 year gap between vanilla and Royal. The first chunk of characters, nothing there, but I didn't give a fuck about Yusuke when I played P5. P5R, and Yusuke is the fucking BEST. He sucks ass before her joins, but once he does he's nothing but absolute gold. Almost everything that comes out of his mouth is amazing. Meanwhile, I got swept up in the Makoto zeitgeist on P5's launch, but on playing Royal she was.....fine? The game treats her like she's the main character sometimes, everyone loves her, it gets kind of annoying. I like her design a lot but she's pretty mid. Haru, however, grew on me a ton on that second playthrough. Even with her minimal screen presence by comparison, she's just a pleasant character to have on screen, I became genuinely invested in interacting with her. She really deserved to have more content in the game.

I do want to add a note here though that I think every character here is good in P5 Strikers. I'm still super impressed at how much fun that game was, considering I am personally of the opinion that Persona characters get worse in every spinoff they're in (P4 characters suffer the most, as they devolve into charicatures of themselves more with every release). Now that I'm done with Reload I'm going to be playing Tactica, though, so time to see what that does with the characters. Don't have high expectations.