I always do the same thing throughout the game - I get some combination of guys that can cover Agi/Bufu/Zio/Garu/Hama/Mudo, make sure some of them can do Media/Diarama/Mediarama, and then push through the game by exploiting elements like crazy. this time I'm trying to use more HP skills (aka using Aigis) but I generally don't find physical skills to be all that effective (even if they own my face when enemies use them). it's just.. well, I can already strike weaknesses without needing to use them, and they suck up my precious HP. Persona is all about not letting the enemy get a turn at all. hell, I would rather use maragi than maragilao because it does basically the same thing for less SP.
do others use more skills or more variety? there's tons of status attacks and support skills but I usually don't touch them unless it's something to protect against one of the aforementioned ailments. I got to thinking about this because I just hit the Tartarus boss that does Sexy Dance in P3P and it absolutely annihilated me because I had basically no answer for being uber charmed the entire fight.
That's basically my strategy too. I totally ignore physical attack skills, and just try to get personas that cover all the elements and healing. Another priority is something with Null Light/Dark.
In FES I think I usually stick to single target spells because IIRC (it's been a while) you don't get the extra turn unless everything was weak to the element.
-- xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out? GotD (219/384) Melee v FFX
I don't *generally* train specific Personae unless there a certain skill (or in P3P, skill cards), I really want or need to fuse on to another Persona. I try to get enough Personae to cover my bases. Phys skills can actually be pretty strong in the right situations! Power Charge + anything usually destroys things if the Str skill is high enough, and some of the attacks that hit multiple enemies can be useful as well. But otherwise, yeah, exploiting weaknesses is where it's at.
Status effects are generally useless except for the buffs and debufs, which are extremely exploitable. Debilitate is very broken in P4 and every other SMT game it's in.
-- You have no time to ponder such questions, as Link has just grabbed a Smash Ball. http://backloggery.com/herodeltiempo/sig.gif
Keep an element of each, try to keep defense/offensive party-wide boosts(I usually end up accidentally getting rid of these, though by endgame I'll usually have one I remember to keep around).
Also keep a null light/dark, preferably with high speed so I could keep it out when first exploring a floor(Nothing like failing and walking into an enemy pre-emptive attack and losing all your progress before you get a turn).
Also for whatever reason confusion was especially effective in Persona 4 and I kept that around(It also made enemies cough up money, which was very hard to come by).
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"First thing that crosses my mind: I didn't get any GameFAQs Karma yesterday." Math Murderer after getting his appendix removed.
I focus a lot on the persona's weaknesses. I like to have a "base" persona that has limited functionality but no weaknesses, so if I'm ambushed I should survive. Other than that, and getting the full range of elemental spells (including Hama/on and Mudo/on), I spend most of my fusion time planning for the next boss.
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Who knew the Rivalry Rumble would be so predictable? SuperNiceDog, that's who.
Also I think I might have preferred FES's system where all of the enemies had to be weak to a skill for you to get the extra turn. Sure, P4/P3P's system made it easier to kill things, but you also didn't run into the situation where you encounter a group of enemies, they hit you with Ma(whatever MC is weak to), get a One More! and then do it again for the kill.
i'm assuming this is just referring to P3 and P4 and not the earlier ones because that answer's entirely different. hell, P3 and P4 differ too. P3 had me doubling more as a mage than a physical guy because Junpei and Aigis did that job well enough and i could 'roid up on almighty midway through. P3's division of 3 physical types wasn't helpful either. while i did magic a lot, i did also have more physical skills than magic by the end. almighty or bust.
P4 on the other hand physical skills became much better due to the single type. that was an easy choice to make and i had more physical skills than magic. wasn't nearly as necessary, or useful.
don't use hama or mudo much, only start to really think of 'em when it's the upgraded skills. usually though my party has the elemental skills so i'm just picking up the slack of what they don't have it.
always have a buffer and a debuffer though. that's a must. i'll even make sure dekaja is the only spell some physical demons have sometimes.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
I just fuse a bunch of personas that can cover multiple elements and also keep ones that are immune/resistant to instant death spells and upgrade when I am leveled up enough.
Honestly I play FES/P3P/P4 pretty much identically even though I recognize the situation is different in each. Physical Attacks are a lot more viable in P4, but I still basically ignore them. However, it does have that one crazy broken skill near endgame. I forget what it's called, but it hits eight times. P4 also has Debilitate, as mentioned, which is also pretty crazy.
...I also feel like Hama/Mudo have vastly increased, if not automatic, hit chances on anything with a weakness to Light/Dark (which is the only time I'll be using them) in P4, but again, how I actually use Hama/Mudo doesn't actually change any between the games to reflect this.
-- xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out? GotD (219/384) Melee v FFX
Yeah Chie's Power Charge + God Hand absolutely wrecked late game enemies. I used Aigis a good bit in P3FES as well. If I was to sacrifice one of either offensive elemental magic or status/debuff protection, I would choose the former in a heartbeat. Although I think P4 got rid of the different kinds of physical attacks, right?
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"It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy...let's go exploring!" - Calvin http://img.imgcake.com/calvinfinalpngpy.png
I didn't find money hard to come by at all in P4 - I was actually making more money than I was spending on the fox, so I could just grind all day
the fox has a stupid random factor where he'll just decide hes angry and charge you outrageous prices. And since its inefficient to spend more than a day in the TV, you are forced to pay his outrageous prices.
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"First thing that crosses my mind: I didn't get any GameFAQs Karma yesterday." Math Murderer after getting his appendix removed.
I like to have healing spells on a lot of them, and then later on get ones to cover my ass for charm/hama/mudo. You never know when you'll run into a charm battle and you need to stop that status effect!
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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER. Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...
yeah, 3 got condensed into a single element. which basically made physical the go-to skill in P4 because 90% of the time it was the best option. healing is easy, and while you COULD elemental spam everything, physical skills were generally less resisted and thus became much better.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
I make sure I have one with each element spell (I used Shiisaa in 3 for a good ten levels past where he should have made it because I couldn't get another good wind spell), a good physical (just in case and especially in 3 where there were various kinds of physical damage), but mostly avoid Hama/Mudo. I have never liked one hit kill moves in pretty much any game ever so I almost never employ them in SMT either. I also always keep a way to void Hama and Mudo, whether it was the Idol or a persona. I also (generally) prefer single elemental spells especially when fighting enemies I haven't analyzed yet because I would much rather choose inefficient victory over getting reflected and ****ed up.
I don't care to focus on gaining resistances or nulls, though with enough of them I might choose that one over one with a useful spell or two, but avoid any weaknesses that I can (though obviously it's almost impossible early on). I frikkin' love reflecting though, and would use a completely useless persona that could reflect an element or two on occasions I knew it might be helpful.
I also don't worry about Almighty until we're talking the very height of their strength toward the end of the game.
I don't usually buff or debuff at all. I've also never used spells like that in games so I didn't really start. I absolutely kept one or two with healing spells though, the strongest I could find. I'm extremely remiss to fuse a healing persona into one that can't.
oh, speaking of buffing. i always, always try to run persona with auto-ma__ buffs. without exception. tarukaja's most important, but my main demons tend to field 2 or 3 of 'em along with their other skills. gets pretty limited that way, but damned if my party isn't a beast for those 3 turns.
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The King Wang. Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.
I made sure I had one of each element, and the one I'd use most often would be high strength and high speed. I used physical most of the time for the aforementioned reasons.
Early Game: I tend to focus on elemental attacks and try to get good coverage for everyone. Getting an aoe heal early is most likely important. A single target defense debuff is pretty good too since you basically have 8 potential attacks to make up for that one lost turn to do extra damage (i'd consider by the time you get your 4th member you're no longer early game).
Mid Game: I probably have already focused on building elemental coverage, but it gets even more important here. I would suggest Absorb, but null is fine. Personally I avoid reflect since there is a good chance the enemy will heal upon being hit by the spell you just reflected back at it.
Mid-late game: By this time you should have the ability to make a few SL10 personas and start wrecking havoc with them. Around now I usually think of trying to get personas augmented with Amps, power charge, mind charge, in attempts to transfer them later for fusion. A persona with an amp and boost + the help from mind charge from another source is great.
This is also when physical attacks start to really shine as you should be using power charge more often. Yeah there's an HP cost, but its worth it.
I normally consider trying to gain personas with Hama+Hama Boost and Mudo+MudoBoost. (if I have room) this is simply because there are certain enemies that will spam these moves and are almost always weak to the opposite, taking them out all at once with almost sure certainty will save you major headaches, especilly if you're on an expert run.
Late game: Right about now im attempting to gain a couple of really strong personas that can be major staples for the final battles. In P3, Cybelle (lovers) or something really saved my ass.
When I played, I mostly just went for anything new first with the exception of one or two mains. I usually had two main characters, maybe a third, sharing Media/rama, the all attack buff or defense buff, the % element passive, and one or two strong element moves, plus good passives.
Oh, also. I don't even really keep a buffing move on my main except for charges, and maybe another because I normally use my party members to cover those for me. Realistically I could fit them, but my mc is normally designed to do damage (except against Nyx where the randomness of the fight restricted me to a healing role)
I made sure I had one with good defense/elemental immunities and preferable good attack in P4. Physical attacks are better there as already mentioned, and SP is a lot more sparse there.
Auto-aja spells never really seemed like they did much for me. I like to keep them but when you're trying to carry over elements, healing , boosts and etc, they usually get left behind.
I reaaaaaaaaallllllllly hope that for Persona 5, they let you just choose the 2-4 skills you want to carry over instead of making you reroll for ten minutes.
I agree that Hama/Mudo are a pain until you get the level 2 spells. Mahama on 3 guys weak to it is kinda cool in P3P though because if you hit one weakness you can go again.
I much prefer the P3P way of letting you go again if you hit one and miss others. nothing is worse than getting into a fight with 3 guys, doing an all tech, missing one enemy, enemy hitting your weakness and killing you. it's not your fault at all and you can lose tons of progress. plus you have to go 10ish floors in P3 before you can resume where you left off.
man, I love P3P and think FES is a game made to annoy you. funny how that is when it's basically the same core game. it's definitely a more rewarding experience and can respect someone preferring the traditional way of doing things, but I'd rather not want to punch myself in the face with P3. it's tough enough as is.
I don't really miss direct control of the MC at all in P3P. the lack of cutscenes hurts a little bit but nothing substantial. then again, I could only stomach about 40 hours of FES before dropping it.
P3P's speed is amazing. you can probably cut your time in half playing that version.
I would use my allies to cover as many elements as I could, and then I would cover the rest with my own persona. My allies would stagger the guys, and I would melee. I guess I would have a heal as well.
-- _foolmo_ 'but that statement is something only an Aspergers patient would say' - UltimaterializerX