A few gripes i have with Persona 4

[FISSURE]

I love Persona 4, just a few things about it that annoy me.

1. One of my main gripes with Persona 4 is that my party continually decides that they are privy to my Homunculus. I'm the most important part of the Party, me, not them. Atlus lets use finally control my party and they put this into the game, really now?

2. It's pretty hard to get money early on. Mainly since i'm spending a lot of time going through the Dungeon in the tiny two weeks they give you to save people. Getting the fox doesn't help until you get his link to 10 because until then he wants a lot of money. Although money and time isn't really bad near the end of the game since i have enough and the fox is at 10 since i'm doing fine.

3. Getting good SP restoring items is harder yet again, thanks Atlus. Soma's, you have to either find them or get them on the rare days that tanaka is selling them, or get lucky and get one with the prize tickets, same with Chewing Souls. In Persona 2 you could buy them easily, Persona 3 you could make them. Persona 4 pretty much shaft's you on SP restoring items.

That's pretty much it.

Although on a side note, Why isn't "Backside of The TV" on either of the American Soundtrack Disc's? Neither Side A or B, it's part of the game's soundtrack, yet it's not on the soundtrack CD's, but it's on the japanese one.

[RL Link]

1. I didn't really have much of a problem with that. After Heaven barely any monsters use any light or dark spells. In fact I think that was the only stage that had a whole lot of monsters that actually used them against me.

2. I think it's a lot easier then Persona 3 was to earn money. In Persona 3 I struggled to get a weapon for each of the team members. Then the fact that I needed to buy their armor after that. xD On Persona 4, due to the fact you're able to SELL the supplies so the weapons can be made makes things much much easier. Just my opinion. =p

3. I'm not exactly sure how to reply about this. It was a lot harder to restore SP this time around. Due to the fact that on Persona 3, if you go back to the main floor your HP and SP comes back. But, I suppose that's where the Death/Judgement Arcana Chances come in. Well, that's if you get them face up. I got unlucky one time with the Death Arcana, but Judgement kept bringing my SP back so I was content. On regards for the items, it was pretty difficult, but they're not completely necessary. You're given time to save the person so if you run out of SP, just use a Goho-M(was that the name?) to return to the first floor and come back another time.

Another thing that makes Persona 4 easier is the fact that you can start back where you left off. On Persona 3 you had to start back from the last checkpoint. Some of those floors were a royal pain.

There you go, my reply. =p

[TheFury9898]

I love Persona 4, just a few things about it that annoy me.

1. One of my main gripes with Persona 4 is that my party continually decides that they are privy to my Homunculus. I'm the most important part of the Party, me, not them. Atlus lets use finally control my party and they put this into the game, really now?

2. It's pretty hard to get money early on. Mainly since i'm spending a lot of time going through the Dungeon in the tiny two weeks they give you to save people. Getting the fox doesn't help until you get his link to 10 because until then he wants a lot of money. Although money and time isn't really bad near the end of the game since i have enough and the fox is at 10 since i'm doing fine.

3. Getting good SP restoring items is harder yet again, thanks Atlus. Soma's, you have to either find them or get them on the rare days that tanaka is selling them, or get lucky and get one with the prize tickets, same with Chewing Souls. In Persona 2 you could buy them easily, Persona 3 you could make them. Persona 4 pretty much shaft's you on SP restoring items.

That's pretty much it.

Although on a side note, Why isn't "Backside of The TV" on either of the American Soundtrack Disc's? Neither Side A or B, it's part of the game's soundtrack, yet it's not on the soundtrack CD's, but it's on the japanese one.


alright here it goes :P

1. You can actually control all your teammates. Just hit square and when you go to change your tactics just pick direct command.

2. You mostly get your money from battles and from the items they drop, when you leave tv world go to the weapons shop and sell all your materials. Not only does it give you ton of money but it also gives you new items to buy. Or you can creep the earlier dungeons to gain some money and materials without wasting SP. The fox is expensive but sometime its worth it depending how u want to spend your time in the dungeon.

3. Again the fox is expensive and it depends how u want to spend your time. For me i only liked spending 1 or 2 days to save some one so i would actually use the fox quite often. What i did (if i was low on money) was go to the easier dungeons and crawled them for a bit. Not only did it give me money and materials, i got a chance to find chests that contained SP recover items (which i recommend you save for bosses). Also you can get some persona that has Soul Drain (can't remember what one) but it cost 3 sp to cast but gives you 30 back. So u can get your MC to do all the work OR you can fill his SP up then go to the fox and have him heal the rest of your part seeing it is less expensive. I know that its hard to find those items but in the end i think it balances out seeing that you only use them for boss battles. I tend to find more than enough before i face a boss. If your having difficulty save your sp in a dungeon, try rushing to the top floor where the boss is by sneaking around the shadows. Once you get to the top you can easily teleport there and spend some time finding chests in the dungeons.

[Rin]

Well, about the Homonculus thing, it's a "too bad" since you can't buy any and your friends wastes it too, try to tag Naoto along then, if her Persona has changed, it blocks Hama and Mudo skills.

For the money, it's better here in P4, because you can sell the materials you've found and the prices of the weapons and armors are fair, not as expensive as P3's...

[FISSURE]

Well, about the Homonculus thing, it's a "too bad" since you can't buy any and your friends wastes it too, try to tag Naoto along then, if her Persona has changed, it blocks Hama and Mudo skills.

For the money, it's better here in P4, because you can sell the materials you've found and the prices of the weapons and armors are fair, not as expensive as P3's...

I love Persona 4, just a few things about it that annoy me.

1. One of my main gripes with Persona 4 is that my party continually decides that they are privy to my Homunculus. I'm the most important part of the Party, me, not them. Atlus lets use finally control my party and they put this into the game, really now?

2. It's pretty hard to get money early on. Mainly since i'm spending a lot of time going through the Dungeon in the tiny two weeks they give you to save people. Getting the fox doesn't help until you get his link to 10 because until then he wants a lot of money. Although money and time isn't really bad near the end of the game since i have enough and the fox is at 10 since i'm doing fine.

3. Getting good SP restoring items is harder yet again, thanks Atlus. Soma's, you have to either find them or get them on the rare days that tanaka is selling them, or get lucky and get one with the prize tickets, same with Chewing Souls. In Persona 2 you could buy them easily, Persona 3 you could make them. Persona 4 pretty much shaft's you on SP restoring items.

That's pretty much it.

Although on a side note, Why isn't "Backside of The TV" on either of the American Soundtrack Disc's? Neither Side A or B, it's part of the game's soundtrack, yet it's not on the soundtrack CD's, but it's on the japanese one.


alright here it goes :P

1. You can actually control all your teammates. Just hit square and when you go to change your tactics just pick direct command.

2. You mostly get your money from battles and from the items they drop, when you leave tv world go to the weapons shop and sell all your materials. Not only does it give you ton of money but it also gives you new items to buy. Or you can creep the earlier dungeons to gain some money and materials without wasting SP. The fox is expensive but sometime its worth it depending how u want to spend your time in the dungeon.

3. Again the fox is expensive and it depends how u want to spend your time. For me i only liked spending 1 or 2 days to save some one so i would actually use the fox quite often. What i did (if i was low on money) was go to the easier dungeons and crawled them for a bit. Not only did it give me money and materials, i got a chance to find chests that contained SP recover items (which i recommend you save for bosses). Also you can get some persona that has Soul Drain (can't remember what one) but it cost 3 sp to cast but gives you 30 back. So u can get your MC to do all the work OR you can fill his SP up then go to the fox and have him heal the rest of your part seeing it is less expensive. I know that its hard to find those items but in the end i think it balances out seeing that you only use them for boss battles. I tend to find more than enough before i face a boss. If your having difficulty save your sp in a dungeon, try rushing to the top floor where the boss is by sneaking around the shadows. Once you get to the top you can easily teleport there and spend some time finding chests in the dungeons.

Fury, sorry but you misread me on the first one.

Rin, actually it's a lot easier to get money in Persona 3, especially in the later levels of Tartaurus, you get tons and tons of money from chests in there.

[TheFury9898]

hahaha yea i realized that after i posted and could edit my post. my bad. lol

but yea ur right

[Daroki]

I love Persona 4, just a few things about it that annoy me.

1. One of my main gripes with Persona 4 is that my party continually decides that they are privy to my Homunculus. I'm the most important part of the Party, me, not them. Atlus lets use finally control my party and they put this into the game, really now?

2. It's pretty hard to get money early on. Mainly since i'm spending a lot of time going through the Dungeon in the tiny two weeks they give you to save people. Getting the fox doesn't help until you get his link to 10 because until then he wants a lot of money. Although money and time isn't really bad near the end of the game since i have enough and the fox is at 10 since i'm doing fine.

3. Getting good SP restoring items is harder yet again, thanks Atlus. Soma's, you have to either find them or get them on the rare days that tanaka is selling them, or get lucky and get one with the prize tickets, same with Chewing Souls. In Persona 2 you could buy them easily, Persona 3 you could make them. Persona 4 pretty much shaft's you on SP restoring items.

That's pretty much it.

Although on a side note, Why isn't "Backside of The TV" on either of the American Soundtrack Disc's? Neither Side A or B, it's part of the game's soundtrack, yet it's not on the soundtrack CD's, but it's on the japanese one.


alright here it goes :P

1. You can actually control all your teammates. Just hit square and when you go to change your tactics just pick direct command.

2. You mostly get your money from battles and from the items they drop, when you leave tv world go to the weapons shop and sell all your materials. Not only does it give you ton of money but it also gives you new items to buy. Or you can creep the earlier dungeons to gain some money and materials without wasting SP. The fox is expensive but sometime its worth it depending how u want to spend your time in the dungeon.

3. Again the fox is expensive and it depends how u want to spend your time. For me i only liked spending 1 or 2 days to save some one so i would actually use the fox quite often. What i did (if i was low on money) was go to the easier dungeons and crawled them for a bit. Not only did it give me money and materials, i got a chance to find chests that contained SP recover items (which i recommend you save for bosses). Also you can get some persona that has Soul Drain (can't remember what one) but it cost 3 sp to cast but gives you 30 back. So u can get your MC to do all the work OR you can fill his SP up then go to the fox and have him heal the rest of your part seeing it is less expensive. I know that its hard to find those items but in the end i think it balances out seeing that you only use them for boss battles. I tend to find more than enough before i face a boss. If your having difficulty save your sp in a dungeon, try rushing to the top floor where the boss is by sneaking around the shadows. Once you get to the top you can easily teleport there and spend some time finding chests in the dungeons.

1. That annoyed me as well. If a teammate gets hit with Mudo or Hama, I'll just use a Recarn to bring them back, I don't need them blowing a Homunculus which could prevent the game over screen if I get surprised with a Persona equipped which is weak against one of those two attacks. And changing tactics doesn't give you the option of stopping them from using it. If they get hit with Mudo/Hama, and there's a Homunculus in your inventory, they'll use it with no input from you.

2. Here's a few hints for the early game. Use the vending machines as much as possible for small SP boosts (5 to 10sp), don't buy medicine, get steak skewers instead since they're much cheaper and do the same thing. Save that money towards Goho-Ms. And i didn't much care about blowing through the smaller healing items from the vending machines if I was going to get more money back from the ability to continue fighting. Money management in the early game is tremendously important, and getting healing items on the cheap goes a long way towards letting you grind longer so there's more time to spend increasing social links for more powerful persona. Make sure you get everything you can out of a TV day too, if you're leaving the dungeon early on with any spirit points, you're wasting money and XP. Take out shadows on lower floors so you can pull out of the dungeon once you've completely exhaused your spirit point supply and recognize when you can go on auto for those early monsters to grind out cash and push some of your lower level personas up.

3. All I can say is continue using the vending machine items for small SP boosts and save the Chewing Souls, Snuff Souls, and Somas for when they're absolutely necessary. Use the fox as much as possible once he's available and dedicate a lot of effort to boosting his rank up quickly to make it so the SP/money ratio you earn fighting is greater than or on par what he's charging you. (And remember the longer you stick it out, the more you get from Diadara when you turn in all those little Shadow pieces you've been gathering.) If I'm breaking even or losing a little bit of yen on the exchange but gaining a bunch of levels, it's fine, because those fights are going to become easier and that will eventually switch to my favor.

Managing your yen in the dungeons in this game was one of the most undervalued things I've seen in discussions. (Maybe everyone's too busy talking to Igor and making nifty new Personae.) But managing the flow of income, especially in the early levels is important. If you're really stretching the use of the initial items, you should be fine to grind as long as needed in no time.

[Gen Eric Gui]

1 - Eh. Death spells aren't really a problem. So few enemies use them and it's really easy to get hold of personas that null those spells.

2 - Get a part-time job. You can -rake- in money by abusing them, especially Translation, Daycare, and Hospital. ON second runs you can abuse the hell out of Tutor for crazy money. And why are you spending so much time in the dungeons? Two trips max should get you through them all, maybe three trips for Yukiko's castle since you don't have much in the way of options for items and no Fox.

3 - They had to limit your time in the dungeon somehow. It was either through a bull#### "tired" mechanic like in P3, or through limiting your ability to heal. Early on, you can abuse the hell out of TaP Soda, and later in the game you really shouldn't be hurting that badly on SP healing. There are very few fights that warrant the use of a Soma(Mostly the final few bosses and maybe Heaven Boss if you don't have a lot of element reflects), and powerful items like Chewing Souls should be used as a last resort. If you get to the boss and need to heal, just leave and come back the next day.

Alternately, get your MC a Persona with Invigorate and Spirit Drain, and only use his MP pool. If you run out of SP, Goho-M, travel over to Yukiko's Castle, and suck MP out of Lying Hableries until you're full again.

And "Backside of the TV" is most certainly on the Side B soundtrack. I can scan in the tracklist if you want me to.

[hibiki_takami]

I was about to write a strategy guide on here, but I definitely agree that it can be daunting at times when you start. It's all a matter of getting used to the mechanics and understand why the developers made it a certain way.

Re: Death spells... Call me a glutton for punishment - I loved it when I died because it just taught me to be more careful.

[Reynard]

1) Heck yeah.
2) I didn't have all that much trouble with cash, really. I spent most of it on weapons/armor and not so much on healing items. How did you allocate your cash?
3) For me, the SP restoring items were strictly for boss fights. I don't think I used a soma until the 2nd to last boss. I'm stingy. Once I got a persona with Cool Breeze, life became much easier.
I can see why they did it from a game-design standpoint. Otherwise you'd just spend one day each cycle to get all the way to the boss. I think I preferred P3's system of your party members just getting tired out after a while, but this wasn't so bad once I got used to it.

[Hypotenuse Man]

The only complaint that you bring up that I genuinely had a problem with was the SP issue. I was definitely hurting in a few boss fights because of a lack of SP; it's more noticeable in the beginning of a New Game + (though that may be because throwing -dynes everywhere drains your SP fast at first, heh).

I never bought any Homunculi at all, to be honest. I never saw the Mudo and Hama skills used that often.

And in regards to money: I had problems with money, then I realized that I didn't have to upgrade equipment as soon as possible. Once I made that mental leap, suddenly I had very few money issues.

[hibiki_takami]

And in regards to money: I had problems with money, then I realized that I didn't have to upgrade equipment as soon as possible. Once I made that mental leap, suddenly I had very few money issues.

Come to think of it, from what I can remember I rarely really used any physical attacks in the game - save for when I had the M.C. do a couple that I was trying out or when I had Chie do rampage.

Anyone encountered this too?

[Daroki]

The only complaint that you bring up that I genuinely had a problem with was the SP issue. I was definitely hurting in a few boss fights because of a lack of SP; it's more noticeable in the beginning of a New Game + (though that may be because throwing -dynes everywhere drains your SP fast at first, heh).


Bah, there's no reason to be throwing -dynes around in the beginning though, just knock everything down and bumrush them like you did initially. -dyning things in Yukiko's castle is overkill and only fun the first 1... um, ok 100 times you do it. :)

[OgGz]

lol the only thing i dont like about this game is that it ends but roll on persona 5 for 2009 plz in the mean time ill just keep playing persona 4 maybe some p3 fes as well

[Gen Eric Gui]

And in regards to money: I had problems with money, then I realized that I didn't have to upgrade equipment as soon as possible. Once I made that mental leap, suddenly I had very few money issues.

Come to think of it, from what I can remember I rarely really used any physical attacks in the game - save for when I had the M.C. do a couple that I was trying out or when I had Chie do rampage.

Anyone encountered this too?

Phys attacks are great in this game. You can cause all kinds of havoc with them, and they save you from having to use SP. They're especially helpful against enemies that don't have weaknesses, since with the jacked up Crit Rate on them, doubled up wth Apt Pupil, you can get a pretty good chance of knockig them down.

That said, it's still not important to upgrade you weapons because the damage from Phys specials isn't determined by your weapon power; the only thing that matters is your Persona's STR stat. Weapons only determine normal attack damage and All-Out Attack damage. So basically, it's better to just hang onto weapons with good skills than waste money -ever- upgrading them, unless you're upgrading to something with better skills. I literally had the fan you get from Yukiko's special boss until I was in Heaven(When I unlocked the fan that game +10 MAG, which I then kept until the end of the game), and Yosuke had his special Wrenches from the Alcohol Shop until near the end of Marukyu.

[Hypotenuse Man]

Bah, there's no reason to be throwing -dynes around in the beginning though, just knock everything down and bumrush them like you did initially. -dyning things in Yukiko's castle is overkill and only fun the first 1... um, ok 100 times you do it. :)

You just gave an excellent reason for throwing -dynes around at the beginning of the game. :P

[Fatney]

1- I agree.
2- I agree partially, I mean, Persona 3 had too much money.
3- No, if you would recover your SP by just going back, it would be way too easy. Especially since you can warp back to whichever floor you had reached. The fact that you have limited SP is what forces you to quit grinding, so you won't get tired of it immediately. Also, Rise will learn a skill at level 75 or something which will restore 5% of your SP after each battle. Just go to Yukiko's castle and defeat some easy enemies until you recover.

I bet everything I said is already mentioned, though. I can't bother with reading through all of them.

[Vincent Alexander]

I thought these were going to be legitimate things to hate here, not reasons why the game was too hard and you couldn't handle the heat.