>>3854652
Persona fans would rather spend the huge 100+ hour playtime talking with their digital waifu than fighting Hitler in megaten combat, which I personally think is sad but yknow

>>3854652
Persona 2 is so fucking boring it's unreal, and trying to play both of the games will kill even the most tedium hardened JRPG player

Persona 1 has an obviously failed mechanical experiment that provides zero entertainment or fun, the spatial system thing where your attacks have ranges and your formation is theoretically something you should think about. Beyond that it's just a typical mediocre SMT spinoff like Soul Hackers.

>Persona 1 has an obviously failed mechanical experiment that provides zero entertainment or fun
Gonna sound like a contrarian, but I enjoyed persona 1 more than any other mainline persona.

>>3854665
I don't think having a failed system you can work around is a dealbreaker and I personally enjoyed the game too. I like the quicker and shorter pace that late SNES/early PSX RPGs like P1 or Suikoden 1 usually had and breaking it into two quick scenarios is great.

But I don't think anyone could seriously argue that they did anything interesting with that spatial range system.

>>3854667
Oh, yeah, I'm not arguing against that at all. The really didn't use the grid in any interesting way.

persona 1's great. not the game's fault people don't appreciate it.

>>3854652
Persona 2 used to be the weeb jRPG of choice, the hubbub around the translation was huge. It's just faded as time went on and nu-weebs prefer the dating sim elements of the newer games or go full SMT fetishism.

>>3854700
it's just one of those games that had a better reputation before most people had played it and the japanese enthusiast types got drowned out by the people that just played it as a game and realized it sucks

They are VERY slow

>>3854725
And yet, you can finish them faster than even persona 3. The bloat is real.

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>>3854652
They are not though
It's just that westoids started with P4 or P5 and refuse to go back
The most played first entry in japan for persona is P1.

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>>3854656
>Persona 1 has an obviously failed mechanical experiment that provides zero entertainment or fun,
Massive skill issue
>>3854665
>Gonna sound like a contrarian, but I enjoyed persona 1 more than any other mainline persona.
So did I, weirdly enough. Hell, in fact, I only maanged to finish P1 and P5.
Just have the speed up hack when fighting fodder and it's all cool.
>>3854667
>But I don't think anyone could seriously argue that they did anything interesting with that spatial range system.
It was fun when you got turbo debuffed and everyone started moving around randomly. But that's it.
>>3854671
Best female cast too. The franchise peaked too early.

>>3854652
P1 is still my favorite of the series. Waiting on Gemini to finish that translation of the japanese version of P1 though. I hate the Vita remake and everything it changed. I want the basic P1JP version but in english. A lot of folks prefer it.

P2 was okay, but I hated the tarot system because you had to basically re-do fights 20 times to stockpile tarot just to get one persona.

P3 and onwards are just weeb fag shit to be honest.

>>3854652
No easy method of playing them. Emulation doesnt exist for retarded normalfags, aka modern persona fans.
If they got a re-release of some kind on modern systems like the FFT remake people WOULD play them. But Atlus likes to pretend that the early games dont exist so they're shit out of luck.

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I think what annoys me so much about the modern games is how little the characters seem to appreciate the scale and magnitude of what's going on around them. 3 wasn't so bad about this but 4 and 5 are dreadfully cynical. You find doorways to peoples subconscious and a world beyond your own and your team gets more excited about sushi. The old games always put the fantasy first. Even if one of them was crazy girl. Actually especially because one of them was crazy girl.

>>3854652
Inaccessible.
If a game isn't on Steam then it might as well not exist.

>>3854831
This is a very good point. The fact that it's just a normal thing they do in modern games isn't as good as having characters react like they do in something like Strange Journey.

>>3854821
>gemini
Tom is working on P1 tho? and weren't the remakes on psp?

>>3854714
>game is loved by enthusiasts but hated by casuals and ironic weebs who get embarrassed about liking "dating sims" (they have never played a dating sim)
sounds fine to me bro

I got filtered by the fusion system on P1 and 2. Tarot cards in 2 are retarded. I like smt more

Thinking about P1's and the P2 duology's release remind me why I've always disdained Atlus as a company. They didn't give a rats ass about the localizations of any of their games for the longest time. Now they've gone full "remaster" garbage as well. Just a really shitty company. I almost feel bad for their fanboys.

>>3855002
The tarot currency for summoning is a seriously terrible system, on paper but even more so in context, but it's the tip of the iceberg of boring shit in P2 so I don't want it to take up too much of the criticism.

>>3855014
if i try playing 1 or 2 again im going to use cheats cause its retarded

I liked P1 on psp, solid game.

P2 ps1 has a really bad metagame where fusion spells are overpowered. This game desperately needs a rebalance/hardtype. Great story and characters

P2ep big improvement allegedly I havent played it yet

snes era megaten is painfully mid, SMT4 is peak. PS2 is solid

My only real gripe was I had to go through the battles on double the speed because each fight, while easy as piss, takes forever, and the encounter rate is way too high. Honestly I think I’d be fine if the encounter rate was just lower.

>>3855019
This is every retro jrpg

>>3855019
They upped the encounter rate for the PSP version.

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>>3854714
>and the japanese enthusiast types got drowned out by the people that just played it as a game and realized it sucks
Look, regardless of if you think the game sucks, it has the absolute best story in ANY megaten game, period. The fucking story alone with worth the hype, it's the Xenogears of Persona.

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>>3854652
Normies got filtered. Simple as.

>>3855730
I wonder how persona fans these days would react if a new persona game ended with one of the waifu baits just getting straight up murdered and the game not ending with everyone going YIPPY FRIENDSHIP!

>>3855009
>Now they've gone full "remaster" garbage as well
>now
they rereleased p4 like 8 times before we got p5

>>3855016
>snes era megaten is painfully mid, SMT4 is peak.
Terrible bait

Persona 1 is a great litmus test.
If someone thinks its bad, their opinions can easily be disregarded. Especially if they like P3-5

>>3855026
The encounter rate was always high. IS PSP is just outright easier than PSX because the enemies are nerfed.

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You know what I miss? Being able to swap the party's personae. This whole wild card shit is stupid lazy crap. It goes against what a persona even should be. Though I do appreciate the irony that after it changed the casts got increasingly more vacuous.

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>>3855912
In my head canon, the Wild Card ability was more common in the past, but in the last few decades since the 90s, with society becoming more homogeneous and individuality declining, it's more rare, and regulated to the "Protagonist-only" status. Or basically anyone who can enter the Velvet Room initially, and not in some endgame circumstance.

>>3855832
No, they upped the encounter rate because they nerfed the enemies. Baffling decision.

>>3854831
characters become more shallow in 4 and 5. 4 and 5's characters are also much more popular than the rest. japan just prefers it that way, not just in video games, and atlus just followed the trend for a mainstream-oriented franchise like persona (i.e. their cash cow)

>>3854665
>>3854799
Has anyone ever questioned Persona2’s whole thing? Like the story felt weird as fuck but cool for the first part, then undo it all at the end to do part 2, and the whole just felt…off for an ending.
Whatever, I mean I think at least P3 and 4 is good

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>>3854831
my fav ellie factoid is that she summons her persona just to have someone to vent to

>>3856214
I probably wouldn't mind as much if people still didn't want to treat persona like it was some nuanced character driven narrative. It's just characters dumping exposition for a problem we barely, if ever, even get to see.
>Yeah, I was sad about thing but I guess I should just accept that part of myself.

>>3855674
DDS1/2 and Persona 1 have better writing. Somehow Kandori returned

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>>3856496
Also he got a girlfriend

>>3856454
wait wtf this cutie's bday is one day before mine

>>3856602
lol virgo

>>3854652
1 is fun, 2 isnt

>>3856460
my point is there's a reason why 4 and 5's characters are much more popular than the rest. people haven't played 1 and 2 more like there's no anime of them because most persona "fans" are secondaries and lp watchers. as for p3, they hated yukari, junpei, and ken for having flaws that negatively impacted the group, or adversarial even. atlus probably took note and made the characters more likable, at the cost of depth. but the fact that the fanbase mostly cares about the stories and the characters is already kind of telling.

honestly though, nu-persona stories/campaigns are annoying and doesn't really go well with the daily life mechanics (which suits better for a more open-ended system). i just want to fuse personas and fight shadows. i don't really care about the plot (it's japan. even if it's fatlus, they're not going to write shitty woke plot). they should've abandoned the wild card mechanics after 3 and gone back to letting other characters switch personas, so the game would just be about persona fusions and composition as you follow the campaign. as for social link, maybe they should change it to a bunch of side quests instead of a bad vn mini game, so the more you do the character's quests, the stronger your bond will be with the character or the group, and you can summon stronger personas or more.

>>3856666
i think the whole "mc wild card, everyone else gets 1 persona" thing is also just a big casualization thing. it's harder for the player to juggle all of that, and it's also harder for the dev to balance it. most jrpgs nowadays are made to have as little friction as possible, and persona being popular is kind of the crystallization of that: a moderately easy game where you can play as little or as much as you want in one sitting, and you never get lost or get stuck on how to progress because the game does that for you, too.

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>>3854799
So this particular skill mentioned is just the ability to sit through boring, clunky gameplay

>>3856699
later on yeah (p4 onward), but initially it was part of the design choice meant to simulate the individuality of the characters, which also includes not having direct control of your party members. since p4 ditched that, there's no reason to keep it around except to simplify/casualize things like you said.

and even then casualizing the games is a bad move because like i said, most "fans" are secondaries and lpfags. they don't play the games for one reason or another. futhermore, as a jrpg series, persona is still not as accessible as games like pokemon, the average gacha, and so on. even on easy you have to learn the battle mechanics, fusion, social links, and so on, a massive time investment for casual gamers.

>>3856666
>as for p3, they hated yukari, junpei, and ken for having flaws that negatively impacted the group, or adversarial even

I think this is what really annoys me. That's a lot of what made them feel like GOOD or at least more interesting characters. The whole series has basically just developed into little more than a friend simulator. One of the things you hear people praise four a lot ...for, is how it "REALLY FELT LIKE A GROUP OF FRIENDS." To which I call shenanigans on. Friends banter. Friends bicker. Friends bust on each other constantly. (No having a single designated butt monkey in the party does not count.) This isn't a group of friends. This is a group of orbiters. And this is really where the biggest problems lie. Characters don't seem to exist outside their relationship to the MC. They don't do anything unless you're directly involved. Inter party relationships simply do not exist. There is only the group. P4 can tell me Chie and Yukiko are super best friends their whole lives all they want but it's just lip service. This really hurts the female characters especially. And it's not a solo persona problem. The Cold Steel games are somehow even worse. And it's all for the sake of self inserters who will lose their goddamn mind if a female character so much as says HELLO to another character.

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>>3856496
I can understand DDS, but Persona 2 spoke to me on a raw, guttural emotional level. Tatsuya is extremely relatable to me

>>3856454
>factoid
A factoid is something that is untrue.

>>3856568
Soejima's art peaked here

>>3856800
Elly is fictional so it applies

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>>3856794

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>>3856800
sorry

>>3856794
Which is funny because for me P2 was an absolute nothing story with no impact or weight from start to finish. Never did EP but IS I struggle to remember a single character trait other than the optional "Tatsuya is gay" bit.

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>>3856882
>for me
Well you're an idiot.

>>3854652
too dated maybe
morrowind daggerfall and arena are good games but are held back by outdated game design
i would kill for an actually good non woke remake of old games like that that keeps the spirit of the game intact

>>3854652
can't date minors

>>3856882
I bailed out on EP
I think it was after the dungeon where the #1 scarf guy from persona 1 is your companion and I was just like I'm so fucking sick of this game.

>>3854652
What would a western clone of Persona series look like?

>>3857002
Clearly that is an issue, along with the lack of incest.

>>3857052
>What would a western clone of Persona series look like?
YIIK?

I remember liking the whole psychological journey thing going on in P1. Also cool music

>>3854652
1 was awesome tons of soul. 2 is slopcore combat too easy story not as interesting as 1. 3-5 are designed by committee slopcore for lonely weebs.

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>>3856882
>P2 was an absolute nothing story with no impact or weight from start to finish
All of Persona's protagonists have no character traits but it's funny to say this because Tatsuya's character is fleshed out in EP with his relationship with his brother, because he's no longer the protagonist. It's not my fault you take everything that happens in P2 at face value when everything actually has tons of symbolism behind all of its tiny details. Tatsuya is literally the ONLY Persona protagonist with any real personality at all
>>3857035
Filtered by kino

>>3857253
Assume the author isn't LGBTQIA+; what would a western clone of Persona/SMT look like?

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>>3854665
Same, it's the only one in the series that I genuinely care for

>>3857435
>Anon says he didn't play EP
>WELL IN EP THE MAIN CHARACTER BECOMES A CHARACTER
Good work anon.

>>3854821
>P2 was okay, but I hated the tarot system because you had to basically re-do fights 20 times to stockpile tarot just to get one persona.

It's been a while since I played it but couldn't you get ridiculous amounts of cards later in the game if you used pacts and talking shticks right?

>>3858592
If you learn how it's pretty easy to get a shit ton of blanks.

>>3857820
Does not compute. Only a faggot would make a "western" version of Persona.

>>3858572
I'm just pointing out that anon is retarded and all Persona protagonists are default self-inserts. The reason why Tatsuya is special is that he transitions from that role.

>>3858710
I'd argue Tetsuya is special because the plot is less about making him feel special and more about kicking his ass.

>>3856286
Persona 2 was a literal cashgrab. Kaneko himself wasn't actually sure of doing it.
It's why the old cast is forced to appear.
>>3856703
>Sit through
The ability is to not do that.

>>3854652
P1 and P2 needed something else to set themselves apart from the rest of SMT and spice up the gameplay loop. Just a different setting doesn't cut it.
You can genuinely hate the post-3 persona framework (or pretend to for internet brownie points) but what you can't deny is that those games do spice up the formula.
Maybe what would have helped P1 and P2 is having a completely different gameplay scheme, even if keeping it turn-based. Gonna sound like a weird comparison but P1-2 remind me of Wild Arms 1-3 where combat was the weakest and most generic part until Wild Arms 4-5 came up with the HEX system to set the gameplay apart from the competition a bit.

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>>3861729
>P1 and P2 needed something else to set themselves apart from the rest of SMT and spice up the gameplay loop. Just a different setting doesn't cut it.
They literally did, though, a completely different negotiation system entirely unique to both games, new elements, a different fusion system, and a different roster of usable Persona and enemies, Arcana system and different party members having different affinities (the party system is already completely different from SMT lol) Positioning in Persona 1(was supposed to be in 2 but got scrapped) fusion spells in P2 that require the entire team to use, the concept of getting ultimate Personas, mutually exclusive party members, rumor system in 2. I feel like I could go on, but they are completely different games from normal SMT if anything, Persona 3 onward used SMT3 as a basis and more closely followed that formula than doing its own thing.

>>3855748
You mean p3

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Im trying to play through Eternal Punishment and it is so slow and so fucking boring... it looked really cool and sounds really cool but the experience is so painful. Which is kinda weird because I liked innocent sin.

>>3854652
The earlier installments in the Persona series, Revelations: Persona (1996) and its sequels Persona 2: Innocent Sin (1999) and Eternal Punishment (2000), remain niche due to several interconnected factors rooted in their era and design choices. Released on the original PlayStation with dated first-person dungeon-crawling mechanics in the first game and traditional JRPG battles in the second duology, they emphasize grinding, complex demon negotiation systems inherited from the broader Shin Megami Tensei franchise, and darker, more abstract psychological themes that lack the polished anime aesthetics, social simulation elements, and accessible storytelling that propelled Persona 3 onward to mainstream appeal. Subpar localizations, limited Western releases (with Innocent Sin absent until a 2011 PSP port), and minimal marketing from Atlus—a then-small developer—further confined their audience to dedicated JRPG enthusiasts, rendering them less immediately engaging or "fun" for casual players accustomed to streamlined modern RPGs, though they retain cult value for their innovative narrative depth and atmospheric horror.

>>3865630
"AI" answers are only funny when you do it in the first few posts.

>>3856882
you're insane, bro.
both P2 games were so fucking based in my book. that zodiac cult rumors come true story did work well. it was so charming too. all of eikichi's stupid shenanigans, gingko's dad being literally steven seagal, shitting on students who go to cuz-u-gay-yama high, meeting all the guys from P1 again, that distinct 90s feeling and atmosphere, Club Zodiac, silly rumormongering and spreading. all in all I had a lot of fun with it.

>>3865431
Probably because it's so slow and fucking boring.

>>3854652
I haven't played P2 duology, which is allegedly better, but I fucking hated P1, it might even be my least favorite Atlus game ever. i did the normal route, I've heard from some the Snow Queen route is a little better, but I had such a shitty time with the game I don't ever plan on returning to it.

>>3854652
summaries perfectly what new Persona is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nGWEb5QxGA

>>3854652
No high school life sim/dating sim. The actual secret to NuSona's success is that people play it because they want Tokimeki Memorial with demons, they don't give a shit about the actual battles and dungeons and whatnot. PSX Persona are dungeon crawling games with story and no life sim

>>3854799
Yuka's so damn hot. I seriously love the old '90s kogal look vs. modern gyaru.

>>3854652
I played persona 2 till I got the flowers faggot. It's trash except for some story bits and the sprites.

>>3856666
I see a lot of Nusona fans (especially on Reddit) complain about how P2 has an overrated and "boring" story, characters, etc. They really cannot imagine characters having flaws and characters having to learn to accept those flawed aspects as part of themselves. Actual serious flaws that might make someone look bad. The closest I've ever really seen it done in Nusona is Chie's initial awakening in P4 where she has to admit that there's a part of her that likes Yukiko being dependent on her because it means she has something over someone that she's otherwise envious of. Of course, nothing is actually done with that afterwards in true Nusona fashion. Actually, in hindsight the awakenings in Nusona kill a lot of potential character growth because they present negative aspects and flaws about the character, then the character accepts them and moves on so when you do their S-Link it's about some less serious and trivial shit.

A character like Lisa (my favorite character in the entire series) would likely turn most Nusona fans off because she's not a pure innocent and misunderstood cinnamon roll but a legitimately flawed and imperfect person. I fear that any remake, unless they got Satomi back to do it, would deemphasize a lot of her more negative aspects so she can be Quirky Kung-Fu Girl who says kei hei. The same goes with the other P1 and P2 characters.

>>3867346
Nusona fags can't even handle Yukari in 3 being kind of a bitch instead of everyone immediately being your best friend. 3 is kind of in a strange spot because of that. It does have a good bit of the edge to it's story and cast the old games do but it's where the new style of gameplay started.

>>3856706
A lot of Nusona design choices were meant specifically for P3 and just carried over because the series was suddenly popular. The calendar system was meant to add a sense of impending dread and go with the idea of having to live a normal life in spite of all the screwed up stuff that's happeing and will be happening. P4 and P5 just keep it because it worked there even though in P5 it reaches a point where it's not actually viable because you're given huge stretches of the game where you literally don't do anything but watch cutscenes, don't actually have anything to do except run around and engage in a pointless activity, or multiple days are just straight up skipped over completely.

>>3866135
One of the things I think Satomi is good at is capturing the zeitgeist in regards to people and their relation to the mass communication technology of the day and how they can allow it to get out of hand. The internet and cellphones allowing for the quick spreading of news which is used by the villain to turn rumor into reality and bring about the end of the world, you can maybe take the shadowmen as being a metaphor for how consuming all of this endlessly can turn you into a shell of yourself. The Caligula Effect had it as well with using idols, vocaloids and the internet in general as a tool to escape from the issues of your real life and how that risks you ending up trapped in a delusional world of your own fantasy.

I think he probably could have done something more interesting with P5's themes of rebelling against the stifling conformity and expectations of Japanese society and the good and bad ways that manifests than what we actually got.

>>3867350
Yukari's bitchiness was a translation invention. Reload's is morein line with her Japanese Nice Girl personality and lo and behold, she's a much shittier and far less memorable character because of it. Persona 3 is also them still trying to keep the dark, gloomy, urban horror vibe of the original games. It was also probably dueto how dark, gloomy and moody was at its peak at the time.

>>3867353
she's a far normal character than people think, especially if you compare her to notable megaten characters. i think she was supposed to be what a normal teenage girl would be like, if she grew up with a shitty single mom, and joined a paramilitary-like group because she thought her dad was martyred and scapegoated in it. she was kind but was still pretty distant, since you know, being fatherless with a whore of a mother would either make people pity her or bully her in japan. she hated mitsuru's family and were planning to whistleblow with fuuka once she found something. then she later on mitsuru's dad told her the truth and it destroyed her. she then fell in love with door, but aigis also appeared, the dude died, and so on.

so in a way she's really written like a galge heroine. kind, tragic past, daddy complex, woman moment, and so on. she set the trend for heroines in later nusona games, but unlike her, the later ones don't have flaws that affect the storyline in a substantial way.

I'm pretty late to the game, but for Persona specifically, and actually a lot of older vs. new RPGs more generally, the difference is that the old RPGs are Dungeon Crawls and the new ones are not. To the point where in P5 you basically train yourself to knock out a dungeon in one night so you can spend more time in the dating sim.
While Persona 1 is definitely a dungeon crawl like old SMT.
That's my only observation other than I also like P1.

>>3867352
>capturing the zeitgeist in regards to people and their relation to the mass communication technology of the day and how they can allow it to get out of hand
The most basic bitch commentary. Real men know the printing press was the great evil.

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>>3867353
>Yukari's bitchiness was a translation invention
Even with that being the case it really doesn't change my point ultimately. Audiences should be able to deal with, accept and even empathize and like characters who don't always agree with their insert or own personal ego. She has a lot more going on than pretty much all later game characters combined. That should matter. Audiences should be engaging with characters and the story and understanding them. Instead it's written off because they're all too thin skinned and vacuous to where the only thing that does matter is getting your own knob stroked.

>Reload's is morein line with her Japanese Nice Girl personality and lo and behold, she's a much shittier and far less memorable character because of it.
I got about three full moons into the remake before I wanted to rip my hair out. the basic frame work of the three I love is there but it's been glazed so hard with a Persona 5 aesthetic that any time the characters start glaming and posing for the camera I want to shut the game off then and there.

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>>3867352
>A lot of Nusona design choices were meant specifically for P3 and just carried over because the series was suddenly popular. The calendar system was meant to add a sense of impending dread and go with the idea of having to live a normal life in spite of all the screwed up stuff that's happeing and will be happening.

This right here is, I think, one of the biggest reasons why three works and the others really don't. It's functionally the same but the framing makes a difference of night and day. Both 4 and 5 feel like the have a stunning lack of urgency. There's no immediacy to anyone's actions. Someone can get kidnapped, thrown into a monster infested fog filled night mare and you'll be more invested in class or a part time job or something mundane and stupid given what's going on. It completely undermines the threat if you can put it off till the last minute. Three had things the other direction. The threat is coming to you and your time is spent readying for it. You want to explore tartarus but can only do so in certain time frames so your characters are, in context, more limited. You're not just ignoring the amazing fantasy world before because you trust the adults are working on it even if you're not. 4 and 5 will see this amazing shit and they get more excited for a sushi dinner. It's staggering how little they care.

>>3867502
>Audiences should be able to deal with, accept and even empathize and like characters who don't always agree with their insert or own personal ego.
I think you know that at this point that's not something that happens. If a character isn't a self-insert or isn't pure and good and wholesome then everyone complains about how shit they are.

I don't actually like P3 all that much and find a lot of the writing bad and characters dull as dirt (better than P4's, not as good as as some of P5's better characters). Yukari is one of the few I actually do like because she's a little closer to a PSX style Persona character than most of the others... in the pre-Reload English version at least. The only other character in the game I really like is Natsuki who also is an imperfect person with more of a character arc than most of the characters. Most of the rest of the main cast are either boring or bad (Ken is just a terrible character with a poorly written story). And then you have the S-Links which are almost uniformly wretched. Kind of amazing that it wasn't until 5 where they managed to get S-Links that were mostly half-decent to outright good (for Nusona) considering how it's a major aspect of the previous two games.

>>3867509
I really don't like social links on a fundamental level. It feels like they've become a cheap out to not integrate your characters better into the narrative. Chie doesn't have to have a plot because we can have a social link where she wants to bee seen as more girly or whatever. None of the plots or stories are anything engaging. If someone has one it's all in service of making them come off as more cute. Like Futaba's anxiety and issue with her uncle SOUND like they should be compelling and bigger deals but they're just not. It exists so Player-san can tell them how much they like them rather than they themselves having to actually face something.

>>3854655
>fighting Hitler in megaten combat
The Persona 2s have a very odd combat system. It has a rolling turn order where you can either input commands once and let it repeat according to the character's speed OR you can manually order your turns, usually delaying actions a bit, to set up combo spells. There is an entire hidden Persona upgrade system called Mutations that requires engagement with the combo system.
I think there are a lot of good ideas there but it was totally dropped after EP.
The real draw of Persona 2 is the setting: Sumaru is incredibly well realized. Every NPC gets updated dialogue after every minor plot beat. Your party members stand around in every non-dungeon location, commenting on either the plot or random things.
Eternal Punishment also has the draw of being one of the few JRPGs where the party is all adults and they actually act like it.
TLDR: the Persona 2s are the best megatens writing-wise but are mediocre gameplay wise. Worth a play if you are a storyfag.

>>3867516
Futaba's is one of the most fucked up because it switches from social anxiety hijinks that are meant to be silly and cute and then suddenly it drops "oh yeah, I had a friend and her parents have been prostituting her out to perverts since she was in elementary school", then you beat them and they say they're sorry and everything is a-ok and it's back to cute and silly social anxiety hijinks.

Like, what? No, it's not fucking okay at all. You don't just have a character (offscreen) have her parents groom and sexually abuse her by making her take sexualized pictures for pedophiles and go "well they said they're sorry, back to the video game lingo" like nothing happened. The whole thing is bizarre and fucked up, like they weren't even thinking about what they were writing and how it would clash with everything else. Doubly so given the entire Kamoshida arc. Even then, though, it downplays his sexual abuse and pedophilia and his raping Shiho to focus more on his physical abuse and abusing his power more broadly.

>>3866562
Everything you disliked about P1 would actually be worse in P2

>>3854652
As someone whose enjoyed my time with all the Persona games I've played (4G, 1, 2IS, 2EP, 3 FES in that order) I can say all of them have their merits but the old ones are going to filter most people. P1 has a lot of cool ideas especially with how the scenario branches but the positioning system added a lot more friction that it did depth and Pandora is easily one of the most bullshit final bosses I've ever encountered with how it switches what it absorbs in the middle of your turn. The P2s have great characters and the rumor system is really cool but grinding tarot cards the way most first time player are going to is fucking awful and the encounter rate is insanely high. Even though I like all of them it's no mystery to me why the newer games are more popular. Anyone who thinks the life sim elements are the reason they're more popular are really underselling how much combat becoming streamlined mattered. P4 being more popular than P3 is mostly because it changed a lot of the issues people had like mandatory AI controlled party members and the dungeon flavor design (or lack there of). I have yet to finish P5 but given how much I see it get shit on for being too easy it's no wonder it attracts normal fags so much.

>>3868230
>Anyone who thinks the life sim elements are the reason they're more popular are really underselling how much combat becoming streamlined mattered.
You're the one understating it. When has anyone ever talked about the gameplay? It's as shit in Nusona as it is in the PSX games. Instead of spamming combo attacks you just spam a weakness so you can do extra damage/get an all out attack while your MC is able to cover every situation himself making teammates redundant beyond providing a little extra damage or a buff (and some times an outright liability). You only ever hear anyone talk about the stories and waifu/husbando shit because Nusona made the games extremely anime dating sims. That's what people care about and that's why it sold better.

>>3868724
If any of the nu-sona games had combat from the PS1 games nobody would make it through the story.
It also doesn't help that a lot of nu-sona fags are just filthy secondaries who don't play games so no shit they're not going to talk about the gameplay.

>>3868230
any streamlining of the combat is only influential insofar as it makes the game easier to play for the casuals coming for the life sim
they don't respect the gameplay mechanically, they just don't want to be gatekept by it

>>3868724
I think what I miss the most is not having this wild card special snow flake bullshit. It makes the MC the only useful character in the game with everyone else being there for clean up only.

>>3868971
Agreed. It's such a grating experience to get through the game where the MC gets sucked off for just existing. It's like every character starts ovulating within your vicinity of you were nice to them. Like, holy shit, do we really need every single character to mention how cOoL Joker looks with that damn grappling hook?
The super-duper-special-chosen-one shtick also shits on the Jungian themes more strongly with each following entry.

>>3856454
>Elly has twin sisters
What the fuck
Why am I only learning this important information
Where IS THE PORN

2 and 3 are my favourite
>>3854831
This plus the fact that all that same mysticism has basically been phased out of the series through 4 and 5 because I guess normalfags don't notice or care is what irks me the most about current Persona
It's a shame that such a unique identity for the series was boiled away into its most generic, blandest components
Definitely not feeling hopeful about 6

>>3854831
You could apply this to most stories in a real world setting where fantasy shit happens

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>>3869942
I've played a few were they at least have a better sense of immediacy. It's the calendar system that fucks things up. It worked in 3 because of the context and framing but otherwise it just makes you look disinterested. Tokyo Xanadu is a pretty dumb game and clearly trying to cash in on Persona but when something there happens the characters see it as an immediate issue. There's even a few side chapters were the rest of the cast don't wait for the MC to show up and you play as them to get things done. One chapter even has you ditching school (Albeit with the student counsels approval) and I couldn't help but just laugh. I think with everything strange going around I'd be willing to chance a make up exam.

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>>3869942
>most stories are bad
Well yeah.