[Phoenix Gamma]

Originally Posted by OxBlood

Hey Phoenix, after you played a bit, could you compare it to P3 for me? Since I wont see much of the game until it gets released here next year...which sucks.

Certainly. I spent another 2 hours in an actual dungeon, bringing me to four hours, which means that this game is literally half grinding and half socializing.

I'll put it in a spoiler tag because it's a long post. No actual spoilers, I promise:

Spoilers!

The social aspect is pretty much the same, except: - Square lets you jump to different parts of where you are. Instead of fumbling around school, you can just skip over to certain floors or buildings. Same with shopping districts and stuff. - "Thou art I..." speech only appears in the initial Social Link, not after each level up. A quick graphic pops up and you move on. Much better. - More stats to boost (Diligence, Expression, something else...) and more chances to boost them (reading a manly comic book in your room boosts courage). Combat: - Fighting is done during the afternoon, which screws up priorities. Now it's School>Socialize/Fight>Dinner/Bed. -If you get knocked down, you stay down after getting hit. However, when you get back up, it doesn't count as a full turn, meaning you get get up and fight instead of waiting again. So actually, it's much better, since you always do something every turn no matter what. -Direct Command is an option under tactics from the get-go, but it's not the default setting. AI is the improved one from FES, so someone will knock everyone down instead of wasting moves on the same enemy. -Big change: Enemies automatically sense you coming. This means to get the jump on an enemy, you need to charge at it from behind and strike immediately, since they'll turn around in about 1 second and chase you. And man do they give chase. P3 was more lenient since you could walk behind them and never get spotted. -Camera angle is from the back, so learn your attack range quickly. -SHUFFLE TIME constantly moves the cards, meaning you need to stop the shuffle when the card to want is about to approach the center of the screen. Really tricky. -Enemy reinforcements can be called during the fight, or immediately after you kill everyone. A pain in the ass, but it's more EXP. -The navigator/advice person doesn't tell you weaknesses until AFTER you find them on your own. This part's a real bummer, since I still don't know one enemy's weakness and I see him a lot. - I'm 90% sure the Compendium auto-registers Personas as soon as you get them. It's the level ups that you need to manually save. I have 5 Personas but only needed to save two that I used frequently. -No warp points. Now you jump right to the last floor you were on right away. Also, you can run back downstairs now.

That's about it. I'm still learning stuff as I go. There's a lot more stuff here, which is saying something compared to P3, which had more than an entire playthrough's worth of stuff.