#look at my icon I love Yosuke persona 4 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lord-radish · 1 year

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I think there are three important criteria when it comes to judging a modern Persona game: Social Links, Dungeon Crawling and the Stupid Guy Best Friend.

Please note that this is more an indicator of personal taste than me trying to objectively quantify any of these categories.

Social Links: 5 > 3 > 4.

god I just looked up the Persona 5 social links for the first time in forever and I love all of them. I was seriously gonna consider ranking 3's social links highest, but Persona 5 really does have it all. Even with the reputation Ohya has, I LOVE her big orange bubble sunglasses. Weakest link is Mishima.

The third game has the worst social link out of them all, but it also has - imo - the best one too. The Moon arcana, with the gormand who steals your money and tries to get you into a cult, sucks. The Sun arcana, where you spend your Sundays with a terminally ill man? Absolute fuckin tearjerker. You also have the elderly bookstore couple and Mutatsu the Monk on top of that. Maya is an iconic social link, and I like Keisuke too.

Persona 4 has some good social links, like Dojima, Nanako and Naoto. But it also has Ayane, and even the characters I liked spending time with had social links that felt meandering. Rise had a good social link, Yukiko's ended up feeling like a rut. Since this is my first playthrough, I didn't even start a couple of the social links - that's my bad. There's also the fact that I'm 27, and I played P3 as a teenager and P5 in my mid-20's; I might be growing out of this sort of cliche-laden Anime stuff. But so far, I honestly think 4's social links are my least favourite. Except for the Fox, I like the Fox.

Dungeon Crawling: 3 > 4 > 5

For the record, Persona 5's dungeons were fan-fucking-tastic. They look and feel incredible, they're incredibly well made. But they're also static areas and I prefer the procedurally generated areas of 3 and 4. There's Mementos, but driving around in the Monawagon got really old after a while. Excellent levels and gameplay, but the PS2 jank is really fun.

Persona 4 had some good maps. I adored the RPG one, I really like the sci-fi one, the Golden-exclusive map was great and there's a great endgame map too. But the maps all cap out at about ten floors. I felt like I was playing the Bathhouse map for way too long, and eventually it boils down to a noticeable formula.

I really like Persona 3's unconventional dungeon structure. Climbing an evergrowing tower with over a hundred floors? That rips. Unlocking new floors with bosses is kind of an oddball, but I like it and it's explained in the game. It's blocky, it's randomly generated, and it's really fun. I love when a simple concept is done well, and that's Persona 3's dungeon crawling to me. The spectacle of 5 is incredible, but sometimes it's the little things that affect you the most.

Stupid Guy Best Friend: 5 > 3 >>>>>> 4

Ryuji is a real bro. He's dumb, but you could do a blood pact with him and probably feel secure that he's gonna pull through for you. Undoubtedly the best Stupid Guy Best Friend in the Persona series.

Junpei is kind of a flake, but I thought he had a pretty good story going for a while there near the end. Junpei probably ends up being the most "human" Stupid Guy Best Friend? The dumb pervy anime stuff begins with him, but he actually ended up having an intensive emotional story.

Yosuke Homophobic Moments Pt. 7.

Yosuke spends most of the game being inappropriate with women and making homophobic comments to Kanji for his perceived sexuality. For some reason, TV Tropes editors are much more heated about Chie for how she treats him, i.e. getting mad at him for breaking a DVD and spending a bunch of his money on a gift for someone else - but this is the guy who signed her up to a beauty pageant against her will and then lost his shit when she retaliated, and basically cornered her into wearing a bikini and guilted her until she gave in. Yosuke fucking sucks - trash character 0/10. I do not like Yosuke.

And I know there were plans to make him a gay dating option that got cut late into development - to the point that there was English dialogue recorded for it. Could it have saved the character and retroactively explained a lot of his toxic traits as overcompensating for his sexuality? Maybe, with a lot of side-eye to match. But that got left on the cutting room floor, and the overly perverted and outwardly prejudiced Yosuke we got in the game is what we got. I really, really dislike Yosuke.

#long post

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