CAG Niche Backloggers Anonymous (Monster Hunter World!) [February]

Persona 5 and Nier: A. I need motivation to keep playing Nier, which is the only reason. Twelve hours in, and I haven't touched it in days.

 
Standings so far:

April   Persona 5 13 Nier Automata 4 Tales of Beseria 3

Not sure if Gershomcz is voting for Mass Effect of Persona 5, so I didn't count his yet.

I might do it like last time and put 2 games, if the runner up has at least 50% of the votes as the winning game.

Btw, we've done 8 of these already! And our one year anniversary is coming up! ^_^

 
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I played Final Fantasy XV: Episode Gladiolus. It's short, but I guess for $5.00 it's not too bad. Teaming up with Cor got me interested in it. If Iris is part of a future episode I might buy it. But it doesn't feel like I'm missing much if I pass on the dlc.

I also played Senran Karuga: Bon Appetit and Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone. I had been waiting for Bon Appetit go on sale after I bought the dlc on sale a few months ago. It has some funny trophy names; "A Lot of Boobs", "Nice Boobs". I'm a quarter of the way through the story mode.

After playing Bon Appetit I decided to look into the Project Diva games. The Future Tone bundle having over 200 songs for $54 sounded great, and my 20% off code took nearly $11 off the price. I've been using random select to play songs. I'm thinking of seeing how the game plays with my arcade stick.

If an Overwatch event happens while I'm playing Persona 5 I won't feel the need to grind loot boxes. I have over 21,000 gold.

 
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Voting has ended. With a whooping 19 votes, the highest of all time! Persona 5 is the Backloggers Anonymous April GOTM! Have fun guys!

Anyone who got the game early, if possible, please refrain from early impression posts until April 4th when the game launches.

As this game is very story heavy, please remember to use spoiler tags when discussing story elements.

deadofnight said:
After playing Bon Appetit I decided to look into the Project Diva games. The Future Tone bundle having over 200 songs for $54 sounded great, and my 20% off code took nearly $11 off the price. I've been using random select to play songs. I'm thinking of seeing how the game plays with my arcade stick.
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If you are interested in music/rhythm games, I highly recommend importing IA/VT Colorful for the Vita. It is my pick for best music game of all time, and it is on my top ten list of greatest games ever made. Very rare for a niche genre like music games to get up there, so the game is absolutely amazing. I love Project Diva, Guitar Hero, DJ Max, Superbeat Xonic, and Rock Band, but IA/VT is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of presentation.

 
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dawg i am going to play the living shit out of persona 5

i like that a standard pre-order gets us a steelcase. i love steelcases.

 
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BlackRockWaifu said:
If you are interested in music/rhythm games, I highly recommend importing IA/VT Colorful for the Vita. It is my pick for best music game of all time, and it is on my top ten list of greatest games ever made. Very rare for a niche genre like music games to get up there, so the game is absolutely amazing. I love Project Diva, Guitar Hero, DJ Max, Superbeat Xonic, and Rock Band, but IA/VT is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of presentation.
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IA/VT is amazing! Definitely one of my favorite rhythm games, and probably the best on the Vita IMHO.
 
I pre-ordered the Take Your Heart edition. It's my second special edition ever. My first was paying an extra $5.00 for the Halo 2 metal case.

I'm going to do my first playthrough on Hard. I did that with Persona 4 Golden, and the difficulty felt perfect. I didn't need to grind to be able to defeat bosses (I just killed everything I saw as I progressed), and I didn't become overpowered. I think the only thing Hard changed was it reduced your XP and money earned from battles. Which helps keep your levels and supplies in check.

I'm also going to avoid any assistance for that playthrough. I'll keep track of things like if characters are only available at certain times.

 
I was tempted to get the regular edition of Persona but I decided to keep my steelbook because I think that will have a higher value in the future. Not that I plan to sell my games but I would rather something more sought after than a controller skin.

 
So by a show of hands, who is tackling Persona 5 this month?

I might do a chart or something to see who stayed on the tracks this month and who derailed. 

 
When the Gamestop employee brought out the Take Your Heart edition box my first thought was it looks like a box of fireworks. I was a bit sad when I thought Atlus changed the box art, but that was just a cardboard slipcover over the collector's box.

I haven't looked at the art book yet. I'll wait until I finish the game. The size of the Morgana plushy makes it fit in next to my Songbird and Jill Valentine pop funco figures.

Sir_Fragalot said:
I was tempted to get the regular edition of Persona but I decided to keep my steelbook because I think that will have a higher value in the future. Not that I plan to sell my games but I would rather something more sought after than a controller skin.
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When I first saw that post I thought how much could games really go up in value? Then I found out my copy of Snatcher for the Sega CD has an asking price of $500. I bought that game when it was released. I should have bought extras when a K-B Toys was having a store closing sale. They had a few of them for $20.

Meanwhile my Halo 2 metal case is averaging around $10.

 
Since using game locations or character/boss names might be spoilerish, why don't we use the number of hours we clocked into the game to say how far we have gotten. Assuming that we spend similar amounts of time on each level.

So far I've spent around 7 hours or so on it, I feel the pacing is pretty fast. Thing seem to go a lot faster than Persona 3 and 4.

Gershomcz said:
Me. So apparently we can't talk about end game content or we get sued right?
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I think so lol. They also blocked streaming the game directly from the PS4. Which I think might be a good idea, since it helps prevent spoilers and stuff. Maybe more games should adopt it. But I think it might hurt them in the long run, so they should probably retract these limits after like 2-3 months or something, when a good amount of people have either beaten the game, or played enough that they are content with it.

draco259 said:
You can't see me, but my hand is up.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
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I haven't seen you playing this one on my friends list, but glad you're on board with us!

 
BlackRockWaifu said:
I haven't seen you playing this one on my friends list, but glad you're on board with us!
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Ugh....Something is going on with my timeline, it hasn't been showing much of my activity. Actually I just looked, it says the last thing I have done is start UC4 on 3/19...Huh, time to look into that.

I'm also about 7 hours into P5 and I am loving it! I definitely agree with you on the pace that the game is moving at so far.

I haven't noticed really any of the problems that some are having, I actually feel like this is on of the most polished Japanese games I have ever played. *shrug* Maybe I just ignore or overlook the problems, but everything seems very smooth, or at least deliberate. I also seem to be in the minority in really liking the English VO work. I typically switch to Japanese right when I turn on a game, but I ended up just keeping this one on English.

EDIT: So I guess my PS4 got set to "appear offline" so that also stopped all of my activities from posting.
 
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I haven't been, cause I know I'm close to finishing Nier. That, and I've only had maybe 2 hours a night the last couple of nights.

Route C, did 2 parts of one character and on the 2nd part of other character.

And I just found out I can buy the trophies I was working towards. So do I buy the 80% quests done trophy.. when I have 79% of quests done?

 
Can we go by days maybe? I kind of left my TV for longer than I wanted once so my time won't be a good estimate of my pace.

 
I have the TYH edition but do not wanna open it until I finish Mass Effect A and Plat Horizon Zero Dawn since my friend borrowed it and just returned it yesterday.

I have yet to even touch FF15 from a previous month. I have not touched a Persona Game since I played Golden a few years ago and wanna devote my full attention to the game and not be playing anything else. And I know I am getting Zelda on my birthday in May and I know im gonna dive full tilt into that.

I have been reading tips about the game without spoilers so I am prepared for the game.

 
draco259 said:
Ugh....Something is going on with my timeline, it hasn't been showing much of my activity. Actually I just looked, it says the last thing I have done is start UC4 on 3/19...Huh, time to look into that.

I'm also about 7 hours into P5 and I am loving it! I definitely agree with you on the pace that the game is moving at so far.

I haven't noticed really any of the problems that some are having, I actually feel like this is on of the most polished Japanese games I have ever played. *shrug* Maybe I just ignore or overlook the problems, but everything seems very smooth, or at least deliberate. I also seem to be in the minority in really liking the English VO work. I typically switch to Japanese right when I turn on a game, but I ended up just keeping this one on English.

EDIT: So I guess my PS4 got set to "appear offline" so that also stopped all of my activities from posting.
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I had a glitch before where something similar happened. My timeline stopped updating entirely, and it took like 6 months to fix itself. But I think your problem might be different if you are able to fix it like that.

Yeah, I also don't really notice the problems that others are complaining about. If anything, I think almost every aspect of the game has improved and been perfected since P4 and I'm having a hard time thinking of any improvements they can make. It might be that people were a little too hype for the game, and wanted way more than anyone could've delivered. Usually I'm the one who nitpicks at little details too.

I also really like the dub, I think people were just expecting the worse with all the little leaks and the fact that dual audio was given early. That way they started to develop a bias against the dub before really even getting a feel for it.

Gershomcz said:
Can we go by days maybe? I kind of left my TV for longer than I wanted once so my time won't be a good estimate of my pace.
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The date would be fine too, doesn't seem to spoil anything.

In the beginning though, there was that whole 6 months rewind, so it might be best to stop using dates when it gets to that point.

umbry said:
I have been reading tips about the game without spoilers so I am prepared for the game.
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Wow, seems like you have quite a bit on your plate! I would be a little careful though when maneuvering the thread. I am having a hard time talking about gameplay/concepts, while keeping it 100% spoiler free. But everyone will avoid story spoilers though, I think we are all on the same boat on that one.

 
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Im thinking try and finish Horizon tonight and just move on to Persona 5 so I be on the same page and all my friends are playing it too and after reading things like how to friend monsters easier and things like that I might just go ahead and play anyway.

I take it there is not an official or unofficial guide to the game?

 
Persona 5 is excellent. I do like the pacing more than 4 so far. I'm only a couple hours in already. I'm reminded of a phrase from pokemon sun.... Get in the bag nebby :)
 
I still have no idea how to use the thieves' guild. I actually needed it a few times too and died in battle.

There is no official guide like Brady guides or Prima guides I think. In terms of maxing things out for a perfect run or answering classroom questions, there are probably a few faqs online. I didn't really want any spoilers, and I know there are spoiler free ones too. 

 
Yeah, the new way to capture personas is unique. However, I don't know what to answer to some of the questions.

Really loving the game though.

 
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I'm playing P5 as well. I think maybe putting the date you've progressed to in the game would likely be a better indicator of progress than hours spent. Because I accidentally let the game idle for a few hours so that artificially inflated my play time.
 
There's actually a really easy method I use to capture them that works almost 100%. A few times it worked too well and the Personas give me items instead. You probably know it too but skimmed over it.

Not a story spoiler, just explaining the Hold Up gameplay thing.

So in case you missed it, in the tutorials there's a section on Persona/Shadow personalities. And they explain the choices that the Personas' love and hate to hear. Basically just follow it, but there is a bit more than just that. They give you two times to answer the questions, the first one doesn't really matter I think, it won't win or blow your chance at the Persona. For the second one, there are 3 choices, and there is one that's the best choice, and the other two is either a complete opposite, or doesn't help. You can view the Personas' personalities on their stats menu, or on the upper left corner on the Hold Up screen.

For instance, if you Hold Up the Timid Horse Knight, he will tell you some sad background story like he was a farmer that got beat up or something, and now he is a drunkard and got fused onto a horse. He'll ask if you want to get girls like he does and you just pick the Kind answer like "Oh man, you have the best girl getting skills! What a Stud!" Then he tries to throw a curveball at you and go like "But what if women see me as a horse and don't like me?" Again, pick the Kind answer and say "Who doesn't like riding horses?" and then the Persona will be happy and remember who they were and join you.

Seriously lol, I don't make these things up. The amount of time and creativity spent on these Persona conversations is mind blowing. Some of them are downright insane. Like the Twilight Prostitutes and Pixies hitting on you and wanting to get it on...

 
So I'm in the first castle went in 4/22 to make sure I had several days but man, it doesn't seem like I made much progress before everyone started getting tired. Began having P3 flashbacks, so I just bailed. It's a far cry from my new game+ playthroughs of P4G where I was one-day'ing every dungeon. It may take a while before I catch the rhythm of the game.

Possible waifu spoiler:
I love the doctor. If she were to marry my character, her name would be Tae Takemi-Takamini. She does not have triple T boobs though....

 
hostyl1 said:
So I'm in the first castle went in 4/22 to make sure I had several days but man, it doesn't seem like I made much progress before everyone started getting tired. Began having P3 flashbacks, so I just bailed. It's a far cry from my new game+ playthroughs of P4G where I was one-day'ing every dungeon. It may take a while before I catch the rhythm of the game.
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I find ignoring your allies saying how tired they are works fine so far. Then after a run/attempt, I wait to go back rather than going back in the very next day. I push as far as my SP will take me or if I hit an impassable snag that you can't get past without leaving the dungeon first. If I hit a snag, I use up the rest of my SP prior to leaving to make full use of the delve. I did the first two story dungeons in 3 delves, not counting days they forced you in and out for storyline reasons.

Dungeons are impossible to one-shot now though. At the very least it will take two, potentially more.

 
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Draekon said:
Dungeons are impossible to one-shot now though. At the very least it will take two, potentially more.
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You can enter a dungeon and reach as far as the game allows in 1 day though. This becomes much easier after the first dungeon since you have more money for SP recoveries and gear
 
tsoul said:
You can enter a dungeon and reach as far as the game allows in 1 day though. This becomes much easier after the first dungeon since you have more money for SP recoveries and gear
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By the term one-shot I was referring to doing the entire dungeon in one day and take out the boss. Dungeons take up a lot more time than previous games because so much is blocked by triggers you can't do while inside the dungeon.

I've already gone through the first two dungeons, so I'm fairly aware on how they work.

 
Man i hate checking what everyone is doing for their day by online. It makes me feel like i'm doing everything wrong (which I may be for the stats......there are so many activities). I forgot cause i haven't played a Persona game in forever ,but damn is this game slow as hell. I forgot the pace of these games, but it's good fun. I doubt i'm going to complete even 70% of the confidants with how i'm doing right now.

 
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nitrosmob said:
Man i hate checking what everyone is doing for their day by online. It makes me feel like i'm doing everything wrong (which I may be for the stats......there are so many activities). I forgot cause i haven't played a Persona game in forever ,but damn is this game slow as hell. I forgot the pace of these games, but it's good fun. I doubt i'm going to complete even 70% of the confidants with how i'm doing right now.
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Here's two helpful things you can do to assist with that if you don't mind some spoilers:

Leveling the Temperance and Fortune confidants when you get to them will provide you extra ways to level things. Fortune will cost you money to level other confidants without using time while Temperance gives you extra free time. Money can be made quite easily in the non-story dungeon, particularly on Pollen days where you abuse chests/drops while ignoring monsters and resetting it by going back up/down a floor to respawn everything.

Also I believe the stats carry over in NG+, so it's not a huge deal if you don't mind a second playthrough later. That means if you don't hit 5 in one of the five stats, you can far more easily max confidants on a second playthrough. Same with the compendium and money. You can't fuse higher level demons, but you can buy a level 99 demon as a level 1 so long as you have enough money. Granted you may not have the SP/HP really necessary to use their abilities much, but you can always make one that's more optimal to go through the early game.

 
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Yeah, dungeons definitely seem a little more time consuming. Although I find that you are able to get a lot more done than in the previous Persona games. Like you can steal a lot of treasure to make money, it's easier to get the Personas you want, and money from battles also comes by quick too. With things like guns and safe rooms, you can maximize your runs pretty well if you use every drop of MP and every last bullet count. It's just that there isn't that end of battle bonus that recovers your hp/sp like P4G had, which made things super easy. No extra EXP bonus either.

I stopped looking through the damn multiplayer survey thing. I always have a lower level than the average level. I also seen some people beat the dungeon in the first day or something which was insane. 

That boss fight music tho... so damn gooooood!  :-({|=  :whistle2:   :applause:

 
Made it to 5/14 today. The first castle was tougher than in P4G, I had to take 2 non-automatic trips to clear it plus a third to beat the main boss whereas I'm pretty sure I cleared the first dungeon in P4G in 1 trip total. I don't see it getting any easier from here either, I'm definitely finding this game to be a challenge.
 
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I beat the first boss. My character was at level 11, and I'm playing on hard. Going into the fight I was wondering if I was under-leveled, but the fight was just a good challenge. We were dropped to our teens in health a couple times, but no one was ever KO'ed.

I was wondering if I was under-leveled because some shadows were able to KO us with a single hit. I can't spend as much time in a dungeon as I did in Persona 4 Golden or Persona 3 FES. I needed to rest and return to replenish SP. Some of the shadows could seriously kick my ass if I took the fight lightly by not attacking weaknesses with SP.

Maybe greater regeneration options will open up as the game goes on. If not then it just means Persona 5 will require a couple extra trips to a dungeon. That's not bad considering Persona 4 Golden took only one or two trips.

 
deadofnight said:
I was wondering if I was under-leveled because some shadows were able to KO us with a single hit.
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That's a normal staple of Shin Megami Tensei games if you haven't really played them before. Though in Persona 5 they let you retry the fight which makes it easier than other ones where you typically have to reload your last save. I don't remember if all the newer games have that feature or not though.

deadofnight said:
Maybe greater regeneration options will open up as the game goes on.
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They do. If you want specifics, then here's a really good one:

[customspoiler='Spoilers on how to acquire a specific SP Regen item']
Your Death confidant sells SP Regen accessories at rank 5. The best ones are 100k, which at around 130 SP regen 7 SP per turn. Not sure if it's fixed or based on your max SP. At Death rank 7, the price will be cut in half down to 50k.[/customspoiler]

 
Draekon said:
That's a normal staple of Shin Megami Tensei games if you haven't really played them before. Though in Persona 5 they let you retry the fight which makes it easier than other ones where you typically have to reload your last save. I don't remember if all the newer games have that feature or not though.

They do. If you want specifics, then here's a really good one:

[customspoiler='Spoilers on how to acquire a specific SP Regen item']
Your Death confidant sells SP Regen accessories at rank 5. The best ones are 100k, which at around 130 SP regen 7 SP per turn. Not sure if it's fixed or based on your max SP. At Death rank 7, the price will be cut in half down to 50k.[/customspoiler]
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Are you playing on Safety? I haven't been able to retry any fights on any other difficulty level yet.
 
Commodore Wheeler said:
Are you playing on Safety? I haven't been able to retry any fights on any other difficulty level yet.
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Normal. I don't particularly enjoy the way harder difficulties are setup in games.

EDIT: I should probably also mention that they may have been event battles. They were brand new enemies for me when I faced them for sure. I haven't died in quite a while though and never to basic enemies that I can remember.

 
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Here is a tip, get the free DLC item, sell the soma for 50k.  That will make a huge difference early on.

 
Commodore Wheeler said:
Are you playing on Safety? I haven't been able to retry any fights on any other difficulty level yet.
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Bosses can be retried on hard mode. Sure is handy when the boss ohkos you!
Difficulty has definitely eased up in the second dungeon as I expected. There weren't any particularly high leveled enemies relative to your level compared to the first dungeon.
 
Draekon said:
Normal. I don't particularly enjoy the way harder difficulties are setup in games.

EDIT: I should probably also mention that they may have been event battles. They were brand new enemies for me when I faced them for sure. I haven't died in quite a while though and never to basic enemies that I can remember.
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That makes sense then. I haven't died on an event or boss battle yet, but I've died in plenty of regular battles.
 
62t said:
Here is a tip, get the free DLC item, sell the soma for 50k. That will make a huge difference early on.
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Lol that's the first thing I did when I could. Geared up with the best stuff from the shop available, and I'm broke again.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk
 
Wow, are the school questions insanely difficult for anyone else!?

I mean I was able to do most of the P3/4 ones myself, but these I have to go straight to Google. And sometimes Google doesn't even help unless you use a faq, even Wiki doesn't know a lot of them. These are definitely not High School questions, maybe not even College level. Either that or the Japanese school system is miles ahead of the US. 

Just found out that you can use the Network poll to help you too. Makes things 100x easier. Also, having Morgana is cheating, wish I had something like that for my exams.

 
So I am a few hours in and started this morning. A little slow to start but I expected that and really like it alot.

Found a guide for the questions and wondered about the guide so I dont miss anything important.

 
5/19 now, things are starting to get pretty tense. I read an article on Gameinformer a few months back where they said the story in P5 is different from that of the past Persona games in that the protagonists and his friends go out and seek trouble, rather than get put into an unfortunate set of events. It's a cool departure from the series, and works pretty well.

Also I can see why people think the pacing of the game/story is a little slow. The characters tend to repeat things and situations a lot, just to make sure to audience is still keeping up with the story. There are also a lot of pauses and obstacles along the way, which makes the protagonist seek other ways around a problem, rather than talking to someone out right. There's also a lot of elevator talk and casual dialogue along the way, and when combined with outside activities like school, it makes long gaps in between story progression. I think there just needs to be a little patience, and not be treated like other games, where fighting to the end boss is the one and only goal. 

 
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