Persona 1 Analysis (Part 2) - Ultimate Persona Compendium

[Music] our PC person--i atrás [Music] my name is syllable I live between the world of couples and go building who are you [Music] hello everyone and welcome back to the ultimate persona compendium in part 1 of this trilogy analyzing the first persona game we took a look into the game's history and plot the second part will be focused on another vital aspect of the game the gameplay by now you probably have a good grasp on what the game is about you play as a group of misfit teenagers who use magical powers to fend off hordes of demons now have invaded their once peaceful City I've already mentioned how this plot differs significantly from the rest of the games in the Megami Tensei series well this also holds true for its gameplay the player traverses first-person dungeons and random encounters are triggered which will force a player to make a choice fight the enemies and negotiate with them or escape the players pie he mainly consists of five members similar to most conventional JRPGs the smt tradition of having mostly disposable demons in the pie II was dropped in this game instead demons become something any member of the pie can equip and summon from within themselves they determine what skills a character can use in battle and have their own set of strengths and weaknesses up to free personas can be wielded per character and are changeable at anytime during a battle provided that character forfeits their turn to do so different personas are suited for different battles and it's up to the player to experiment with different combinations if they are to succeed the sona's are divided into 21 classes based on the major arcana from tarot cards these arcanas can tell you a lot about the personas and not just in terms of gameplay mechanics as we explored back in part one personas are archetypes and thus expressions of a journey the characters themselves are also assigned their own suitable Arcana related to what scene of the Major Arcana they best represent this is something that is worthy of analysis but since this video is strictly about gameplay we'll save it for part free for now it's important to keep in mind what these arcanas mean to the gameplay magician personas are very good at offensive magic priestess have good healing magic Hierophant have good debuff sin ailments and so on since your characters have their preferred arcanas it's best to take this into consideration when fusing and equipping personas there's four types of persona affinis the highest allows access to secret powers that will activate automatically if certain conditions are met below this is simply good affinity the persona can be used with our issue what you can't access any extra potential a bad affinity does allow you to equip the persona but you can't use any of its skills the only use for this is if you need to take advantage of its resistances during a battle and the very worst affinity you won't allow you to equip the persona at all it's also the only affinity the game will actually tell you about the rest you have to find out for yourself either through trial and error or with a strategy guide however those rare secret powers I mentioned aren't detailed in even the official strategy guide and the game itself doesn't tell you about them IVA it's pretty clear that they wanted this as something you could discover at random without ever knowing how or why it's a bit of added mystery that fits the esoteric nature of this game quite well and believe me esoteric is a great way of describing this game's mechanics [Applause] while personas are what you'll be using most of the time there are more conventional means of dealing damage each character has a melee weapon and the gun that's right the high school students have ready access to submachine guns pistols shotguns and assault rifles changing the game's location to somewhere in the US helps the believability of this aspects a little but if this line of dialogue from me is to be believed the guns can only hurt demons I wonder how that makes sense the characters can also equip melee weapons such as swords this is equipment that the player will have to scavenge from defeat enemies as these high-schoolers obviously didn't bring weapons with them to school well except for mark and Yuki who both somehow have weapons during their first battle Yuki's throwing knife makes a little sense she's a delinquent so it's believable like she would happen to be carrying one around but marks great big axe is a source of confusion for many why did he bring it to school why did he bring it to the hospital what was he planning to do with it never explained the battle screen looks unimpressive compared to other JRPGs on the PlayStation 1 at the time but on the other hand it was a massive leap forward for Megami Tensei previous games had extremely basic first-person battle screens the player characters attacks were never shown beyond small visual effects and the enemy's movements were equally as limited with this in mind it's easy to appreciate how much more visual appeal persona brought to the table you could actually see your characters on screen you could see them moving over to the enemy to attack there are so a lot of other small details to appreciate such as how the characters have different animations depending on the weapon they lash used there isn't a large amount of animation going on here but in terms of sheer variety it's impressive there are well over 100 enemy types and all of them were designs specifically for this game this is worth mentioning since Atlas are known to reuse assets from previous games Shin Megami Tensei if being a prime example there isn't much going on in cutscenes outside of idle animations and stike character portraits on screen the game doesn't solely rely on 2d sprites this was released on the PlayStation 1 after all an era where 3d polygons were still new and impressive the older SMT games simulate 3d with their first-person dungeons a sauna was the second game in series to use the real deal after Devil Summoner on the Sun a year prior it's a transition that greatly benefitted the franchise actually having a free D space to explore felt a lot more natural than the pseudo 3d from previous games the dungeons themselves are long corridors of a recurring texture visually it's probably the game's most unappealing aspect even though the dungeons aren't randomly generated they certainly look and feel like they are there are 4 visual styles that you'll be seeing in this game the 2d exploration where you'll be able to walk around rooms find item boxes and speak to characters there's also a hub world which allows you to explore the town of Luna Vale on a larger scale this safe Reedy version of the overworld from the Shin Megami Tensei series and finally the 2d Bal screen it's here where the visuals gay little abstract and psychedelic you appear to be on a platform floating in a void but I assure you this is merely symbolic you'll notice that the game is half 2d and half Freedy this is a stylistic choice that carries over into the pre-rendered cutscenes as well the human characters hair are contrasted with a cold and empty world the opening movie before the title screen set system perfectly and is continued in the seemingly endless demon filled dungeons this is an example of where early CGI animation was used to great effect it creates an of a worldly feel in even the most mundane of locations the characters retain their to the anime look even in these 3d sequences this is something that clearly identifies them as human on the other hand we have Philemon who is the only character that is pre rendered in 3d this gives him an otherworldly quality that helps separate him from the rest of the cast the character in demon designs would be helmed by artist Kazuma koneko who had been involved in most atlas title since Megami Tensei to his ability to filter the aesthetics of mythology into his own style was brilliant and this is something that was continued in the first entry of the persona series with fantastic results his artwork is beautifully alluring and distinguished with a sense of psychological discord the gameplay in persona 1 is a strange beast and takes a bit of explaining it's both simple and needlessly complicated as we've already established you have sword attacks gun attacks and persona attacks the ladder is made up of a variety of magic depending on the persona equipped all skills are used by personas are also used by enemies with a few exceptions there are four groups of magic offensive defensive mind slash body and physical offensive magic is made up of ten main classes the first four includes pretty standard elements via ice wind and earth nothing too out there you haven't already seen the next four are a little more unconventional and includes heat sonic wave gravity and lightning the final two are curse and holy light i've singled these out since they work a little differently from the rest they deliver a payload of damage and continue to do damage every turn after they're cast offensive magic can deal damage against a single foe a single foe and the area around them our every foe you see on screen next we have defensive magic this is made up of revival skills healing skills and skills that can remove starts ailments there are so buffs and debuffs this can raise a character's effectiveness in battle by giving them added defense or attack it can also lower it for the enemy the next category is mind-body which is mostly concerned with status ailments this game has a lot of status ailments to worry about some of which are more dangerous than others let's go over them shall we firstly you have poison it saps health every turn as poison is known to do it also drains your health outside a bottle as well there sleep which makes you skip your turn until someone wakes you up with an attack charm which makes you turn against your own allies happy which makes you so joyful you skip your turn all of these makes sense next we have blind the structure here and evasion rate tera which makes you to scarify and possibly even flee the bottle panic which makes the afflicted act in unpredictable ways guilt which makes you feel too guilty to use offensive skills and many of us there are so positive status ailments that you can use on yourself for the sake of strategy berserk increases attack power but whoever it's cast on can only use physical attacks you can also turn yourself into a beast with the wolf skill which appropriately is most effective during a full moon finally we have the physical line of magic which are the most useless type of attacks this type of magic is made up of the following by scratch needle tackle punch weapon kick and this is my favorite simply because of how stupid it is bird attacks yes there is an entire subclass of magic dedicated to stuff like death claw and wing flap all of these are basically standard melee attacks but used as a persona skill since every character already has a melee attack this isn't very useful furthermore these skills don't do as much damage as a standard melee attack and usually have much worse range I mentioned earlier that surn attacks have an area of effect this plays into a barely explained game mechanic that has to do with an invisible grid during Bowl the formation of your party members determines what you can and can't reach with your attacks a character on the right side of the screen won't be able to hit the enemies on the left side at least not with physical attacks this renders a lot of the physical based magic useless for someone that isn't both in the middle and on the frontlines magic attacks have a much longer range some party placement doesn't come into play as much here the manual pie placement seems like it gives you a lot of options for strategy but it really doesn't there's a very clear right answer Mary must always be placed in the back center or else she can't use her bow she's a magic based attacker so she has a low health making it unwise to stick her on the frontlines everyone else should be placed in the front row with one character slightly behind them IVA on the left on the right side it doesn't really matter the only reason you'd need to switch this placement is if you need to stick someone in the middle so their physical persona magic can make contact personas rank up the more you use them which unlocks more skills sometimes you might get persona that starts only with these terrible physical skills sadly so you're forced to use them so you can stop using them it's added busywork that requires a little grinding before some personas can become useful you can save your Pais formation in up to eight slots and it can be changed in the middle of a battle if need be the only reason you need to do this though is if you were taken by surprise in an ambush this is represented by your view being spun around at the start of a random encounter and your formation being reversed this is a pretty bad position of being as all of your front row attackers will be too far away to use melee attacks and your back row characters usually just Mary is too close to use magic attacks conversely you can enter a battle with an advantage in something called a blitz attack which takes the enemy by surprise it all depends on your character's level and agility at any rate we've come back to the bottle screen and there's a lot more that needs to be talked about here we've already covered the bars themselves but you have our options here - if you find yourself ambushed or low on health you can choose to escape the bowl this is a high-risk high-reward maneuver it'll use every characters turn and has a high chance of failure if you're lucky enough to succeed you'll have cheated death and lift the fire another day that actually means something in this game since there's real progress to be lost save points are incredibly sparse as we will see lair [Music] another option on this menu is analyze which will allow you to read the strengths and weaknesses of enemies provided you've defeated at least one of its kind before it goes without saying that you should take full advantage of this before choosing your attacks item is pretty self-explanatory any party member can use items during any turn although it's worth mentioning that the success rate for items isn't 100% in extremely rare cases your items can actually miss and last but certainly not least we have the contact option which allows you to negotiate with the enemy as I've mentioned numerous times you can use this at any time in the bowl but it's recommended you only use it when you know you can win if things go awry or if you have no other option talking to a demon brings up this graph that tells you how they reacted to what you said if any of these four fill all the way there will be a different effect a scared demon will run from the fight an angry demon will cease all contact and attack you and a happy demon will either be afflicted with the happy status ailment now we'll give you something and leave finally an eager demon which is the best possible result we'll give you a variety of options you can ask them to give you an item money or provided you're not a lower level than they are a spell card these spell cards are vital as we'll see when we get to the Velvet Room so how do you go about getting the desired result from a demon it requires some trial and error every demon has its own personality made up of eight character traits strong surly smart happy stupid grumpy weak and snobby each character in your party has a set of four conversation options this is tied closely to their personality for example nee is the arrogant rich kid so his interactions are often quite patronizing this is an attitude that will interest some demons and antagonize of us it's all about becoming familiar with these personality traits and memorizing the correct options every now and then the demon will throw you a curveball in the form of a question these are also tied to that personality but all you can do is memorize the correct responses through trial and error really by the end of the game you should be familiar enough with this mechanic that it becomes routine however there's no way you can memorize all of them and it's often a little obtuse since a lot of demons have a variety of character quirks and won't follow a predictable pattern if you wish to bypass this part of the game it's recommended that you do not read the official strategy guide it has a brief section on contact but it doesn't tell you the correct choices for this you'll need to consult the persona one wikidot which has a guide for every possible personality combination this is insanely useful but this didn't exist back in the night but then your only hope would have been this strategy guide and it's only slightly more useful than the manual in this area so assuming you've memorized everything are using the persona 1 wiki duh there should be no possible room for failure at least that's what you would think but sometimes negotiations will go south anyway even when you do choose all the correct choices this ties into the moon phase mechanic a feature that was a holdover from the Shin Megami Tensei games it's featured prominently in the top left when exploring dungeons you'll notice that it would change with every sixteen steps you take it'll go from a new moon to a full moon and then back again this has an effect on how demons will treat you when you try to negotiate with them during a new moon the demons will be a little more easygoing during a full moon the opposite happens sometimes they won't negotiate with you at all and when they do they'll be incredibly arable outside of negotiations moon phases also has an influence on the essence store and more importantly the velvet room [Music] as you may remember the velvet room is where you can create new personas with the help of Igor it's a mechanic that was based on the Cathedral of shadows from me Megami Tensei games the Cathedral of shadows was a location that allowed two or more demons to be fused together to create a new demon usually of a higher level and with some skills inherited from both the velvet room functions in a similar way only by using the demon's spell cards instead of the demons themselves unlike previous games there's no way to summon the demon you enticed over to your side its spell card must first be fused with another demon to create a persona there's very little crossover between demons and personas they're completely different with a few exceptions both Jack Frost and pyro Jack appear as both a demon and a persona for example the velvet room gives you the choice of full service and self service with full service ego will show you all the possible fusion options with the spell cards you haven't hand I recommend you never actually use this though self service gives you much more choice to play around with self service allows you to manually choose the cards you want to fuse as well as what items you want to throw into the persona fusion before we go into fusion itself it's worth mentioning the benefits of throwing items into the fusion you can throw any old junk in there and usually you won't know what it did if anything at all the only time when this is obvious is if the item changes the fusion result which happens when you use a totem item to create a special persona you can also throw an equipment tablets or essence to both the persona stats are teaching new skills the fusion system here can be slightly confusing without the game's manual loss strategy guide but basically there are loft small variables to take into consideration the demons you collect for fusion are divided into their own class race and species different races have different strengths and weaknesses it's very similar to the arcanas the personas are grouped by only much less memorable because of the naming system they use each race is given two initials what these initials stand for is unknown you think their species designation would have something to do with this but there doesn't seem to be any relation between the two for example the ma race is made up of the holy light sign species and the DD race is made up of the elemental terror species there is a third type of classification that is never actually seen in the game itself it can only be found in the manual basically it just describes what kind of demon it is there's devil angel dragon bird beast demon spirit and outsider this also doesn't explain the initials though honestly I think they might be completely random at any rate both the race and species of the demon will die no its clan using these two as my examples again their clans are ma Holy Light and DD elemental the subspecies doesn't have any bearing on the fusion so we can safely ignore it not all demon clans work well together in a fusion it's like a food recipe you could end up with something really good or something really bad fortunately the game does steer you in the right direction with these symbols next to the fusion fusions of compatible clans will have an arrow pointing up this is the best possible fusion and will result in +1 to all of the persona stats on the other end of the spectrum fusions of incompatible clans will have an arrow pointing down and will yield minus one to all stats as if this wasn't bad enough irregularities are likely to occur in this type of fusion you can actually end up with the Jellyman persona that has minus 5 to all of its stats if you're unlucky enough to end up with something like that it's probably best just to the leader and try again however there's also a small chance of a beneficial fusion accident occurring this is the only way of fusing personas of the hidden 22nd Arcana The Fool there are other factors at work here such as the color of the arrows which is influenced by species compatibility blue is incredibly good and gives +5 to a single stat red doesn't lower any stats but it raises the chances of a fusion accident occurring finally white is in the middle and gives a stable fusion with no added benefits and as does the arrow pointing to the right when you fuse a persona you won't start with all the skills you saw an effusion screen it has to be ranked up first which can be done by using game bottle personas have a total of eight ranks with a variety of growth patterns tied to their stats once a persona reaches rank 8 it can't get any stronger you can keep it but it's recommended you return it to Eagle for a special item returning is the same as deleting by the way so don't accidentally delete your personas thinking you'll get something cool it only works at rank 8 no lower I feel a need to stress this because for a time I fought level 7 was the max level [Music] [Music] Damascus I would say persona 1 is probably the most complicated game in the series the mechanics in late games wouldn't be nearly this obtuse but then again that's part of the charm of this game as mechanics may be complex but there was simply nothing else like it at the time next let's address C difficulty Atlas are known for the high level of difficulty in their games and persona is no exception enemy encounters can be dicey affairs that can easily end in a complete pipe for the player which is the only way to get game over as with most RPGs of the time there was no checkpoints are all saves death means continuing from the last save point which are rooms with something called the Augustus tree the Augustus tree is a purple talking tree that gives encouraging words to these young adventurous and allows them to carve their record on Twitch trunk I really can tell you the law surrounding its existence these save points are plentiful early in the game but become increasingly rare later on to put it into perspective the game's final dungeon the 'video world has a single save point at its entrance considering it takes upwards of two hours to navigate this dungeon and fight the final boss you're looking at a lot of lost progress if you die before the ending and you will because it's not an easy final boss the dungeons contain a lot of dead ends so will extend your stay if you don't know where you're going some even have traps that will drop you to the lower floors making navigation even more confusing there are love of obstacles such as damaged floors and tiles that will forcefully move you in certain directions your only guide in the dungeon is your map screen there are Mike Lee logs everywhere you go getting past some of these dungeons requires that you get lost enough so you know where not to go there's a little trick you can exploit if you want to avoid unnecessary movement if you change the direction you're facing the map will rotate and briefly reveal that ends beyond your view this isn't a game changer or anything it's just a useful little trick I found myself using quite often other than this your only guide through dungeons is your own wit are the official strategy guide which is actually quite useful in this department since it has maps for all the layouts the dungeons can be incredibly frustrating at times especially during that long and arduous final dungeon I mentioned earlier I could go on at length about how much I both love and hate the video world exploring it for too long can start to send you stir-crazy close to the final boss you'll be given an incredibly difficult choice to make there's a hole in the ground that will send you back to the start of the dungeon where you can save use The Velvet Room I'll leave altogether to stock up on items in town however if you do take the drop you won't be able to get back up without going the long way again which can take you well over an hour even when you know exactly where to go so you have to choose between saving your hours of progress thus far are fighting the final boss and possibly losing everything the following footage is my trek through the dungeons sped up by 1000% the random encounters have been caught but I'll be keeping track of how many you have to get through before you reach the end keep in mind this is not my first journey through this dungeon so what you see here is the quickest I can do it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] if you want to play it safe here it's a good idea to fuse the protagonists ultimate persona a Monroe which has a skill lies specifically designed for dealing damage to the final boss and nothing else it's named boss damage yes boss damage sadly this is a level 62 persona and by the time you get to the video world you'll only be around level 40 assault this is not an easy game to grind in either working your way up 20 levels in your video world can easily take over 10 hours there's an optional side dungeon in the form of the ruins but getting to the bottom where all the powerful demons are can also take you about an hour and then you need to escape and get back to a save point which can take you another hour if only this game had some soft skill that could Wahb you back to the entrance of dungeons now better yeah reducing calorie while run the subject of gaining levels in this game this is an aspect that persona 1 handles a little differently from most JRPGs Freestar not all of your characters will level up at the same rate characters will be given experience points based on how much they did during the battle using a single character to deal all of damage while everyone else defends will greatly benefit that character but no one else this becomes problematic when you realize that some characters are more useful than others the protagonist and Mary will usually be a higher level than anyone else mainly because they get best skills earlier in the game mary has access to heavy magic that can tear through the enemies before poor mark and they even have a chance to move this will force you to sideline your best characters and attacks so the others can catch up this isn't a very good system it makes gaining levels feel like a chore at times in addition to this is a novel complication that you're most likely miss on your first playthrough your characters don't just have a single level they have to a character level de persona level the character level is gained by using melee attacks while the persona level is gained by using persona magic the character level raises stats while the persona level allows you to summon higher level personas this adds yet another level of micromanagement to the process not only do you have to make sure all of your characters are doing consistent work but you also have to watch what kind of attacks they're using as well the protagonist submachine gun is an extremely useful weapon in many situations you'll find yourself using it quite often because of this but this has the adverse effect of raising the character level way higher than the persona level barring you access to some of the higher level personas late in the game it's much more effective to rely more on persona attacks for this reason alone this is made frustrating by how much more satisfying guns and physical attacks are compared to magic this is because unlike most persona skills guns and swords can deal critical damage which is indicated by an incredibly satisfying sound when raising your character level you're given free points to disperse across your stats this is a staple of RPGs and allows you to create your own unique character build unfortunately you're not given much choice here technique and the Jillie are the only stats you need to race since they yield the grease benefits in terms of damage and hit rate vitality and lot can more or less be ignored and strength is best used as a dumpster your character stats are also influenced by the persona and equipment you have as well the yellow bar is your own altered stats the blue bar is why is added with equipment and the red bar is why cited by the persona stats soul the characters overall start is the highest stat held by the character or the persona [Music] the gameplay of persona 1 is possibly its weakest aspect it can be overwhelming for first-time players and it's clear a lot of streamlining is an order was it really necessary for there to be both a persona level and a character level was it necessary for your characters to have their own stats separate from the persona stats was it really necessary to have so many types of status ailments and magic types to keep track of there's so many I had to skip over quite a few of them there's still a lot of fun to be had when negotiating with demons and customizing your party but many may be put off by the amount of micromanagement required here there are just too many different types of skills and mechanics for its own good it gives the game a great deal of variety but not in the places it really mattered you'll spend a great deal of this game using the same personas and not really having much need to fuse higher level ones granted this might have been for the best considering you have to manage the personas of 5 characters but it's a shame the game doesn't force you to utilize this feature more and of course many of these issues would be addressed in future persona installments and we will get to those eventually the purpose of this second part was to explore this game's mechanics in a simple and easy to understand way so that fans wanting to get into this early entry won't be so intimidated it's a game that has a fantastic story but less an ideal gameplay [Music] well this isn't the version most people are going to play these days is it as I mentioned back in part 1 of this analysis series this is not the only version of persona 1 we have the benefit of taking a look at there is also the 2009 re-release for the PlayStation Portable which was localized by a much more experienced atlas USA our final part in this persona 1 analysis will be looking at this updated version of the game not only this but we'll be taking a look at the content that was originally caught from this early ps1 release as well as comparing it to the original Japanese version there is still a lot we need to cover in this series but for now farewell oh yeah [Music]

Channel: SnicketySlice

Views: 167,307

Keywords: Revelations: Persona, Persona 1, Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, Game Review, Analysis, Gameplay, Strategy guide, Walkthrough, Persona History, Atlus, The Persona series, Avidya World, Megami Ibunroku Persona, PS1, PSP, Persona 5, Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 2, Megaten, SMT, Persona Origins

Id: 9KdFUzOpjMI

Length: 39min 22sec (2362 seconds)

Published: Mon May 21 2018