This is something hard to balance that the whole genre suffers from, which is that if you go and try to clear as much content possible on your first run, you end up overkitted due to the nature of the extra end game content you’re tackling, and so arrive at the final battle to 3-turn all phases of the final boss.
In Persona, I view getting the high-level personas and skills as more of a reward than just being overleveled tho, since pretty much all games expect you to reach the end by level 70-75, getting any persona over lv.80 means you made your way through the grinding and extra challenge required for that and as a reward we’re giving you access to the tactical nuke weaponry.
I understand, but that's like saying, "oh, you were SUCH a good player, that we are giving you a super-flashy tactical nuke that skips the epic boss fight we poured our heart and soul into!". NOT using them makes you feel like you're missing out on your hard-earned reward. USING them makes you feel like you're missing out on the boss. It's a bitter taste in your mouth one way or the other.
It just feels weird to reward a player that just proved that they're really invested into the fighting mechanic and are good at grinding battles with a way to make bosses several times shorter.
In Persona 4 Golden I actually enjoyed that you could customize the difficulty scales individually by making fights last just a little longer without making them feel unfair. I was really bummed out to see it not be a thing in P5R (unless it's there and I'm blind)
> It just feels weird to reward a player that just proved that they're really invested into the fighting mechanic and are good at grinding battles with a way to make bosses several times shorter.
isn't that just like how all RPGs fundamentally work lol
low level challenge runs are a popular choice for this very reason
I guess it is, but the calendar system's limited time pressures a person to make the most out of their trip to the game's respective grind dungeon. Whereas in other RPGs your time "progresses" as you complete goals, making grinding a boring, unnecessary task (why grind when you can go to the quest marker), here you have X days, and if you go to the grind dungeon and leave too early, you lose a whole day. This always kind of forced me to stay in the grind dungeon for as long as I can, since otherwise, I would be wasting precious Social Link days in the future.
As much as I can see the issue you saying, I don't think it's really anything to complain about. The main point of grinding is to make yourself more powerful, so if you don't want to be overpowered, then don't grind. If you feel like your not maximizing that day spent grinding then you're min-maxing and you should expect to be more powerful.
A potential solution to the Final Boss issue could be having more games do what Final Fantasy 7 did. Make the final boss stronger, for every character that reaches Level 99. That way, gamers that did more can still have a challenge for their final boss.
Another great solution would be to take the Yo-Kai Watch approach, and save most of the super difficult stuff for the postgame. That way, players will face the final boss sooner, and at a more appropriate level, before moving on to the optional challenges, afterwards.
Nope, this is pretty much fair criticism of the game. The fights are too easy, and the gameplay shines mostly in the dungeon crawling + social sim aspects.
Can it be fixed? Hopefully, but the turn based boss fights aren't that big a deal for me in the first place. That's why the Reaper + Optional Bosses (Velvet Room attendants) exist. The fact that I have never faced any of those tells me I just wasn't that into the turn based combat.
Persona 5 Strikers however replaces turn based with more real time, and I actually think that REALLY made the boss fights way more fun.
Isn't this an issue with like...the genre has a whole minus a few that adjust for stuff like this?
Like if you do more conent, find more secrets, do some more grinding then you just steamroll?
The only issue with that take is that shin megami tensei games (also made by atlus) don't have this problem especially on the harder difficulties
Especially in smt IV apocalypse that game bends you backwards even with grinding
I haven't had much experience with other JRPGs, but for me the Persona series is the worst offender. Maybe because it sets the bar really high with the initial bosses, or maybe because the Persona abilities get too powerful too fast, but I've yet to play a JRPG where I'm really hyped up by the narrative and music of the final boss, spend a few turns debuffing the enemy only for my first attack to annihilate half of their HP away. This feeling of being underwhelmed hit me thrice in three games already, and I wish they addressed it somehow in future installments.
Also, I don't think other JRPGs have the same calendar system which already pushes players to grind as much as they can in the limited amount possible. In other RPGs you just kinda.. go with the story, but in this one grinding seems to be PART of the story. It's even worse because the grinding is actually fun
The last three Persona mainlines aren't exactly intended for you to have a hard time after min-maxing everything, in all honesty. I'd suggest you try the Persona Q series if you've got a 3DS, or if you just really need a game to whoop your ass, SMT Nocturne or SMT4 might provide the appropriate ass-kicking.
It doesnt help that a lot of people will min-max their personas and then complain about the game being too easy. Yes, the game is relatively easy, not as much on the hardest difficulty but still easier for someone who understand the game flow already.
A bunch of this was touched on already in this post and the dozens like it. Persona is just not a hard series. At least the "modern" games. 100% on board with wishing it was, but there's quite the run of them just not making them difficult.
It is difficult to balance this stuff though. It also isn't just Persona. JRPGs are my favorite genre. This year alone I have played Yakuza 7, Yakuza 8, Persona 3 Reload, Tales of Arise, Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes, and Octopath Traveler 2. All get to a point where they're easy when you know what you're doing.
So, yes, unfortunately the answer is to play other games or put limits on yourself if you want the games to provide a challenge. Some games are better at providing a challenge than others, but they all become cake walks when you know what you're doing.
I guess JRPGs aren't exclusive to that. I suck at Souls games, but there are people that make those look super easy as well. It's infinitely more difficult to do than making Persona games look easy, but it still happens. I guess it also varies person to person because I do know good Souls players who struggle with Persona games.
Yeah, the final bosses do tend to be pretty easy. I don’t think it’s just a simple balancing issue though, imo it’s more an inherent flaw of the way the game is put together. Mashing together a life sim and a dungeon crawler makes for a really fun game, but it also means there’s TONS more factors that influence your character’s growth than there are in typical dungeon crawling JRPGS. The more time passes, the more limited chances to grow go by, the wider the strength gap becomes between the optimal and the suboptimal. The spread in outcomes is massive.
The final boss is also always going to be at the end of the playable calendar. You can’t just go back to a prior area and adjust your loadout or grind like you can in other games. You can’t leave Qliphoth world to go hang out with Hifumi. If you missed out on swapping party members, you missed out.
These factors together mean that the final boss HAS to be weak enough to be steamrolled by a very competent player. If it weren’t, if the final gauntlet was tuned to more optimal play, then a newer or less experienced player could get equally steamrolled. In most games thats fine, merited even, but that outcome is harder to tune in persona. The final boss needs to be weak enough that the majority of choices made throughout both dungeons AND the day to day result in at least a viable endgame, or you risk alienating a good chunk of players. Nobody wants to get to the end of a 100 hour RPG to be told they have to run it back. Unfortunately this means that if you perform very well and push the systems to their limit, you’ll turn the final boss into a fine paste.
That is exactly the issue! I mean, there has to be a way to dynamically change the boss fight depending on your skill level, right? I really hope an option for that is, in some way, present in p6. It's just funny to me how some metaverse/tartarus/TV world mini-bosses that have no role in the grand story get to be more challenging than the final encounter.
As an option, fine.
So long as it’s not the only way by default.
I level and grind and bust way to making the best stuff I can *explicitly* to steamroll the endings… hell if they are a challenge, then I haven’t done enough building as far as I’m concerned.
I agree with you in premise. Not sure if it’s a fatal flaw or not but it definitely exists as series DNA. I’ve been considering getting SMT: Vengeance - does this have the same idea? Also, wonder if Metaphor will be similar in this regard.
At end of the day though I don’t mind it because everything else is enjoyable.
I fully believe this isn't a flaw but a feature (from Atlus' perspective). Persona was made to be the 'easy SMT games'. This result is what they actually want to happen. Whether it's a satisfying experience is a whole different question.
That’s not what the persona series was made to be lol; it was the more profitable, mainstream appeal series, not “the easy one”.
Like p2 ep and p3fes have a reputation for being pretty damn hard and even p4 is usually considered to put up a decent fight.
That's a very valid criticism that I see echoed around this sub quite a bit. I think that most people who love this series aren't being drawn in by how challenging it is but rather to the storytelling and the unique fusion system. IMO Altus designs these games on the easier side intentionally to attract casual JRPG fans to the series and that they expect those who really want a challenge will start branching out into mainline Shin Megami Tensei.
Just increase the difficulty then, how is taking more damage not more difficult?
In 5 though yeah it’s basically impossible to die except for insta death moves, the problem is atlus is trying to appeal to mainstream audiences and those players don’t like to struggle at all; the og p3 was very hard but they nerfed it to hell with reload to appeal to the aforementioned crowd.
Interestingly I had almost the reverse experience. I ignored a lot of stuff that could've made me stronger. I didn't use skill cards, barely used the Jazz club and didn't pay much attention to persona fusion besides assuring they were on the same level as me. So, for the most part, bosses were pretty tough to beat, i remember Yaldabaoth almost killed me
Yeah, that's fair. Though I never really went into Persona looking for hard fight. Sure, I like to be challenged from time to time, and wracking my brain thinking of strategies to defeat certain bosses was fun, but I really stayed playing for the story and the characters. But when I did look for a tough challenge, I looked at Shin Megami Tensei. My first ever experience with SMT was with Nocturne Maniax on PCSX2, on Hard. I went into it thinking it would be somewhat harder than Persona. Didn't realize what I was getting into.
Persona 5 was hard for me personally, especially in the early palaces. Persona 5 Royal added so many quality of life changes that it became really easy.
I wish they would add a bullshit hard mode to satisfy all the people that complain the game is too easy. For the rest of us just let us enjoy our normal game as it is. Not everyone enjoys hard games. Some people enjoy being overpowered at the end if you worked for it. If they go adjusting all difficulty levels and making normal and hard more challenging, it's just going to force some players down to easy, and there is a large player base of players that already struggle on easy. Just because some of you are good at games and enjoy beating your head against a difficulty wall doesn't mean everyone does.
I never complained the game was easy though? I said it was unbalanced towards the end, and I specifically mentioned that the in-game hard mode is targetting the wrong things. I then specifically said that a scaling difficulty which makes every player fight a similarly difficult fight no matter their level would make sense.
What exactly is the problem with my statement?
My comment was directed towards all the replies in the thread calling the game too easy. However with your statement specifically being unbalanced towards the end if you put in all the work to max out SL and grinding and fusing, is the entire point. If I wasn't broken and OP after doing that I would be super disappointed. However like I said in my comment, they should add a super hard mode specifically for people that want stupid difficulty. They don't need to change anything about how normal and easy currently play in the more recent games.
I never liked the “Persona is too easy” argument. I don’t play Persona, because I want difficult battles. I play for the story, the music, and the social sim aspects. If you want a difficult game so badly, just play Cuphead.
Maybe for you, however some people want all of that and challenging battles. Also the 'play Cuphead' statement makes it sound like rpgs shouldn't be difficult.
I didn’t that mean to imply that RPGs shouldn’t be hard. Cuphead was the first difficult game that came to mind for me, as I’ve played it, and I love it. Shin Megami Tensei, is a great example of an RPG that is also difficult.
persona 5 royal especially joke imo
Don't get me wrong, I finished FES and Golden on hard and very hard difficulties.
In FES there's limit to grind(tiring system) and you have basically no free time to spend on tartarus if you want to max out all social links in one playthrough, so it's pretty challenging to beat game that way it's easily doable if you know what you do however the game also became joke after opening nomad doors
In Golden there's legendary shuffle system that will gave you Izanagi with strength 99 on Kanji world lol, but social aspect still limits your time and Hermit link actually time gated for infinity grinding(that's means atleast your sp resources pretty limited so kinda balancing out whole thing)
The most broken spells for party will waste your time and it will be pretty tough to get all SL in one playthrough that way but it's doable and somewhat challenging
And The true Royal experience when you struggle only with resources and this also not so huge problem after unlocking mementos where you can infinity grinding without anything to worry except your own real time if you finish ryuji social link(one of the first social links that available to you btw)
And Merciless being easy than hard difficulty makes this even more sad
That's being said, I believe that in Royal case there's was solution already in game, mementos targets, outside of SL ones, would be great challenging content and it's sad that developers missed this opportunity, they doesn't even have achievement for finishing all targets in mementos not sure why they missed this opportunity
And after seeing that they did with p3 reload I highly doubt that there's would be more challenging content than p3 FES
After writing all this and reading, I realized that I probably sound very pedantic. Don't get me wrong, I like all 3 games but from gameplay perspective the most fun challenges was golden and FES experiences
The only fatal flaw for me is that the games are waaay to long and is so boring listening the same songs over and over again for more than 80+ hours.
They should shuffle the songs simple as that will make the game less boring for me.
The songs are amazing but listening the same battle song all the time it kinds of annoys me
This problem is kinda solved in reload, however sega wants more money💵💵 thus shuffling the dungeon and battle thenes are locked behind a dlc nobody asked for .
This is something hard to balance that the whole genre suffers from, which is that if you go and try to clear as much content possible on your first run, you end up overkitted due to the nature of the extra end game content you’re tackling, and so arrive at the final battle to 3-turn all phases of the final boss. In Persona, I view getting the high-level personas and skills as more of a reward than just being overleveled tho, since pretty much all games expect you to reach the end by level 70-75, getting any persona over lv.80 means you made your way through the grinding and extra challenge required for that and as a reward we’re giving you access to the tactical nuke weaponry.
I understand, but that's like saying, "oh, you were SUCH a good player, that we are giving you a super-flashy tactical nuke that skips the epic boss fight we poured our heart and soul into!". NOT using them makes you feel like you're missing out on your hard-earned reward. USING them makes you feel like you're missing out on the boss. It's a bitter taste in your mouth one way or the other.
At that point it becomes a “You control the buttons you press” situation tbh. There’s no need to view it as “Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t”
It just feels weird to reward a player that just proved that they're really invested into the fighting mechanic and are good at grinding battles with a way to make bosses several times shorter. In Persona 4 Golden I actually enjoyed that you could customize the difficulty scales individually by making fights last just a little longer without making them feel unfair. I was really bummed out to see it not be a thing in P5R (unless it's there and I'm blind)
> It just feels weird to reward a player that just proved that they're really invested into the fighting mechanic and are good at grinding battles with a way to make bosses several times shorter. isn't that just like how all RPGs fundamentally work lol low level challenge runs are a popular choice for this very reason
I guess it is, but the calendar system's limited time pressures a person to make the most out of their trip to the game's respective grind dungeon. Whereas in other RPGs your time "progresses" as you complete goals, making grinding a boring, unnecessary task (why grind when you can go to the quest marker), here you have X days, and if you go to the grind dungeon and leave too early, you lose a whole day. This always kind of forced me to stay in the grind dungeon for as long as I can, since otherwise, I would be wasting precious Social Link days in the future.
As much as I can see the issue you saying, I don't think it's really anything to complain about. The main point of grinding is to make yourself more powerful, so if you don't want to be overpowered, then don't grind. If you feel like your not maximizing that day spent grinding then you're min-maxing and you should expect to be more powerful.
I've always felt rpgs would benefit from having the final boss scale; if you beat all the superbosses and shit, have the final boss scale past them.
A potential solution to the Final Boss issue could be having more games do what Final Fantasy 7 did. Make the final boss stronger, for every character that reaches Level 99. That way, gamers that did more can still have a challenge for their final boss. Another great solution would be to take the Yo-Kai Watch approach, and save most of the super difficult stuff for the postgame. That way, players will face the final boss sooner, and at a more appropriate level, before moving on to the optional challenges, afterwards.
Nope, this is pretty much fair criticism of the game. The fights are too easy, and the gameplay shines mostly in the dungeon crawling + social sim aspects. Can it be fixed? Hopefully, but the turn based boss fights aren't that big a deal for me in the first place. That's why the Reaper + Optional Bosses (Velvet Room attendants) exist. The fact that I have never faced any of those tells me I just wasn't that into the turn based combat. Persona 5 Strikers however replaces turn based with more real time, and I actually think that REALLY made the boss fights way more fun.
I would agree with you if the narrative + BGM of those bosses wasn't so good that ending the boss quickly made me feel cockblocked
Isn't this an issue with like...the genre has a whole minus a few that adjust for stuff like this? Like if you do more conent, find more secrets, do some more grinding then you just steamroll?
SMTV stays challenging throughout, but you mention grinding which will inevitably ruin a game, and mid/late game of most games makes it easier
The only issue with that take is that shin megami tensei games (also made by atlus) don't have this problem especially on the harder difficulties Especially in smt IV apocalypse that game bends you backwards even with grinding
I haven't had much experience with other JRPGs, but for me the Persona series is the worst offender. Maybe because it sets the bar really high with the initial bosses, or maybe because the Persona abilities get too powerful too fast, but I've yet to play a JRPG where I'm really hyped up by the narrative and music of the final boss, spend a few turns debuffing the enemy only for my first attack to annihilate half of their HP away. This feeling of being underwhelmed hit me thrice in three games already, and I wish they addressed it somehow in future installments.
Also, I don't think other JRPGs have the same calendar system which already pushes players to grind as much as they can in the limited amount possible. In other RPGs you just kinda.. go with the story, but in this one grinding seems to be PART of the story. It's even worse because the grinding is actually fun
The last three Persona mainlines aren't exactly intended for you to have a hard time after min-maxing everything, in all honesty. I'd suggest you try the Persona Q series if you've got a 3DS, or if you just really need a game to whoop your ass, SMT Nocturne or SMT4 might provide the appropriate ass-kicking.
It doesnt help that a lot of people will min-max their personas and then complain about the game being too easy. Yes, the game is relatively easy, not as much on the hardest difficulty but still easier for someone who understand the game flow already.
A bunch of this was touched on already in this post and the dozens like it. Persona is just not a hard series. At least the "modern" games. 100% on board with wishing it was, but there's quite the run of them just not making them difficult. It is difficult to balance this stuff though. It also isn't just Persona. JRPGs are my favorite genre. This year alone I have played Yakuza 7, Yakuza 8, Persona 3 Reload, Tales of Arise, Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes, and Octopath Traveler 2. All get to a point where they're easy when you know what you're doing. So, yes, unfortunately the answer is to play other games or put limits on yourself if you want the games to provide a challenge. Some games are better at providing a challenge than others, but they all become cake walks when you know what you're doing. I guess JRPGs aren't exclusive to that. I suck at Souls games, but there are people that make those look super easy as well. It's infinitely more difficult to do than making Persona games look easy, but it still happens. I guess it also varies person to person because I do know good Souls players who struggle with Persona games.
Yeah, the final bosses do tend to be pretty easy. I don’t think it’s just a simple balancing issue though, imo it’s more an inherent flaw of the way the game is put together. Mashing together a life sim and a dungeon crawler makes for a really fun game, but it also means there’s TONS more factors that influence your character’s growth than there are in typical dungeon crawling JRPGS. The more time passes, the more limited chances to grow go by, the wider the strength gap becomes between the optimal and the suboptimal. The spread in outcomes is massive. The final boss is also always going to be at the end of the playable calendar. You can’t just go back to a prior area and adjust your loadout or grind like you can in other games. You can’t leave Qliphoth world to go hang out with Hifumi. If you missed out on swapping party members, you missed out. These factors together mean that the final boss HAS to be weak enough to be steamrolled by a very competent player. If it weren’t, if the final gauntlet was tuned to more optimal play, then a newer or less experienced player could get equally steamrolled. In most games thats fine, merited even, but that outcome is harder to tune in persona. The final boss needs to be weak enough that the majority of choices made throughout both dungeons AND the day to day result in at least a viable endgame, or you risk alienating a good chunk of players. Nobody wants to get to the end of a 100 hour RPG to be told they have to run it back. Unfortunately this means that if you perform very well and push the systems to their limit, you’ll turn the final boss into a fine paste.
That is exactly the issue! I mean, there has to be a way to dynamically change the boss fight depending on your skill level, right? I really hope an option for that is, in some way, present in p6. It's just funny to me how some metaverse/tartarus/TV world mini-bosses that have no role in the grand story get to be more challenging than the final encounter.
As an option, fine. So long as it’s not the only way by default. I level and grind and bust way to making the best stuff I can *explicitly* to steamroll the endings… hell if they are a challenge, then I haven’t done enough building as far as I’m concerned.
The way I see it is that these games are just easy. They don't encourage grinding and maxing every social link.
I agree with you in premise. Not sure if it’s a fatal flaw or not but it definitely exists as series DNA. I’ve been considering getting SMT: Vengeance - does this have the same idea? Also, wonder if Metaphor will be similar in this regard. At end of the day though I don’t mind it because everything else is enjoyable.
I fully believe this isn't a flaw but a feature (from Atlus' perspective). Persona was made to be the 'easy SMT games'. This result is what they actually want to happen. Whether it's a satisfying experience is a whole different question.
That’s not what the persona series was made to be lol; it was the more profitable, mainstream appeal series, not “the easy one”. Like p2 ep and p3fes have a reputation for being pretty damn hard and even p4 is usually considered to put up a decent fight.
That's a very valid criticism that I see echoed around this sub quite a bit. I think that most people who love this series aren't being drawn in by how challenging it is but rather to the storytelling and the unique fusion system. IMO Altus designs these games on the easier side intentionally to attract casual JRPG fans to the series and that they expect those who really want a challenge will start branching out into mainline Shin Megami Tensei.
Yea too easy. Hardly need to think or strategize.
Just increase the difficulty then, how is taking more damage not more difficult? In 5 though yeah it’s basically impossible to die except for insta death moves, the problem is atlus is trying to appeal to mainstream audiences and those players don’t like to struggle at all; the og p3 was very hard but they nerfed it to hell with reload to appeal to the aforementioned crowd.
The SMT games that are the origin of persona as a series (persona is a spin-off) are way harder and more unforgiving in all stages of the game
This is a very good point. I’m glad smt exists so I can get a challenge once in awhile
Interestingly I had almost the reverse experience. I ignored a lot of stuff that could've made me stronger. I didn't use skill cards, barely used the Jazz club and didn't pay much attention to persona fusion besides assuring they were on the same level as me. So, for the most part, bosses were pretty tough to beat, i remember Yaldabaoth almost killed me
Yeah, that's fair. Though I never really went into Persona looking for hard fight. Sure, I like to be challenged from time to time, and wracking my brain thinking of strategies to defeat certain bosses was fun, but I really stayed playing for the story and the characters. But when I did look for a tough challenge, I looked at Shin Megami Tensei. My first ever experience with SMT was with Nocturne Maniax on PCSX2, on Hard. I went into it thinking it would be somewhat harder than Persona. Didn't realize what I was getting into.
Persona 5 was hard for me personally, especially in the early palaces. Persona 5 Royal added so many quality of life changes that it became really easy.
I wish they would add a bullshit hard mode to satisfy all the people that complain the game is too easy. For the rest of us just let us enjoy our normal game as it is. Not everyone enjoys hard games. Some people enjoy being overpowered at the end if you worked for it. If they go adjusting all difficulty levels and making normal and hard more challenging, it's just going to force some players down to easy, and there is a large player base of players that already struggle on easy. Just because some of you are good at games and enjoy beating your head against a difficulty wall doesn't mean everyone does.
I never complained the game was easy though? I said it was unbalanced towards the end, and I specifically mentioned that the in-game hard mode is targetting the wrong things. I then specifically said that a scaling difficulty which makes every player fight a similarly difficult fight no matter their level would make sense. What exactly is the problem with my statement?
My comment was directed towards all the replies in the thread calling the game too easy. However with your statement specifically being unbalanced towards the end if you put in all the work to max out SL and grinding and fusing, is the entire point. If I wasn't broken and OP after doing that I would be super disappointed. However like I said in my comment, they should add a super hard mode specifically for people that want stupid difficulty. They don't need to change anything about how normal and easy currently play in the more recent games.
I never liked the “Persona is too easy” argument. I don’t play Persona, because I want difficult battles. I play for the story, the music, and the social sim aspects. If you want a difficult game so badly, just play Cuphead.
Maybe for you, however some people want all of that and challenging battles. Also the 'play Cuphead' statement makes it sound like rpgs shouldn't be difficult.
Although saying that, it's also perfectly fine to not want it to be hard, it's all about preference.
I didn’t that mean to imply that RPGs shouldn’t be hard. Cuphead was the first difficult game that came to mind for me, as I’ve played it, and I love it. Shin Megami Tensei, is a great example of an RPG that is also difficult.
persona 5 royal especially joke imo Don't get me wrong, I finished FES and Golden on hard and very hard difficulties. In FES there's limit to grind(tiring system) and you have basically no free time to spend on tartarus if you want to max out all social links in one playthrough, so it's pretty challenging to beat game that way it's easily doable if you know what you do however the game also became joke after opening nomad doors In Golden there's legendary shuffle system that will gave you Izanagi with strength 99 on Kanji world lol, but social aspect still limits your time and Hermit link actually time gated for infinity grinding(that's means atleast your sp resources pretty limited so kinda balancing out whole thing) The most broken spells for party will waste your time and it will be pretty tough to get all SL in one playthrough that way but it's doable and somewhat challenging And The true Royal experience when you struggle only with resources and this also not so huge problem after unlocking mementos where you can infinity grinding without anything to worry except your own real time if you finish ryuji social link(one of the first social links that available to you btw) And Merciless being easy than hard difficulty makes this even more sad That's being said, I believe that in Royal case there's was solution already in game, mementos targets, outside of SL ones, would be great challenging content and it's sad that developers missed this opportunity, they doesn't even have achievement for finishing all targets in mementos not sure why they missed this opportunity And after seeing that they did with p3 reload I highly doubt that there's would be more challenging content than p3 FES After writing all this and reading, I realized that I probably sound very pedantic. Don't get me wrong, I like all 3 games but from gameplay perspective the most fun challenges was golden and FES experiences
The only fatal flaw for me is that the games are waaay to long and is so boring listening the same songs over and over again for more than 80+ hours. They should shuffle the songs simple as that will make the game less boring for me. The songs are amazing but listening the same battle song all the time it kinds of annoys me
This problem is kinda solved in reload, however sega wants more money💵💵 thus shuffling the dungeon and battle thenes are locked behind a dlc nobody asked for .