Welcome to Gaia! ::

The battle system relies less on levels and more on tactics. Make sure the MC is high enough to fuse decent demons for fights, but exploiting weaknesses and getting demons with good racial abilities can more than make up for being a bit underleveled. Also, take advantage of the fact that you can attack and heal/revive people in the same turn.

And grab Drain as soon as it shows up on Skill Crack. Almighty attack that costs 2 SP and leeches the opponent's HP/SP? Incredibly broken, especially on a magic nuke.


Other stuff:
- ROMSL: I did one for P3FES my second time through, and I absolutely hated it. I got to do one thing that entire playthrough, and that was choosing which girl to hang out with on the one free day at the end of the game. I didn't even have much choice over Personae or going to Tartarus; those aren't spelled out in the guide, but arcana and stat requirements are so restrictive that they might as well be. I don't know that I could do one for P4, even with the month or so of extra days.

- RPGs where I didn't hate the grinding: TWEWY's battle system is pretty fun once you get the hang of it, and outside of plot battles you only fight if you choose to. EarthBound also deserves a mention since they skipped the battles entirely if you were against low-leveled enemies. There are a couple of other games where I didn't have a problem with levelgrinding, but I was generally underleveled in those cases.

I've always found grinding in Pokémon to be pretty boring, though. Audino and Lucky Eggs make it slightly better, but it still takes a lot longer than I'd like it to.

- P4G: I don't want to buy a system just for a game that I already have. But P4 is one of my favorite games of all time, and if they give it the same treatment P3P got then I could more than justify playing through it a third time for MShe and the various new/updated content. I may have to make an exception and hope that we get some other good games on the Vita.

You do need to be at a certain level just so you can survive attacks, yeah. I probably should have mentioned that killing a couple of guys and fleeing works; I know I abused that to level for the bonus boss. sweatdrop
Hopefully things go better from here!

I generally have to levelgrind every couple of gyms, even if I fight all of the trainers between cities. Some of it is understandable like swapping in new pokémon, but there's also instances like Koga and Sabrina's pokémon being 15-20 levels higher than Erika's team and basically nothing that has a type advantage over Elesa's Emolgas being available.

No MShe? Sad; I liked the addition in P3. sad

I think her name is Marie. I'd guess that she's a new Social Link, but we'll probably find out more about her as things get further along.
I ragequit The Answer, honestly. I wouldn't object to an epilogue, but they need to at least add a new compendium for it.

It's scheduled for Spring 2012 in Japan, so we probably won't see it for at least a year. Companies have until then to announce more interesting games, I guess. If the Vita doesn't get a price drop by then, you could at least save some money and buy it used.

Yeah, it's definitely a lot better now. Except... I JUST finished battling the Shomonkai reject guys, the last one said "We underestimated them..." and RIGHT after that line, the game crashed completely and I had to hard reset. sad

I will never ever forget Elesa's Emolgas. I think RPGs are sometimes harder earlier in the game just because you don't have as many abilities and whatnot (or in this case, Pokemon) that you can strategize with yet.

Yeah, the female protagonist was plain awesome. I don't think the ability to play as someone of a different gender has ever made that much of a difference in any game before. Apparently, P3 was originally planned to have a female protagonist, though, so maybe it was easier to change that than it would be for P4, which was all planned out for its protagonist from the start? I dunno. Also, imagine Nanako saying "Welcome home, big sis!" xd

The floor bosses in The Answer were pretty hard, yeah. I think it was so worth it, though! You should unragequit it and just Google how to beat any bosses that block you. I mean, not having to worry about maxing social links in order to fuse the Personas you want is great, the story wraps up really nicely and the last few bosses are so... cool.

Knowing Atlus, I imagine that the game will become rare if I wait more than a year, and when I do find it it will still be expensive xd But yeah, we'll see how that goes.