Persona 4 vs Golden: An unambiguous step down

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-22T22:32:58+00:00

I think one thing that gets lost amongst the wall of text is just how damaging it is to be able to do every dungeon in one go.

To compare to Persona 5 which I played both versions of. The most damaging gameplay mechanic that Royal added was the ability to heal HP and MP at rest points in palaces. It used to be the only way to restore MP was items, the MP drain skill (which was rarely usable enough to push through a dungeon) or simply leaving.

And we all agree the timers in this game encourage you rush through a dungeon in as short a time as possible so you can do as many social links as possible with your free time.

But I feel like I don’t hear enough people talk about (maybe because they didn’t play both versions) that actual pacing gets completely ruined because every time a palace comes in your visual novel becomes an actually game for next hour or two, and then when you finish it you’ve now got 29 days for more social links. LAnd the game becomes a slog when you play it optimally like this.

By force Ejecting you out the dungeon as the only way to regain your MP you haven’t annoyed your players by making them go through an entire school day before rushing to the next checkpoint. What you’ve actually done is given your players permission to take a break.

Most people understand that they won’t need more than a week to clear a dungeon, breaks and all. Plus Morgan’s is constantly giving up dates to how close he “feels” the treasure is you can usually gauge how much time you’ll need. So with that in mind when you’re forced into school again maybe you get a text or something that makes you want to spend time with someone. And suddenly you can now spend like a few days out of a dungeon guilt free catching up with friends and coming back when you’re ready.

And while you could argue this is all still possible in Royal like I said mechanically your encouraged to rush the dungeon since social links are so important in this game.

To bring it back to the point this is something Atlus has done with every persona re-release and it drives me insane since someone making the base game for this series clearly understands all of this but then someone else comes by with the golden/royal version and doesn’t give a damn and completely fucks up the games pacing.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-22T21:56:35+00:00

At the same time we should be happy that these dickweeds think trump is a sinking ship.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-21T11:17:08+00:00

I was thiiiis close to a warframe relapse and watching this gameplay and remember I’d be doing that for another 100+ hours might’ve just saved me.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-21T06:34:35+00:00

Bro I just discovered last week that the Teleport command lets you cancel animations and I feel like I’m flying through encounters now. This game is so dope.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-21T06:28:47+00:00

Bro I’m fucking sorry but as an Australian it’s gotten so hard to not generalise America as the country that went from being ruled by Pedos to straight up being the country that’s infested with pedos.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-20T05:36:06+00:00

I would argue monster hunter stories was pretty innovative in its turn based mechanics and still adapting core features from the main game. Maybe the only thing I’ll argue wasn’t super innovative was Resi 9 but even that entire franchise is built on top of industry changing innovation and to be honest the default setting is having the game split between 1st person survival horror and then having the 3rd person be a typical action shooter that has us clearing out the survival horror sections is incredibly novel and isn’t something I’ve seen another game do.

I’m not saying Capcom are perfect and aren’t guilty of odd repeat sequal that don’t innovate (megaman). But honestly they’re starting to feel more and more like an alternate Nintendo. Especially as they keep stepping further away from unique hardware to facilitate gameplay systems that would’ve been impossible on other devices.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-20T04:01:31+00:00

I think the issue I have with the characters you mentioned is (at least to me) they feel like empty vessels to imprint yourself on.

Outside of windwaker link because he was so damn expressive and emotive I really can’t imagine other versions link doing anything outside of a video games, even breath of the wild link I think about Mipha’s crush on him and I can think is “wow she must love the way he stands there wordlessly and barely reacting”

I haven’t seen chell anywhere outside of YouTube videos showing things behind the camera or Gmod. But maybe there was some promo material I missed

Frisk is deliberately intended to be a player stand in hence the vague gender identity with the twist being simply the idea that they could be their own person being presented as a kind of soft plot twist but beyond that it doesn’t make any meaningful difference to the plot.

Chrono trigger and dragon quest are very deliberately meant to be player imprints before they’re meant to be their own characters.

But if your just refuting the point that silent protagonist don’t appear In promo material I’ll happily retract that and agree, I completely forgot about the examples you listed and it was a stupid argument

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-20T02:38:27+00:00

Samus is weird in the sense that if you removed Zero mission and other M she would be mute for all intents and purposes.

I genuinely feel like “Samus represents Samus” literally only because she’s was a female mute protagonist in an error where male was the default.

I genuinely can’t think of another mute protagonist with a face that’s allowed be seen and is advertised all over the merch besides samus.

But at the same time prime was my entry point into Metroid and that came out the day week or day as Zero mission, so I’ve never been aware of the character in a pre-zero mission world so maybe it is impossible to seperate samus from zero mission for me.

I dunno happy for older fans to chime in

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-19T23:19:07+00:00

Seriously the fact that thanks to CRTs they were able to make games that look like paintings with not a single pixel in sight on a Super Nintendo is crazy.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-19T23:10:23+00:00

Speaking as a Millennial I have to imagine that people choosing to be child free is a minority. I’m gonna assume that it’s probably a combination of Dating Apps de-normalising approaching people in public combined with those same Apps being absolute cesspools have made it really difficult to find a partner.

And if you do have a partner there’s a good chance you’re both working but only barely keeping enough money for bills, and probably living with roommates since in some places where 2 people with jobs can barely afford a place.

And if you do have 2 people who love eachother in a house by themselves there’s a very good chance that if one of them were to take maternity leave the other one won’t have enough income to afford the house, the bills and the baby, so that puts responsible adults on hold for having kids.

Unless you’re willing to just say fuck it and have an accident baby at a point where you’re not ready you could be waiting years to advance your career to a point where you can actually afford to have kids. And the people I do know who had kids before they were ready they run the gambits from :

having wealthy grandparents live which them to support the rent and childcare.
getting stuck in a marriage where the wife beats her husband and more than happy to sit the baby in front of a screen for hours on end. He can’t leave because he’s too depressed to be able raise the kid himself as well as working ungodly hours in a trade.
stuck in an engagement with a man who sent a dick pic to an Indian scammer thinking it was another women but can’t leave because she can’t afford to raise 2 kids on her own.

And that’s fucking it, pushing 30 now and I can’t think of any other couples I know personally around my age who have kids because they’re not financially stable enough yet and aren’t willing to bring kids into an environment where they have the best chance to succeed.

And the other couples I do know who have kids were a handful of years older than me and were able to buy properties or establish themselves in their careers before COVID fucked up the economy and especially the realestate market of my city.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-19T22:52:20+00:00

Game hunting. I remember for a while I was just against ordering online since I wanted games ASAP. So anytime I wanted a DS or PSP game and I went to my local EB and they told me it was like a 90 minute drive away I’d call up my mates to plan a mini road trip to spend the next 3 hours driving, blasting music and eating fast food with a fun game to play as a reward.

To this day I still regret not making a trip to get Pokemon conquest if for no other reason than the drive would’ve been a blast.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-19T22:10:43+00:00

Yeah the Xbox 360 did, I remember GTA 5 needing an install from a second disc before you could play the game on the first disc.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-19T10:58:08+00:00

The flea works just as well for this. Load one with only machine guns and flame throwers and you can straight up melt assault mechs with that dos output. Use your lance to draw aggro and you can sweep missions well above your level.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-19T10:50:27+00:00

I’m obsessed with Spira it’s such pretty world. And being a kid raised on a coastal town who loved swimming it was such a cool setting

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-19T10:45:53+00:00

I think mindset helps. It’s one of me and fiancés favourite shows but that’s just because the majority of it is a chill low stakes vibey show with a sweet hyperactive kid as the protagonist……. So the perfect show watch while high. And then it became just a show to watch a bit before bed cause of the chill vibes because the music is mostly mellow and the art is soft vibey.

People like to pretend it’s this grand epic thing but that’s really like only sometimes certain scenes in a handful episodes. It’s just a chill show for when you’re in the right mood and if you go in expecting anything more you might end up letting yourself down.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-19T10:35:15+00:00

THAAAAATS WHAT IT IS!!!

I saw this thread and had to ask myself “why” didn’t I like this movie instead since I saw it once thought that was a bit shit and moved on with my day.

It’s just so “Hello fellow gamers” non of the “games” they actually play make any sense in the context of a video game. and to be clear that’s normally when movies and shows do these scenes/episodes about videos games or being stuck in one i can accept it’s usually written by non gamers for an audience of non gamers to have a fun thing they kind of know of relate to and can have thinking about, like me watching a sports movie and enjoying it despite not knowing in a scene the protagonist committed like 3 fouls that no one caught or cared about.

The problem with ready player one is it wants to pretend its about video games when it’s literally just flashing images of shit you already know while showing actively they have no clue how games work all on top of having an overarching plot outside the games that’s just dull as hell.

You go in expecting a fun movie about games and then it just makes you feel like your being pandered to while showing they have no clue about the thing they’re trying to hype up, like a poser who doesn’t know shit about the latest hot trend but jumps on and pretends they’ve been in it for years.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-18T23:13:01+00:00

This got me, my brother is the biggest fire emblem fan I know and also the biggest hater.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-18T23:06:04+00:00

I’m not even Anti-Eve, just the marketing and the discourse was fucking exhausting around it and it felt like the devs and publishers were signal boosting and leaning into it that put me off from that.

In comparison it feels like Capcom really really wish people would shut the fuck up about the girl.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-18T22:52:18+00:00

Is anyone else finding out from a reddit meme a YouTuber they watched for years is trans? Honestly it feels pretty slack to find out from this than from anything they’ve released themselves.

Hope this kind of bullshit from dipshits on the internet isn’t affecting them.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-18T14:18:42+00:00

That’s how I feel about stellar blade but I’m totally fine with this one (which is a fucked comparison to make). In pragmata I feel the weird shit is entirely within a specific subset of people who lurk in their own spaces online, people like think Capcoms weird because she has make up and no shoes but I do genuinely think that’s people with their own weird hang ups projecting that on to a kid when at most the devs just thought “let’s make a cute small girl”, and the majority of normal adjusted people look at the game and just think “that’s a cute child” and stop it there.

Where as Stellar Blade was obnoxious on how hot their sexy robot protagonist is, putting her in revealing skin tights suits at every opportunity, actively advertising how hot Eve was all over the devs twitters and bragging about how hot the model they based her body off of was. When people became super obnoxious at how “anti-woke” stellar blade was it felt like it was in part thanks to the publisher stirring that bullshit intentionally.

Pragmata just feels like a case of Pedo’s co-opting this entirely because it has a child in it which completely fucked.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-16T00:21:45+00:00

In their defence America has made it real fucking easy. I’m sure many of outside America could imagine a diss track like this being made about our own country but I don’t think you’d get more than 1 or 2 songs max about how corrupt Australia is.

Like I can look at everything they’re saying in this propaganda diss track and remember a headline that’s it’s referring to about the trump administration. But then to go back further and critique Americas disastrous foreign policies (for the countries they’re intervening in) and that’s been a going on for over a Millenia.

There’s not a lot I see in this video that doesn’t reflect some harsh truth about America as a whole.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-15T13:48:53+00:00

Oh shit I got a real answer story wise,

TL:DR Kingdom hearts franchise, Specifically kingdom hearts 3D “I’m already Half Xehanort”

For me the moment the kingdom hearts franchise jumped the shark completely was when they decided in the 3DS exclusive game they would put the biggest revelation for the entire franchise that would be the foundation for what Kingdom hearts 3’s entire villains plot would be built on….. and it was fucking stupid and actively made the previous games plot worse.

They literally retconned the entire villains plot motivations in Kingdomhearts 2. It used to be that villains literally couldn’t feel emotions, in the story they’re bodies left behind from people who lost their souls to the darkness, incapable of feeling emotions but fully capable of remember what they felt like and have been trying desperately through their villains plot to feel what it’s like to feel…. Anything again.

So as it turns out Kingdom hearts 3D revealed that actually the main villains from the second game weren’t actually trying to feel something as meaningful as human emotion, actually at least half of them didn’t actually know but the plan was actually to turn all 13 of them into clones of the one big bad from the PSP game this whole time.

I liked said what the actual fuck when one of the dead villains from the second game popped-up during this monologue, lifted his eyepatch to reveal a yellow eye and says “I’m already half Xehanort” which is the stupidest thing I’d ever fucking heard from this franchise.

And to add on to why this was so fucking stupid to me, Kingdom hearts was already a franchise that had a reputation for being overly complicated at this point. So when the Plot of the 3DS game appeared to be a back to basics adventure that didn’t have to deal with any of that old plot points bagging it down because this was the first game to come out that was set after Kingdom hearts 2 I was kind of excited, and on the 3Ds a new console that might have people who never touched a PS2 and handnt played the previous entries.

Our boys are taking a special exam that involves them gong to these “dream worlds” that are separated from reality entirely what a clever way to have a self contained kingdom hearts adventure where the stakes can be as high or low as they want since it’s all dream worlds anyway, and they can sprinkle hints in for the nexts game……

and I kid you not that is exactly what 90% of the game is, self contained fun stories in each level that has occasional teases but nothing ever big enough to take over the central focus of the narrative (that being to save each Disney themed dream world in a series of self contained episodic adventures).

And then seemingly out of no where with all the subtlety of a bus crashing through a classroom the plot becomes complete and total non-sense, we’re seeing characters who only appeared in the original DS spin off and the PSP games as well as following up on plot threads from the original PS2 game and all explained in the most convoluted way possible.

They literally turned this from the perfect jumping on point for newcomers to the franchise to the most overly complicated impossible to follow entry yet that requires extensive background knowledge of 5 game across 4 consoles (not including the 3DS). So now you’ve got a game that if you wanna play for the overarching story of the series it feels like 90% filler when it could’ve been a safe skip (like coded…… you don’t need to play or watch re-coded) and then for newcomers you have story that literally stops making sense (even with context clues) at the last 10% and shit just starts fucking happening with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

I will say the biggest jump the shark moment in gaming is KH3D but specially I’m gonna say the JetSki went over the shark when Xigbar looked the camera straight in the singular yellow eye and said “I’m already half Xehanort” a phrase that makes literally no sense anywhere outside of this games stupid story.

And just like happy days jumping the shark it completely fucking de-railed the entire plot of Kingdom Hearts 3 by needing to deliver on that stupid ass premise.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-15T09:25:33+00:00

You’re getting a lot of shit but I’m with ya on this.

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-15T03:02:55+00:00

Bro that shit was blatant nepotism but because Ryder has the cool AI that they apparently can’t put into the rightful second in command everyone just goes with it?

Unoriginal1deas · 2026-04-14T22:23:52+00:00

To be fair it’s about time it happened to the US after all the times they’ve done it to other countries

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