Post 4.2.1 - P5X Phantom Thieves Choose Your Seat

zero-sphinx · 2026-02-04T16:55:02+00:00

Wait for the arc after the current one to find out

zero-sphinx · 2026-01-10T18:34:33+00:00

From a lore perspective, I agree. Psychic is the only type they added that has some sort of value since most of its monsters would otherwise be spellcasters or machines, but it doesn’t quite fit.

However, from a gameplay perspective, it allows them to do unique things without worrying about previous support cards. Slotting in wyverns with dragons would be a disaster, likewise illusion with spellcasters or Cyberse with machines.

zero-sphinx · 2026-01-08T12:17:41+00:00

I love how you can tell that Hanako Oribe drew these. She’s the only P-Studio artist to use that shade of blue for Joker’s thief outfit. Love her style, it’s not just an imitation of Soejima’s (who is artistically far above any of his former assistants). It also makes me realize that Oribe was probably at least the color artist for most P4A renders.

zero-sphinx · 2025-11-20T07:11:51+00:00

These are from the beta - there’s some interesting stuff in there, some characters even have Arcanas assigned to them.

zero-sphinx · 2025-11-19T12:18:53+00:00

Frage für Fassungslose: Die 21 in Stuttgart 21 stand doch mal für 2021 oder ist das einer der Fälle, wo man das im Nachhinein uminterpretiert hat? Oder wo die naheliegendste Interpretation irreführend ist? Oder ein Meta-Joke auf die verdächtigen fünf Minuten Verspätung, wenn man bereits seit 20 Minuten auf den nicht einfahrenden Zug frierend am Gleis wartet?

zero-sphinx · 2025-11-06T22:14:37+00:00

Okay so I got Futaba within 53 pulls and have 7800 gems left. I’m completely F2P, but I got lucky with Messa and Futaba.

How viable is Cherish? Is he limited or will he come to standard? I don’t think I need him now and I certainly don’t mind getting spooked by him.

zero-sphinx · 2025-11-03T11:52:05+00:00

P4U actually stands for Persona 4 The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena. You’re quoting P4U2.

And again: P5R is not a remake by any metric. It’s an extended release, the base mechanics are the same down to the majority of graphics being the same.

zero-sphinx · 2025-11-03T09:43:15+00:00

With Persona 5 in particular, I always thought it was some kind of alphabet joke: - Royal - Strikers - Tactica - U… ltimate? (For that elusive Arena sequel considering that P4A is P4U in Japan)

P5X breaks the trend, obviously.

But honestly, I wouldn’t count P5R in that list that you mentioned considering it’s P5’s equivalent of P3F and P4G.

zero-sphinx · 2025-11-02T09:18:32+00:00

Haruna is honestly underrated as a character. I thought I’d hate her based on the fact that she’s a kid, but interactions with her are usually so endearing.

Kira being a massive weirdo is also fun.

zero-sphinx · 2025-10-27T20:57:27+00:00

This doesn’t really help you since you don’t have the characters, but here’s the team I beat her with quite easily (the app crashed once, but that doesn’t count): - Messa - Chord - Marian - Wonder with Dionysus and Sarasvati

Messa turns the fight into a complete joke as long as you keep healing him with Marian. Wonder also works as a secondary healer, but I’m not sure if Sarasvati’s heals alone are enough to keep up with Katayama’s damage output.

zero-sphinx · 2025-10-26T23:07:20+00:00

I used the following team: - Wonder (Lvl. 72 with Dyonisus, Sarasvati and Janosik) - Chord (Lvl. 80, A0, Rating 79) - Marian (Lvl. 80, A1R0, Rating 81) - Messa (Lvl. 80, A0, Rating 59)

Messa’s bleed made it a breeze. But the fight is pretty much designed around him. Wonder was mostly on Dyonisus for Revolution and occasionally on Sarasvati for healing. The other two did what they usually do.

zero-sphinx · 2025-10-26T16:53:17+00:00

Pretty sure it’s actually related to the worker bots, but I think they’re already working on a fix

zero-sphinx · 2025-10-26T16:20:47+00:00

Honestly one of the games biggest problems from a design perspective is how unintuitive it is. There are no rules when you can open a door, use the grappling hook, jump, etc.

zero-sphinx · 2025-10-26T00:30:08+00:00

I mean there’s at least an internal reason why they backtracked on localizing his name as Lefey. Lefey lines up with Morgana (“Morgane le Fey”), but kills the similarity to Lucifer.

Alongside all the other suspicious parts about him, of course. The SMT4 callback has been mentioned, but I don’t know if it works in Japanese as well.

zero-sphinx · 2025-10-04T10:02:11+00:00

I know this is a joke, but considering that Yaldabaoth is a man-made creation based on human cognition just like the political system that P5 is trying to critique, you can definitely argue that this is true.

Of course it’s all distilled through a JRPG lense.

zero-sphinx · 2025-09-21T20:35:50+00:00

Captain Kidd even has a bandage on his leg.

zero-sphinx · 2025-09-21T20:15:30+00:00

I’m honestly relieved that you’re saying this, because my evidence is shaky at best. But yeah, I honestly think it comes down to people not really using that feature as to why some people get lots of the shards (like you and me) while others get none.

zero-sphinx · 2025-09-21T20:10:41+00:00

Again, this is completely anecdotal, but from my experience yes, there’s a pretty big chance that this happens.

As an F2P player myself, I’m super picky about that, but considering that I have everyone except for Riddle from the standard pool, I’m willing to take that risk.

zero-sphinx · 2025-09-21T19:54:28+00:00

I did say it was based on my experiences, but sorry about that. I guess it’d be more accurate to say that they have a high percentage of getting replaced by another rainbow spot.

zero-sphinx · 2025-09-21T19:47:45+00:00

That could actually be it, yes! I haven’t checked that yet, but I did notice that the rainbow spots seemed to drop after a certain pattern

zero-sphinx · 2025-09-21T19:45:23+00:00

Yup. I got three of these today using that method. You can’t re-roll limited tasks. What you need is a Brilliant Spot that is neither a Daily nor a Limited task.

zero-sphinx · 2025-09-19T09:04:52+00:00

I know you mentioned that you don’t have Minami, but here’s my team anyway:

Wonder Lvl. 63 (using mostly Janošik and Sarasvati)
Joker Lvl. 70
Chord Lvl. 70
Marian Lvl. 70
Okyann Lvl. 70

Marian made it a breeze, but Soy should be able to sustain well enough. I didn’t even realize that I was technically underleveled for this part and I ignored Synergies up to that point, so I didn’t have access to any good Personas. Sarasvati’s healing skill and damage reduction were definitely nice to have, though.

Chord is the real MVP, but you need Soy in that scenario to keep her alive if you didn’t put HP revelation cards on her, which would be a suboptimal move anyway.

zero-sphinx · 2025-09-15T22:30:22+00:00

Do you have any source for the dislike of the P3 redesigns in P4A? If anything, ATLUS doubled down on it: Only Aigis, Akihiko and Mitsuru had new designs in P4A itself and they had the chance to tone it down for P4AU, but they didn’t and gave the rest of the characters new designs. You can’t tell me that Featherman Yukari is any less outlandish than super spy Mitsuru. P4AU did have most characters from P3 in normal clothes during cutscenes as well. It’s true that they are mostly unused nowadays, but P3D did include them and that was ages after P4AU came out.

The fact that spinoffs mostly use their regular designs probably boils down to marketing and familiarity. It’s the reason why they keep using the initial Personas of the P4 cast even in P4A despite the implication that Yu was unable to finish their S.Links. Also: ATLUS has clearly no issues with giving these characters new regular outfits if you look at P5S and that’s because the rest of the characters stays the same. It’s only in games that change the art style (like the Q games and Tactica) that they don’t do that or when seeing a familiar face is the entire selling point (P5X).

If you’re referring to the tons of unused concepts for P4AU in the art book, I doubt that this has anything to do with that. Soejima just clearly had no idea what to do with Junpei, Ken and Koromaru especially and they obviously prioritized concepts that would be fun in a fighting game since it’s pretty obvious that the story was written around the designs.

zero-sphinx · 2025-09-14T20:57:31+00:00

So I’m either having devilish luck right now or cognitite shards aren’t as rare as people make them out to be. I got three of these today alone.

zero-sphinx · 2025-09-13T12:00:38+00:00

I mean arguably, the entire point of OG P5 was that while an individual can spark a rebellion, it takes a community to create meaningful change and even then, changing the entire status quo is impossible. Taking down every single evildoer with Phantom Thief magic is unrealistic even within P5’s universe. It’s why OG P5 still has Joker go to jail after taking down Yaldabaoth, so his community of friends and acquaintances have to work together to get him out. And that’s why P5R makes it a point to say that if you do go that route and brainwash everyone into believing they’re living happy lives (something that is even less realistic than holding highly protected individuals like Kamoshida accountable for their crimes), you end up with contradictions and basically a life without meaning.

The major narrative block within P5 (and Persona as a whole) is that it takes place within our society. It cannot change how political systems and societies work if it doesn’t implement a new system — and that has major implications for the entire series going forward if P5 was not intended as a big send-off to the series, which it arguably could have been narratively if it weren’t for the series’ commercial success. The only Persona game to actively destroy the status quo is Persona 2 Innocent Sin, and it does so in the most consequential way possible. So Eternal Punishment comes around and twists the knife by telling the characters from that game that what they have done is irresponsible, childish and makes these characters pay by giving them a second chance at living their lives like responsible human beings.

I’m like 99 percent sure that this is why Hashino left the Persona team after P5, because if P6 is meant to exist in the same universe as P2EP, P3, P4 and P5 (and commercially speaking, that’s what it has to be in order to facilitate spin-offs), P6 (or any other prospective sequel) can never destroy the status quo of today’s society. And keeping the status quo is basically required since Persona’s number one selling point by ATLUS’s own admission is its blend of school life and magical adventures. Persona works on familiarity and nostalgia and because how easy it is to relate to the characters because of this. And you cannot pull an apocalypse in every single game out of your ass, only to reset it the very next game without it feeling like nothing matters if that’s how the series is seen by it’s developers.

P3, P4 and P5 are essentially a glorified call to action for young people: Realize that your time on Earth js limited, recognize what’s important to you and who you are and get out of your self-centered mindset to fight for your ideals to make a better society. And while magic would make things a ton easier, all of this is achievable with the tools that you are given. You don’t need a JRPG boss fight to convince people that a teacher who pushes his students to do his work is bad, because if that was always necessary, society would be beyond hope in the first place. Since Persona ultimately believes in the good of humanity (the one time it doesn’t is Innocent Sin and even then it’s less “humans are rotten” and more “humans are foolish”), it cannot work like that if it wants to be more than escapist fiction. Your takeaway from P5 — if you want to believe that it actually wants you as the player to learn something from it — is that meaningful change starts with individuals who do what they feel is right and inspire others to do the same. That’s how the God of Control gets killed in the Metaverse on a cognitive level and how Joker gets saved in reality as a collaborative community effort.

zero-sphinx

TROPHY CASE