Looking back at what I had accomplished thus far. I had finished playing Persona 3: FES one week ago and has since started playing P4. After playing P4 for roughly a week now (now on mid September), it had sprung to my mind to mention the changes for this awesome RPG in comparison with P3 or P3:FES, just for the sake of memory refreshment and ways to kill time aside from indulging myself in P4.
Story / Plot
- Moon cycle (Full Moon) in P3 is replaced by weather (Fog) in P4. For each Full Moon in P3, you will fight each Shadow correspond to the twelve major arcana. Not much curiosity involved as you are only expected to fight each shadow by every Full Moon. In P4, when the fog is the heaviest, that is when someone will be killed. Here you are presented with much curiosity as you are trying to figure out who is going to be killed next.
Dungeon Exploration:
- Your party HP and SP are no longer restored to maximum. In P3, every time you return to 1F in Tartarus, all your HP and SP will be restored to their maximum points. I used to exploit this mechanic by returning to 1F after activating the beacon before fighting the floor boss. However, in P4, the only way to restore SP is by using the Fox service (which healed your SP for a price) or SP recovery item.
- Instead of one single dungeon, Tartarus to explore in P3, there are now multiple dungeons to explore in P4, each of which caters to the character traits. The most memorable ones are the retro game dungeon which looks like 3D Dot Games Heroes.
- There are no more floor beacon to activate in the dungeons in P4. This makes sense as the number of floors is small, but seemingly increasing with each new dungeons. The highest floors I reached thus far is not more than 15F. In other words, the only way to return to the entrance now is by using skill ( ), item ( ) or the Glittering butterfly savepoint at the highest floor of each dungeon (before fighting the dungeon boss).
- Before fighting the dungeon final / true boss, there are now an intermediary boss that you will need to fight.
- In P3, you visit Tartarus in every Evening; In P4, you can only gather your party for dungeon exploration during After School.
- While exploring Tartarus with your party, your teammates as well as yourself might get tired after battling a certain number of Shadows. When this happens, the character is more prone to critical attack (hence knock down status), getting more damage from Shadow, lower hitting rate, etc. If prolonged, the character might be getting sick after returning to the reality. You wouldn't want this to happen as it takes much more days for the sickened character to become healthly again. In P4, however, this mechanic had removed altogether. Your character will not have tired/sickness status and you can explore the dungeon for all the time you want.
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