Jasede, If you're already good at the games in this series, expect to roll through this game without a sweat. Golden introduces a number of different ways that let you completely break the game over your knee. Between shuffle time, the overblown XP rates, skill cards and pickable skills... yeah, the game is a good deal easier than the PS2 if you minmax even remotely. That being said, I still found breaking the game open to be a lot of fun, if a little monotonous by the end.
For one, Golden Hands no longer just give a large amount of yen, they give you a shitload of xp as well. They're also much more common in this game than in the PS2 version, and easy to initiate combat with. Which would be fine if they were hard to kill. But all you have to do is throw some damage items that you can buy in the shop, and that's 50 unmitigated damage which is usually 2/3 of their life bar. By the time they start nulling items you'll probably have almighty spells and mind charge. Due to this, in my first play through I think I was level 75 rolling around with Surt by the time I finished Risette's dungeon.
Being overlevelled was partly my fault, though. I played it on Hard, which makes yen costs to summon persona skyrocket. This, btw, is always something about the series that always annoyed me... their whole selling point is the fusion system but imposing such heavy yen costs kind of dissuades experimentation and punishes 'bad' fusions to severely. But anyways, I needed yen, so I farmed yen by killing gold hands and then I completely broke the game. welp.
Also the new shuffle time can also make your dudes incredibly broken. This is mainly due to these:
Shuffle time is basically a list of different cards now, you don't have to guess at which card you're going to pick a la P3 or pick cards out of a whirling tornado like the PS2 version. You just pick from a list. The brokenness comes in due to the +stat cards, free level up cards, and cards that upgrade a random skill of your persona to the next tier. i.e., Resist Ice becomes Null Ice. Ziodyne becomes Maziodyne. And so on. The +stat cards are frequent enough (and if you're spergy enough like me, you'll notice certain stats cards 'drop' more often in certain dungeons
) that you can get several level-ups worth of bonuses to a persona in just a few shuffle. I think my succubus was getting near max magic by the time she was like level 60. That said, I don't necessarily mind the fact that shuffle time is the way it is. It gives you more freedom to spec your personas the way you want, and the Level Up and +stat cards make even low-level persona viable for the end game if you spend enough time farming them up. Or not:
So now I've typed a bunch of words which basically amount to 'this game is easy'. But it doesn't necessarily have to be. The game got hard again once I cracked open New Game+ and started imposing a few handicaps on myself. Golden's NG+ actually lets you set different aspects of the game's difficulty. So you can make custom adjustments to XP and yen gains, or player and enemy damage. I turned XP way down, stopped picking +XP cards from shuffle time and stopped attacking Gold Hands altogether. Suddenly, I'm not overlevelled and the game is challenging again. Level more than anything seems to be the biggest factor in how much damage you receive and how much damage you do. When you're 10 levels lower than the monsters you're fighting it's not uncommon for a trash mob to 1-shot you if you don't have a defense buff up. Suddenly bosses are lethal again, require foresight, and a good knowledge of their attack pattern. Suddenly success or failure depends on having a stable of smartly-made personas in your pocket again. Basically, try not to overlevel, or make NG+ your *real* playthrough..
ANYWAYS, as far as the new Golden stuff.... well, the new social links are a mixed bag. Marie is pretty groan-inducing, and I skipped through a majority of her dialogue. I can't say the new dungeon is fun. A lot of the new events and set pieces aren't lacking that Persona charm. There are a little additional ease of use odds and ends here and there that I can't remember, but a lot of effort was made to refine the experience and it shows. There are lot of costumes and flavor text that goes with them. If you end up buying the game make sure to date everyone because Valentine's day ends up being hilarious.
I think it goes without saying that I am very gay for this game I've sunk more time into than I should have in good conscience. For your Vita purchase, also consider that it's an excellent shitter game. You can easily knock out a social link level or two by the time you're ready to wipe. The Vita's not all bad, and I'm pretty confident there will be a decent library for it eventually. I've spent a lot of time playing Jetpack Joyride which is free to play. Soul Sacrifice is also turning out pretty fun. And if you like fighting games, DOA looks good and I hear good things about the MvC3 port.
cheer up bro.
