Bear puts his bread in the oven: 10 Suggestions to Persona

Persona has been around a bit longer than some probably think. The original Revelations: Persona on the PSX was inspired by the story of Shin Megami Tensei If… which was a side-story of the original SMT. Persona used to be on the back end of anyone’s mind, especially regarding the SMT franchise as a whole. Especially with only half of Persona 2 being released, neither the first nor second game made a big splash outside of Japan. But, one day, Atlus released Persona 3, with a whole new formula. Now today, Persona 3 has been released three times: the original version, FES, and Persona 3 Portable. P3P was just released not too long ago, and to tie you over until my first playthrough is done along with my review, I’ll tell you my ideas for improving the series as a whole. Warning: Spoilers of Persona 3 and 4 may follow!

1. Stop remaking Persona 3. No, seriously, knock it off! We get it, Persona 3 was a great game and Atlus fans love it to death, but it’s time to stop beating around the bush and either remake Persona 2 or Persona 4, preferably the latter. Atlus’s original release of Persona 3 had a lot of bad design choices in it, namely not being able to control your party directly. However, P3P has pretty much fixed all of them at this point. Really, there’s no point anymore! So please, I bet of you, stop remaking the same game over and over.
2. Social Links that change the story. We’ve already seen this in a sort of experimental way in P3P. Certain Social Links change small aspects of the story, like when you meet Ryoji for the last time. If you get his Social Link up to 9 before New Years Eve on the Female story, he’ll have some extra dialogue. Not that big a deal, and hardly story changing. The biggest game changer, however, was if you maxed out Shinjiro’s Social Link. After maxing it out and confessing your undying love for him, instead of dieing when he gets shot by Takaya, he will instead fall into a coma the rest of the game. With this, after you beat Nyx, the female player can choose to spend her last moments with Shinjiro instead of Aigis, changing the cutscene. This, Atlus, is something I want to see much, much more of. You’re good with changing aspects of the story depending on choices in the game, as seen by Devil Survivor. Bring more of that, and I promise you Persona 5 will sell like mad.
   

   Sex that will save his life.

3. Change the music. And by change the music, I mean over the course of the game. After 30 hours of hearing the same battle theme every time I enter a fight, I am quite sick and tired of it. Hell, the first time I heard Mass Destruction I was sick and tired of it. The problem with Persona being such a long game is that a lot of it becomes overused. The Tales of games have this same issue, however they fixed that by changing the music every now and then. Persona 3 also did this well, how after certain points in the game, background music on the maps would change. I suggest, after a half way or third way point, change the background and/or battle music. I promise you it’ll lose a lot of the monotony of battles very quickly.
4. More human social links, less animal/robot social links. I’m sorry, but there is nothing interesting about bonding with a robot or animal that can not communicate with you. The Fox social link and Koromaru’s were perhaps the most boring period simply because it was just you playing with the animal and them responding with a bark or a yip. Granted, Koromaru’s gets pretty sweet at the end, however the whole first six or seven links of it are just you playing with him, brushing him, or going back over his backstory that they told you months before. There are plenty of actual people you can spend time with, why the dog or a random fox? Instead of bonding with Koromaru, I would much rather been able to bond with Yuko or Kaz. Hell, one of the teachers would be more interesting than an animal or robot. While we’re on the subject of teachers…
   

   "BARK!"

5. Social Links or being able to better interact with the teachers or faculty of the school. Persona 3 and 4 had some pretty cool and interesting teachers; why weren’t they explored more? How can you not love Mr.Edogawa’s lectures on magic? They are a potential goldmine for social links, don’t just leave them hanging. And when I say Teacher Social Links, I’m not counting the MMO you played in Persona 3 and your teacher was your online BFF Jill.
   

   I'd be best bros with Mr.Edogawa. As long as he didn't put a hex on me.

6. More school options. I don’t like being the nice kid with Straight-A’s all the time. Sometimes, that’s just not fun. Why should after-school be the only time you can hang out with friends? How come I can’t skip class with them and hang on the rooftop or go out to eat? Similar in manner to when you get calls from your friends on Sunday, you should be able to choose to go hang out with friends and skip class. Other school options would be cool as well, maybe if you’re feeling sick you can leave class and go stay in the nurse’s office. But if you do, you may miss information that will be on an exam, or a chance to increase your charm/academics. Speaking of which…
7. Please keep only three stats. Charm, Academics, and Courage are really the only ones that are necessary, they really are. There is no need for a whole wheel of them like there was in Persona 4.
8. Non-Persona optional bosses. Elizabeth, Margaret, and Theo are cool optional bosses, I will never say otherwise, but I would like to see other SMT heroes make a cameo in a fight. Personally, I would rather not see Demi-Fiend or anyone from DDS since they’ve kind of already been done before. Raidou has too, from the Devil Summoner series, but he hasn’t shown up in the states yet and is probably the second most popular character in the SMT universe at this point. Raidou could very much be an optional boss, and I would encourage that. Other people could be the Hero from Strange Journey, or possibly the hero from Devil Survivor. If Atlus wanted to keep the optional boss in the Persona universe, however, I would be totally fine with fighting one of the main characters from the other games. Maybe Joker from Persona 2 even? Don’t just keep on the Velvet Room Residents, there are plenty of other cool characters out there you can use, Atlus!
   

   If you had seen what this kid could do, you'd be frightened too. This kid is THE KING OF HELL!!!

9. No more analyst character. When people ask me what I hate most about Persona 3 and 4, the first thing I always tell them is Fuuka and Rise. They are the most worthless and annoying characters in the entire series. There was one point, while playing through P3P, where I started a drinking game with myself. To play, you just take a drink whenever Fuuka tells you how many enemies there are or if she tells you the enemy or enemies are down. You will lose cans of beverages in matters of minutes. I don’t need to know every aspect of battle every five seconds. I’m not blind! So stop talking like I am! I can see that there are three enemies, I can tell that I knocked them down! The only thing the analyst characters were good for was having someone who can directly teleport you out of the dungeon at any time. And even then, I only recall Fuuka getting it, which makes Rise pretty damn useless.
10. Let me skip the All-Out-Attack animations. They’re funny the first few times, but it’s a bit time consuming and when grinding, I get very impatient. What I would do is this: make a button on the command-list for AOA that’s grayed out until all the enemies are knocked down. This way you can not only knock them all down, but maybe even dizzy up the girl before you hit the finishing blow on them. And if you press X or whatever during the animation, it quickly skips it. It would save a lot of time, and what I would think a lot of space on the game disk.

Those are my suggestions to the Persona series. Some are small, some are rather big. It’s looking like that a few of them may actually happen as well, which I’m pretty excited about. There are rumors going around that Atlus is quietly working away at Persona 5. In fact, a secret character was found in the Female Playthrough of P3P. A man drinking alone at Club Escapade with a character portrait. There’s speculation that he may be a main character in Persona 5, but we’ll see! I’m not 100% sure how to get him to appear, but I’ve heard it’s after the final boss fight. I’m looking forward to Persona 5, and you should too.

Keep an eye out for my Persona 3 Portable review in the coming days. Got anymore suggestions for Atlus regarding the Persona series? Leave a comment and tell us what you think!