@Kidfried The compendium is basically a log of all the persona you’ve had access to, either by negotiation/capture or through creating via fusion. And it functions as a way to “call back” a persona into your possession again once it’s gone. However — you have to manually add any persona to the compendium that you’ve captured. And it will “save” that persona into that log/library called the compendium for you to access later if you want (for a fee). So you need to be in a habit of dropping by the Velvet Room to upload all the new persona into the compendium before you start using them for fusion or deleting them because otherwise you’ll have to capture them again if you ever want it or need it for a fusion ingredient. If you’ve captured it and saved it in the compendium, you’ll never have to capture it again, so long as you have the money to buy it back.
Also — when you save (or the game calls it “register”) a persona into the compendium it will register and overwrite a previous version of that same persona if you’ve already registered it before. So in other words, as you level up a certain persona in the palaces or mementos you’ll want to update that stronger more leveled version into the compendium. But the twins will automatically remind you if you select that “Register” icon in the Velvet Room to register all the persona you have in your current possession which haven’t yet been registered.
A word of warning though — sometimes the persona you have in your possession is actually weaker than the one you previously registered. So for example, say you have a Jack Frost that you used a lot and leveled up a ton in the palaces and you register it into the compendium, then use it to fuse another persona, so it’s gone from your immediate possession after that; then if you later capture another Jack Frost while you’re palace/dungeon crawling and if you register that new Jack Frost it will delete your higher level Jack Frost and replace it with the new one, and you could lose all the time and XP you had earned with the first version of it. So sometimes you’ll want to avoid the “Register All” prompt when you come back to update your compendium and have to be sure to look individually at each one to make sure you want to “keep” that version in your compendium library. But as a whole, it’s best to visit and make sure you’ve registered all persona you captured or leveled up after each palace or mementos session.
When you create a new persona via fusion, it’s automatically put into the compendium, I think, and you don’t have to manually add it like you do when it’s a captured one.
I’m sorry if that either doesn’t make sense or is a bunch of stuff you already know. 😅
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Kidfried it’s not like you actually need to do things efficiently to enjoy your life as a high schooler and complete the game. I just did what I found fun rather than trying to see everything the world had to offer.
Man oh man I messed up (information leading up to final boss below)
So I've been trying to get my PS4 backlog caught up so I can focus solely on new releases and up until recently I've been playing Persona pretty timidly like 2-4 hours per session. Now I'm having full blown 6-10 hour sessions and I've been breezing through from the 5th palace and beyond (side note: screw the Okumura boss). I had just finished Shido's Palace after farming a bunch of exp and money, was going to use all that for health items, and persona and weapon upgrades but instead I procrastinated and spent a bunch of time with my Confidants and then calling card day came. Beat Shido (which was really cool, I loved how dramatic that 1v1 felt), next thing I know it's exam week and literally the day after they're finished I'm thrown into the depths of the mementos. The feeling of dread that came over me when the world was transformed and I realized I ran out of time to do the things I needed to, it was one of those rare moments in a game where the feelings of the characters can exude from the screen and controller and into my heart. Nobody ever told me how tough the end of this game is.
That journey up the hill and fighting each of those guardians I felt just as mentally exhausted as the characters did physically. Then I finally get back to the top of that hill, low on health and sp items. Then something really stands out as I'm with my team about to head in, there's no music. I knew it was about to get real. I open my inventory to see that all I have are 6 master coffees and 1 soma. Still I went in determined. I beat the Holy Grail and I got super excited because it was a tough battle. But then it happens, he transforms into yAlDaBoAtH. When I say that my heart curled into a ball and died. How could I not see through the obvious "You haven't even seen my final form". My back is against the wall in this fight, every moment, every decision has to be the right one. I use my final sp item and hope for the best. Then... Then he charges up what looks like a tailed beast bomb and it ANNIHILATES ME even when full health and blocking. So then I reload at my last checkpoint and see that it had been nearly an hour worth of battle. I closed app and went to sleep. Literally my first thought when I woke up was "Omg I only have 6 master coffees " and I don't even have any ultimate personas from my max links. Then I realized I made a grave mistake ignoring one of the game's biggest messages "Take your time". The moment I decided to rush and procrastinate was the death of me, and now I'm stuck. All hope isn't completely lost though, I have a save the night before exams so atleast I can make one night's worth of coffee and go buy a ton of Takemedic-Zs, but still the idea of a rematch is so daunting.
@Arugula@Kidfried I think the 4th palace might be my favorite, along with the 1st and 7th. They all have their pluses and minuses.
As you progress through, you’ll probably find a couple of the confidants that are hard to connect with (I know I did) but as a whole I agree that the side content of getting to know so many different types of characters and their stories is a nice part of this game (and the other Personas). The development of your relationship with Sojiro is particularly well done. I also liked the development of Futaba, Yoshida, and Takemi’s respective arcs.
I’m still in the latter stages of the game, about to finish the 7th palace. 125 hours gone by.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@TraCuz- I mean, if it comes down to it, you can just drop the difficulty, right?
I can sympathize, though. When I was young and played Lunar 2 for the first time, I was trapped in a bad place right before the final boss: no saves before the final dungeon, no ability to exit the final dungeon, and I was low on health.
An accomplishment 3 years in the making, I have finally “seen the credits” for Persona 5.
I use the term because there were several moments in the last 30 hours of game time that I thought I was at the end, but the game kept on going. Only when the credits rolled did I finally let out a sigh of relief and feel confident it was finally over.
My completion playtime on my save file is a little over 130 hours. And this with me being a fairly fast reader and often just skipping a lot of the text if it was getting repetitious and not feeling crucial to advance the story. Taking into consideration occasional reloads and paused time, my PS5 tells me my time spent playing the game was 150 hours; eclipsing all my other games except MGSV (a whopping 224 hours on that one!)
I’m stopping at 77% trophy completion. I only have 7 trophies left for the platinum, but I’m going to just have to concede on the hopes of ever accomplishing that. I actually am not too far from a full persona compendium, which is probably the most time consuming, but I haven’t been able to hit a home run at the batting cages, and I haven’t heard all 250 of Futaba’s lines, so it’s not worth it to try for the other grindy trophies like creating all types of infiltration tools.
I won’t go into a detailed breakdown, but I will say the game is worthy of much of its praise. The amount of content is staggering, and I only played the base version. I can’t imagine what Royal must be like. In a way, I’m glad to have just done the base game experience because Persona 5 has been like an albatross around my neck for 3 years and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I had some measure of relief at having completed it.
Nevertheless, I am already sad to have it over. Will I miss the characters? Absolutely. The ending was touching and slightly emotional for me. I had spent so much time building these relationships and the game does a great job at the end of pulling together all these friends and confidants you’ve invested so much time in. I have quite enjoyed the dance rhythm games for Persona 3 and 4, and I purchased the Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight, so I’ll be happy to revisit the gang in that game later on. And now I’m actually seriously considering Persona 5 Strikers, since I guess it’s almost a sequel of sorts, although I haven’t ever played musou games from which P5S has apparently been inspired.
So for me, the character and social simulation was definitely the highlight. The story ended up being a bit stronger than expected in the end, but it’s by no means Oscar worthy narrative.
Ending spoilers:
I really liked the initial twist of Joker being shot by Akechi, only to find out that it was all a trick done in the metaverse. I thought the role of Shido being the villain behind the scenes was a also a great twist. I also liked the final palace being the representation of the will and choices of the collective society. I thought that was cleverly done. And I even liked the twist that Igor and the twins end up being the unconscious villains through being victimized by Holy Grail/Yaldabaoth.
Unfortunately, I think the final boss and the subsequent final moments of the destruction of the metaverse and the explanation of Yaldabaoth’s motives and the philosophical ramblings about the human subconscious and desires and what’s real or not... it became a little too nonsensical and I had trouble completely wrapping my brain around it. I think there was something lost in translation from Japanese, either linguistically or culturally. Nevertheless, I appreciated the effort at trying to make a deep intellectual and metaphysical statement with the game. But the only part of the games message that will stick with me is one of Riuji’s final remarks in the last scene when he says something like “In order to change the world, you have to alter the way you look at it.” (...Or some statement along those lines) But if someone else garnered another moral of the story, then I’d like to hear it.
In the end, it’s a solid 7-8/10. I have more fond memories of P3 and P4, but I’m not sure why. By all counts this is a better game. The palaces are much better than prior games’ dungeons, the art style and production value trumps other games in the universe. But a certain je ne sais quoi is missing that the previous titles possessed. I can’t help but think the game would have heavily benefitted from cutting out some of the extraneous content, yet the silly social sim stuff was my favorite part. 😅
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
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