Persona 4 - finished.
Initially got Bad Ending (ver. no-deaths). Subsequently looked up the requirements for True Ending. Have to say that some of them are kind of unintuitive.
Despite knowing who the killer was from here across the entire playthrough, I cannot say that I ever saw anything that would point towards them? Seems almost like you aren't supposed to know and just have to guess based off the conditions set up previous to the question, which do strike off most options to be fair. Wonder if I would have gotten it initially or not if I had played up to there without knowing.
Ending to the final happened somewhat strangely. After two characters had been removed, Yukiko revived one of them with no apparent effect, but then on the next lot of removals Yukiko was removed... and so was the character that had been revived, which made for a somewhat strange scene since they were not on the field. Next turn the main was removed anyway, but I find it hard to believe that that was supposed to happen that way.
Managed to at least start all slinks this time. Aside from plotslinks, maxed Chariot, Empress, Magician, Hermit, and Priestess. Cannot say I think much of slink-based evolution as opposed to plot-based evolution.
Expected to max more that that because I was not expecting things to go into autopilot after Magatsu. Annoyingly I redid the previous dungeon for fetch quests before running through Magatsu in the one p-day, so I effectively failed those quests as well due to this.
Things which are annoying:
Being restricted to two-handed swords. I am still bad at timing swings right with them. It doesn't help that I fail to comprehend the requirements for Player Advantage as I have hit enemies from behind without getting it and hit enemies from the front with getting it (without Emperor active). Was also hit with Enemy Advantage a fair amount after missing and being hit from the front, which assuming is a penalty for failing to connect, is all the more reason to not be happy about the situation. Plus I assume that being stuck with one weapon type is what caused the physical elements to be combined, which I am not really a fan of, mostly because it resulted in there being multiple physical skills which previously were differentiated by being different elements but now have no obvious difference from each other.
The partner AI is kind of dumb at times. I observed it using multitarget skills which were effective against particular enemies but repelled/drained by other enemies on the field numerous times. Chie also insists on using Mabufu/Bufula on enemies which aren't ice-weak despite her physical skills being more damaging. No-one with buffing skills ever seemed to use them either, although I am fine with that from a gameplay perspective. Not the biggest fan of P-buffs.
On the plus side, unless my memory is failing me, I seem to recall the P3F:A partner AI suffering from a crippling fear of using healing skills when below half SP. That doesn't happen here, so that's either an improvement or nothing at all depending on how my memory is. On the flipside of that, the P4 AI appears to have nowhere near the critical predictiveness of the P3F:A AI. Or possibly just critical rates were reduced. Seems like there is still some amount of psychicness built into it though.
Continuing on regarding the AI, what happened to the AI tactics? In P3 we've got Act Freely, Knock Down, Attack Fallen, Full Assault, Heal/Support, Conserve SP, Assign Target, Same Target, and Stand By, whereas here we just have Act Freely, Full Assault, Conserve SP, and Heal/Support. Also Direct Control if you're insane I guess. To be fair, some of the P3 tactics were useless, but these included Full Assault, which is still available, and Conserve SP is only useful for stopping Chie from wasting her time with ice. Actually, Full Assault is less useful in P4 than in P3 because most people don't have anything to do apart from assaulting, whereas in P3 they could all use items. Anyway. My main problem is that, assuming that Stand By causes people to go into guard mode and not just stand around as I don't remember, there are a number of times when I would have liked to have used it in P4.
I don't like that the people following you around in dungeons are just decorations, despite never using the split up functionality in P3 when I wasn't forced to. I don't like that in certain dungeons I can turn around and find that no-one is there as they have all got stuck on dungeon architecture aways back. I don't like the numerous times I rotated the camera to see down a passageway and then it snapped back into a position unusable for that after releasing the button.
I don't think the Goho-M/highest floor system makes any sense compared to the terminal system.
I don't think being forced to use ID skills on enemies to see whether they repel it or not is a good idea, for all that a good deal of ID skillusers are resistant to the type of ID they use.
Things which are not so annoying:
Slinks having optional romance late >>> Slinks having mandatory romance midway.
Slink reversal system was seemingly removed as well? I never had any slinks go into reversal, and some of them were left for some time.
In summation, P3 is better.
SRWL - Up to episode 9.
Started replaying this for some reason. I guess due to having watched Macross Frontier?