Because I like talking about games and because OK has vanished into the ether. I am here to carry on his work. Persona 3: Reloaded (P3R for short) is the remake of the original Persona 3 game for the PS2 from over 10 years ago. The overarching story is still the same and most of the gameplay is the same. I'd wager to say like 85-90% of it plays roughly how the original does. It does come with some bells and whistles of course and depending on which version of P3 you played, some or all of this may be completely new. Seeing as I am also insane like OK, I have played basically every version (Vanilla, FES, Portable and now Reloaded), below are a list of new OR adjusted features compared to
vanilla:
General Universal Changes- All characters can now choose their own skillsets, with a way to revisit and relearn old skills if need be (although this consumes an evening - more on time costs later). This gives them more flexibility with what they want to carry for DL purposes. Of course, PCs are also now all manually controllable, making it such that you can't really choose an ineffective skillset unless you really tried (like keeping Elec Boost but not electric attacks)
- All characters have now gained a new meter called Theurgy. In a nutshell, these are
limit gauges. P3R being P3R though makes them a bit more complicated (okay, needless complicated for the nitty gritty details) as the charge rates for each character vary. The same action on one PC may not charge the same amount of meter as another character. More on this when it comes to the PCs.
- All characters
can no longer be turn locked when their weakness is struck. This is very key. If you were voting on vanilla only, Mitsuru loses to Alaina (from Suiko3) or anyone with a lighter really because all they have to do is hit weakness, then do literally anything else but attack and the P3 PC loses their turn from recovering. Now, if you hit a character's weakness, they will auto recover after 1 turn.
- All characters also now have some unique equipment specific to them. Equipment in general has a huge overhaul. You still get your vanilla gear from Officer Kurosawa, but the special gear is a bit different. There are unique equips in Tartarus, but you can also forge new rare and stronger equips with heart items. Like in vanilla P3, some Personas will carry an item and upon reaching a certain level, drop the item into your inventory. This is the same deal in P3R but the Heart Items are much more accessible. Largely because of lower level thresholds, but also because of some changes to the XP mechanics and Shuffle Time. In General - Everything BUT the final tier of equipment is pretty accessible. I'll make a note if a PC wants something that belongs within this tier.
- Characters can now "Shift" or pass their turn upon getting a 1 more just as in P5. This is largely DL irrelevant unless they get teamed up together, but noting it for documentation.
Changes to the Makoto/Minato/Ren (whatever the heck you want to call him. I'd just refer to him as Yiu cause pun):- For Fusion purposes, skills can now be
manually selected. This makes skill inheritance much easier. As in later Persona entries, there are also skill cards available as drops and you can automatically slot these skills into a Persona's skillset as you see fit. All Personas (not just those of Yiu) are limited to 8 skills, so keep this in mind.
- Fusion spells can no longer be summoned at will. These are now tied specifically to the Yiu's Theurgy Gauge
- Some Fusions are now tied directly to interacting with PCs and getting their backstories. These events have time costs associated with them. If you are a stickler about this, Yiu can be shut out from getting access to certain ultimate Personas (read Max S.Link). The one off the top of my head is Kohryu, which requires Byakko, which can only be attained through a completed Koromaru backstory.
- Yiu also has a lot of access to free stat boosters. These come from a mixture of shuffle time changes as well as various social activities in the game that can alter his bases. I have factored in the ones to HP/SP since these are two stats that do not change when shifting to another Persona. The rest, you can deduct 1 or 2 points from their totals if you see fit.
Fuuka- Fuuka has also undergone some major changes, although these effect dungeon exploration in Tartarus and not really the flow of the game.
- For the purposes of this topic, just be aware that Fuuka also has a Theurgy gauge. This matters largely for any bosses that may be documented (such as Jesus with a Gun) because it allows the player to tap in for extra assistance that isn't available in vanilla. Notably, it probably makes them worse.
- Certain accessories can be equipped on Fuuka but will have party wide benefits. Any SP+ items for example is a huge boon since it lets her scan an extra time and thus a faster Theurgy charge
- Fuuka also has some additional skills that are available within Tartarus such as Sylphid Aura that grant the team Auto-Maraku and Auto-Masuku, which drastically decreases enemy offense for the first several turns. These all cost SP.
Those are the major changes I can think of that effect battles at the moment. Will list more relevant ones if they come to mind. Now then, onto the next topic - Gameflow.
GameflowIt's important to discuss Game Flow because it gets into one of the biggest issues on dealing with interps and unfortunately player averages. If you haven't played a Persona game since 2007, the way these game work is as follows. You are given control of your avatar (Yiu) and you have an entire year to do whatever you want within the game's list of activities. You are a high school student, so you have to attend school, but after classes? You can hang out with friends, go to the arcade, go do charity work, eat a burger - you name it. For the first several months in the game, you are required to take on a main mission every Full Moon (roughly 30 days) after which the cycle repeats. Of course, you also have certain obligations as a student such as writing your midterms and there are scripted plot events so there will be times when you are required to do something else which will take up your day.. After the first several months, missions are no longer scripted outside of the very final one that takes place at the end of the game.
Why this mattersEvery activity or event in the game consumes time. Time in P3R is broken into either Daytime and Nighttime. In general Daytime availability is extremely valuable. This is how you improve character relationships (your Social Links) or view character events (backstories /linked episodes noted above). These directly tie into how strong of a persona you can fuse. When your relationship improves, it improves the strength of the Persona you fuse and if you max out a relationship, then the game grants you access to fuse the ultimate form of that particular Arcana. In contrast - Nighttime availability is much less valuable for the main reason that most people are not available during the night. Outside of hanging out with your team members, there are only 2 Night S.Links, so for the purposes of this topic, it assumes most - if not all - Night time activity is completed. This means the all PCs have their maxed characteristic and more importantly, a certain healthy grind mindset towards Tartarus.
Tartarus is the game's main universal dungeon. You are free to explore this place at your own pace, but it is only available during the Night. There are some days when you are barred from exploring due to scripted events. But in general, exploring Tartarus is how you get stronger physically (levels and such) versus improving your abilities (Personas). You can theoretically never touch Tartarus until the last day if you could beat the main missions severely under leveled. This is obviously not intended and with the amount of Nights that are available, the topic assumes a decent number of visits. Since fighting in Tartarus is also how you get crafting materials, you can see why I allow most of these equip options.
The Time Cost and how it hits the AveragesIn previous Persona topics, it is assumed that your MC equivalent has maxed out all his Social Links because in those games, you can often end up with way more time available even after all your relationships are capped. As such, even if not played perfectly, there is a decent amount of leeway to presume that an experienced player can get most of the S.Links to the cap. In P3R, this is not the case. I've read two max S.Link guides and in both guides they note the amount of free Daytime availability is limited to roughly a week. 7 Days sounds like a lot, but due to the limitations of most S.Links requiring a Daytime slot, you can get locked out of a maxed S.Link run pretty easily. The caveat to this is that both of these guides assume you will complete the Linked episodes / backstories for Junpei, Ken, Akihiko, Shinjiro, Koromaru and Ryuji. If you decide for whatever reason to free up these days, then it gives Yiu more time to finish the S.Links. Just keep in mind doing this means you can also lock yourself out of some of the Max S.Link fusions.
How you want to take Yiu is pretty nebulous as a result. With max S.Links, he'll have the entire Persona compendium at his disposal in terms of what he uses for duels and obviously gives him the largest advantage. Whether or not that is reasonable given what I noted above though is another story. If you assume that a max S.Link 1st run isn't reasonable, there are some other ways to take Yiu as part of the average:
Method 1 - There are 3 fixed Social Links that you are guaranteed to max out regardless of what you do. These are Fool, Death and Judgment. So what methodology is to assume the bare minimum and give Yiu access to only the final Personas of these 3 Arcana. He'll still have like 80% of the list available but it strips out some more powerful options from the table.
Method 2 - An average 1st run through if you aren't really following a guide and doing everything blind will probably finish 16-17 S.Links (including the 3 fixed) of the 23 available. You can pick and choose which ones to skip, but I'd probably recommend ones like Aeon because of its extremely tight time line or those that require fusion chains like Kohryu (needs Byakko which requires completing Koromaru's backstories). You can also just selectively dump out the 7 worst final fusions from the average.
Note that with the introduction and advantage of skill cards, outside of truly unique skills like Alice's Die For Me! the base form of the Persona probably matters more than any other skill as you *could* just slap the skill on with the corresponding card. This topic will list out the most practical set up for a Persona. I'd also only include Personas within 10 levels or so of the final average unless it is a Max S.Link one as fusing Personas with that much of a deficit means Yiu starts taking big stat penalties. Also, Elizabeth warns you in-game whenever you do that, which is a good indication that it is probably too underpowered to be considered.
PCs and Theurgy -All PCs in the game have a separate gauge that is charged during battle, which when it hits the max level, allows you to use a very powerful skill specific to that character. The game notes that every character has certain conditions, which when fulfilled, increases the rate of which their gauge charges. The truth is a little more complicated than because as it turns out, Theurgy is charged *every* turn in battle. More specifically, there are 16 separate states / checks (17 including one specifically for Fuuka) that are made and every time a check is satisfied, it increases the Theurgy meter for that character. Every character has one advanced charging condition where they get significantly more meter and then a lot of other states where they may gain a bit more than their fellow cost members. The mode for charge rates across every state is about 30 units unless otherwise noted. Note that every PC when recovering from getting knocked down will gain 100 Theurgy units. This is universal and applies to every PC except Fuuka. A maxed gauge is roughly 1000 units of charge. The separate states are as follows:
1. Recovering from being Knocked Down - 100 units for all PCs except Fuuka
2. Under "Charge" Status
3. Under a Stat Buff
4. Start turn with Low HP
5. Start turn with Low SP
6. Receiving a Shift Turn
7. Begin a turn with at least one enemy under a negative status effect.
8. Begin a turn with at least one enemy suffering a debuff
9. Scoring a Crit
10. Hitting a Weakness
11. Using a Physical Skill
12. Using a Magical Skill
13. Using a Healing Skill
14. Using a Support Skill
15. Using a Status Skill
16. Knocked an Enemy Down
17. Scanning Complete - Fuuka only (50 units)
I should note that once the event takes place, the gauge charges instantly. For example, if you heal someone, the charge would apply after the healing has taken place, so the presumption is that the charge only kicks in at the end of turn. However, starting off your turn with a buff also raises your theurgy, and that is a start of turn trigger instead. You still need an active turn to trigger your Theurgy skill, but meter building occurs at the time of the event. This shouldn't matter too much except in niche cases but it is worth noting.
Each PC has 2 Theurgy skills, except for Yiu who has 7 (Fusion spells). They do not need to be selective and choose one before the fight like FF7. Instead, they'll have access to all their Theurgy skills learnt. Meter can be carried over from one fight to another so for those of you that allow half gauges or what not, keep this in mind for damage averages.
One other interesting thing of note is that each PC's starting Theurgy is apparently different
every day in the game. There are kind of 3 ways to take this for starting meter:
- Option 1: Take starting meter to be all at 100. So no one has an advantage over another (the Jan 31 approach)
- Option 2: Consider dates of major boss fights (all full moon shadows, Strega, etc.), then average the starting rates out.
- Option 3: Consider the starting Theurgy of every available day that PC can be used. Then average it out.
While Option 3 would normally be absolutely tedious and insane to document, thanks to CTOBN, this information has already been mined in his database (see below). All we needed to do is to have someone take the data and calculate it. Shout outs to Nama for sending me the completed data, which will be included in each PC's load out.
Most of this information comes from a virtually completed datamine of the entire game, courtesy of CTOBN. You can find the link to it here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f4Bhkg0gBqUSm4YR1Bba1JsQn6w6fPDrqBTaWlHla8A/edit?gid=0#gid=0Much thanks to him, otherwise this topic probably wouldn't exist for all the subsequent information that follows. We're going to be using it for lots of other things below. For those interested, I suggest checking it out as it might contain things I skipped over.
Equipment ExpandedI already noted the equipment from forging / exchange that can be done and the degree of ease with which most of it can be attained. In general, the base of a piece of equipment sans Dead Moon Husks (DMH) are all readily available and there are enough Tartarus days for the grind to get them. The only real question left is "Are the gemstones and Persona material easy to acquire". For the most part, the answer is yes. The most rare component here is actually the Gold Quartz. These are hard to come by but you can also exchange for 1 at a price of 200,000 Yen. This isn't exactly cheap but since there's very little to buy at end-game and you can also get some during Tartarus grinds, the end result is that there is often enough to come by. Each PC has four equipment slots - A weapon (unique), Armor (classed), Footwear (mostly classed) and Accessory (mostly universal). Unique obviously means it can only be used by one person. Classed in this case means it is separated between Male/Female/Aigis/Koromaru. In general, Aigis and Koro use their own armor class, so everything they can use is always unique. For the humans, it is a different story. There are significantly more males than there are females (4-5 to 2 depending on if you count Shinji), so while Female armor has a spectre of uniqueness to it (2/8 or 2/9 with Shinji), Male armor does not (4/8 or 5/9 with Shinji) unless it is specified. Footwear is similar except for the fact that dogs don't equip shoes.
As a result of the above classification and notes, the default armor for human PCs is going to be the Fallen Noble Armor. This costs 2 Soul Sea Droplets, 3 Gold Quartz and an AS Refined Material. You only need 4 for an active party, so this translates to 8 Droplets and 12 Quartz, which is manageable. This armor has 345 Defense and provides immunity to Mental status, which is kind of a big deal. Women have the added benefit other forged / exchange equipment, which gives them a bit more utility, but it's tough to argue with a great status blocker on a high defense item. Men on the other hand, just have to deal.
For Footwear, the default Footwear is the Mysterious Geta, which gives all humans +3 Stats across the board and has 99 Evade. Similarly, women have the choice of some unique footwear. Men on the other hand, again, have to suck it up. This mostly craters Junpei because he would love for you to give him the Dragon Boots (Auto TaruRebellion) as well as DMH weapon, but dem's the breaks. If you are very lenient, I'll note Junpei's weapon when it comes up. Otherwise, the Dragon Boots have 108 Evade and Auto-Taru + Auto Rebellion.
Accessories is up to interpretation. The default suggestion is to assume this slot is null (outside of status blocking) because every accessory can be outfitted on to every other PC. In practice of course, this isn't true. Some accessories like Wind Bracers for example is basically useless for every PC except for Yukari and the MC. Sure, there's an extreme fringe case where it *could* be useful for Koromaru, but that's highly unlikely. For this reason, there are a lot of accessories where in practice, they only impact 1 PC. You might consider this to be their "default" as a result - especially for those of you that adopt NEB/Dhyer's view where an accessory to block status should have an opportunity cost. In this case though, the human PCs are already going to be immune to mental status effects so whether or not you want to further extend an olive branch is up to you. If you do, most PCs want a +Boost element that matches their skillset in general. There is some flexibility and exceptions. For example - Mitsuru has a choice between boosting Confusion's success rate OR boosting Ice damage to free up a skill slot space. The one PC who has an advantage here is Akihiko because he debatably has no need for an accessory. He won't pass up on a free bonus passive if everyone else has one, but he gains significantly less so you might also want to tax him less (or none at all) if you're trying to slap on some penalty:
Yukari - Wind Bracers - to further boost Wind damage by 25%
Junpei - Slash Amp - to further boost Slashing attacks by 50%
Akihiko - Strike Amp - to further boost Strike attacks by 50%
Mitsuru - Amulet of Perplexity - to further boost Confuse success rate
Aigis - Pierce Amp - to further boost Piercing attacks by 50%
Ken - Light Boost - to further boost Light damage by 25%
Koromaru - Fire Bracers/Dark Bracers - to further boost Dark damage by 25%
Status Conditions and What notMost of these shouldn't be news but it is good to go over again to clarify. There are 3 types of conditions in the game: Physical, Mental and Instant Death. Let's go over them:
Physical Conditions:Poison - Take 20% MHP damage at the end of your turn. Lasts indefinitely.
Frozen - Lose your next turn. Evade drops to zero. Any physical attack made against a Frozen target is an automatic Critical Hit
Shocked - Lose your next turn. Evade drops to zero. Physical attacks have a guaranteed 35% chance to Crit + Crit Rate of the attack in question.
Dizzy - Lose your next turn. While Dizzy, your evade drops to zero, you take 30% more damage and Physicals have a +15% chance to Crit
Down - Lose your balance and fall down. Evade drops to zero and you take 30% more damage from incoming attacks. When a target is knocked down, the attacker receives a bonus turn (a 1 More) and they can receive some new team actions (Shifting/All Out Attack) or just use the turn as they deem fit. Once a target is knocked down, you cannot be knocked down again. Hitting a knocked down target does not re-stand them (as in vanilla P3). Attacking a knocked down target has a 30-50% chance of causing them to become Dizzy. I'll get the exact rates later. Automatically recover once it is your turn again.
Hitting a Weakness or a Crit results in a knock down roughly 99% of the time in the game. When doing so doesn't give a 1 more, it is because visually, your target doesn't get thrown off balance (such as Nyx). For this reason, some of you may consider the Knockdown to be what causes the 1 more and not the action of hitting weaknesses or crits.
Mental ConditionsDistress - Your offense and defense are halved and physicals attacks have a +60% chance to Crit. Wears off after 3-4 turns.
Fear - 50% chance of losing your next turn. Wears off after 3-4 turns. Physicals have 20% increased Crit
Confusion - Will act randomly. Most of the time though, you'll just waste your turn. Lasts about 4 turns. Physicals have 20% increased Crit
Charm - You will perform actions that are beneficial to you opponent such as healing them, buffing them, attacking your own team, etc.
Rage - Will only use physical attacks. Take twice the damage as normal.
Instant Death (ID)Mudo/Hama - Dark and Light based ID. These run through the status check formula.
Ghastly Wail - Guaranteed instant death if you are afflicted by Fear.
Relevant Damage Formulas -Massive special thanks again to CTOBN and his dissected formula and numbers guide here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3230774091Cribbing out all the useful stuff for our purposes:
Damage - √(Skill Power x 15 x (Str OR MAG/END)) x2 x Affinity x Level Mod x Other ModifiersSkill Power is the name of the ability. If it is an equipped weapon, the Skill Power is half of the weapon's strength.
Strength is used for physicals (Slash/Blunt/Pierce attacks) and Magic is used for everything
Affinity is the modifier based on the target's vulnerabilities. For the purposes of the DL, this is always 1
Level Mod is the modifier based on the level difference between the attacker and the defender. Again, for the DL purposes, this is always 1, barring some really good reason to assume a level difference exists.
Other Modifiers refer to other multipliers that are applicable. These include Boosts, Amps, the Charges, hitting weakness, buffs, being under status conditions, etc.
Theurgy Damage -
√(Skill Power x 10 x (Level + 20) x (St + Ma) / En) x 0.7 x Level Difference x Affinity x Other ModifiersI did mention Theurgy was more complicated than it looks. In fact, it has its own formula for damage.
Skill Power is the name of the ability. The rest are all pretty self-explanatory.
Accuracy - ((Attacker's AGI +200)/(Defender's AGI+200)) x Skill's Base Hit RateEvery attack in the game has a varying hit rate although most are 90%+. Note that Evasion is calculated separately because P3R runs a separate formula for enemy accuracy.
Evade - {[((Attacker's AGI +200)/(Defender's AGI+200)) x Skill's Base Hit Rate] x Skill Modifier x (Attacker's AGI +200)/((Footwear Evade/2) +200)} - Equipment EvadeDespite how stupid it looks, in summary, take your accuracy, then multiply it against the PC's Footwear Evade less any other Equipment Evade.
Skill Modifier refers to Passive abilities as well as the Sukus which all multiply accuracy by differing factors
Equipment Evade refers to any Armor or Accessory with an "Evade *Attribute type*" as its passive. This is subtracted from the calculated total at the end as a flat penalty for the attacker.
From the BMG, it looks like the Minimum Hit Rate is 50% while maximum is 99%
Crit Rate - (Attacker's Luck + 50)/(Defender's Luck + 50) x Skill Base Crit x Crit Rate Multiplier + Crit Rate BoostsEvery physical skill has an innate crit rate attached to it. For Weapon strikes, they all have a Skill Crit Rate of 3.
Crit Rate Multiplier is strictly looking at Apt Pupil (which Doubles Crit) and Sharp Student (Halves Crit for defender), otherwise it is 1
Crit Rate Boosts refers to everything else that buffs Crit Rates - Rebellion, Revolution, Crit Boost, Crit Amp, etc.
A weapon with a Crit Rate Up (X) where X is Low, Medium and High have an added 5/10/15% increased chance to Crit.
Certain status conditions will also add Boosts. As noted above, Dizzy adds 15% for example.
Status Accuracy - ((Attacker's Luck + 100)/(Defender's Luck + 100) x Skill Success Chance x Affinity x Skill Multiplier x Physical Equipment Modifier x Mental Equipment Modifier)The formula is pretty self explanatory...until you get to Affinity. Basically each status is classed as its own affinity with the exceptions of Down, Freeze, Shock, Hama and Mudo. If a target is weak to the affinity, then the Ailment success chance is increased by 25%
Skill Modifier refers to any success rate boosts coming off associated sets. For example, Freeze Boost, Shock Boost, etc.
Then we get to the last bits. To summarize, these only matter on defensive checks on PCs because enemies with Resist <Status Skill> just reduce the status by a 50% rate. Essentially, Freeze and Shock are treated differently by the game and their Resist Skills do not alter the affinity to the status condition but are instead just multipliers. Because of this, Resist Freeze the skill and Resist Freeze the equipment will not stack. However, Resist Charm the skill and Resist Charm the equipment will as one alters the base affinity and the other alters the success rate.
In a majority of cases, both of these modifiers will simply be 1.
