TheBlue

@mezza: I initially thought I would go for Ann, but as the story goes on she kind of becomes...less interesting and more of the bubbly blonde ditzy type. Which is disappointing because when I first saw her design in trailers and such I assumed she'd be a much more serious and complex character. Whatever, Queen is best girl anyway and the game clearly seems to agree. I would highly recommend getting that Priestess rank up before the end of the August if you don't want to miss any stuff.

Oh and it might be a little late for some, but be sure to go to the Underground path every Sunday and buy the juice there for 5000 yen. It's a little pricey early on but +1 in a stat without wasting time helps in the long run. Also, the Big Bang Burger challenge can give you a nice boost. I did a lot of stat boosting during the day, when there are less people to hang out with and prioritized Fortune and Temperance at night, it seems to be working out okay. I'm at the 5th dungeon and I have Max Charm and 4 in everything but Proficiency (sorry Yusuke).

@mezza: Yeah status effects in this game are pretty brutal sometimes. 4th palace boss had me on the ropes for most of the fight until I got lucky and the status attack missed most of my party. It made me realize the severe lack of useful skills on most of my party or rather, how often enemies use ailments and how you need to be ready for them.

I gotta say, I've hit the end of July/beginning of August and I have more free time than I know what to do with. I'm exaggerating of course, but they do give you plenty of free time to do whatever. I think a lot of the frustration comes from how many options there are of things to do at night. In vanilla 4, you could read, study, go do Devil Nurse, fish, or hang out with Nanako or Dojima for the majority of the game. In 5, there are just as many S. Links at night as there are during the day (if not more), not to mention making tools, making coffee, reading, studying, hitting the bathhouse, working numerous jobs and a bunch of other useful things. So it seems like when Morgana just says go to sleep, it feels wasteful cause there's so much to do.

I do think that when the game forces you back home and to bed, it's really just giving you an opportunity to save. It's just annoying cause your desk is like...right there. If you could make tools every time you were forced to bed, you'd have max Proficiency by June.

@redhotchilimist: To be fair, having to walk around town to find Naoto and have her tell you that basically, Kanji is weird, just to be able to get to his dungeon is one of the dumbest things in P4. Though it did lead to one of the best ER moments, which you posted.

I also found the set up for the second dungeon kind of weak, but once you find out the whole story with Madarame and Yusuke, it at least ends up carrying more weight than you'd expect.

Just hit the third dungeon...

MAN, THIS GAME.

I think a lot of people feel this way during May. There's a good week and a half where you literally have no free time even though the game reminds you when and how to spend it. I will say once I got past that stretch you are definitely given a lot more free time. I also noticed looking at the calendar that it includes January, February, and March and there are exams and such during it, so I assume those months will also be playable. Vanilla Persona 4 skipped them entirely with the same amount of social links and options of things to do, so I think the extra days needed for dungeon crawling might be offset by that. I could be wrong, however, it's just an observation.

Though the whole not being able to do stuff at night when the big thing to do the next day is go stand around an art exhibit is a little bit of nonsense.

I knew I'd like this game, but damn, it might be even better than I was expecting. The music might be the best in the series and I'm very interested to see how the story evolves. I just hit my first day of free time and started exploring the first dungeon proper. The only concerns I have so far are the return of buying gifts (which was semi annoying in Persona 3 cause it was basically guessing which character would like which item) but maybe it's more direct in P5, and the characters mentioning getting tired. The fatigue in P3 was...not an enjoyable mechanic, though again, maybe this game does it better. That and I'm not sure if there's a way to hold up enemies without hitting their weakness. If I one shot an enemy I obviously can't talk to them, so I can't get them any other way besides fusing one? Seems weird but yeah, game's fantastic.

@whitestripes09: I did the same thing since I had only two that I could fuse. I think that dialogue is just meant to imply that he is still story relevant despite being able to fuse him immediately. He's auto registered to your compendium so you could just summon him back at any point.

@fatalbanana: I actually kind of like Ryuji better than Yosuke so far. They're very similar in terms of being the protag's partner in crime and shouting at things until they're explained four or five times, but Ryuji leans more into that "loud jerk upfront but actually a nice guy" whereas Yosuke was the nice guy who would just kind of be a jerk sometimes. Not that a character having flaws is a bad thing, I just found Yosuke's jerk moments very off-putting.

There's a whole thread dedicated to Elusive Targets over here.