#it STARTS as crit i guess. but this is less criticism and more... an opportunity for improvement fhjkhgjktheygjh

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

for the record tho i DO actually have a bit of an issue with how stede's character arc of unlearning biases is like... subtle enough to almost be subtext. like [URL REDACTED] did have a point (one singular point) about how this season focuses so much on stede's feelings of inadequacy and guilt about abandoning his family. there's a lot of screen time dedicated to showing the audience how stede feels, and not a lot of him recognizing when he's said or done something out of ignorance

part of that is the nature of stede being the protagonist, obviously. he's the hero of a romcom, we HAVE to know how he feels or else this is the shittiest romance writing of all time. the logical next question to that is "well why is a white man the protagonist?" and for that one you'd have to ask david jenkins why he wanted to write a fictional romcom about stede bonnet anyway, and that's a WHOLE other extremely valid criticism of the show that people have talked about before. so the fact that the show is going to give us more insight into stede's feelings than to like, the rest of his crew, is just a reality of how this story is set up.

and then there's the issue of "how much attention can this show give to stede's Unlearning Biases arc before this becomes the White Man Unlearns Racism show." like, i've said before that i want stede to get called out on his bullshit, but what i DON'T want is a scene where olu sits stede down and very patiently teaches him about racism and stede asks a lot of questions and at the end olu claps him on the back and is like "on behalf of all BIPOC, i declare you Not Racist"

which obviously i don't think this show will do, bc ofmd has a lot more nuance than that. but on a spectrum of THAT to making the Stede Learns About Prejudice arc so subtle that people might deny it's even there... we're actually firmly in the second category, even though i think that's more the fault of viewers misreading the show than the writing of it. it's tricky to strike this balance of not excusing stede for the dumb shit he says and does, but not spending an excessive amount of the show on corny scenes where they rehabilitate a white man from his implicit biases. i think the show does a mostly good job of it, but they err on the side of subtlety a little bit more.

and the thing with THAT is like, we've only gotten 1 season so far, and stede's barely even started on this arc. so my opinion on how the show handles this is going to change one way or the other. right NOW, so far, i think the show can stand to be a bit harsher to stede about all this. but it makes SENSE that it's been pretty subtle about it so far! like, i said in the first paragraph that this season had so much focus on how stede feels, but the main focus of the plot was literally ABOUT stede learning what he feels. and what he feels is gay love!! now that stede knows he's in love and he's irreversibly committed to being a pirate, i stand by what i said in the post i linked above: i want his arc in season 2 to be about actually learning about this new world he's chosen to live in and learning that it's not just the thrilling adventure he thought it was. that's a much easier character arc to thread the Stede Unlearns Biases arc through in a way that isn't corny and annoying

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #157

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making Emiya Alter! No, not that one, the one they gave a really dumb nickname to.

Anyway, Demiya is a Vengeance Paladin to take down anyone who would threaten humanity (and protect himself from mind control nonsense) as well as a Hexblade Warlock to project whatever blades he might need straight into enemies. I know he made the deal with Alaya, but it made him good with swords, so it’s probably fine.

Check out his build breakdown below the cut, or his character sheet over here!

Next up: Man’s worst nightmare

Race and Background

Despite your arguments to the contrary, you’re still a Human, giving you +1 Strength and +1 Dexterity. You also get proficiency in Insight to be a better investigator, and the Fighting Initiate feat, because paladins don’t get the Archery fighting style normally. This gives you +2 on ranged weapon attacks.

What was it that turned you to the path of Alterness? Whatever it was, it made you a Haunted One, giving you proficiency with Investigation and Arcana, as well as a healthy hatred for anything Kiara-based.

Ability Scores

You’re good with guns and small swords, plus you fight shirtless, so make sure your Dexterity is as high as possible. Second is going to be Charisma. You’re a pretty scary guy, we need it for multiclassing,and it’ll help you shoot good later. Your Wisdom is also pretty good, thanks to your built-in mental protection. You’re too affected by your Alterfication to get affected by anything else. Your Strength isn’t that bad, you do use melee weapons too at times and we also need it for multiclassing, but your Constitution is rather low. Kintsugi is very pretty, but it’s not a great way to build a person. Finally, we’re dumping Intelligence. It’s less that you’re dumb, more that you just absolutely don’t care about stuff enough to get scholarly on most subjects.

Class Levels

1. Paladin 1: Paladins get better hit dice and the martial weapons we need for that Fighting Initiate we got, so we’re kinda stuck starting there. First level paladins get proficiency with Wisdom and Charisma saves, as well as two paladin skills. Intimidation is pretty self-explanatory, but you also get Athletics. Look, you’ve got pretty good abs, they had to come from somewhere.

You also get a Divine Sense, letting you sense threats to humanity nearby, and Lay on Hands for a bit of free healthcare for you or whoever else you touch. You get 5 hp of healing per paladin level per long rest, and you can use 5 points from that amount to heal a poison or disease.

Yeah, first level isn’t particularly in-character, but it’ll get better later.

2. Paladin 2: Second level paladins get another Fighting Style, so grab Close Quarters Shooter from the underdark UA for sick melee ranged attacks. This negates the disadvantage caused by making a ranged attack near hostiles, your ranged attacks ignore all but full cover, and you get another +1 to ranged attack rolls.

You also learn how to cast an prepare Spells using your Charisma. You can either use your new spell slots for, y’know, spells, or for a Divine Smite to add on extra radiant damage to a melee attack. Ranged attacks in melee range don’t count, sadly.

As far as prepared spells go, Detect Evil and Good can help hunt down baddies, ditto with Protection from Evil and Good. 

3. Paladin 3: At third level, you can at long last devote yourself to Vengeance!, giving you the spells Bane to trip up foes and Hunter’s Mark to stick some serious damage onto your enemies over time. You also get Channel Divinity once per short rest that you can use in two ways.

Abjure Enemy spends an action to force a wisdom save (DC 8+charisma mod+proficiency) or one creature is frightened for up to a minute or until it takes damage. While frightened, it can’t move. On a success, the creature’s speed is halved for a minute or until it takes damage.

Alternatively, you can swear a Vow of Enmity as a bonus action, giving you advantage on attacks against a nearby creature for a minute or until it hits 0 hp.

You also get Divine Health, making you immune to disease. Like half your body is gold, it’s not like sniffles are a big concern at this point.

4. Paladin 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to grab the Crossbow Expert feat. There’s a lot of overlap with Close Range Shooter, but you can now attack multiple times per turn with a crossbow, and you can use your bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow if you attack with a one-handed weapon with your main action. Unfortunately, that’s the one kind of crossbow that won’t work with warlocks, but for now it’s fine.

5. Paladin 5: Fifth level paladins get an Extra Attack, letting you attack twice per turn anyway! Making great use of feat you just got.

You also learn second level spells! Your freebies are Hold Person and Misty Step. Admittedly neither are really in character for you, but if you want to power game Hold Person gives you guaranteed critical hits on the held person, which is super busted when combined with your smites. Food for thought.

Otherwise you can use Magic Weapon and other smites to make normal swords into fancy magic swords.

6. Warlock 1: Bouncing over to warlock for a bit puts you in a pact with an even fancier magic weapon: a Hexblade. You might not have a soul any more, but you do have a Hexblade’s Curse, which you can put on one unlucky bastard as a bonus action once per short rest. The target’s cursed for 1 minute, during which: You add your proficiency to damage against the target, crit on 19s, and you gain HP equal to your warlock level+your charisma modifier when they die.

You also become a Hex Warrior, turning one non-two handed weapon into a charisma based weapon instead of dexterity or strength. You can also use this on any kind of weapon made with your pact weapon feature later.

Finally, you get Pact Magic, which is pretty similar to your old magic except it recharges on short rests instead of long ones. While the spell slots don’t blend like other multiclassing builds, you can use warlock slots to cast paladin spells and vice versa.

Speaking of warlock spells, you get Eldritch Blast to summon gunfire and Sword Burst to summon swords right into people. You also get Cause Fear because that’s most people’s natural reaction to you and Expeditious Retreat to stay in archery range. Just because you can fight in melee range doesn’t mean you should.

7. Warlock 2: Second level warlocks get Eldritch Invocations. Like usual, we’re saving one for level three, but you still get Armor of Shadows now for free Mage Armor on yourself. Now you can finally rip your shirt off and make Kintoki jealous!

You also learn Comprehend Languages. Alaya probably wouldn’t drop you off in someplace without giving you the language to get around, right? Right?

8. Warlock 3: Your pact boon, as you can probably guess, is the Pact of the Blade, letting you summon pretty much any melee weapon you could want as an action. It also counts as magic for overcoming resistance, making the Magic Weapon thing from earlier pointless.

That invocation we were saving becomes Improved Pact Weapon, which expands your pact weapon choices to pretty much any ranged weapon you could want and it gives any weapon you make +1 to attacks and damage.

Honestly there aren’t that many second level spells that I think really fit Emiya as a warlock, but Blur is nice. If you’re going to be nameless, you might as well be faceless too, I guess.

9. Paladin 6: Going back to paladin for a bit lets you create an Aura of Protection, adding your charisma modifier to any save you or allies within 10′ of you make. It’s not an enormous buff, but a +2 is a +2, take what you get.

10. Paladin 7: Seventh level vengeance paladins are Relentless Avengers. When you hit a creature with an attack of opportunity, you can move half your speed as part of the reaction an ignore opportunity attacks. Like a lot of paladin goodies, this doesn’t pair well with your guns, but you do have swords as well.

11. Paladin 8: Another ASI at last! Bump up your Charisma for better saves and spells.

12. Warlock 4: Use this ASI to become Tough for an extra 24 HP now and another 2 each level. If you want to get in close, you’d better be able to take a hit. Also, you’re part gold. Sure it’s a soft metal, but it’s still a metal. That’s worth a few HP.

You also learn True Strike because I’m really hoping you’re aiming those things, and Shadow Blade for yet another sword you can summon.

13. Warlock 5: Fifth level warlocks get another invocation and a third level spell. Spirit Shroud makes all your swords a little bit sharper, dealing extra damage to and slowing down creatures in a 10′ radius. You also get Eldritch Smite, which burns through warlock slots to deal extra force damage, and can be used with ranged weapons.

14. Paladin 9: Ninth level paladins also get third level spells, like Haste which adds to your AC, bumps up your speed, and gives you and extra action for the duration. When the spell ends you have to take a turn to chill, but it’s totally worth it. You also get Protection from Energy, which... I mean if someone’s throwing around acid arrows, yeah go for it. Otherwise you can get more smites and Elemental Weapon for more fancy weapons.

15. Paladin 10: Tenth level paladins get an Aura of Courage, preventing allies in it from being frightened. I’d be more worried about charms, but honestly your wisdom save is pretty good at this point.

16. Paladin 11: Your Improved Divine Smite means you can add radiant damage to melee attacks even when you have no spell slots to burn; unfortunately that’s still just melee attacks, not ranged attacks.

17. Paladin 12: At seventeenth level you can finally use this ASI to bump your Charisma up past the point where your dexterity started, meaning your attaks finally get a bit more accurate thanks to being a Hex Warrior. This also bumps up your spell effectiveness and all your saves.

18. Paladin 13: Thirteenth level paladins get fourth level spells, like Banishment and Dimension Door. You also get access to yet another new smite for yet another new sword.

19. Paladin 14: Your last mainline paladin goodie is a Cleansing Touch, spending an action to end a spell affecting yourself or a willing creature charisma mod times per long rest. You’d think this anti-Kiara protection is coming late, but to be honest you probably should be level 20 to take on a Beast of Humanity.

20. Paladin 15: Your capstone level makes you a Soul of Vengeance, letting you make opportunity attacks on a creature affected by your Vow of Enmity if they try to attack anyone. Again, this only affects melee attacks.

Pros:

Mixing your Hexblade’s Curse and Vow of Enmity together means you’re really good at dealing crits with basically four times the odds of critical attacks each attack compared to your regular fighter. This is especially good for a character that can double smite like you can, dealing serious burst damage easily.

You also deal consistent damage with a +14 to hit and several different ways to stick more damage onto your attacks, like the afforementioned curse, Hunter’s Mark, or Spirit Shroud.

Thanks to your warlock slots recharging on short rests, you can go ham on smites a bit more than most people could, making your Unlimited Lost Works available to you more than other paladins.

Cons:

You’re a paladin specializing in ranged attacks. Admittedly the only things really making you a ranged fighter are your fighting styles, which can easily be changed, but if you’re playing to character you’ll find it a bit harder to use your paladin features.

Another reason staying at range is a good idea is your Concentration saves are really bad, with a total of +0 and no way to improve them.

Starting as a paladin but then adding in hexblade later means you have something of an awkward beginning, with your first couple ASIs not really contributing much to your character, with those first few mostly making up for your weaknesses rather than playing to your strengths.

[scarletwitching]

Oooh oooh oooh pleeeeeeease talk about Ed Brubakers cap run

It’s full of plot holes.

I know we’re not “supposed” to care about plot holes. The great internet film critic/youtube person circle got together and decided that Serious People™ don’t talk about plot holes, and actually, they rewrote the definition so that nothing is a plot hole anymore. Some people take it too far and don’t pay attention and then complain about things that were explained, and I get the frustration. But everyone cares when important things are confusing or don’t work the way they should or don’t get explained. We all do, and saying, “I am superior because I only care about theeeeeeemes” is a crock of bull.

So, I have some questions, such as: Why were Fury and Sharon trying to free Steve when he turned himself in? How did no one in that huge crowd notice that Sharon shot Steve? How did the coroner not notice that Steve was also shot up close from straight on? Do coroners in the Marvel Universe not know how angles work? Or the difference between different bullet wounds? I guess you could say that the coroner was a plant by Red Skull, but Tony also examined the body. Does Tony not know how angles work?

That’s just a few of the questions I had from one story arc. I could keep going. It’s not about the specific things that don’t work. It’s about how lazy everything feels. It’s about how there is a technological fix-it to every plot problem that arises. Gadgets appear out of nowhere to solve problems, and then are never mentioned again. I can understand cutting corners if you’re writing a miniseries or a book that could be cancelled at any point, but this book went on forever. It had way too many filler issues and unnecessary World War II flashbacks, and that time could have been spent making the plot more natural or, idk, exploring Bucky’s mental state,* beyond “man is sad because he did a bad thing.”

Or exploring Steve’s mental state, for that matter. Brubaker wrote that book during Civil War, and instead of trying to explore Steve’s motivations and feelings, he had one dialogue exchange between Steve and Sharon about the SHRA and then the rest of the tie-ins were about random shit and other characters.

There are character and story consequences to all of this corner cutting. If magic technology can get you out of any scrape, it gives you less opportunities to show the characters being creative and resourceful, to put them in tight spots and actually force them (and you) to think of a way out of it. It’s not just about “realism.” It chips away at the suspense. That’s why I’m always harping on how Wanda’s powers should be based around quick thinking and inventiveness, not untouchable godhood.

And okay, I’m gonna be honest and admit that I don’t understand the Winter Soldier as a character (specifically the assassin years, not Bucky in general). I found the canon too vague and seemingly self-contradictory, and then the fandom made me more confused because people talk about him in ways that I don’t… think are supported by the canon. The movies made everything worse because he’s handled very differently there, but people talk about it like it’s the same thing.

The movies do a better job of making it cohesive, but it still doesn’t work 100% there. I feel guilty saying this because he’s my favorite character in the MCU,** but if I think about the details for too long, my head starts to hurt. Even putting aside the baffling specifics, I get the feeling Bucky would be better off being written by women. Not that I could test this idea since the stories that deal with the Winter Soldier stuff are written by men. I guess there’s fanfiction, but I don’t read fanfiction, so…

ANYWAY, last thing: I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that all that stuff Brubaker did to Sharon Carter was bad and made me uncomfortable. Lots of people have talked about that, and I don’t have anything to add. It’s just… man, that was really gross.

*Do you ever think about the fact that there was a whole issue about Sin’s deprogramming, but Bucky was fixed with a Cosmic Cube? That was weird.

**I say this, yet I’m fascinated by the intense fanboy hatred towards MCU Bucky. I mean that in a neutral, unironic way. I think it’s interesting. I even agree with Film Crit Hulk’s criticism of the way he’s written, though I’d say there’s more to the negative reaction than writing flaws. There is something about this version of this character (as opposed to the 616 version) that a lot of people (it’s more often men, but other people feel the same way) really don’t respond to. Which is made more fascinating by how strong the opposite reaction is in others.

[harguusmcfarguus]

Hey, let’s get d&d and dirty. Let’s do some hypothetical math.

As of recently the book Xanathar’s Guide to Everything came out and detailed the Samurai subclass for the fighter. Let’s have some fun with it =3

At 15th level the samurai gets the ability Rapid Strike which can turn advantage attack rolls into the same number of dice as separate attacks. Sweet!

Now let’s give them a +3 Greatsword and turn them into a Half-Orc. When a Half-Orc gets a crit they roll an extra weapon’s worth of damage so a greatsword would do 6d6 instead of 4d6. Fun fun fun.

Let’s make it even more fun and give them a belt of Storm Giant Strength to raise that strength to 29. A nice +9 for the whole family. 

At level 20 a Fighter gets to have 4 attacks a round and nobody can stop them. 

Enemies that are under the effect of a Hold Person spell are incapacitated and Incapacitated people grant attack advantage and any hit that lands automatically crits.

So far our battle hardened Samurai will, with the help of a friendly caster, have the chance to roll (8*6)d6 + (8*(9+3)) damage. 

48d6+88 damage.

I’m pretty sure that’s enough damage to retroactively erase some poor bandit’s family tree from existence. 

Let’s add some more shall we?

Let’s add another friendly face. A casual caster able to cast a single second level spell. Enlarge/Reduce, among other things, can give someone an extra d4 of weapon damage per swing.

So for those 8 attacks, you could do an extra (8*3)d4 of damage. 24d4 more damage, thanks Wiz!

So a total of 48d6+24d4+88? That sounds pretty bad to be on the receiving end. 

...But wait, there’s more!

At 2nd level a Fighter can Action Surge to take an attack action again. Neat! Especially neat when the 4 attacks a fighter gets a round is all part of 1 attack action!

So let’s double that handful of dice, shall we?

With a possible 8 more critical hits our Warrior of the Rising Sun is now sporting a hefty 96d6+48d4+176 damage. Who even has that many dice? Having a rain of meteors dropped on your unfortunate peasant village only does 40d6 total damage, and you have the opportunity to dodge that. Ain’t no running from this pain train.

You know what’s more fun than having the approximate power of the universe collapsing in on itself? Spiteful vengeance. 

At level 18 a Samurai can use Strength Before Death to interrupt an enemy’s turn if they drop to 0 hit points. And during this interruption they can take an entire turn to unleash all the pent up rage from enduring 20 levels worth of Weeaboo jokes.

So our intrepid fighter has dumped enough damage to kill everything in a 15 square mile radius and has somehow still managed to be dropped to 0 health and make them even madder. 

So the Enlarged Fighter decides to swing another 8 times at the poor sucker who had the poor fortune of getting out of bed that day.

To make everything just a bit worse starting at level 17 a Fighter can Action Surge twice a day, but not on the same turn. Unfortunately this is only the same round and not the same turn. Poor bandit.

Let’s double that damage once more: 

A total of 192d6+96d4+352 slashing damage in less than 6 seconds. 

I don’t know how many past lives of sinning it took for a bandit with a hit dice total of 2d8+2 did to deserve this, but I guess that’s what happens when you exist in a world where a dragon can just come and sit on your town because a bard sang Final Countdown one too many times.

Want to have even more fun? Let’s bring in another caster buddy, one slightly stronger than the last two. With the 3rd level spell Elemental Weapon cast with a spell slot of 7th or higher a weapon gains a +3 to damage and a bonus 3d4 of Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder damage.

With the 32 swings being made by our ancient samurai blender would deal a bonus total of (96*3)d4+27 elemental damage or 288d4+27 damage. 

A grand total of 192d6+384d4+379 is a good trick to pull out on any unsuspecting DM. Honestly by this point you’d probably save time just dumping all the dice out on the enemy and let them get crushed under the sheer weight of it.

For added fun pick an element and enemy combo so that the damage you deal is then doubled due to damage vulnerability. 

I can’t say that I’ve met any Ancient Dragons, Liches, Gods, or Galaxy Devouring Eldritch Gods with enough hit points to match you but I’m sure after pulling this off a time or two the DM will find one somewhere. You never know what corner of existence a DM might pull Super Satan out of as punishment for sucker punching the universe right in the teeth.

I think the best takeaway from this is 

Never mess with Japan

[bedlamgames]

Q&A #23

As a quick update no livestream tonight, probably one at 22:00 GMT tomorrow on Wednesday starting off the No Repeats streams.

Anonymous: How does on go about procuring Shakko? I've seen several references to it, but never found it in-game.

There’s two ways currently, either by having an encampment alchemist or via the marshlands. There would be a third but you being able to craft potions yourself is not as fixed as a thought it was. 

More under the break.

Anonymous: Just wanted to add my two cents : "Anonymous: Bug Report: Upon a failed recapture slave mission where I sent out two of my slavers, it brought back a bugged slaver version of the slave with no name, even though the log refers to him by name. ..." Same thing more or less happened to me, but I wanted to add that the noname slaver not only couldn't be sold, but wouldn't die/leave no matter how many disastrous suicide missions i sent them on. keep being awesome.

Thank you! Aware that recapture has some issues and will resolve them for the next update.

Anonymous: Hi! Can I suggest some ideas that seems not hard to implement, but can make this great game more intresting? 1)Let any number of slaves be sent for sale with an escort of 2 slavers 2)Make sale opportunities in all cities (same as City), may be with different demands in race, skills and payment 3)Remake both quests in Rose for one rare and high risk hunt for an exclusive slave (same as Wedding Crashers). I’ll be glad to describe these ideas in more details if you are interested in. Thank you.

Ideas are easy, actual implementation can be surprisingly hard not to mention time consuming. There will be more ways to dispose of slaves, in greater numbers and the opportunities are going to become more lenient which should hopefully help out with that. 

Anonymous: After loading the game I cant make any assignment on the world, only go for personal assignments from the camp. Loaded the game properly. When I rightclick my character the only avaliable comamnds are : Enc. stores x3, Glossary, Stats.

Please make sure you are using the correct version of RAGS, and that you did not save a game state that you should not have saved in as per the message at the start of the game. Those would be my first two guesses for causes anyway.

Anonymous: Little bug report. Then you change clothes, changed clothes come back with every stat = 0.

Dang thought I’d sorted that finally. Will take another look at it. 

Anonymous: On 7032: I'd call this more of a feature than a bug, but I think that if you select the elf shadowcaster start, then go back and choose a different start (high elf sentinel in my case), even going with full customization, you get Osawa Megumi for free.

Thanks for letting me know and sorry that I’ll be fixing that. 

Anonymous: no whorelocks news?

Had hoped to start work on it again this month alongside the next No Haven update but as it’s the 28th it does seem a bit late. Will try and do at least one (if not more) Whorelock development livestream sometime in March. 

Anonymous: Bug Report: For the plains mission Raid Human Village or whatever it's called, it's possible with the preferences set to capture males to get a human commoner male on a crit with Beautiful, but no Feminine.

That’s a new one. Will check it out.

severelynuttyanchor: In "No Haven" I am unable to put my second in command into another position. Is there a way to do it?

Currently seconds and spiritual leaders if you select one refuse to leave their role so they only way to get a new one is to lose them. There will be a way round this and that’s coming with the reputation system. 

xcomcommander12: Are missions not supposed to go into the negatives? Because on Corruption changing places I had a 102% chance of success and a -5% failure chance. Also I found an interesting mission when scavenging in the dreadsea coast area on a critical success, is it possible to free my slaver?

They shouldn’t no. Need to sort that for the next update. If you lost one getting that crit there’s not currently away to get a lost slaver back, but there will be when I do the events system. 

If you’re talking about the follow up assignment and what happens to a slaver on a success the only way is to lose the lamia as that should free the slaver. Will be some other ways later when I come back to that. 

Anonymous: Hey. I was trying to engange in biomancy, but the option is not showing on my "personal assigments" (I am also a Healer, and the Healer option is appearing), what can I do? :c

Huh, odd one. I can possibly see it disappearing, but doesn’t it come back after a finish day?

Anonymous: Hey! Realize this isn't exactly an inspiring question, or very relevant to you really, but I was wondering if you knew of any handy way for me, as a player, to start with any number of trait points for my camp leader? 

Apologies, but there is no way of doing that. I hope you continue to enjoy the game anyway. 

[doktorpeace]

I think I’m close enough to the ending to make my definitive P3 and P4 comparison post. I’ll do it quite simply, I’ll list one game’s Pros and Cons and then the other’s. Each subject will get a little bit of discussion but I don’t want this to be a thesis paper so. It’s still going to be long though. Needless to say this will contain relatively heavy spoilers from both games.

P3: Pros -  Stronger party members and inter-party dynamics. SEES is much more well fleshed out than The Investigation Team even despite that over half of them do not have Social Links. The characters all living in one dorm together means there’s a lot more opportunity to see them and also to see them interact with each other. P3P furthers this gap by adding social links for the boys. In P4 the party members dynamics with each other don’t change that much over the course of the game, where the cast of P3 has their relationships change around you regardless of your decisions. The game also has a lot of cutscenes showing their interactions without you, and that’s something P4 sorely misses, everything in P4 has to have Yu in the shot and it’s gets in the way of that. A stronger story. The story of P3 has much better pacing because it spends mandatory time developing your party members and there’s a consistent build of tension even within each month as a Full Moon approaches. This then works into the overarcing story of tension building higher and higher as you defeat more and more of the 12 Full Moon Shadows. Because of this it builds at a very good and reasonable pace.  P3′s story also goes right for the gut in terms of emotional impact, it doesn’t pull its punches and you’re going to be sad. While this may not be positive for everyone it certainly leaves a stronger impact. More consistent difficulty scaling. The game challenges you with bosses at a regular rate throughout Tartarus to ensure you’re ready for the next story boss. That said sometimes they’re overzealous in doing this, a few times I found the Tartarus midbosses to be more difficult than the actual Full Moon Shadows. Better critical hit animations and more dynamic Persona Summoning animations. While the latter is more subjective P3′s critical hits pack more of a punch, they feel weighty, it’s good. While a couple are oddly long (Mitsuru, Junpei) it’s not bad enough to take away from it. Character portraits are more dynamic, they are in multiple poses that suit the emotion they’re conveying. While each character has a standard ‘pose’ where their expression simply changes having their ‘pose’ change as well helps a lot in keeping them feel alive and and engaged. A more consistent commitment to the game’s themes and style. The soundtrack and mood of each scene work together much better and the game generally avoids mood whiplash problems. This even extends to the game’s core colors and UI design, overall a very sleek looking game. With how severe the game’s central story themes are this is a huge plus imo. Neutral -  A higher difficulty. P3 is harder than P4 without question especially early on. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on who you ask. All of the side quests are obtained from Elizabeth. From a gameplay perspective I find this superior since I actually did all of the sidequests in P3 simply because they were easy to access and commit to. Tatsumi Port Island is bigger than Inaba. In some ways this is nice since there’s more places to look around, but if you have a poor memory or sense of direction this could be a negative. A tighter schedule. The game only has something like 6 spare days on a fresh file if you want to complete every social link. That’s unforgiving to a ridiculous degree. Cons -  Easier to abuse mechanics. Fusion Spells are broken, being able to directly buff your Persona’s stats is also broken especially when in the last 3-4 months there’s nothing better to do with your evenings. Having your SP fully restored when returning to Tartarus’ ground floor is super abusable especially once Fuuka learns Escape Route. The last 50-60 floors or so of Tartarus I breezed through by spamming Thunder Call and retreating back to the entrance anytime I happened to get low on SP. Makoto is not very compelling as a protagonist compared to Yu, he’s needlessly perfect and while this comes up in game as a source of jealousy for other characters it really doesn’t mesh with how Makoto is allegedly a cowardly dumbass with no game when you start. Makoto’s dialogue options tend to be very neutral or negative to his conversation partner as well, so it’s often very obvious which dialogue option is correct, which is to say whichever dialogue option isn’t those things usually. If you don’t like stories with Messianic main characters on principle you’ll also not like Makoto. Some blocks of Tartarus are a fucking eyesore dude. Block 5 in particular is horrible. Some of the social links really suck. Like, really bad. Moon and Magician in particular fucking suck dude. Also you can’t complete all the social links without cheating on 5 girls and the game in no way punishes you for it. That’s fucked up dude. Some of the shadows are fucking ridiculous. They’re immune to everything except one damage type or they’re just flat out immune to everything except Megido skills. It’s bullshit sometimes. Not often enough to be a huge hassle since running away in this game is easy, but it sucks dude. P4: Pros -  Better social sim elements. More interactions require you to have a certain level of a social stat and more interactions raise your social stats as well. It’s a good change. Your social stats also progress at a more reasonable pace. It’s a very good change overall. Better social links. 4′s social links are more involved, requiring more social skill checks to take the best dialogue options while generally being longer and more deeply exploring the characters in question. It’s great how memorable and interesting each one is. They really hammered out this system a lot better and you meet a lot of people from a lot of walks of life, it’s great. Additionally party member’s social links get them more involved in combat which assists with reducing the RNG factor RPGs can have. After just a couple levels they’ll take one mortal blow for the protagonist in a fight, though this won’t affect spread moves so it doesn’t negate difficulty. Mostly it just saves you from random crits or from a Hamaon or Mudoon that decided it wanted to fuck your day. You have more to actually do with your evenings. In P3 only two social links took place at night and in P4 there’s 4 that do. You can also do several social stat raising activities, but you can’t grind out your persona’s stats. It’s good. Varied dungeon designs and more consistent internal difficulty with each one. Each dungeon has a unique theme which directly pertains to who you’re rescuing and what difficulty they’re facing and they’re all 8-12 floors long. This is a great change because it lets the developers really know the pace the player is going to generally have getting through it and it helps build some player tension for what each boss could be like. Each one also has 1-2 minibosses before the main boss, which helps the player gauge if they’re a the right strength for the next major Shadow Boss. They also made use of 2-3 set design floors for every dungeon, this allowed them to include minor puzzle elements in each one ranging from pretty good (Naoto, Adachi) to Really Annoying (Mitsuo). P4 is less difficult but a much more consistent experience. P4 has a way stronger supporting cast. There’s not characters like Jin who just kind of exist but never have any part of their character explored. Dojima, Adachi, Namatame, Nanako and others are very well fleshed out. Where of P3′s side cast Elizabeth really steals the show (not that I mind too much cause she’s such a good character) P4′s are all well developed and I like them a lot. It helps that several of them are social links I guess but still, P4′s side cast is way better than P3′s. Yu is a more fleshed out protagonist, thanks in no small part to being in future content, but even aside from that he’s a better character just in the game itself. His dialogue options are much more varied and good partially because of the higher involvement of the social stats. You can directly control your party members holy SHIT this alone is such a huge boon to gameplay. P3′s companions have good AI mostly but god is it annoying when they elect to just kill one thing they knocked down instead of knocking down all the enemies. The plot is really well set up overall. The twists all make sense but are very hard to foresee. I like the game’s story a lot it’s just mostly held back by its pacing and hands off nature in terms of developing the Investigation Team. Nothing feels like it came out of nowhere or doesn’t make sense, which is very good for a murder mystery. Neutral -  The Fusion Forecast is a neat, but largely unimportant as an addition to the game. Sometimes it lets you make stupid bullshit though and that’s cool. The side quests are obtained from a variety of NPCs at varying points in the game. This helps the setting feel more alive and breathes some life into Inaba and from a worldbuilding perspective I like this better. That said I only did about a quarter of the sidequests in P4 in my second run and only like 3/4 in my first one and I think that speaks for itself. Cons -  The main cast is weaker generally, but by no means bad except Yosuke. Yosuke and Teddie in particularly are very weak characters after the first third of the game is complete. There’s not much to say on it that hasn’t been said on this blog already though. Sucks that Yosuke starts off pretty good and has a pretty good social link but then just goes to shit and stays that way in the spinoffs. The story’s pacing is kinda janky. It isn’t bad by any stretch, but it is about 3/4 of the game doing the same thing then it suddenly escalating and escalating and escalating all at once near the end. It builds tension certainly but not as well. Also any given story encounter is relatively easily solved all in one day, which makes the pacing feel weaker since then you spend 2-4 in game weeks just going through the motions of doing social links and raising your social stats. Party member’s Personas advancing via social link rather than through the story is lame. It basically forced them to shove all of their actual growth off to the side. While most of them have really really good social links that advance their character meaningfully this cannot be reflected in the story at all, which is a huge negative. It also means nothing of major importance can happen to any of them that would cause their persona to develop naturally either. A couple party member’s social links really double back on the advancement they had from confronting their Shadows. While Rise and Yukiko have very good social links they ultimately just end up back on square one, just with a new lens to view the world through. It’s kinda cool but makes the cast feel more stagnant than it needs to. The Biggest Con of them All is that they chickened out of making Naoto a trans guy. Genuinely and honestly the worst fuck up the game makes is this. Cutting Yosuke’s gay romance (WHICH IS STILL IN THE GAME AND FULLY VOICED IN ENGLISH) is also lame as shit but I can deal without that. Seriously though they set Naoto up to be trans so well and genuinely look at some trans themes but even though Kanji’s shadow is about Attraction To Dudes and Yukiko’s is about lamenting her life being out of her hands because of her genealogy and Teddie’s is about emptiness and not knowing what you really are and Rise’s is about owning your own image and ALL OF THOSE are genuine and really part of them I guess the parts where Naoto’s shadow explicitly talks about wanting to surgically transition and to be a man are the exception, huh Atlus. In Persona 4 Arena+Ultimax and Persona Q they take small steps towards making Naoto still questioning and leaning towards wanting to transition than they are at the end of their (otherwise good) social link. But i’m just waiting for a like, 25 year old Naoto to show up in Persona 5 Arena or Persona 6 or whatever and to just be a guy. And also dating Kanji but that’s neither here nor there. In Closing: I like P3 better but mostly for the writing and main characters. As a gameplay experience P4 is better by a wide margin.