Persona 5 - No Fusion No Social Link Part 1: Guard Captain & Heavenly Punisher

Channel:

MoogleBoss

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Published on June 8, 2017 5:55:01 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6NxI09mco4

Game:

Persona 5 (2016)

Duration: 4:14

2,986 views

57

Challenge playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSv8zSDR9c08j9S-VjJOPMXIUEyo7-fS

My capture card arrived today so I figured I might as well start this as I'd wanted for a while before. Any comments about the video and sound quality are appreciated - I suppose there's no lag? That's good for a start. I imagine some settings can be improved and optimised in the future (edit: yeah, it does look worse here on YouTube than what I saw in the preview window... hmm).

I really enjoyed my first / normal playthrough of the game, finding a lot of the new features that weren't around in P3/4 to improve the games' quality of life. However, a lot of things make the game easily breakable. They probably compliment each other rather than any one thing being particularly OP. The first thing that stands out to me is the MC who can severely overpower his allies thanks to the different types of fusion - not just being able to choose which skills you pass up to the better Personas, but also the Strengthen Persona function, which allows concentrating on a single stat (str / mag) with some amount of patience and also makes passing down just about any skill incredibly easy if you're ready to reset a bit. In the game, money is power, and there's an easy way to get a ton of money.

I've wanted to do another Persona challenge run since the unfinished P3P low level challenge (screw Nyx and my laggy old PSP), and this run is my attempt at eliminating the broken things out of the game. The MC is no longer the god he is in a normal PT (he still is kinda godly though...) and I'm also eliminating some money-making methods and chance-based boons from the run.

- No Fusion

No fusion of Personas besides the 1st forced one in Velvet Room (results can be erased), no Strengthen Persona, no Network Fusion. In addition, while Itemize Persona is okay in my run, I may not use cards to teach my Personas skills they can't otherwise learn.

MC is severely nerfed by this, but still maintains his flexibility and unique utility like Rakunda casting.

- No (=Base, rather) Social Links

Forced SLs with some of the storyline characters are in, but we can't manually develop any of them. This limits us in very many ways. Our allies (sans Morgana and I guess Akechi when he's available) can't recover status, endure fatal strikes and evade their weakness among other things. The clinic offers a poor selection of items, Futaba does nothing, Kawakami does none of the useful things she can do, no Sun rank means money will be a problem forever, the list goes and on...

Not having to work on SLs and subsequently social stats frees up a lot of time, which can be used to clear palaces (which we will need without any decent SP recovery options), train with Morgana at night for extra HP and uh, what else? I dunno if the gym is usable without Chariot SL; I do hope it is later on because I'd like some more SP on the MC for obvious reasons.

- Hard Mode

An easy choice over Merciless aka Meme Mode. Triple damage when hitting weakness would trivialise the random battles, which we spend the bulk of our game time facing. HM offers the best difficulty in the game.

I think this sums up the rules; let's move on to the bosses now.

Belphegor is Ann's awakening battle, the first fight with 4 characters. Like his normal self, Belph is fire-weak, and we can opt between doing an all-out-attack when knocking him down and leaving him there for maximising subsequent damage. Both Ryuji and MC are wind-weak, but there's no risk of OHKO, and an offensive strategy totally pays off. A good time to unload guns with Skull/Mona, since we're forced back into the real world afterwards.

Archangel, now, is a real PITA. The plan was winning here while I still have some SP then head back home until another day. Joker has few SP for debuffs, basically letting me have one - I go with an unreliable offensive strategy that relies on Rakunda to deal a lot of damage quickly.

He always Charges before every attack. The 1st Cleave tends to hit Joker more often than not, so I have him Guard as suggested while others start chipping in. The boss's def then gets debuffed and I unload my attacks on him until his 3rd turn. Here, he can use Vajra Blast (medium AoE dmg) which is basically a game over unless you've used Tarunda, restored HP AND guarded before then (no SP for this long strategy though) or he can use Cleave again. Said Cleave needs to not take out anyone important (i.e. not Joker or Skull). If that goes as planned, and too many attacks don't whiff, we should emerge triumphant.

Archangel is a bit ridiculous tbqh.

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