My Biggest Problem With Persona 3 Is The Story's Pacing

Hi everyone,

Monday was not fully what I was planing for, but it was an okay day on a few fronts. Did a bit of yard work, cutting branches on some trees that are interwoven with the fence (something my mom allowed over the years... so it's a bit of work). Also finished the AEW story and sent it off to the person who commissioned it. If they like it, it'll be up on the SubscribeStar page by the end of the week. 

This means I was able to move onto the next commission request for a Mass Effect story, getting the introduction and setup taken cared of with references to a much earlier chapter. I should have a fair time writing it as I have a good idea of what I would like to do with the characters involved.

The stream of Persona 3 Portable did indeed see us pick up in the middle of Taratus and it was most certainly a grind to cover a lot of ground to get to the 164th floor. There was a lot of back and forth to keep all the characters even in terms of levels outside of Yukari and Mitsuru, the later of which was needed to off-set the need to use ice skills to help keep a constant advantage.

The plot most certainly flew by as we covered both battles with Strega, the first against the male members of the trio and much later the one against Chidori, who is Junpei's love interest, who ends up dying in the end, sacrificing herself to revive Junpei after he is shot. It reminded me of the Star Trek episode 'The Empath', where Gem is in a position to use her abilities to heal McCoy from certain death. Still this at least gives some major motivation when it comes to what I'm guessing is a rematch against the other Strega members, since Junpei got the big anime yell moment.

But this does bring me to the plot of Persona 3, which in several ways is a follow up to elements I guess that happened in the original game or something in the Shin Megami Tensai universe, in the whole 'Bring About The Fall' plot, where we get Itkuski's betrayal, which would have been effective if it was timed to be actually at the end of the game, and the sudden introducing of Ryoji after the Death Arcana Social Link is completed. It really feels disjointed with the awkward pivot and focus.

Then comes Persona 3's other big problem in that you basically run out of things to do in the 'evening' portion of the game, unless you're going full bore to level grind wildly in Tartrus. If there was something I loved about Persona 5, its that there were enough Social Links only available in the evening hours to really make time fly by. 

Still I do know for tonight's stream we're pushing for another big Tartarus night with 50 floors to cover

Persona 3 Portable Achievements

• Settled the Score: Defeat the Hanged Man.
• Bond Maniac: Max out 10 Social Links.

For the raid, we dropped in on MissCammi316 who was playing Overwatch 2 over on twitch.tv/misscammi316

Now the plan start time for tonight's stream is 9:30 PM Eastern, because I already committed to working what evening hours I could get Tuesday to Friday this week. If for some reason I end up starting earlier than 9:30 PM, then you know something went wrong with that.

So on that note, we'll see you tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden