What do you get when you mix the dungeon traversal, map-making, and combat of Etrian Odyssey with the skill system, characters, and difficulty of the Persona series? Well, a huge unbalanced mess but also this game. Persona Q is a blend of various elements from the previously mentioned two series, that strangely works but doesn't work.
To start, the game is canon to the stories of both Persona 3 and 4. Although, you don't have to played either game to understand what is going on in this game. It is probably a good idea because you won't understand a lot of the character development. I will say, the game is very good at blending both the themes of Persona 3 and Persona 4. Having the two casts meet was really neat and the scenes where the velvet residents are poking at each other is pretty good. Without spoiling the game, I think the themes are definitely on par with the Persona series.
Dungeon crawling is where the Etrian Odyssey series is mostly seen. You move through 3D mazes, building your map, finding treasure and shortcuts. Coming to this game soon after Etrian Odyssey IV, I felt right at home. The biggest different though, there are many puzzles and especially in the last two dungeons. They are incredibly tedious and sometimes just frustrating. Having to deal with the various FOEs as well was just a slap in the face. They definitely did not hold back in punishing the player for making one misstep. I am actually very glad I was playing on SAFETY and could just power through FOEs if I needed to because the last puzzle in the last labyrinth was absurdly long and esoteric and just completely unfun.
Having two casts of characters, there are a lot to choose from and each has their strengths and weaknesses in battle. Once I had my full team though, I never switched it up because trying to raise levels on lower characters was painful. Just as a tip, if you want an easier time, make sure to have Naoto with you. You'll figure out soon enough why. The normal fights range from tedious slogs to downright annoyances. Bosses are at least a little bit better as you can develop working strategies that don't immediately go off the rails for reasons outside of your control. In classic SMT fashion though, don't sleep on buffs/debuffs, they are crucial to winning. Hitting weaknesses was useful until about the midway point when magic becomes pretty much impossible given the SP usage. Even with good sub-personas and SP boosts, 4-5 fights can easily drain your SP and you are trekking back to replenish.
If you are a fan of either Etrian Odyssey or Persona, this game is worth it. Don't go into expecting an easy time, even on SAFETY there were times when I just had to bite the bullet and power through, letting my characters continually die just to get through. It wasn't a fun journey and at the end, I just wanted it to be over. I really have no desire to play the game ever again and I really don't want to recommend it to anybody. It really isn't fun to get into a random encounter, be surprise attacked when you have a skill that is supposed to greatly reduce that from happening, and then getting killed in two attacks. If I had lost progress when that happened to me, I would have given up. Luckily SAFETY means you are unkillable for the most part.
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