# Persona 3 FES or Persona 4?



## Butcher (Sep 27, 2014)

So, I only have enough money to buy one atm. I plan on buying them on PSN for my PS3.

So, I've already seen the Persona 4 anime, which was pretty good. Though I hear they raped the source material. I'm wondering would I still highly enjoy it despite already watching the anime?

I've seen the first Persona 3 movie that came out recently, which was just a big meh. It also got me interested in getting into Persona though. I already know I won't be spoiled much since they just adapted one season, and I know jack shit about the rest of the plot beyond the first movie. 

I've done extensive research on both of them. I know they both have great stories, awesome characters, some of the best RPGs to ever grace the gaming world. 

Basically, they sound around the same level. What I'm mainly looking for is great characters, plot is second, and gameplay is a little important since I don't want to get bored quickly from it. I want the combat to be fun too. Also, hardly any farming would be appreciated. 

Although the SoL does seem quite fun. I'm looking forward to that aspect of both games. 

ALSO, this will be my first turn-based JRPG. 

So, which game does the great people of NF think I should get?


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## crazymtf (Sep 27, 2014)

Persona 3 is great but 4 is a masterpiece IMO. Top 3 RPG on PS2.


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## Scratchy (Sep 28, 2014)

persona 3 is a big pile of shit, idc for 4.

go play nocturne


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## zenieth (Sep 28, 2014)

Ignoring the edgy asshole, go with p4.

p3 has quite a few faults p4 doesn't.


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## Scratchy (Sep 28, 2014)

if you've got access to a psp, get the p3 version for that, since it allows you to control your entire team, iirc. fes gameplay suffered because of the companion's AIs.

probably makes tartarus somewhat more tolerable.

and as zenieth said, get p4 first, although my point still stands.


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## VoodooKnight (Sep 28, 2014)

I'd say 4 myself as well.  It improved on a lot from 3/FES with the dungeon design, story, and game mechanics.

Of course, I'd say get the Vita version, but that'd cost far more.

Like Scratchy said, when you do get to Persona 3, start with the PSP one.  If you're a hardcore fan after that, then consider FES for the new story stuff.


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## Violent by Design (Sep 28, 2014)

Persona 4 seems better than Persona 3, I'd get 4. Though, I'm personally holding out on Persona 4 until I get a way to play the Golden version.


I'm enjoying Persona 3 Portable but it is grindy.


Personally, I'd just buy a PSP, hack it and dload P3P.


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## Millefeuille (Sep 28, 2014)

I'd say none  but if it's btw the two p3.


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## Butcher (Sep 28, 2014)

I'd get the PSP version if I could ,but I don't have a PSP so I'm just going to settle for both their versions on PS3.

Also, It turns out I am now able to get both . So, I'm just going to get P3 first, then P4. 

So, mods, you can lock this thread. 

Also, thanks guys for your input, twas much appreciated.


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## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Sep 28, 2014)

Persona has shit dungeons anyway compared to SMT and the story and characters are better in 3 imo.

So play 3 first


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## Canute87 (Sep 28, 2014)

Persona 4 has better gameplay mechanics and better freedom especially in control of your characters.

Persona 3 has a pretty cool story though.


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## zenieth (Sep 28, 2014)

3 has no story, it has the illusion of a story.

And saying persona has shit dungeons compared to main smt is pretty retarded since that's true of like 80% of all rpgs


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (Sep 28, 2014)

>shit dungeons

Sounds like someone never played Persona 1 and 2


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## zenieth (Sep 28, 2014)

brah, bomb shelter was, is, and forever will be a shit dungeon.


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (Sep 28, 2014)

But Ameno Torifune and Monado Mandala exists so it immediately kicks the shit out of the bomb shelter.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbutYegpbdg[/YOUTUBE]


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## scerpers (Sep 28, 2014)

3 if you want a game with horrible pacing, sub-par music, terrible and repetitive dungeons, fucking pathetically easy, dark and gritty mature story for mature gamers such as myself with some likeable characters.

4 if you want a game with horrible pacing, god awful music, terrible and repetitive dungeons, even more pathetically easy, cookie cutout characters from every shitty shonen anime ever who are also incredibly retarded and incompetent with memory issues, worthless character that's shoved down your throat constantly and melo-drama.

play persona 2.


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## Patchouli (Sep 28, 2014)

Play them all.

Except Persona 1.


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## Lord Genome (Sep 28, 2014)

if your gonna play both eventually play 3 first

if you play 4 first your gonna hate yourself playing 3 considering the gameplay differences


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## Tarot (Sep 28, 2014)

P3 FES would be a better start since it's almost like a reboot to the series and the battle system is a bit better. It also has a much longer story and more content. Both P3 and P4 are great tho.

P2 is shit. It has a slow tedious battle system, incredibly grindy, forces you to waste time conversing with the same demons over and over again to get arcana cards, there are far too many attributes to want to keep track of, the story is just grab-bag of lovecraftian lore and cliche's 90's anime tropes, and the fanbase are just a bunch whiny hipsters who are just jelly because its' sequels are more popular. So its like Soul Hackers, except terrible.  I've played pre-Nocturne SMT and enjoyed it, but P2 just felt like a giant chore.


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## Unlosing Ranger (Sep 28, 2014)

Only play p2, it isn't easy as shit.


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## The World (Sep 28, 2014)

don't play any persona games and play the main SMT games

or the Raidou stuff


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## Tarot (Sep 28, 2014)

Ringabel said:


> Only play p2, it isn't easy as shit.


^Implying P2 is actually hard


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## Qinglong (Sep 28, 2014)

Harder than babbysona

On Topic: 4 is the lesser of the two evils


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## Qinglong (Sep 28, 2014)

Scratchy said:


> go play nocturne



or just do this


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## GiveRobert20dollars (Sep 28, 2014)

Play Digital Devil Saga, or Nocturne


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (Sep 28, 2014)

Kyuuyakuu Megami Tensei will actually put fur on your nuts


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## Tarot (Sep 28, 2014)

Raidou Kuzunoha said:


> Kyuuyakuu Megami Tensei will actually put fur on your nuts


Because its actually good hard like Strange Journey, or Final Fantasy I hard where the game is just badly designed?

Back on topic: OP Here's a preview of the Persona fandom if you get into the series.
[YOUTUBE]0VLNOXkc7nk[/YOUTUBE]


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## Tarot (Sep 28, 2014)

plz, Nocturne is entry level shit compared to most NES RPG's, you're entering another plain of existence once you step into that threshold. Besides, everyone always ignores the Answer and the Elizabeth fight when they talk about P3 being so easy.

Off topic: I found DDS a lot harder than Nocturne. The only 3 bosses that gave me trouble were White Rider, Trumpeter, and Lucifer. Beelzebub was a complete joke despite what people told me.


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## Kurou (Sep 28, 2014)

wow

how can one person be so wrong


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## Unlosing Ranger (Sep 28, 2014)

Death Arcana said:


> plz, Nocturne is entry level shit compared to most NES RPG's, you're entering another plain of existence once you step into that threshold. Besides, everyone always ignores the Answer and the Elizabeth fight when they talk about P3 being so easy.
> 
> Off topic: I found DDS a lot harder than Nocturne. The only 3 bosses that gave me trouble were White Rider, Trumpeter, and Lucifer. Beelzebub was a complete joke despite what people told me.



>Implying that the Answer and Elizabeth aren't throwbacks to begin with


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (Sep 28, 2014)

Death Arcana said:


> plz, Nocturne is entry level shit compared to most NES RPG's, you're entering another plain of existence once you step into that threshold. Besides, everyone always ignores the Answer and the Elizabeth fight when they talk about P3 being so easy.
> 
> Off topic: I found DDS a lot harder than Nocturne. The only 3 bosses that gave me trouble were White Rider, Trumpeter, and Lucifer. Beelzebub was a complete joke despite what people told me.


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## Qinglong (Sep 28, 2014)

>Answer
>being hard

pick one and only one


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## VoodooKnight (Sep 28, 2014)

Geez.  You guys have enough rags to clean up the cum from all this circle jerking?


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## Violent by Design (Sep 29, 2014)

You guys really debating which of these RPGs are better based on what's harder..lol.


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## zenieth (Sep 29, 2014)

Qinglong said:


> Harder than babbysona
> 
> On Topic: 4 is the lesser of the two evils



>p2
>hard

it is literally the easiest persona


of all four entries

(yes I mean both versions.)


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## zenieth (Sep 29, 2014)

I mean jesus fuck.

I have to fight level 70 demons to put up a fight against my level 35 party. 


SEVENTY


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## zenieth (Sep 29, 2014)

But VoodooKnight and VbD are right

you fuckers circlejerk is blatant

And I say this with Nocturne being one of my favorite jrpgs


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (Sep 29, 2014)

We know that's just IS dude.

EP is a completely different matter together.


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## zenieth (Sep 29, 2014)

No it fucking isn't.

EP is harder than IS.

 it's not nearly as hard as persona

And is only as hard as p3 (though that's mostly due to p3 fuck retarded ai party)


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (Sep 29, 2014)

zenieth said:


> No it fucking isn't.
> 
> EP is harder than IS.
> 
> ...



You're telling me something you and I both know and that what I was getting at.

I mean hell, Tats comes in at like lvl 50 in EP and by then the game is neck deep in bullshit and Nyarl even towards max level can still deal a good 70%.

The overall difficulty would go like

Persona 1>>>EP>>>P4>>>P3>>>IS


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## zenieth (Sep 29, 2014)

Though death arcana is still full of shit.

p3, even including the answer can't hope to be as difficult as Nocturne, and most average nes rpgs aren't even a quarter as difficult as it.

Also saying DDS is harder is a stupid marker since most folks have either dds or nocturne as the hardest ps2 jrpg.

That's like saying "the only thing harder is the hardest thing ever, cha stop being so casual"


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## Unlosing Ranger (Sep 29, 2014)

zenieth said:


> I mean jesus fuck.
> 
> I have to fight level 70 demons to put up a fight against my level 35 party.
> 
> ...



with or without the broken ass combo attacks that show the p2 cast would wipe the floor with all the other persona games combined? Try doing the game without knowing what those combos are and what order to do them in. 



zenieth said:


> Though death arcana is still full of shit.
> 
> p3, even including the answer can't hope to be as difficult as Nocturne, and most average nes rpgs aren't even a quarter as difficult as it.
> 
> ...



DDS is a lot harder than Nocturne, but that's because of nocturne's AI , the certain abuse of prayer, meditate, and mana refill. 

DDS is far less forgiving if you fuck up on what to pick for boss battles you don't know are coming up. "Didn't pick the right thing and right party members to main at that time? Hope you're ready to fail a boss fight about 20 times and pray you can beat it out of luck." 

Nocturne you just have to have a proper build and stick to it to clear it fairly easily along with only certain demons, plays like a lot of SMT games.
You also don't get to actually fight the Demi-fiend.
Which is basically why it's harder.


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## TheForgottenPen (Sep 29, 2014)

Butcher said:


> So, I only have enough money to buy one atm. I plan on buying them on PSN for my PS3.
> 
> So, I've already seen the Persona 4 anime, which was pretty good. Though I hear they raped the source material. I'm wondering would I still highly enjoy it despite already watching the anime?
> 
> ...







Play Persona 4 
*Spoiler*: __ 



arena/ultimax


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## Tarot (Sep 29, 2014)

I like how this somehow turned into a big dick competition over RPG difficulty...and I participated >_> too much internet for today.


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## TheForgottenPen (Sep 29, 2014)

It has to be this way


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## zenieth (Sep 29, 2014)

Ringabel said:


> with or without the broken ass combo attacks that show the p2 cast would wipe the floor with all the other persona games combined? Try doing the game without knowing what those combos are and what order to do them in.



...friend, I've been playing the game since 07. It's got nothing to do with fusion spells. P2 is easy

always was, always has been.

I'm not even addressing the other point, cause why the fuck even bring it up? I never argued about dds' difficulty or lack there of.



But this thread's gone way off tangent and the op's already made his decision. This shit needs a lock.


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## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Sep 29, 2014)

TheForgottenPen said:


> It has to be this way



[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcpGIVbPYrI[/YOUTUBE]


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## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Sep 29, 2014)




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## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Sep 29, 2014)

my point was it makes more sense to play p3 because its more clever than p4 and has more interesting themes than 

DEALING WITH MAH DEMONS

Considering how edgy persona 3 looks on the surface, I bet they took that shit even further and somewhere along the lines they decided to set what is basically CRAWLING IN MY SKIN, to a happy go lucky murder mystery contained story of feel good jives.  


Persona 3 is more GRAVITY OF THE WORLD type stuff though. But the underlying themes are actually quite profound as you pick the characters brain. Personally I think dealing with the inevitability of your death gave the game a better narrative direction


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## Qinglong (Sep 29, 2014)

I had already looked over both just a few day's prior to this topic

I'm still cringing at how fucking awful I was back then when I finished both True Ends

but w/e


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## Naruto (Sep 29, 2014)

You fucking people 

>OP asks a Persona question
>Thread turns into SMT circlejerk

Having only played Persona 3, OP, I can say my experience was negative. I didn't expect 80% dating sim and 20% grinding a boring, repetitive dungeon.



Maybe Persona 4 is better but I wouldn't know. Voodoo Knight is a huge fan of the whole series so I would trust his opinion.


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (Sep 29, 2014)

Persona 4 is roughly the same thing, the only difference being you get multiple randomized dungeons to look at instead of just Tatarus for the whole game.

4 has an actual ongoing plot with the whole murder mystery schtick and not just wait till 3/4 of the game is done to actually get started but like around every month there's always something going on to progress the story.

As someone said, 4 is the lesser of two evils as far as, do you want to play something that makes you feel at least you made progress or just dungeon grind for the entirety of the game while playing an epilogue chapter that makes me wanna slap Yukari.


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## scerpers (Sep 29, 2014)

i didn't bring smt into the thread at all. just saiyan


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## Unlosing Ranger (Sep 29, 2014)

zenieth said:


> ...friend, I've been playing the game since 07. It's got nothing to do with fusion spells. P2 is easy
> 
> always was, always has been.


Do you happen to grind and fight every battle, because my characters were always being nearly one shotted in p2 unlike in p3 and p4 which tells me something else.


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## Raidou Kuzunoha (Sep 29, 2014)

You can more or less coast fights in Innocent Sin save for a few boss fights since they were pricks (fuck you knights).

EP on the other hand can and will kick your ass and its vital to get new Personas.


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## creative (Oct 17, 2014)

I would go with 4, if only because the fighting feels a bit more simplified, thus you should, in theory spend way less time grinding compared to persona 3.


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## Missing_Nin (Oct 31, 2014)

they're pretty close for me, but i have to give the nod to p4.  you control your character in p4.  i didnt mind AI much, but there were times where it would do some stuff that you wouldnt do if you were optimizing.  there's more interaction between the characters in p4 compared to p3.  in ps3 it feels like your team really isnt together much and just get together during the dungeons.  the story would depend on you, both are good while p3 would be consider 'darker.'  oh i didnt like the psp version much cause of the VN type play.  if you've already finished 3 though it's good cause of controlling character, skill transfer, quick travel, etc.


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## Hack Snyder (Oct 31, 2014)

Persona 4 for being able to control all the characters during battles. Love both though.


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## Buskuv (Oct 31, 2014)

P3 needs a 'The Golden' treatment for the Vita.

Hell, do it for all the PS2 SMT games.


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## Izaya (Oct 31, 2014)

Love both but I definitely prefer Persona 4.

Better gameplay, more likeable characters, and improved dungeon crawling.

I liked Adachi more than Strega just gonna be honest here


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## Yagura (Oct 31, 2014)

My biggest complaint about the Persona games have been the  dungeons being randomly generated. It makes things feel repetitive, fast. Specifically when you have to grind, like you do significantly in 3. You, however, do less of that in 4 - and dungeons at least feel fairly distinct. Go with 4.



Dr. Boskov Krevorkian said:


> P3 needs a 'The Golden' treatment for the Vita.
> 
> Hell, do it for all the PS2 SMT games.



I think you mean PS4.

The Vita is kinda a corpse at this point.


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## shit (Oct 31, 2014)

Fuck da vita and everyone who supported it


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## Missing_Nin (Oct 31, 2014)

Naruto said:


> You fucking people
> 
> >OP asks a Persona question
> >Thread turns into SMT circlejerk
> ...



if you dont like the style of P3 i dont see how you're going to like P4.  the set-up is similar: you go to school and do SL, go to dungeons to rescue people, rinse and repeat.  you're either a fan or you dont like it.  i like it and cant wait till P5.


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## Butcher (Nov 1, 2014)

So, I dunno how this got to be over 4+ pages when I decided to get both on the first page, but w/e.

I finished Persona 3 FES yesterday. Its a pretty good game, and I didn't like the SoL aspect, the battles were okay, and the story was really good. Character were a lot better than I was expecting too. 

Going back to the SoL part, I only gave a shit about Aigis & Mitsuru social links. Everyone else's Social Links were boring as hell. I wouldn't know about Fuuka's since I didn't earn enough courage. 

I'm pretty mad Shinjiro didn't get developed as much as he should have either. Plus, he was one of my best team members.

The ending was also quite good. I nearly cried from Aigis. Definitely my favorite character from Persona so far.

Also, while I've been playing P3: FES, my brother has been slowly trekking his way through P4. Out of the P4 cast, Yosuke is my favorite, and my second favorite character in Persona next to Aigis.


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## Buskuv (Nov 2, 2014)

Yagura said:


> My biggest complaint about the Persona games have been the  dungeons being randomly generated. It makes things feel repetitive, fast. Specifically when you have to grind, like you do significantly in 3. You, however, do less of that in 4 - and dungeons at least feel fairly distinct. Go with 4.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Vita's doin' fine.

I play it more than my PS4 lol.


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## Yagura (Nov 2, 2014)

Dr. Boskov Krevorkian said:


> Vita's doin' fine.
> 
> I play it more than my PS4 lol.



...uh huh. I don't know what your definition of 'doing fine' is but it's not mine and it certainly isn't Sony's, given even they have stopped supporting their own device. Not even the Wii U has it that bad.

That said, I would love to see updated versions of these games on home consoles. I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened yet.


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## Buskuv (Nov 3, 2014)

I'm sure we will.

There's not much to update, though, aside from HD textures so when Atlus goes Capcom on us and releases a bunch of HD updated SMT titles, with little to no extra content, I'm sure we'll all be thrilled.


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