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I've been playing Persona 3 lately. I have a 76 hour file and i'm still not done. I'm thinking about possibly doing a speedrun for this brutally difficult and epic game but It will probably be way too long since you can't really skip cutscenes. In addition, the game is tough and a speedrun would only make it harder. Luckily there is a "solution" to this... a "bad ending" speedrun. Tartarus bosses are no longer a problem and the "final boss" ends up being Chidori (she's really easy).
Unfortunately, I don't think that most of the run would be interesting to watch since it'd be button mashing during cutscenes and "go to school, go to dorm, and go to sleep" over and over. Any comments, thoughts, or suggestions?
Thread title:  
welcome to the machine
I like the game a lot and you couldn't pay me to verify something like this, sorry.  It just isn't a good idea.

Maybe if you new game + a good ending run it would be watchable (in the sense that the viewer could skip through the 29 days per month of 'go to school, go home' and watch the one day of tartarus), but then it would almost certainly shatter SDA's time limit.  I know Enhasa said in the ffx update that he didn't really know if a time limit would exist when push came to shove, but he wasn't considering p3. :/

Also: you can hold triangle to skip through cutscene dialogue really fast.
yeah. I know what you mean. The game's structure is not speedrun friendly. I just like to experiment with stuff like that.lol.
everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
If Xenogears is specifically in the FAQ as too long, this game is screwed.
I'd recommend The Answer if you're seriously considering speedrunning Persona 3 / 4.
THE GAME!!
It would be a very boring speedrun. Don't get me wrong, I think Persona 3 is awesome. I just think a speedrun itself would probably bore the runner.
I'm sure everyone here has moved on, however I'd like to try to keep this game in contention for a discussion. I don't think the route would be much more boring than most JRPGs with dialogue overload.

A 14:09 run was done in Japan but is a private video on Nicovideo and thus, I don't think anyone can view it. I don't think there's anyway a 14:09 is the shortest possible run for this game.
Speed is all that matters.
Good job at reviving a 4 year old thread, I guess.

Anyways, to give some input on this.
You can always just assume that the fastest known run on games that aren't SMB1 or so is actually beatable.

In terms of what Ragnarok said 4 years ago, his logic was flawed to begin with. Full Moon bosses will wreck you if you just go to the dorm and sleep for 30/31 days a month, regardless of how easy Chidori might be. Additionally, you wouldn't want to run bad ending anyways since about all SMT and Persona games are usually done with best ending on hardest difficulty.
Aside from that, Persona 3 is not speed run unfriendly, the issue just lies in figuring out what you need to make it speed run friendly, similar to Persona 4. Given that it's turn based and you can manipulate the AI it's not any harder/luck dependent than other turn based RPGs, take FFX for example.

With that said, I have no fucking clue why I respond to a thread that's been dead for over 4 years.
I thought responding to this thread was probably better than starting a new one.

I didn't get the Chidori ending before so I'm unsure of it's practicality in terms of being a satisfying ending or anything, but it sure as hell is faster. I would assume that if this game actually ever did get off the ground as something people run at all then it'd be a different category or whatever, but who can say.

It's hard for me to imagine a P4 run could be done in 9 hours or so but that 3 is impossible. Perhaps the popularity of 4 just eclipsed it enough to where the demand/interest isn't there?

Dunno. It's something I'd like to work on, but there's no way I'm the most expert on even the fundamentals of what the optimal run entails. I would assume one would take the hardest boss in the run statistically (Nyx or whatever is before Chidori depending on where that debate ends up) and work backwards to find the minimal party setup that can defeat that boss relatively safely. Then go backwards from there.
Speed is all that matters.
WR for Persona 4 is 15:23 - EXPERT, Izanami END.

Fastest known for P3 FES is 14:09:16 - HARD, Nyx END

Honestly, no one would really care about anything besides best ending for these.
Depending on the version you play, I think the time for P3 could be shortened. If I remember correctly, you have infinite stamina on the nights before the full moons in the original game (not FES), meaning unless you wanted to optimize some social links (or do a 100% run, which some walkthroughs have already been mapped), you could essentially turn the entire run into a sleepfest with one night of grinding levels and obtaining personas before taking on the story bosses without getting tired or sick. I also think going for the Nyx ending would be a little more acceptable as a goal instead of going for a bad ending.
Bad ending in P3 is really a nonsense. I think every run of this game should aim for nyx (even not in hard mode).
Speed is all that matters.
Quote from Otakutom:
Depending on the version you play, I think the time for P3 could be shortened. If I remember correctly, you have infinite stamina on the nights before the full moons in the original game (not FES), meaning unless you wanted to optimize some social links (or do a 100% run, which some walkthroughs have already been mapped), you could essentially turn the entire run into a sleepfest with one night of grinding levels and obtaining personas before taking on the story bosses without getting tired or sick. I also think going for the Nyx ending would be a little more acceptable as a goal instead of going for a bad ending.

That would never work in a serious route. Grinding levels is also slow and without proper social linking you'd have to grind even more.
Getting tired or sick is almost never an issue after the first like two times you go to tartarus.

So far there's only very few occasions where you need to actually "grind" a few enemies for EXP in order to progress on your fusion chart and even then you'd specifically kill red shadows if possible.

And to give my two cents about the matter: Bad ending runs should never be a thing.
Quote from Neviutz:
Quote from Otakutom:
Depending on the version you play, I think the time for P3 could be shortened. If I remember correctly, you have infinite stamina on the nights before the full moons in the original game (not FES), meaning unless you wanted to optimize some social links (or do a 100% run, which some walkthroughs have already been mapped), you could essentially turn the entire run into a sleepfest with one night of grinding levels and obtaining personas before taking on the story bosses without getting tired or sick. I also think going for the Nyx ending would be a little more acceptable as a goal instead of going for a bad ending.

That would never work in a serious route. Grinding levels is also slow and without proper social linking you'd have to grind even more.
Getting tired or sick is almost never an issue after the first like two times you go to tartarus.

So far there's only very few occasions where you need to actually "grind" a few enemies for EXP in order to progress on your fusion chart and even then you'd specifically kill red shadows if possible.

And to give my two cents about the matter: Bad ending runs should never be a thing.

Yea, thinking about it more, doing the S Links would make the level grinding shorter, and would take less time than fighting in Tartarus, but some of the prerequisites for them can take some time.

I think if I speedrun this game, I'd do it as a 100% run.
Speed is all that matters.
Quote from Otakutom:
Quote from Neviutz:
Quote from Otakutom:
Depending on the version you play, I think the time for P3 could be shortened. If I remember correctly, you have infinite stamina on the nights before the full moons in the original game (not FES), meaning unless you wanted to optimize some social links (or do a 100% run, which some walkthroughs have already been mapped), you could essentially turn the entire run into a sleepfest with one night of grinding levels and obtaining personas before taking on the story bosses without getting tired or sick. I also think going for the Nyx ending would be a little more acceptable as a goal instead of going for a bad ending.

That would never work in a serious route. Grinding levels is also slow and without proper social linking you'd have to grind even more.
Getting tired or sick is almost never an issue after the first like two times you go to tartarus.

So far there's only very few occasions where you need to actually "grind" a few enemies for EXP in order to progress on your fusion chart and even then you'd specifically kill red shadows if possible.

And to give my two cents about the matter: Bad ending runs should never be a thing.

Yea, thinking about it more, doing the S Links would make the level grinding shorter, and would take less time than fighting in Tartarus, but some of the prerequisites for them can take some time.

I think if I speedrun this game, I'd do it as a 100% run.

There's no % counter so you'd have to run something silly arbitrary and not actually 100%. Besides the addition of "100%" over "Nyx END" would not make the run any more interesting, it would also leave you with less routing choices and would basically just resemble a casual playthrough of a completionist just with skipping all the text.

Of course, in the end it's totally up to you what you want to run. Just keep that in mind what I pointed out.
Messing with routes now. My exploration strats are basically to try to max social links and play swiftly. I'd like for my final game time on the exploration run to be about 25 hours. That would mean that I could cut about half just due to mistakes and screwing around/bathroom breaks,etc. From there I could start peeling off social links and leveling I didn't need until I have comfortable strats for each boss.

I will say that the beginning through June is really easy to run. Nekomata and Ari Mitama are the only Personas you sort of need and even then, I'm not convinced it's required. Cadenza alone gets you through so many fights you would otherwise die in. I've fought all the way through Change Relic (mid-boss on 2nd Tartarus block) with almost zero leveling. On each floor, I split up the team and just climb stairs that way. Obviously I'll hit a ceiling at some point and have to grind some, but nevertheless, I don't think it's a totally unreasonable run. Entertaining...well...that's going to vary from person to person.

The big question is how much Academic/Charm/Courage is needed and what social links are actually required to get through the mid to late game safely?
I would've thought someone else would have pasted this by now, but since no one has:



This is Venick's (now month's old) boss skip technique. In case this bloated corpse of a run still has a breath or two.
Edit history:
Toothache: 2014-05-14 08:54:31 am
Let the music play!


There is the first video of a low level run on P3P's Maniac Mode, in progress atm (got as far as the Hanged Man fight at time of posting), proving you don't necessarily need to grind to a huge level in order to beat this game. However, these strats do require an awful amount of prep work, especially the amount of Magic/Attack Mirrors needed and the Persona's fused with all the powers needed to ease through these battles. I'm sure there are even easier ways to get through this game on the PS2 versions, even with the reduced control of the other characters.
Is there any route written down for a P3P route at all anywhere at all, and on what difficulty?
There are few, if any, notes of any kind. I've been sort of checking in on this game every few months for over a year and nobody is touching it. The 14:xx hour run from Nicovideo is private and I've never seen it nor do I know anyone who has. The general consensus of this game as speedrun viable stands currently with the following:

-NG+ is broken because Armageddon is OP. Even a NG+ mode without Armageddon or with random self-nerfs (solo MC challenge, etc. whatever) is generally considered too niche for anyone to want to seriously mess with. It's too off the path from the intent of speedrunning the game to start with. NG+ runs are common in speedrunning, but not with a bunch of self-policing restrictions to make it matter.

-The Venick boss skip (posted a few posts up by me) was met with almost universal apathy. Romscout himself messed with the trick and got it, but still, he never touched it again. Then I experimented with it and found out why. While not TERRIBLY difficult to do, it is super-unreliable. It isn't totally in the realm of TAS-type stuff, but God is it close. So the biggest skip/breakthrough is pretty much unusable.

-The Answer on FES is probably the closest anyone has to a version of P3 that's runnable in any kind of traditional sense. And even then, I'm not sure anyone is doing it. It still takes a ton of luck (getting quick drops w/ the right Personas after battles). The grinding is monotonous in a casual game and even worse when you're on the clock.

Basically, until someone finds an INSANE sequence break or finds a glitch that makes grinding/battles less miserable, this game isn't viable.
I question how any RPG speedrun can be called unviable in a universe where people unironically attempt to speedrun Dragon Warrior VII. Smiley
It's true.

It's more a matter of it being unviable for what most people consider to be a reasonable amount of completion time. One runner (forgive me, his handle escapes me) was doing lots of work w/ both this and Persona 4, but runs rarely finished, the data mining was super deep without yielding much gold, and again, speedrunning the game straight-up just takes soooo long compared to a usual speed game.

Technically, a flawlessly coded game with zero exploits that takes 80 hours to compete minimum is still speedrun viable. It's just that pretty much nobody is going to want to do it. Persona games have the cultural issue of not passing "the ear test." When someone says they can beat Mario in 5 minutes or Final Fantasy 7 in 7 hours, it immediately sounds amazing and you want to know more. Saying you can beat Persona 3 in 15 or 16 hours isn't really the same sort of statement.

Game needs a huge find to knock 2 or 3 hours off. That could possibly get the ball rolling, but even still, a significant portion of the run would be flying through dialogue, which is historically unappetizing in a speedrun.
Speed is all that matters.
Quote:
The 14:xx hour run from Nicovideo is private and I've never seen it nor do I know anyone who has.

In fact, it's only semi-private. It's restricted to people that are part of his community. He's also very secretive about his route because he thinks it's not that great.. or something along the lines.

Quote:
-NG+ is broken because Armageddon is OP. Even a NG+ mode without Armageddon or with random self-nerfs (solo MC challenge, etc. whatever) is generally considered too niche for anyone to want to seriously mess with. It's too off the path from the intent of speedrunning the game to start with. NG+ runs are common in speedrunning, but not with a bunch of self-policing restrictions to make it matter.


Whatever, if you really think it's what you wanna do then go for it. Although NG+ in Persona games is incredibly silly to speed run.
Don't even think about adding restriction like no Armageddon to it, lmao. It's not supposed to be a challenge run and adding restrictions have no place in speed runs.

Quote:
-The Venick boss skip (posted a few posts up by me) was met with almost universal apathy. Romscout himself messed with the trick and got it, but still, he never touched it again. Then I experimented with it and found out why. While not TERRIBLY difficult to do, it is super-unreliable. It isn't totally in the realm of TAS-type stuff, but God is it close. So the biggest skip/breakthrough is pretty much unusable.


The boss skip is super unreliable and you should probably not use it except for like once or twice. Even then, you kind of need regular back-up strats if you fail it. The real problem is that even turbo doesn't do the job consistently.

Quote:
-The Answer on FES is probably the closest anyone has to a version of P3 that's runnable in any kind of traditional sense. And even then, I'm not sure anyone is doing it. It still takes a ton of luck (getting quick drops w/ the right Personas after battles). The grinding is monotonous in a casual game and even worse when you're on the clock.


Runable in any kind of traditional sense? Lolwut?
Anyhow, given that Episode Aigis is only a bit over 3 hours it's less of a stretch to work on compared to Episode Yourself.

Quote:
Basically, until someone finds an INSANE sequence break or finds a glitch that makes grinding/battles less miserable, this game isn't viable.


Well, you don't seem to know that the actual issue at this point is the gain of money in a reasonably amount of time, not the actual fights, even less so the "grinding".

Quote:
Game needs a huge find to knock 2 or 3 hours off. That could possibly get the ball rolling, but even still, a significant portion of the run would be flying through dialogue, which is historically unappetizing in a speedrun.


The only way to cut that much time would be to be able to fast forward through text or skip "some" of it entirely.
Edit history:
Fragmaster01: 2015-02-03 11:21:34 pm
Wiggle wiggle
Honestly, you'd be better off running an SMT game that doesn't have all the non-combat dialoguey stuff. Persona 1/2, or the SMT series proper.

They're still super long. I think Nocturne TDE was like 16 hours(with a death in the 3rd kalpa to Raidou), though the videos aren't showing on romscout's twitch archive sadly.
Caution: This user contains Kana ^_^
Quote from Fragmaster01:
Honestly, you'd be better off running an SMT game that doesn't have all the non-combat dialoguey stuff. Persona 1/2, or the SMT series proper.

Wait wot? Persona 1 has a ton of dialogue which you can't even skip through quickly … I would know, I'm still routing it xD