Part 244: Difficulties

Welcome to the Velvet Room: A Difficulty For Those Who Enjoy the Thrill of Death

So let's talk about the difficulties available in this a bit. There are a full five difficulties in Portable, up from the two in the original (Easy and Normal) and three in the FES rerelease (which added Hard). Let's talk about them a bit and what this being on Hard actually means (though you've probably seen some hints of it if you watch the Guardian battles closely).

The first difficulty is also the first new one, Beginner. This is a difficulty for those who really don't care much about the rpg elements, being real. The original game itself was already pretty easy (though they did make Normal a bit more challenging in this later on than it was in vanilla P3) and between making enemies weaker and the number of continues Beginner gives you (basically you are able to resist dying and Game Overing) it really does sort of make the game just a visual novel with some rpg stuff for flavor.

The second difficulty is Easy, which is pretty much Easy from the original. You get some continues and I want to say the enemies might not hit quite as hard. It's definitely easier and again given how easy the game already is most of the time the only real reason I can think of for it is that you're afraid of some of the Tartarus Guardians and don't want them to be mean to you.

The third difficulty is Normal, and it's what it says on the box. You don't get any special favors, nor do the enemies. As I mentioned before, they've actually done some things that do improve the difficulty of the game as it progresses and if you're as cavalier as you honestly could be in the original you can run into some serious problems from things that were sort of laughable in the prior releases.

The fourth difficulty is Hard, and it's actually sort of interesting what it does. It makes enemies hit harder across the board but otherwise leaves them pretty much unchanged. So, you are in the interesting position of having enemies you can pretty trivially kill in Tartarus that also easily hit people for 1/3-1/2 of their health in a go. A firm grasp of the sort of weaknesses a given Shadow type will have is pretty mandatory, because you don't want to waste a lot of time waiting for analysis if you can help it. Taking advantage of Defend where applicable is also pretty important in Portable, since you'll easily see people killed in a single hit by their weakness. Also I think the compendium costs more on Hard, which is a common thing for SMT games on higher difficulties.

There's a fifth difficulty, one that I'd have played on but it sort of defeats one of my intents in this LP (namely to show off all the social links but not have to play to some crazy strict schedule). It's called Maniac, and that's who it's for. Not only is it harder than Hard, you also don't get to bring stuff in from your previous cycles. For everyone who ever said that Persona 3 is super easy, this is your difficulty because it definitely won't be here.

At some point I'll make some videos of Tartarus so you can see where Hard difficulty sometimes creeps in and I inadvertently get half the party killed to trash Shadows because I missed a weakness or just have no idea what the fuck I'm supposed to hit the target with. It's happened and it'll happen again. Perhaps I'll even do some commentary on a big terrible raw Tartarus video if I get really drunk one night or something. Who knows.