Part 213: Addendum II: Samsara

Addendum II: Samsara

While we wait for more information on just what Persona 5: The motherfucking Royal is, let’s get into what New Game+ in this game entails. In every modern Persona game it’s a tiny bit different, with Persona 3 being the biggest outlier in that pretty much everything except your inventory, including the main character’s level and equipped Personas, carried over there.






We get to choose, and we obviously decide to carry it over because fuck if I’m gonna go through the hassle of optimizing my schedule again.




Let’s go through this list item-by-item and see what it means and how it compares other games in the series.

• Social Stats: Our Knowledge, Guts, Proficiency, Kindness, and Charm will all carry over. This is a mainstay of the series’ New Game Plus modes because without it going through the game again would just be agonizing. All three modern Persona games let you transfer this, and sometimes there are even special dialogue options you can only pick on New Game Plus, though that’s mainly just a Persona 4 thing.
  
• Persona Compendium: Also, duh. We can summon any Persona we’ve already obtained again as soon as we gain access to the Compendium, though it still costs money. The discounts still apply, though, which is nice. Again, all three games do this.
  
• Skill Cards: Most consumables do not carry over, but Skill Cards do. This was also true of Persona 4 Golden, though only the ones in Marie’s stock would transfer, not the ones in your inventory. I do not believe Persona 3 Portable’s skill cards transferred, either.
  
• Equipment: All armor, weapons, guns, and accessories will come with us, though we obviously can’t give Makoto her awesome +10 to everything gun until she rejoins the party. The main character kept their equipment in Persona 3’s NG+, but in P4 you had to start from scratch. In Golden however, you could just rebuy any weapons you needed from Daidara immediately because his stock did transfer. Costumes transferred too, but those are mostly DLC.
  
• Money: We keep all the money we have in our wallet. That’s also in all of them, but we don’t actually have that much right now due to all that fusin’ I did last update.
  
• Playtime: The number keep go up, yay!!!!!!
  
  Now, you’ll also notice a few conspicuous absences from this list. What about…
  
  
• Items?
  
• Our equipped Personas?
  
• Confidant progress?
  
• Our levels?
  
• Our chocolate fountain and other assorted knickknacks we have decorating our room?
  

Nope! But now at least we can have the special experience of having the game’s obvious plot twists become even more painful as our bumblefuck main characters blindly waltz into the world’s least subtle conspiracy!

Anyway, there’s one more thing we don’t have, but I’ll get to it in a bit.



“Special items” here is a pretty broad set, comprising of not just the farewell gifts, but also the Christmas and Valentine’s presents we got from Haru.




One of those items, the hat Haru gave us, will allow us to progress her Confidant every time we hang out with her as long as we have a matching Persona. Haru’s probably the least useful person for that bonus, though. It’s much better for someone like Kawakami, but yikes to that!



And finally, the farewell presents confer their own benefits, in that they will immediately unlock some abilities once we activate their Confidants again. The utility of most of these directly correlates with how useful the Confidant’s skills were in the first place, so Ohya’s is still garbage while Tora and Shinya’s are fucking amazing.



Now, let’s skip forward a bit and check our inventory at the first opportunity, which is about half an hour in even skipping through everything as fast as possible. Ignore the Medicines, those are automatically given to you at the start. Haru’s Valentine’s chocolate will fully restore one ally’s SP, neat.




All our skill cards, right where we left them.





These tabs have been completely emptied out.



Our Key Items tab is full to bursting, though. We still have our items that let us fuse certain special Personas.



We also have that hat that lets us advance Haru’s Confidant quickly.



Now we get into the farewell gifts. Makoto's Buchi Calculator lets us see if an enemy nulls, drains, or repels our chosen element when we target them.



Soil Improvement was the skill that let us get veggies quicker, as you’ll recall.



Ann’s Fashion Magazine lets us get Sexy Technique (“Chance to seduce the enemy during negotiation and steer discussion,” whatever that means) and Crocodile Tears(make the enemy ask for less during negotiations), neither of which are very useful, particularly because they only apply to hostage situations, which are incredibly rare!.



Futaba’s Promise List gets us Treasure Reboot and Mementos Scan.



Kawakami’s “Unlimited Service” (ugh) gets us the Special Massage (why) immediately.



Takemi’s Dog Tag gives us access to her entire inventory.



Chihaya’s Fortune Tarot Card lets us use any of her fortune readings we want.



Ohya’s Interview Notes gives us her final skill, letting us reduce security level gains to 3%. Not great.



Hifumi’s Kosha Piece gives us Touryou, which will allow instant escapes from battle (though not from ambushes). Really woulda liked mid-battle switches on anyone’s turn, though.



Ryuji’s Sports Watch gives Ryuji’s Harisen Recovery. It’s useful, but come on, not even a unique skill!?



Morgana’s Morgana’s Scarf gives us Pickpocket, so we have a bizarrely small chance to steal an item when Joker melees.



Sojiro’s Recipe Notes lets us make the best coffee and curry whenever we want.



Mishima’s Documentary Plans gives us all his experience skills, including the highest experience boost and full experience for backup party members.



Iwai’s Gecko Pin lets us do any customizations we want.



Lavenza’s Cell Key lets us use any of the special Velvet Room features.



Yusuke’s Desire and Hope lets us copy any Skill Card.



Yoshida’s Fountain Pen just gives us all his skills, why not? Negotiation won’t be that useful on NG+ because we already have pretty much every Persona we’ll run into, but we can still ask for lots of money!



Shinya’s Gun Controller also gives us all his skills. This is probably the best one in the game and is only tempered by how late we have to wait to benefit from it. Oda Special’s crit boost alone is nuts.



And Sae’s Business Card… gives us nothing. Great job, Sae. I can always count on you.

But, as I mentioned earlier… we’re missing something. Something big. And if you paid attention to that huge list of items, you might know what it is. See, we didn’t actually get items from every Confidant we had, because two of them were dead. Akechi didn’t have any permanent benefits anyway, so no loss there, but Fake Igor… Fake Igor gave us something pretty fucking important that we’re gonna have to wait a while to get back.



Hope you like having six Persona slots again, shithead! Katsura Hashino can bite my ass. Not for this in particular, just in general.



While we’re here, let’s check out our equipment.





All of it’s still there! Well, except the guns, we hadn’t done that tutorial yet when I took these shots so we don’t have them.

Anyway, New Game+ should be… something. Persona and SMT in general, despite what can sometimes be a somewhat steep initial learning curve for players new to the series, doesn’t really “do” postgame content. Persona 3 had a bonus dungeon and P3P added some challenge fights, but this game has a bonus boss unique to NG+, and that’s kind of it. We’ll see that fight, but it’s not like there’s a plethora of new shit waiting just beyond the horizon. We’ll see how this goes, but I’m just gonna say now: it’s gonna be surprisingly light in new anything.