I decided to use my clear data to play Persona 4 again, and a few thoughts occurred to me.

  • I should have saved up more money before beating the game
  • I should have made one of the “ultimate blocker” personas and a mid-level persona with all 4 ma~la spells, or a high level persona with ma~dyne spells and spell master
  • It probably would have been worth it to level Lucifer up to L99 in order to get Victory Cry since Cool Breeze etc. isn’t as useful at low levels.
  • Arguably it would be a good idea not to complete the persona compendium on the first play-through so that you can get the mandara robe on your second play-through. This could easily be achieved by choosing not to fuse either Fortuna, Abaddon, or Mara. Possibly abstaining from one of the low level persona that you don’t need or want for a social link or a special fusion would be an option as well but that would require such intention from the start of the game.
  • Upon starting the new game I should have only summoned up Yoshitsune, one of the persona I had Cool Breeze on (I somehow had an Arahabaki with that, absorb fire, and natural reflect physical that isn’t bad, although Isis might be a better option), and the Norn I was using (couple of auto ma-kaja skills as well as wind boost and amp for great power, and debilitate of course). I also summoned Beelzebub and that was probably OK, but Lucifer (without victory cry) and Helel were expensive and just take up space at this point in the game.
  • Getting the social links maxed out was kind of fun the first time around, but trying to do it a second time is a pain in the ass. Other than getting a few bonus or otherwise slightly different scenes, and needing to pass the game days somehow,  it’s probably not all that important to max links the second time around aside from the party members you want to use, the fox, and Margaret. The 3 job related s. links might be worth the easy money to max out since your stats should be maxed as well.
  • I should have made sure that I had all the persona that Margaret requests registered right from the start so that it would have been easy to max out. Instead I have to wait until level 68 late in the game to fuse a Trumpeter with Mind Charge again.
  • It’s not really necessary to bother buying new equipment for your party members early on since your main character with a level 85-99 persona might as well be invincible (or if you fused an invincible persona, then he really will be), will always go first anyway, can take out most enemies with one physical attack, and all but early bosses with one special attack.
  • Most quests probably aren’t worth going out of your way to complete since you don’t get anything special for completing all of them, and they ultimately just end out making you a small amount of money which should no longer be necessary. Of course if you’re beating up the optional bosses then you have to complete each dungeon twice anyway, so you would already be encountering the enemies that you need to get stuff from.
  • Like any other work of fiction, the story isn’t that engrossing the second time around in P4. Knowing the truth from the start puts certain events into perspective, but it’s also frustrating that you have no options to alter the course of the story. So unless you’re a hardcore Megaten fan you might want to wait a month or more until you forget the plot somewhat to play it again.
  • This game could have really benefited from some kind of scene skipping option in addition to the regular ability to fastforward text. Even the sorriest of visual novels let you fast forward until you get to something new and that would have been great for a replay of this game.
  • I kind of wish I had a cheat device so that I could skip all the battles or something, and since that’s the whole point of dungeon crawlers like P4 maybe I’m just not that into this game anymore.
  • This is a little too long for bullet points.
  • It really looks like crap too.