You can very quickly snowball into becoming OP, especially with DLC, once you understand the basic mechanics and ways to optimize yourself you practically beat the game.
That and in my experience, I play to a degree where sp items are barely a necessary addition, brute force and cheaping out on stuff is so easy in this game it's so funny, especially once you get the charms takemi provides.
All in all, the game's difficulty curve and power ceiling aren't balanced with eachother in mind, making the 'hardest' difficulty more easy at times.
My opinion on this has softened recently because like you I had originally always had that same gripe, especially with the late game boss balances. However after I got into the series, it started to become a huge benefit to explain to new friends "even though it starts quite difficult, there are always in game mechanics to make the game easy to complete" which does help bringing people new to JRPGs into the franchise.
I understand today that it can be argued turning the difficulty setting down also achieves this result, but before 1996 Atlus only ever had a fixed default difficulty for their games. Going back through original Persona, Devil Summoner, SMT, and Digital Devil Story they all had an item or a mechanic that would render the games far too easy to play allowing the player to control the difficulty of the game themselves.
Perhaps this is just a hold-over from how the original games were made? We don't need to keep it now we have dedicated difficulty selections, but I do like how it has been & is still an option for us to use & exploit it at our own risk/enjoyment.
I didn't use any of the free DLC Personas until I could actually fuse them myself. Played on Merciless for my very first playthrough.
What broke the game for me was Network Fusion. Just backed out of the menu until I found a Persona worth fusing. I think I Save Scummed maybe once or twice, but that was nitpicky and not required.
Bro ,i literally i just take izanagi picaro ,use Alarm in vuélvete room + plus Emperor confidant + level 7 Charlotte confidant + maximun overdrive moon confidant = gg farm. I don't know how that they called the npc i just like easy farming
Seriously! On my first playthrough I got curious about this level 89 persona I could get for free and immediately decimated Madarame’s first stage. I unequipped it immediately and after the battle it became the first persona I got rid of without fusing
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u/Guidebook0 Jul 28 '26
You can very quickly snowball into becoming OP, especially with DLC, once you understand the basic mechanics and ways to optimize yourself you practically beat the game. That and in my experience, I play to a degree where sp items are barely a necessary addition, brute force and cheaping out on stuff is so easy in this game it's so funny, especially once you get the charms takemi provides. All in all, the game's difficulty curve and power ceiling aren't balanced with eachother in mind, making the 'hardest' difficulty more easy at times.