Topic: Persona 4 Golden

I got this at the weekend after many years hearing nothing but good things and Persona 5 incoming. I'm about 6-7 hours through now and it's starting to pick up. Think I'm nearly done with the first dungeon. Really enjoying it at the moment.

Any tips, especially in regard to fusing personas? I don't entirely understand it. Am I basically trying to get cards after battles and then fusing those cards in the velvet room to create personas that are in line with my max equipable level? Should I be fusing my favourite personas or levelling them up? Should I rely on only one Persona at a time or try and have a couple that I regularly switch between in battle? Also, I've 3 team members but I only seem able to change the equipped persona of my main character - is that correct?

Any clarification/other tips?

Social links are the key to making strong Personas because that allows you to make stronger Personas than your current level. Join clubs, make friends, spend time with your friends, do well in school and become more popular.

@kyleforrester87: As well as what @Wesker says, I'd say feel free to experiment with your Personas and don't be too scared to go mad fusing stuff if it seems better than what you've got. Generally speaking, you will become more powerful by fusing higher level personas than you will by continuing to level up a lower level persona.

This was by far the hardest aspect of the game for me to grasp properly, as it's very counter-intuitive to other RPG systems where continuous nurturing is the name of the game. But yeah I found in the end the best approach was to not get too attached to your Personas, and to focus more on which ones to fuse next and how to pass moves on to the persona you want, rather than just how to develop the one you're currently using. Once you get the hang of it, it's a really powerful system - in the late game it is possible to chain fuse personas in such a way that you can end up creating ones which either nullify or absorb all damage types except almighty (which only a handful of enemies can actually use)!

Always save before fusing though, just in case it fails (happens v rarely on a random basis), and remember if you need access to Personas with certain skills / affinities quickly you can always buy back your previous version of that Persona from the compendium if you registered it (which you should do)

EDIT: also, and this is entirely personal preference here, but I recommend sticking with the first 4 characters you unlock as your main party throughout the game. I played around with some of the others a little, but found that they just weren't as good a team as the first 4, which give you a really good balance of attack skills, buff/debuffs, and the best healing you can get! Some would argue you should use 2 healers later on once this becomes an option, but I never really found it was necessary.

@SteveButler2210: Great, thanks. That's pretty much what I was wondering really, with regard to fusing new persona's as opposed to increasing the power of my current ones.

How about equipping other members of my team with different personas? Am I being stupid? Can only seem to assign for my main character, or is that the way it's supposed to be..Hmm

@SteveButler2210: regarding your edit, are not healing skills etc. attached to the personas, not the individual characters? So can't you just modify the persona the other character is using? Or, going back to my last post, are you only able to change personas on your main character?

Thanks - it's all a bit confusing once you're over the initial 4-5 hours and it throws the various systems at you

@kyleforrester87: Only the main character can swap personas - everyone else is stuck with their own. All abilities are tied to personas - none of them are tied to the characters themselves barring base stats.

@ShogunRok: So do the other characters learn new ones in any way, or they just keep the ones they've had to begin with? Do they not even learn new skills?

@kyleforrester87: The other characters learn new skills as they level up (you can see at the level up screen how many skills are left to learn, I think it's by little black question mark boxes or something like that but can't remember). Once their skill lists are full, you get to choose which skill to replace with the new one they're trying to learn, and later on there are a couple other ways to learn new skills and also re-learn forgotten ones.

The one thing you can't do is use skill cards on your team mates Personas, those only work on your ones. I only found this out late game, when I made the mistake of spending obscene amounts of money on a high level skill card, without saving beforehand, only to realise it was useless as I couldn't teach it to the character I wanted to and I didn't need it for the main character!

EDIT (again): as for new personas for the other characters, their base ones can be upgraded, but it's not a regular thing with loads of them like the MC, they just have a few upgrades each. I'll let you work that part out for yourself though

@SteveButler2210: Nice - thanks!

Any other tips welcome

@kyleforrester87: No problem

A big thing is that in your first playthrough you shouldn't obsess about trying to max everybody's S.Links, because it can't be done on that first run, so just play through however you want and have fun with it!

The only S Link you should worry about getting done is Marie, as you need it done by December 23rd or you miss out on some stuff. Outside of that just do whichever ones you fancy spending the time on

OH, and after you have completed each dungeon the first time, before moving on to the next one you should go through the completed dungeon again, as there will be an optional boss at the end and usually powerful gear for one of your characters in the room after you beat it. Doing this every time generally ensures you're at a good level to continue with the next dungeon as well, so it works out nicely