Junpei vs. Yosukie vs. Ryuji

[Forsaken Lover]

Playing P5 for the first time. Have to ake a break 'cuz my controller broke but hope to restart next week. I'm not that fast - just got Yusuke in the party - but I'm curious about this.

P3-5 each have the "Bro" character. While very different overall. they still fall into the same overall type. They're the first guy on your team you meet, they are really bad at school. everyone kind of makes fun of them for being dumb, etc..

But which do you like best and why?

[Pumpkin]

Ryuji. I just found him the best match for me in terms of broness. Aside from his stupid yelling of secret information

[Wolf Kanno]

Junpei is my favorite because he's both likable and multifaceted once the plot gets going. Sadly Yosuke always felt rather one note for my taste, and Ryuji's better character development is in his social link, whereas he's a complete short tempered dumbass in the main plot. Overall, Yosuke is my least favorite of the three because his personality kind of grates on my nerves and he's a bit too clingy for my taste.

Course none of them have anything on my main man Eikichi!

74070

[Mirage]

I hate them all. But I hate Ryuji the most. Well ok, i dislike Junpei the least. He gets a lot more shit from other teammates than he deserves, the same can't be said for the other two.

[Fynn]

*slams the Junpei button as hard as he can*

https://pics.me.me/when-u-see-a-blue-button-and-u-really-wanna-21534727.png

[Vermachtnis]

Kanji

Okay, Ryuji. I love the guy. He very likeable. He really feels like a friend to the group. Him and Mona had more of a brothers dynamic going on.

Junpei good too. After while anyway. But Yosuke just gets worse as the game goes on.

[Edge7]

Haven't gotten too far into Persona 3, so I can't speak for Junpei (I know he gets massively better later, but as of three months into the game, he's alright). But I love Ryuji. His social link is so good, it always feels contrived to me whenever he smurfs up; like he should be smarter, but the writers needed a comic relief moment. Yosuke feels like he always deserved anything bad that happened to him.

But yeah, the real answer is Eikichi Mishina aka glam rock Kazuma Kuwabara

[Psychotic]

FOR REAL?!

I haven't experienced 4 yet, so it's between Junpei and Ryuji. I really like them both but I'm going with Junpei because the Chidori arc gave him a surprising amount of depth.

[Fynn]

I mean, yeah, I agree, Michel needs some love

https://68.media.tumblr.com/a7bab5133455a505086f08b46eedab8d/tumblr_mm897j9FBg1qai61bo1_500.png

[Edge7]

I cannot stress how much I love Michel. He's like my favorite anime archetype combined with the style of Visual Kei J-Rock (which I don't really listen to, but I love Prince and early Queen, so... close enough?)

What's funny is that every time I revisit Persona 4, I like Yosuke less and less. It's the equivalent of catching up with a friend who refused to grow up after High School; I'm reminded of what I used to be like, and its embarrassing that I could ever relate to him.

[Fynn]

What's funny is that every time I revisit Persona 4, I like Yosuke less and less. It's the equivalent of catching up with a friend who refused to grow up after High School; I'm reminded of what I used to be like, and its embarrassing that I could ever relate to him.

Exactly. I liked him well enough on my first playthrough. On my second, he got pretty grating.

[Forsaken Lover]

There is a scene in one of P2's many awful dungeons where Tatsuya will save Maya from something falling on her head...but in an exact copy of that scene later, he lets Eikichi get his skull caved in. Therefore, I dub thee NOT Best Bro. In fact, I think it's pretty obvious who Tatsuya's best bro was. About as gay as Yu and Yosuke but they didn't cut it.

Also Junpei is a pig to my FeMC. He's just falling further and further the more I play of P3.

Yosuke is always supportive and cool.

[Fynn]

tbf, Junpei's sexism is presented as a characer flaw that he must overcome and in the endthat makes him even more endearing.

Yosuke, on the other hand, has his sexism and homophobia treated as a joke and/or point of relatability

[Forsaken Lover]

tbf, Junpei's sexism is presented as a characer flaw that he must overcome and in the endthat makes him even more endearing.

Yosuke, on the other hand, has his sexism and homophobia treated as a joke and/or point of relatability

Yosuke only really has a problem with Chie and that's because they bicker like an old married couple. If you're gonna bring up his being a bit mean to her, I'm gonna bring up her assaulting him and then poisoning him. The fact is, they hurt each other 'cuz they care.

Yosuke's homophobic comments are undeniable but the sexism charge is kinda ridiculous. Yosuke never has a problem deferring to Naoto nor does he undermine her intelligence. She is the undisputed smartest person in the group. Yosuke never shows any signs of being uncomfortable about this fact or feeling like he has to put her in her place.

[Edge7]

He does buy the girls swimsuits and guilts them into wearing them.
He also signs them up for a swimsuit pageant w/o their consent.
He's the one who suggests that they charge the girl's room as some sort of "retribution" for the bathhouse schedule mishap.
He asks Teddie for the girl's measurements, again, w/o their consent.

Like, Yosuke might not be a straight-up women hater, but he makes it clear that he doesn't seem to respect them. From what a friend told me, Junpei stops flirting with the FeMC and acts more as a bro than he ever did to the MC. Again, that's word-of-mouth, still haven't played P3 all the way.

[Forsaken Lover]

He wouldn't have had any ammunition to guilt them if they hadn't actively poisoned him and you. Like, it's not hard to follow instructions. They do it later to avoid hurting Nanako so obviously they just didn't care what they did to Yosuke or you, or the fact they made you both go hungry.

The girls then enter Yosuke and you into the Crossdressing competition.

And of course on the camping trip, they literally beat Kanji into unconsciousness. Oh and of course it's like our first scenes with Chie where she kicks Yosuke in the nuts.

So we've got unprovoked assault on the girls' side vs. Yosukebeing a teenage boy who likes to see girls in bikinis. I mean, geez, why wasn't he the main villain, am I right?


Or maybe Yosuke is no different from Chie and this is all harmless fun between friends? Yeah, that's what it is.

I get it, P4's humor and style is not for everyone. Maybe you feel these are all terrible human beings and you don't buy into their relationship at all. That's fine, that's your right. But singling out Yosuke's actions to wards a specific group of girls, one of which he has a highly..."antagonistic" relationship with and saying 'AHA! MISOGYNIST EXPOSED!" is just being biased and unfair to the point of losing all credibility. These actions were not done in a vacuum.

What's more, there are dozens of hours of other scenes where he gets along just fine with the girls and where the girls get along just fine with him. Pointing to some slapstick and condemning him is just part of this weird hatedom Yosuke has because he's the most popular P4 character.

[Wolf Kanno]

Yosuke is just kind of a pervert, which is nothing new as both Junpei and Ryuji are the same way, but I do feel that Yosuke is more adamant about it whereas Junpei grows out of it, especially once he meets Chidori, and Ryuji never really stooped to his levels. The idea it's all retaliatory is a bit misguided though as Yosuke had kind of brought the swimsuits along way before the girls poisoned them and it was his idea they should cook for them anyway cause he liked the idea despite not even knowing if they could cook, he just kind of assumed cause it's apparently a girl thing. I mean he kind of had this weird girlfriend fetish angle going into the camping trip. The girls signing them up for the cross-dressing game was in retaliation of him signing them up for the beauty pageant, so he kind of struck first. I'm not saying this all mean "Sexists Evil Pig" but he definitely hits the perv meter far more and his constant deriding of Kanji's sexual orientation never gets better, so I can see how some people feel he's a misguided attempt at comedy who comes across more offensive than funny. I had a laugh though, and I would agree the girls are far more antagonistic and violent than the ones from other entries so there is certainly more give and take going on here.

For me though, I just don't like him cause he's the least interesting of the three. Junpei has an interesting arc where he's a bro with the MC and then at odds with them due to his own insecurities and need to feel important, which is something he ends up always outgrowing and that makes him stand out from a lot of the cast by being someone who really matures. Ryuji has his whole issue with his track team and the bad blood it created due to his temper, and at least his social link is about trying to overcome this weakness and do what is right for them. Shame that couldn't translate into the main story where he remains a short-tempered idiot, but it is what it is. Eikichi dealt with a weight problem as a child that fueled his narcissism, his struggles against his father's wishes for him to take over the family business versus Eikichi's dreams of stardom, his rep as a delinquent, and his relationship with Kozy. Throw in the fact he's a very good friend who looks out for his people and you see he's a really good guy with several flaws built from his low self-esteem he's had since childhood. I mean he's a pretty complex character, and I didn't even have to resort to his biggest plot element he shares with the rest of the party.

Yosuke, I mean what was his arc really about? Being bored being in a small town, okay fair enough, not compelling but relatable. Being ostracized cause his father's work is putting everyone out of business, not his fault and he does take more advantage of it than you would think which tells me he's adjusted to it. Playing second fiddle to life partner Yu? He seems pretty cool with that. I mean I struggle to even remember what his social link was about, which is often a major issue with the party ones in P4 for me. Yosuke's issue is that he's a little perverted butt monkey who is here to be the cosmic chew toy for the party half the time and the mouthpiece for the MC every other time, but he doesn't have any real arc or story that sets him apart or makes him compelling to watch.

[Forsaken Lover]

He's your best friend. That's his character. I don't know why people get on his case for this. Sure you can say Junpei is your friend too and Michelle and Ryuji but they are still just "a friend." There is absolutely nothing that makes Junpei, Ryuji or Eikichi closer to you than any of the others. Yosuke is the first person whose darkest secrets you see and then help him through it. For the rest of the game he is your partner in everything and will be the first person to cheer you on or support you. There are a lot of little things, like the fact he will call you up to ask for your help at the store. (and then pay you) His final Social Link scene is you and him having a friendly fist fight and celebrating your youthful manliness.

There was a YT comment on a Yosuke S Link video that commented about how Yosuke has better chemistry with the MC than the MC does with the actual girls. That's pretty much why people love him. It's why I love him.

[Edge7]

I mean, everything you're saying is why I liked him when I first played the game. He was my favorite character for the longest time, and I even mained him in P4A. I'm hard on him because if I were friends with him in real life, the stuff he pulls wouldn't fly. The girls in P4 are certainly more aggressive; Chie's violence is unwarranted, and I mean Jesus, Yukiko, "studying" means "studying". That being said, the fact that karma comes back to bite him doesn't absolve Yosuke of the fact that he has put these girls in numerous situations that compromise their privacy to satisfy his own hormonal urges. In a game about seeing people for who they really are, Yosuke seems more focused on the superficial qualities of a woman (their ability to cook, what they look like in a swimsuit, etc) than how the people in question feel about his actions.

To his credit, I misremembered the scene at the Amagi Inn. It was actually Teddie's idea to sneak to the girls' room because there were creepy noises in the guys' room, and it was Kanji's idea to sleep next to the girls. Yosuke's pretty enthusiastic about the idea, but he doesn't actually act on it.

I think my biggest problem with Yosuke is more symptomatic with a problem I have with Persona 4 and 5 in general; the finer details of a party member's backstory (and their development) happen in a vacuum. Unlike WK, I LOVE Yosuke's S Link (still do, regardless of how I feel about him in the main game), but the Yosuke in the main story is so hit and miss for me. For every two cool things he does (he gives Teddie a home, that's like the nicest thing anyone does in that game), there's always something that casts him in an uglier light for me.

[Fynn]

Look, I'm not denouncing him as a raging misogynist or anything - I just wanted to point out the difference in how that sexism is presented to the player.

Wolf also pretty much summed up my reasoning for liking Junpeiover Yosuke as well

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I’d have to replay Persona 4 again to remember any of the finer details of the character arcs. Anyways, I will say it is a weakness of Persona 4 and 5 in that the social links don’t impact the main story in any real way. I like Junpei more than the others, and a lot of that probably has to do with the fact that he develops and changes throughout the story.

The cast of Persona 4 all felt a lot more static to me, if I remember right. They developed in the social links and were interesting, but they seemed a bit more one note and undeveloped in the main story. Again, it’s just an issue with the social link system, and it probably doesn’t help that I get the party social links out of the way as fast as possible. Everyone was good friends and had good chemistry, but I preferred the tension and growth into friends that happened with the P3 group.

Persona 5 has much the same issue as 4, and my criticism is about the same.

I would just like a better mix of growth and dynamic characterization in the main story and social links with your main group.

[Wolf Kanno]

He's your best friend. That's his character. I don't know why people get on his case for this. Sure you can say Junpei is your friend too and Michelle and Ryuji but they are still just "a friend." There is absolutely nothing that makes Junpei, Ryuji or Eikichi closer to you than any of the others. Yosuke is the first person whose darkest secrets you see and then help him through it. For the rest of the game he is your partner in everything and will be the first person to cheer you on or support you. There are a lot of little things, like the fact he will call you up to ask for your help at the store. (and then pay you) His final Social Link scene is you and him having a friendly fist fight and celebrating your youthful manliness.

There was a YT comment on a Yosuke S Link video that commented about how Yosuke has better chemistry with the MC than the MC does with the actual girls. That's pretty much why people love him. It's why I love him.

Funny enough, and perhaps this says more about me, but I feel the opposite. I feel Yosuke was the "designated" bro who just gets super buddy with you pretty early with little say on your part because that's his role. What I like about Junpei is that he has to earn his friendship with you, and I don't mean his relationship with the MC, I mean with the player. You get chummy, you fight, you deal with his jealousy and you are there for him during his good times and dark times with Chidori. I feel like Junpei grows to be the best bro as the two of you really share ups and downs. It's the problem with Yosuke and Ryuji, like Scott_ffgamer points out, the characters growth is separate from the story and has no bearing on it, so even playing therapist for the guys never changes the disconnect you feel from the difference in their growth as characters in the plot versus the SL. Yosuke and Ryuji getting their Ultimate Personas are cute moments for them, but Junpei's was like a serious awesome moment for him and he's a great guy I like being around. He has his flaws, but you watch him really outgrow them and feel that impact, which is something that makes him and even Eikichi stand out compared to the more recent bros. It's why I didn't like it when P4 started making the party all designated SL links because it took away from the story proper. I think I would have liked Ryuji so much more if the growth of his Confidant Link had translated into the main story proper.

[Fynn]

That's kind of the thing. I mean, I can't comment on Ryuji (yet), but with Yosuke I got this feeling that the game was really trying hard to make you like him - and in the end, that's what prevented me from really making a connection with him. He doesn't get any serious flaws that could make him controversial and he never really gets any conflict with you, while his flaws from a meta-perspective (like the sexism and homophobia mentioned before) is either played for laughs or as a point of relating to him ("haha, those girls, am I right, guys?"). It's like Atlus going "here's a best friend for you please love him we'll do anything for you to love him" rather than crafting someone that feels like an actual person who you can befriend by overcoming differences and gaining mutual respect. Yosuke just loves you from the getgo. Arguably, this could have worked much better for him without a silent protagonist that's just an audience avatar. But this is not the case here.

Despite my gripes with him, I'm actually a bit upset that they cut out that romance option with him since that would arguably have made him more interesting in that he'd be the only gay romance option in the entire series, not counting 2, which may have been pretty groundbreaking in the 90s but still stands out from the romance options of the later games as pretty irrelevant.

[Forsaken Lover]

Thing is, you don't always have differences. Yes, you might have occasional fights but that's totally unrelated to, say, Junpei being a sexist, jealous shithead. That is a innate character flaw that makes him a bad person and a bad friend. You are under no obligation to care about him and he is not owed your friendship just because he bumps into a psycho girl he falls in love with.

You guys are basically praising P3's greatest flaw in terms of storytelling - the total lack of S Links with your male teammates. Nobody liked that which is why they fixed it in 4 and 5.

[Fynn]

Except Junpei really isn't like that. His progression is gradual, and in the female path, he gets over "but our leader is a girl thing?" pretty quickly. From what I recall, he had an alcoholic father or something, and his character evolution has much more to do with him just processing everything that happens around him, with Chidori being only part of his whole character arc. Even before he meets her, he comes to accept his role in the group as not the leader earlier, even if he doesn't fully embrace it until later. It's kind of unfair to describe someone dealing with such a crippling inferiority complex (that he deals with on his own, no less) as an irredeemably bad person who deserves to be cut from your life.

I think we just have different approaches to what we expect from characters in games. I like my characters to be flawed. I like it when a game is frank about human nature because irl it's a very unhealthy thing to expect that people you want to be friends with will be perfect people who will just love you unconditionally and will never have any friction with you. I want a game to show me that you can be amazing friends with flawed people, rather than giving me a completely unrealistic scenario with perfect friends that will ultimately make me only depressed because friends like that can't exist in real life.

[Formalhaut]

Honestly, I've never been a massive Junpei or Yosuke fan but I do agree with Fynn and WK that Junpei is the more compelling character even if, superficially, Yosuke is more comedic and built for laughs.

They're both flawed in ways I don't appreciate, but I approve of Junpei's character development over the course of the game. Yosuke - and to be honest the majority of the cast - are more static and it is harder to detect moments of character development because it is so front-loaded.

In Persona 3, everyone already has their persona. You don't need to go through a dungeon to obtain them. Because of this, their arc bleeds through into the main story until they all get their ultimate persona at a critical moment.

Whereas, in Persona 4, each character introduction is preceded by a character development dungeon, which basically shows you a clear before and after image. Take Kanji. Before his character development dungeon, you see him as a brash delinquinent. Post dungeon, you see it's actually his problems with living up to some masculine ideal (and maybe sexuality, but that's a different argument), and how he works past it. Same goes for the other characters. Their character development post-dungeon is much more static because they've gone through their major character development simply in recruiting them, as opposed to the P3 method of interweaving it as part of the main plot.

In the P3 method, Party Social Links act almost like Gaidens or side stories that aren't integral to the plot but serve to facilitate it. And you get a reward out of them regardless (getting the top level persona of that arcana).

I will say I quite liked P3P's method, of having S.Links and main plot factor into development. But it really only works because your party members already have their persona. They join you straight away. The nature of Persona 4's writing is such that everyone has to go through a dungeon to claim their initial persona, and the plot dictates that they get their persona after some personal growth. Problem is, most of their growth happens when you first meet them (S.Links tend to reaffirm whatever message it's saying to gain their ultimate), so they feel static in the main plot because their primary problem is resolved.

Honestly, my main problem is that he doesn't really seem to grow out of his juvenile behaviour and thoughts. I don't mind Yosuke being homophobic initially, but they really needed to follow that up later on in the game and they just didn't. I agree with Fynn about it being interesting the idea of Yosuke being a gay option, and it is a shame they scrapped that idea because it would've cast his homophobia into a whole new light.

Junpei, for all his initial flaws, in my opinion he does go through some significant development and so for me is the more interesting character. Yosuke just seems a little too much like a cipher for 'best bro', and to be honest I kinda wanted that role to be given to Chie. Chie's cool.

[Forsaken Lover]

Apparently an addition to Golden and its best ending is that Yosuke makes Junes better. It's an underappreciated aspect of the game that Inaba is so infinitely better characterized than P3's...whatever it was. Te island where an evil scientist set up a school because.

We're introduced to so many aspects of Inaba's society and that includes the economy. I bring this up because in the end, Junes helps save the economy and the people of the town are no longer resentful. Things are looking up for the shopkeepers of Inaba. A minor detail? Sure but that's what building atmosphere is all about.

And that is part of Yosuke's character development. He doesn't resent this "small town out in the sticks." He helps support Junes and in turn supports Inaba, saving the twon from the more mundane menace of economic hardship.

Before I started Persona somebody said there is an argument to be made about P3 FES vs. P3P but there is literally no argument for P4 vs. P4G. They appear to have been totally right. Everything is better in Golden, even the ending and worldbuilding.

Also it's been observed by people who have watched me play various RPGs that I just have a very first impressions view of things. If I like you within the first few hours of knowing you, I'll love you to the end. If I don't, you're worthless to me. That's probably what happened to Junpei.

It also happened to Yukari. Notice a lot of people fuckin' hate Yukari. They weren't willing to wait for the flaws to be filled in and neither was I.

[Fynn]

I... really don't see how that makes Yosuke more likable or human.

And Yukari is friggin' great and I am seriously annoyed with all the hate she gets. Like, sorry that this girl reacts to the stuff that weigh on her as well as all the difficulties she has to face now like a normal fucking human being.

[Forsaken Lover]

I was pointing out how his character did not just "end" at the beginning. It carried on to the very end of the game.

And I think we're approaching this from very different angles. You're looking at it as a simple story as opposed to a role-playing game. And not in a Final Fantasy way but actual self-insert roleplaying. In the real world nobody gives a trout that your life is hard and you got problems. You meet someone who is a jerk to you and you flip them off. You don't ponder that daddy didn't love them enough or maybe their dog got run over. Maybe both those things are true but it doesn't occur to you because all that matters is this person was a jerk to you.

Yukari and Junpei are not just characters in a story to apathetically evaluate. They are your friends. And if they do nothing to earn your friendship, if they instead constantly do things that make you mad, you're not going to love them anyway because character development.

I love Mitsuru. Best character inf all of P3. Yukari's passive aggressive assaults on her all through the game are not going to be forgiven 40 hours in because she has a great moral epiphany and gets a message from her dad. That's not how you think about people.

[Fynn]

They also have literally no reason to treat you right because in real life people just don't throw themselves at you and doing everything so that you'll love them right after you meet the,. Actually, wait, no, they do. They're called sycophants.

And to be fair, both Yukari and Junpei start out being fairly friendly to you. It's only when you start spending a lot of time together that you start seeing the darker parts of their personalities - which is, again, realistic.

And yes, I am enjoying both of these characters better because of the fact that I was roleplaying that guy as a self-insert protagonist. Because those flaws made them feel more real and the experience felt much more visceral than P4's wish-fulfillment fantasy.

And sorry, but I really have no clue how you can get actual, deep friendships with other people when you just go "nope, you're a jerk, gtfo" if they ever wrong you in any way. Like, everyone has flaws, everyone's patience has limits, and you will encounter clashes at one point or another in an actual friendship that is not just surface-level hanging out etc. You cannot realistically expect someone to always be their perfect selves for you while also literally claiming you'd drop them the second they act like a jerk. A true, deep friendship is a type of relationship, and relationships need work in order to function well. Just like with a romantic partner, you really have to try to reach an understanding in spite of differences, rather than pretending the differences that cause you to clash don't exist.

[Skyblade]

He does buy the girls swimsuits and guilts them into wearing them.
He also signs them up for a swimsuit pageant w/o their consent.
He's the one who suggests that they charge the girl's room as some sort of "retribution" for the bathhouse schedule mishap.
He asks Teddie for the girl's measurements, again, w/o their consent.

Like, Yosuke might not be a straight-up women hater, but he makes it clear that he doesn't seem to respect them. From what a friend told me, Junpei stops flirting with the FeMC and acts more as a bro than he ever did to the MC. Again, that's word-of-mouth, still haven't played P3 all the way.

This is mostly because he (along with the rest of the male SEES members) actually gets a Social Link in Minako's route, and so he does get to be a far better friend than he ever was with Minato.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

It’s not just the guys of P3, but I feel the girls who you do have social links with have noticeable development throughout the main story as well. If nothing else, I’d like to see more of that in the series. Either way, it’s something that I wish was better integrated into the games, having social links impact character interactions outside of them. It’s weird ending up in romantic relationships and having no one acknowledge it or anything.

You have different dynamics in the games though, and there is nothing wrong with preferring the friendships of P4. They are the group of friends where everyone just clicks and everyone has good times. P3 are a group born of necessity. They need everyone with personas to combat the shadows and figure out the dark hour. They grow into friendship through shared hard times and by living and working together. I feel like it’s like school or work where you aren’t going to mesh with everyone likely, but being stuck together for long periods of time can have you gain an understanding of each other and grow past your issues with each other.

I’m at the hospital at the moment so I’m going to have to end my thoughts. Hopefully they made sense as I can’t look back over them at the moment.

[Formalhaut]

I know this is technically not the purvue of this thread but I also do not understand the dislike of Yukari either. Actually, thinking about the party members in 3 and 4, there's not a single one I actively dislike. Hell, I even found Ken enjoyable.

I don't know if this was deliberate, but I feel either Junpei or Yukari could fulfill the role of 'best buddies', in much the same way that I feel Yosuke/Chie do also. I know Junpei/Yosuke are the obvious 'best bros' but I'd find it refreshing if this official/unofficial role title was given to a woman. It doesn't really matter, because I connected with Yukari more than Junpei in my first playthrough of the game with the FeMC, but who knows.

[Pumpkin]

Ryuji feels the most brolatable to me. I thought I would hate him at first but he quickly grew on me. Even the fact that he kept some of his bad habits throughout (please stop shouting about the Phantom Thieves in public) just made him more relatable. Not everyone wraps up their character flaws in a neat little character building arc. He imporves in some ways and in others he's still a moron.

Also I don't know why this sticks out to me but there's a scene when Ryuji, MC, and Ann are all at the gym or something and Ann makes a comment about how desirable she is towards Ryuji or whatever and he just goes "No" because at that point they're just friends, you know, and it was one of the most natural conversations and reactions I'd seen in the game so I really like that scene.

[Forsaken Lover]

@ Fynn

Nobody ever said the P4 cast were flawless. Yosuke's treatment of Kanji is indefensible. Rise's constant flirtation was most unwelcome. It's just that they also do good most of the time. You can overlook occasional flaws in favor of the positives.

It's ironic that Kanji gets the most universal love of the P4 crew on forums like this when he is precisely the least flawed person in the group. He has the shallowest pretense of a thug imaginable and is all around nice to absolutely everyone. Yet no one is complaining about him.

But Yukari and Junpei, if we had some sort of BioWare Freind-o-meter, start at zero and go into the negatives pretty quickly. As I said, Mitsuru was my favorite from the word Go and Yukari's constant tapdancing around just calling Mitsuru an evil, manipulating bitch sank our friendship before it even had a chance. Mitsuru has problems, too. She's not perfect. Does she ever take it out on you or the others? Nope.

[Pumpkin]

that feels when everyone is arguing how likable Yukari, Mitsuru, Junpei, and Yosuke are and you don't particularly like any of them

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I do like Ryuji quite a bit too. Junpei is the more interesting character to me in how he develops throughout the story, but I could see myself enjoying hanging out with Ryuji more in real life.

I think it’s interesting that despite similar themes and set ups in these games how different the character dynamics end up being.

I feel like P3 has more of a work-type relationship that just develops into stronger bonds due to the shares crazy experiences. The P4 group all already feel like good friends even if the personas and murder mystery weren’t apart of it. They are just a group that clicks and want to be together for fun, not from necessity. The P5 group feels kind of similar to P4, except you are an outcast instead of this popular guy. Being an outcast, you attract other outcasts, and everyone clicks in a similar way to P4 cast. I feel like that’s similar to real life too.

I like P4 quite a bit, and I enjoy the cast. I just think the other two games had a more interesting dynamic. I find Junpei and the rest of the P3 crew more interesting from a story telling perspective because I like those kind of character arcs in my fiction a lot of the time. I find the P5 crew super relatable though as that has probably been more my experience in developing friendships over the years as i would tend to feel more like an outsider. That’s not to say I thought all my problems were because of corrupt adults (although, I feel like that’s relatively relatable for teenagers who are the target audience of these games I’d think).

[Wolf Kanno]

Way too much stuff to respond to individually so I'll just make a few general opinions.

I can also get behind the idea that Yuakri gets too much hate from the fandom, she is kind of tied with Mitsuru as my favorite of the P3 girls, of anything, I think Aigis gets too much love. She's just a very complex character, and it's actually fun and rewarding to chip away her emotional armor and see the real her. One of the most heartbreaking moments for me in P3 was when you get far enough into her social link to date her, and in addition to being one of the most intimate and affectionate romance options, you get this scene (it might be the Christmas date) where she wants to see her mother and introduce you to her, and that scene is heartbreaking when you realize the game's ending. In fact, I've always been a bit thrown off by some of the romance options in the series because Yukari's is the only one where you seem to actually try to plan out a future, with which for me, is a big part of a relationship. Still, I kind of feel like more than anyone in the series, her relationship with the MC felt the most like a real relationship where you're trying to discover boundaries and work towards that intimacy. She's a very complex person and getting to know her is one of the more rewarding aspects of her story arc and SL.

While I do like the story that Junes brings to P4, it feels more like commentary on the nature of a large business coming to a town and basically consuming it's entire economy. My GF is from a small town and the one next over has a Wal-Mart and little else because of it. So it was a pretty cool element of Yosuke's story, though one that winds up being beyond the scope of the main story.

As for Inaba being more likable... I'm going to disagree once again. Another factor of why I don't care for the party having Social Links is because they make the setting feel smaller. It wasn't such a bad concept in P4 because the setting was meant to be a remote place, but when P3 copied it for the FeMC, I couldn't help but feel like the city was such a smaller place because the FeMC never expanded the world beyond the party. One of the factors I liked about the SL in P3 was that they made the setting of the city feel like a bigger place and made it more important to me that I wanted to protect it. Not just because the party lived there, but also several friends I had made across town, which is something I didn't really feel like I got in P4. I feel it's a better world-building tool to move the scope of your caring potential beyond just the people closes to you.

Being the cynical ass that I am, I can't rely on first impressions of people to judge whether I like them or not because I would have very few friends if that were the case. Oddly I'm more leery of people who are overly friendly with me than standoffish ones surprisingly enough, because I can at least understand where those types might be coming from. This may largely play into why I prefer P3's cast over P4s because the party dynamics work better with my relationship philosophy whereas the overly idealistic nature of the P4 cast never felt right to me. In some ways I almost feel like P4's cast is a result of fan feedback whining about the P3 cast being too moody and hostile towards each other, and then P5's party was based on fan feedback that the P4 cast was way too friendly. Personally I feel P5 hit a nice balance of the group being pretty cozy with each other but still maintaining a sense of professionalism due to only banding together because of a common goal. Granted, there are still some hiccups here and there with them but that's what P6 will be for.

As harsh as I may be sounding with P4, it's not like I hate it or anything. Comparing the Persona game casts for me is like comparing desserts: P3 is a strawberry shortcake, P5 is apple pie with ice cream, and P4 are chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts. I like all three, especially when compared to other choices, but when put in order of fave to least, cookies are not my top choice compared to the other two and the Pumpkin Pie that is P2. At worst, I simply feel indifferent to P4 in some ways. I don't hate Yosuke, but he wasn't even my favorite character in P4, whereas Junpei is. Ryuji himself is also towards the bottom of the P5 cast for me, but I also found him to be more memorable even if some of his memorable traits are not exactly flattering, and that's something that's required for a character to be likable for me. Yosuke simply never stood out to me and it didn't take long for me to relegate him to 'token best friend" and simply ignored him while I focused on the characters I did find interesting. I mean Kanji stands out because his story is interesting. Again, I would point out that Yosuke's SL was very forgettable for me largely cause it didn't have any real memorable arc to it. It felt more like hanging out with a needy friend than actually a story. This is why Kanji is more well liked, because his story was actually memorable and his SL had a clear focus that built to a pretty satisfying conclusion. To be fair to Yosuke, he's not the only character I felt had a weak SL, I feel Chie's was also very underwhelming as well as Fuuka, and Ann's took forever to actually get interesting. The one thing I liked about P5's SLs was that all of them had an actual focus to them.