[DragoonKain3]

I personally just abused the ability to get 'first strike' status nearly every time if you're cautious, and also abusing the weakness system.

IIRC, at around that time, I got a Persona (was it Inugami?) in which I had all 4 elements on him, and first strike + weakness means opponent never getting a turn. I had to expend some chewing souls since they're a drain in MP, but I didn't see it as waste in hindsight.

That's because in the mid game you get the knockdown command, in which 3 out of the 4 elements could be covered by your party members, thus drastically reducing mp usage since you have basically quadrupled your SP count. And near the end, you get SP restoring accessories, which meant I never used a chewing soul or something like that to restore MP ever again lol.


And Persona being Persona, I found physical skills to be lacking (which is a breath of fresh air from the typical RPG). Sure the Getsu-ei and its counterpart are great in their respective phases of the moon, and Cu Chuclain's pierce skill is awesome at that point in the game (especially if you get the crit rate up skill). But in mid game, almost no enemies are weak to it and you won't be able to OHKO them anymore, while in late game you're risking a gameover since the skills take so much HP despite having HP regen and/or skill mastery.

Biggest hit towards physical skills though is that it drastically reduces your shuffle time chances. Putting aside that shuffle time increases signifcantly by hitting monster's weakpoints (of which very few are weak to physical), physical skills also has a tendency not to give you shuffle time even if you cleared the monsters in one round because it counts as hp damage.

As such, I suggest you try and steer clear of the Chariot and Strength commus, as I certainly found them mostly useless being of the physical type. (Game though forces you to get at least 2 and 4 levels respectively in order to get tower, which is basically the 'free' commu) I found Magician to be most effective, but that's mainly because you won't get a dedicated fire mage till later in the game (Junpei has crap fire skills and SP reserve), and so you're pigeon-holed into becoming a fire mage. Also the fact that its the first commu in which you can access its ultimate form the fastest, I really don't think one can go wrong with it.

Another commu you might want to consider is Emperor, since I find a lot of enemies weak to electricity since a good portion of them are 'mechs'. However, that element is already covered by two potential characters, so there's some overlap. However you're rewarded with Odin, who has probably the most synergistic skill set out of most of the Personas. Best elec spell + elec amp + spell mastery? Only thing you need is an MP recharge skill, of which can be taken care off via accesories, and elec break, which shouldn't really be a problem.

Late game, it really doesn't matter what you use, as they're all powerful in their own right. A lot of people like Star for the best Persona in the game, but you can beat the game LONG before you get to level 88. I myself stopped at lvl 82, since IMO Shiva kicks ass if you give him fire amp, break and hopefully Ragnarok as well (spell master is good too).


As for party, I personally loved Yukari/Mitsuru/Akihiko with main being fire mage, since not only you got 3 of the four elements covered by party members, but these three have the highest MAG stats of their respective elements. So even if the mobs aren't weak to their element, they can still OHKO or at least close to it against random mobs. Pretty brainless too, since all you do is switch everyone to knockdown and you won't have to worry much about random battles.

As for equips and order, Yukari don't naturally get wind boost/amp (and thus, her accesory slot will be filled by the item that gives wind amp), and she's the main healer since she has earliest access to the better healing spells, so she should be last in order to conserve SP when you really need it. The other two should get their respecitve element boost items until you get extra SP regen items, which is more effective since they'll be spamming their spells non-stop.

One theoritical party is using Akihiko/Ken/Aigis as a party, while main is mainly emperor. While you lose the ablility to hit enemy weaknesses (which means dungeon crawling is much hardeR), you do gain 2 people who eventually have weapon masteries to somewhat compensate for this. And worst come to worst, it only needs one elec break to allow Aki and Ken to start using their elec skills to blow bosses up, while Aigis acts as support. Whats certain about this team is that its going to be hard on your wallet, since the effectiveness of this team somewhat relies on updated weapons. Compare this to the mage party, of which you only really need to purchase wind/elec/ice amp accessories (which is dirt cheap btw) since you won't need to ever buy weapons until the end since you're rarely attacking anyways.