How To Play Persona O.A.

Persona O.A.
     This is a great app for any fan of Persona games (Which are usually played via playstation).  This is doubly true for fans of Persona 5.  Persona O.A, is a Persona 5 game in the form of an app.  You play as yourself, but you wield multiple Persona and meet up with the members of the Phantom Thieves, travelling through Mementos and special event Palaces to steal hearts and gain levels.

     A lot of people complain because the application is Japanese only.  Though knowing Japanese certainly makes the game play easier and more enjoyable, English speaking users can still play the app so long as they know what to do.  I've decided to make a tutorial on how to play this app for those who can't read Japanese.  This will cover the basic functions of the app.  There is a great deal of dialogue in the story cut scenes that will not be covered here.  To view translations for those go here.

     Upon loading the app for the first time you'll be guided through the game elements and account set up by Sae Niijima.  I have created some graphics to take you through the account setup.  Click them to expand the images to a larger size if you find them difficult to read.

     Above you can see how to set up your new account.  If you have an existing account and know your user code, you can enter it in through the data transfer method.  Below you can see how to enter your name into the next section.

     Once you are able to start playing you will always start the app on the main home screen.  The home screen character and background changes every time you reload it.  It pulls from various characters in Persona 5 like the main characters and confidants.  They will have a quote under them as well but this isn't really important.  It is just a fun element of the game, so don't worry about not being able to read it.  The things you need to know on this page can be seen in the graphic below.

     I wouldn't worry too much about the Calendar, Twitter or P5A buttons.  If you want to watch the P5A with subtitles you can do so at Crunchy Roll.  The calendar will talk about upcoming events but it is all in Japanese, so unless you want to translate it don't worry about it.  The events will notify you when you start the app up if they are happening anyway.  The calendar is just to set up notifications for future events.

     The news also covers the more recent events, just like the calendar but again, it's in Japanese.  Just keep an eye on the dates so you know when something new is happening.

     The Event button shows you all the events (dialogues) in the game with the various characters.  You can see which you are missing and replay the ones you have already unlocked.

     You will start with some free PP (Persona Points).  You can spend these on the Persona Gacha which gives you a random Persona or skill card.  You can also spend your points on Persona wallpapers for your phone.  To use the Gacha, visit the Velvet Room at the bottom left.  To buy wallpapers, tap the More Options button on the top left.  You can see this screen below.

     The above graphic gives you a basic run down of the options here.  The only important ones are the Take The Day (I may have mistranslated this) option which gives you your data transfer code, and the Persona Point option.

     If you tap the Persona Points button you will be taken to the screen on the left of this text.  At the top left you have the Back button, the top right is your total PP.  You can scan QR codes with the top option or use the second option to type in codes.  The codes are obtained by purchasing official Persona products or from various magazines which release new codes every issue.  These magazines include PASH, Anime Japan, and several others.  A full list can be found on the official site.  If anyone gets access to the codes in these magazines and would like to share them, please leave a comment on this post.

     The bottom option is where you can spend your existing PP on special wallpapers.  The wallpapers cost quite a bit but when you purchase one you have options on what dimensions you would like to save the file as.  You will also unlock more wallpapers as you progress through the various dungeons.  Special seasonal events will allow you to unlock event exclusive wallpapers as well.  To be honest you can probably find any of these wallpapers online for free though.  Don't be like me and waste your PP on the wallpapers.

     If you access the Velvet Room through the home screen you will need to know what the various options given there are.  You can see the translations on the graphic below.

     You get your personas by playing the gacha.  There are more than one available usually.  Different gachas cost different amounts and give you access to different levels of persona.  There are also special event gachas that appear sometimes.

     The top gacha on the screen to the left is a special gacha.  It costs more (300PP for one draw) but you can get really amazing persona from it.  I got Futaba's persona on my first play.  However, all of the gacha only give you a chance at a persona.  You can alternatively get a skill card instead.  It's random so you never know if you'll get something good or not.

     If you do get a skill card you can use it on a persona by clicking the Skill Mastery button.  Skill cards have the skill type printed on as an image.  You can only use certain skill types on certain persona.  This is easy enough to figure out though.  If you look at your persona in Skill Mastery mode, at the bottom it shows what types of skills they can learn (And which they already have).  Below you can see the bottom skill area of a persona.  Below that is what a skill card option looks like in the skill select screen.  Clicking the cards image on the right of the skills will take you to your available skill cards so you can select one.  Once a card is used, it disappears.  Choose wisely.

     The compendiums are a way to see what personas and items you have gathered.  Looking at a Persona Compendium is a good way to see how strong it is.  You can also view the level that the personas you have are and how rare they are (More stars mean rarer persona).  I will show you what the stat translations are below.

Strength:
Magic:
Endurance:
Agility:
Luck:

     Those are what the stat options on the bottom left side say, in that order.  As you can see this persona has a lot of Luck but very little Strength.  Different dungeons are easier with different types of persona.  So it is good to collect a good range of persona with various stats and abilities.

     In order to level up your persona you;ll have to explore the dungeon areas such as Mementos and the special event Palaces.  Also please forgive the fact that I wrote Momentos instead of Mementos in all of my graphics.

     When you go to Mementos from the home screen you can choose which dungeon to explore.  More will unlock as you progress through the game and special Event Palaces will appear near the top of the list.  Each dungeon has a different difficulty level and recommended level written on it.  So choose the ones that will work best for you at the level that you are.  If you are unsure about what level you currently are, or what your personal stats are you can tap the button in the top right corner during dungeon selection.  It will take you to the screen to the left (You can change your name here if you want as well).

From the top, clockwise: Knowledge, Courage, Dexterity, Kindness, Charm

     After selecting a dungeon you get to choose one persona to take with you and one companion.  You can only choose from the characters you have met thus far.  You start with Morgana, then you meet Ann, then Ryuji, and so on.  The more dungeons you explore, the more characters you'll meet.

     Your persona, companion and yourself each will gain experience and levels when you are exploring a dungeon.  Below you can see what it looks like while you are exploring.

     This part of the game just requires you to wait.  You can exit the dungeon at any time by clicking the Finish Exploration button in the bottom left.  However, it is best to wait for the Investigation bar to fill up or the Security to be at 100 percent.  Because when either of these gauges fill, you will no longer be gaining items or experience. (UPDATE: Check out how to beat dungeons you get stuck on here)

     The game does not need to be open for exploration to commence.  If you want to play other parts of the app just click the Back button from this screen.  If you want to close the app, you can do that as well.  The exploration will continue until either security or investigation maxes.  Then you'll have to come back and tell it to finish so you can go to another dungeon.  If your security bar maxes before exploration does, don't worry.  You can always come back and continue to explore later.

     To the right you can see what it looks like when you complete an exploration.  You, your persona, and your companion rank ups are displayed as well as how close they are to get another level.  Scrolling down shows what items you found and how much PP you earned.

     After exploration you may trigger some dialogue with whatever companion you took with you into the dungeon.  If you can't read the dialogue you have two options.  Either you can click through it and guess at any dialogue options it gives you to choose, or you can use a translation app to help you translate the text.  Though these applications aren't always accurate.  You can see what I mean below.

     Like in the Persona 5 game, different options will have an effect on the affection of the character.  You'll get little music note animations if you choose the option that makes the character happy.  You will also be able to use items you found on your exploration, such as books, magazines, DVDs, etc.  An option to watch/read them will appear when you get home after your time spent with your chosen companion.  Depending on what you read or watch, you can boost different stats.  Boosted stats will help level companions as well as help you defeat certain dungeon bosses.

     After this you can go explore another (or the same) area.  This is pretty much the whole game.  If there is anything I missed that you want explained or elaborated on, just let me know.  I hope you enjoy playing this really cute Persona app game!

• Free
• Seller: Aniplex Inc
• Category: Entertainment
• Size: 113 MB
• Languages: Japanese
• Copyright: ©ATLUS ©SEGA All rights reserved.　©ATLUS ©SEGA/PERSONA5 the Animation Project

You must be at least 17 years old to download this app. Gambling and Contests

Destiny Child

 Destiny Child
     This is not a game about a popular former female music group.  I realise the name is a bit confusing...  This is basically a CCG with a plot/story line, full audio dialogue and tons of extra optional playable content.  The graphics are great (Though I could do with less breast bouncing), the game play is simple but fun and the characters fun to watch as they progress through the story (I recommend clicking some of these thumbnails to view the larger image so you can read the dialogue).

     This app has a lot of optional content and constantly has new events spawning up so I'm not going to dive too deep into the content of the app.  I don't want this to be a novel.

     You play as a demon who has accidentally signed himself up for a competition (The Archfiend Contest) where he must gather an army of childs (soul fragments taken from humans) to battle other demons for the throne of hell.  Your day job?  You work as a cashier at a convenient store... and you were only trying to pay your rent on your phone when you accidentally signed up.  This whole thing is really more of a hassle than anything else to your character but you have some pesky succubus guiding you through the process and forcing you to continue with the contest.  So onward to collect your army of childs...

     Each scene has moving character avatars, a full background, text dialogue and voice overs which is amazing.  The voice overs would be more amazing if they came in multiple languages but I suppose we'll make due with Japanese only.

     The game even has a fully animated anime intro you get to see when you start the game for the first time.

     There are several parts of the game to play but the main areas to keep up with are as follows.

Story: This continues forward with the plot.  You go through story line and battle story based NPC groups of childs.  Users collect new childs after winning boss battles and collect items and gold among other useful loot and experience.  Don't forget to collect completion rewards at the bottom of each story segment (3 per segment).

Night World: This is where you complete your daily quests.  Not all of them need to be done.  Really none of them are necessary but they can be very useful for levelling, evolving, and acquiring certain items.  At very least I recommend always doing the Exploration, which allows you to send childs on adventures for hours and come back with gained experience.  These childs can still be used freely even when they are sent off on exploration.  Event Dungeon is also very useful.  The contents change daily so check back every day and collect rewards you need specifically such as gold, evolution items for specific types of childs or level up material.  Devil Rumble and Underground are optional really.  Devil Rumble gives you 5 plays a day and resets after a week.  Underground is a great way to get experience and items by using all of your childs.  Don't try it until you have a lotat your disposal though.  Scenarios can be found here as well and is a way to watch any plot you've already gone through.  Rebirth Labyrinth is a recent addition but I'm not sure if it will be permanent.  it's a good way to win costumes for you childs.

Summon: This is how you acquire more childs outside of actually fighting and getting them as drops.  It is essentially a gacha style system.  You can get childs, equipment and more from here.  A fun feature when getting child drops is if you draw a 5 star child you get a cute little animated sequence.  You can choose to spend money on in game currency for this but I've been playing this since just after its global launch (Global launch was December 2018).  If you play casually you still earn enough for at least one gold draw 10 a day, one crystal draw 10 a day and your free draw one that resets every day.  That's at least 21 every day, easily.  But be careful, users have a limited amount of slots available so you'll have to pick and choose who to keep.

Mailbox: Always check this daily to collect everything you earn from logging in.  You also get friendship coins from your mailbox if you have added friends.

Items:  Really only needed for using your free tickets and getting rid of things you don't need.

My Room: This is where you earn rewards for just doing the regular game play you are already doing.  if you've earned a reward your My Room tab will have a dot by it.  make sure you collect them daily or you'll lose them.

Child:  This is where you can see every child you have.  You can sort them for easier browsing, evolve them, combine them, upgrade their skills, create teams and more.  i find myself spending a lot of time here just to make sure my childs are as upgraded as they can be and getting rid of ones I don't need who take up space.

Friend: This is where you can give friendship coins to your friends, add friends, delete them, accept friend invites, etc.  Friends in this game are useful because depending on the user's main avatar, you can use them to give your team special buffs when you fight.  It is important to choose a useful child for your avatar for this reason as well.  This will help you to be more useful to your friends.  I find the most useful ones are childs that give a buff to all other childs, not just type specific ones.

     Now that the important areas have been covered I want to explain a little about the actual gameplay.  In order to battle against other players such as the Devil Rumble PVP or battling NPCs such as in Story Mode, you'll need to know how to put a team together, how to use abilities and how to upgrade your child.

     The childs come in categories, both battle type and elemental type.  Water, Wood, Fire, Light and Dark are the elements and Debuffer, Attacker, Healer, Defender, Support, Combine are the attack types.

Water > Fire > Wood -  Light >< Dark (These two are weak and strong against one another)

     If you are going up against a team with a lot of fire, you may choose to switch to a heavy water based team for example.  Though most groups will be mixed and you will need to use your own strategy to effectively power through.

     The attack types should be pretty clear.  Defenders are your tanks, they have heavy defense and absorb a lot of damage while being slower at attacking.  Debuffers remove buffs from the opponents, while supporters will buff your team.  The only odd ones are the combine types which serve as sacrifices for your group.  If used correctly, they can be very useful.  It is best to have a mixed group but it is good to choose the combination that works best for you.  My main group has a healer, two defenders, one support and an attacker.  Sometimes I switch out a defender for a second healer if I need to.

     In a battle there are three ways to attack (Though you'll likely turn on auto attack so you'll only manually need to know the last way).  A tap attack which, a slide attack or your big attack which is your drive skill.  Each of your 5 battle childs have circle portraits at the bottom of the battle screen, your enemy above.  When a child's portrait is surrounded by the colour strip you can tap it or slide it.  Sliding it will begin to fill your drive gauge which can be seen running along the side of your health bar at the bottom under the portraits.  When the gauge is full a little skill bubble pops up under your childs.  this is when you can use a drive skill which does heavy damage.  But you need to time it right for the best effect.  A bar will fill up quickly and you need to tape it when it's in the centre of the charged part of the line.  The centre will give you a Perfect, near it is a Great, a bit farther off is Good, and too far off is Bad.  Depending on your score you'll fill the fever gauge (Yes another gauge).  If you're good it will take 3 drive skill attacks to fill your gauge as a perfect gives you 40 percent. a great gives you 30, a good 20~ (This one depends).  Fever time is when you jut place your finger on a child consistently and leave it there until fever runs out.  That child will continually attack the enemy and do tons of damage quickly.  In stages with 3 levels I try to do one drive skill per level so I can do the fever on the last (and hardest) level.

     Your childs have other abilities but they are passive.  The tap, slide and drive skills can be levelled up (to 10 per rank).  If you use a child often, level it's skills up fully as soon as possible.  It will cost you onyx (Which is also used for awakening) but this is pretty easy to come by.

     Your child will level up as you use them but you can also use the Combine button in their profile to level them up further (Up to their max level).  When you combine, you will use Level-Up Material childs which look like little slime blobs.  Using ones of the correct elemental type will give you the best results but you can technically use any elemental material to level up your childs.  A child will only level so far before it needs to be evolved.  Evolving a child will reset it to level one but it will be a higher star count.

2 Star Child - Max LVL 20
3 Star Child - Max LVL 30
4 Star Child - Max LVL 40
5 Star Child - Max LVL 50
6 Star Child - Max LVL 60

     You can only get a 6 star child by evolving a 5 star child.  Evolution can only happen when your child is at it's max level and you have enough evolution material.  You will also need to sacrifice other childs of the same star level to evolve one.  For example if I have a level 40 four star child and all the material I need to also sacrifice 4 other 4 star childs to evolve this one.  I will lose the four sacrifices but my evolved child will become a 5 star lvl 1 child.

     You are also going to want to awaken your childs.  This can be done by spending onyx and continuing to level them through use (Or exploration or combining).  When you finish awakening a child it will get a new costume.  You will also be able to equip an accessory along with the weapon and armour.

     Also... equip weapons and armour to childs you use... But remember to remove them if you decide to get rid of that child.

     I have already gone into more detail than intended.  So I will leave you with this... This is a fun game that you can spend a lot of time on so be careful not to get addicted.  The story is fun and I recommend paying attention instead of skipping through it.  The graphics are so detailed and amazing, plus you can change the home page background and child to customise it to your liking which is amazing. The fact that all the dialogue is spoken word is brilliant but it does make the file size for this app pretty big so users might want to be sure they have the room to download this before starting the download (You'll need to download a packet when the app starts for the first time which is far bigger than the app file size).  Also, I do not recommend this for children... this is a teens and up app.  The fact that there are bouncy breasts and succubi mentioned in this review should be pretty clear signs of that.  Only real complaint is that it can take a bit to get used to all the elements of the app... it can be pretty overwhelming at first.

     Here are some other resources for how to play the game.
Blue Stacks
Gacha Games
Fandom Dot Com
Rating 4.5/5

• Free
• Seller: LINE Games
• Category: Games
• Size: 74.8 MB
• Languages: English, French, Thai, Traditional Chinese
• Copyright: © LINE GAMES Corporation. & ShiftUp Corporation.

You must be at least 17 years old to download this app. Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content and Nudity Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes