Ok, I can't even pretend to have some kinda cutesy anecdote about this one. At this point in the life of this blog it's pretty well documented how much I've fallen in love with this franchise. I talked about it non-stop until I played Undertale. Now I expect it to swing back that direction because a new one has finally been released, so the question really is going to be how does it hold up to it's lineage. Let's get to it.
PERSONA 5 (PS4)
There is a bit of introduction so I'll try to cliffnote it here. The game starts off with you taking control of a masked thief being referred to as Joker. He's a got a briefcase and is being pursued as he being looks to make an escape. He is in radio contact with what appears to be a whole team. He dispatches a series of shadows (giving us a brief combat and stealth tutorial) and makes what seems like a daring escape through a decorative window, only to be ambushed by a large scale police force and apprehended.
After getting beaten down by the police and drugged up, he is forced to sign a confession of guilt. The prosecutor of his case arrives to interrogate him, inquiring how one could "steal someone's heart" but she wants a truthful story out of Joker. Despite her disbelief of the whole situation you are told to start from the beginning.
Joker is actually a high schooler called Akira Kurusu (Manga), who is moving to Tokyo after being expelled from his original school. He was removed from school due to a criminal probation, as he was sued by a man who was sexually harassing a woman on the street, and Joker physically put a stop to it. The case didn't go his way, he was taken out of school, and sent by his parents to live in Tokyo for his probation staying with a somewhat cold and distant cafe owner named Sojiro Sakura.
After making his day one introductions, digging his roots to his new room, and finding a mysterious app on his phone Joker runs into local delinquent Ryuji Sakamoto on his way to the first day of class. However, the pair never make it to school as they find a medieval castle in its place run by what seems to be an oversexed and overblown version of the schools PE teacher, King Kamoshida. They are attacked and accosted by the King and his Shadows which causes Akira to awaken to his persona and fight back.
During their escape, Ryuji sees many of his fellow students being tortured and caged. They are able to make their escape by releasing a talking cat monster called Morgana who seems to have an understanding of this world, which turns out to be a manifestation of the teacher's twisted desires. The boys make a deal with Morgana to come back and help them as "Phantom Thieves", and in return it will allow them to change Kamoshida's heart to confess to the possible abuses he has done back in the real world.
I am probably glossing over a lot there but as we all know by now the Persona is a very narrative driven game, so admittedly they reason they start you off In Medias Res is to let you get a feel for the action early because once that is done you are in for a bit of storytelling. I will say that it feels like this one gets Star Ocean 2 levels of long before it really lets you off the chain to explore the world more. Which is fine, I don't mind a little exposition for a longer narrative, but you really gotta get the hooks in early for some people.
The Persona franchise is a split between a dungeon crawling JRPG and day-to-day Japanese Life simulation. That really is the best way to explain the two major aspects of this game. One of the key aspects of the Persona franchise for those who don't know is the contemporary setting forcing a balance of daily normal life on top of the fantastical dungeon crawling. You aren't legendary heroes on a quest, you are high school kids trying to go to class and save the world on the side. So why does the game force you simulate normal life? Because it affects your ability to fight.
While dungeon crawling the game has a very standard JRPG system about it: wander the map, find treasures, fight monsters, get to the boss. As you fight various shadows, you have the opportunity to collect them as personas to make them fight for you. You might think this apes the Pokemon system but the major difference here is that your persona's abilities also directly effect you. If your persona is weak to ice, then that means you are too so you have to be careful about what you are using to what you are fighting. On top of collecting them, you can fuse them together to make new ones with the abilities of both.
So what does this have to do with your daily life? Personas are tied to various tarot arcana, and they can be strengthened by increasing you bonds of the said arcana. This is done by bonding with the various people you meet in your daily life. Some are teammates, some are classmates, some are strangers, but as you continue to deepen your bonds with them, it increases the strength of your fusions for massive experience boosts. So while you might love a Persona you've been using for hours, eventually the game will out pace you and they won't be relevant anymore.
So typically, when you have the freedom, your day will start with you going to school and getting a bit of news about whats happening, you might have to answer a question in class so pay attention (seriously). After class you can go out and work a job, hang with your friends, study or do other various activities to boost your stats. As you improve your relationships, the corresponding arcana also increases, and when you fuse a new persona of that type, they will grow much stronger. Both of them play a factor into each other, so you will want to make time to do a little of everything.
If you chose instead to dungeon crawl, then your objective should be to clear dungeons in as few attempts as you can possibly muster. If you can go from start to finish in a single day that is ideal because then it maxes out your time to socialize with other people. There is a degree of pressure to this because Persona is a game that's defined by its deadlines. When you are given a mission you are then restricted to a few weeks time to complete the dungeon as well as fit in all the socializing you need to do prior to deadline, so as said above it's in your best interest to try to complete the dungeon in as few attempts as possible.
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| The goofy dubs they do spoofing on American movies are fucking hilarious. |
If you chose instead to dungeon crawl, then your objective should be to clear dungeons in as few attempts as you can possibly muster. If you can go from start to finish in a single day that is ideal because then it maxes out your time to socialize with other people. There is a degree of pressure to this because Persona is a game that's defined by its deadlines. When you are given a mission you are then restricted to a few weeks time to complete the dungeon as well as fit in all the socializing you need to do prior to deadline, so as said above it's in your best interest to try to complete the dungeon in as few attempts as possible.
I've touched on the combat a little bit, but for a more full explanation it runs the typically turn based JRPG standard this series has always had. In battle you have the option to fight, guard, use your persona, run and etc. All the enemies in the game have varied strengths and weaknesses, and if you manage to hit a weakness it knocks them down for you to do a follow up attack. If you are able to knock down all the of the enemies you get the chance to smash them for a big all out attack.
But that has changed a little bit this time around. Since you are thieves instead of just rushing for an all out attack, you instead can hold up the monster. In doing this you can then negotiate with them to give you an item or drop more cash at the cost of less experience, or you can persuade them to join you as a persona (Which hearkens back to the old Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games). These can be tricky since you need to look at their personality type, and respond to their questions appropriately. Since getting many of them will allow you to increase your strength, you will want to try to catch as many as you can.
There are handful of little tricks you can learn along the way too. Persona 5 brings back the "shoot" damage affinity since everyone has a gun they can use in battle. You can't often restore ammo and sometimes it's not as strong, but it can be used to hit a weakness. If monsters have varied weaknesses, you can use the "baton pass" ability to give your bonus turn to another character to keep the chain going. This is incredibly handy since your Skill Points used to cast personas are limited, and by being able to trade to other teammates, it will keep you from wasting all your hero's SP.
The game has a minor stealth mechanic to dungeon crawling. If monsters see you it raises an alert percentage and makes the enemies more aggressive. If that number reaches 100% getting caught again will bounce you right out of the dungeon, forcing you to waste a day of time. Thankfully, the game is pretty forgiving. You have lots of little ledges and corners to hide behind, and as long as you are hidden behind them the enemies can't see you even if they are standing in front of you. Pretty much gives you a free pace to ambush them and bring down your alert percentage.
Those are really the big functional differences to the overall combat system. If you have a played a Persona game prior to this one then all in all it's going to feel pretty natural to you. The one thing they changed that felt odd was instead of using the D-pad to pick your battle options, your main abilities are tied to different buttons: Fight is X, Guard is O, Persona is Triangle and so forth. It's a subtle change that took some getting used to but after a while you won't even notice it.
 |
| If you are on a wall, it doesn't where the baddie is. They can't see you. The stealth in this game is very generous. |
Those are really the big functional differences to the overall combat system. If you have a played a Persona game prior to this one then all in all it's going to feel pretty natural to you. The one thing they changed that felt odd was instead of using the D-pad to pick your battle options, your main abilities are tied to different buttons: Fight is X, Guard is O, Persona is Triangle and so forth. It's a subtle change that took some getting used to but after a while you won't even notice it.
That isn't the only shortcut they added either. Usually when you fight things or if you captured said persona you can tap the L1 button to see its list of health, strengths, weaknesses, and immunities. But now they've added a handy shortcut button (R1) that will jump you to a knockdown option. It may not give you the best possible option (such as a stronger version of a Fire attack, or one that attacks everyone) but it will give you one that can knock them down, if you can't it will show you who can pass the baton to to keep the chain going. It was a nifty little feature I appreciated.
You are going to spend a pretty significant amount of time in some menus too, primarily in the Velvet room. It returns again as your hub to fuse personas, and they thankfully put in all the little updates to in previous iterations of the game so now you can sort out by results, manually choose which abilities to bring over, and get a clearer better overall viewing of what it is your are doing. They also added some means of turning old personas into items or nuking them for a free XP boost as well, in addition to adding kind of solitary chamber to increase their resistances. But I'll be honest with you I found myself not needing to use these very much, only when I was trying to make something specific.
Ultimately, those are the major mechanics to this game. A lot of little changes built onto the solid core it has already established. If you have played a previous Persona game or are even loosely familiar with JRPGs then this one is not going to throw you any curveballs you aren't expecting, at least from a gameplay standpoint.
Graphically the visual styling has changed, sharpened, and matured. When I first started playing the game I couldn't rattle out of my head that it just felt like Catherine the RPG, but in retrospect that's not a really fair analogy. While it has kind of gone away from the more anime looking styles off Persona 4, the design definitely falls more in with the original design aesthetics of the Shin Megami Tensei series Persona initially spun off from.
Because of this, everything looks more mature. When I say that I mean when playing the older ones the character models looked very video gamey for lack of a better term, where in this one they are fully fleshed out and appropriately sized. Characters are taller and more human looking. More importantly, I feel it really allows to show reactions better. For example, the moments where a character makes a contract with their persona, or show actual terror the way the eyes dilate in that very Shigenori Soejima manner you've come to know.
From what I understand, this is a pretty faithful recreation of current day Tokyo, which is pretty impressive. It also explains why in the very beginning of the game when I was trying to get to the right character to actually progress with the start of the game It took me forever to get to. Persona 5 has done a pretty painstaking job of showing where everything is on your map with a minor exception of the way point maker. That would have been helpful navigating around the first few areas of the game.
Thankfully as you play through the game and visit more areas, you can eventually just menu jump from place to place without having to walk the entirety of the map. So you can go around and do your shopping and visit places and talk to people before you "spend your afternoon". It makes the whole time mechanic a little goofy since you can travel around town for hours and not pass time, but one trip to the batting cages wastes the whole day. You basically get the choice to do something during the day and something at night, unless you went to a dungeon. So you really need to use your time wisely.
Speaking of which, Social links feel way more important in this one. You could always use them to boost the experience your persona's got, but now on top of allowing your teammates personas you improve, the strangers that you befriend also have a significant effect on you. Through improving the many social links you meet along the way, you learn multitudes of new abilities both in battle and out. One lets you extort people for more money, One lets you learn how to switch your teammates in battle on the fly, one gives you more time to do additional daily activities, and so forth. It really forced me to take an interest in completing all of them because they all bring something valuable to your team.
Let's talk Shoji Meguro. I've previously mentioned that this man is in my god tier of video game composers and he once again knocked it out of the fucking park this time. Now when I first started it didn't immediately grab me, and I'm not sure why. Meguro is known for using various styles of music throughout his works. Persona 3 had a more hip hop vibe, Persona 4 was more punk and rock influenced, Persona Q blended the previous two games styles with a Ska vibe and somehow made it work {which is a true testament to his ability because Ska is awful}.
To be a bit more descriptive, if I had to summarize what style of music this game had I would say it shifts itself somewhere between I what feels like a blending of Acid Jazz for the downplayed moments, and Disco for the more upbeat moments, with an occasional rock song spliced in here and there. For lack of a better way to describe it I would say it it's very "groovy". Watching the intro movie to the game left me feeling lukewarm at best... to start.
That being said, this soundtrack was a slow burn for me. As I was playing through the opening segments and going into new areas, the music just wasn't hitting me. But as I played along, I would catch myself kinda moving to the music as I played. I would catch myself humming some of the songs, so they were definitely notable. Then I hit the main boss music and I got this shit eating grin on my face because it was scored perfectly with this great guitar riff, it raised the tension of the fight and just made the whole thing feel bad ass.
Then the music started introduce the vocals of Lyn Inaizumi, which she sung completely in English, so then songs became songs I could sing along with which make them stick in you head more. Then I started to notice how some of the songs remixed to be softer when it rained in game. Noticed homages to other video games with the chiptunes they used, the callback to Persona 4 in the crane game, the type of song used for each dungeon. Everything about it felt.... Perfect. Not much longer after that I approached the final acts of the game and got to some later boss fights. Those fights had a song I loved so much... Well.. Look...
That image isn't staged. For the final few fights of the game, I enjoyed the music so much that I actually made me get up out of my chair and dance while I played. I am not making this up. I genuinely enjoyed the music of the game that much. It took me forever to find a copy of the 3 disc soundtrack (only to have it domestically released right after) and it's currently bumped Undertale's Determination soundtrack off my listening for now. It's a fantastic OST and has forced me to come to terms with the fact that I might like disco. Shoji Meguro is a god.
One other minor note on the sound? I would like to thank Atlus and Persona team for adding in an animal mascot character and NOT give them a voice that made me want to dig the business end of a screwdriver into my ear. I usually develop a numbness to some of them over time but they are usually insufferable (Tales of Berseria is a big offender here). While Persona has done this before Teddie and a lesser extent Koromaru, it was nice to have a cat person not be so sickeningly over the top.
As I've always said, there is no perfect game but my complaints in this one are minor as always. First and most annoyingly it's kept the very very stupid "Hero can't die" rule that the other games had. So regardless if you have the items, spells, or party members to save you, if the hero drops to zero it's an instant game over. So if you say accidentally use your own weakness in the late stages of the final boss and it gets reflected into you, get sent up fucked river for it. I don't know why they keep this. Morgana can literally save me on the next turn, why do I need to reload the fight?
Speaking of that fucking cat, Morgana? To steal a joke from Kotaku: I'm a big boy. I can go to bed when I want to. I don't need you holding my hand constantly telling me to go to bed. In Persona 3 being in Tartarus directly affected your health and you needed the rest to be in peak form. Persona 4 they outright said the TV world can be physically draining. They have said nothing of the like in Persona 5, so if I want to study or make coffee after doing some dungeon crawling, god damn it let me!
In addition to that, there really are long stretches of the game where you are subjected to a lot of story. Like, a lot of it. I said before it's a very narrative driven game, but some of the deadlines wouldn't feel like they are pressuring me so much if I was allowed to do more during the deader story moments. Functionally, only when you have the actual deadline counter on the screen, that's when you have the freedom to actually do things.
There is some great story moments in this game, but there are some pretty large segments that just feel like fluff to fill time. I don't know why but I don't feel as emotionally pulled into this one like I was with Persona 4. But that is more because of the theme of that one resonated with me more on a personal level. The pace of the story is pretty slow I will admit, and it takes a few dungeons before the main narrative really sort of unveils itself and drive me. Until it does, it has a very doofy "Aww man, adults are the worst and were the best because were teens" theme to it. Which is silly since they are year or 2 out of being done with high school.
There are two big story issues that I have that I'll keep somewhat spoiler free. First, they tease something right into the opening cutscene and build throughout the course of the game, and they do a pretty good job of throwing things around to make it confusing, getting me to 2nd guess my choices. But it's resolved by being what was probably the most obvious solution, which actually kind of stunned me that they went that way with it. It felt too obvious and thought my ideas would have been way better.
The other is the resolution of that situation where they have to explain how they got out of the other aforementioned one. It's such a long and contrived explanation that they basically leave it for you to find in a single missable conversation, where it tells you straight off "this can be long and boring, you sure you want to know?" and then will ask if you want to quit mid explanation. Well no, I already plowed through 10 other text boxes, you might as well keep going so I can understand what the fuck happened. I wonder if this is a matter of localization, but I'm not really sure.
And this is kind of a weird thing to note, but apparently in Japan older working women are super down with the idea of banging a 16 or 17 year old kid, because you certain have options to romance in your social links. Don't get me wrong, they all have amazingly useful effects and were my favorite social links to do, but it does give an air of creepiness about them.
The game has an online mechanic for the "Thieves guild" which is cool. It shows you what people did on what days and what percentage of them did. But it also shows you what people picked on non-test school answers. Guess what, everyone is using a guide. It makes class easy mode because the right answer is usually ahead by an 85% margin. It sort of breaks the purpose of it but I'm not complaining. I was a bad student anyways.
My biggest complaint isn't really about the game, but with Atlus' draconian stances on streaming and sharing. They, like the Tales of series, locked off all native streaming abilities, and threatened copyrights and channel take downs if you played online. This pissed a lot of people off and there was a massive backlash. I was personally upset because I took 9 days off to play it and fully intended to stream. Now the backlash was really bad and just recently they lighted up the restrictions. You still can't do it natively on the console, but they are now at least cool with you streaming up to the last major act. It's still stupid, and makes getting screenshots a chore, but at least it's a minor concession.
But honestly, a lot of the things that can be seen as complaints are things that some people like about JRPGs. And you look at the things I was able to complain about in this you can see that they are minor complaints at best. The fact is I was able to plant my ass in a chair for 9 days and binge on 122 hours and then have to force myself to stop from continuing a new game plus because I have such a huge pile of games to get to.
The team at Atlus realized something that a lot of other games realized lately and have benefited from. Is that when you, from a story or gameplay aspect, make your game about doing heists? It instantly becomes more fun. Sure it takes some effort to slog through the dungeons but when you actually make the final push to finish and the song gets upbeat and you dash into the boss encounter? It's just impossible to not enjoy yourself.
Persona 5 is great. I knew it was going to be great, reviewers knew it was going to be great, YOU knew it was going to be great. I don't know why I needed to bother with 3500+ words to jack this game off. If you like enjoy anime based JRPGs or day to day life simulators with a sprinkle of Pokemon collectiblity, Persona 5 is going to scratch all those itches. It's not a game for those who are looking for a quick weekend play or games with a lot of reading.
But for everyone else, get it. It's incredible. This is going to be a very difficult year for people to decide on what the game of the year will be because there is so many amazing games that have come out this year already with more on the way, but you bet you ass Persona 5 is going to be that discussion. Five star A+ high recommendation. I love you Persona.
I'm sorry Punk Rock Doc, I know you are hot
but when I met "Becky" I knew I couldn't love you anymore.
I hope we can still be friends.
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| Persona has always been fetishistic a bit, so this didn't bother me. This is not the worst thing in this game. |
You are going to spend a pretty significant amount of time in some menus too, primarily in the Velvet room. It returns again as your hub to fuse personas, and they thankfully put in all the little updates to in previous iterations of the game so now you can sort out by results, manually choose which abilities to bring over, and get a clearer better overall viewing of what it is your are doing. They also added some means of turning old personas into items or nuking them for a free XP boost as well, in addition to adding kind of solitary chamber to increase their resistances. But I'll be honest with you I found myself not needing to use these very much, only when I was trying to make something specific.
Ultimately, those are the major mechanics to this game. A lot of little changes built onto the solid core it has already established. If you have played a previous Persona game or are even loosely familiar with JRPGs then this one is not going to throw you any curveballs you aren't expecting, at least from a gameplay standpoint.
 |
| It's actually pretty ironic that the Velvet Room is a prison this time around, because you are going to be locked in these menus for a while. |
Graphically the visual styling has changed, sharpened, and matured. When I first started playing the game I couldn't rattle out of my head that it just felt like Catherine the RPG, but in retrospect that's not a really fair analogy. While it has kind of gone away from the more anime looking styles off Persona 4, the design definitely falls more in with the original design aesthetics of the Shin Megami Tensei series Persona initially spun off from.
Because of this, everything looks more mature. When I say that I mean when playing the older ones the character models looked very video gamey for lack of a better term, where in this one they are fully fleshed out and appropriately sized. Characters are taller and more human looking. More importantly, I feel it really allows to show reactions better. For example, the moments where a character makes a contract with their persona, or show actual terror the way the eyes dilate in that very Shigenori Soejima manner you've come to know.
From what I understand, this is a pretty faithful recreation of current day Tokyo, which is pretty impressive. It also explains why in the very beginning of the game when I was trying to get to the right character to actually progress with the start of the game It took me forever to get to. Persona 5 has done a pretty painstaking job of showing where everything is on your map with a minor exception of the way point maker. That would have been helpful navigating around the first few areas of the game.
Thankfully as you play through the game and visit more areas, you can eventually just menu jump from place to place without having to walk the entirety of the map. So you can go around and do your shopping and visit places and talk to people before you "spend your afternoon". It makes the whole time mechanic a little goofy since you can travel around town for hours and not pass time, but one trip to the batting cages wastes the whole day. You basically get the choice to do something during the day and something at night, unless you went to a dungeon. So you really need to use your time wisely.
Speaking of which, Social links feel way more important in this one. You could always use them to boost the experience your persona's got, but now on top of allowing your teammates personas you improve, the strangers that you befriend also have a significant effect on you. Through improving the many social links you meet along the way, you learn multitudes of new abilities both in battle and out. One lets you extort people for more money, One lets you learn how to switch your teammates in battle on the fly, one gives you more time to do additional daily activities, and so forth. It really forced me to take an interest in completing all of them because they all bring something valuable to your team.
 |
| She better have good ethics about games in her journalism. Yeah, that still pisses me off. |
To be a bit more descriptive, if I had to summarize what style of music this game had I would say it shifts itself somewhere between I what feels like a blending of Acid Jazz for the downplayed moments, and Disco for the more upbeat moments, with an occasional rock song spliced in here and there. For lack of a better way to describe it I would say it it's very "groovy". Watching the intro movie to the game left me feeling lukewarm at best... to start.
That being said, this soundtrack was a slow burn for me. As I was playing through the opening segments and going into new areas, the music just wasn't hitting me. But as I played along, I would catch myself kinda moving to the music as I played. I would catch myself humming some of the songs, so they were definitely notable. Then I hit the main boss music and I got this shit eating grin on my face because it was scored perfectly with this great guitar riff, it raised the tension of the fight and just made the whole thing feel bad ass.
Then the music started introduce the vocals of Lyn Inaizumi, which she sung completely in English, so then songs became songs I could sing along with which make them stick in you head more. Then I started to notice how some of the songs remixed to be softer when it rained in game. Noticed homages to other video games with the chiptunes they used, the callback to Persona 4 in the crane game, the type of song used for each dungeon. Everything about it felt.... Perfect. Not much longer after that I approached the final acts of the game and got to some later boss fights. Those fights had a song I loved so much... Well.. Look...
 |
| And that is why I hide in the corner at parties. Look at this mess. |
That image isn't staged. For the final few fights of the game, I enjoyed the music so much that I actually made me get up out of my chair and dance while I played. I am not making this up. I genuinely enjoyed the music of the game that much. It took me forever to find a copy of the 3 disc soundtrack (only to have it domestically released right after) and it's currently bumped Undertale's Determination soundtrack off my listening for now. It's a fantastic OST and has forced me to come to terms with the fact that I might like disco. Shoji Meguro is a god.
One other minor note on the sound? I would like to thank Atlus and Persona team for adding in an animal mascot character and NOT give them a voice that made me want to dig the business end of a screwdriver into my ear. I usually develop a numbness to some of them over time but they are usually insufferable (Tales of Berseria is a big offender here). While Persona has done this before Teddie and a lesser extent Koromaru, it was nice to have a cat person not be so sickeningly over the top.
 |
| Aside from a few meows in his words, Morgana is actually pretty normal. |
As I've always said, there is no perfect game but my complaints in this one are minor as always. First and most annoyingly it's kept the very very stupid "Hero can't die" rule that the other games had. So regardless if you have the items, spells, or party members to save you, if the hero drops to zero it's an instant game over. So if you say accidentally use your own weakness in the late stages of the final boss and it gets reflected into you, get sent up fucked river for it. I don't know why they keep this. Morgana can literally save me on the next turn, why do I need to reload the fight?
Speaking of that fucking cat, Morgana? To steal a joke from Kotaku: I'm a big boy. I can go to bed when I want to. I don't need you holding my hand constantly telling me to go to bed. In Persona 3 being in Tartarus directly affected your health and you needed the rest to be in peak form. Persona 4 they outright said the TV world can be physically draining. They have said nothing of the like in Persona 5, so if I want to study or make coffee after doing some dungeon crawling, god damn it let me!
 |
| Didn't take the meme folk long to go to down on this one. Atlus even made a shirt about it. |
In addition to that, there really are long stretches of the game where you are subjected to a lot of story. Like, a lot of it. I said before it's a very narrative driven game, but some of the deadlines wouldn't feel like they are pressuring me so much if I was allowed to do more during the deader story moments. Functionally, only when you have the actual deadline counter on the screen, that's when you have the freedom to actually do things.
There is some great story moments in this game, but there are some pretty large segments that just feel like fluff to fill time. I don't know why but I don't feel as emotionally pulled into this one like I was with Persona 4. But that is more because of the theme of that one resonated with me more on a personal level. The pace of the story is pretty slow I will admit, and it takes a few dungeons before the main narrative really sort of unveils itself and drive me. Until it does, it has a very doofy "Aww man, adults are the worst and were the best because were teens" theme to it. Which is silly since they are year or 2 out of being done with high school.
There are two big story issues that I have that I'll keep somewhat spoiler free. First, they tease something right into the opening cutscene and build throughout the course of the game, and they do a pretty good job of throwing things around to make it confusing, getting me to 2nd guess my choices. But it's resolved by being what was probably the most obvious solution, which actually kind of stunned me that they went that way with it. It felt too obvious and thought my ideas would have been way better.
The other is the resolution of that situation where they have to explain how they got out of the other aforementioned one. It's such a long and contrived explanation that they basically leave it for you to find in a single missable conversation, where it tells you straight off "this can be long and boring, you sure you want to know?" and then will ask if you want to quit mid explanation. Well no, I already plowed through 10 other text boxes, you might as well keep going so I can understand what the fuck happened. I wonder if this is a matter of localization, but I'm not really sure.
And this is kind of a weird thing to note, but apparently in Japan older working women are super down with the idea of banging a 16 or 17 year old kid, because you certain have options to romance in your social links. Don't get me wrong, they all have amazingly useful effects and were my favorite social links to do, but it does give an air of creepiness about them.
 |
The older social links are not exactly shy about what they want to do with
Joker if you choose to purse one of them romantically.
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The game has an online mechanic for the "Thieves guild" which is cool. It shows you what people did on what days and what percentage of them did. But it also shows you what people picked on non-test school answers. Guess what, everyone is using a guide. It makes class easy mode because the right answer is usually ahead by an 85% margin. It sort of breaks the purpose of it but I'm not complaining. I was a bad student anyways.
My biggest complaint isn't really about the game, but with Atlus' draconian stances on streaming and sharing. They, like the Tales of series, locked off all native streaming abilities, and threatened copyrights and channel take downs if you played online. This pissed a lot of people off and there was a massive backlash. I was personally upset because I took 9 days off to play it and fully intended to stream. Now the backlash was really bad and just recently they lighted up the restrictions. You still can't do it natively on the console, but they are now at least cool with you streaming up to the last major act. It's still stupid, and makes getting screenshots a chore, but at least it's a minor concession.
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| This is Mara. It's a giant tentacle dick on a chariot. THIS is probably the worst thing in the game, It also should be made the new Atlus mascot over Jack Frost because of their streaming policies. |
But honestly, a lot of the things that can be seen as complaints are things that some people like about JRPGs. And you look at the things I was able to complain about in this you can see that they are minor complaints at best. The fact is I was able to plant my ass in a chair for 9 days and binge on 122 hours and then have to force myself to stop from continuing a new game plus because I have such a huge pile of games to get to.
The team at Atlus realized something that a lot of other games realized lately and have benefited from. Is that when you, from a story or gameplay aspect, make your game about doing heists? It instantly becomes more fun. Sure it takes some effort to slog through the dungeons but when you actually make the final push to finish and the song gets upbeat and you dash into the boss encounter? It's just impossible to not enjoy yourself.
Persona 5 is great. I knew it was going to be great, reviewers knew it was going to be great, YOU knew it was going to be great. I don't know why I needed to bother with 3500+ words to jack this game off. If you like enjoy anime based JRPGs or day to day life simulators with a sprinkle of Pokemon collectiblity, Persona 5 is going to scratch all those itches. It's not a game for those who are looking for a quick weekend play or games with a lot of reading.
But for everyone else, get it. It's incredible. This is going to be a very difficult year for people to decide on what the game of the year will be because there is so many amazing games that have come out this year already with more on the way, but you bet you ass Persona 5 is going to be that discussion. Five star A+ high recommendation. I love you Persona.
but when I met "Becky" I knew I couldn't love you anymore.
I hope we can still be friends.
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