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Atlus Persona 5

Hyperion

Arcane
Joined
Jul 2, 2016
Messages
2,120
The game blocks screenshots because Atlus is pretty militant about spoiling this game. All pics in here have to be taken using a camera.
 

eric__s

ass hater
Developer
Joined
Jun 13, 2011
Messages
2,301
Speaking of spoiling the game, I didn't even look at the game's cover art or title screen until after I beat it because I didn't want to see which characters I'd get.
 

GarlandExCon

Arcane
Joined
May 19, 2014
Messages
6,975
Finished the 4th Palace in 1 day, had like 3 weeks to spend and do nothing but build up Confidants and Social Stats. Was 100% convinced I was gonna sex up Kawakami for obvious reasons, but after getting her Confidant Level up to 8 and seeing her story, I did a complete 180. All of the responses to her suck as well. Tired of having to pump up her self-esteem and reassure her she isn't a worthless cum dumpster. I have no time for that fucking shit.

Dr. Takemi here I come.

Edit: Ground out a few extra levels in the Palace / did 4 Mementos bosses, and Persona combinations are finally getting fucking cool. Got a White Rider with Trigger Happy, Gun Boost, and Triple Down I'm kinda excited to give a go once I get some more Hanged Man Confidant levels. Also made a Hell Biker with like 35 Agility or some shit, and a Mitras with Bless Boost. Did like 1,000 to some Mementos Boss with Tarukaja on. Can't imagine what those uber Personas like Michael and Yoshitsune are like.

Getting a Persona with High Strength seems pretty hard to come by. Right now, Joker seems better relegated to Mage with Yusuke, Makoto, and Ryuji suited for attacks.

Yeah, the Kawakami social link has turned out to be extremely lame and disappointing. That period before you have to go into the 4th palace during Summer break feels like you're just along for the ride for a good two weeks with people calling you and showing up at LeBlanc everyday.
 

Malpercio

Arcane
Joined
Dec 8, 2011
Messages
1,534
The game blocks screenshots because Atlus is pretty militant about spoiling this game. All pics in here have to be taken using a camera.

AbcBfC6.jpg

1BzZXqF.png

TpMvTrJ.png
 

Jick Magger

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 7, 2010
Messages
5,667
Location
New Zealand
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Bubbles In Memoria
At the second-to-last palace now. The game is only truly severely rail-roaded for the first two palaces, with May being the absolute worst due to the multiple gameplay mechanics and characters being introduced and plot threads being established, ultimately leaving you with barely two weeks of free time to work with. The game only truly begins to open up once you reach the fourth palace, which also roughly coincides with the remaining confidants becoming available. The big issue is that this game has probably the most superficial in the series in its methods to artificially restricting your time. The game has both streamlined some of its mechanics while putting more restrictions on others: this game probably has the most skill-gates in the series in regards to progressing with confidants, which encourages you to manage your time more efficiently in order to max these stats out, but at the same time the confidants are all fairly straightforward once they are unlocked, so you never have to worry about any esoteric or easy-to-break confidants like with the other games (I'm looking at you, Ai). The game also encourages you much more to pursue these confidants due to the various gameplay bonuses they can give, though this can have the unintended side-effect of the player beginning to value confidants more because of whatever bonuses they may impart rather than actually liking them (I only tolerated Mishima because of the shared XP bonus he gave, for example, while pretty much ignoring Ohya because her bonus is unnecessary unless you're somehow bad at the game's rudimentary stealth system.).
 

Red Rogue

Learned
Joined
Dec 6, 2015
Messages
148
Location
The Squat Rack
Anyone else feel that Haru was introduced far too late into the game? By the time she joins your party, you're just before the game's climax. The meat of the story is behind you and it leaves you with no downtime to connect with her as the player. Then, on a technical level, I'm feeling discouraged to use her in battle because all of my other party members have maxed out social links which provide invaluable benefits.

Hell, just to be able to use the baton pass ability on Haru, you have to have MAX proficiency. That's lame.
Sure, you had to have max charm to complete Makoto's social link, but at least the game didn't put Baton pass behind a charm wall!
 

Red Rogue

Learned
Joined
Dec 6, 2015
Messages
148
Location
The Squat Rack
Finished the 4th Palace in 1 day, had like 3 weeks to spend and do nothing but build up Confidants and Social Stats. Was 100% convinced I was gonna sex up Kawakami for obvious reasons, but after getting her Confidant Level up to 8 and seeing her story, I did a complete 180. All of the responses to her suck as well. Tired of having to pump up her self-esteem and reassure her she isn't a worthless cum dumpster. I have no time for that fucking shit.

Dr. Takemi here I come.

Edit: Ground out a few extra levels in the Palace / did 4 Mementos bosses, and Persona combinations are finally getting fucking cool. Got a White Rider with Trigger Happy, Gun Boost, and Triple Down I'm kinda excited to give a go once I get some more Hanged Man Confidant levels. Also made a Hell Biker with like 35 Agility or some shit, and a Mitras with Bless Boost. Did like 1,000 to some Mementos Boss with Tarukaja on. Can't imagine what those uber Personas like Michael and Yoshitsune are like.

Getting a Persona with High Strength seems pretty hard to come by. Right now, Joker seems better relegated to Mage with Yusuke, Makoto, and Ryuji suited for attacks.

Yeah, the Kawakami social link has turned out to be extremely lame and disappointing. That period before you have to go into the 4th palace during Summer break feels like you're just along for the ride for a good two weeks with people calling you and showing up at LeBlanc everyday.

That was a little odd. I didn't find it very useful. I accepted twice and the other days I ignored them to go progress confidants. Once, Ryujii called and wanted to play videogames but I hadn't bought the console and then my pet cat felt the need to lecture me about it. Fuck off pet cat.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
14,022
Location
Platypus Planet
Anyone else feel that Haru was introduced far too late into the game? By the time she joins your party, you're just before the game's climax. The meat of the story is behind you and it leaves you with no downtime to connect with her as the player. Then, on a technical level, I'm feeling discouraged to use her in battle because all of my other party members have maxed out social links which provide invaluable benefits.

Hell, just to be able to use the baton pass ability on Haru, you have to have MAX proficiency. That's lame.
Sure, you had to have max charm to complete Makoto's social link, but at least the game didn't put Baton pass behind a charm wall!

Persona 3 & 4 had the same problems when they introduced they last party members. I had hoped that P5 was different because they gave you a full 4 man party quite early in the game, before you even completed your first dungeon, but I guess not. Shame too since Haru was probably the best party member for damage. She just shits out high numbers.
 

GarlandExCon

Arcane
Joined
May 19, 2014
Messages
6,975
Finished the 4th Palace in 1 day, had like 3 weeks to spend and do nothing but build up Confidants and Social Stats. Was 100% convinced I was gonna sex up Kawakami for obvious reasons, but after getting her Confidant Level up to 8 and seeing her story, I did a complete 180. All of the responses to her suck as well. Tired of having to pump up her self-esteem and reassure her she isn't a worthless cum dumpster. I have no time for that fucking shit.

Dr. Takemi here I come.

Edit: Ground out a few extra levels in the Palace / did 4 Mementos bosses, and Persona combinations are finally getting fucking cool. Got a White Rider with Trigger Happy, Gun Boost, and Triple Down I'm kinda excited to give a go once I get some more Hanged Man Confidant levels. Also made a Hell Biker with like 35 Agility or some shit, and a Mitras with Bless Boost. Did like 1,000 to some Mementos Boss with Tarukaja on. Can't imagine what those uber Personas like Michael and Yoshitsune are like.

Getting a Persona with High Strength seems pretty hard to come by. Right now, Joker seems better relegated to Mage with Yusuke, Makoto, and Ryuji suited for attacks.

Yeah, the Kawakami social link has turned out to be extremely lame and disappointing. That period before you have to go into the 4th palace during Summer break feels like you're just along for the ride for a good two weeks with people calling you and showing up at LeBlanc everyday.

That was a little odd. I didn't find it very useful. I accepted twice and the other days I ignored them to go progress confidants. Once, Ryujii called and wanted to play videogames but I hadn't bought the console and then my pet cat felt the need to lecture me about it. Fuck off pet cat.

I did them all, sadly. I was under the mistaken impression that it would progress the confidants AND increase your stats at the same time. It only seems to do the latter. This would make a lot of sense for it to do both, too, since they introduce so many NPCs late int he game after this that it's impossible to max out their confidant. If they gave you the time over the Summer break to both progress your existing confidants and increase your stats, that would make a lot of sense.
 
Joined
May 6, 2009
Messages
1,876,046
Location
Glass Fields, Ruins of Old Iran
I was watching Direboar's stream yesterday and oh god, the NPCs will comment on every single action. The randomized car dungeon segment felt like you were driving with five Navis on your shoulder. I asked the streamer and he thinks you can't turn down the frequency of party banter, just turn it off altogether. Why

Also, your cat will sit on the crafting table and force you to watch him licking his balls while you make gadgets.
 

Cowboy Moment

Arcane
Joined
Feb 8, 2011
Messages
4,407
So, after finding the opening of Persona 4 too painful to endure a couple years ago, I decided to give the series another shot. P5’s opening is much stronger, I liked the premise a lot more (the game ultimately didn’t live up to it, but the concept is pretty cool), and ended up finishing the game and enjoying it, even though I found it to be flawed in many respects. Now I'm stuck on a delayed flight, so I decided to pass the time by writing some extremely tldr impressions. This should be obvious, but for the benefit of the less perceptive among us, I will warn that spoilers follow.

Its strongest point is, by far, the overall presentation. It just oozes style, is incredibly slick and polished, with a great soundtrack. Some of the UI elements are impractical (the slanted heart makes for a very poor hp/sp meter, for example), but the whole package is very impressive, and also refreshingly bold and ostentatious. In comparison, the 3D overworld and dungeons are rather disappointingly plain – the dungeons themselves being mental landscapes should permit all sorts of craziness, but the game rarely makes use of this, opting to mostly copy real locations with some adornments.

The dungeon crawling experience is surprisingly pleasant, although I can’t see how it would be anything but incredibly boring without a self imposed challenge of clearing them in a single day. Dungeon design isn’t too great in and out of itself – they try to mix things up with various gimmicks, but they’re all varying levels of shallow, and the puzzles are insultingly simple. Progression through them is also very linear, so while the maps themselves can be somewhat complex, they allow for very little exploration. What remains is the combat, which is too shallow and simplistic to carry the whole thing by itself. Ultimately, what made the dungeons compelling to me was managing my SP and consumables to complete them in a single go. In hindsight, the game should really be played on Hard at minimum, which can actually kill you if you get too greedy.

The game really wants you to buy into its Phantom Thief fiction, but the stealth and alert level mechanics do practically nothing. You never actually pull off a clean heist, and always end up beating up the dungeon boss to get the treasure, which causes a bit of dissonance. P5 has a lot of similar narrative problems, but more about that later.

Mementos is awful, of course. Some of the worst procedural level generation I've seen in a game ever. Diablo 1, released 20 years ago, runs circles around the dull crap Mementos spits out, to say nothing of real dungeon crawlers and roguelikes. It doesn't help that, in typical JRPG fashion, the loot is incredibly boring, and money isn't very useful in the life-sim part.

On the combat itself, I’d say that its main problem in normal encounters is being too snowbally – hitting a weakness or critical leads to more opportunities for hitting another one, and therefore you almost always win before the enemies get to act, or occasionally lose to a string of bad luck too unlikely to be worth playing around. Thus, combat comes down to knowing weaknesses and sequencing your first turns in such a way as to win via holdups. Boss encounters don’t have this problem, but suffer from SP regeneration mechanics – you have a ton of SP to balance the rarity of SP regen items and having to leave the dungeon to regain it naturally, so you won’t realistically run out in even the longest boss fights. Thus, they can only threaten you by doing tons of damage or constantly spawning additional enemies. I think reducing max SP substantially while providing more ways to regen it out of combat would allow more interesting boss designs by forcing the player to actually manage their resources in boss fights as well. Would also make them take less time, which a lot of them desperately need. Seriously, the 7th Palace boss was a ridiculous slog.

The Persona fusing and enhancement systems seem pretty interesting and in-depth, though unfortunately the game doesn't require you to make particularly good use of them. At the very least, I finished it on Hard without much trouble, while only really trying to fuse more when I ran out of slots, no real planning involved. Would've been nice to have an optional dungeon which actually required the kinds of overpowered Persona I assume you can make if you really try.

Like I said, I did like the concept of P5's story, and enjoyed the first arc quite a bit, handholdy and tutorial-heavy as it was. I think it did a great job of establishing the injustice of the protagonist's situation, and created a suffocating atmosphere by casting him as a pariah, looked at with indifference or fear. Nothing about the school experience was pleasant, which made the initial excursions into the metaverse feel liberating, nicely matching up with the game's main theme. The intimate setting also allowed Kamoshida to be properly characterized, and it's a characterization that, while exaggerated, is also unpleasantly believable. The game even acknowledged, in a way, that Kamoshida can only get away with his behaviour because of a combination of apathy, fear, and desire to conform from everyone involved - students, parents, teachers. My biggest disappointment with P5’s narrative is that this is completely dropped and never mentioned again until the very end.

This is probably on me, for having too high expectations for a JRPG plot, but after that opening, I thought it'd get a lot more subversive, and the heart-changing powers would be used to directly target systemic social problems. I wanted to fight the power, kill the masters, examine the ethics of vigilante justice and revolutionary change. The moment I saw Akechi the first time, I envisioned him as the true antagonist, with his own idea of justice conflicting with that of Joker's (would've been much better than the disappointment he ended up being).

Well, so much for that. After the first Palace, the plot loses all its energy and tension, and then has you spend the following 4 Palaces bullying random poorly characterized evil people while constantly worrying about your own popularity. Indeed, after hammering home the idea that public opinion is shallow, unfair and viciously judgemental, the game nonetheless wants you to accept it as the primary measure of your success. It sucks. It picks up again in the sixth Palace, which belongs to an important character (and therefore adds to her characterization in interesting ways). This is also where the big twist (and the reason for the interrogation framing device) happens, and while the sequence of events isn't very believable, it's quite fun and at times even clever, and certainly an improvement over what comes before.

Still, thematically, the whole progression is a mess. It wants to cast the protagonists as modern Robin Hoods, and this more or less works. However, Robin Hood's story ends with taking down the sheriff of Nottingham - not with open rebellion against the king and abolition of feudalism. Indeed, I feel like Shido serves as a good final antagonist for the "evil people abusing power" angle, the problem lies in what comes after. The game is not subtle at all with the point it wants to make via Mementos Depths, but said point is disconnected from most of what happens in the story before it. I'd actually be more than fine if the activities of Phantom Thieves were treated as an allegory for political activism (as the ending wants to interpet them), and that would've likely made for a much more interesting plot. However, I get the impression that the writers are afraid of doing this, so instead they first tiptoe around the underlying problems that enable abusers like Kamoshida, and then only allow the protagonists to rebel against society in a very abstract way, carefully avoiding any specifics. I see this as fake, cheap, and unearned.

P5's primary and biggest flaw, however, is that it's massively overwritten (even more than this post, which is an accomplishment), with most of the writing being mediocre to bad. The localisation seemingly having been done by a B-tier amateur anime fansub group doesn't help, and I certainly can't tell if the original material is any better, but a lot of the problems simply cannot be blamed on translation. You are constantly bombarded with pointless and boring dialogue, IM convos with your teammates being the worst offender, but the main plot just loves repeating everything constantly. Maybe the writers realised the group didn’t have much chemistry and tried to make it up with quantity? The poor writing is generally also what makes the life-sim aspect become tedious really quickly, and turns most of the Confidant storylines into boring non-events.

The best thing about the Confidants is their gameplay benefits, which are substantial, varied, and thematically appropriate. With the exception of a single stinker - the Devil - they were very well done, exciting to unlock, and fun to use. The stories themselves, however, leave much to be desired. The party confidants suffer from being completely disconnected from the main plot, which forces them to either be insubstantial or produce inconsistent characterization - the main plot is always the same, so either the confidant storyline doesn't change much, or the character acts inconsistently between the two (mainly a problem with Ryuji, who is surprisingly mature and thoughtful in his Confidant story, and the complete opposite in the main plot). All the Confidants suffer from Bioware space jesus syndrome, where the main character takes the role of a passive therapist, providing support via the occasional encouraging comment, as the other person pours their heart out to him. They even have an obligatory statement at the end, where they explicitly thank the protagonist for being such a great therapist, which is usually awkward and out of place.

I'm exaggerating a bit, and for a few of them, this pattern makes sense and is executed well - Sojiro, Futaba (where it's explicitly therapy), and the old politician come to mind. Some have potential, but squander it due to the story itself just being too stupid to be believable - the doctor and the teacher in particular. Way too many follow an unpleasant template, where the Confidant is a total wet rag being bullied by bad people, and we have to fix their problem with Metaverse magic - this just seems to be against the game's theme of rebellion, which none of them appear capable of. This is also why Mishima is one of my favourite Confidant stories - he's a real person with real character flaws, not a innocently suffering saint; but he eventually grows past them on his own, and the scene where his Shadow taunts you to change his heart, and you reply "No need" before walking away is probably my favourite in the whole game.

Ultimately, all of this comes down to the poor writing, and the Confidants just not being very interesting or intriguing characters. I guess adding as many potential waifus as possible took priority over that. Not that this succeeded either, as the romances barely exist, consist of 2-3 short and forgettable scenes, and of course the main plot completely ignores them.

To wrap up this ungodly wall of text (will it even fit in a single Codex post? we'll find out once I get off this stupid plane), I guess the game is mostly style over substance. It’s a great style, but it's not enough to carry 100 hours of clicking through bad dialogue and samey combat. I will admit though, that I kinda want to try playing SMT Nocturne now, given that it's supposed to have much better combat and no mediocre VN segments to break it up.
 
Last edited:

dukeofwhales

Cipher
Joined
Nov 13, 2013
Messages
423
I do not watch anime and I like the persona games, but make no mistake - these games are triple distilled anime garbage
 

GarlandExCon

Arcane
Joined
May 19, 2014
Messages
6,975
So, after finding the opening of Persona 4 too painful to endure a couple years ago...

I remember when I played P4 I almost gave up because of the opening. It's like "am I watching an anime or am I playing a fucking game?" but it was well worth the endurance.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
15,010
I watch copious amounts of anime but have no interest in these games- I tried P3 when it came out and the dull mechanics and awful pacing turned me off completely.
 

StaticSpine

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 14, 2013
Messages
3,232
Location
Moscow
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Katsura Hashino, producer and director of several Persona titles, has moved away from the series. After the international success of Persona 5, Hashino wrote in a letter to fans that he’s giving other designers a chance to helm the franchise.

“Last year, with the milestone of the Persona series’ 20th anniversary, I handed off the series development to my successors and announced the start of my new RPG project that takes place in a fantasy world,” Hashino said toward the end of his post.

Project Re Fantasy is that next step. Revealed in December, it’s the first game from the newly formed Studio Zero. Hashino launched Studio Zero as a development team within Atlus, but it remained unclear whether his work there would take him away from Persona-related projects full-time.

Project Re Fantasy is said to be “a complete departure” from the work of P-Studio, the internal team working on Persona games. That should have been enough of a hint that Hashino was ready to tackle other projects, yet neither Atlus nor Hashino was explicit about whether he’d remain involved with both teams.

His continued work on Persona games remained up in the air as recently as last month, when a Waypoint interview with Hashino mentioned that there was “no guarantee” that he’d stay with the franchise past Persona 5.
https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/4/15545254/persona-5-director-leaves-katsura-hashino

Old news or not?
 

Hyperion

Arcane
Joined
Jul 2, 2016
Messages
2,120
New game is old news. Departure from Persona was expected, but not official 'till recently.

New project is clearly referencing Tarot cards again. From my immediate memory, JRPG's that make heavy use of tarot cards are major sources of incline. (Ogre series, Shadow Hearts 2, this... etc.). Traditional JRPG with an Atlus touch? Sign me up.
 

Malpercio

Arcane
Joined
Dec 8, 2011
Messages
1,534
So, after finding the opening of Persona 4 too painful to endure a couple years ago, I decided to give the series another shot. P5’s opening is much stronger, I liked the premise a lot more (the game ultimately didn’t live up to it, but the concept is pretty cool), and ended up finishing the game and enjoying it, even though I found it to be flawed in many respects. Now I'm stuck on a delayed flight, so I decided to pass the time by writing some extremely tldr impressions. This should be obvious, but for the benefit of the less perceptive among us, I will warn that spoilers follow.

It’s strongest point is, by far, the overall presentation. It just oozes style, is incredibly slick and polished, with a great soundtrack. Some of the UI elements are impractical (the slanted heart makes for a very poor hp/sp meter, for example), but the whole package is very impressive, and also refreshingly bold and ostentatious. In comparison, the 3D overworld and dungeons are rather disappointingly plain – the dungeons themselves being mental landscapes should permit all sorts of craziness, but the game rarely makes use of this, opting to mostly copy real locations with some adornments.

The dungeon crawling experience is surprisingly pleasant, although I can’t see how it would be anything but incredibly boring without a self imposed challenge of clearing them in a single day. Dungeon design isn’t too great in and out of itself – they try to mix things up with various gimmicks, but they’re all varying levels of shallow, and the puzzles are insultingly simple. Progression through them is also very linear, so while the maps themselves can be somewhat complex, they allow for very little exploration. What remains is the combat, which is too shallow and simplistic to carry the whole thing by itself. Ultimately, what made the dungeons compelling to me was managing my SP and consumables to complete them in a single go. In hindsight, the game should really be played on Hard at minimum, which can actually kill you if you get too greedy.

The game really wants you to buy into its Phantom Thief fiction, but the stealth and alert level mechanics do practically nothing. You never actually pull off a clean heist, and always end up beating up the dungeon boss to get the treasure, which causes a bit of dissonance. P5 has a lot of similar narrative problems, but more about that later.

Mementos is awful, of course. Some of the worst procedural level generation I've seen in a game ever. Diablo 1, released 20 years ago, runs circles around the dull crap Mementos spits out, to say nothing of real dungeon crawlers and roguelikes. It doesn't help that, in typical JRPG fashion, the loot is incredibly boring, and money isn't very useful in the life-sim part.

On the combat itself, I’d say that its main problem in normal encounters is being too snowbally – hitting a weakness or critical leads to more opportunities for hitting another one, and therefore you almost always win before the enemies get to act, or occasionally lose to a string of bad luck too unlikely to be worth playing around. Thus, combat comes down to knowing weaknesses and sequencing your first turns in such a way as to win via holdups. Boss encounters don’t have this problem, but suffer from SP regeneration mechanics – you have a ton of SP to balance the rarity of SP regen items and having to leave the dungeon to regain it naturally, so you won’t realistically run out in even the longest boss fights. Thus, they can only threaten you by doing tons of damage or constantly spawning additional enemies. I think reducing max SP substantially while providing more ways to regen it out of combat would allow more interesting boss designs by forcing the player to actually manage their resources in boss fights as well. Would also make them take less time, which a lot of them desperately need. Seriously, the 7th Palace boss was a ridiculous slog.

The Persona fusing and enhancement systems seem pretty interesting and in-depth, though unfortunately the game doesn't require you to make particularly good use of them. At the very least, I finished it on Hard without much trouble, while only really trying to fuse more when I ran out of slots, no real planning involved. Would've been nice to have an optional dungeon which actually required the kinds of overpowered Persona I assume you can make if you really try.

Like I said, I did like the concept of P5's story, and enjoyed the first arc quite a bit, handholdy and tutorial-heavy as it was. I think it did a great job of establishing the injustice of the protagonist's situation, and created a suffocating atmosphere by casting him as a pariah, looked at with indifference or fear. Nothing about the school experience was pleasant, which made the initial excursions into the metaverse feel liberating, nicely matching up with the game's main theme. The intimate setting also allowed Kamoshida to be properly characterized, and it's a characterization that, while exaggerated, is also unpleasantly believable. The game even acknowledged, in a way, that Kamoshida can only get away with his behaviour because of a combination of apathy, fear, and desire to conform from everyone involved - students, parents, teachers. My biggest disappointment with P5’s narrative is that this is completely dropped and never mentioned again until the very end.

This is probably on me, for having too high expectations for a JRPG plot, but after that opening, I thought it'd get a lot more subversive, and the heart-changing powers would be used to directly target systemic social problems. I wanted to fight the power, kill the masters, examine the ethics of vigilante justice and revolutionary change. The moment I saw Akechi the first time, I envisioned him as the true antagonist, with his own idea of justice conflicting with that of Joker's (would've been much better than the disappointment he ended up being).

Well, so much for that. After the first Palace, the plot loses all its energy and tension, and then has you spend the following 4 Palaces bullying random poorly characterized evil people while constantly worrying about your own popularity. Indeed, after hammering home the idea that public opinion is shallow, unfair and viciously judgemental, the game nonetheless wants you to accept it as the primary measure of your success. It sucks. It picks up again in the sixth Palace, which belongs to an important character (and therefore adds to her characterization in interesting ways). This is also where the big twist (and the reason for the interrogation framing device) happens, and while the sequence of events isn't very believable, it's quite fun and at times even clever, and certainly an improvement over what comes before.

Still, thematically, the whole progression is a mess. It wants to cast the protagonists as modern Robin Hoods, and this more or less works. However, Robin Hood's story ends with taking down the sheriff of Nottingham - not with open rebellion against the king and abolition of feudalism. Indeed, I feel like Shido serves as a good final antagonist for the "evil people abusing power" angle, the problem lies in what comes after. The game is not subtle at all with the point it wants to make via Mementos Depths, but said point is disconnected from most of what happens in the story before it. I'd actually be more than fine if the activities of Phantom Thieves were treated as an allegory for political activism (as the ending wants to interpet them), and that would've likely made for a much more interesting plot. However, I get the impression that the writers are afraid of doing this, so instead they first tiptoe around the underlying problems that enable abusers like Kamoshida, and then only allow the protagonists to rebel against society in a very abstract way, carefully avoiding any specifics. I see this as fake, cheap, and unearned.

P5's primary and biggest flaw, however, is that it's massively overwritten (even more than this post, which is an accomplishment), with most of the writing being mediocre to bad. The localisation seemingly having been done by a B-tier amateur anime fansub group doesn't help, and I certainly can't tell if the original material is any better, but a lot of the problems simply cannot be blamed on translation. You are constantly bombarded with pointless and boring dialogue, IM convos with your teammates being the worst offender, but the main plot just loves repeating everything constantly. Maybe the writers realised the group didn’t have much chemistry and tried to make it up with quantity? The poor writing is generally also what makes the life-sim aspect become tedious really quickly, and turns most of the Confidant storylines into boring non-events.

The best thing about the Confidants is their gameplay benefits, which are substantial, varied, and thematically appropriate. With the exception of a single stinker - the Devil - they were very well done, exciting to unlock, and fun to use. The stories themselves, however, leave much to be desired. The party confidants suffer from being completely disconnected from the main plot, which forces them to either be insubstantial or produce inconsistent characterization - the main plot is always the same, so either the confidant storyline doesn't change much, or the character acts inconsistently between the two (mainly a problem with Ryuji, who is surprisingly mature and thoughtful in his Confidant story, and the complete opposite in the main plot). All the Confidants suffer from Bioware space jesus syndrome, where the main character takes the role of a passive therapist, providing support via the occasional encouraging comment, as the other person pours their heart out to him. They even have an obligatory statement at the end, where they explicitly thank the protagonist for being such a great therapist, which is usually awkward and out of place.

I'm exaggerating a bit, and for a few of them, this pattern makes sense and is executed well - Sojiro, Futaba (where it's explicitly therapy), and the old politician come to mind. Some have potential, but squander it due to the story itself just being too stupid to be believable - the doctor and the teacher in particular. Way too many follow an unpleasant template, where the Confidant is a total wet rag being bullied by bad people, and we have to fix their problem with Metaverse magic - this just seems to be against the game's theme of rebellion, which none of them appear capable of. This is also why Mishima is one of my favourite Confidant stories - he's a real person with real character flaws, not a innocently suffering saint; but he eventually grows past them on his own, and the scene where his Shadow taunts you to change his heart, and you reply "No need" before walking away is probably my favourite in the whole game.

Ultimately, all of this comes down to the poor writing, and the Confidants just not being very interesting or intriguing characters. I guess adding as many potential waifus as possible took priority over that. Not that this succeeded either, as the romances barely exist, consist of 2-3 short and forgettable scenes, and of course the main plot completely ignores them.

To wrap up this ungodly wall of text (will it even fit in a single Codex post? we'll find out once I get off this stupid plane), I guess the game is mostly style over substance. It’s a great style, but it's not enough to carry 100 hours of clicking through bad dialogue and samey combat. I will admit though, that I kinda want to try playing SMT Nocturne now, given that it's supposed to have much better combat and no mediocre VN segments to break it up.

The space Jesus aspect isn't as bad as Persona 4 at least. :P

But yeah, very good post. Excellent analysis.

Your part on the writing is very on point, so much useless text, especially in the last part of the game. (or maybe not, but for me it was when it started to get grating)

I see this as fake, cheap, and unearned.

Yeah, Persona 5's message failed to resonate with me. It doesn't help that the game is a waifu game, the game wants to criticize society and wants the player to feel "oppressed" by society, but it also trapped into anime tropes and it wants to give the players everything they want and fuel their escapist fantasy. The overall message comes off as dishonest and cheap.
 
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lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,198
That was an interesting read and what I feared it would happen.

Yeah, Persona 5's message failed to resonate with me. It doesn't help that the game is a waifu game, the game wants to criticize society and wants the player to feel "oppressed" by society, but it also trapped into anime tropes and it wants to give the players everything they want and fuel their escapist fantasy. The overall message comes off as dishonest and cheap.

It was going to happen I think. After all, no Japanese game would truly encourage rebellion, considering what kind of society they live in... With some exceptions like Yoko Taro's works, but these are not the norm.
 

Malpercio

Arcane
Joined
Dec 8, 2011
Messages
1,534
Well, I would say Persona 5 does encourage rebellion, even the final message of the game is pretty clear
get out, make yourself heard, change things, fight the authorities
, it's just feels half-assed like a lot of the other social commentaries in the game. As Cowboy Moment said, it comes off as "fake, cheap, and unearned".
 

mck

Cipher
Joined
Nov 1, 2011
Messages
599
Is there any cut content on the PS3 version of Persona 5 or is it the same as the PS4 version minus 1080p?
 

Cowboy Moment

Arcane
Joined
Feb 8, 2011
Messages
4,407
I remember when I played P4 I almost gave up because of the opening. It's like "am I watching an anime or am I playing a fucking game?" but it was well worth the endurance.

Well, I got to the beginning of the second dungeon before calling it quits. At the time I didn't really understand the systems, so maybe I'd enjoy the dungeon crawling on the highest difficulty at least with my P5 experience. Still, the premise and setting of that game left me rather cold, and I think Dojima was the only character I actually liked.

Yeah, Persona 5's message failed to resonate with me. It doesn't help that the game is a waifu game, the game wants to criticize society and wants the player to feel "oppressed" by society, but it also trapped into anime tropes and it wants to give the players everything they want and fuel their escapist fantasy. The overall message comes off as dishonest and cheap.

It's ironic, that while the game's final message is that of rebellion against the status quo, it's ultimately a piece of escapist fluff. In the wonderful world of P5, you can be the noble vigilante Joker, with his own harem and magical ability to force evildoers to confess their crimes. In the real world, you better get back to work in your cubicle, slave.

Well, I would say Persona 5 does encourage rebellion, even the final message of the game is pretty clear
get out, make yourself heard, change things, fight the authorities
, it's just feels half-assed like a lot of the other social commentaries in the game. As Cowboy Moment said, it comes off as "fake, cheap, and unearned".

Well, to be precise, that is the message the game wants you to think it has. The actual message, accounting for the entire 100 hours of playtime, rather than just the last 5, is more akin to "Endure abuse quietly, wait unil someone else shows up and saves you".
 

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