Persona 5

A case study in style over substance, not helped by a grating localization. Doesn't know what to do with its themes of oppression or societal pressure, and is muddled as a result.

this game feels too MUCH to review conclusively, and that almost seems like its design philosophy. to always be a lot, to attempt to say a lot, be loud be aggressive. move fast and break things. but in its attempt to execute thsi aggressive doctrine it frequently stumbles and in my opinion no element of this game fully escapes this pervasive mess.

but nonetheless its a sort of brilliant i dont see quite so frequently. elegant in its refusal to be properly, recommend-ably good.

Solid game, I have some minor issues with the way its themes sort of face plant in the final cutscenes. This game is maligned because of an overeager fanbase with no concept of where it came from and what it owes homage to.

In the space of the Persona series itself, its a good installment, but arguably weaker than some of its predeccesors.

In the wider world of the Shin Megami Tensei games and their spinoffs, I think Persona 5 is ultimately fairly average. That said SMT has a very high watermark, not a lot of outright duds in that franchise, so dont take this as me saying Persona 5 is bad or falls short of anything, I just dont think it measures up to its cousins.

At this point everyone probably knows what Persona games are all about, and Persona 5 (I've only played the Royal version) doesn't break that mold. It's visually stylish and has a memorable jazzy soundtrack, it puts you in the shoes of a highschooler who must balance mundane high school life with his RPG obligations in a well-realized corner of Japan, there's a cast of rounded, memorable characters, and an excellent English localization (and finally an option to use the original voiceovers). The production values take a distinct step up from the PS2 games. It's all pretty familiar, and a sense of diminishing returns is creeping in, but it's well-done.

But one unwelcome change is this is the longest Persona game by a considerable margin, and this is not a series known for brevity and concision. The unhurried pace is part of the charm of these games, but here they take it too far, and a lot of it just drags. There's reams of repetitive, needless exposition and recapitulation, different people say the same things over and over, easily a third of this game's length could've been cut without losing anything superfluous.

The more bespoke, crafted dungeons are a major improvement over the anonymous randomly generated hallways of previous entries - which, sadly, still make a needless return in Mementos, another unfortunate piece of filler in a game that hardly needs it. P5 adds some light action bits to the dungeon crawling, which gives a little variety to the moment-to-moment gameplay but not much else.

Persona 5's combat system is the series' best and most refined, but continues to suffer from the occasional difficulty spike and some overly long battles. It's not much fun when a boss gets a killing blow on your player character 45 minutes into a fight. But a lot of effort seems to have gone in to improving quality of life and making it more accessible, which I appreciate. I just wish they'd slim these games down a bit.

Persona 5 holds a new standard of passion when crafting a video game. This game is not perfect, but it's incredibly hard to be perfect with 100+ hours of base gameplay. This game has 3 major strong points that make it so immersive:

1. Gameplay / Palaces
2. Teambuilding and The Velvet Room
3. Presentation

1. The palaces in this game are incredible. Each have their own themes with immersive fights and gorgeous landscapes along with challenging puzzles. The
combat is incredibly immersive and requires attention to nearly every move. The game is challenging but kind of disappointingly easy when compared to other SMT games. Most other games get pigeonholed in gameplay with the few solutions the player uses in combat, but Persona 5 manages to give tons of solutions and styles with all equal merit. Boss fights are incredible too. The quality of life in gameplay too really keeps you hooked.

2. Collecting Personas and building a team is nothing short of fantastic and intuitive. The game incentives you to do execution fusions, utilize The Velvet Room, fill out the compendium, build out your team to accommodate for different palaces, and fuse together top-notch Personas. Everything here is quality-of-life, and the options here make Pokémon seem limited.

3. The music and art style are the best part of this game. Acid jazz, instrumental rock, and a plethora of other genres hook you into whatever scenario is going on. That paired with the inky comic book style and fast paced animations and smooth framerate makes this game an absolute joy to the senses. The music combined with the team building and gameplay make boss fights in this game some of the best boss fights ever.

Only complaints are the over-the-top ending, some weak characters, incomplete themes and story discussions, and just how derivative it can be when compared to the magnificent Persona 3.

Verdict: Despite its flaws, this is truly one of the best of decade that I've played, and a new steppingstone for RPGs. Only play this if you have an open mind and are willing to put in the hours to really watch this game pay off. One of my favorite stories to tell is how it took me a year and a half to put the first 25 hours into this game, and I beat the other 80 hours in no less than 2 weeks. Thats how much the payoff hooked me.

After nearly 10 years, Atlus delivered the much hyped monolith of a sequel: Persona 5 (released later in the west) that is destined to remain one of the most stylistically impressive games of all time. Every aspect, from menus to HUD to dialogue to sound effects, are presented in a sleek manner. Its visual presentation is monumental. Moreover, Atlus finally addressed gameplay QOL issues from the last few games and even introduced actual level design to their dungeons, employing a more stealth-oriented gameplay approach.

The story also presented a dramatic shift away from past entries, disposing of the individual's personal tragedies to target their actions as they react to outer society and its vices. Persona 5's vigilante themes resonate with the thousands fed up with the old guard's corruption, both public (the media, authority figures) and private (parental issues). Adolescent topics such as insecurity or acceptance are dispensed in favor of rebellion and a focus on issues of authority, which at times compose moments more powerful than those of their past games.

This is where its positives end. While each entry experimented and expanded on the previous effort's format, Atlus were content with recycling the gimmicks of the past, assembling these mechanics into a package that feels all too 'safe' compared to past excursions. Instead, Persona 5 aimed towards formal perfection. While each mechanic refines previous entries' gameplay quirks into a more accessible format, the main combat system disappointingly remains the same, flaws and all. The much celebrated visual style and ease of control combined with the deluge of mechanics both in and out of combat all fail to address the issue, and feel like embellishments made to distract the player from its weak, tiresome combat.

Whatever its flaws, Persona 5 remains one of the most important 8th generation JRPGs.