Persona 5

I bought a PS4 just so I could play this and feel it was worth the price of admission.

Persona 5 is a game that achieves a special kind of perfection. It takes the foundations that were laid down in Persona 4 (and Persona Q too) and takes them to a level of perfection beyond what even the most ardent fans were expecting.

Storywise, the game is thematically distinct from Persona 4 in that there is no murder mystery to solve, but rather a larger conspiracy of adults to oppose. P5 is a game whose central theme is outcasts conducting a rebellion against our shitty modern society. The result is our protagonists are much more active this time around, with all of the Phantom Thieves' heists into cognitive dungeons feeling more than just typical RPG romps where you bust down the door and kill everything until the problem is solved. Since you are Phantom Thieves there to steal the hearts of your victims, the game has the 'dungeon' portion consist of sneaking through guards until you've got your entry route, at which point you leave and send a calling card announcing your intention to come for the target. As your guys come together for the final blow, the game gives you all the feeling and satisfaction you might feel when a good plan comes together.

For gameplay, the game has taken all the niggling annoyances of the first game and removed them while enhancing what P4 already did right. Instead of a fairly basic 'see enemy and fight enemy', you've got a (admittedly very simple) stealth system that gives the player an advantage for initiating a battle out of stealth. Instead of the randomly generated dungeons, you've got dungeons that are meticulously designed to give you a perfect feel for what you're doing (with some pretty good puzzles to boot).

Special mention goes out to how they've changed Social Links to make it so that non-combatants give you assorted benefits for maxing them. That gave the acts of getting bonds feel less like pissing away your time between the real stuff and more like being an active revolutionary who is gathering backers and resources for the cause.

Persona 5 oozes style out of every orifice, effortlessly achieving what other RPGs can only wish to have a fraction of. It's worth playing.

Now let's talk about some specifics...




First:
The Overarching Theme of the Persona Series As A Whole

I've played enough of these things to sort of get the cosmic war we're part of in these things. From what I've gathered in previous games, Igor is a representative of Philemon, who is a hidden diety (Represented by a blue butterfly) that wants to give mankind a chance to cling to hope and rise against our base natures. He is opposed on the other side by something called Nyarlathotep, who is an evil entity that wants humanity to destroy itself. All of this is apparently established in the first two Persona games, which I haven't played, but it's interesting to think of it in that context.

Nyx and Izanagi are both entities either coaxed by or serving Nyarlathotep. Perhaps they are even incarnations of Nyarlathotep itself. Regardless however, the Velvet Room then serves as the counter to Nyarlathotep's interference, summoning a 'guest' to bring them down. When you consider that much, the later part of Persona 5's story is pretty interesting. After losing in Persona 3 and 4, Nyarlathotep sends Yaldabaoth to to attack and destroy Philemon's base so he can finally win.

In that context, the protagonist was a desperate last twist of fate by Igor to try to save humanity. The 'last ace in a lost hand', in other words.

Maybe I'd understand this more if I played the other two Persona games, but it nevertheless is fascinating that something so subtle could be in the background of these already elaborate 100+ hour games.

Next:
The Theme of This Game.

I found it interesting that the game essentially is about teenagers knocking over the pillars of society above them one by one. You start with a teacher-figure and two parental-figures, representing the immediate personal connections from members of society. After that you move up to corporations, the government and then of course the Japanese Donald Trump, but it finally culminates with a battle against 'God' himself.

The game thus has a nice revolutionary tenor to it. It's about defying authority and living on your own terms, and I sort of really dig that. There are too many games where you're on authority's side more often than not.

But the way you take down authority members... essentially by forcing them to grow a conscience... is also fascinating. The worldview of the game seems to be that most people have essentially discarded their consciences, and that everyone from your average pedophile teacher to Donald Trump himself, can still come back and repent.

And that's a really cool sort of rebellion, you know? A revolution of the human conscience. I really thought that was a really fresh idea.

Anyhow...
Social Links and characters.

I think it was a stroke of brilliance to make it so that your S-Links figure out that you're a member of the Phantom Thieves the moment you get to level 10. It really made it so that the non-combatant s-links actually felt relevant to the overarching plot. Same thing goes for the way the level 1 link would cause the scene to cut back to the interrogation, with Sae interrogating you about that person. In Persona 4, you played as a person who whittles away his days hanging out with old ladies and slutty nurses for no other reason than that they were there. In Persona 5 though, every act performed is for the cause and that is just great.

If there's one point in which Persona 4 trumps 5 however it is in the characters and romance department however.

All of Persona 5's characters are good, but if you do a side by side comparison of most of them to their Persona 4 equivalents then normally the P4 crew is going to win out.

Ryuuji is your best friend character and he seems like a decent guy. He puts on this strong front, but is really concealing a lot of weakness. I dig it. But Hanamura is a lot more nuanced than he is. Yusuke meanwhile has a fun personality, but is he a more interesting character than Kanji is? Probably not.

The reason for that comes down to the basic structure of the games. Persona 5 is about outcasts taking action against a corrupt society, but Persona 4 was about defeating one's inner demons. We got to see Hanamura mourn Saki and we got to see Kanji struggle with his sexuality. That gave those characters a lot of nuance and Persona 5's cast has a hard time reaching the same high standard.

Which brings us to...
Romance

Considering the above, it's probably not surprising that I didn't like my chosen girl in P5 as much as I like the lovely Rise.

Makoto is a good character, but I feel that the game didn't adequately explore her. She's an honour student, but her Persona takes the form of a badass motorbike. This means that while she plays in the rules, secretly she wants to push through every limit and ride free. That's pretty hot, but... it never really came out in her character's actions in the main story.

Maybe her social link should have been her being a bit more rebellious and pushing back against her sister's bullshit. Maybe we should have seen her completely resolve why her sister seemed to view the world through the prism of a rigged casino. I dunno.

Don't get me wrong, she's my kind of girl, but it just felt like she needed something more, something that would have made her a bit more special.

But we should also mention...
Morgana, aka Mona.

By far the best character in the game, Morgana takes Teddie's place as the mascot-with-depth character. In addition to being a very nice cat, Morgana is essentially the game's way of getting around the silent protagonist's lack of reaction to anything. Morgana comments on things you can do and can't do in place of a banal silent narrator and his constant commentary really helps you get a feel for what your character's personality is like.

His character arc ended up being really interesting, particularly when it's revealed that he is the incarnation of mankind's hopes. The people behind this game clearly understand cats very well.

And before we go...
The music in this game is bloody divine. No surprises there though considering Persona 4 was the same in that regard.

I look forward to putting together a Persona playlist with all the upbeat big hits in there. Musical paradise.

There's a lot to say about a game like this of course, but I think I'll leave it here. But cheers once again to Atlus for delivering one of the very best RPGs ever made once again.