Persona 5 (PS3/PS4)

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Hipolito
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Persona 5 (PS3/PS4)

Post by Hipolito »

I have pretty good credentials as a Persona fan. I've played P3, P4, a little bit of P2, and one of the Persona fighting games. I even own a few Persona figurines.

When Persona 5 finally arrived in the mail, I opened it, set the Morgana plush toy on my TV stand, and let it watch me as I spent the next 6 months maxing out my friendships and beating up Shadows.

P5 adds a lot of gameplay enhancements and has some interesting things to say. On the whole, though, it didn't emotionally involve me as much as P3/P4. It's a disappointment.

I'll break this game down by feature and indicate with (+) or (-) whether I think this feature is better or worse than in P3/P4.


Relationships (-)

As in the previous Personas, you're a teenager in Japan who spends the days going to high school, the afternoons and evenings going out with friends, and the nights fighting Shadows. The closer you grow to your friends, the stronger you become as a fighter.

In P4, your party members received "perks" as you deepened your friendships with them. That was a cool feature, but the perks were the same for all your party members, and you received no perks for your relationships with non-party members. In P5, you gain perks in your relationships with both party and non-party members. The perks are far more numerous and varied. They can greatly help you manage your time, gain more loot, and survive longer in the dungeons.

That's a big motivator for maxing out as many of your friendships as possible, and I managed to max out all but one. The other big motivator ought to have been the relationship storylines. One of the major themes of P4 was self-identity, and helping your friends realize and accept their true selves led to some provocative storylines. In P5, the theme is fighting for one's beliefs in the face of adversity. That's a fine theme, but it doesn't produce interesting storylines here. Of all the characters, I only really cared about 3 of them (Emperor, Hierophant, and Hermit). The writing for the rest of them is competent, but not poignant.


Combat (+)

You'll spend many hours figuring out Shadows' weaknesses, knocking them down with the correct magic spells, and stretching out your magic points for as long as you can before you have to leave the dungeon. There are two abilities that distinguish P5's combat from that of P3/P4: passing the baton to teammates and negotiating with Shadows.

As in previous games, when you knock an enemy down with the correct magic, you get an extra move. But with the baton pass ability, you can give your extra move to another member of your party. Chaining together baton passes for team synergy is a cool new tactic in the Persona series.

Shadow negotiation is a feature that hasn't been in the Persona series since P2. In P2, every battle began with the chance to negotiate. If negotiation went well, it might end peacefully, with the Shadows giving you some loot. If negotiation failed, the Shadows would fight you. Negotiation felt frustratingly random in P2 and was a reason why I stopped playing that game.

In P5, negotiation doesn't kick in until you've knocked all the enemies to the ground. So if negotiation fails and leads to more fighting, at least you've weakened your enemies a little and may still beat them. Negotiation feels less random and provides more hints to lead you to a good outcome. And, perhaps most important of all, negotiation can end with the Shadow joining you as a Persona. That's right: except for bosses, all Shadows can be recruited as Personas! This is a thrilling new way of expanding your Persona compendium. A minor downside to this is because all Shadows are potential Personas, they all look like deities and creatures of folklore, losing a bit of the quirkiness they had in P3/P4. No longer will you be fighting floating dinnerware or ballroom dancing couples.

Sneaking up on Shadows to ambush them is easier and more fun in P5. In P3/P4, enemy movement was floaty and erratic, so it was tricky to get the jump on them. In P5, enemies have well-defined patrol routes and you can hide behind objects while waiting for their backs to be exposed. Dungeon running now feels like a stealth-based action game, and you can get the jump on Shadows almost every time. If you're playing on higher difficulty levels, you will need to.

Speaking of difficulty, I recommend playing on the highest difficulty setting, Merciless (available as a free DLC). If you've played Persona games or even any JRPG before, you'll find Merciless a manageable and fun challenge. You can always lower the difficulty if you need to, which you couldn't in previous Persona games. I kept the game in Merciless except for boss battles which were too long and luck-dependent unless I played on Normal or Easy.


Story (-)

Between the dark, sexy P3 and the goofy, innocent P4, P5 is more like the latter. But it deals with heavy themes such as abuse and exploitation. It does a good job exploring why it's so difficult for victims to fight their abusers, and why most people give up on trying to improve things and just coast through life. P5 is also an interesting study of both social isolation and Internet fame.

But the emotional undercurrent that was constant throughout the hundreds of hours of P3 and P4 just doesn't exist in P5. P3 hooked me with its abject tragedy, P4 with its small town murder mystery. P5 didn't hook me and I'm not sure why. Maybe because it plays its hand too early with certain plot twists, and hides other plot twists too much. Since the story depicts my high school life day by day, it would have felt more honest and convincing had it been told in a linear, straightforward manner. Instead, it uses amnesia and flash-forwards in its attempts to surprise me. It even cuts the sound during a few dialogues so I won't know what I said until I "remember" those dialogues later on! Lame.


Visual presentation (-)

P5 was in development for a long time and is available for both PlayStation 3 and 4, which may be why its graphics aren't a stellar leap up from the PS2-era P4. It makes use of the fluid motion-capture that was in Catherine, but not always. It has beautiful full-motion anime cutscenes, but they're few and far between.

The daytime urban areas are unexciting. Even Akihabara, which is supposed to be an otaku Disneyland, looks barren and drab. The nighttime dungeons look good, though, and are stronger thematically than those of P3/P4. Each dungeon (except for the randomized optional dungeon) is a distinct and hand-crafted environment, not a random maze, so its fun to explore.

I'm fine with the look overall, but what really disappoints me is how Personas look in combat. In P3/P4, I was captivated by their stately presence. But maybe fans complained about how long their animations took and asked the designers to streamline them. Now, in P5, the camera stays close to the ground and the party members, making it difficult to appreciate the might of the Personas. Also, the Personas have an unappealing "wet" and transparent look when summoned.

When browsing the Compendium or fusing Personas in the Velvet Room, though, the Personas look fine, with the higher-level ones looking especially elaborate and ornate.


Music (-)

The music of P5 strays from the hard edges of P3's hip-hop and P4's J-pop. It's laid back and mellow, sounding more like traditional funk and blues. The singer, Lyn Inaizumi, has a nice, warm alto. But the soundtrack for a game that lasts hundreds of hours needs to have a certain power to it, or it's going to fall behind. P5's soundtrack feels subdued. It's more listenable than P4's soundtrack, but it doesn't enhance the game and stick with me as much as P3's.


Acting (-)

P4 had some of the best voice acting of any game I've played, aided by the depth of the dialogue and character-building. In P5, the voice acting is competent and little more. It doesn't enhance the more emotional moments of the game, but the story and characters aren't strong enough to have much emotional weight, anyway.

As before, the main character is a mostly silent protagonist, but he talks a little more now. It's always fun when he does.


Internet features (+)

For the first time, there are some Internet-based features in Persona. The most useful one is when you push the big central button on the controller, you get a rundown of what other players chose to do during the same day in the story. If you're wondering what to do on any particular day, ask the big button.

In the Velvet Room, you can do "Network Fusion." You choose a Persona, and the game will, I guess, randomly choose a Persona from another player's stock and fuse them together. I tried this about 5 times, but only once did I get a Persona more powerful than I could have created on my own.

In battle, a Shadow will seldom try to escape or take one of your party members hostage. When this happens, you can ask another player for help. If you do, the escape or hostage-taking attempt fails and you're told "player so-and-so helped you!" or something like that. I don't think the other player receives any sort of reward or notification about this. It's an insignificant feature that I had few chances to use.


DLC (+)

There are free DLC, Persona DLC, and BGM+Costume DLC available for this game. I bought them all!

The free DLC include the aforementioned Merciless difficulty, a Japanese audio track, some loot sets to give you a slight advantage, and costumes so you can doll up your characters in the dungeon.

The Persona DLC add Personas to your compendium that you can't otherwise obtain. You can then summon for free (even if they are higher level than you) or acquire them through fusion. These Personas come with unique skills and sound effects.

The BGM+Costume DLC add battle background music and costumes from other Atlus games. When you don your main character with a costume from another game, the battle music will be from that game. Now you can fight with the legendary P3 battle music! (It doesn't really fit well with P5, but it's still neat you can have it.) This is a really cool way to incorporate content from older games and keep it alive.


Overall (-)

There's a lot of other little enhancement and additions I haven't mentioned. These make the game more tolerable, but they don't make it great. I stuck with Persona 5 to the end mainly because I had waited for it for so long. It was finely crafted, but not transcendent. It made me think some, but it didn't make me feel much. I used to think the Persona series had replaced Final Fantasy as the premier JRPG, but P5 is a bit of a setback.

Edit: fixed the link to P3 battle music. Ooh yeah, dada-dada, dada-dada.
Last edited by Hipolito on Tue Jan 10, 2023 11:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Blackhawk
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Re: Persona 5 (PS3/PS4)

Post by Blackhawk »

Thanks. I've been wanting to try out the series for a while. I was waiting for 5 to come down in price, but I may give 4 a try after Christmas.
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Skinypupy
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Re: Persona 5 (PS3/PS4)

Post by Skinypupy »

ARISE!!

So after severely disliking P5 on my first go, I decided to give it another shot (since it was 50% on the PSN Black Friday sale). It has definitely clicked this time, and I'm enjoying it far more than I expected to. The combat is still the weakest part of the game, but now that I've gotten a bit further into the story, the social management aspects have certainly gotten better. I somehow find myself incredibly interested in the social comings and goings of the group...something I never thought possible.

My only problem is that I always feel like I'm doing the wrong thing and am running the risk of gimping my character. I'm almost to the end of the first palace (in the Safe Room, my party keeps saying that the treasure is "right around the corner") with 6 days to go. So do I immediately go for the treasure now? Do I spend 5 days studying and building up my Confidant links? Do I spend the 5 days grinding for more XP/loot to get more powerful? So many choices.

I'm also entirely baffled by the "Negotiation" process with Shadows. I have yet to be successful, and have tried at least 10 of them at this point. It's so frustrating.
When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.
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Isgrimnur
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Persona 5 (PS3/PS4)

Post by Isgrimnur »

Each negotiating partner has a personality type. Each type likes on particular type of answers.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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