Persona 5 (2016)

Persona 5 is the 5th mainline entry in Atlus's popular turn-based RPG/Life-sim Persona series, itself a more popular spinoff series based on the older Shin-Megami Tensei series with a more traditional JRPG formula. It is the first Persona game I've played, so while I can't really comment on how it compares to older entries in the series, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Persona 5 offers two addicting, deep but approachable core gameplay loops which allow the player a startling variety of freedom, with an inventive narrative exploring themes of corruption in society that incorporates a wide variety of influences from coming-of-age stories, heist movies, popular psychology, and mythology, all slathered in a heaping dose of style that is virtually unrivaled in gaming. Persona 5 is a must-play masterpiece of game design.

While casual players may balk at the run time (127 hours to completion for me), your time investment will be well worth it. This is a game with a well-earned reputation, and playing it left me curious about other entries in the series.

Gameplay

Persona 5 offers two core gameplay loops, each of which fits neatly within the story the game is attempting to tell. Players explore and solve a variety of dungeons throughout the runtime of the game, fighting the demons, called Personas populating them using turn-based JRPG combat. While players can simply defeat the enemies they encounter, they are strongly encouraged to exploit enemy weaknesses in order to force a negotiation, following which the player can permanently utilize that Persona's abilities combat abilities for their own. These enemies can later be combined with each other, in a truly staggering variety of combinations, in order to form newer, stronger Personas. As the player progresses through the narrative, new team members join the party, each with their own unique, unalterable persona with specific strengths and weaknesses. Combat itself is snappy, with short but stylish animations and menu designs and never really feels like a slog like other turn based JRPGs, and offers sufficient depth and difficulty to keep genre veterans entertained and to entice genre newcomers to explore the systems without harsh punishment. Just be sure to save frequently.

When players aren't exploring dungeons, they are living the life of the protagonist Joker, a high-school age teenage boy who needs to earn good grades, stay out of trouble, explore romance, strengthen his emotional ties to allies, and shop for supplies around a modern-day Tokyo whose multiple small explorable areas are inspired by real locations. Doing activities with friends (called Confidants in the game) in the life-sim part of the gameplay allow Joker to unlock a variety of upgrades in the form of active and passive abilities usable in the combat and life-sim loops. Underlying both of these gamplay loops is the idea of limited time. The game takes place over a period of time about a year long, and players simply do not have enough time in the day to do everything they want. When a player chooses to spend time at the batting cage to improve their proficiency statistic for example, they lose out on an opportunity to hang out with their girlfriend that day. Players have a limited amount of days to complete the dungeons, and each time they explore they lose a day, encouraging players to push themselves until resources run too low for the day to continue. This is an exciting concept which kept me wondering (and sometimes consulting a guide) how to plan out my weeks as efficiently as possible. Sometimes the designs for the life-sim gameplay loop are a little too unclear. I especially didn't enjoy having my nights taken away by force because the game said I needed to be well-rested for the next day, though I have read there are many quality of life improvements in the Royal edition of the game. Petty grievances aside, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the inventive gameplay of this series.

Narrative

In Persona 5 you play as a team of Japanese adolescents on a secret mission to bring evil-doers to justice by invading the dungeons within their mind, defeating the evil cognitive reflection of said evil-doers, and stealing the dungeons treasure. Successfully conquering a dungeon promotes a change of heart in the evil-doer, usually causing them to admit to their crimes and face the consequences. It is a fun but often serious narrative featuring standard Japanese media tropes both in tone and content such as adolescents with special powers operating in a hidden world, competing romantic interests, and a narrative that ends with fighting and killing God). That being said, I do not think one needs to be a fan of anime to enjoy this game, and there is something in here for a very broad audience, so long as one is comfortable with exploring a new cultural milleu. I personally loved the narrative of this game, especially the emotional high and low character moments, the heisty/thriller elements complete with a twisted political tale that offers explicit commentary on corruption and apathy in modern society, and the way the game incorporated elements of Jungian psychology and Gnostic mythology in its world building. I also liked the character stories that play out as Joker's relationships with supporting characters increase. these side-stories which are explorable in the life-sim portion of the game add an additional emotional base to the game that gives players a breather from the main story line.

I must say that I did find the middle third of the game to be a little formulaic and repetitive at times, especially with regard to the manner in which new characters were introduced, and I think that occasionally the exposition and dialogue-heavy scenes could have used some trimming from a pacing perspective, as I was eager to get back into the dungeons. I will also say found a lot of the romance in the game a little cringe inducing and I think the way the game handles many of its women characters might turn off some sensitive players (though I do know a lot of girls who recommend this game to people). At the end of the day one's tolerance of these more objectionable issues all depends on taste. While there's nothing in here that will be knew to fans of anime and manga, approaching the narrative with an open mind will be key for western players unfamiliar with modern Japanese media.

Aesthetic

Nothing in this game is more impressive than its presentation. While the visuals are decidedly low tech (the game was designed for the Playstation 3 after all), the art direction and music direction are astounding. The game has a 3D cell-shaded aesthetic for most of its runtime but key cutscenes are presented in a hand-drawn anime style. Character design and environment design is on-point and especially evokes the impression in the player that our hero and his team are a bunch of misfit punk-rebels ready to take on the corrupt corrupt society of their elders. I especially liked the environmental and enemy design. Each dungeon feels unique and exploration is rewarding if only to see more of what each dungeon holds in terms of artistic design.

The soundtrack in this video game is also hands down one of the best in gaming. It has a Jazz-pop quality that absolutely will get stuck in your head, and you can and will listen to tracks from the game in real life. They are that good.

Score: 5/5

While no game is perfect, a 5/5 game is one that can be recommend to a broad gaming audience, achieves greatness in all areas of gaming design for it's genre, attempts and succeeds at pushing the medium forward, and leaves a lasting impression that is emotional, philosophical, or amusing in nature. Simply put, a 5/5 game is a masterpiece.

I went in knowing nothing and left with one of my favorite games of all time.

Right off the bat, the art direction is so memorable and beautiful. The music is also very unforgettable, the tracks stick to you, and you just can't shake off the melodies.

Aesthetics were not the only excellent aspect of this RPG, the gameplay is fresh, varied, and honestly quite fair. I never felt like the game was being annoying or filled with difficult spikes.

The story is very anime/fantasy, but it never goes into confusing or "extreme" nonsense, although the final battle got close. What really stuck with me beyond this game is the cast, the characters are all so well written, unique, and feel normal and not like tropes or simple NPCs. They had arguments, jokes, and adventures.

It is a shame that the sequel will have a new cast, but I will definitely be checking out any future games from this series if they are just as good.

What follows assumes the reader is somewhat familiar with P5 or at least the Persona series since I won't really be explaining how the game works, there're plenty other reviews that do a great job at that.

This game's greatest features are very flashy and very exciting...for a while anyway.

• For most people the visual style it's on point, I agree but it gets old when you've seen the same "All out" attack animation for the Nth time or when you find yourself mashing the X button to get through the same end of combat screen you've been seeing continuosly for 80 hours.

• Many people love the music in this game. Sure, the OST is great. But then you have to listen to the same background music on loop for what feels like eternity because of how incredibly long and stretched out some dungeons are.

• I don't really agree but many players praise the story and character development, but even here the game just drags on and on, the characters often repeat themselves like broken records and just go on and on about the same points. A lot of chats could've been cut for sure.

• The combat is fine but because the dungeons are often very long and very densely packed with enemies you end fighting the same type of mobs again and again. Ambush, find weakness, kill. After you encounter the handful of different enemies that roam the different layers of the dungeons it starts to feel like a chore and just a strain on resources (mainly SP) before you get to the minibosses and the end.

• The Persona fusion system is again the best part of the game in my opinion. It's always interesting to unlock and build new ones through fusions and it's very satisfying to walk around with a vastly overleveled persona due to the social link and the strengthening option. The skill themselves are fun and varied and increasing the rank (Light damage to Severe or even Colossal) always feels great because you really notice the growth of the characters.

Besides how long in general the game is I also have major issues with the pacing and the general structure.

If you want to play this game "optimally" you are strongly incentivized to rush through Palaces in one day because that way you don't waste time (as in actual in-game days) that you need to max out the social links and stats. This also destroys any sense of pacing since you'll be stuck in pretty long dungeons that inevitably feel repetitive and tedious by the end only to be followed by mandatory "wait for the, now pointless, deadline and the next narrative event to finally trigger so the story can continue" in which you just hang out with people whenever you are able to and otherwise work on the social stats through the same activities. This can go on for like 20 days in a row until the next dungeon finally opens up.

I guess it could be argued that the game isn't intended to be played this way but that's hard to believe given that some characters will basically refuse to hang out/do anything else if you haven't completed the Palace before talking to them.

Regarding the social links and how you engage with the several characters you meet something similar occurs. Usually you have 3 dialog options to choose from when you're talking to them or reacting to different situations, the game strongly incentivizes that you choose whatever option you guess is what the character wants to hear because that will net you the most "social points" with them, which leads to earlier leveling up which in turn leads to very useful skills for the dungeon crawling side. This renders the already personality lacking silent protagonist even flatter as a character since you basically just have on-rails conversations instead of true role playing.

And again, it could be argued that you can actually choose how to react to the different NPCs and stuff, but again while technically true if you care at all about maxing out the links (which also unlocks the strongest Personas of each Arcana) and about having effective perks in battle you just won't.

To summarize: a decent JRPG but nowhere near the "masterpiece" status many people seem to give it IMO. Too many flaws for that.

With P5R coming very soon, I've been thinking about getting some thoughts out on P5. Because when I first played it, I was kind of in love with the game, and now I'm kind of not. And whilst I still think some elements of it are exceptional - the music, the style, and how a lot the dungeons and to some extent the combat are massive steps up from P4, I just dont think back on the game with the same rose-tintedness i do with those two games.

Still, the first half of this game is pretty great. Right up to Haru joins the story, the game is rock-solid. And a large part of that is for similar reasons as to why the later part fails, and to put it bluntly, it's because the overall narrative of P5 is hot garbage, and the first half of the story has nigh on nothing to do with it.

The first half of the story is heavily focused on building up the party with mostly self-contained short stories focusing around small casts of characters. And this is where all the most emotionally impactful and interesting conflicts come from, and the ones that most well tie into the fantasy of teenage rebellion against corrupt boomers, and the later bullshit can absolutely not match it. Obviously, to some extent this is also a failure of the first half because this stuff basically amounts to vignettes and the main plot may as well start at the 3/4 point of your average playtime, despite P-Team's blatant attempts to rectify this with a pretty pointless framing device reminding you that "oh yeah, this goes somewhere eventually".

It also doesn't help that the last two dungeons are easily the worst the game has to offer in terms of gameplay and the story makes a few pretty obnoxious decisions during this section Ryuji's pointless death fakeout, the god stuff reveal, and that the story puts a lot of weight on akechi's involvement when I personally find him pretty uncompelling as a character.

P3 and P4 were also pretty bad with incorporating their long form narratives with their episodic structures, but P5 is particularly egregious, and a lot of that also comes down to it's gargantuan lenth. I'm fine with a long game, but P5 is too long for it's own good and is horridly paced. The game needed an edit probably in the conceptual phase - and as much as i like those episodic stories that make up the first half of the game, by the time it's Haru's turn it's getting old, and when even that one isn't kickstarting the plot it starts to feel silly.

Persona 5 might go up a whole star in this rating if Haru and all the plot bullshit surrounding her was cut out - I want to like her, but it's all so completely pointless and adds absolutely nothing to the game. It's about 10 hours of bad filler in a game that would still be bloated without it.

God knows how bad P5R's pacing will be if they only add onto the game.

As much as I complain, I do still really like parts of the game - the character design and art direction in general is on point, the music is some of the best Shoji Meguro has ever put out (and that's saying something), the early character stories are typically well done and are the best the game ever gets to tieing into it's themes. Most of the dungeons are a massive step up for the series, as are the boss encounters and the implementation of sidequests, even if mementos is a budget tartarus - which isn't saying much.

I don't know how muhc P5R will fix these issues if at all - from what i've seen it almost seems to embrace the insane bloat and just pile more on top of it - though i guess if the game can keep you in the good part of it for 70 hours instead of 50 maybe that's an improvement?

I guess I'll have to see for myself.

This is the first Persona or Atlus game I've ever played and I was completely blown away. It is a massive game story and content wise, and it's ridiculously polished. There is not a single thing I did not like, which is crazy considering it is 100 hours just for main story.

From the second I started it I was completely sold. Even the loading screens are cool and they vary depending where you are, what time it is, what the weather is like. You are instantly involved in the story from the way it is told, it makes you want to know more of what has happened and how it got there.

The Tokyo they recreated feels really alive and there's always something to do, whether you want to do a mini-game on your own or getting to know more about the many other characters and their story.

The combat is an updated version of the Persona series that takes from the older titles with the persona negotiations and weakness-strength system, it has a really good flow to it and the smooth animations that transitions you from combat to exploration make you forget that it's a turn based game.

The dungeon crawling it's a step above the previous games with great design and more interesting puzzles and quests, not at all monotonous as it could become in the older titles.

The soundtrack is absolute perfection, I loved every song and still listen to a lot of them.

This has become my favorite game, it is so good, don't miss it!!!

I have trouble even describing the joy my first Persona 5 playthrough gave me. Even if you hate anime tropes and turn based combat, I'd still recommend giving this game a try. Having now experienced other games in the series, this one does lack in certain areas compared to other games. The characters and the chemistry of them isn't as strong as in Persona 4. The plot and the way the game wraps up isn't as good as Persona 3. It's worse than Persona 2 at both characters and plot. Now I've made the game sound like garbage. It's not. The plot is repetitive but good. The opening arc in particular really let's you know what type of game this will be. The game tackles real problems like sexual harassment, depression, corruption. Being a persona game the characters are still great and the main focus and I'll get to that later. This game is an improvement on all other personas in many ways. For starters, the combat is the most fun it's ever been. The game makes a compromise between the simplicity of Persona 4s combat and the complexity of 3s. We now have 2 physical damage types, normal physical and gun and I really like gun. It adds a few new elements like psi and nuke. An addition I really loved was the return of demon negotiation from Persona 2 and also some random smt games. I just think it's really unique, not having to kill them and bargain for items or a persona instead. And it's fun trying to guess what dialogue appeals to them. The baton pass system of passing your extra turn to a teammate is fun and adds a layer of strategy to combat. The only part of combat I don't really like is how they cheapened bless and curse skills because those skills used to be exclusively for insta kills. The combat menus are a perfect blend of form and factor. They're well laid out and it's really easy to just hit r1 and scroll through your personas and skills. You can easily find what you need unlike some jrpgs. But it also retains the awesome style that oozes throughout Persona 5. Simply just the pause menu is great design and you can see how much work went into that alone. The all out attack cutscene isn't skippable but it never gets old, it's just so satisfying to watch. The music in this game is great. Music is of course subjective but the battle tracks and the city tracks are great. You see a lot of Euro/America culture borrowed in P5, and the jazz influences show in the music. Beneath the Mask, Rivers in the Desert, Wake Wake Up Get Up Get Out There are great tracks to name a few. Now the part I have to talk about is the characters and the confidant system. This is a time management game. You have to choose between improving your character stats by studying or working out, going into dungeons, or hanging out with friends. This social link system, now known as confidants, is the unique feature since persona 3 that sets this series apart. The confidant system lets you bond with characters outside of dungeons and the plot while improving your ability to create good personas. And you can date the girls. Right off the bat, you get great characters, Ryuji,the lovable idiotic at times bro and Ann, a model, who's actually very interesting, not just the pretty girl. My favorite of the party member confidants would have to be Futaba even though she's not my favorite girl as a romantic option, she just has the most complexity. There's a couple suprising social links like Kawakami, the teacher. One negative thing I would like to say regarding characters is about screen time. Haru appears way too late for me to care about her and characters like Morgana and Makoto end up getting way more attention because of relevance to the plot whereas the other characters get pushed to the side after their arc of introduction and confidant. Ryuji for example essentially becomes just the team punching bag. This doesn't detract all that much from the experience and I do love the cast of characters. One final complaint I have is you'll beat a villain and change their heart and then you wait 20 days for them to announce their guilt irl. The downtime is fun but this is kind of dumb and it makes no sense. In Persona 3 and 4 it made sense. The midnight channel only showed on foggy nights or things are the shadows come out on full moons. In 5 it's just random.

Overall while I can come up with complaints about the game, it's such a carefully crafted experience and I really adore this game. It's not just one of the best jrpgs in years, it's probably one of the best games. Even during the worst arc of this game, I was still enjoying it a lot. It's an easy 10/10, most games can't keep my attention 50 hours, much less 100.

I started playing Persona 5 based on a recommendation from a friend. I didn't know anything about the game, but I was quickly amazed by the catchy soundtrack, the stylistically amazing artwork, and the engrossing story and mechanics.

Despite taking breaks in playing the game (it is a really long title), I continually found myself mentally planning for my second play thru, because the game has such depth both in its mechanics, but also in the ways you can pursue the story. As I grew to better understand the game, I realized that much of my early game in this hypothetical second play thru would be drastically different.

To me, this excitement about the game demonstrated what a gem this game is.

The story, unsurprisingly for a JRPG, sits at the center of the game. And it is an AMAZING story. There are a few moments it drags just a little, but 99% of the time I found myself enthralled by the experience of playing thru this world in Japan.

I think the less time a player spends focusing on when they will beat the game, and the more they spend on enjoying the ride, the better the experience will be, this is highlighted by the game's loading screen tag line "Take Your Time."

The cast of the characters, the amazing soundtrack, and the wonderful art style have all made this one of the best gaming experiences I have had since my first play thru of Mass Effect!

I barely play RPG's. I have only played the Mario and Luigi series (except Paper Jam), Paper Mario:TTYD, Pokémon, Undertale, Deltarune, and the Stick of Truth. That's it. When I heard that even some who aren't fans of RPG's enjoyed Persona 5, I was interested. I got it on a PS3 emulator and it ran at 15-20 FPS. I don't care though, because I absolutely loved Persona 5.

I'm currently 7 hours in on Persona 4 right now and played a bit of P3FES so I can maybe give a few comparisons on what P5 did over those 2 games. To start, the stylish UI. Everybody has talked about this already. What more can be said about it? It's the best that I have ever seen. Then there are the dungeons/palaces. Instead of the dungeons being procedurally generated in previous titles and P5's Mementos, P5's change of palace design fits right at home as you know the layout, where the enemies are in the map and how many there are as this makes you plan as if you were actually breaking in. The graphics feel like they could stand the test of time compared to 3 & 4 which look kind of dated (in my opinion) for 2006 and 2008 games.

Now for the game in general. This game made me feel like I was in Tokyo. It made me want to be in Tokyo. It make me feel like I was with Morgana, Ryuji, Ann, Yusuke, Makoto, Futaba, Haru. The writing for these characters felt natural and for someone who is not a fan of dubs. Goddamn is the dub is surprisingly great. I loved changing hearts of rotten adults because they build up to be absolute scumbags and the more they reveal themselves to be, the more you want to change their hearts, and when you do change their hearts, it is so satisfying to watch them admit that they did shitty things. The story hooked me through all of its 80 hours and I loved every single second. Now for the gameplay. I swear. This is the first time any RPG has done this to me, but it made me sink hours and hours of gameplay into it per day, making me want to know more and more. The thing is in Persona games after 3, you can leave the turn-based sections whenever you want despite there being limits in days for some dating sim-ish gameplay. Both gameplays sides are executed very well as both connect to the story. The dating sim side makes your Pokémon- ech Personas stronger and make you learn more about the characters you interact with. Also with me not being a fan of both genres, both were fun. The soundtrack has some of my favorite music ever. Last Surprise, Beneath the Mask, Wake Up Get Up Get Out There, Life Will Change, RIVERS IN THE DESERT (my favorite track in the game :) with until the 7th palace's boss), Blooming Villain, Will Power, Disquiet. Need I go on?

As for issues there are just a few pacing problems. Particularly in palace #5. That's it. (At first an issue I had was that the culprit behind the mental shutdowns was predictable, but it was then made up with the characters already knowing that it was him and said that it is obvious as well).

To sum it up. The title says it. It's my favorite JRPG and it is also my first that I've beaten. It is also the longest single player game I have ever played. If you're not a fan of RPG's though, I'd suggest you play the first 10 hours for yourself. If you like it, it's for you. PS3 and PS4 owners must play this. RPG fans must play this. Answering questions before they are asked, Makoto is best girl and Akiren is best boy.

FINAL RATING: 10/10

EDIT #1 (My 1st New Game + playthrough): Right after I beat the game (the review was posted before beating the true ending) and built my new PC, the first game I started when I got on was P5 just to see the comparison in performance with my old PC and my new PC and the new PC ran at 60 fps throughout 90% of the game. Thus, I played it for a month because I was back to being hooked with this game. After playing it, I loved the game even more.

There were so many things that I missed out on my first playthrough like the game's main themes of authoritative power and rebellion which are just marvelous. I barely used the fusion system in my first playthrough. Now with the second playthrough, just wow. When I decided to fuse Persona's into the most powerful beings to ever exist, I spent all my money on fusion and then grinded in Mementos for 5 hours to get Yoshitsune and Satanael. It is that investing and satisfying to just get 1 powerful Persona and use it in combat. (Tip: if you want to do this, max out the Velvet Twins aka the Strength Confidant. Their final ability is extremely useful). I maxed out with almost everyone EXCEPT Yusuke (because he wouldn't let me level up to rank 9 after 3 fortune tellings from Chihaya). And I'd like to discuss everyone I maxed out (except for Morgana, Sae Nijima, Igor, and Akechi).

Starting with Ryuji Sakamoto. I really liked Ryuji. Out of all the Phantom Thieves, Ryuji was the one that felt like your best friend the most. Regardless of the situation, he would be there for you like how his mother was to him. It'd be you hanging with with him at the beach or even "dating" him on Valentine's Day. This and his confidant are very faithful to his tarot card, the Chariot Arcana.

Ann Takamaki: Ann was the first person I maxed out and romanced. Her ideas of being strong were a bit stupid like giving her insults and starring in action movies, but there is just some sort of innocence despite all the shit she and Shiho have gone through that I just can't help but chuckle. Ann's determination and loyalty are what made me like her instead of just being a THOT. She kind of reminds of me when my best friend moved away. I kept thinking about my friend and wanted to think of ways to be close to her.

Makoto Nijima: Makoto is my favorite girl and I romanced her in the 2nd playthrough. She's smart, a nice motherly figure, her goals for the future are to do what she wants and what others want her to do, and is a big middle finger to all the Mary Sues out there. And that is awesome. However, she has the weakest social link of the Phantom Thieves since her link is mainly focused on this other girl named Eiko. Instead of trying to open her mind with new interests as said. What she does is try to stop Eiko from her suspicious boyfriend from a yakuza. Yeah yeah. It's the same thing Makoto went through with Kaneshiro, but her confidant mainly loses focus.

Futaba Sakura: Futaba is the most fleshed out character out of all the Phantom Thieves and is the one I can probably relate to the most due to isolation and anxiety. I feel bad for her because her talents could overshadow the ones who yelled at her. Futaba did nothing wrong and she deserved better. She has a lot of motives that she actually does unlike Ann. Kana was the weakest part of Futaba's social link because of how sudden Kana's parents' change of hearts were after being told about them. Even then, Kana isn't as focused as much as Eiko.

Haru Okumura: Poor Haru. You sweet little ball of floof. She was introduced so late into the game and barely had screentime. It's sad too because while she's my least favorite girl of the Phantom Thieves, she has the best confidant out of the 4 main girls as her confidant was a nice balance of have a huge amount of responsibility to dreaming of making her own cafe like how her grandfather once did.

The Protagonist / Akira Kurusu / Ren Amamiya: I love him. Best boy. I'd go gay for him.

Sojiro Sakura: Best Dad. Nuff said.

Ichiko Ohya: So many people consider her to be the worst confidant in the game, and while I wholeheartedly agree, I still don't consider her to be bad. She's just boring. Her skills are the most useless perks in the game. She doesn't develop in the end. I don't despise her. I don't consider her to be bad. She's just forgettable in my eyes. Even though she helped out the Phantom Thieves, I really hope that she is improved upon in Persona 5 The Royal. I only maxed her out because I wanted to 100% everyone.

Sadayo Kawakami: Suck it, Kenji.

Munehisa Iwai: I can't believe this is the only adult confidant where you actually do something other than change someone's heart. I liked the relationship between him and his son.

Hifumi Togo: I can relate to being put up on a pedestal by my mother. The only thing is that I really don't deserve it. I hope she appears a Phantom Thief in Persona 5 The Royal.

Persona 5 is my first experience with this franchise...and I'd say there is a pretty good chance I'll start working my way through the rest of them. What a fantastic RPG!

Purely on the merit of its endlessly cool jazz soundtrack, slickly stylised presentation and fantastic voice acting, this game feels like a masterpiece. But the social commentary, excellently written characters and incredibly addictive RPG gameplay loops also help elevate it above most others in the genre.

Definitely worth going in on (just be ready to invest a lot of your time).

Introduction

Persona 5 is the epitome of JRPG for the year 2017. It simply oozes style, with a simple but effective gameplay that has never felt so well-refined and satisfying to me before. It is currently one of my all-time favorites because of its characters, as they felt so real and connectable, not only due to the narrative but the way they affected me as a player - it was just so relatable how they felt as social outcasts trying to pave their way into society.

Combat

The combat was improved compared to the older series. It is much faster and easier for a player to navigate through the menu with its slick and stylish interface. They also added demon negotiations from older persona series which is a welcoming return with new (returning) elements and guns, making the combat much more fun.

Characters

Firstly, I have to separately express my love towards the designs of the characters both in the real world and the metaverse, including their personas.

I love all of their personalities, as they each have their own important role to the story even though there are some who are pushed slightly less compared to others in the story (I’m looking at you, Ann). The villains do a really good job in making me hate them - they are that good - especially Kamoshida in the first arc of the story, including the side characters' social links (confidants in the game). Also, for all confidants, ranking them up results in various bonuses which is a step up from the previous titles if I remember everything properly.

I also love the little details that they put inside the game. Slight small spoiler For example, how when you're supposed to investigate for Makoto, she follows you with manga in her hands if you look at her. That little part sealed the deal for me right there for this to be one of my favorite games. It shows me that there was love and care poured into the game by its developers. As the time passed on to nearly the end of the game, I proudly announce that I did tear up.

Dungeons and Aesthetics

I love Persona 5's palaces (or dungeons, if you want) a lot. They removed the randomly generated themes from Persona 4, which is surely a big plus to me. Additionally, they have also added a stealth mechanic that goes along with the theme of the game, which is being a thief.

My only gripe is about a particular dungeon that was space one with the stupid maze. Like, why does that even exist? It was plain annoying, and I was done with that particular pallace by that point.

On the plus side, both the pyramid palace and the casino were my absolutely favorites, the soundtrack fits in the theme of the palaces and the puzzles just as greatly in my opinion.

Soundtrack

Now I'm not very good in the music department, so there’s nothing much for me to tell in details about, but I like the OSTs a lot and I even listen to the one that they gave out from the collectors edition every single day. You definitely didn't see this coming.

Conclusion

TIn short, this game is amazing and it’s definitely a 10/10 from me. It has an amazing and engaging plot Outstanding and believable characters Great soundtracks Beautiful aesthetically

When I beat this game for the first I felt pretty firm about this being a 4/5 title, but going through the second playthrough I was leaning towards more 3.5/5, and nearly two months after that I'm still feeling 3.5 but for the sake of using full stars I'm leaning more towards 3. I feel regretful in doing so.

The story here is the best since the Persona 2 games and the atmosphere at times gets very SMT-ish, moreso than 4 ever did. The music is absolutely fantastic (OST release alreadyyyy). The characters as a whole are all very likeable and even those who aren't plot-essential justify their presence by being very interesting. The game is remarkably polished, especially for a title that isn't from a AAA developer, and delivers massively in art design. I enjoyed the game and intend to go through it a third time with the NA release.

For all the good that Persona 5 has to offer -- and there is quite a lot -- there is an unfortunately massive flaw that drags the game down from where it could be -- the system. Persona 5 continues the staunch devotion to the game system introduced in Persona 3 and it suffers massively for doing so. It just flat out no longer makes any sense where you're stuck on a timetable for dungeons -- OK like in Persona 3, the big operations would take place every full moon, so it made perfect sense there. In Persona 4, you have to wait for the next string of continual rainy days? That's awfully contrived and kind of lame but OK. But here in this game, I stole the target's heart and I gotta wait like two weeks for them to sit at home and stew in their feelings before they decide they want to make a tearful public apology which just so happens to coincide with some other important deadline that may or may not be related???? Give me a fuckin break here.

And honestly I found the day system tiresome in P3 and by now it's more than worn out its welcome. So much of this game just feels like you're doing something to hurry the date up so you can move the story forward and go back to the dungeons again. There are some new activities added this time around but frankly the majority of them are completely unnecessary and it will be very possible for you to beat the game without doing some of them even once (and why the HELL is the fishing minigame back here?!).

But like I said, I did enjoy the game in spite of that. The good points are REALLY good, and thank god for that because now Atlus has earned their pass with this. They desperately need to change the system with Persona 6, though, or else it won't matter how good all other factors are with that game.

Summary:
Story: 5/5
Music: 5/5
System: 3/5 (I mean it's not buggy but c'mon)
Iconoclast factor: 100000/5 (watch out for all the articles from game sites where people try to use their English degree to pretend like there's any relevance between this game and Arsene Lupin novels and pooh pooh invisible naysayers)
Overall: 3.5/5

ADDED 5/14/17: Having purchased the NA version of this game and having played through it twice (again), I decided to revisit my thoughts on this. I think I was a tad bit harsh on this due to being frustrated at how much the game draaaaaaaaags at the end, and I still maintain that the day system really needs to go. That said, the game still does a lot right, and if nothing else I'm glad that after the goofy cartoony tone of P4 that they went back to a story that's more in spirit with the prior Persona games (to the point of even taking the main conceit of the story from P2!). In light of that, I think it would be more fair to bump the rating up a star (I did say I was very much on the cusp of that, anyway).

Regarding the English localization: I've seen some things around regarding the iffiness of it, especially in the early section of the game/the pronunciation of some character's names. I also noticed it as well, and I agree with it sounding "off", though allegedly part of that was due to the loss of a primary localizer and getting some last minute help from the Japanese branch -- I don't know if that's true, but if so it would explain a hell of a lot as much of that sounds like how a non-native English speaker would translate stuff. That said, the quality oddly shoots up after you get past April, and I didn't really recall anything past that. I wasn't too hot on how some of Ryuji's lines were translated, but other than that I have nothing but praise, especially for Futaba (they handled her really well and she's true to the character portrayed in the Japanese text, and she's the character who would've been easiest to mess up). I didn't play the game with English voices, but I watched a friend play it briefly with them and (odd name pronunciation aside, also see earlier in the paragraph) they did a decent job.

ADDED 1/28/18: ok I'm bumping this back down to my original rating of 3/5. After talking about this with various people for a while I have a hell of a lot of problems with this game, part of which I touched on in my first edit of the review. I don't think I can really be easy on it, especially not when the Persona 2 IS/EP and Persona 3 manage to do elements of what P5 is trying and do them better, and especially not when NieR: Automata and Tales of Berseria also came out in 2017 (in the US, at least) and both outshine P5 by orders of magnitude.