For quite a long time I had held the idea that the Shin Megami Tensei main games were superior to the spin-off games that were the Persona games. Admittedly, this was based on a very shallow (and faulty) knowledge how those games actually played and what they were about. Which, as it turns out, was pretty foolish of me. Not playing those games that is, whether they are better or not is of course highly subjective, but uninformed opinions are never something to be proud of.

Now I'm telling this because the entire series is, I believe, something to keep in mind when judging this title. At the very least, it heavily influenced my opinion of the game. I think the series use of RPG mechanics blends so perfectly with its narrative of character growth. Using personas, social links (or confidants, as they are called now) and social skills as game mechanics in a way that actually complements the RPG-character of the game. I think they're not, as many people have stated games with RPG segments and social simulator segments, they're RPG's in both these cases.

The game at hand is on first glance no different than the two that came before. It features those mechanics as described before, it expands upon them, features some completely new things and has put some old ones back into the mix again that previously featured in 3, and even some things from 2. Now on this 'mechanics' side of things, the game has pretty much only progressed. The combat mechanics and the UI in those combat encounters is amazing, polished and feels at the same time deeper, and clearer than in P4. The social links and social stats haven't had any drastic changes, but I already loved them as they were, so I'm not complaining. The day structure is also more or less the same as in P4, and while I much preferred P3's take on this and the added freedom I felt there, it works. The new touch where you use some cover and sneaking to get around and ambush the enemies is a nice thematic addition, but to me it felt like it toned down the difficulty for these encounters a lot. Now I could have made it harder for myself by not using this cover option, but it's such a central mechanic, it hardly makes sense to impose such a challenge on yourself with no added reward.

Which brings me to difficulty. I've played 3 and 4 on normal, which is the way I tend to play games. 3 could be pretty tough at times, and 4 also managed to be quite a challenge at times, making me wonder whether it was better to push on and hope the final floor of a dungeon was in sight, or whether it would be best to head back to the start. P5's difficulty in general, helped by the easier ambush system, and the quantity of safe rooms was much lower than those games, with even checkpoints at the beginning of boss fights that made a riskier playstyle much more attractive. The option to even go back a day gave me a feeling that my choices whether to enter a dungeon, or whether I needed to train a bit first had much less weight than they did in previous games. Now I can see why people would actually praise this, because it means you don't have to arbitrarily create new save games constantly, but I felt it took away some of the gravity of a game over in the previous games.

It's the story and plot-structure however where the game really drops the ball for me. By dropping you right into the action Persona 5 tries to hook you in right from the beginning, as opposed to 3 and 4 (and 2)'s very slow starts. I know there are people that like this, and it's a common thing to do in film, but I honestly dislike it a lot in games. Mostly because it makes the player get used to the controls through some of the main mechanics, while after that, the game proper starts, and you have a more complete tutorial-like section, giving you some prompts of things you were already doing a while back. You know, when you were actually playing the game. But from a story perspective, this also takes some of the tension off the progression, because you already have a good feeling of where it's headed. Now it could have used that to subvert the player's expectations, but it follows neatly along the lines. The entire story keeps getting explained, right before you actually engage in it. And not in the way P4 did this, with next targets showing up and the whole how and why being a central mystery, but it is just told to you from the future. This makes the entire story feel very on-rails until right before the end. This is also reflected in the many days that are fully or partially scripted, that completely take away agency and just keep that calendar rolling on, while you as a player are left feeling you could have achieved far more useful things in that time. Morgana telling you that you're tired being the most obvious and therefore most presented way the game does this to you. It's not that I don't undertand that the game was designed with as much plannable days in mind as there actually are in the game after subtracting those scripted events, it just feels horrible having that freedom taken away from you because you have to spend some time with the group cooking up the next target because the game says that's what you do today. And it's not even interesting to follow these discussions, because you the player, have long been told who it is.

There were a few memorable characters in this game, although on the whole I didn't like them nearly as much as the characters of 2, 3 and 4, and this mainly has to do with the way the game portrays them for a large part as nearly flawless individuals, who had evil done unto them by others. Unlike the introspective focus of the previous games, the focus here lies mainly on the "evil adults", people who you hardly ever care for, because they do evil things, and hey, turns out they have a shadow side. Where the other Persona games told you that everyone has some side that isn't pretty, and overcoming that was the pivotal point of their personal journey, 5 takes the 'evil is evil, therefore should be stopped' approach that is so much less interesting to me. Mishima, on this point, is the most interesting and well-developed character in the entire cast.

Now there are actually a lot of interesting themes presented in this game. The structuring of villains according to the seven deadly sins (although some did this a bit better than others). The themes of rebelling and usage of tricksters and anti-heroes in myth (even though they are actually being pretty straight up heroes). The bleak outlook on the way masses are easily influenced. The themes of imprisonment. The way they are handled, is however pretty sub-par to me. Especially for a Persona game. But this is still very much a Persona game, and it is still a really good game. It uses a lot of established mechanics and plot-points of the series (the ending felt very much like a mixture of the endings of 2IS and 3, be it far more positive). But for a game that is very much about rebelling, it is the Persona game that plays it most safe in terms of the story, and that's a shame.

Persona 5 is everything that the previous games were and more. If you liked those games then you'll love this one. If you've never played those games then this one might require a bit of explanation. Basically, Persona is a combination of social sim and dungeon crawling adventure all told through an Anime-styled overarching story. The basic plot of the games varies, but they all have certain commonalities. Naturally, you play the obligatory Anime high school student with the power to summon monsters known as Personas to aid you in battle. Your opponents are Shadows, twisted manifestations of people's distorted desires and you confront them in an alternate world outside this one (accessible now through a phone app). This game's plot is focused around rebellion, and you play as the leader of a gang of thieves who steal evil people's hearts (ie. their unnatural desires) in order to make the world a better place. Once those hearts have been stolen, the villains can't deal with their guilt and confess all their crimes. It's adventurous, exciting, and very stylish.

The tale takes place over the course of an entire school year. During that year you get to plan your daily life. Will you hang out with one of your friends in the afternoon? Read a book? Do some studying? Practice baseball? What about that evening? And when will you take the time to hunt down those monsters causing havoc? It's hard to see from this where the game's addictiveness comes from. It sounds a bit too close to all the things we hate about our own lives (minus the monsters, I hope). But it turns out these things are a lot more fun when it's somebody else's life. Being given control over their social life and development means that you feel like you are genuinely living this adventure. I've never been a Japanese high school student, but while playing these games I feel like I am one. It's not something that's easy to replicate in any other format.

One of the wonderful things about Persona is the way that you truly come to understand the characters in a way that only spending a year together can achieve. Unlike most series, you don't become instant bosom friends. You spend months or weeks getting accustomed to each others' quirks. And that means that these characters grow on you. Yusuke, for example, struck me as a fairly uninteresting pretentious artist type, but after a few weeks you really start to appreciate his complete obliviousness to everything that isn't directly related to his art. It's played mainly for laughs, but they do it so well that you just kind of shake your head and chuckle the same way you do when hanging out with crazy friends.

Combat is basically identical to Persona 4, although the controls are different. Rather than using a combat ring you select different attacks by pressing different buttons on your controller. This substantially simplifies the control system. A big addition is that we now get negotiation back, as it was in the first Persona games. When knocking down all your opponents you now have the option to negotiate with them. If your negotiation is successful you can recruit them into your Persona pool. The recruitment system can be frustrating, but when it works it is far superior to the older system of cards. At least it makes the combat gameplay interact with the Pokemon-style collection in a meaningful way. The other major difference is that there are more types of magic than the previous four elements and a light/dark instakill. Now there is nuclear and divine damage. These work the same way as other magic types. Their main addition is to increase the number of possible weaknesses/strengths you can exploit.

Unlike previous Personas, the dungeons in this game are carefully designed rather than being random. This is a major improvement. The new sneaking mechanisms work super well in a way that they simply couldn't in a randomly generated dungeon. You get to jump from hiding spot to hiding spot as you try to position yourself for the best possible attack. Level design regularly includes puzzles and different types of obstacles. Each dungeon feels different and special with none of the repetitiveness of previous games. Well, apart from the part where you die unexpectedly and lose ann hour's worth of leveling because the save points are so far apart. Prepare to experience a lot of that. There are random dungeons as well, in the semi-optional world known as Mementos. I wasn't super thrilled with this part. Mementos villains are too weak to serve as effective tools for leveling up and driving around in your cat car seems unnecessary.

The game looks amazing, although I feel I need to distinguish between visuals and the commonly used meaning of graphics as 'visuals that fall in the high end of what the system can achieve.' Graphically, this game will win no awards for pushing the hardware. It's not photorealistic in appearance, nor is it trying to be. Instead it looks like a beautifully rendered Anime. And the visual design is what makes the game look great. Everything here is awash in style, from the menu design to the look of the characters and Shadows. The world itself is a highly accurate representation of Tokyo. It feels real and lived-in in a wonderful way. A game doesn't need to push the hardware to its limits to achieve that. I do have a few gripes about the graphics though. Some of the texture maps are absurdly low detail (particularly in signs) when they should be able to stand up to much higher scrutiny. The way that Shibuya is divided between four different maps is an unnecessary compromise for older tech. The locations themselves look wonderful, but you shouldn't need a loading screen to go from the various levels of Shibuya station or from the main square or shopping district.

The game isn't flawless. The deadlines imposed to pull off the various heists feel even more arbitrary than in previous games. This is admittedly, an area where I felt Persona 4 was a step backwards from the third one (do it before the next fog? really?) but at least they had a justification for it. Here, the villains set arbitrary deadlines for no obvious reason when they could simply ruin your lives right then and there. And when you do pull off the heist, they just break down offscreen and only confess their crimes on the assigned day. What a coincidence! And while texts are used effectively in general, it does feel silly that you have to seek out your friends around the city instead of simply texting them. There are also some unnecessarily unskippable animations. But of course, neither of these is a major issue. And it's really hard to pick out anything serious to criticize about the game, except to say that it likely isn't for everybody. I mean, I think it'll appeal to a lot more people than are aware of it, but if you don't like Anime or dungeon crawling (or high school) then this game probably isn't for you.

Each Persona game has a color theme that matches the tone. 3 was blue for depression, 4 was yellow for joy, and now 5 is red for aggression and rebellion. The games are so similar in quality that which one you prefer is largely going to depend on which attitude strikes a chord with you. As such I prefer 3 and 4 because they fit my personality better. I've never been that much of a rebel (or even really desired to be) but I've certainly had my moments of joy and sadness. Persona 5 offers some improvements in gameplay, but the changes aren't major enough to up its ranking on that basis. This isn't a quality issue. It's strictly a question of taste. This is still the best JRPG released for the PS4.

It took a really really long time for me to settle on my opinions of Persona 5. Atlus's most recent hit is an incredible mess in terms of its components that just barely lies hidden beneath its incredible starstruck aesthetic. As a cohesive whole it manages to strongly capture the beats of school-time stress management and plan-preparation jrpg combat, but under a microscope a lot of the cracks give way. The story is awful both in terms of pacing and how it is written due to its cardboard antagonists, ridiculous mystery logic, and inconsistent tone. It does have its strengths, especially during the first and fourth palaces which both build around an interesting character or interesting set of character relationships tied to said character. But they are very few and far between, and the fucked up translation doesn't help much either. There's a very clear realization that this story went through multiple multiple drafts and it's a shame it came out in this rushed state. The gameplay in contrast is good...ish. I enjoy the once more combat and I personally found that Persona 5 highlights strong bosses and encounters especially near the end of the lategame. However it is still shallow in terms of strategy but at least it extends a ridiculous customization that respects the series standard in terms of team composition. The palace/dungeon traversal is certainly better than the previous dungeons of prior games but at best it is tolerable and at its worst constantly hitting you over with the same theme of any x specific area.

Despite this laundry list of incredible issues, maybe even nail in the coffin scale issues for any reader looking to purchase the game, I'd still say the game is good. Despite its flaws I found myself immersed through the whole experience just due to how strongly it carries its aesthetic and core gameplay loop. The music is incredible, almost every single hour I never felt bored or marred in a tedious grind that the game totally has. It's possible I had my brain off for certain sections but I'd be lying to my own huge enjoyment with the game if I were to say that this is a bad game in any fashionable way. Persona 5 is a good terribly flawed game that I recommend to fans of the series and to anyone who was floored by the aesthetic alone in trailers. (7/10)

I loved the combat mechanics in this -- I described it to my friends a million times while playing it (over the course of 7 months this 100 hour game took me) as "a much less annoying Pokemon". The Hold-Up system confused me at first for a half-second; I didn't think a game like this would be so generous as to let me entirely skip battles just because I knew combat weaknesses. It turns out that in the end I was still right because it still took a LONG time to beat this game, but it wasn't because I had to sit through drawn-out battles.

But the real gem of this game is the Japanese teenager life-simulator game that you get to play between the fun mask collecting and exploration of a Satoshi Kon reminiscent psychological dimension. I loved unlocking new areas of Tokyo, roaming around, hanging out with my friends, and maybe even doing a romance quest a la Mass Effect or two.

As much as I adored this game overall, I do criticize it for having what feels to be about two anime seasons worth of story stretched out over ten seasons' worth of time. The end of the game also stretches out into tedium, making you feel trapped in a routine. I complained about this a lot while I was going through it, but as soon as I got to the end of it and saw how it all played out, I felt like perhaps that was actually a genius ludological choice to communicate the themes of the plot. I mention it explicitly, though, because I'm sure that some players won't appreciate it.

Overall, this game won't be a hit with everyone, but this game presented me a story that really resonated with me with gameplay to match, and goes down as one of my all-time favorites.