(Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/18/2020)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Persona 5
Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Atlus
Genre(s): JRPG
Platforms: PS3, PS4
Release Date: September 15, 2016
Wow, this game is so vibrant! Even the menu items pop with style!
That introduction was so enthralling! Wait, the majority of this game takes place throughout recent past events told by the main character? That's a lot like Sly 3, which is one of my all-time favorite games!
Wow, that gym teacher is a total fucking asshole! I can't wait to see what's coming to him!
Just like that, a game that I revved up in my PS4 one night out of slight curiosity became a constantly invigorating journey that took up a non-consecutive 100 hours throughout the first third of 2019. I enjoyed this game so much that I played through it again immediately after finishing it, which is something I seldom do with any video game, much less one as long as Persona 5. Through the course of those two playthroughs, I fell in love with Persona 5 to the point where it is not only one of my favorite games released in the past 10 years but one of my all-time favorites.
So, why did I fall in love with Persona 5? Well, why did everyone else fall in love with Persona 5? This game was a massive hit unprecedented by anything else Atlus had put out over their 30-year course as a company. Until then, Atlus's franchises naturally fell into the cult classic territory. Persona 4 and its remastered version P4 Golden were pretty major hits, respectively, but the success of Persona 4 was mere pennies compared to Persona 5's goldmine. Persona 5 is by far the best-selling game that Atlus has ever released. Suddenly, a giant influx of new fans who weren't even slightly familiar with the previous Persona games or Shin Megami Tensei (myself included) started heralding this game as a masterpiece and as the gold standard for not only the franchise but for the JRPG genre. This massive success for Atlus does not come as a surprise. With all of the delays juxtaposed with the quality of the game's final release, it's obvious that Atlus crafted this game to ooze style and made every single aspect of this game immensely durable regarding its story, characters, gameplay, and design. Since playing through Persona 5 twice, I have also played through Persona 3 and Persona 4, the other "modern" Persona games, so my recent revisit of Persona 5 not only serves as a means to compare Persona 5 to its predecessors but gives me insight on how Persona had grown as a franchise and how savvy I've grown to be with this game revisiting it compared to when I was clueless playing it for the first time.
I've already used the word "vibrant" to describe this game, but it bears repeating. Persona 5 is probably the most vibrant game I've ever played. I don't think there is a single audible or visual aspect of this game that is underwhelming. The opening of the game before the main menu is a strikingly attractive color palette of bright crimson red on a base of white (which, personally, the two-color base white on any other striking color is a great way to get my attention for anything) and the opening theme is upbeat and infectious. Overall, Persona 3 may have my favorite soundtrack, but Persona 5's soundtrack is probably the most consistent in genre and tone. In terms of genre, Persona 5's soundtrack is somewhere in between jazz-fusion, acid jazz, and lounge. It's always in the sweet spot between Bob James, Jamiroquai, and Stereolab with some vocal jazz leanings oftentimes. The soundtrack to this game is hip, it's cool, it's smooth, and no matter what scene the soundtrack is accompanying, it stays consistent in its overall core style. I like how there's more than one piece of music to convey tension in this game rather than Persona 4's constant piano track (you know the one).
I never thought I'd be praising a game for its menus either, but that's the level of detail that this game upholds. Every time you pause in this game, the menu with all of the options makes a strangely satisfying THWAP sound that never gets tiring no matter how many times you use the menu to navigate items, skills, confidant rankings, etc. Each menu item has its distinct features where Joker and the other characters are displayed in a comic book-style animation with different poses oftentimes differing on the selected menu item. Sometimes after quitting the game for the day, I'd take the last few moments to navigate the menu because even the menus were fun to scroll through, which is a rare aspect of any game. The in-game selections are just as vibrant as well as the blue-on-white color pallet in Takemi's clinic, with a silhouette of her posing when selecting items to buy. This game also chose to switch the character dialogue models to the bottom left corner of the screen. It's not a major change, but it's still somehow much more attractive than how it was in the previous two games. The characters also look much less chibi than they did in the previous games, borrowing the art style of Catherine, another non-Shin Megami Tensei-related Atlus game. Ultimately, the changes in Persona 5 are wonderful but also necessary to modernize the franchise with the current generation. Atlus took a franchise that was already brimming with personality and elevated it to an unprecedented height not only for the series but for any video game. It is no hyperbole when I say that Persona 5 is one of the most attractive video games of all time.
The game's merit doesn't just stand on its style alone. Its story is one of the best I've played through in any game despite it also being the longest story I've played through in any game. In the 100 hours it takes to play through this game, the story never faltered, and I never became bored with it, unlike some points in the stories of Persona 3 and 4. Personas 3-5 almost act as director Katsura Hashino's "Three Colours Trilogy," in which each entry's tones and themes coincide with the ever-present base colors in each game, signifying the common tropes represented with each color. If Persona 3's blue represents grief and sadness, Persona 4's yellow represents exuberance and light, then Persona 5's red represents anger, passion, and rebellion. Those three signifiers associated with the color red are used to great effect in this game as the general theme of Persona 5 is upholding justice and rebelling against the seemingly impervious forces in society that abuse their power to constantly suppress those weaker than them.
Persona 5 starts with a mysterious, cloaked young man being pursued through a casino by shadows and what also seems like a heavily armed SWAT team. As he finds an escape route, he's holding a briefcase in one hand while his silhouetted teammates try to help him from afar. As he makes a crude exit by jumping through a stained glass window, the SWAT team overwhelms him with size, and he is taken into custody. While being interrogated, he's roughed up and drugged by the SIU agents who try to make him sign a confession for all of the hefty crimes he's allegedly committed (this is the most unorthodox way of a Persona game having you enter your name and I enjoy this way of introduction). Before they tear his limbs off, an attractive young prosecutor named Sae Nijima arrives at the interrogation room to inquire the young man about his shifty past. The beginning events of the game chronologically occur seven months earlier as the protagonist does a reverse Persona 4 and moves from the country to Tokyo, the pinnacle of a bustling city metropolis. A few months earlier, the protagonist was wrongly charged with a count of assault when he was trying to prevent the man who charged him from raping a woman. Because of his newfound criminal record, his parents kicked him out of the house and forced him to move to a quiet area of Tokyo under the custody of Shojiro Sakura, a seemingly stern owner of Leblanc, a cafe whose attic is now the protagonist's new home. The protagonist enrolls in Shujin academy, where he is already treated like a delinquent. On his way to his first day of school, he encounters a beautiful blonde girl, a floppy-haired gym teacher, and an indignant blonde teenager named Ryuji. All of these factors culminate in a phone app transporting you to seemingly another dimension in which Shujin Academy becomes a castle. Upon venturing inside, you discover that the castle's ruler is the floppy hair gym teacher you encountered earlier, except now he's donning a crown, a leopard-skin cape, and a pink thong and is also acting like a cold-blooded tyrant. Before he attempts to kill the protagonist and Ryuji, the protagonist stops him by awakening to his persona. Upon exiting the castle, they encounter a strange cat-like creature named Morgana imprisoned in a dungeon cell. Morgana explains that you're in a place called the metaverse, a cognitive otherworld represented by the reality of what people feel about themselves and the people around them. In Kamoshida's case, the castle his cognitive self was ruling over is known as a "palace," a structure created by someone with distorted desires who usually does something harmful to others or themselves in the real world. In Kamoshida's case, it is in the form of physically abusing his students and sexually harassing teenage girls. The only way to stop them from enacting these harmful things is to make them have a change of heart by stealing their treasure at the core of their palace, which would get rid of their distorted desires. . After their first job, the protagonist, Ryuji, Morgana, and the pretty blonde girl named Ann, form The Phantom Thieves of Hearts to pull off more jobs in the metaverse by changing corrupt people's hearts to reform society.
If that base plot summary sounded long-winded, it's because this game has giant stretches of exposition. This is no more apparent than in the introduction of this game which spans from the future casino escape to getting a deadline to finish Kamoshida's palace. If you thought Persona 4's opening was a long span of exposition, you're in for a real treat with Persona 5. The introduction/tutorial in this game is long enough that you almost feel like you could've completed another game in the time it took to finish this introduction. I certainly didn't mind, however, because the introduction was all this game needed to get me hooked initially. I loved the fact that the first scene of the game only foreshadowed what was to come many hours later in the game, and I had to work my way up to find out what was happening. I also loved that most of the game's story is being told from that future point by the protagonist like in Sly 3 (or probably in better examples from other media, but Sly 3 was the first video game I saw with this narrative mechanic). The events in the introduction that leads up to the first moment of normal Persona gameplay are consistently invigorating as I wanted to know more about the metaverse and what was going to happen once they stole Kamoshida's treasure and changed his heart. Once the introduction ended, and the game lets you loose, I was a little intimidated by the time limit, but I was sure that the game would give me enough time to complete the palace.
This leads to my first criticism of Persona 5 that I can state now that I've played through the other games: this game has the worst time management out of all of the "modern" Persona games. This is largely due to the vast amount of exposition throughout the game contrasted with the fact that there is so much to do in seemingly so little time. Like Persona 4, the otherworld you visit where the RPG gameplay is can only be visited in the daytime, so the character is "too tired" at night to do anything else if he has visited the otherworld previously that day. It's more of a problem in Persona 5 because there are plenty of confidants (social links), the stats are more difficult to improve, and besides the palaces, you also have to spend a lot of time in Mementos. Mementos is essentially this game's version of Tartarus except explored by descending it instead of climbing it. Mementos act as the general public's cognition in which you take on requests from the Phantom Thief Aficionado website that Mishima makes after completing the first palace. The requests are usually unresolved domestic squabbles, but they tend to get more intense as the game progresses. It's a wonder what line the game draws in discerning who is fucked up enough to get a palace because some of the people you face in Mementos are seriously disturbed. Many confidants also require you to fulfill requests in Mementos to max them out, which involves a lot of time spent in places during the daytime, which makes you unable to do anything at night. This can be resolved through a certain confidant, but you need a certain level of guts to call her to request her service, and you have to max out her confidant as well. This is why whenever you schedule a day to do the palace, do as much as possible on that day until you run out of SP. Leveraging SP in a palace can be hectic at times, but it's the only way to sufficiently give yourself enough free time for the requests, stats increases, and confidants. During my first playthrough, I had no idea what I was doing and didn't give myself enough time to raise my stats or most of the confidants. Now that I consider myself a Persona veteran, I now think that the time management factor was better implemented in Persona 3, and Persona 5 got a little too ambitious with trying to cram in all of the aspects from previous Persona games with the new features. At least you can read on the subway on your way to school to raise your stats sometimes, I guess.
I suppose that it's a good thing that the palaces in this game are always really invigorating since they are the top priority of your time spent in this game. Persona 5 swaps the randomly generated dungeon crawling format from the earlier Personas in favor of making the central palaces like Zelda dungeons with a series of different floors with different gimmicks, the occasional puzzle, and the overall multi-faceted layout that most 3D Zelda dungeons also have that make them feel so rich and engrossing. Like in Persona 4, each palace is themed and requires you to beat them in a given time or else face a colossal game over that will send you back hours of progress if you don't meet that time limit. In the case of Persona 5, there is another aspect at play with the time limit for each palace. Even though the game sets a concrete date for when a person's heart will be changed, the game recommends that you complete the palace a few days before the set date because you will need to issue a calling card. As Morgana explains, the treasure can only materialize when the person knows that their treasure is going to be stolen, so they send a calling card that looks like a ransom note on a red business card which activates the main boss of that palace, which in turn completes it upon beating the boss. Zelda dungeons WISH they could be this circuitous. Inside these dungeons are shadows, but unlike the third and fourth games, where they are an array of familiar enemies that get a tougher re-skin/color as the game progresses, they are cognitive blobs that take the form of familiar Personas during battle. Persona 5 makes a surprising move back to the original two Persona games by having you exploit the enemy's weaknesses, hold them up, and then negotiate with them to join your Persona roster. Thank god they implemented this feature back into the franchise because the shuffling mechanic in Persona 3 and 4 was bullshit. However, it is fairly difficult trying to guess which dialogue option will suffice for the specific persona even though they give you a vague personality type to work off of. It's still better than gaining a new persona by chance. On average, you will end up fighting these shadows more than the ones in the other worlds of Persona 3 and 4 because they are much more difficult to get around. To fit the theme of thievery, Persona 5 implements a percentage meter that ostensibly grows whenever the guards catch you either while trying to avoid them or if you failed an ambush. I've found that this alarm meter is more bark than bite because I swear I got the level up to 100% once, and the game did not kick me out of the palace. It is still very annoying, however. What's even more annoying and slightly hectic is the fact that you have to earn the ability to escape battles by leveling up a particular confidant that isn't even available until you finish the third palace. I understand that the game has to give you some incentive to rank up the confidants, but that's like having to unlock the ability to pause the game. It's just one of those features that shouldn't be compromised.
On the other spectrum of the game, the areas of Tokyo you visit somehow balance looking faithful to their real-life locations while still feeling like they were made for this game. What better city to base the setting of an incredibly vibrant game on than arguably the most vibrant city in the entire world? Yongen-Jaya may seem quiet for Tokyo standards, but everything from Leblanc, the clinic, the batting cages, etc. is still so lively. Shibuya is the central area between your home in Yongen-Jaya and Shujin, and it is always packed with people night and day. The subway channels are only needed a couple of times earlier in the game, but they are a nice feature that makes the city seems livelier. Shinjuku is a swankier area lit up in neon red, and Akihabara is a ward filled with arcades and electronics stores. Other than the free-roam areas, there are also "hangout spots," which include a fishing pond, a park with a big lake, a giant bridge, a couple of amusement parks, etc., which are mostly used to hang out with confidants to rank them up, or they are used as brief places in the story. Shujin Academy is underutilized in this game compared to Gekkoukan and Yasogami. The protagonist still goes to school like the others, but none of the social links/confidants are from school clubs like in the past two games thus, going to school just seems like every morning exposition before leaving the school to start your plans for that day. Most of the confidants are people outside of school except most of your partners.
I generally like the main cast of Persona 5. Each of them is likable in their own right, and they work off of each other pretty efficiently. However, as a group, I don't think they work as well as the Investigation Team in Persona 4, but they're not as sterile and formal as the members of SEES in Persona 3. Many of the main characters are more fleshed-out and likable versions of the main characters from Persona 3.
Ryuji is the dumb best friend character more similar to Junpei from Persona 3 than Yosuke in Persona 4. He's essentially the comic relief character, and I enjoyed his presence the first time I played through this game. After playing the other games with similar characters, I don't like Ryuji as much as I once did. Junpei may have been obnoxious and dumb at first, but he grows as a character over time and becomes much more likable by the end of the game. Ryuji, on the other hand, stays the same obnoxious, boorish idiot as he was on your first day of school. His constant banter with Morgana is always amusing, and he's a lively character, but realistically, if I had a friend like Ryuji, I'd want to kick his ass after a while. The stupid best friend trope was done so much better in previous games because they weren't used solely as comic relief.
Morgana is a talking cat you meet in the metaverse while exploring the first palace in the introduction. He fervently claims he's not a cat, but he is indeed a cat. Essentially, he's Persona 5's Teddie. He's a mysterious creature that comes from the other world, he's an animal (or in an animal's form), he's the team navigator for a little while until someone takes his place, and he has amnesia. Morgana forms your group as a means to help him gain his memory back and possibly turn into a human. Besides being the navigator and one of the first party members, he also turns into a car in Mementos which is surprisingly incredibly smooth to control. The only difference between Morgana and Teddie is that Morgana follows you around like Ash's Pikachu at every waking moment of the game after the introduction. If this was the same case as with Teddie, I'd eventually have to murder him, but this is not the case with Morgana. Morgana is not a character without his flaws. He's not as annoying as Teddie; however, he has a habit of acting like a smarmy, know-it-all shithead a lot of the time. As I said before, his banter with Ryuji is always amusing, but usually, it's debatable whether or not Ryuji deserves it or not. I guess two strong personalities measured up with an extent of insecurity on both sides usually clash together. Morgana also has a crush on Ann that is never resolved and usually results in tons of embarrassing moments where Morgana proverbially tips his fedora to Ann in almost every scene where they are together. It's like your meme-spewing, crusty friend going after the hot cheerleader. You don't say anything for the sake of their feelings, but every interaction between them makes you cringe.
Speaking of the hot cheerleader, Ann is the last original member of your group after another confrontation in Kamoshida's castle in the introduction. She's like Yukari in that she's the pretty, fashionable girl with a quarrelsome dynamic with the idiot best friend character with some slightly hinted sexual tension. Unlike Yukari, Ann is much more tolerable as a person. She's a girly girl, but she has a strong, willful demeanor that makes her likable (and doesn't act like she has a giant stick up their ass like Yukari). She expresses that her struggle comes from being so naturally beautiful that all the girls resent her and the boys are too intimidated to approach her. I'd argue that this situation is unrealistic, but maybe it's different in Japan. Her will comes from her strong relationship with her friend Shiho which becomes greatly tested during the Kamoshida arc in this game.
Yusuke is the first member to join the group after the Phantom Thieves are established. He's a tall, lanky blue-haired boy with a deep voice who attends a prestigious neighboring academy on an art scholarship. He encounters the Phantom Thieves after pursuing Ann to potentially paint her nude. In my Persona 3 review, I mentioned that Yusuke reminded me of Akihiko because they were both stern party members, but this comparison doesn't hold true to me anymore. Yusuke is an eccentric who lives in his isolated bubble, giving him a passionate but skewed perspective on everything. He's also a tad flamboyant. He's a character that fits the group dynamic just fine, but I was always a little hesitant to hang out with him as a confidant.
Makoto is the next member to join your group and my favorite party member. She is also the younger sister of Sae Nijima, the woman that has been interrogating you for the duration of the game thus far. She reminds me a lot of Mitsuru from Persona 3 in that she's the student council president, and her social link/confidant involves her breaking out of her shell. Unlike many of the other members, she's the only one with a solid character arc. She starts as a threat to the Phantom Thieves because she's been sent by Shujin's principal to do some snooping work to find who they are. She seems like a prudish, nosy bitch until upon discovering that she wants to join your group to take down Kaneshiro. Once she joins your party, she gains a badass nuclear bike persona with a skin-tight spike studded outfit to boot. She becomes so much more likable throughout the game that you tend to forget the bad first impressions that you had of her. Her insight and acumen also lead her to become the de facto co-leader or advisor of the Phantom Thieves as well.
Futaba is a shy, petite red-headed girl who becomes the metaverse navigator after completing her palace. She's also very timid around people she doesn't know due to past trauma and her incredibly sedentary lifestyle. Let's just say she's the hermit arcana for a reason. When she's around friends or her adoptive dad Sojiro, she tends to be quippy and brash. She's also a nerdy tech whiz whose skill far surpasses mostly anyone in Tokyo. She's a vital asset to the team and has an endearing charm to her.
Haru is the daughter of the CEO of Okumura Foods, who joins your party in the middle of the game when her father becomes the top targeted person on the Phantoms Thieves website. She mostly joins the team by circumstance in a confusing scenario where Morgana brings her into her father's palace, and her persona is only half-awakened somehow. Haru is the only weak link in this game's party members as she joins the team way too late into the game to establish herself as an interesting character. It worked in Persona 4's case because Naoto was already an established character before she joined your team, and she has some stake in the ending events of the game, but with Haru, it's not the same case. Like Fuuka, she's shy, polite, soft-spoken, and submissive, especially in the case of her arranged fiance. Her confidant also involves becoming better at cooking which has already been played out to death in these games.
The other non-party member confidants/social links kind of pale in comparison to the ones in Persona 4, but they aren't as insufferable as some of the ones in Persona 3 (except for Ohya, who is like hanging out with your drunk aunt). The most notable ones are Sojiro, your guardian, and Sae, the woman who interrogates you after you get caught by the police. Unlike Dojima from Persona 4, who automatically feels some connection to you through being blood-related, you have to earn Dojima's trust and respect. For the first half of the game, Sojiro treats you like dirt because of your criminal record and takes you in seemingly as a way to challenge himself and out of pity for you. He even utters a mumbled groan every time you return to Leblanc in the evening. As the game progresses, you learn that Sojiro is nothing but a big ol' clueless softy, and his newfound liking for you is both adorable and gratifying. Sae's confidant is a special one because it ranks up automatically, and her interrogation serves to divide the game into chapters. This happens every time you conquer a palace or start a new confidant. Some of the flash-forwards into the long interrogation scene start to get ridiculous; however, in particular to Shinya and Haru, in which Sae essentially screams at you and says, "WHO TAUGHT YOU HOW TO COOK VEGETABLES AND PLAY VIDEO GAMES!? ANSWER ME!' Go home, Sae. You're off this case.
As for the rest of the non-party member's confidants, they range from being fairly interesting to being underwhelming. They also range in terms of usefulness, so I'd skip some of them if it's your first playthrough of the game to rank up on stats and other confidants. Many of them also involve changing someone's heart in Mementos to fully rank up their confidant, so that will take even more time out of the game. The most useful ones to rank up are Chihaya, Kawakami, Hifumi (this is where you will get that precious escape battle "skill"), Takemi, Yoshida, and Mishima. Yes, I know Mishima is hard to stomach because he's a sycophantic dweeb, but his confidant perk is incredibly useful. There is also a disturbing amount of dateable older women in this game. The nurse in Persona 4 was ready to jump your bones from the moment she first saw you, but even then, the game wouldn't let you do it. Persona 5 is a different beast, and you can screw the older women to your heart's content.
I'd be remiss if I didn't discuss the villains, considering they are at the forefront of this game and its themes of rebelling against society. This game also has a thematic trend similar to the seven deadly sins. The PS4 trophies tell you what each main palace villain's sin is, but I disagree with some of their assertions.
Kamoshida is the first main palace villain in this game, and I'll be damned if he isn't the strongest in his plot arc. He's a former Olympic gymnast turned high school volleyball team coach that seems like the golden nugget of the prestigious Shujin Academy. He also physically abuses his students to the point where they have very dark visible bruises on them, and he's a sexual predator who tries to sleep with an array of Shujn girls, namely Ann. When Ann refuses his advances towards him, he beats the shit out of her friend Shiho to the point where Shiho tries to commit suicide by jumping off of the top floor of the school. He also leaked Joker's criminal record to the school, giving him an immediate bad reputation, and he crippled Ryuji for a while because he saw that the track team rivaled the attention of his "glorious" volleyball team. This game makes you hate this man so much, and it's so effective at making you want to get back at him for everything he's done. He is a fantastic villain to start the game off with. He represents the sin of lust because of his pervy attraction to the underage girls at Shujin and his lust for glory to build his illusions of grandeur.
Madarame represents the sin of pride (no, it's not vanity as they say because vanity is not a specific deadly sin). He's a famous Japanese artist and a teacher who has taken Yusuke as a pupil and is also housing him. It turns out that Madarame is an untalented hack who steals from his students to make a profit off of them and get receive credit for them. When I was first playing through this game and learned that the next target was also a teacher that was abusing their students, I thought this game had already become stagnant, but that was not the case. It was at this point that I started to fall in love with this game. The moment where Ann is trying to distract Yusuke by agreeing to be painted nude while Morgana tries to open the lock on the door with Joker and Ryuji outside of the door in the palace was like something from a final operation in Sly Cooper, and it's one of my favorite moments in the game.
Kaneshiro is a mob boss who represents the sin of gluttony. Whether it's because of his insatiable appetite for money or because he's fat is up to the player. His heinous crimes include not only being a huge factor in the Tokyo underground drug trade but forcing students into debt and having them work it off through human trafficking. When Makoto forcibly encounters Kaneshiro, this is what he intends to have her do until they change his heart. I don't if it's because I don't find a bank to be a particularly interesting place to explore or because Kaneshiro isn't all that interesting, but his palace is not one of the highlights of this game for me. Maybe it's because of Kaneshiro's strange lisp.
Futaba's palace may be a change of course for this game, seeing as she's not a villain, but her palace is my favorite nonetheless. Futaba represents the sin of sloth as she depreciates in her room due to unresolved trauma involving the death of her mother. This is when Persona 5 takes notes from Persona 4 and blows every partner-themed dungeon from that game out of the water. Futaba's palace looks fantastic, the theme is one of my favorite tracks in the game, and it expertly mixes dungeon layout with puzzles incredibly well. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of this palace's boss, however. An evil giant beast with Futaba's mom's human head on it is kind of gross.
Okumura's palace seems to be the unanimous least favorite among fans of this game. For one, Okumura doesn't seem as insidious as a villain as the other three. He represents the sin of greed as he works his employees to the bone, but there is no real underlying scandal except if you count his ties with Shido. His space palace is a long arduous task, and the final space vent puzzle can fuck right off. Even after three playthroughs of this game, I can never tell if I just have luck on my side when I finally accomplish this
Sae Nijima, yes, prosecutor Sae Nijima, is the host of the casino palace where the game comes full circle to the present day. She, of course, is not an insidious villain, but she is an obstacle for the Phantom Thieves hence why they choose to steal her treasure. She represents the sin of envy as she envies the men in her field who she feels have an easier time becoming successful in her field than she does or ever did. Her palace is a casino because of the outcome of her work standing becoming up to a game of chance. This palace does have its tedious moments, but it is probably the most vibrant palace in the game,
Shido is the most popular candidate in the election to become the future prime minister of Japan and is the last formal palace in the game. He's also a complete homicidal sociopath who represents the sin of wrath. He's also the man who is directly responsible for coordinating the mental shutdowns, and he's the man who pressed charges on Joker, ruining his life and giving him a criminal record. He is not someone to be taken lightly. His palace is a cruise ship that represents his prestigious status and also his plan to steer the country after he gets elected, mostly for his benefit. Shido's palace is easily the longest one and also the most difficult as you have to fight five different mini-bosses to get to Shido, and there are also long periods where you are transformed into defenseless rats and can't fight. The length alone of Shido's palace certainly makes him feel like a formidable foe if all of the other factors don't already.
The is another important character in Persona 5 that is in a league of his own. He's both a partner and a villain, but not either all the same. His name is Goro Akechi. Goro Akechi is a celebrity teenage detective, kind of like Naoto in Persona 4, but his popularity is also due to his appeal to younger audiences. I guess to make teenage girls interested in what's going on around them, you have to have an inoffensive effeminate teenage boy at the helm of political media discourse. Once you meet him at the TV station, he sort of becomes Joker's rival, whether he's aware of it at first or not. He also publicly disapproves of the Phantom Thieves' actions, swaying public opinion because of the moral grey area of their actions which surprisingly makes the Phantom Thieves questions themselves. In reality, it's to take the attention off of himself. It's alluded to early in the game that another person is using the metaverse to conduct mental shutdowns. We see this first hand when a tall black figure shoots Okumura dead in his palace, and then he dies in real life. After this happens and the public turns on the Phantom Thieves, Akechi aids them in taking down Sae's palace, but this is only to organize the SWAT team that ambushes Joker and takes him into custody. After the interrogation is finished and the events of the game come full circle, Akechi enters the room and shoots Joker dead in the face revealing himself to be the person who set the Phantom Thieves up and the person who enacted the mental shutdowns. It's no surprise that Akechi is the one who betrays the Phantom Thieves. Anybody as delightfully positive as Akechi is suspect, especially in a Persona game.
The surprising part is how the Phantom Thieves combated his schemes. After Joker is shot in the head, he is presumed dead by everyone, but his teammates had a trick up their sleeves. They already suspected that Akechi would betray them, so they set up an elaborate scheme in which Akechi would shoot the cognitive version of Joker in the metaverse, and Joker would just sit back and laugh. Why did they suspect Akechi? Because several months earlier, he heard Morgana talking about pancakes meaning that Akechi had already been to the metaverse earlier than he stated. This twist plot reversal is known to the player after everything had already been done, so the first time I played through this game, I was astounded at how they set this up and the reason why they did. Once Akechi figures out that Joker is still alive and the Phantom Thieves are still together, he follows them into Shido's palace and tries to finish them using all of his power, revealing himself to be a psychotic brat. So much for the charming persona he upheld. Through the battle, you learn that Akechi is just a sad young man who just wanted to be loved and accepted, and he thinks he's accomplished this by heeding Shido's whim, but as he is lying there defeated, Shido's cognitive version of Akechi comes to finish him off. It's quite an emotional rollercoaster. Surprisingly, I liked Akechi much more as a character when he revealed his true motivations. I felt like I had to stomach the smug bastard whenever he came up to me and combated my hostility towards him with a smile and a passive response. He's much more of a threat in the game than Adachi ever was because Akechi is far more capable. Akechi is a gifted mess, and his character brings an interesting point of having talent and potential being corrupted by adult figures in their formative years.
By the end of Shido's palace, it seems like the biggest enemy has been conquered, and the Phantom Thieves can disband. However, we all know that every Persona game ends with killing God, so you know that the game isn't over yet. It's here where Persona 5 goes full Thomas Hobbes on us with philosophies dealing with free will and human behavior. After defeating Shido, his cronies desperately backpedal to cover their asses, so they sway public opinion away from the Phantom Thieves making it seem like they never existed. The Phantom Thieves investigate the root of this problem in the depths of Mementos to find a giant holy grail figure, the general public's treasure. This holy grail puts the general public in a state of tranquility, free of any tangible desires, because humans are full of sin and will innately act on those twisted desires if not kept in check. The grail proves to be too mighty as it seems to erase the Phantom Thieves. Joker appears in the Velvet Room as Igor wishes to have him executed for failing to stop the "ruin" of humanity when it's revealed that Igor didn't get a new voice actor. The Igor you've been interacting with IS the holy grail in Mementos, and he was using Joker and the rest of the Phantom Thieves to enact the ruin of humanity. Never trust anyone in a Persona game, kids. The real Igor is revealed after the Velvet Room twins dispose of the fake. Real Igor also brings the Morgana arc full circle by announcing that he was created to help Joker stop the holy grail. Once you defeat the holy grail, it turns into Yaldabaoth. His fight is grand, and he is the only main boss in this game. I had to grind for a bit before defeating him. As far as a god figure representing a core theme in the game, I'm not sure if he's as satisfying as a conclusion to the game as Shido. This is the point where Persona 5 airtight story starts to lose momentum. It's not that the holy grail doesn't fit the game's themes, but it feels like such a pace breaker in the middle of the game. It does feel satisfying to finish off the final boss with a kill shot while everyone is cheering you on from the streets below.
I'm glad that Atlus took their time with this game. I feel that if this game had come out a little after the release of Persona 4, the game wouldn't have been as stylish, intricate, and invigorating as it proved to be due to technical limitations. This was Persona for the next generation, and it delivered something that I would consider to be the full potential of the franchise. In the first few hours of this game, I couldn't take myself away from it, which led to a constant feeling to play it even more and find out what was going to happen and then play it again soon after to pick up the missing pieces. Every Persona game I've played has its strengths and weaknesses, but Persona 5 is what I consider the gold standard for the franchise.
(Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/26/2021)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Persona 5: Royal
Category: Expanded Game
Release Date: October 31, 2019
I initially thought that the changes that P5 Royal added would just amount to what seemed like what could have been DLC added to the end of the game. I thought that it would be like "The Answer" in Persona 3: FES. I'm glad I was wrong because Atlus somehow improved what was already solid in the base game and made it practically flawless. The additional district of Kichijoji is swanky and robust and incorporates a dart mini-game that is actually quite enjoyable. Each partner immediately has the ability to baton pass diversifying the range of team building at any point in the game instead of unlocking the ability through ranking up confidants. You don't have to unlock the escape option, but ranking up Hifumi's confidant gives your partners the ability to swap each other out of battle. If you don't select the optimal response during a confidant, Royal gives you a second chance with extra points through phone conversations after every confidant. Morgana/Futaba will tell you the temperament of a shadow to make it easier to communicate with it. This list of changes continues of course, but my main point in highlighting these is that these weren't needed to improve on the original game, but they are certainly welcome because they make the experience much smoother. The only major gripe, as I initially said about the original PS5 was juggling time management. This was the only negative aspect of Persona 5 that I thought Personas 3 and 4 had the advantage over. However, Royal's time management is much more lenient. Even after you've been in the Metaverse, you can still raise your stats at home without having to call Kawakami. Thank the lords. My one major grievance was annulled and now this game is perfect. Right?
...It's all a little too perfect. The caveat for all of these smooth changes is that they've made the game a little too easy, and I don't think it's because I've played through this game four times. I even played Royal on hard mode and it only felt like a substantial challenge at certain points rather than offering a consistent level of difficulty. Of course, Persona 5 was already easier than the previous two games, but not to the point where I questioned the quality of it. In the social-life aspects of this game, the more accessible route of having the player raise their stats anytime at home makes the time crunch of raising your stats with ranking up confidants in one playthrough much less strenuous. I'd argue this is a good thing, but the whole process felt less rewarding to me. In battle, you'll unlock "showtime moves" in which two of your partners perform very flashy, over-the-top finishing moves targeting one enemy. These new battle mechanics are entertaining, but they are all incredibly overpowered and occur so often. It happens so often that it feels like the game is bailing you out of getting a game over. In fact, the showtime move seems to trigger almost every time you might be on the verge of dying. It's a shame that these moves get so tiring because of how well they fit with the style of this game.
The new characters added to the base game worried me a bit. The story of the original Persona 5 is one of my favorites in any video game I've played and adding characters to an already established story can verge on the uncanny. Judging from the quality of both Metis and Marie, Atlus have struggled finding a comfortable spot for the additional characters, but this is not the case for the new characters in P5 Royal. Altus managed to organically place these new characters without disrupting the pacing of the story. It also helps that these characters add an extra layer of depth to Persona 5 and it's premise that I had no idea that it needed.
Dr. Takuto Maruki is the new guidance counselor at Shujin Academy that provides his aid after the Kamoshida palace. I guess it would make sense to hire a guidance counselor on short notice considering what Kamoshida did. There are many points in which Joker and his partners seek his aid throughout the game (even Yosuke who despite not being a student at Shujin is fascinated with the man and wants his input anyways as a way for every partner to become exposed to him) and Joker's confidant with him involves helping him with his research in cognitive psience. He's a young, tall, clumsy, unassuming man that fulfills his role as a high school counselor adequately (always complete with an assortment of healthy snacks). However, if these games have taught me anything, it's to always keep a watch out for the ones that seem the least assuming. Maruki made me indifferent about ranking up his confidant during the base game, but visiting his office is more than worth it as we see Maruki's character arc unfold in the third semester.
Kasumi Yoshizawa is a first-year transfer student at Shujin Academy. She goes to Shujin Academy on a gymnastics scholarship giving her a prestigious role in the school. This reputation only garners contention from her peers and puts a lot of pressure on her as well. I was worried about Kasumi being introduced in this game because I knew that she was going to be the new inclusion to the Phantom Thieves beforehand. This game already had issues with introducing characters after a certain point in the story (Haru), so I didn't have exceeding expectations for a character that I thought was going to be shoe-horned incredibly late into a story that was already finished. Fortunately, Kasumi is introduced as early as the first palace of the game and makes an appearance every so often that the player will naturally become used to Kasumi being in the game even if they played the original Persona 5. Now if only they could have done the same for Haru. I started to get attached to Kasumi every time she'd whisk Joker away to have the player explore more of her character arc (and as not to disrupt the flow of the already established base game). She's spunky, polite, motivated, and wears an adorable, radiant red ribbon in her hair. If things had gone as planned, I would've romanced her and only her in my first playthrough of P5 Royal.
The changes to the base game are merely small hat to the real meat of the P5 Royal experience. The third semester of this game is by far the main selling point. It is here that I have a confession to make: I had to play through Persona 5 Royal twice to unlock the third semester. In the first run of any Persona game, I mainly focus on leveling ups stats and focusing on confidants pertaining to my party members so they aren't useless in battle. To unlock the third semester, you have to fully rank up the confidants of the new characters, Dr. Maruki and Kasumi, and Akechi who does not rank up automatically like in vanilla Persona 5. The only character I maxed out was Kasumi because of course I'm going to max out the cute new girl. Dr. Maruki at least had some useful perks, but didn't entice me enough to keep visiting him. As for Akechi...well, I fucking hate Akechi. I'd rather have Ohya throw up all over me than have to hang out with that smarmy psychopath, so of course I ignored him. Persona games have many routes that lead to undesired endings, but not ones that lock you out of the good/true ending several hours before the game ends. I prepared myself for another 100+ hours and unlocked the third semester on my second playthrough of P5 Royal.
The third semester essentially revolves around the three new confidants available to rank up during the base game. It makes sense given that the game locks you out of it if you don't rank up those specific three characters. Firstly, if you rank up Akechi's confidant, he'll take your place in a holding cell to testify against Shido. You get to revel in holiday festivities with your friends, but you wake up on New Years Day in an episode of The Twilight Zone. A hunky anime boy with blue hair is sleeping in your bed and people that are supposed to be dead are up and about without anyone questioning it. However, everyone seems to be extremely happy with this alternate reality, so you just let everything be. The only person who is aware of how bizarre things are is Akechi who has miraculously gotten himself out of jail. You work together with him to find out who is behind all of this in a new palace that has somehow materialized outside of the metaverse. To no one's surprise, the palace's ruler is Dr. Maruki. With the completion of his cognitive research, he has created the ideal alternate reality for all of the Phantom Thieves (ie. Shiho is out of the hospital, Morgana is human, Futaba's mom is alive, etc.) He has taken the Holy Grail's place as the ruler of the metaverse and is using his new ability to adulterate reality to the point where everyone is happily living their ideal lives. Once you go around being a total buzzkill, your friends come to their senses and help you bring reality back to what it was and stop Maruki from getting too ahead of himself more than he already has.
The content of the third semester had to be gigantic in scale. Every ending to a Persona game involves killing a god, so how does one top that? How does Maruki compare to Yaldabaoth as a worthy opponent to end the game on? Also, while examining the content in the third semester, I struggled to find the relevance that all of this had to the core themes of rebellion in the base game. It more or less reminded me of of the themes of Persona 3 and 4 in that the characters are masking their grief by divulging in this fabricated reality. The theme of rebellion is only present as the palace progresses as you reject every proposition Maruki gives you to accept this reality. If you accept his proposal, the ending you get isn't even really a bad one because everyone (literally) lives happily ever after. It should be obvious at this point of the game that you're supposed to oppose this reality and fight Maruki, but your choice isn't as obvious as it was with other palace rulers. This is why I'd argue that Maruki is the best villain in the entire game because he isn't as cartoonishly evil as the other villains. His motivations for using the metaverse are seemingly selfless and the game takes several instances to make you reconsider what you're doing. As you progress through his palace, you learn that he has used his research to aid trauma victims in coping with post-traumatic stress disorder, and quite effectively as well. He uses it on his ex-girlfriend who was shaken up by the demise of both of her parents. More importantly to the plot, he used it on Kasumi, or should I say Sumire, after she indirectly caused her sister to be killed in a traffic accident. Yes, that's the big reveal behind Kasumi's character. She has taken the role of her sister because she feels like she caused her death and thus ended her potentially lucrative gymnastics career. To end her guilt, Maruki convinces Sumire that she is Kasumi to take her stead as the gifted gymnast so she can live out her destiny. The moment when Sumire remembers who she really is during Maruki's palace is quite shocking and makes quite the argument for Maruki and his research.
Ultimately, to get the true ending of the game, you have to rebel against Maruki and fight your way back to the less than optimal true reality where people have died and or suffered. Unfortunately, you have to do this with Akechi by your side and he's just as insufferable as ever. He's past the point of being prim and proper and just acts like the fucking lunatic he is. The problem is that he really puts it on heavy with the psychotic ramblings as he never shuts the fuck up during battle. He constantly laughs maniacally and never stops saying edgy things that make me wince. He's one step from being a smarmy Shadow the Hedgehog. Akechi, you don't need to prove to anyone how damaged and crazy you are. Your performance in the boiler room of Shido's palace was convincing enough. To make matters worse, he is your only partner for the first few hours of the third semester, so you can't swap him out for someone else. I'd say something like "kill me now", but I don't want to give Akechi the satisfaction.
If you need a reason to oppose Maruki besides the fact that the game wants you to, take a look at his palace. It's white all over without even a speck of character making it look eerily sterile like a doctor's office with too much lighting. It's what I imagine the inside of the Scientology headquarters to look like. In fact, Maruki's vision of himself and his desired reality is a bit like Scientology. He wants to wash away people's humanity by offering artificial bliss. There is even a "garden of Eden" section of this palace where Maruki's patients are in a place of eternal ecstasy. Didn't I read about this on a pamphlet at some point? Even Maruki might seem benevolent, his ego makes him a borderline cult leader. His final boss is even just as grandiose as Yaldabaoth making a case against Maruki and giving us a final boss as satisfying as the previous one.
200 hours later, I can hardly remember what the original Persona 5 was like without the changes and this was the game that immediately became one of my favorite games over night. Persona 5 Royal eclipses the original in every single way even with the questionable changes. The new characters are great and the third semester as a whole is fantastic. It's like Atlus pampered every Persona fan and now we're spoiled. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be taking Ryuji to the cleaners in a game of Tycoon in the Thieves Den.
