Finally Finished Persona 5

[CaitSeith]

And did I miss something or did an important character leave rather unceremoniously?

To sum this up nicely with little spoilers; R opened his fat mouth again and hurt M's feelings by basically calling him useless once F joined the team, and M ran off cause he's a sucky baby. I can only assume this is the moment you're referencing.

That was not the moment I meant, but thank you for making me laugh with this rather accurate describtion.
Boy, this is hard to describe without spoilers: I was referring to a situation late in the game in which A character wasn't nice and got beat up for it. The way I remember it the story never made a final point to this and simply closed the shutters on the matter.

Spoiler: You mean when the plot finally reached the point of the intro?

And A character just appears and shoots a guard in an interrogation room? Yeah, A character just left; but the other characters expected him to leave, and the game kept that hidden to the player (with the subtlety of a billboard saying "coming soon") up to his re-apparition. I think the point was to highlight how much compassion the main character has for even remotely redeemable characters (after beating the crap out of them) who have suffered injustice from society, no matter how low they have fallen.

I have heard that there is Japanese cultural context in A character's backstory that was lost in translation.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I got to where the story catches up to where the game starts -- you know, the part where it decides to just throw in a whole bunch of bullshit that was apparently set up, but we didn't know cuz of the drugs? That's when I pretty much gave up on this game. My patience was already wearing thin with the unnecessarily crappy turn-based combat, the annoying way in which it handled time management, the lame villains post-Kamoshida, the characters turning into tropes once their introduction chapter was done, the same damn dungeons but with different wallpaper. But the pay-off to the whole interrogation framing device was the last straw.

So... You've never played a Persona Game before.

No, I haven't.


But if this is par the course for this series then.. shit man.

 

[CaitSeith]

I got to where the story catches up to where the game starts -- you know, the part where it decides to just throw in a whole bunch of bullshit that was apparently set up, but we didn't know cuz of the drugs? That's when I pretty much gave up on this game. My patience was already wearing thin with the unnecessarily crappy turn-based combat, the annoying way in which it handled time management, the lame villains post-Kamoshida, the characters turning into tropes once their introduction chapter was done, the same damn dungeons but with different wallpaper. But the pay-off to the whole interrogation framing device was the last straw.

So... You've never played a Persona Game before.

No, I haven't.


But if this is par the course for this series then.. shit man.

Not really. Persona 4 executes its twist much better, as it doesn't begin in medias res and the only thing that keeps the player in the dark is good writing (instead of drugs). It's still pretty tropey (tropie? tropei?) though, and the dungeons are even more similar between them.

 

[TimespliTT]

the first dungeon felt like a full game to me

 

[Hades]

I love Persona 5, it narrowly edged out Horizon: Zero Dawn for my game of last year. I've never played a Persona game before, so can't compare it to the rest of the series. It took me 125 hours to finish the game and by the end I was in love with it.

The story gripped me, but I would say that none of the bosses felt as personal as Kamoshida, even the final one who set everything in motion with the main character. Maybe it's because Kamoshida, a teacher who is physically and sexually abusing his students, could actually happen. While the last human boss is so cartoonishly evil that it stops being believable. But then, it turns out that everything is building up to fighting a God, that's when I noticed I was smiling at the ludicrous-ness of it. That's when the game went from good to amazing for me.

I've heard that complain about the twist in the middle of the game and I can understand that. It is obvious who the traitor is from the start despite the game trying to throw you off the trail. But what I liked was the way it was done and how it came down to a throwaway bit of dialog from Morgana at a time at a point in the game where you are so used to hearing him speak, you forget that no one else is supposed to be able to.

Yeah, love this game, I'm about halfway through my second playthrough and it's still as much fun as the first time around.

Now if you'll excuse me, my cat tells me it's bed time.

I wouldn't say Shido is particularly unbelievable. Populists have been getting voted into office by foolishly zealous fans for a while now. Some of them even go around grabbing woman by the ****** like Shido is doing.

But I also wasn't really feeling the evil god part. Made me think of Zero Punctuations claim that every JRPG MUST have an evil god being beaten by teenagers using the power of friendship.

 

[CaitSeith]

I wouldn't say Shido is particularly unbelievable. Populists have been getting voted into office by foolishly zealous fans for a while now. Some of them even go around grabbing woman by the ****** like Shido is doing.

But I also wasn't really feeling the evil god part. Made me think of Zero Punctuations claim that every JRPG MUST have an evil god being beaten by teenagers using the power of friendship.

I think that's the staple of the series (it certainly felt a little ham-fisted here though).

 

[totheendofsin]

I wouldn't say Shido is particularly unbelievable. Populists have been getting voted into office by foolishly zealous fans for a while now. Some of them even go around grabbing woman by the ****** like Shido is doing.

But I also wasn't really feeling the evil god part. Made me think of Zero Punctuations claim that every JRPG MUST have an evil god being beaten by teenagers using the power of friendship.

I think that's the staple of the series (it certainly felt a little ham-fisted here though).

This is correct at least since 3 (never finished one before that)

the idea is you're fighting the manifestation of the collective unconsciousness's desires regarding whatever the theme of the game is, sometimes it sticks the landing (I thought it was done really well in 4) sometimes it doesn't, like in 5

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

The story gripped me, but I would say that none of the bosses felt as personal as Kamoshida, even the final one who set everything in motion with the main character. Maybe it's because Kamoshida, a teacher who is physically and sexually abusing his students, could actually happen. While the last human boss is so cartoonishly evil that it stops being believable. But then, it turns out that everything is building up to fighting a God, that's when I noticed I was smiling at the ludicrous-ness of it. That's when the game went from good to amazing for me.

I wouldn't say Shido is particularly unbelievable. Populists have been getting voted into office by foolishly zealous fans for a while now. Some of them even go around grabbing woman by the ****** like Shido is doing.

But I also wasn't really feeling the evil god part. Made me think of Zero Punctuations claim that every JRPG MUST have an evil god being beaten by teenagers using the power of friendship.

Exactly. That's the scary part, and the cathartic payoff; the criminals that you battle to change their hearts are only slight exaggerations of people who exist in reality. There's real Shidos all over the place, just without the power to cause mental shutdowns in people of their choosing. If you looked, I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to locate someone IRL similar to Okumura, or even Kaneshiro.

 

[Mikejames]

I still had fun with Persona 5, and don't regret the time I put into it, but I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't already played P3 and P4. The stylish aesthetics and general dungeon gameplay are as good as they've ever been, but everything else, story, pacing, and character-wise, felt kind of watered down by comparison..

I feel like the idea of building so much of the game around exploring the villains through their palaces was a huge missed opportunity story-wise, because there's nothing interesting about them beyond hearing a long list of why they're one-dimensionally evil, which is repeated on loop over and over again, and any potential depth granted to their change of heart boils down to flipping a switch in their head to brainwash them into being good. I thought the conflict with Kamoshida worked alright, because you actually have that time to build up antagonism with him and explore the horrific things that he's causing, but no one after that really has as much presence as an antagonist. And I found Akechi to be very disappointing as a rival character...

I actually quite liked Futaba and her palace though, but that's because it's the only dungeon that apes Persona 4 and explores a character's development and personal agency beyond them acting like a crazed super-villain. Oh, and Yusuke's great. The humor in this series has always been kind of hit-and-miss for me, but I'd be remiss if I didn't admit how much I enjoyed his interactions during his whole social link.