Finally Finished Persona 5

CriticalGaming

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Good lord this is the game that never wants to end. I kept getting to points in the story where it made sense to end, and the game kept going and going.

As great as the game was, by the time I got to the end I just wanted the damn thing to be over.

Question for the forum. How did ya'll feel about the last chapter of the game, and the ending itself? I'm talking about the "true" ending too, not the endings you get by making bad choices. I'm curious to know if anyone felt that the game just dragged on for the sake of it, or if they thought the ending made sense.
 

CaitSeith

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Yeah, I felt the story was weakening near the end, and it was outstaying its welcome. But the last half kinda recovered enough for my taste.

...a talking cat and Satan save Christmas!

Sincerely, I was still expecting (and somewhat fearing) more to follow after the goodbyes, but it didn't. I can say Persona 4 is a stronger entry in the series. Persona 5 still has the upper hand in terms of stylization, gameplay streamlining (specially when it comes to selecting Personas, managing team members and saving) and spectacle.

PS: I'm currently starting the NG+ to max out all the confidants and see what I missed. Wish me luck!
 

CriticalGaming

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CaitSeith said:
Yeah, I felt the story was weakening near the end, and it was outstaying its welcome. But the last half kinda recovered enough for my taste.

...a talking cat and Satan save Christmas!

Sincerely, I was still expecting (and somewhat fearing) more to follow after the goodbyes, but it didn't. I can say Persona 4 is a stronger entry in the series. Persona 5 still has the upper hand in terms of stylization, gameplay streamlining (specially when it comes to selecting Personas, managing team members and saving) and spectacle.

PS: I'm currently starting the NG+ to max out all the confidants and see what I missed. Wish me luck!
Good luck. Once I read up on how much of a pain in the ass the Twins were, I was like "fuck that noise."
 

Casual Shinji

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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.
 

COMaestro

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That's funny, I just finished up Persona 5 a few days ago myself. I really enjoyed the game as a whole, didn't really notice the dragging on element, but then I have been playing it off and on since the beginning of February (I don't get a lot of gaming time these days), so I likely just forgot it.

I didn't like how railroaded some parts of the game are. You think you have more time to do things like raise confidant levels or work on your stats, but due to the story you lose a bunch of time.

I do plan to go through NG+ at some point to max out my confidants, but I need a break for now. I have no idea if I got the "true" ending or not, but it was pretty good. I didn't like how you could only say goodbye to your confidants that were at rank 10 at the end. That seemed silly when you've been working with a bunch of the characters for the better part of a year.

Commanderfantasy said:
Good luck. Once I read up on how much of a pain in the ass the Twins were, I was like "fuck that noise."
Actually the Twins were one of the easier ones as if you had money and a number of the Personas already, you could level them up a bunch in one go. My biggest roadblock for them was missing capturing one of the earlier Personas, I think in Madarame's palace, that I didn't get until much later in Mementos. Maxed them out soon afterward, though.
 

CaitSeith

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Commanderfantasy said:
CaitSeith said:
Yeah, I felt the story was weakening near the end, and it was outstaying its welcome. But the last half kinda recovered enough for my taste.

...a talking cat and Satan save Christmas!

Sincerely, I was still expecting (and somewhat fearing) more to follow after the goodbyes, but it didn't. I can say Persona 4 is a stronger entry in the series. Persona 5 still has the upper hand in terms of stylization, gameplay streamlining (specially when it comes to selecting Personas, managing team members and saving) and spectacle.

PS: I'm currently starting the NG+ to max out all the confidants and see what I missed. Wish me luck!
Good luck. Once I read up on how much of a pain in the ass the Twins were, I was like "fuck that noise."
Oh, I already did the twins in the first run; so, if it's like in Persona 4, to do them again I only need to pay money for the personas already registered. It really was more of a pain in Persona 4 tho (at least here you get to select the skills to inherit on a fusion, and you can use the skill cards too).
 

totheendofsin

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CaitSeith said:
Commanderfantasy said:
CaitSeith said:
Yeah, I felt the story was weakening near the end, and it was outstaying its welcome. But the last half kinda recovered enough for my taste.

...a talking cat and Satan save Christmas!

Sincerely, I was still expecting (and somewhat fearing) more to follow after the goodbyes, but it didn't. I can say Persona 4 is a stronger entry in the series. Persona 5 still has the upper hand in terms of stylization, gameplay streamlining (specially when it comes to selecting Personas, managing team members and saving) and spectacle.

PS: I'm currently starting the NG+ to max out all the confidants and see what I missed. Wish me luck!
Good luck. Once I read up on how much of a pain in the ass the Twins were, I was like "fuck that noise."
Oh, I already did the twins in the first run; so, if it's like in Persona 4, to do them again I only need to pay money for the personas already registered. It really was more of a pain in Persona 4 tho (at least here you get to select the skills to inherit on a fusion, and you can use the skill cards too).
I think he's referring to the optional boss fight against the Twins you can only do in new game +, not the confidant/social link

Anyway I think the story drags towards the end because unlike in Persona 4 where you can accidentally get a bad ending if you're not careful Persona 5 pretty much railroads you to the best ending, to the point where you have to actually be trying to get one of the bad endings in order to get it,
 

DeadProxy

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I loved the game quite a bit. Currently on a break from my 5th playthrough on my journey to get all the waifu-sweets.

Regarding the OP's question, I didn't feel like the end game dragged on too much except for the second last dungeon. Those extra long, quite pointless mouse-mazes just add on so much extra time in a boring area that's just hallway after hallway. But after that, I'm okay with the pace.


As for the Twins, there's a fusion guide to make a nearly unkillable persona to challenge them with. But you'll need most of the persona's that you get for maxing out confidants, so that's nearly a whole playthrough needed to acquire the materials and money to afford making that guy. You should look up the "Confuse exploit" to build up money. I used it to get 6-7 million monies and have barely gone under 6 million after a couple playthroughs of buying high level persona's to coast through the game.

Also, I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned yet, but who best girl?
I can't decide between Futaba and Kawakami <3

Edit: Oh wait...I forgot how much the game actually annoyed me on my first and second run of the game because it really grips your hand for the first 20ish hours of the game, being pretty limited in what the game allows you to do, and omg stop stealing my Sunday's from me, I need my god damn smoothie!
 

WhiteFangofWhoa

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Hardly dragged. It's been a tradition from the very first game for the final showdown to be against a God formed from human subconscious desires. Merely ending it with a Japanese Trump expy would have been an anticlimax extraordinaire, despite his greater personal involvement with the protagonists. It's also a very short space of time between the two confrontations.

I'm now 32, and the scenes in the core of Mementos still felt like a gut punch to me the first time, an attack on heartfelt beliefs. The idea that, deep down, we're all just so exhausted by the stress and confusion of modern life that we really just want someone else to take care of everything for us, that we'd be willing to ignore the true reality around us and be controlled in exchange for 'the freedom not to make choices'. I couldn't believe they actually worked Igor's change of voice into the plot itself.

Excellent use of the Phantom Thieves' main 'theme song' to inspire you through the final stretch. Though I have seen complaints that the God was too easy compared to the likes of Nyx, Erebus and Izanami, I'm not sure what else could have been done to make him tougher than he was without making it cheap. This isn't mainstream SMT, and I consider it a good thing that most designers no longer try to make final bosses as aggravatingly unfair as Nyarlathotep was.

The ending afterwards was quite long, but even in a semi-optimistic setting such as the Persona games, certain things had to happen before Joker could be given his well-deserved happy ending.

EDIT: For the poster above me, Makoto is always the best girl <3
 

meiam

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I couldn't even finish it, rather than drag I actively disliked the main story, so much so that I wish there was a free mode with no story. Most of the villain could have easily being dealt with without using the dream stuff and they were all so one note anyway that I couldn't bring myself to even dislike them. Ryuji is easily the worse character in a video game and ruined almost every scene he's in (aka pretty much all of them) and most character aren't really interesting outside there own confidant scene. Futaba is pretty much the only character I actually liked and she comes in so late.

The gameplay is broken way to quickly, with easy to gather item that recharge your SP available really early in the games. This lead to really bad pacing, where every time a castle was opened I'd just clear it on the first day (and then get really annoyed that I had to leave just to come back the next day anyway, especially since you can't progress confidant until you kill the boss). And then I'd have really long stretch of just social interaction. They also made the confidant power way too strong in term of how much time they free up, if you decide to go after the maid or fortune early on you save an insane amount of time which makes it easy to clear all confidant early on, but most confidant aren't nearly that useful (the journalist skill is so useless). I like it more when you could just choose confidant just on personality rather than how important there skill were.
 

CaitSeith

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DeadProxy said:
Edit: Oh wait...I forgot how much the game actually annoyed me on my first and second run of the game because it really grips your hand for the first 20ish hours of the game, being pretty limited in what the game allows you to do, and omg stop stealing my Sunday's from me, I need my god damn smoothie!
Meh! Persona 4 grips it even harder; but the creepy story and uncanny atmosphere makes it feel like a breeze. This also reminds me the complains about P5 being pretty annoying in not letting you do anything in days with plot, but P4 did the same thing (it just didn't had the mascot character telling you to go to sleep).
 

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I finally picked up my NG+ playthrough the other day after putting it down nearly a year ago. On track to Plat it.

Still love the game, but NG+ is pretty damn boring. Very easy to breeze through the entire experience since your social stats are maxed from the beginning and your personas are mega OP. To be fair though, I have very highly optimized personas and Persona 5 is pretty easy for a Megaten game.

As much as I love the game and series though, I've got to say that Persona as a franchise has diminishing replay value for me. There's not really much point in playing over again unless it's for the story. If you really like the gameplay, I think it is more efficient to replay mainline SMT games like Nocturne and SMT IV/Apocalypse.
 

Windcaler

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I recently finished it for the first time too. I dont know if I got the true ending but the "holy grail" thing didnt make any sense to me in the grand scheme of things. That was the weakest part of the story IMO. I think it went out with an appropriate bang having clear end of the world themes going for it (though it still doesnt top persona 3s end IMO but what can). I actually drew a few simularities to persona 3's themes as well like when they talked about people loosing the ability to function I thought "that sounds like apathy syndrome, I wonder if the lost are making a return"

Although the next weakest part IMO was Ann Takamaki. I ended up pursuing a relationship with her and honestly she was more interesting before I knew all about her.
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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I beat p5 within a span of 3 weeks so it never felt as though it dragged. I had about 150 hours of playtime too, tried to do everything and enjoy my time with the game. (though back then it had just come out in Japan so I did inadvertently miss a few co-ops from maxing out)

Maybe you played in small session or something? If you do marathon sessions like normal, Jrpgs don't feel like they drag cause you're always making progress, whereas if you take ages to complete any one story it'll feel as though you're not making much progress.
 

Catfood220

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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.
 

Xerosch

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I needed about 90 hours to finish the game with the true ending and about everything I wanted to complete in it (thanks to an excellent schedule guide).

I was hooked until I hit hour 70. The characters were likable, I enjoyed how the plot moved and I didn't see the story in the last 20 hours come. But after hour 70 I started to fast forward through text messages, those public opinion intermissions, commute segments and some classes. I was ready for the endgame, but at about hour 75 I reached a specific event and was bombarded with a lot of long cutscenes.
And did I miss something or did an important character leave rather unceremoniously?

In summary: The game oozes style and gives you a LOT to do. Compared to P3 and P4 I found a lot of the Social Links dull and the game is about two dungeons too long. But I still had a blast doing all of it.
 

DeadProxy

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Xerosch said:
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.

And I'll say that probably after a couple dungeons, I pretty much ignored any and all NPC chatter. Half the time it's just fluff disguised to be a mechanic explanation, like whenever you walk to school and overhear something, or just flavour text on the current goings on with the Phantom Thieves or Akechi or current villain. There's a couple NPC's I can remember, like the "creepy" girl who stalks that one guy in school, or that black street shouter who doesn't understand why customers run away from him, but none are really worth paying attention to, and they just become moments of lost time once you've already dealt with the dungeon and just want to get to your next date/workout/job/link.
 

Xerosch

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DeadProxy said:
Xerosch said:
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. :D
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.
 

Casual Shinji

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undeadsuitor said:
Good god there's like entire months where the game drags you at rapid pace through scenes after directly introducing you to concepts that you need time to spend on, it's incredibly annoying
My favourite is when you've rented a couple of movies, and right before you turn them in to avoid a fine the game decides to eat up, like, 3 or 4 days for plot reasons. Thanks.


It's such a cocktease to give us all this extra stuff to do and explore, but only two time slots a day at most of free time. Maybe it's supposed to mirror the japanese worker bee mentality, but man is it frustrating and in no way fun as a game mechanic. Meanwhile in Yakuza you can just run around and have a ball.