Title: Persona 5
Original Release: September 15, 2016 (PS3, PS4)
Finished Release: North American PS4 Release (2017)
Hey, it's actually a game from this year! It's the first one I've talked about, unless you count Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. Ironically, P5 was technically released in 2016, but only in Japan. But enough with the semantics.
So I've been shamefully unexposed to the Persona series, not to mention the wider Shin Megami Tensei series that it spun off from. Some of this can be attributed to my age and the relatively limited release of many of the games in the franchise, but I'm not going to allow myself to escape at least a bit of the blame. I was aware of Persona 3 back in the day. I even considered getting it, but I just couldn't pull the trigger (hehehe).
Not too long after (at least in North America), Persona 4 was released, and this time I was quicker on the draw. I can't really explain exactly why P4 was a must-buy when I was undecided on P3, but there you have it. Maybe it was the colors, maybe it came out at a good time. Who can say?
Anyway, I fell in love with it. I never finished it, but I plan to rectify that soon enough. More importantly, it was a genuinely great game, one of the greatest JRPGs of its day. Even moreso, it introduced me to the Shin Megami Tensei series at large, a pedigree that stretches back to the Super Famicom (and even farther, technically). I've since played tons of SMT (or MegaTen, if you will) games, and I buy them whenever they come out. Hell, I'll grab things that are only tangentially related, like Catherine, or the severely overlooked Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. And yet, I've never actually finished a Shin Megami Tensei game. But this year, I finished Persona 5.
Too bad the Persona series dropped the "Shin Megami Tensei" part of the title.
"So, Jordan," I force you to ask, "what exactly is Persona 5. Also you're very handsome."
Well, I'll tell you, and thanks for your very genuine compliment.
We begin the game as a male Japanese high school student, the name of whom we're prompted to create. I went with Akira Kurusu (or Kurusu Akira, if you're traditional), since that's the closest thing to an official name I could find for him.
Akira has been having a rough time lately. See, one evening Akira was just walking home, minding his own hipster business, when he came upon a troubling situation. He discovered a drunk man in a nice suit, attempting to force himself on a young woman. Akira can't abide by this, and so he attempts to help the woman.
Unfortunately, in the fracas that follows, the man in the suit is accidentally injured, just in time for the police to discover the scene. Things quickly go south, as the suited man turns things around, accusing Akira of attacking him. Charges are summarily pressed, and before you know it, Akira is on probation. His parents are unhappy with this situation, and so they send him to live with a friend of a friend for a year, in Yongenjaya, Tokyo.
The trouble doesn't stop there, however. Akira's new landlord isn't exactly welcoming, and his room is the dusty attic of a cafe. And then, while walking to school on his first day, he encounters several characters that will soon become important, and winds up in a medieval castle. The castle is filled with monsters called Shadows. It seems like the end of the line for Akira (and the blond punk he met on the way to school) when, in a moment of desperation, he awakens a power within himself: Persona.
Okay, so a very long story begins with a very long intro section, but this is nothing new to the Persona series. What follows is a winding thriller, full of intrigue and plot twists galore.
The story is pretty interesting, as always for this series. A few of the plot twists felt a bit too contrived, and one was so blindingly obvious that I thought it must be a red herring. Even with that though, it's definitely an engaging tale, and I was never bored with the story itself. I couldn't wait to see what happened next. But I'm honestly not sure if that would still be true with a different cast of characters.
The characters in Persona 5 are great. The player character doesn't really have a personality outside of the choices you make for him, but that's okay, it's meant to be that way. As you progress through the game, however, your group of friends grows as more and more characters awaken their own personas and join you in your quest for justice. And they're all pretty much fantastic.
Okay, so in every group of main characters, you're going to have favorites and non-favorites. That's to be expected. And yes, most of the main characters fall into very clear character roles. But when you take the group as a group, they're all just so great together. You grow to care about all of them, and it's genuinely touching to see how much they care about each other. Some characters admittedly don't get as much focus as they probably should, and so they sort of fall to the back, but I still can't imagine the game without even them.
And it's not just the main characters that are great, since a large majority of the side characters are as well. You'll be meeting plenty of friends over the 90+ hours (much more if you do everything) of the story. Spending time with these characters is usually pretty great, especially as you learn a little bit more about what makes them tick. Hell, one of them was actually planned to be a party member, and she totally should have been. I'd bet money she will be if they ever do a Persona 4: Golden-style updated release.
The villains are a bit of a mixed bag, unfortunately. I can't say too much about them without giving things away, but I'll do what I can. Some of them are genuinely interesting, even intimidating characters, especially the more primary ones. The lower-tier arc villains, however, tend to feel a bit samey. They're all pretty much scum in one way or another, all that really changes is what their particular crime is. Don't get me wrong, a couple of them are awesome, but that's mainly because they change the formula that the others prescribe to so heavily.
Now, if you've never played a Persona game before, you might be wondering why the side characters are so important. Well, that's because the Persona series is a unique beast. Or, at least, it was, when P3 was new. Certain other games have emulated a few of its more unique aspects here and there, but that's okay, that's how it works. And Persona, for my money, still does it the best.
Persona 5 is a dungeon-crawling, turn-based JRPG, focused on fighting and befriending monsters to become more powerful. Persona 5 is a dating/friendship sim, focused on spending time with characters in an effort to become closer with them, eventually dating one or more of the characters.
Both of those statements are true.
The story moves forward on a day-by-day system. Each day, as long as nothing important is happening, you're essentially given free rein to do whatever you want with your time. You can choose to hang out with a friend (assuming they're available), you can go to the batting cages, you can fish, you can work a part-time job, you can play video games... or you and your party can go fight Shadows.
The main focus, of course, is on the dating sim and RPG aspects. There's not as many side activities as you would find in, say, the Yakuza series, but that's okay. See, the relationship mechanics and the combat are two halves of the whole that becomes Persona 5, and they blend together fantastically.
There's not really much "gameplay" to speak of on the relationship side of things. You pick who you want to spend time with, you read or watch a cutscene between you and the character, sometimes you give them a gift, you decide what to say at certain points, and your relationship with them increases (or doesn't).
And, as I mentioned before, you can even date certain characters! If you get your relationship with the character high enough, you can choose to become the boyfriend of any (or all) of the girls in your main party, as well as several of the side characters. And the most impressive part is how great most of them are. Had it not been for the existence of Futaba (who is sublime and perfect), I would have had a genuinely difficult time picking who to date. Or hey, if you don't want to, you don't have to date anyone. That's totally cool too.
The JRPG side of things, on the other hand, is almost all gameplay. Every dungeon has s story, of course, and they're usually pretty entertaining. But these sections are mainly focused around the combat, and the combat is superb. See, I love me a good turn-based battle system. I always have. As great as games like Final Fantasy XV and Xenoblade Chronicles are (and they are), I will almost always prefer that my JRPGs have a turn-based system. Persona 5 does, and it's honestly one of the best systems I've ever played.
P5 uses what has become the Persona series' standard combat system. Your party of four stands opposite a host of enemies, and you each take turns taking actions over the course of a round. Every character and most enemies have a certain weakness to a particular element or attack type. By exploiting those weakness, your characters become able to take extra actions. As the story (and your relationships) progresses, your characters will learn more combat techniques, such as giving their extra turn to another character. Most of it isn't really new to the series, but it's been refined to the point of near-perfection. It's smooth, stylish, and satisfying.
Speaking of satisfying, I actually had a pretty deep concern about P5 that was thankfully unnecessary. See, Persona 4's soundtrack was awesome. It was funky and catchy, and just really pleasing to the ear. It was so great that P4 got a spin-off rhythm game all about the music. That says a lot. But that also made the idea that Persona 5 would have a completely new soundtrack terrifying. I didn't know how it would ever top P4, to the point that it seemed silly to try.
But the creators did the intelligent (and I suppose obvious) approach to the music: making it completely different. Where P4's soundtrack was funky, P5 leans more towards jazzy. It's smooth and cool. Half of it is stuff that you could have on in the background while enjoying a rainy day nap, while the other half gets you out of your seat and moving around. It's some of the best music I've heard in a video game in a long time, and one of the few modern game soundtracks that I'll listen to in my free time.
As for the dialogue, I made what some people may consider the unwise decision of playing with the English voices, rather than the Japanese ones. But honestly, the English voice work is pretty fantastic. Every character sounded exactly how I would've expected them to sound, and the principle cast all manage to bring across emotional moments very well.
Now, while the voices may be good, that doesn't mean they don't get annoying, and I'm referring to one very specific thing when I say that. See, a couple of the characters take it in turns to act as, more or less, cheerleaders during battle. They'll react to things that happen during battle with brief bits of dialogue, commenting on how things are going. The problem is that they only have one or two selections of dialogue for any given situation, and they aren't shy about berating you for things you have no control over, such as when your character misses with an attack. It can be very frustrating to be in the middle of a difficult fight, only to have the game treat you like you don't know that "you gotta aim!"
To be fair, though, it's not really any better when you're doing well, since they still only have one or two reactions to any particular thing. There are two characters that act in this capacity, Morgana and Futaba. Morgana is easily the worse of the two, but even Futaba can be grating (hey, I never said she was perfect.)
And let it not be forgotten that the game is fantastic to look at. Character and enemy designs are on point, and the color palette is a real treat. There's a lot of contrasting of bright colors (mainly red) and thick swathes of black. Even the menus are stylish.
Yes, Persona 5 is an outstanding game. There are problems, sure, but they're all honestly pretty minor compared to all of the greatness packed into it. This was a game I was really looking forward to, and it lived up to all of my expectations. With its combination of stylish combat and compelling character relationships, it feels like playing through a really great anime series, and I mean that in the best possible way.
Until next time!
Current interests:
Listening - Persona 5 Original Soundtrack (2016)
Playing - Azure Striker Gunvolt (2014)
Reading - Hyperion (Dan Simmons, 1989)
Watching - Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return (2017)
No comments:
Post a Comment