After 137 hours of playtime, I finally finished Persona 5. I mostly enjoyed my time with the game - the gameplay is multitudes better than the last game, the art and soundtrack are exemplary, Shibuya is vast and overwhelming and full of things to do. But I can only say I mostly enjoyed it because the game’s statements on self-discovery and belief ring more and more disingenuous the more I consider it. I blame Ryuji. Okay, that’s not fair. Ryuji is not the sole proprietor of Persona 5’s shortcomings. But he is the most representative of them. To be blunt, the cast of characters that make up the Phantom Thieves came off as really dumb to me. The so-so translation likely exacerbates these problems, but the number of times plans and situations had to be re-explained during the same scene became increasingly grating to my ears. In Ryuji’s case it’s intentional since his lack of intelligence is the basis for the grade-a beef between him and Morgana, as well as the general dunkathon that occurs whenever he says opens his mouth:

That stuff is ultimately harmless at the worst of times, but Ryuji’s grossest act is far from that. In the beginning of Futaba’s dungeon, the Phantom Thieves enter the metaverse in the middle of the desert miles from the actual palace, so they all pack into Catbus Morgana in order to escape the punishing heat (how great is it that someone put a playable catbus into a video game?). After a short conversation with Makoto, Ann starts fanning herself off before the camera cuts to a view looking down on Ann as she fans herself with her sweat-drenched shirt. Ann then looks behind her to find her fellow phantom thieves and alleged friends staring directly at her slightly revealed chest. Ann is understandably aghast at this and throws them back with the emergency brake. "Morons", she utters. Catbus Morgana then rolls up to the giant pyramid that houses Futaba’s treasure and the focus quickly shifts to saving Sojiro’s secluded daughter.

And that’s the end of the scene. The incident is never brought up again, the guys never really apologize, the episode amounts to a total non-sequitur that’s never referenced again. This really bothered me. Aside from the fact that brazenly ogling your teammate is a real scumbag maneuver, but it’s also tonally asynchronous with the game’s themes. The Persona games, the ones I have played at least, are a longform metaphor for self-realization and acceptance. Discover your inner power, defeat the malevolent opposition standing in your way, save the world in the process. Freedom is the ultimate goal in Persona 5, but the freedom the game believes in still clings to an old-fashioned view of society. The inability to have gay romantic relationships between the player character and your friends didn’t strike me as peculiar when I played Persona 4, but that was eight years ago. My desire to see stories from unfamiliar perspectives has increased, and so has the conversation surrounding representation of different subcultures. It’s still depressingly controversial, but refusing to give players that choice in a game where you decide how this character behaves almost every day feels like a missed opportunity.

Then again, given how Persona 5 depicts gay people, leaving this possibility unseen was the best move for all parties because whoooooo boy is this game a sorry representation of that community. The only openly queer characters you come across during Persona 5 are tired stereotypes incarnate, obsessive perverts who can’t stop themselves from shamelessly creeping on Ryuji’s young body. Their existence is played for cheap laughs, like Sideshow Bob stepping on a rake except with a group that is disrespected and discriminated against far too often.

For all of the gameplay improvements Atlus made with Persona 5, the game’s collective voice is disappointingly two-faced. Atlus’ view of empathy is still a very heteronormative one. The depiction of homosexuality in this game is out of step with the rest of the game’s ethos. Persona 4 certainly had some of these problems in retrospect - the hoops they leaped through to make Kanji not gay weren’t necessary - but society has inched forward just enough that the adherence to tired stereotypes feels way off. Persona 5 wants to have its cake and laugh at the people who are banned from the dessert table. It’s still an excellent game, but it could have stood for something more.

As for the scene in the bus - I think people have started to project this political correctness that is at odds with the real world a little too fiercely into games and media overall. Everything you said is technically true - ogling someone is not very cool.. as an adult. These are high school students with raging hormones and all that. Would high school kids honestly apologize? No, they're high school boys seeing their attractive friend in a revealing situation that kids of that age literally dream about. It's an awkward time full of similarly awkward simulations.

This reminds me of a review I was watching recently for the new Spider-Man movie where the critic mentioned a scene in the film where they make mention of slavery and how brave / progressive that was - stating that DC need to incorporate similar scenes into their films. On one hand yah it's a funny scene that's a slice of an uncomfortable truth, on the other hand.. really? Why would they NEED to put scenes like that in? Just to shoehorn some political correctness into a puddle deep summer action flick about superheroes? I'm all for more diversity and self awareness in film but let's keep it organic rather than a checkbox list to get through when writing a script.

Similarly with Persona and other games, it's cool to have "awareness" in varying degrees and by all means it's cool to see that stuff evolve, but let's not get too critical about how our virtual videogame counterparts act in these wildly fictional worlds divorced from real life.

I did not have a significant issue with the bus scene, because the entire cast shows a lot of immaturity. Futaba, the protagonist, Ryuji, Ann, and even Morgana are all very young and they make some incredibly dumb decisions. I am not arguing that they were written that way on purpose, because I do not have all of the facts, but I took it as high school students being high school students and making more dumb, immature decisions.

As far as the gay people, I have no idea where that comes from. It serves no purpose and it was only funny in the context of Ryuji getting advances from people that he found undesirable. It could have elicited the same reaction, if not a more meaningful one, if some girl had a crush on Ryuji and he had no interest but she kept pursuing him. The fact that the men were gay is something I have no idea about and I questioned as well. Once again, I cannot condemn the developers for this, because I do not know the intent. All I can say is that I consumed their content, and it seemed inappropriate and misguided by way of my own culture's view. We all like to assume that society is at a certain place, but I have no idea what society is like in the region of the country that this game was developed in.

They're teenagers. High schoolers. Were you not at least slightly that way? I give that stuff a big pass because of their age.

However, the gay couple is borderline offensive....I say that as a straight man. If a gay person told me they found it outright offensive, I would not argue in the slightest. Really should not have been in the game. Poor decision.

@sam_lfcfan: Hello, can I please ask for some spoiler free information. I have just completed Futaba's palace and am sitting just under 40 hours of game time. Can I please ask roughly how far am I through the game. I saw your game time which seems monstrous knowing that there isn't a crazy number of palaces (not sure how many). Is this just one playthrough?

@wrinklydinosaur That's just about the halfway mark, at least as far as gameplay goes. It felt like there was more padding and story stuff in the latter half though, so it might not actually be halfway. I ended up at 128 hours, and I think I was nearing 60 at the end of Futaba's dungeon. Hope that helps!

Ryuji sucks. Period. I hate every scene he has, I hate that I can't tell him to shut the fuck up when he says something utterly stupid. I hate that they use his stupidity to explain every damn thing three times, just to make sure the player really knows what's going on.

As for the bus scene, some more outrage by the girls would definitely been appropriate, but it was probably supposed to be a throwaway gag or something. In general, the anime scenes were kind of low quality, definitely not tv quality.

@wrinklydinosaur: While not naratively, gameplay wise you have reached about halfway. There is well over another 40 hours of game left though. The back half of the game is DENSE. stay strong and you shouldn't burn out.

@benderunit22: Yea I also hate Ryuji. I would take Yosuke's homophobia over another second hearing Ryuji bitch and throw tantrums. People seem to give him a pass by saying he's a high schooler, but that doesn't change the fact that's he's unlikeable and annoying to be around. Maybe I just hate high schoolers and wish Persona had a more mature cast. Persona 3 definitely didn't act like your average high schoolers, and 4's cast were just more endearing.

I liked those scenes with Ann. It's not just in the bus, there's at least two more between the beach scene and the festival scene. Ann's thing is that she's naturally sexy, and I thought it was nice that they reinforced that with the guys checking her out all the time. It's not just informed beauty, like Rise and Yukiko, where it's occasionally said they are the most beautiful but it doesn't really come up often. Instead it's there in her poses, the anime cutscenes, the early arc where Kamoshida's lusting after her, the part where Yusuke wants her to model for him, when she seduces a villain later on and in her confidante where she struggles to start working on her sex appeal to be able to maybe model for a living. Her looks are a big part of her. I can respect that you thought that scene was bad, but I saw it as a further establishment that yeah, Ann is hot. The guys ogling her and her calling them dorks never read as tonally asynchronous with the game’s themes to me, it's a quick bit of fanservice that fits with the characters.

I don't think anyone enjoyed the two gay dudes. Like yeah, it's obviously a joke on Ryuji. Poor guy, keeps trying to pick up chicks but he only gets lucky with this older gay couple. But it's a very predictable joke, that won't get many laughs but is sure to get blog posts about gay representation.

It sounds like standard anime oggling. People can go ahead and justify it all they want through the characters (sometimes this does justify it), but in the end it's a tired trope.

The bus scene was silly, but ultimately fine, I'd say. But I also kind of liked Ryuji, so what do I know. Overall, I think the game suffered from less interesting characters rather than hetero-normative issues. Not to say that a Persona game shouldn't have a queer character, it should, but I find it odd that the complaint for 5 is about the lack of a queer character when the real issue should be that almost all of the characters were kind of just "okay, but I want more" at best.

I have plenty of problems with P5's ability to capitalize on its theme of self-improvement, but isolating them to two incidents that probably took up .01% of your total play time in scenes that you yourself admit are hardly plot essential suggests you are blowing them out of proportion.

@redhotchilimist: The moment at the beach in particular I really like because right after Ryuji stares and does a silly groping gesture, Ann's reaction is immediately just to point and laugh at him. Then she walks over to him, puts her arm around him, bumps his side with her fist and teases him about it.

I really love that moment because it gives a lot more dimension to her character. Sure Ryuji is attracted to her, she's his hot friend, but these two have known each other since junior high and this moment shows how OK they are with each other. They're simply growing up. It's nice.

Welcome to anime. I have a LOT of problems with Persona 5, particularly with its characters (especially Ryuji) and story, but this isn't one of them. Keep in mind that these characters are like 15-16 years old. High school guys checking out high school girls in a way that's not elegant, refined, and respectful is pretty realistic. From what I remember of high school (I'm 24 now), the guys' actions seem pretty par for the course. I'm all for social equality in video games, but it seems like you're overreacting a bit here to content that takes up a completely insignificant amount of time relative to the whole game. Now if you wanted to raise the point that Ann doesn't seem to have anything going for her character besides her sexuality, that's a whole other conversation.

I will agree that the portrayal of homosexuality in this game is objectively pretty bad, but also don't forget that the game is made in Japan, where attitudes are different from what they are in the West, so that might explain (but not excuse) it.

It's kind of weird, as gags like that about homosexuality and cross-dressing are fairly common-place in anime. I wouldn't try to excuse it by Western standards, but I don't know if I'd be that offended by it. So we've had this weird progression from the 90s to today where anime went from seemingly progressive with shows like Sailor Moon to now featuring common gags that get called out.

As for the rest, I mean, Persona 3 and 4 were worse in terms of someone oggling girls. I mean at least 5 didn't have a scene of attempting to peep on your teammates in the onsen.

You played through the whole thing? My condolences.

I could only last through the first 50 hours or so then I had to stop.

I finished it recently, too and ended up enjoying it more toward the end. The front half of this game was a bit frustrating to me. The re-explainations really didn't help! The way P5 represents homosexuality didn't bother me, but see where you're coming from. I think the west has a different perspective on this matter and that looking through the lense of Japanese culture makes Atlus's motivations less weird. Also, it's as some folks have already mentioned, this is definitely a trope in anime.

What? Why the hell would you play a game you don't like for 50 hours? Did you think after 50 it would magically change to your liking? Seriously.... wow. Just wow.

Because a lot of people really love the Persona games so I wanted to give it a fair chance. To be honest I don't usually play a game I'm not super fond of for that long, but I'm also really careful with the game purchases I do make. So before I bought it I have watched a lot of GB's playthrough of P4, didn't want to have P5 spoiled, I liked most of what I saw. People seemed really excited about P5 and I wanted to experience it along with everyone else. I didn't care much for the characters and I didn't like the way the story was told. From what I have seen of P4 I liked the characters and story way more in that than what P5 offered.

When I didn't care much for the characters or the story it made it real tedious to get through. Also I wanted to try something new. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. P5 wasn't for me. Sadly.

I liked the first hour or so of the game. I think the game has a really cool intro and the first palace was also great. Kamoshida was a real good scumbag villain. But everything after that was slightly dissapointing to me. Nothing in my remaining playtime was a cool as the opening or the first palace. I think some of the later palaces felt a little more generic to me.

It was just a dissapointing experience for me as the game went along. I hoped it could turn it around but I finally just accepted that I didn't actually care much for characters or the story and it started to feel really monotonous. So in the end I came to the conclusion that it wasn't for me.