So I love persona 4 so much that unless the word becomes this is absolute garbage I am likely to get it I would still like to go in with eyes open. Has anyone found a good nonspoilery review? Story and character really more important to me than gameplay so a review that goes into that (because the reviewer knows Japanese) would be great.

Thanks!

Well I don't have enough confidence in my understanding of Japanese to possibly attempt some kind of review, nor have I played enough of it, but the game does feel extremely polished and way more stylish than pretty much anything else.

I love the design of the UI as you can see on the left. Just enough English to make it fairly easy to navigate too.

They are way more ambitious with their in-game cutscenes than ever before. A lot more cutscene-specific animation than the types of scripted sequences that were in P3 and P4. Improved on the stuff they did in Catherine.

I can't really speak too much on the story since, I'm very early since I have to go slow while I do my rough translation but the setup is great and the way the game has you choose your difficulty and enter your name is super clever.

Ditto on combat since I haven't done much of it at this point but it seems like they are expanding past the standard elemental weakness, stun and all-out-attack stuff of the last couple games. The dungeon levels are way more involved with stealth and puzzle mechanics.

The one negative thing I'll say so far is that the PS4 version feels a little bit like a PS3 port. A port of a great PS3 game but there are definitely some low-res textures in the environments that don't feel up to modern standards. The game has a great style so this doesn't detract too much but it is obvious that PS4 wasn't the lead platform for development.

@cybexx: One of the worst aspects of Tokyo Mirage Sessions was the cutscenes feeling really low budget with awful looped animations. Is it a lot better than that?

This game has so much goddamn style. Look at those UI animations.

Hnggggggggggggggggggggg

@cybexx: that gif got me to preorder the collector's edition through Amazon (to which I was very happy seeing the Prime discount applied as well, 'cause I completely forgot that was a thing)

I reckon I'll be able to finish the game this week (am on the last dungeon, I think) and intend to write a spoiler-free (non-professional) review of it. Maybe that will be of some assistance to you and other people who are on the fence about this game.

Can you at least give us a hint on how it is? I mean if you're on the last dungeon and all. Also, I would be curious as to how long the game took you to finish. Between this and Mass Effect I will have a busy couple of weeks. Then again I feel like Persona 5 marks the end of this insane early year of games

@sackmanjones: I am currently sitting at 88 hours and 40 minutes played. Assuming the next dungeon is the last one, I'm looking at finishing somewhere between 90 and a 100 hours. I played some of the side missions (and all of the "side dungeon"). I was not in a particular hurry to play through, but also didn't agonize over not being able to do everything and find every social link opportunity, etc. So I'd say most people's final time will be somewhere between 80 and 110 hours, depending on their rhythm (you could save quite a bit of time by not letting the voice acting play out before skipping, for instance.) So it's a good length.

As for the game itself, it's been fantastic. I think P3 was very good, and that P4 is one of the best games I have ever played. I'd say in terms of story and characters, this game is nearly on par with P4. I'd place it only slightly below it. I never got attached to any one character in P5 the way I did to Nanako in P4, but I love most of the cast here all the same.

The game is also insanely stylish. Seriously, whoever did the UI design and the environment design, they aer geniuses. It has fantastic music too, that remains imprinted onto your brain in the same way P4's did.

The game's single biggest improvement over P4 is its dungeon design. All of the dungeons are very interesting to look at, and require new mechanics to navigate, which makes them feel more fresh. It's always exciting to see what the concept for a new dungeon is, which wasn't the case for me in P4, because all those dungeons basically were bland corridors with a different colour palette attached to them every single time. On the other hand, the "extra dungeon" that focuses on a side plot does suffer from repetitive environments, but that's something I can easily look past.

The combat is deeper than it has been before (more magic types, some extra mechanics around the ability to talk to shadows and negotiate with them) but it is still very much the same thing. If you loved the combat in the previous Persona games, you'll love it again here. For me personally, however, the combat has always been something to endure through in order to get to the juicy, voice-acted storyline meat.

Finally: there's quite a few very good-looking animated cutscenes. Or at least, it feels like there were far more than in Persona 4. And I really like those.

So my verdict in a nutshell: it's pretty goddamn great. If you liked P4, I can't imagine you'll dislike P5.

@dudacles: awesome, can't wait. This will actually be only my second JRPG I've really dug into. I played P4 golden a bunch but since it was on vita I never really had super long sessions of playtime. I started getting back into it and was approaching the end but I misplaced my vita power cord so now my goal to beat P4 before P5 is pretty much a wash.

I'm with you on the combat though, it's actually pretty fun but all of the dialogue and school stuff is sooooooo amazing that I kinda wanna just get through the combat. I actually hit quite a few roadblocks in 4 that made me stop playing for a bit, I'm curious how the difficulty is. I may actually just play on easy if thst offers the better story experience. It would've been fine if I could change it anytime but for some reason P4 golden does not so I was stuck with what I picked.

@sackmanjones: as long as you don't start the game on "safety" difficulty, you can change it whenever you wish