128 hours and 2 minutes later i have finally finished Persona 5, longer then I anticipated but totally worth it. Now that i have finshed this game i wanted to talk with everyone else out there about the game in a more open way, no tip-toeing around stuff, I also noticed that there is a lot of spoilery talk going on throughout the P5 forum and thought it might be a good idea to consolidate the spoiler filled talk to a single thread where we can somewhat more openly talk about the stuff people wouldn't want spolied, and also just air our opinions on the game.

As such, you have been warned, here there be spoliers, so please do not come here and then complain that you read something you didn't want to know. Lets try to be civil and stay on topic, thanks.

"Warning spoliers start here"

So, that being said, i'm curious to hear what everyone thought about this story, i've seen it mentioned before how so far at least persona 3-5 all have the same sort of structure and broad story beats, (persona 3-4 spoliers) in 3 you fight the 12 shadow things thinking your doing good untill you discover you have unwittingly unleased Nyx, bringer of death. In Persona 4 you solve a murder mystery that in actuality was sorta set up by Izanagi, fog lady or something in a game of sorts and decides to end the world. And now in 5 you steal peoples hearts only to realise that your part of a game set up by the holy grail or Yaldabaoth, the god of control, and it will destory everything and rebuild, I guess.

I was having alot of fun with the story and characters, it was darker in tone than 4 which i appreciated, but it eventually decided to get kinda lazy and just fall in line with 3-4 in a grand plot sense, (also i havn't play 1 and 2, are they similar at all?) it was somewhat dissapointing but im not sure that I should have expected different. I also didn't enjoy the fact that they, late minute, connect your 2nd and 3rd target to shidou, I was waiting for there to be a dumb connection to Kamoshida aswell. All in all though i really enjoyed my time with persona 5 and i would say that, imo, it is a better game than persona 4.

I also really like how they introduced Futaba and tried to change things up with her palace and why you enter it, but i was also disapointed in how the next 3 palaces are basically back to business story wise.

I also feel like the confidants are better handled, they're all slower burns, but i felt closer to them all at the end of each arc then i did with 4 as they all seemed to have more going on then like, almost half the social links in 4, but maybe i played that game so much they all started to bore me at some point while this is still fresh

Also, I think my best lady friend is Makoto and Haru who are tied for first, just like Rise and naoto.

What are your guys thoughts.

Megaten in general is almost always about eventually discovering which Deity is either Angry at or Secretly Testing humanity and then you have to beat them up.

I really enjoyed the reveal around Akechi. The drug fogging your memories is a contrivance, sure, but a reasonable one and everything else hinged on details that were still properly foreshadowed and there for people paying close enough attention to potentially pick out ahead of time.

Here be spoilers, sorry about the wall of text, I had a lot to say

First off, let me say that I had a great time with the game. As usual with Persona, I really enjoyed the main crew characters. Ryuji eventually won me over, Ann and Makoto were the highlights. Each of their personal narratives had emotionally weight and made me invested in their recovery. From Ann's sexual harassment to Futaba's depression to Haru's treatment from her father and fiance, I understood their suffering, they just needed someone to come in and help them but were instead judged as troublesome outcasts, isolated, and avoided. Their treatment from others because they were marked as punks, delinquents, sluts, and tools made me want to see how they overcame their issues. The twist with Akechi and his redemption made him sympathetic as you learn that he was the bastard son of Shido and treated as nothing more than a tool. Then you see the twist with Igor and my initial concerns about Igor all came together. The question, "Why would they give Igor such a different voice?", was answered. Morgana is a great character and his "death" scene got to me. I really enjoyed all of the side characters maybe with the exception of Mishima.

These games really make me feel like I am experiencing a journey over the course of the story. From the relationships you grow, to the character's own personal stories, to the main narrative. The highs and lows between story sequences and down time let the story develop and breath. The feeling of it happening over a year carries impact. You see change in the seasons, the developments of the relationships you've made, to the detailed story that moves you through the game. The calendar system is great at conveying this change.

I also really want to point out how great and topical the themes are in this game. From sexual abuse and coercion in the school, to greed and plagiarism in the museum, to depression, government scandal cover ups, media manipulation, and political corruption later on. They took these issues and showed, pretty accurately, the results and consequences of each in a power hungry society and the suffering imposed on the weak by the strong. The back and forth mob mentality on the Phan-site was also spot on. It reminded me a lot of internet forums, Twitter, and Reddit. You experience these societal issues on both macro and micro scales from a commentary on society on a large scale to the personal level through the suffering of one of the game's characters.

I have four complaints on the storytelling that I can recall. First, I don't think I like the Akechi enemy reveal. The fact that you forget almost everything about his evil side and the subsequent fake death scheme until after it happened, while exciting, didn't sit well with me. It didn't make sense that with Sae in the interrogation room, I can remember that I watered a plant eight months ago but completely forget that Akechi was evil and that I helped plan this convoluted, very detailed escape scene. It's just poor storytelling to give the twist more impact. With that said, I was at the edge of my seat when these tense scenes played out.

I also agreed with Alex's initial reaction on the how Sae's conversations were held. Oh, I met this artist who is good at drawing. Sae with practically no prior knowledge of who these characters are says, "You must have had an artist with your crew to make those calling cards right?" I met this kid who is good at a gun game in the arcade "You must have had someone to teach you how to shoot guns" I met this politician who was a good speaker. "You must have had a successful speaker teach you how to manipulate people" Only a few of these made sense to me, it was such a logic leap for Sae to connect the dots for most of them. The rest of her dialogue is mostly the same, just a tool to try to keep the interrogation room relevant for 90 hours until you catch up to the present day.

This is just a series complaint. They went through the trouble to give a voice to the protagonist. We know what he sounds like when he hmms and groans. He shouts the names of select persona. He even speaks a couple lines leading up to the ending. It's just so weird that none of his choices are voiced when most of his lines consist of 3 or 4 words. In the voiced scenes, all the other characters are incredibly talkative, even Futaba, and Joker just stares on while the conversation goes on without him. I don't understand sticking with the silent protagonist decision for Persona 5 in those voiced scenes. It bothered me more here than it did with Breath of the Wild and I think it has to do with Persona's focus on story and voice acting.

Lastly, I think the idea of forced rehabilitation to be unethical and defeats the purpose of what actual rehabilitation is supposed to do. If jail time (in an ideal world) is supposed to rehabilitate you by making you think and repent about your actions by atoning for your crimes, forced rehabilitation is worrisome because it puts already rehabilitated criminals in jail after they are already "cured". I think the part that bothered me was that the criminals were cured due in no part by the actual criminal's actions or repentance. They made no effort to change themselves until the Phantom Thieves forcibly changed them.

I could keep going with specific character arcs, like Futaba's story/dungeon for instance, but this comment would literally turn into pages. So, I'll end it here with just an overview of my thoughts.

tldr: It's great and I only have minor gripes with the way the story was told.

I was also fairly disappointed in the return to (mostly) silent protagonist especially since the game opens up with him actually saying a couple of lines and building hope for a second.

But at least when Joker does get to speak it's a pretty rad occasion.

Some of the storytelling and dialog could have been better as you guys have already said.

Liked everyone of the Phantom Thieves (even Futaba grew on me even somewhat), some of the confidants didn't do anything for me like the arcade kid or the fortune teller so I just ignored them.

Akechi being the one to sell you out and Shido being the mastermind was pretty obvious and worse then the P4 villain reveal but fortunately the game still had the Igor reveal.

The Shido boss fight was pretty good.

Last boss was kinda easy but then you shoot a God with the 7 deadly sins with your Satan Persona...

The Igor reveal is fun but it does beg the question of....why bother impersonating him?

Who is there to fool? Nobody knows who Igor is except for the people he specifically invites.

The Igor reveal has got to be just for the player right? Or the Igor impersonation is for the Twin Wardens since with the help of the prisoner, they know that they are missing important memories. The fact that you are with Igor in the Velvet Room with another blonde haired assistant was enough for me to buy that this was just the Igor for this game until the reveal happened.

But then at the end when the reveal happens, you begin to see the oddities of the Velvet Room in a new light. You are reminded of Lavenza's voice talking to the player at the beginning of the game asking for help. You are reminded why the Twin Wardens are trying to recover their memories in their social link. You can also make the connection between the player being a prisoner in a cage and the fake Igor wanting control over him. Instead of the Velvet Room portraying an elevator or the back seat of a limousine where the player is treated as a temporary guest, the Velvet Room in Persona 5 is a prison where the player is the prisoner and leaving the prison is treated as a "break". I remember one of the wardens saying "enjoy your break" when you leave the Velvet Room.

I understand where you are coming from but like you said, I thought it was a lot of fun that they made Igor the true final boss this time around.

You can also hear Lavenza speak to you in a very easy to miss scene if you take a nap on the bed in the Velvet Room. Something I only realized was possible after accidentally hitting a prompt trying to talk to the Wardens.

I must have missed that or I just didn't put it together at that time. When Lavenza mentions the message she sent the player at the beginning of the game, I barely remembered that scene happening because it happened over 110 hours ago for me.

I'm also pretty sure it's her voice narrating the "I am thou, thou art I..." text every time you initiate and complete a confidant.

Gotta say, the end Akechi stuff just left me shaking my head through the entire scene. It felt completely unearned, and I was practically screaming at my screen "This dude is a psychotic killer! The hell is wrong with you guys?!". Something is really wrong, when I feel like Adachi came across more reasonably. I was waiting for the final boss scene to have some Shinjiro-esque "Let's do this." moment with him. Thankfully not. Don't sully that beautiful moment. I almost cried, damn it!

I loved the game, but I have to say, I thought the overall plot, and even Social Link story lines weren't great. So much of everything felt like a repeat of Persona 3/4. I was almost in tears at the end of my first playthroughs of Persona 3 and 4, and sad to see them end, but once I was done with Persona 5, I was pretty glad to be done. At this point I think I'd rank it as my least favorite Persona game, just below the Persona 2 duology. (Haven't ever gotten through Persona 1).

I feel like shit to be so negative toward it, because I really did love so much of it, but it's largely just from the gameplay, music, and visuals this time around. Hopefully my view of it is more positive, given time.

@nev: Did you think the social links in Persona 5 were poor because they were so similar to what you had seen before in past Persona games? I thought they were pretty similar and all were better than the music girl in P4, the sports guys in P4, or the bookstore manager in P3. It's been a long time, but I think I agree with you about P3 having better social links with Elizabeth, Tanaka, and bench Jesus. Idk, Persona 5 is so fresh in my mind and it's been years since I've played P3.

I had the same reaction at first to the gang's reaction to Akechi. "How could you feel sorry for this serial killer, the one who framed you guys!?" I liked the redemption of him though because he was the first criminal in the game to actually be the one to change. He was shown compassion sympathy from the Thieves and he began to see the error of his ways. Everyone else (except Sae) was forced to have a change of heart, Akechi changed on his own. That felt significant to me.

@cerberus3dog: Well there is also Sae who did not experience an actual change of heart either.

I didn't really get the sense that the team was ready to forgive Akechi, and you can feel sorry for the circumstances that created a monster while still feeling that they are one.

@efesell: I think we are on the same page. Maybe compassion is the wrong word, sympathetic to his situation is better. I completely forgot that you don't steal Sae's treasure.

I really enjoyed my 98 hours with P5. Great game. I found that I was way more invested in the central mystery than I was in 4, which got by mostly on the strength of the social stuff. Everything from Okumura's death to Shido's takedown was good, and I especially liked the ridiculously long con on Akechi. That was some real heist movie Ocean's Eleven shit.

Shido was a pretty well-done villain--I was so happy when I rolled into the Diet Building and stomped his Metal Gear Rising-looking ass--but it really grated on me that it takes the better part of a year for the MC to recognize his face. The reason, I know, is that it was dark on the night they met, but the game shows Shido's full portrait to the player right off the bat, essentially giving you the tools to out-deduce the MC. That's never a good feeling. P4 had plenty of "forced idiocy" moments where the characters struggle to come to obvious conclusions, and it's a bummer they fell into the same trap here, especially since they avoided it with Akechi.

The last couple of hours kind of fell flat for me. I know it's a Megaten tradition that the last boss is a god who thinks humans suck, but the main arc already climaxed thematically with Shido's takedown. I'd have been happy enough if it just ended with that last heist. Granted, with the endgame, they were trying to do some cool thematic shit with public opinion, but I wonder if there was a better way to do it. In the moment, it kind of reminded me of Necron in FFIX, which is never ever a compliment.

I really don't mind being privy to details that the characters aren't but it seemed odd to me that the game wanted his reveal to seem so important.

After 110 hours of Persona 5, I can truly say that it is a good game, but the convoluted story and weak characters keep it from being a great game.

The characters on why I come to the Persona series. And this game has the weakest cast of the Persona game that I've played. (P3 and P4) Most of them are very flat and 2 dimensional. None of them have a real character arc. The person you see when they are first introduced are the same characters when the game ends.

Not to say the game has no strong characters.

Morgana and Mokoto are the the standouts to me.

But everyone else just feel flat and/or are remixes of old characters in the series.

Ryuji is Kanji/Yosuke without the depth or heart of either one.

Ann is just feels Rise without the fame. Honestly she feels kind of useless character-wise after the first dungeon. She doesn't really have much to add to the story.

Yusuke likes art. That's kind of it. And I know I cant be the only one that feels like he would have a palace 10 years down the line from having girls in his casting couch.

Futaba feels like a more extreme mix of Chihiro and Fuuka from P3. While she's not a bad character, she doesn't have much going on outside of her quirks.

Haru is the most pointless addition to the party. She comes in so late to the game its hard to really get a feel for her. I didnt even have enough proficiency to even start her slink until a week before the game ended. You could take her whole character out and nothing would change. When I saw her black mask I began to fantasize how awesome it would be that she was the serial killer. She had about as much set up as Akechi did. It would at least give her character some sort of depth.

Akechi? The only in redeeming about him was the fact that the game that you treat them like shit from day one of meeting him. I could not roll my eyes harder when he started to tell me his sad backstory out of nowhere in the coffee shop. The head scratcher of the whole thing with him is that your group was willing to forgive him and probably let him back in the party. All I could think was that he was probably as bad if not worse than anybody that you did a change of heart on previously. He is a serial killer. Fuck em.

The stories pf the persona series have never been super great. But there's something about the monster of the week feel of this game didn't do it for me. The past 2 games did a similar thing but the difference is they had end goals. Find the killer and stop the Dark Hour. I had no idea what the Phantom theives end goal was. When do they stop? You know if the game didn't give them some arbitrary reason why they couldn't use their personas anymore they would have kept on doing it.

Because they had no overarching goal, thestory felt aimless at times.

I found the school events to be super duper weak this time around.

The trip to Hawaii was absolutely pointless. I got the feeling the only reason why they went there with so they can have the characters put on swimsuits.

Their plan to catch Akechi was so convoluted I still don't quite understand what happened.

This might be the biggest nitpic I have about this game, but I find the battle theme to not be very memorable. It takes so long for the song to get to its chorus that by the time it does the battle is over.

The only time I've ever heard the song's chorus is when things have gone terribly.

Now that I got all that negative crap out the way, I'll say this game has by far the most fun battle system out of all of the persona game. I love the fact that I get deeper and more complex the farther the game goes in.

Also if this game doesn't win best style this year I'm going to riot.

Thanks for this, now I don't think I'm going to actually play this game. I've realized that I only liked Persona 4, and don't have any real interest in the rest of the series.

Every time I hear somebody say that this game story is dark I can't help but think that that is bullshit.

The game goes out of his way to shoot every emotional moment in the foot. The only people to die in the story are people who you don't care about to begin with.

Shiho doesn't die. I forgave that because she did only jump off a 3 story building.

Was anybody esle pissed that Ryuji and Morgana we're both killed on screen only to be brought back 5 minutes later. Ryuji was blown the fuck up. I actually felt a little bad. I said holy shit there's character development. I can't tell you how pissed I was to see him perfectly okay.

Morgana might be even worse. His character arc was done. It had finally come full circle. To see him come back to life almost immediately this seems like a waste.

@blackichigo: I'd say that murder is not the only tool to make a story feel dark. When people say that is darker, I think is mainly because most of the bad things that do happen don't happen because of magical tv monsters, but because of societal flaws and abuse that simply feels more "real" and these are perpetrated by real life villains. The scale is smaller, they are not eating children, but not going over board is what made it feel the way it does.

As far as the Ryuji and Morgana supposed deaths, I hear you, it would have made for a better story. At the same time I was glad they where ok. Cheap, I know, but it worked for me.

The only sequence of events I did not like is the way they dealt with Akechi. Didn't bought into his sappy backstory and thought he deserved some kind of punishment rather than redemption ( he does die, which is "punishment" I guess, but I almost would have preferred he had to live with what he did). He made his own choices and it's not like he was dumb.

There's a weird obsession in the Megaten fandom about having to feel like the games are super dark and grim. Can't let it just be kiddy stuff.

Persona 4 gets a bad wrap on that front despite all the issues it aims at, as though none of them count since it is so outwardly cheerful.

@matiaz_tapia: I hear you. Maybe the story didnt feel that dark to me because I wasn't in love with the characters all that much. I didn't really care what happened to them all that much. Every time I did care about something bad that happened to them the story would backtrack it somehow.

Character revivals just happen to be a pet peeve of mine.

It takes away consequences and weight of stories. If you're just going to bring a character back to life why kill them in the first place?

I do agree with Ryujis in any event, that one was just terribly unnecessary.

Morgana's felt consistent though. Could go either way there.

So at 135 hours with 18 out of 20 confidants maxed and a 92% compendium, I finally beaten the game. Definitely one of the most stylish games out this year with great music and overall improvements on staple Persona/SMT gameplay mechanics. The confidants/social links in this game might be one of the best in the series. Not only does every rank add a beneficial gameplay mechanic, but from a story perspective the confidants were better written than anything prior to P5. Whereas in P3 I didn't care for none of the social links and in P4 only for half, each individual confidant's story in P5 was pleasant spending time with. What was also good was the implementation of the confidants on the overall story of the Phantom Thieves (if you had maxed them out) and how naturally they fit into the final act, which is much more believable than the cheerleading force ghosts from P4. While I did enjoy my time with the game (and it will definitely find its way in my top ten this year), I do have some issues with the game.

1) While the P5 cast were the most stylishly designed cast in the series, they fell to live up to the charm and depth of the P4 cast. Luckily though I didn't hate them (in fact I liked quite a few). The P3 cast continues to be my most hated cast members in the series and I hope it stays that way for future Persona games.

2) Akechi's redemption/forgiveness felt so unearned and just terribly written. The dude was a psychotic killer, but because he was a fellow teenager with a tragic past, the heroes were ready to forgive him? Yet every palace ruler and shadow in mementos they fought also had a tragic past, but the Phantom Thieves didn't seem to care to hear about any of the events that led to these individuals' life of crime. But Akechi had killed Futaba's mom and Haru's dad and so many others and NOW they were ready to forgive because he was a misunderstood teen like them. It was your stupid typical anime/JRPG trope, but was just not earned nor needed. It was just awful and made the Phantom Thieves look like hypocrites.

3) Didn't care for the death fake outs that happen multiple times throughout the game. Manipulating the emotions of the audience/player in such a cheap way grinds on my gears.

4) For being the leader of the Phantom Thieves, the main character isn't very smart. Every confidant that had an issue that needed to be dealt with a change of heart, the MC did little to hide the fact on what he was going to do after randomly asking them for a name. "Yup totally not going to do anything suspicious... oh no you found out I was a Phantom Thief but how?!"

All in all I greatly enjoyed the game and I do hope Atlus doesn't make us wait nearly a decade again for the next entry in the Persona franchise.

So... I just had a 5 day weekend and managed to somehow put 50 hours (I'm in July if that helps) of it into P5. I'm pretty tired... But man. This game's preeetty good. Full disclosure: I'm actually on forum/internet blackout and haven't actually read any of the posts in this thread. But I think I need some help from duders with something.

I feel strapped for time.

And because of it the social link stuff is stressing me out. I just don't feel like I'm using my time effectively and I'm wondering if that's just normal. I have, apart from the automatic story social links, 4 characters at 7-8. Two of which have now stat-blocked me from progressing their story unless I get about 2 more full points of charisma, so that's another million evenings lost to baths.

Everyone else is like at 1-2... There are a substantial number of characters I haven't even started to hang out with at all at this point in the game, and I'm starting to get worried that I might not get to.

After checking the online stats in game there's like 5-10 characters that people hang out with during evenings, and most of the names I don't even recognize having met yet. I feel like I don't have time to start a new social link at this point. Should I just not worry about it?

For example... The story thing that happened in July made me really super regret that I never hung out with Pimp-Hat. Is there even any point in starting that social link at this point? Will I even have enough time to complete it? What about Gun-Guy? And like a million other characters...

@xymox: the game gives you less time in the beginning then later on. As long as you do palaces in (close to) the minimum amount of time, you will be able to max out a lot of the confidants.

As for Sojiro you can't even get him further then Rank 4 before the palace in august so you are fine.

Regarding the topic of darker themes I think P5 definitely tackles some stuff. I mean the main theme of the game is adults abusing and manipulating teenagers for their own gain. However the comparison to an afternoon-special that the guys made on the last Beastcast is pretty fitting. It's all very surface level.

On the other side there is the normal Megaten "dark" stuff of summoning demons and fighting gods. That has always been ridiculous and even the most die-hard Megaten fans don'the take it too seriously. I think that has it's own charm of how stupid it gets like in Nocturne where you decide to team up with Satan to kill YHVH.

What I would like to see return would be the more out there stuff from P2. If you played Innocent Sin you know what I mean. (still have to play eternal punishment). But who knows how well that would sell nowadays.

As for the fake deaths I think they are a bit reluctant to repeat that one guys death in P3.

I didn't like Akechi from the start and his betrayal was so telegraphed. Once he joined the party I just left him in the dust and was glad when he left again. Also his costume was terrible compared to the rest.

@xymox: Without spoiling much, the best time getters in the game are the Temperance and Fortune confidants. It's also helpful to get Death to at least 5 to get something that will help you complete dungeons in one day.

Sun helps with Charm training. Tower helps with kindness ( tho it's a late confidant).

Sorijo is difficult to rank up. You need to make coffee to get him to like you better. Otherwise it takes too many tries just for one rank up.

But Temperance man...if you get that to 10 you'll never feel strapped for time again.

Awesome. Thanks duders. That does help ease my worries.

The ones I've been trying to max are Death, Temperance, Priestess & Lovers, so I should be good there. I'll try to hang out with Sun + take some baths and hopefully that'll be enough to get back on track on Death & Priestess.

Now back to Persona!

@xymox: Alternatively Devil also helps with charm but apparently everybody but me hated her, so...

Pfft, Devil is great that's crazy talk.

Just finished at a bit over 105 hours. Really enjoyed my time with the game. Mechanically it's the best Persona game (maybe even Megaten game). The quality of life improvements were definitely worth the wait.

I thought the characters (main and side) were all solid, with the exception of one. The rebellious tone of the game was on point and the engine looks great and runs like a dream. Would love to see other Megaten games come along and use it.

I got my nitpicks but the only real issues I've got with the game are:

1. LIke someone mentioned above, Haru is a wasted character. She doesn't really add much to the conversations (you could literally skip all her lines and not miss a beat in any cutscene/ conversation) and is the annoyingly stereotypical demure and mousy anime girl.

2. It's time for Japanese games, especially jrpgs, to tighten up their games. Story beats could be more compact and effective without multiple characters endlessly repeating what someone just said.

The last two dungeon areas after beating Shido were kinda bad and filled with enemies that could absolutely wreak you if you made a simple misstep. This is made worse by poor save room placements in these areas.

Additionally, having the last several hours be nothing but info dumps, dungeons, and boss battles with none of the pacing and "openness" of the rest of the game was a bummer. I know it's the climax but to be stuck in the above mentioned loop for several hours was a bit rough.

3. Having everything and everyone connect to eachother in some way was too convenient and reminded me of other bad examples of this (prequel Star Wars). It's just a lazy way to tell a story and while I can forgive some of it (this is a Megaten game and they always deal with things like fate), the amount of times it gets used in this game is unfortunate.

That being said, I really enjoyed Persona 5. Definitely the most fun Megaten game for me and one I can see going through in new game plus when the next game drought comes.

Without Haru I miss out on the best by a mile victory screen and I won't have it.

Haru's abuse by her father and fiance, and the logical distrust she has about her company employees are what made her story and social link interesting to me. After you finish a character's dungeon and social link, don't the characters mostly become talk pieces during the main narrative anyway? I'm not sure what Ann or Yusuke adds that Haru doesn't. Haru is just the super kind one.

Also, I bid @efesell's Haru screen "Adieu" and I raise you Makoto's. She has that super unsettling death stare in her biker ninja gear. You see a blood stained tire track when she ran the enemies over with her motorcycle persona!

@cerberus3dog: It's great but the sheer ridiculousness of Haru's makes it unassailable. Everyone else gets a pose but Haru has an entire spontaneous production.

Akechi's is probably 2nd given full knowledge of his whole deal.

Makoto and Haru's are great, but there can only be one best finishing touch.

That's fair.

Getting the itch to play through it again already. Has anyone tried having your teammates make choices by themselves? I was thinking of trying that for the second playthrough; Persona 3 style!

@theblue: Wait up, hold on a minute, the fuck is that?! Ist that real? How do you get that?

@linne: I think that's from the optional boss fight in NG+

@briarpack: Ah ok, thanks. Haven't looked into NG+ yet

I never got the intention that the team was willing to forgive akechi, but more that they felt sympathetic for him and they respected that he was as powerful as joker, as he was essentially just used as a tool with severe daddy issues. (Maybe a stronger localization would have made this easier to swallow?)

How they tricked akechi to not actually kill joker initially took me for a complete spin, but eventually I understood (thank god they did all those flash backs)

And I wished they gave the player a bit more time to breathe after beating shidos palace, but I understood why they did it with the lead up of the MC turning himself in on Xmas eve and spending time with your romanced lady on Xmas eve (I went makoto, and hers flowed seemlessly into the next story bit where she's sitting there with futaba and sojiro)

And just based on how 4 went and how this game played out, yea the structures are the same (even though I think Izanami was an actual god and had more of a genocidal mindset with the fog, while yaldabaoh was basically created from the cynicism of the public, and wanted to rule over the public as their god)

but I think this game has a stronger execution of its "message" than 4 did, (outright symbolized with the protagonist summoning the gnostic "rebel" Satanel to shoot the false gnostic god which grants the public emancipation )

and I think I like the characters a lot more than 4,they all were a lot more realistic with very realistic problems and insecurities, while not fully straying away from their anime archetypes they are based on, while the 4 cast, while great, I found took a bit more of a suspension of disbelief to connect with their stories than this game

Played only a bit of 3, (that games atmosphere and characters never clicked), beat 4, and I like this game a lot more than 4, there's some jank in the localization or in the story itself where some bits in the story could have been smoother, but the good overshadows the bad for me and it's easily one of the best games I've ever played.

Preach brother

@mrfluke said:

Oh man, I actually felt really bad when it dawned on me why (unromanced) Makoto was already there. Her only family decided to go to work on Christmas. Sae Niijima kinda sucks as a sibling.

The thing that I really liked about the game's story is how the themes of people sheltering and even outright defending and worshipping the same thing that is causing them harm really coming together.

They drop this throughout, with the way that the teacher gets away with so much, and Yusuke's defense of his teacher despite knowing what's going on, and all of that. But I thought it was a really good idea to bring this into a boss fight metaphor with the Holy Grail where it's the people themselves angry at the thieves for attacking their captors, and giving it life and strength.

I dunno whether it's just the timing of it all but I've been thinking a lot lately about how people defend the things that are hurting them, and seeing that play out really worked for me.

I'm glad that this theme at least shines through, because on the whole I think I was a little disappointed in the writing from two angles: firstly, I think they are, like with the previous games, almost being really exciting and bold but holding back, or being inconsistent in spots which undermines the story they're telling. And secondly, it's a very uneven localisation. Some parts (particularly unvoiced text message stuff) is absolutely fine, some is just sort of bland in a way that made me respect Persona 4 much more, and some of it is riddled with outright mistakes like made up words, people saying the opposite thing to what they must have meant, or weird grammar/pluralisation errors.

It's not fatal, but I wish it wasn't a problem, especially right on the heels of Yakuza 0 which just has such good localisation touches.

Anyway, my personal hope for this game is that maybe it sees a re-release at some point with some of these points addressed, as I feel like I just played and enjoyed a fansub. Failing that, here's hoping that Persona 6 is a return to form for localisation.

@kestrelpi: "I feel like I just played and enjoyed a fansub"

The localization could be better (think the latest Yakuza games are the pinnacle of translation atm) but come one, it's not fan sub bad...unless fansubs have gotten a lot better from my basis of perspective on them. I was actually hoping for and disappointed that there was no classic, awkward line on the level of, "Aha, is this our chance."

I wonder if the game having 50% more dialogue than even Golden stretched Atlus a bit thin and they couldn't comb through the localization as well as with previous ones?

Ah, looked up some examples and I was wrong. I never noticed it but there are some weird translation inconsistencies with using honorifics or western formal titles and such.

Ok but am I the only one still questioning Akechi's "death". I mean we hear gunshots from the other side of the wall and that both the cognitive and real Akechi's presence wasn't felt afterwards but we don't actually see him die. Also they never found him dead back in the real world. Every time they happen to mention him in the real world everyone just says he's "been missing". Like what the hell is that about lmao. The only thing I can compare it to is Okumura's death but they're different. Okumura died because his shadow self was killed leading to him having a mental shutdown in reality. as for Akechi, it's presumed that Shido's cognitive version of Akechi killed the real Akechi which brings me to the question, can someone else's cognitive version of a person actually be capable of killing a real person? And if they can, what the hell happened to Akechi's body in reality? Is he just dead somewhere still not found? I just have a feeling that he's not actually dead and that he somehow managed to escape and they'll reveal him being alive in some spin off version of persona 5 like they did when they milked the hell out of the persona 4 series lmao. Surprise, Akechi is alive and he's (kind of) a good guy now just like Adachy baby ! (Honestly still questioning why teddie ever called Adachi by that bizarre mispelt nickname). But maybe it's just me being hopeful that my sweet baby boy Akechi is still alive. I have a thing for culprits in persona series. Adachi and now Akechi both have a special place in my twisted heart ? (Who both were just play toys used for a bigger game made by some mythical "human desires are my desires" true culprit asshat, ha)

Finally capped this one off. I'm not sure if I'll go straight into a NG+ playthrough or hold off for a bit. While I think I prefer the overall narrative of Persona 4 over this game, I think P5 has it beat on the storylines for the confidants/social links. P4 had a lot of social links that I honestly didn't care much about, but this game had many touching character moments for the teammates, and certainly more relationships with adults that I was invested in. I thought Takemi and Ohya in particular had really good stories on that front. For the teammates Ryuji, Futaba, and Yusuke had my favorite arcs. Makoto's was perhaps a little too invested on her school friend and that sleazy host, so I was a bit disappointed with that, but it made sense with her particular character motivation so I didn't dislike it too much. I said in the other thread that I was probably going to romance one of the adult characters in my next playthrough, but with how natural Makoto's romance feels like it slots into the story, particularly around Christmas, I don't think I can go with anyone else. I do kinda wish at some point there would be a scene where Sae would comment on the relationship though.

One thing that really disappointed me was how the game dropped the ball on the group outings. The fireworks festival gets rained out (which is admittedly a little funny), the class trip to Hawaii was disappointing, the school culture festival was barely an event... I would have loved to have seen more scenes with the group having fun on their down time but much of what's in the game didn't do much for me. Poor Haru especially got the short end of the stick with how late she joins. I liked her confidant story but I don't think she got enough time as a full-fledged Phantom Thief at all. In P4, Naoto also joins late, but she had at least been interacting with the cast for a good while before her dungeon, so I was really able to buy into her as a part of the crew. Haru joins and then it's onto the home stretch of the narrative right afterwards with barely any time to breathe.

I really hate to say this so soon after finishing, but the way they skipped through so many days makes me think they'll be filling them in Golden-style with a bunch of extra scenes in a re-release later on.

The palaces were mostly lackluster narrative-wise after the very strong start. Futaba's palace was perhaps another peak, and I really liked how they handled her character throughout that month and then afterwards with her reintegration into society through the main story and also her confidant scenes, but Kaneshiro and Okumura were big misses for me.

The Akechi reveal was actually spoiled for me way back in September, so all throughout the game I couldn't help but scrutinize him closer than I may have if I hadn't known about him beforehand. He's a really fishy guy almost from the first interaction, but my judgement of him had to be biased. I at least had fun picking the rudest dialogue options possible to respond to him. He always brushed it off, but I like to think it hurt him inside. Maybe. He was just an annoying guy to me whenever he popped up, and I was disappointed with the turn his character took. As soon as his dialogue portrait changed into that typical "unhinged anime boy" face with the wide eyes and the crazy smirk, I lost any last investment I had in him. That's just a particular trope that I've had enough of. I did think how they paralleled his abilities with Joker's, and how he brought up how he may have turned out differently had they met earlier was pretty interesting though.

@redyoshi: I knew that Akechi was trouble from the get-go, and I wasn't spoiled on him. He just had an odd vibe.

When should I send the calling card for shido? I have 6 days left. Will the days after I finish be free to use?