I can't wait to listen to this later. Also answers: Casino, Rivers in the Desert, and Makoto as my answers.
Regarding the game being disappointing, I didn't even realize it was that disappointing for some until I heard something about that on the Bombcast. I think on some level the burden of expectations on this was likely too high for it to ever meet for some after P4. It's hard for me to see this as disappointing on that level when the core gameplay is such an upgrade over previous Persona games. I can certainly see for some the strength of the cast was so integral as to what they liked about P4 that it was alone enough to make this feel disappointing (though I still preferred this cast to P3's quite a bit). Also, outside the core villain of P4, this was the best set of antagonists in the last three Persona games IMO.
But expectations are a tricky thing. I imagine Nier Automata is going to be a favorite answer for "Best Surprise" of 2017, but by the time I played it, it ended up being slightly disappointing (the pacing completely fell apart during route B for me, it suffered from side quests bogging the flow down, and there just wasn't enough variety to enemies/not enough cool boss fights ) because of the what I probably inwardly thought it'd be based on how good Platinum's character action games are.
Right now, it'd be a discussion between P5 and Zelda for my GotY, but it's really early.
I honestly didn't know there was any kind of general feeling of disappointment out there for Persona 5 until I listened to the Bombcast. Personally, I think it was an incredible game and will easily be in discussion for a top spot on my GotY list. There are certainly ways it is different from P3 and P4, but I don't know if it makes it worse. The gameplay/combat is objectively better and the dungeons are more interesting at a minimum. The plot is certainly more ambitious than P3 or P4, and while there are points where it could have been executed better, it generally delivers. Also as much as I love the Murderer (keeping it vague for anyone who has yet to play it) from P4, the overall cast of villains for 5 is better than 3 or 4.
I was also in the group that expected to like the game a lot more than I ended up doing. I can even see the game I wanted in there somewhere, but it's kind of buried behind some rough early areas, bad enemy design at times, and the fact you need too many upgrades before the combat starts getting that interesting. Also, the chain drifting mechanic is too difficult for any real practical application for a lot of players (I know some people don't run into this issue, but count yourself among the lucky ones as a Google Search for scripts to get past certain chain drifting challenges will show you how much trouble players had with it).
That's a lot of games in one year. I keep having to remind myself to play AM2R at some point. SMT IV is an interesting one because, if I'm being honest, I didn't really get into SMT IV the base game at all. The difficulty curve was all over the place, and the characters just didn't grab me. I ended up stopping after about 15 hours in, and never really could get back into it afterward.
@slag: Great list, man! I'd concur: Reincarnation the song and that concert in general was probably the best part of the game. TMS was definitely the best thing to come out in an otherwise barren year on the Wii U.
I'll be starting FF XV soon enough. It's definitely the most excited I've been for an FF game in some time.
Thanks for the blog! You reminded me I still really want to play this, but I don't know if I'll get to it by the end of the month. :/ I'll definitely look to pick this up during the Steam sale.
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