ENDGAME SPOILERS INCOMING!!!!!!!!!
In my opinion, more than any other Persona game, P5's story shattered after Shido's Palace. The game shifted from a semi-realistic interpretation of Japanese society/corrupt politions/desire for nationalism (in some ways Shido was similar to Donald Trump with his "lets make Japan strong again" and people being apathetic to his criminal history). The Sun social link tied into a lot of this stuff. And then all of a sudden, a God of Control is influincing everything? I feel like it actually takes away from the story in a lot of ways and turned P5 into a typical "lets save the world" JRPG.
In Persona 3, I liked how the story's final arc developed. I won't spoil it but the "save the world" theme made sense in context of everything else. It was ~ok in P4 as well, though I think I kind of tuned out to the story by that point as well. But in 5, it throws out the entire story. It even somewhat attempted to "justfy" abusers and perverts who broke out of their cells to create their own palaces (aka thinking for themselves and forging their own future, just as MC and party did). They were justified because according to the game, the prison is abhorrent. So why wouldn't Shido etc try to escape from that Control? They turned the Palaces from the warped desires to these guys just escaping the grasp of the God of Control. It "takes responsibility" off the antagonists we've been fighting all game and throws it on to a mythological being. It throws out all the real-world analogies the game was making. We didn't even get a followup from the guys who wanted to continue Shido's ambitions after he confessed.
In general though, P5's story meandered a lot more than 4's (the slice of life stuff in 4 such as the campout helped alleviate the meandering main plot). Also, Ryuji was not the comic relief that Kanji was, nor was Morgana. Rather than comedy, it felt toxic when Ryuji and Morgana were flaming eachother. However, the twists were fantastic. I didn't see either of them coming, so they were great. Akechi was one of my favorite Persona characters too. Helps that his English VA was very good. He was a far better antagonist than Shido or the God. I was expecting him to be the final boss (either him or his cognition self escaping and becoming a problem).
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