Giant Bomb Presents: Persona 5 Spoilercast

@redhotchilimist: @elvenstein

Yeah, that was kind of my feeling on Mishima. Where I hated Akechi pretty much the whole way through, I softened a bit on Mishima as the story went along. I think the game maybe skips over a bit of the legwork necessary to make him a completely sympathetic character, but my general vibe on him by the end of the game was "Oh, you dumb knucklehead" and wanting to give him a noogie, as opposed to full-on, white hot hatred.

@alex:

I enjoyed all of the palaces for what they were (yes, even palace 5, at least up until that last maze section where I was stuck for way too long). After hearing about so many people talk about how long the ending seemed to drag on, it... actually didn't feel like that at all for me. I assume that complaint specifically is coming from newcomers, because it really seems to fall in line with what Persona 4 does; you beat the "culprit," celebrate, even though something doesn't feel right, then find out there's actually another big bad to beat and have to go through another dungeon. Felt pretty par for the course in terms of pacing in a Persona game.

Rivers in the Desert is arguably the best boss theme in the Persona series to date. It's between that and The Battle for Everyone's Souls. Comparing soundtracks as a whole, I think Persona 4 might have a stronger overall soundtrack, but Persona 5 has better individual tracks? It's kind of a weird way to put it, I know.

Also, even though I didn't romance anybody in my first playthrough (because you can miss me with that until I'm able to date dudes, Atlus), I really liked Haru. She's adorable, and I don't know why so many people are down on her. I feel they did a better job with her than with Naoto in terms of being the last (permanent) party member to join. Naoto's lead-up to joining your party is definitely more natural, but I feel like she kind of falls off once she actually joins your party. I like the cast of P5 a whole bunch; I never felt like they didn't have enough moments together like some people seem to be saying. The dynamic between the P4 cast was just so much more wacky in comparison, while P5's cast interactions are a lot more subdued; stuff like popping fireworks outside of Leblanc with Morgana, Futaba, and Sojiro was nice.

TLDR: this game's good, dude.

how far do they talk about the ending?... I answered the question to get the "true" ending... but haven't gone that far into the final "dungeon"... But also i want to listen to this...

Kawakami is the best. Her story arc could have been awful but ended up being one of the best. I like how the game dealt with relationships with large age gaps and relationship dynamics that are considered taboo. The fact that she calls you master throughout the whole game is insane. I cringed so hard when she was introduced with ryuji and mishima but they handled it so well. I really enjoyed it and I have no regrets choosing kawakami.

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 agree with Ben that this was the best game in the series, mechanically speaking. One would hope that would be the case. I liked the crafted dungeons, combat felt as good as always, filling out your persona compendium remains compelling, and Confidant availability was handled pretty well with that map.
  • I don't think I had quite as negative a view of the combat and dungeon design as Alex and Ben seem to have, but some dungeons were certainly better-designed than others. The first one was clearly a highlight. Also, as they both acknowledged, it's not too hard to overlevel and get overpowered if you just want to power through fights. Amused to hear that Ben did the Reaper flu season trick!
  • Alex's core team of Morgana, Makoto, and Ryuji was my core team exactly, and it sounds like Ben agreed. I wonder how many people tended toward this team.
• I enjoyed the new abilities attached to reaching certain levels in social links, although this did have the side effect of making you want to prioritize some social links for gameplay reasons, as opposed to just hanging out with the people you want to hang out with, which is perhaps a bit of a pity.
• I liked that it was much easier to complete all your Confidants in this game without a guide, largely due to the Temperance and Fortune Confidant abilities. I don't mean to brag in saying this, but I maxed all Confidants without using any kind of day-to-day guide, which was pretty much impossible to do in P3 and P4. I even had about three weeks to spare. It meant that I didn't need to do a NG+ to see everything, which is a good thing. Just too bad that Alex didn't know about the Fortune Teller until very late in the game, otherwise he probably would have progressed his Confidants a lot more.
• I agree with Alex that "Beneath the Mask" was a good song. I actually listened to that one a lot outside of the game. It's great music for just chillaxin'. I particularly liked the version with vocals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeSyAgUvwHI
• I also agree that story-wise and character-wise, this was perhaps one of the weaker games in the series (FWIW: I've played through P3 multiple times, only played a bit of P4 but have watched the whole endurance run).
  • It did indeed feel like this game was more about being a Phantom Thief than a high school student. In this game, for instance, there really weren't any social links that got you involved with school activities. In previous games you ended up joining school sports teams and social clubs and stuff, but oddly nothing like that here. It made the school feel a little thinner to me than it should have.
  • The Yusuke conversation Ben and Alex had was interesting, that maybe he should have just been a gay character that you could date, which brings up the fact that there's absolutely no queer character in this game at all, anywhere. P4 had Kanji and Naoto as main cast, Persona 5 only has a few dirty old men who hit on Ryuji in a couple of scenes (a wholly negative portrayal). I'm not saying there needed to be a romance option for a dude, whether it was Yusuke or someone else (would have been a little odd for the MC to swing both ways), but at least a non-romantic queer social link would have been nice, whether guy or girl. I mean, here's a game that got released like eight years after the last one, and as far as social consciousness goes (yes, gay people exist, and they're not all pedophiles), they didn't just not grow, they went backward on this issue.
  • I agree that Sojiro is one of the best characters in the game.
  • Contrary to what Alex and Ben were saying, I liked Futaba as a dating option... she's actually the one I would pick if I had to pick one "girlfriend." It seems like the "geeky shut-in computer and video game girl" is an innately attractive option to someone who is by definition spending a lot of time alone playing a JRPG! Also, age of consent is different in Japan, so the age difference isn't so creepy there.
  • Like Alex, I enjoyed the doctor. She and Makoto would have been strong second girlfriend choices for me.
  • The constant refrain to "crooked adults" kinda annoyed me. All the games have had a main cast of high-schoolers, but in previous games they weren't so naive as to blame "adults" as a blanket class for all their problems, realizing instead that there are crappy people of all ages, adults just tend to have a little more power to make their lives miserable (though not always). I guess maybe this might be more of a Japan-specific thing that I don't really get. But it made the whole cast feel a little whiny to me, honestly. Maybe that's just because I'm in my 30s and all that high school stuff is long past, but I also hope that most high-schoolers don't actually think this way. It's really pretty dumb. I would think that reasonably self-aware high schoolers who play this game will feel a bit pandered to.
  • I felt like the social links were pretty bland in this game compared to P3, and just not as interesting or varied (I'm talking less about the main cast, and more about everyone else). I mean, Persona 3 had Tanaka, who was genuinely kind of a bastard but really made you smile about it, plus the drunk chain-smoking monk, and that old couple at the bookstore. I thought they were all more memorable than any social links in Persona 5.

  • Then there's the whole localization issue. As Alex said, it's not actually terrible, but definitely a bit mediocre. And while that won't ruin any specific moment, over the course of the game a mediocre translation drains personality out the game in ways that you'll never really realize. Molly Lee over at Polygon wrote a great article about this:

    http://www.polygon.com/2017/4/20/15356026/persona-5-translation-localization

  • Pacing-wise, maybe I'm just wearing rose-colored glasses with this one, but this game felt even clumsier than the previous ones in its penchant to eat up one to two weeks without letting you make any decisions at all. I felt like the others games did a better job of breaking up the story so that you weren't just watching story stuff for hours in a row without being able to spend any time with Confidants, etc.
• There's actually at least once reference to a character from a previous game here (from P3): http://imgur.com/g433lG5 But this is just a quick reference in passing, more of an easter egg. Not sure if there are others.

It sounds like a lot of complaints, but I did really enjoy the game. I wouldn't have spent 147 hours completing it if I hadn't. It's a pretty easy one to recommend, even despite its shortcomings, and not necessarily just to JRPG fans. The social element seems to make it a little more accessible to a wide audience that might be turned away from high-fantasy JRPGs; I can easily imagine newbies to the genre enjoying it.

EDIT: Oh, also very much agree with Alex's assessment of Mishima in the above comment. He ended up redeeming himself in the end... there was that whole moment where he basically rallied the crowd and saved the day. He did some dumb things, but I think he ended up in a good place.

Futaba is the best girl.

@alex- I guess it's just surprising to hear it called mixed when it's the highest rated game on metacritic of 2017. Metacritic isn't the best source but I think the general consensus was it was a very good follow up to 4.

I found I hated Ryuji more than any other character but that was because he wouldn't stop yelling out our secret identities in the most public places.

I burned out on the game 3 dungeons in and sold it, I will listen to this though, interested in GB staff thoughts!

When I saw one of the character's persona was a fucking bike, and casted magic by popping broadies, I knew this was going to be a classic.

This pretty much nailed my feelings with the game; my interest in the narrative jumped off of a massive cliff during the Shido dungeon.

I did actually really like Akechi's finale though, I thought the VO for that was absolutely stellar work.

The high concept stuff that Persona 4 and now Persona 5 went for in the tail end of their games really didn't sit with me at all. They tend to do it at an absence of an actual villain; and though while it was a little better in this game, the final act (Mementos onwards) just did nothing for me at all.

The characters as well were, largely, quite one note. The first 4 characters you get in your party (Ann, Ryuji, Mona and Yusuke) were all just quite uninteresting to me. It wasn't until Makoto joined (who was a pretty great character) and Futuba's dungeon happened was when I really started to like some of the characters in the game.

But even then, there just wasn't any moment of lightheartedness there. Like, Hawaii was a REALLY bad bit, in what was the first real moment with all the characters away from the main story.

The gameplay itself was a lot of fun, and the music was AMAZING. It just was missing what I go to Persona for: good personas.

Layer Cake is the best song!

I just wanted this game to end by the time I was done Shido's dungeon, the 8 hours I had left kinda dragged.

I don't think any of the characters suspected Haru as being the person with the black mask that Madarame was talking about. I found this odd, they know she had previous access to the metaverse but aren't suspicious?

Also I hate Morgana.

Pretty much agree with everything you guys said though.

great discussion, generally agree with all of it.

i got to level 99 (yay me) and you really feel how weak the dungeon design is by that point in the game, they truly need to work on that. 1st dungeon was the best for sure.

Glad you guys did this, been waiting to hear a few in-depth impressions and some analysis.

I gave up after 80 hours but I enjoyed my time with it. I think I was in the last dungeon (the ship?). I liked P4G a bit more though, and Golden has a lot of the QoL improvements that 5 has other than the weakness button and the baton pass stuff.

I heard Tokyo Mirage Sessions is more like a sequel to P4 so maybe I should finally check that game out.

I'm surprised they didn't touch on my least favourite part of the game. When Morgana gets all angsty and childish, leaves the crew and wastes everybody's time until they make up again. Felt like such a pointless section.

Im still kinda confused about the negatives thrown at this game. I know their is a chance for gay options but arent their chances or openings for all types of character dynamics. The game doesn't seem to be doing gay people a fault. But i could be wrong just from what ive read it seems to be a big topic.

also i dont get the idea that this game is disappointing. are we at a point were good games arent good cause their not perfect (i find this level not good and this one picky mechanic is trash or handled bad cause it is inconvenient so this entire game is not perfect 3/5 stars was better before kinda stuff) I think our nostalgia of the past clouds our critics of stufff today. Crash bandicoot was fine for people in the 90s but now i hear from podcast it was a BAD GAME or just OK PASSABLE. Not saying everyone should like or enjoy stuff but damn were in the greatest era in history with less bad stuff and more entertainment then we have time. I know that means be picky with your time but I still hope people are enjoying their experience opposed to the 2 or so things you dont like making you think a thing is just ok. Cause boy does that JUST ok translate to Trash in 4 or so years. Great/ good games become just ok in a couple of years. like the revisionist history of games people liked at the time now being considered not that great or good like gta 4/assassins creed 4/ffX/Mass effect 1/Zelda games/ etc you get my drift.I may be also overlooking how minor the issues are for people and not taking into account just bringing up problems (any) to get a 100% take on a thing.

Man, it's gonna be years before I can play this game or listen to this podcast.

"Did someone say pancakes?!" "Howdy-doody!"

Good point with the thing at the beginning with Shido assaulting the woman for no real reason. Now that you mention it, it really does seem out of character.

I have mixed feelings regarding the final boss. Every Persona game I've played has done it. Persona 3 you're fighting people's wish to die, Persona 4 you're fighting people's wish to be alone, Persona 5 you're fighting people's wish to be controlled. The theme works fine. It's actually kind great. It's just getting a little formulaic at this point. Kinda like how every Bioware game articulates the same way. But I guess we've seen Bioware repeat the same formula every 2-3 years and Personas are so few and far in between. I feel like if they do it one more time, it will start to feel stale. But I guess I'll know in 10 years when the next one comes out.

Tokyo Daylight is my personal favorite track.

Makoto is obviously the best girl.
I think I actually enjoyed Futaba's dungeon the most, though I really didn't care for any of them. At least they weren't just the no-design slogs from 3 and 4.

By the way, did anyone else assume Morgana was a girl until he identified himself as a dude?

CHARGE, JOHANNA!

I'll listen to this later, but props for putting best girl in the thumbnail, duders.

Dungeon: Bank. The discovery of the palace was clever and the lock mechanic is great.

Song: Either the Casino theme or the intro animatic theme. All around amazing OST.

Best girl: Kawakami with Makoto following close behind.

Still haven't listened, but I'm excited!

I have no idea why the game offered romance opportunities later in the game when they introduced Tae Takemi early on in the story.

Also, yep. Wasn't until after the Mementos introduction where it was cleared up.

I did. I mean both of the names he uses are feminine after all.

I always find the argument 'Akechi killed people' to be a really lazy way to justify throwing away one of the most interesting, and definitely more integral, characters in the story. I get not liking him because, yeah, he's a hitman, but shortening his entire character as 'abandonment issues' is kinda absurd.

Favourite theme: Life Will Change

Favourite dungeon: Kamoshida's Castle

Favourite character (party): Makoto

Favourite character (non-party): Kawakami

It's interesting to hear the perspective from Alex and Ben, neither of whom finished Persona 3 and largely have P4 driving their expectations for the series. P3 had a much bleaker tone compared to P4, which I was pleased to see Atlus revisit in P5, a game that deals with some heavy real-world themes in a way that the one before it didn't. Persona fans are very torn between the earlier entries in the series, which closely match the style of the Shin Megami Tensei main series games, with Persona 3 being a halfway house and the more recent games going further in the anime-style direction.

I think that Persona 5 is an excellent, generation-defining game that is going to set the standard for future JRPGs to come in the same way that the Witcher 3 has set the standard for western RPGs. P5 isn't without its flaws, which get touched on in the spoilercast but it still manages to stand head and shoulders above most games released this gen.

OMG, can you like...do a hundred more of these??? I need Persona 5 content in my life.

@atheistpreacher: Just wanted to *thumbs up* your comment.

Just finished listening. Really great stuff. I think I liked the game more than either Ben or Alex but I couldn't disagree with any of the complaints that they had. Makes me wish we'd get more games club style podcasts with the GB crew,

They party immediately suspected her the moment they saw her. Then Morgana came in and they tried to act all tough and the rest of the party realized she was no threat.

I feel ya, that's my least favorite part of the game too.

His Japanese voice is the Chopper/Pikachu voice actress, who voices boy characters with a real obvious feminine voice, so I never thought it was anything other than business as usual.

@alex First off, thanks for doing this, had a ton of fun listening to you duders discuss what will probably remain my favorite game of this year. It was also a bit calming to listen to some of my favorite podcast hosts talk about Persona 5 in a tone that was not "eh, it could've been better".

Which brings me to my inquiry (and I never thought I'd be typing something like this, but here we go) - what exactly were some of the people you've talked to so severely dissatisfied with after playing P5?

It just comes off as a tad baffling to me, as this is one of the few recent entertainment experiences when I was really hyped for something and it actually lived up to my admittedly high expectations.

I preordered the game (which I normally never do) and as soon as my copy came in the mail early, I stumbled over to the local electronics store to buy a PS4Pro because I suddenly decided that my plan to play through during summer was a gross miscalculation of my interests. I have never played a Persona game before this, but vowed to pay Atlus back for their hand in making the Endurance Run possible (lol).

Needless to say, I pretty much binged through the game, even though I have comparable restraint in my gaming habits nowadays as opposed to when I was younger, and enjoyed every second of it. I felt like that I wasn't alone as Metacritic rankings gave me the illusion that the game was critically acclaimed and lauded across the board...

...until I started listening to the gaming podcasts I tune into regularly. Brad mentioning multiple times how "people who shall remain nameless" were "disappointed" with the game, but never giving any proper indication exactly what aspects they were not pleased about. The initial focus of the coverage on how the game is a slow burn and Morgana wants you to go back to sleep (which was largely redeemed by this spoilercast). As GB happens to host 8-4 Play, I cannot not mention reaction how their reaction stumped me the most - "don't you value your time more?" being one of the quotes which almost pissed me off considering the whole staff adamantly engages in gacha games to some degree or another.

I more or less came to terms with the fact that probably Vinny will be the final person from the GB staff to finish Persona 5 and that the new Zelda will sweep GOTY, reducing P5 to an honorable mention, but what gives? Is it one of those games that receives high praise, but when the reviewers are questioned further they in the same breath respond "it's not for me"?

Signed,

A concerned fan of both Persona and GB

(who probably gave off crazy fanboy vibes)

PS: You're right, Makoto is best girl.

Well, it's a little late so I won't be really giving a big opinion. The game kinda was missing some stuff in the main plot, and the Social Links weren't as strong as P4 Social Links.

Anyway, I did like Yusuke. At first I was like "Oh, so you're THIS kind of character." But then he actually turned out pretty great without even changing much, the way that he's random and says senseless stuff just had a great timing and was hilarious as hell to me. He was the saving grace in some moments (specially because of Ryuji). And Mishima started good, went into a shitty character, but he did redeemed himself in the end, so I actually liked him, one of the good SL in the game.

Ya gotta go with the older women in the game.

It is baffling to me that you guys exist in a bubble where mostly everyone you know is disappointed with P5. Whereas the overall consensus is that it's one of the greatest if not the greatest JRPGs of all time. Everything P4 does 5 does better, from the writing to the setting, to the gameplay and music, the list goes on and on. I can't really see myself going back to 4 even with the golden version(though I'll still boot up the endurance run no problem) but when I beat 5 I was almost tempted to start ng+ immediately after the credits stopped rolling and I was in the main menu. I get your guy's perspectives and all and I understand but man it's just so weird. At least it wasn't witcher 3 where nobody aside from Vinny played it more than 10 hours let alone finish it.

I'll probably never play this game but I'm glad they did this, I wish spoilercasts for big story driven games were a more regular feature on the site. The few they've done over the years have always been good.

Kaiki Deishuu remains best girl.

(I watched at least one anime to bring you this hot meme.)

I played the game with Japanese VO with English text so I didn't get the bad VO and I think people should play that way.

Makoto 4 Life. Her dead eyes are 2 Sweet!

Edit: I love the anime cutscenes. Not for the content, but because I yelled "ANIME" when it was happening.

I go back and forth on the crazy, Sherlock, cognitive master plan pancake stuff.

On the one hand, I thought it was really lame they held information about the protagonist from the player. As someone who is living in this person's shoes literally almost 24/7, having him and the rest of the cast just do something really important off-camera seems like a cheap way to seem clever.

But then I like Ocean's 11 a lot, so

The adult characters (especially Sojiro, Iwai and Yoshida) seemed more interesting to me than most of the kids. I liked Hifumi, Mishima and Yusuke a lot.

Somewhere as they're soft-introducing Akechi, the newscaster compares him to the other famous "boy detective," Naoto Shirogane.

@redhotchilimist said:

And it should be noted that the benefits of leveling up the Confidant with Mishima are among the best. I'd rank backup members getting full XP despite not fighting probably the 3rd-best, behind Hifumi's Touryou (escape any battle instantly, a requirement for farming the Reaper during Flu Season) and the various Harisen heals.

What's Going On for best track, can't get enough of that descending motif. Layer Cake is up there for me too. It's all really good, even in a strong soundtrack year I keep coming back to it.

This should be done more often, too many times on this website the staff are constrained from having interesting meaningful game discussions because of SPOILERS. Thanks for this.

I liked not loved P5 and it was super disappointing. When you hit a high mark in P4 you hope they keep the great things and improve the rest. While P5 has the best mechanics and style of the series and maybe Jrpgs ever it has little to none of the charm of the great titles from this genre and that massively damages it as a game. There are huge bits of downtime between story beats and if you don't like the characters and world they drag so badly. Characters, story, level design are dull dull dull. Of course this is subjective like what you like.

Best girl? Why choose? It's a harem game. Everyone gets a ride on the Ferris Wheel of Love with the stickiest seats this side of Tokyo. When you walk back into the café after "everyone" thought you were dead and you're dating at least four of the girls there..thank god none of the women talk to each other or try to kiss you or say anything about loving you..could have gotten real awkward!

P.S. People using METACRITIC of all things on THIS SITE as a way to justify a viewpoint will never cease to astound and amuse me.

Who says the VO is bad? The issue is occasional spotty localization which you still get with the English text.

Oh hell yes.

I didn't have the huge CRASH alot of people had over P5 (due to expectations after the wait?); in fact, I think it deepened during the playthru. Even the ending (see below) left it above what I had going in.

This game just DRIPPED with audio-visual flair. I am just in awe of the whole package.

The pacing was better than 3 or 4; every time I got to the "downtime" between story beats you'd get the misfired party event, or the plot would blow up again. I really appreciated this maintaining of a marathon pace thruout a marathon game.

I like how you noticed the shared rise of nihilism and ennui on the world front, Alex. Not enough "get" this and it's really unnerving to hear anecdotes about this in Japan from the last decade or so and have it jump the Pacific here. "Just tune out when the news blows your political ideology a new one" is...alarmingly apt nowadays. The longer I got in that game the thicker it got. Hashino KNOWS the human soul and psyche.

5's crew specifically feels more like 1, 2, and 3's teams; 4 is the aberation in that they're deeply friendly.

Yusuke is a goddamn JoJo's character and I love him to death. Too bad he falls off late though.

But I'd probably put Futaba as my favorite character out of all; she's like the Jun, Junpei, or Naoto of this game, just a kid with some REAL baggage and that baggage was used exemplarily well. She ain't "fixed" of all that ailed her earlier (girl was on the spectrum) but the "supernatural" problems got fixed by fighting a giant sphinx, and the slow reintruduction the gal got to normal life was preparing her for that normal life (the scenes where the social anxiety got to her was alarmingly well done).

Hawaii was supposed to be Hashino commenting on how they are still fixated upon the Phantom Thieves back home (and a knock on Japanese tourists who move around in their own little "fishbowls" of back home as they go on vacation abroad period). It's another one of those "and there's a deeper layer below that one!" these games have I love to dig into after beating them.

Did not like past the depths of Mementos (the freshmaker). The Megaten-esque ending sequence went against the emphasis of people bottling stuff up down deep (like mementos). Shoulda freed Igor and whatsherface and fought Yaldaboath down there with the spirit bomb. Felt "mandatory".

The "lets activate the trophy message to say you cant take a screenshot here even though you have trophies turned off" was...alarmingly dumb.

Yo, you get some Confidants maxxed the game gets DUMB easy. Even ambushes become relative discomforts.

Fave track:

@turboman: My G.