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FOAMGaP pt 12: Persona 5 Royal
a year ago
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i can also be found at:
https://www.deviantart.com/bardicdragoon
and
https://www.patreon.com/ZaBardicDragoon
after nearly 140 hours I have finally beaten this, purported, JRPG masterpiece. Final verdict; it lives up to the hype, mostly. I suppose such an ominous qualifying statement isn’t super necessary most of that discussion is about the story, character and UI/UX design which are all Amazing or just short of it at worst, the UI design especially. The gameplay more broadly though is a bit more complicated.
The Press turn derivative One more system that has defined the Persona sub series since Persona 3 makes its return her, but there are some serious upgrades at play: Light and dark elemental magic being given damage dealing options rather than exclusively being instant death spells makes them feel more useful (though that might just be a me things as instant death magic has always been an viable/strong option in SMT games as anyone who has suffered a mamudo wipe can attest), Technical hits create a an alternative to weakness exploitation that can really expand strategy in fun ways, Baton Pass does the same while creating a more interesting buildup to all out attacks especially against varied enemy parties, and while having a decent amount of experience in regular SMT games I realize its not new demon negotiation is still a nice inclusion that makes building up and filling out the Person compendium a better experience.
The thing is all these changes kind of exaggerate something of an issue with the one more system in general: exploiting weaknesses to setup all out attacks feels like the pinnacle of strategy. With light and dark elements now being able knock enemies down, and Technicals letting you knock down enemies with no weaknesses; the game feels built around abusing all out attacks at every opportunity. This isn’t a bad thing in a vacuum, setting up and executing all out attacks is fun even before the absolute top shelf gourmet cherry on top that is Persona 5s top of the class UI/UX design, but this can still be a bit repetitive especially 100+ hours into the game.
Though to be fair; while combat makes up a huge portion of the mentos based gameplay, mementos stuff is only half the game. and honestly while as a more Gameplay focused person I can enjoy visual novel stuff (though rarely in a game wholly focused on such) finding much to meaningfully say can be hard since there aren’t really mechanics or gameplay to sink my teeth into or discuss. Though to briefly give my thought on the narrative parts of the daily life sections; they are good with my favorite confidants were Takemi/Death, Kawakami/Temperence, and Futaba & Sojiro/Hermit & Hierophant (they overlap so much its hard to think of them separately for me). That out of the way in a gameplay sense they really stepped things up for this one. While the mechanics are the same as Persona 4 and Persona 3 Portable, Persona 5s oft previously mentioned UI/UX design add a number of Quality of Life features that make the experience much smoother; I’m particularly fond of the text message mechanic which really helps in assessing/deciding what to do on any given in game day.
I suppose I should talk about the main story, but what can I say that hasn’t already been said; the original game came out ~7-8 years ago with the Royal version itself being ~4-5 years old and both were pop culture phenomena. I can say I rather enjoyed it; the main cast is fun and has good chemistry, the villains are delightfully hateable and evil with just enough context to avoid them being moustache twirling card board cutouts but not enough to make them overly sympathetic (with one arguable exception), and while the vibes for the 3rd semester section feel weird in general the main story serves as a really interesting expansion and alternate take on the core ideas of the main story.
One last thing I want to bring up as a very me issue with the game. This game, while having solid combat mechanics with a bit of depth, is very stat focused; so if you enjoy the combat its way too easy to end up really overleveled and take the challenge out of the game. Throw in one of the early confidants that I feel is likely to be finished by most players early on letting you insta kill lower level enemies without having to fight and the last 3-4 palaces were mostly running through instakilling enemy mobs then wiping up bosses with next to no effort unless I did something really stupid (speaking of which took me three tries to beat the normal ending final boss because I kept having Joker use a fully boosted multi target sever physical damage ability when a physical damage reflecting minion was in play), and I played the game on hard so yeah I was seriously overlevelled.
i can also be found at:
https://www.deviantart.com/bardicdragoon
and
https://www.patreon.com/ZaBardicDragoon
after nearly 140 hours I have finally beaten this, purported, JRPG masterpiece. Final verdict; it lives up to the hype, mostly. I suppose such an ominous qualifying statement isn’t super necessary most of that discussion is about the story, character and UI/UX design which are all Amazing or just short of it at worst, the UI design especially. The gameplay more broadly though is a bit more complicated.
The Press turn derivative One more system that has defined the Persona sub series since Persona 3 makes its return her, but there are some serious upgrades at play: Light and dark elemental magic being given damage dealing options rather than exclusively being instant death spells makes them feel more useful (though that might just be a me things as instant death magic has always been an viable/strong option in SMT games as anyone who has suffered a mamudo wipe can attest), Technical hits create a an alternative to weakness exploitation that can really expand strategy in fun ways, Baton Pass does the same while creating a more interesting buildup to all out attacks especially against varied enemy parties, and while having a decent amount of experience in regular SMT games I realize its not new demon negotiation is still a nice inclusion that makes building up and filling out the Person compendium a better experience.
The thing is all these changes kind of exaggerate something of an issue with the one more system in general: exploiting weaknesses to setup all out attacks feels like the pinnacle of strategy. With light and dark elements now being able knock enemies down, and Technicals letting you knock down enemies with no weaknesses; the game feels built around abusing all out attacks at every opportunity. This isn’t a bad thing in a vacuum, setting up and executing all out attacks is fun even before the absolute top shelf gourmet cherry on top that is Persona 5s top of the class UI/UX design, but this can still be a bit repetitive especially 100+ hours into the game.
Though to be fair; while combat makes up a huge portion of the mentos based gameplay, mementos stuff is only half the game. and honestly while as a more Gameplay focused person I can enjoy visual novel stuff (though rarely in a game wholly focused on such) finding much to meaningfully say can be hard since there aren’t really mechanics or gameplay to sink my teeth into or discuss. Though to briefly give my thought on the narrative parts of the daily life sections; they are good with my favorite confidants were Takemi/Death, Kawakami/Temperence, and Futaba & Sojiro/Hermit & Hierophant (they overlap so much its hard to think of them separately for me). That out of the way in a gameplay sense they really stepped things up for this one. While the mechanics are the same as Persona 4 and Persona 3 Portable, Persona 5s oft previously mentioned UI/UX design add a number of Quality of Life features that make the experience much smoother; I’m particularly fond of the text message mechanic which really helps in assessing/deciding what to do on any given in game day.
I suppose I should talk about the main story, but what can I say that hasn’t already been said; the original game came out ~7-8 years ago with the Royal version itself being ~4-5 years old and both were pop culture phenomena. I can say I rather enjoyed it; the main cast is fun and has good chemistry, the villains are delightfully hateable and evil with just enough context to avoid them being moustache twirling card board cutouts but not enough to make them overly sympathetic (with one arguable exception), and while the vibes for the 3rd semester section feel weird in general the main story serves as a really interesting expansion and alternate take on the core ideas of the main story.
One last thing I want to bring up as a very me issue with the game. This game, while having solid combat mechanics with a bit of depth, is very stat focused; so if you enjoy the combat its way too easy to end up really overleveled and take the challenge out of the game. Throw in one of the early confidants that I feel is likely to be finished by most players early on letting you insta kill lower level enemies without having to fight and the last 3-4 palaces were mostly running through instakilling enemy mobs then wiping up bosses with next to no effort unless I did something really stupid (speaking of which took me three tries to beat the normal ending final boss because I kept having Joker use a fully boosted multi target sever physical damage ability when a physical damage reflecting minion was in play), and I played the game on hard so yeah I was seriously overlevelled.
