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It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I’m a tremendous fanboy of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise ever since playing SMT IV in 2013 but I won’t spend much time gushing about that game so instead I’ll shamelessly plug my two reviews of the game and it’s sequel
In 2015 I managed to get into the Persona spin-off series of games with Persona 4 Golden on the Ps Vita.It took me a whole summer to finish the game and I loved my time with it so much.For a while P4 was on my top 3 favorite games of all time and it’s still a game I love to death but some issues with the game’s structure and pacing that set it a bit back from being my favorite SMT game.
And then Persona 5 finally arrived,after quite the long development cycle and a gap between the Japanese and English releases that lasted for more than a half a year.I spent well over 98 hours playing the game non-stop for almost two months and marathoned most of it during the last two weeks(I played 12 hours a day and couldn’t stop playing) And man.....oh man did I never see it coming(literally) .

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The Fabulous Phantom Thieves of Hearts
In the year of 20XX(eyy look it’s the Mega Man calendar) you are a 16 year old student who got unjustly sued for a crime he didn’t commit and as a result you have been transferred to Shujin Academy in Tokyo under the care of Sojiro Sakura and immediately you’re ostracized by society for your supposed criminal record and things has just started to get worse for you as both you and one of your classmate accidentally discovers the metaverse in which you meet the talking cat Morgana who explains that you’ve been stumbled into a palace formed from the distorted desires of Kamoshida,an abusive teacher with a history of violence and sexual harassment towards his students,eventually you’ll meet Ann Takamaki,the half-American girl who’s one of Kamoshida’s victims as the three of you work together with Morgana to use the metaverse in order to steal Kamoshida’s treasure in the metaverse from his shadow which would result into a change of heart that would force him to confess his crimes.And thus the Phantom Thieves of Hearts were formed.A group hellbent on enacting a social reform in which they change the hearts of rotten corrupted adults and give hope to people who’ve been ostracized by society the same way they were.
If this synopsis of the beginning of Persona 5 sounds much more exciting and eventful than Persona 4’s very slow prologue to you,then that’s because the game has a much better pacing for it’s story compared to the previous two games in the series.In Persona 4 it took 8 hours of barely anything happening just to get to the first dungeon,but in Persona 5 right from the first hour you’re thrusted into Kamoshida’s palace to start exploring the dungeon.Sure it had it’s tutorial heavy moments but they were much better paced throughout the dungeon and the pace felt more fluid and natural than it was in Persona 3 and 4.And for the most part the game keeps the excellent pacing as you progress through the story,explore the palaces & mementos,bonding with the confidants(the new social links) scattered throughout Tokyo.....etc.
But what I love the most about Persona 5 is the dark and disturbing themes about society that it tackles.From it’s main theme of enslavement by a fate unjustly set for you, to suicide,depression, plagiarism and even politics later on and even themes that used to be only in the mainline SMT games.In a way Persona 5 harkens back to it’s Shin Megami Tensei roots more than any game in the series since Persona 2.It’s basically the best of both worlds where it feels close to it’s SMT roots while keeping what made the Persona games so beloved in the first place.Combine that with an excellent cast of characters from your party members to the different confidants you bond with throughout the game who feel much more fleshed out and relatable than previous games and you get one of the best stories you could ever find in a video game in my opinion.But the greatness of Persona 5 doesn’t stop here my friends cuz it gets even better
 

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Watch out for that chalk piece,ya'll need some mad charm and proficiency to dodge it
Just a refreshment for those who haven’t kept up with the series:The modern Persona games from 3 onward are split into two halves:The social simulator part where you go around,do part time jobs,study along other activities all while trying to increase your social stats and bond with many NPCs through Social links.The other half is classic SMT dungeon crawling where you explore dungeons,fight demons,recruit them to make powerful Personas that you can fuse in the Velvet Room where Igor and his assistants resides, and do classic JRPG turn based combat.
The social part of Persona 5 has been significantly improved compared to P3 and 4 in almost every way thanks to the Confidants(The new name for the links here) as almost each and everyone of them provides you with lots of benefits in and outside of battles.For example: Progressing through Mishima’s Confidant link will allow your party members in stock to gain experience even if they’re not used in battle(think EXP.Share from Pokemon Gen 6 and onward),progressing through Ohya’s will lower the security level increase when exploring palaces(which I’ll get to soon),while going through Dr.Takemi’s Confidant will give you huge discounts for healing items in the clinic shop on top of making very OP healing items like the Life Ointment which fully heals one fallen party member and it’s cheap to buy too....and the list just goes on.
This is excellent as it gives the player even more incentive to seek all the confidants to link with everyone one of them(though most you won’t be able to until New Game+) on top of what I mentioned earlier about the confidants having more interesting stories behind them than most of the Social links in P3 and 4.On top of that the game gives you a much bigger time frame to link with them as it gets rid of the huge time skips that were in 3 and 4.To give some context,in P3 and 4 sometimes during the plot the game will just skip a whole month or two and that’s not even in the end of the game which barely gave you enough time to bond with anyone beyond your party members as you need some high social stats just to start some links so those random time skips were a really bad game design for games that puts a huge emphasis on time management.
In Persona 5 however that issue has been fixed *for the most part* as the game gives you a lot of time and won’t skip a single day on you without your consent which gives you a lot more time to manage your links with your trips to the Palaces and Mementos(more on that soon).Unfortunately though, Persona 5 still kinda suffer from the same issue of having some links be very demanding when it comes to social stats.For example,just to progress through the halfway point of Makoto’s confidant link you need max level 5 charm which,unless you already took part time job and knew which magazines to purchase to increase those stats,it’s gonna take a really long time to increase those especially when you’re trying to increase other stats like Kindness and knowledge and that can be pretty cumbersome to manage especially if you were planning to romance a demanding link like Makoto. But besides that I’ve had a pretty good time with the revamped social sim features in Persona 5 and it’s overall much better than previous games despite few things that needed some more polish

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Studying at day,Fighting demons and pulling heists in the afternoon.Just another normal day for a highschoolar
As the leader of the Phantom Thieves,your dungeon experience is divided between two types of dungeons:The Palaces in which you invade to steal the distorted desire of the corrupt adult that the group is currently targeting, and the depths of Mementos,the palace of the general public of Tokyo in which you do sidequests submitted on the Phansite and explore the randomly generated dungeon layouts.
If you noticed that I bundled the randomly generated dungeons with Mementos in that statement.That’s because unlike the previous two games,Persona 5 goes back to a more traditional and more refined SMT dungeon crawling experience as the Palaces,the main dungeons in the story,are not randomly generated like how Tartarus from Persona 3 or the TV world from Persona 4 used to be.Each palace has a set number of floors and each floor has it’s own map lay out and studying them can ease your exploration a great deal especially when you’re going for hidden chests scattered around the palaces.
Demons\Shadows roam around and you can ambush them by utilizing the game’s cover system to hide then jump on them to initiate a preemptive strike before battle which works pretty well for the most part.Some floors have safe rooms in which you can heal, save the game(think of them like the safe rooms from Final Fantasy IV),teleport to previously visited floors and exit the palace if you want to.When you explore a palace be aware of your alert meter as it fills up everytime an enemy finds you and if it reaches 99%(which rarely happens if you’re careful)you’ll be automatically kicked out of the palace to try another day.The goal of each palace is to locate the treasure that represent the palace’s master’s(A.K.A the Shadow-self of the corrupted target)
What sets Persona 5 apart from the previous games and every other SMT game out there is how stylish and beautiful the aesthetics of the palaces you explore are and the variety of themes each palace is centered around as you go from a castle to a museum to an ancient pyramid to a floating bank in the sky to firetrucking Spaceship and casino.It makes exploring each palace more and more exciting as you progress through the game and anticipate what’s the next palace gonna look like.Sure Persona 4 sorta had that with the TV world but the randomly generated layout doesn’t take any advantage from it,but in Persona 5(which has actual dungeon design) makes much more use of it to showcase different scenarios during the cutscenes,some decent puzzle solving and storywise tells you more about that person’s psyche and how they see the world around them in a much better way than Persona 4
The only gripe I have with the Palaces is the fact that you can’t go back to a palace once you steal it’s treasure and enact the change of heart.Sure story-wise it makes sense but if you’re a completionist this can be a bit of a nightmare if you’re going for a 100% playthrough as you gotta make sure you get every chest and collect every demon you can possibly get(tho most of them respawn in mementos so don’t worry) before fighting the Palace’s boss.Another nitpick I have is how often your progress can be interrupted by a cutscene while playing,it’s not bad in most dungeons but it can get a bit obnoxious in later parts of the game.

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You'll never see it COMMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!BY THE time it hits you,YOUR LAST SURPRISE
The battle system of Persona 5 still utilizes the Press-Turn system that was introduced in SMT3 Nocturne and was later modified for every Persona game from 3 onward in which if you hit an enemy with their weakness you get an extra turn to keep attacking the other enemies.But Persona 5 adds even more tweaks to streamline it and make it more fun to play and more accessible.For example once you register an enemy’s weakness you can press R1 to automatically target the enemy’s weakness and switch to the Persona in your stock that has the spell you can use to exploit it.It might sounds like a little addition but it helps keeping up the pace of battle without needing to scroll through the menus every time you enter a battle.

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The Memetastic Fantastic battle UI
Another change that I absolutely love is the new battle UI. Now each command is mapped to a different button which grants you a much quicker access to them without scrolling through menus like before as X is used for normal physical attacks,Up on the D-pad for guns,Triangle for Personas,Square for Items and Circle for guarding.It helps a lot especially when you’re grinding and this speeds up the monotony of the process and makes it much faster and less tedious especially since now the animations for persona summoning and attacking plays much faster compared to previous games in the Persona series which keeps up the pace for the game as smooth as a console turn based JRPG can get

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Hey Pix,wanna become my new fancy mask xD
Demon negotiation is back and it’s a feature that the main series is more known for but was also featured in Persona 1 and 2 before it got dropped in 3 and 4 when the demons were dropped for Shadows. Once you knock down all demons by either hitting their weaknesses or landing a critical hit you’ll issue a Hold Up in which you have two choices,initiate an All-Out-Attack to deal massive damage or start a negotiation.Negotiation here is much more simplified than what was in previous SMT games especially P1 and 2.You can ask for three things:Ask for the demon to join you and become a Persona,ask for money or ask for an items.
If you choose to ask the demon to join you you’ll need to answer two questions and how each demons responds depend on the attitude listed on a demon when you examine them.You can ease the negotiation process even further by finishing the confidant links of your party member in which sometimes they’ll interrupt the conversation if you’re failing and force the demon to give you a second chance.
I love that they brought demon negotiation back because I couldn’t stand Shuffle Time from Persona 3 and 4 where the Persona you’d get is entirely dependent on a random drop at the end of a battle and that’s assuming you could get Shuffle Time in the first place so I’m so glad they brought it back heck the fact that demons are back as enemies is a huge plus for me as it’s better than the bland heartless-esque shadows from the previous two games.
Buuut I have a nitpick with the negotiation process in P5.Because of how much the process has been simplified,you’ll find it more likely to encounter demons that would respond to your answers the same way as a previous demon you just encountered a few moments ago especially since they don’t demand item and money like usual.That and the fact you can only issue a negotiation if you knocked the enemy down which makes trying to obtain low level Personas a bit of a pain if you’re looking for one to use in fusion.
In terms of length,Persona 5 clocks around 100 hours on average if you’re playing on normal difficulty or lower which is longer than Persona 4 by an additional 20 hours added.And while the game was paced much better than the previous two games and I personally didn’t find it an issue,I can see why the game’s length might feel a bit too bloated to some as there are some scenes and dialogue that the game could’ve done easily without like a lot of the phone group chats that most of the time have characters either summarizing what you just did or them saying the same thing a lot of times just with different sentences

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Slaughter your enemies with STYLE
Graphically speaking,the game utilizes a modified version of the engine Atlus used for their first HD outing Catherine(For Ps3 and Xbox 360) as the game was originally developed for Playstation 3 before the Ps4 version was in development.The game looks more or less the same between the two versions only that the Ps4 version plays in a higher resolution.While the game won’t set any records in polygon count or raw graphical power compared to other Ps4 games,Persona 5 totally makes up for it with it’s unique art design.
This game oozes with style in almost every corner.From the creative use of the game’s primary color choice of Red,White and Black,to the stylish battle UI,to the animated cutscenes(produced by Production I.G) especially the opening,to the finishing screens that each character has after an all-out-attack,to even the freakin menus including both your main menu and the menus for the Clinic and weapon shops.It nails the feeling of being in a comic book\manga and it’s so pleasing to look at especially when you traverse through the beautifully designed palaces.It’s the most beautiful looking Shin Megami Tensei game I’ve ever seen and I can’t wait to see what they can do in future titles like SMT 5 and hopefully Persona 6
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The soundtrack for Persona 5 is once again composed by long-time SMT\Persona composer Shoji Meguro who’s been composing for the franchise ever since Persona 1 and his first big contribution to Atlus with the soundtrack of SMT3 Nocturne and Persona 3. The game has around 110 tracks in total and my God......they nailed it.
This is,in my opinion,Meguro’s magnum opus and the best soundtrack that I’ve ever listened to in a Persona game by far.From the jazzy tunes like the Bank Palace’s theme “Price” to the amazingly catchy J-pop songs like the game’s main battle theme “The Last Surprise”, endgame songs like “Rivers in the Desert” to my favorite vocal theme in the entire game “Life will change” which plays in the last part of a palace leading to the treasure,to the soothing “Beneath The mask” theme that plays in Tokyo to emotional set pieces like “Regret” and “Alley Cat” ....the list goes on.It’s simply a masterpiece that I just keep humming even after turning the game off.
And the best part about it is that,it didn’t go overboard with the vocal themes like in the previous two games where they felt like they should shove Lotus Juice(the band that did the vocal songs for P3 and 4) songs into every part of the games.The fact that I can listen to The Last Surprise over and over again and still keep on humming it afterwards compared to “Mass Destruction” from P3 that I got so sick of after two times listening to or the tiring “Reach out to the Truth” from P4 is just a testament to the quality of Persona 5’s soundtrack and I can’t wait until I get my hands on a physical disc of it and download all of it on iTunes.

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A 100+ hours adventure that I hoped it would never end.It's just that good
What more can I just say that hasn’t already been said my many reviewers out there and by this overly long review that I just wrote?
Persona 5 is simply a masterpiece that is rare to find something that can compare to it within the genre besides examples like Xenoblade in both this and the previous generation of consoles.When I started playing this game I kept playing 12 hours a day everyday Until I finished the game within two weeks.Rarely can any other game keep me this hooked besides an expertly crafted game within the Shin Megami Tensei franchise and P5 is just another reason why I adore and love SMT so much.
Let me put it this way,my friend Pauric,who never played a Persona or SMT game before,managed to play and enjoy Persona 5 alongside me and we had a ton of fun conversing and theorizing about the game together.That’s how accessible this game is and I’m so glad Atlus is keeping the trend going ever since the release of Shin Megami Tensei IV
And unlike a certain other game that came out last year that was a decade in the making yet came out unfinished,Persona 5 is absolutely worth the wait through all the delays that happened.
I can’t stress enough how much of an excellent job the series’s director Katsura Hashino and his team have done in crafting this game.If you have a Playstation 3 or Playstation 4,please do yourself a favor and give this game a shot.It’s absolutely worth every penny of it’s price even if you’ve never played a Persona \SMT game before,as long as your approaching it with an open mind,you’ll be having the time of your life and the game will surely
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Edited by Dio Brando

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Great review!

One of the biggest issues I have with the game is that the camera while sneaking around can be painful to control, which sometimes ends with the enemy ambushing me because of the limited camera.

That, and that when there is a story event, the game forces you to skip the day entirely, including the evening actions(insert the Morgana memes here). In the previous games it mostly happened when you were exploring the dungeon, but here it is almost any story event, no matter how trivial it might be, thus making your schedule more tight with a poor excuse. 

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Great review!

One of the biggest issues I have with the game is that the camera while sneaking around can be painful to control, which sometimes ends with the enemy ambushing me because of the limited camera.

That, and that when there is a story event, the game forces you to skip the day entirely, including the evening actions(insert the Morgana memes here). In the previous games it mostly happened when you were exploring the dungeon, but here it is almost any story event, no matter how trivial it might be, thus making your schedule more tight with a poor excuse. 

Yeah but at least it's a day and not three months like in Persona 3 or weeks like in Persona 4

 

But I do agree on the camera and especially Morgana xD...........and that's why I went after Ms Kawakami early cuz her massage lets you continue the evening even after visiting a palace or mementos

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