Persona 5 (PS4) Review
Persona 5 (PS4) 7/10
Hello everyone and welcome to my first Persona game. Persona 5 was released on September 15, 2016 then brought over to the West in early 2017, with the game being released on both PS3 and PS4. The game is developed by Atlus and P Studio and published by Sega.
When this game first dropped, it took over the gaming world. Persona 5 was EVERYWHERE. I’ve been a long time Persona fan ever since playing this game. After 5, I went over to 3 then 4 then back to Royal and Strikers. I even played the fucking Dancing games. But before we get to all of that, let’s take a dive into the original Persona 5. With this review, I’ll only be going over the original and not Royal. I’ll be touching Royal at a later date. Let’s begin.
The story follows our main character (who you get to name yourself, but I named him Akira Kurusu). After being framed for assault and being labeled with a criminal record, Akira Kurusu moves to Yongen-Jaya, Tokyo under the supervision of his new guardian Sojiro Sakura, who owns and manages a coffee shop named Leblanc. On his first day to his new school, Shujin Academy, he runs into fellow students Ryuji Sakamoto and Ann Takamaki. Ryuji shows Akira the way to the school when something weird happens: they end up in a different world that looks exactly like the real world except for one difference: the school had been replaced by a castle. Completely confused, both of them go inside to investigate. A guard captures them and they're imprisoned. The gym teacher, Kamoshida, shows up wearing regal clothing. Ryuji asks him what's going on and one thing leads to another and suddenly both characters are about to die. Akira rebels against the situation and something happens within him. His rebellious spirit comes forth and unleashes its powers. After taking care of the situation, they lock up Kamoshida in the cell. Both characters then start wandering around trying to find a way out when they find a talking cat named Morgana in a cell. After negotiating with him, they release him and follow his lead. As they travel around the castle Morgana tells them about their surroundings and what's going on. He explains that the duo had entered a cognitive world called the Metaverse and where they're at is called a Palace, more specifically Kamoshida's Palace. A Palace is the ruler's cognitive view on a place (in this instance Kamoshida views the school as his castle because he believes he rules over the school). What Akira had summoned was called a Persona, the manifestation of one's rebellious spirit (similar to that of a Stand from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure). After escaping from the castle, Akira and Ryuji ditch Morgana and head back into the real world via a mysterious phone app. Back in the real world, some shit is going down at the school. The gym teacher and former Olympic medalist Kamoshida has been abusing his students and no one's saying anything about it. It gets to the point that Ann’s best friend Shiho tries to kill herself. This plus an imminent expulsion pushes Akira, Morgana, Ryuji, and Ann to enter Kamoshida's Palace and steal his Treasure. A Treasure is the Palace ruler's source of distortion. Stealing this will force the ruler to have a change of heart and atone for his sins. After successfully stealing it, Kamoshida has a change of heart and confesses all of his crimes. The gang then goes out for dinner to celebrate their success. While eating, the gang officially form The Phantom Thieves and vow to reform society, one corrupt adult at a time. This spawns the rest of the game with each new target they get a new member to the group.
The story for this game is absolutely phenomenal. There's so much depth and so many layers to each character and situation. Every single character in this game, whether they're main characters or side characters, have the utmost care and detail put into them. Ryuji's familial struggles, academic struggles and track team skirmishes; Yusuke's art slump, Makoto's need to broaden her views, Kawakami's financial problems, Sojiro's hidden past, Yoshida's troubled career, everyone is fun and interesting to learn about. I did find Haru to be the least interesting for me (it might be because I wasn't able to hang out with her).
The main story for this game was surprisingly very deep, going into many societal problems and personal issues that each and every one of us has to deal with. I love the idea of "changing a person's heart" as everybody is worthy of redemption.
The graphics and art style are amazing. The game is in traditional Japanese anime art style. Usually with these types of games, the 3D models for the characters look like garbage, but this game does a splendid job at making them look nice.
There are a couple of different cutscene types. There's the fully 2D animated cutscene, fully 3D animated cutscene, 3D models in the base game engine with voices, and 3D models in the base game engine with no voices. These different types of cutscenes usually signify its importance. These different cutscenes confused me at first, but I got used to it.
The music is phenomenal too. Easily one of the best soundtracks ever. The jazzy, funk beats fit perfectly with this game and it helps bring this story to life. The rock, metal-ish tunes also fit perfectly for the intense scenes and battle. I can honestly listen to this soundtrack all the time. I gotta say my favorite song is "Rivers in the Desert" (Shido's boss theme).
The battle mechanics is what truly makes this game unique and different from other JRPGs. The combat is of course turn based. You can have a max of 4 people in your main party, while everyone else is your backup. In between fights, you can switch who can be in your main party. The combat system is actually fairly similar to Pokemon. There are several types of Personas depending on which Arcana they fall under. I'll explain this in a little bit. There's also different types of attacks (wind, fire, electric, ice, nuclear, psychokinesis, bless, cursed, physical, and gun). Each Persona is weak or strong against one of these elements. Depending on if you hit a Persona with an attack that it's weak to or land a critical hit, you can perform a 1 More (an extra turn). If all the enemies have been knocked down, you can perform an All Out Attack which deals massive damage to all foes. There's a pattern to every fight and it's basically a puzzle. It's an easy to learn combat system but it's also subtly complex, which I was not expecting. Kudos to the designers of this excellent system.
So in the game, one of the main aspects of it are the relationships that Akira will make. There's more to these relationships than just world building, character development, and having a girlfriend. Each character represents an arcana (Takamaki is the Lovers arcana, Mishima is the Moon arcana, Takemi is the Death arcana, Morgana is the Magician arcana, etc). Each arcana represents a card from a Tarot deck. These arcanas coincide with the types of Personas in the game (Arsene is part of the Fool arcana, Kaguya is part of the Moon arcana, etc). By forming these relationships with people, the higher the strength and more experience a Persona will gain. And there's more to this, too.
In the game, you can fuse Personas together to create better, stronger Personas. Depending on the resulting Persona's arcana, you can get an arcana burst. An arcana burst is a massive extra experience gain for the fused Persona. Making and strengthening relationships is vital for making powerful Personas. I really like this system and the way it intertwines with other game mechanics so smoothly. I was kinda skeptical about it at first, but I grew to love it.
There's another plus to keeping your relationships. Every time you strengthen your bond with someone, you'll get a rank up in their arcana. Ranking these up will grant you perks in and out of battle. Like for instance if you keep hanging out with Takemi, she'll open up more of her stock to you. If you hang out with one of the Phantom Thieves members, you'll unlock battle perks that really help out during fights (such as baton passes and follow ups).
There's also social stats in the game. There are five stats: Knowledge, Guts, Proficiency, Kindness, and Charm. You level up these stats by doing certain activities in the world (studying, reading books, playing video games, taking care of your plant, making infiltration tools, playing Shogi with Hifumi, giving out info to Ohya, etc.) Leveling up these stats is crucial in advancing in certain relationships.
The game is also a real life simulator. You'll be following a tight schedule of going to school and planning on what to do during your free time. Will you go to your job or will you hang out with Ryuji? Will you hit the batting cages or go study? All of these options will force you to choose wisely with what you do in your free time as you only have so much time. The game is on a constant time limit with heist deadlines and other activities so you have to spend your time wisely. While I did enjoy this part of the game to an extent, it is flawed. There are moments in the game where you'll go days without free exploration. Let's say you rented a DVD and you have to return it in a week. I watched the DVD and planned on returning it the next day. Because of how the game was designed, I couldn't return the DVD before the deadline. I was 10 days late returning it because the game wouldn't let me leave the house because I was "too tired", causing me to pay 3000+ yen in late fees. This was absolute bullshit and a major flaw within this game.
I can't really find many flaws with the game (besides what I just said lol). The life simulator is flawed and should be fixed up. There can be bullshit moments within battle (instant one shots that have no right being that accurate, input delay causing you to pick the wrong target which could cause you to lose the fight and die, and just straight up overpowered basic enemies). I do wish they also developed a couple of the side characters better such as Shiho (hell, they should’ve made Shiho into a confidant).
Overall, this was a fantastic game. Once I was finished with it, I clocked in 103 hours (and I know for a fact I didn’t do everything). I definitely recommend this game to everyone, but be aware this is a pretty big game. Also, please get the Personas DLC which allows you to get Personas from the previous games and use them in battle. These Personas are a literal game changer and make the game a whole lot easier (or don’t if you want to stick to a better challenge). Anyway thanks for reading and watch out for annoying cats that dictate your sleep schedule.
I’ll see you next time.
This is Zorgak, signing off.
P.S. I am well aware I glossed over certain aspects of the game as well as not fully critiquing it. I originally wrote this when I was in my Persona obsession chapter of my life (2019), so things are going to be a bit biased. I did spruce up some of my feelings, but I wanted to retain what I felt when I first played this. As for an actual review, my Persona 5 Royal review will be better (which I’ll drop sometime in the future).
