For a game that is definitely outdated by today’s standards, the gameplay is still good just a bit clunky and awkward at times. The skills Frank gets are fun to use and add a lot more variety to the game, but don’t be fooled as there is obvious better weapons and not everything is equal in this game(the gun you get from special forces is crazy broken). The story for dead rising is honestly not that good and carlito is such a terrible villain and his motives for doing what he does is laughable at how he came to the conclusion that he did tbh. A lot of people in this game also act super weird and Frank our main character always throws me off with what he says. Like it could be a serious or sad moment and he shows no signs of empathy or has his camera out lmao. He gets better later in the game but the way he acted shocked me even if he is a photographer. All of the side bosses are good for the purpose they serve, and almost all of them are just so over the top that it’s funny and leaves them as memorable. Also the survivor ai is absolutely terrible in this game even knowing all of the mechanics. But anyways, Isabella Brad and Jessie were are fine but the way Jessie died was a lil corny. It serves as a great shock and the story really picks up from what was a lackluster one when she turns so I take it as a even trade off. So overall, if the last stretch of this game didn’t happen I probably would’ve gave this a 4 or 5 out of 10 rating.

Overall: 6/10

SPOILERSSSSS: Yea it’s amazing. Great story, great themes, mostly good cast, great peaks and fun gameplay. As a fan of Pokémon, turn based gameplay has never been a issue for me, but even I will admit that it gets tedious and boring at times. And I could definitely feel that in P4G as well, my only other experience with persona games up to this point. So how does P5 improve on this aspect? With gameplay that is smooth and fast. Having equipped a auto-ma character in your first slot, you can already get rid of one turn off buffing, not to mention great accessories that can give you automatic charge of your first magic attack. But even before that we don't need that. It is essentially a expansion on Persona gameplay but with much more added to it, with showtimes being great ultimate attack moves that deal great amounts of damage, and personally I loved the animations on them and didn’t skip them ever unless it was including Haru cuz I dont fuck with her tbh. But there’s also the additions of gun attacks, automatic gun down shots, entering gunfire before the fight starts, being able to switch party members(should be obvious but hey p4 didn’t have it) and much more like psychic and nuke types. This isn’t even to add in my opinion the best new feature for gameplay, baton pass, which just adds to the fluidity and smoothness of the gameplay.

So with general gameplay out of the way, how is gameplay difficulty? Fairly easily ngl. There is multitude of reasons for this, like Mishima’s whole entire existence and Jose mementos cognition exp change, as well as quality of life changes like just being able to freely run over/kill any enemy who is significantly weaker than you, but yea the games easy. There is also the easy buffing system(Teddie lowkey carried in that aspect for P4) and the absurd amount of broken moves, even without using dlc personas. There is one fight that is mildly annoying, like really annoying, and it’s Okumura, a fight that gets easier on a fucking harder difficulty. I stood with my guns and beat him on normal but it took 4 tries cuz after the first try where I ran out of time I figured if I wasn’t perfect I might as well die in order to save time and luckily I learned some good lessons from that fight. Those lessons were 1. Single target moves covering a weakness is way better for baton passing 2. Triple shot is fucking broken at that point in the game and basically a good ass move forever 3. Haru and Morgana suck ass at dealing damage because I didn’t rank them up by playing darts yet. So all in all, even that fight with decent prep probably shouldn’t take no more than 2 tries. The only other time I died was at kamoshida boss, and that’s really only because I didn’t know shiho was weak to literally everything, so I played it safe and that volleyball attack is no joke that shit kills you pretty easily at that stage in the game. But overall 4 deaths is not too shabby I would say, and it equals to my P4 deaths, but the final fight in that game was way harder than the final base game boss fight in P5. I would say it was a decent amount harder than Maruki’s too, but Maruki ain’t no slouch, he’s just very easy with buffs and debuffs while exposing baton pass features for crazy damage. Pop a debilitate on his persona and you don’t even gotta guard for his build up attack lol. Anyways yes it’s a easy game, but that doesn’t take away from the experience at all for me, even for the fights that are supposed to be tough, Aka the bosses, it’s fun for me to do buffing/debuffing/charge and then seeing these huge HP sponges take 1K+ damage. Big numbers on the screen are so satisfying to see idk, I think futaba agrees with me doe.

Onto one of the biggest things going for this game and an area I can confidently say it’s a 10/10 in, the aesthetics and design. The red and black color way with the jazzy soundtrack combined with Joker’s swagger of a character, bag on shoulder and hands in his pockets make for a really great, smoothing and charming atmosphere. In addition to that, it’s very smooth and modern, which is most obviously seen in it’s game menu. I was actually overwhelmed at first by the menu, there’s so much going on with joker moving and interacting with the screen while you press it, but now that I’m used to it, it really is just clean transitions that help the atmosphere and swagger of the game and of Joker. The confidant screen is also amazing, with a dynamic perspective of Joker with his back turned to the confidant that you are currently on.

With general gameplay, difficulty, and aesthetics out the way, I want to focus in on the palaces. As for general thoughts, the only thing connecting them design wise is all of them having will seeds I think so yea, will seeds are pretty cool, nothing else to say about them. None of them were particularly hard to get at all, but they were fun little mini detours to heal your sp, but most importantly get a really good accessory for if you showed it to Jose. Without using dlc, they were the best accessories you could get so I ran them pretty much all game.

The first palace of the game is kamoshida’s castle, which ironically is an actual palace. It is definitely one of my least favorite palaces from p5 yet it would still be the best dungeon in p4 without a doubt, design wise atleast. I really liked how we first entered the palace but the underground area kinda was useless after that besides going in again to see how kamoshida viewed his volleyball players as slaves, so it’s understandable but I would’ve liked there for more things to do underground. Kamoshida actually has a pretty fun puzzle to me, nothing crazy and pretty simple but putting the books in the right places was fun and fit thematically with kamoshida and the rest of the cast, showing how depraved that boy kamoshida really was. It also being the starter dungeon has way more perks that lets it stand out to other palaces in the game, like visiting the palace so many times and also having 3 party members and 2 persona awakenings, which are badass as fuck btw. Technically 3 persona awakenings cuz joker also got his at the start, so that’s a huge advantage as awakenings are some of the most hype moments in the game and you get super excited to see the design of the persona and your new party member kick some ass. Besides that, the boss fight was harder than it should’ve been for me, resulting in one of my four deaths due to playing too passive. All in all, the focus on Kamoshida and him being the only person who was an enemy who had a palace at our school gives him bonus points and makes him far more evil, or seem to be more evil, than others you face later on down the road.

The next palace is Madarame and the design and atmosphere of this palace is amazing. The time we first enter we have to sneak into the main part and the nauseating gold all over is a nice touch to his parallel in the real world of a humble artist. The puzzles were a bit annoying tbh, especially the finding of the real sayuri amongst fake ones but that’s really the only complaint I have about this one. The new elements like lasers and going through paintings to progress was really cool and getting keycards off of armed guards by defeating them or just listening in on them just made getting the code a little cooler. The boss fight with Madarame was also great, with the first stage of the paintings just a teaching point on targeting the most important enemies first, and also to remind you to not just mindlessly spam attacks that hit all, and then Madarame boss fight while extremely easy was just fun when he created enemies of all one type and you blow them away. Just a fun elemental battle tbh.

The next palace is kaneshiro and just like always the build up is great for this one too with the makoto stalking and her finding us out and then being stupid af and baiting herself into some mafia dude. But honestly kaneshiro is soooo disappointing, he is a fucking mafia dude, decently high up and he’s a bitch. Also he is only representing gluttony because he’s fucking fat lmao, in the end he was a scaredy-cat and shit his pants when we beat his ass. But for general design the floating bank is really cool design and I really enjoyed going through this bank, especially nearing the end with the code puzzles and the shifting bank vaults. Makoto has one of the best awakenings, a frigging motorcycle, and yea she was a permanent member after that, not to mention she was the only other aoe healer besides weak ass morgana. Kaneshiro boss fight seems very big in scale and when I first attack and saw how much health the piggy bank had I was a little scared, but he’s really not that bad and giving him a good item will keep him occupied in that form. With him and the two guards that was fun but overall just beat the guards ass first or inflict them with a status ailment and then attack kaneshiro.

Futaba’s palace is unique because she becomes a party member later on but once again the build up is amazing I mean the fact she hacked us and wanted to test our ability to then finding out she’s sojiro’s daughter was great. Also I haven’t mentioned it but this is like the last palace where I can see a clear connection to the theme of it and the personas within the palace. This is obviously the most in your face theme wise, being Egyptian and one of the strongest personas in the palace is Anubis and the coffin persona so yea. The palace music is banging and the puzzles are some of my favorite in the games, especially the one with the tombs and the red and blue color coding it actually worked my brain a bit. I think super emotionally driven dungeons are the best in persona(notably why I love Marie’s dungeon the most from p4g) and futaba plays right into that with her wanting us to kill her “evil”. I really love how I’m the final boss fight it isn’t palace futaba, it’s her perception of how she thinks her mother saw her as, and what she accepted herself to be, a burden. Palace futaba actually guides her to face that perception and help us and herself overcome that, leading to one of the most emotionally driven moments in the game. Also it was cool how we left the main palace design and went to the nearby town, I would love for persona 6 and beyond to expand upon that, although shido dungeon is pretty long so it may have mixed reviews. And although I already talked about the boss fight, I’ll just say this is definitely the easiest one💀.

Oh boy, Okumura is… Okumura. Tbh the whole morgana and ryuji beef was pretty stupid and that’s what lead to the build up of haru and all the other bullshit to the palace so yea. At first I thought Ryuji was being a dickhead but now looking back I kinda feel like it was just friendly banter from him. Not to say it wasn’t valid for morgana to feel that way, whether someone is joking or not if it’s something you are insecure about it will still continue to bite at you. And with morgana’s role in the team dimishing and him admitting to it and being sad/scared about it, Ryuji wasn’t helping. Still it was overblown and started acting out of character because of it, leading to the worst introduction and worst character of the main group, Haru. Just why, why is she in the game bro, she is added too late for us to care and they didn’t even do her the justice of letting us have a interaction with her before she joins like they do with Akechi and Sumire, just like two dialogues of her on the beach and shots of her in the background once or twice. And then when you do get to meet her she’s the most plain Jane person ever and she crying cuz she gotta get married. Besides the coffee she wants to make due to her grandpa starting from humble backgrounds, I could not name you anything else interesting about her character. Also I hate character move pools like her, like in Pokémon with mixed attack sweepers she’s kinda like that but for gun and psych and I think she can even run a third kinda of build with the -karn abilities. So actually that’s cool ig I’m just hating rn. Since I talked about her here I won’t be talking about her when I go over characters and social links lol. So back to Okumura, my least favorite dungeon if you haven’t guessed yet, it was overall just a fine experience until up to the boss fight. The factory parts were cool, and I know some people struggle with the puzzle near the end with going into like space vents or whatever, but it was fairly simple and took like 5 minutes for me. So the boss fight, aka the hardest ducking fight in the game for some reason, I already talked about so I’ll just say it was fucking annoying. The aftermath of this boss fight was pretty insane btw, with akechi really putting a bullet in bro and then the press conference where he fucking died.

The casino!!!!!! Sae, makoto’s sister, surprisingly had a palace and it caught me off guard when first mentioned. And then you start going through the palace and you start realizing, wait this is where the game first started. And then you realize this shit is gonna be so so good. The walk into the palace…. Great. The music, great. The puzzles, great. The whole atmosphere and the rigging of the casino games as well as going in the back rooms to put it in your favor, amazing. Akechi joining up with y’all, amazing even if his first persona is a bit goofy. The boss fight all in all was a bit disappointing tbh, especially with the cool concept of rolling onto an element and the rigging within a fight, but you soon find out that makoto’s sister is chump change. Then the whole section after that is just peak, including the fake assassination set up and everything.

Shido’s palace is fucking amazing and I didn’t even realize it doesn’t have as much love as I originally thought. I don’t think people think it’s bad per say, but the parts that they don’t like and ultimately lead to the palace not being top 3 for people I didn’t expect. The common complaints are being too long of a palace and the mouse system, but for me personally I loved long dungeons and I loved futaba’s palace and wish that it expanded on the town and made it even longer. Maybe it’s weird, but I also search every corner and fight every enemy I see too so my sp was going down in shido’s palace but that’s why the mouse system was great for me, the cheese gave me the sp I needed plus the backup member gaining sp perk. I found the mouse system very easy to toggle on or off as well for needed purposes and going thru vents so yea it was never a problem for me. And getting caught by shadows in p5 is like entirely your fault 99% of the time due to it being so easy to avoid/sneak up on them. I really loved how this dungeon also made everyone useful, which was very needed for some characters like Ann and Haru. Makoto and futaba were always useful and helping out, and you could assume Yusuke was always useful as well due to his skill cards ability. Although you have to fight all the mfs anyways, it was nice to see the idea of a plan and most of them getting a letter before the fight even starts. But onto the akechi fight, it honestly wasn’t hard at all and that kinda sucks since the reveal was super cool but it is what it is. Then the ending with akechi’s sacrifice got me feeling sad but it was all good brodie would come back soon. Shido’s boss fight was actually a decently hard fight with him having hella health and doing for bit of damage, and I like at the end when he separates us from our members and makes it a 1v1, letting us beat the niggas ass of who ruined our life. The ost is also a banger so that helps. If you use joker as a crazy damage dealer the 1v1 probably wasn’t that hard but in that point in the game I was using mid ass sonas so I almost died in that fight, which lead me to realize I had to make some demon personas from here out.

Mementos is a snooze fest ngl, the place looks really cool but the puzzles suck and the fights may have been the easiest in the palaces so far. I guess it was due to the final boss of the original game being on the other side but yea, until you reach the cup mementos isn’t that fun. That’s when the crazy ass shit happens, everybody fades away and then you retrieve everybody back and you get ready to fight again. The boss fight was actually really satisfying to do well in and this fight is really when I perfected my p5 craft. I was looking like prime mj and lebron out there with my auto-ma ryuji makoto set up with Ann concentrate. It was a beautiful and glorious sight to behold. They faked us out with some morgana fade away and then we went to Christmas with one of your shawtys cuz akechi turned himself in, which should’ve been the first red flag yk.

Maruki’s palace is a place we had went to before, where we saw sumire’s fake persona awakening and that’s about it. But good god is the atmosphere on this palace insane, with the simple but menacing yet calming theme music, to the all white pure of intentions walls all around, representing a clinic and the idea of bettering others, it’s all just so good. It presents a good challenge at first due to you akechi and sumire being the only playable characters for the first run in, and then akechi and joker until you reach a certain point against sumire. But yea the peaks are undeniable in this palace/arc, the reveal, the maruki tapes lying around, the sumire twist, the squad joining back up and not to mention the boss fight. The puzzles are also pretty cool and you can read up on their symbolism and what they represent, which adds to the theme of maruki. Back to the boss fight, it was the best feeling of control ever. I never felt like I was gonna die but I was still so invested in the stakes of what would happen. I felt like I really needed to win this fight. The tentacle first part is ironically the hardest part of the fight, the other stages while grand and intense, is pretty easy if you know what you’re doing. The camera angle when joker is at the head of maruki’s monster persona and it tells you to shot, damn that shit is good. Akechi being there in general also just felt so damn good. When maruki and you scrap after he pulls you down, that whole section made me realize how impactful joker could be as a character, even if he barely speaks or anything. And it is because he symbolizes something, he symbolizes hope. It is some of the strongest representation of hope I have ever seen in media and I didn’t realize it till Maruki mentioned it. “Your eyes are as bright and honest as ever…”

And with that I was gonna do the characters and social links but I think I waited too long to write this review. After the first 1,000 words I stopped due to stupidly writing on the website first and then losing it all so I had already written 1,000 words before. Now my brain isn’t flowing like it was when I first beat the game and decided to write like i did. I continued the palace part just due to feeling like this game deserved a review, and one that goes over the game’s sorry itself a bit more. If I was in prime I could’ve wrote even 2,000 more words but I’m gonna call it here. Basically I love persona 5 and almost everything about it. A quick shoutout to my favorite characters since I won’t do a write-up on them(also shame on you Altus for not giving voice acting for the 3rd level personas). Shoutout to
Joker:kinda weird since he’s a self insert but he deserves it
Ryuji: a idiotic hothead and simple minded but his hearts in the right place and he’s passionate
Makoto: relatable aah nigga, listening to the adults in life, doing good in school and thinking everything will work out for you when you don’t even know what you want yourself. But at the end of the day knows when things are wrong and becomes almost like a different person sometimes.
Futaba: relatable aah nigga pt2, idea something is wrong with you, gamer nerd and niche humor(funniest character in the game btw) also hates going outside
Akechi: I don’t even know what to say about him, just a very interesting character who had an unfortunate outcome within his life, possibly best dynamic with joker and third semester just showed how much of a real nigga he was
Sumire: honestly underrated and could be considered best female character in the game, important central part of marukis philosophy, she was seen as the nice girl who was basically perfect but deep down it was just who she wanted to be, there was cracks within her persona throughout the game and her reveal was geniuely amazing.
Maruki: great throughout the entire game, loved his social link and really felt like he was going over interesting topics and concepts in them. Added in with third semester and you might get the goat of the game lol.
Sojiro: While I do prefer Dojima, sojiro is a cool guardian figure who softens up on you over time.
Takemi: goated

Overall rating:9.75/10