Persona developers learn how to pace a video game challenge (impossible)
I have very mixed feelings about this game.
On one hand, it’s got some fantastic characters (especially Nanako and Dojima), a lot of memorable moments and some genuinely funny dialogue. Probably the only game to have a dialogue prompt to compliment another man’s cock after he lost his underwear - they were truly firing on all cylinders when they wrote that.
On the other hand, it’s bogged down by insanely boring, randomly generated dungeons with the most pathetic excuses for gameplay gimmicks known to man, designed to waste as much of your time as humanly possible.
Who could forget everybody’s favorite “floor that randomly teleports you”, or the classic “floor that requires you to backtrack two floors up”.
Then there’s the story. I don’t have any issue with the overall message, even if it’s not very deep, but the pacing of everything was agonizing to sit through. There’s so much downtime and zero urgency to anything. I swear to god, I could have started a family and had 3 children by the time Naoto recovered.
Despite trying to be a murder mystery, the characters find a grand total of 0 pieces of evidence pointing to anyone for 80 hours, as the game desperately chucks false suspects at you to try and pull some cheap “Gotcha!”s.
They fuck around for a whole year and then the game remembers that it's a JRPG in the final act and inflates its stakes from 0 to a trillion in like 30 minutes by doing your regular "God's going to destroy the world" shtick that felt extremely out of place and tacked on.
Plus the actual real suspect is kind of underdeveloped. Dude has like 5 minutes of screentime not counting their social link. Definitely better than Persona 5’s villain though (not a very high bar).
Just a random final thought: I think Persona games would benefit from shortening the social links. Make the max level be 8 or something like that. They always add so many side activities that I never touch because I want to finish the characters' stories. Like fuck no, I’m not going fishing - it’s Sunday, grandma is waiting for me.
I’m happy I played this, even if I didn’t really enjoy it that much. The endings for these games always get me weirdly emotional nonetheless. I like what the Persona games are trying to do. I’ll be there when Persona 6 releases in 30 years.
So, in conclusion:
I learn how to express my thoughts on JRPGs without writing a rambling, barely coherent wall of text challenge (impossible)
I have very mixed feelings about this game.
On one hand, it’s got some fantastic characters (especially Nanako and Dojima), a lot of memorable moments and some genuinely funny dialogue. Probably the only game to have a dialogue prompt to compliment another man’s cock after he lost his underwear - they were truly firing on all cylinders when they wrote that.
On the other hand, it’s bogged down by insanely boring, randomly generated dungeons with the most pathetic excuses for gameplay gimmicks known to man, designed to waste as much of your time as humanly possible.
Who could forget everybody’s favorite “floor that randomly teleports you”, or the classic “floor that requires you to backtrack two floors up”.
Then there’s the story. I don’t have any issue with the overall message, even if it’s not very deep, but the pacing of everything was agonizing to sit through. There’s so much downtime and zero urgency to anything. I swear to god, I could have started a family and had 3 children by the time Naoto recovered.
Despite trying to be a murder mystery, the characters find a grand total of 0 pieces of evidence pointing to anyone for 80 hours, as the game desperately chucks false suspects at you to try and pull some cheap “Gotcha!”s.
They fuck around for a whole year and then the game remembers that it's a JRPG in the final act and inflates its stakes from 0 to a trillion in like 30 minutes by doing your regular "God's going to destroy the world" shtick that felt extremely out of place and tacked on.
Plus the actual real suspect is kind of underdeveloped. Dude has like 5 minutes of screentime not counting their social link. Definitely better than Persona 5’s villain though (not a very high bar).
Just a random final thought: I think Persona games would benefit from shortening the social links. Make the max level be 8 or something like that. They always add so many side activities that I never touch because I want to finish the characters' stories. Like fuck no, I’m not going fishing - it’s Sunday, grandma is waiting for me.
I’m happy I played this, even if I didn’t really enjoy it that much. The endings for these games always get me weirdly emotional nonetheless. I like what the Persona games are trying to do. I’ll be there when Persona 6 releases in 30 years.
So, in conclusion:
I learn how to express my thoughts on JRPGs without writing a rambling, barely coherent wall of text challenge (impossible)