20 YEARS OF GAMING PART 15

Playing this game this long after launch led me to hear a wide variety of opinions on it. So I can't say I went in with no expectations, but I did come out of it happy. This is a pretty solid strategy games, it has all the stuff that comes with a strong persona title, mainly a strong presentation and score. I also really like how they translated aspects of Persona, mainly the One More mechanic, into a turn-based strategy game. It allows me to bring out super long turns where I kill like 20 guys with strong positioning and that, combined with the excellent sound design makes mowing down enemies really satisfying.

So what's the problem? Well there's several. Mainly the issues come narratively, which is pretty important for a Persona Game. Now, I love Toshiro and Eri as characters, but the Phantom Thieves and most of the actual line-by-line dialogue are so undercooked it's actually crazy. The entire cast is flanderized and their presence is so unnecessary it's crazy. Additionally, the game definitely overstays its welcome and loses steam near the end. I was kinda ready for it to be over like 4 hours before it actually did. This also goes for the map design, which also falls off pretty badly near the end.

So what we have is a classic Bell-curve type game. It starts off a little slow, gets super strong as it goes along, but then loses steam near the end. It got very repetitive, even though I really enjoyed it for most of the playthrough. All I'll say is that at this point, I can safely say I'm over the phantom thieves and kiiiinda want them to move on soon. We can stop here guys.