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A fun, quaint game that also shows you some of the history of the gaming industry.

Before I begin, here's a few disclaimers:
-I played the game on the PC version from the Xbox store; this version contained all the DLC Personas by default.
-I played it on normal, as I did with my first runs of P3P and P4G.
-For those that still don't have a clue, Katsura Hashino still sucks, and the only two gay characters in this game are part of a sexual assault scene. The problematic stuff isn't as common as it was in 4, but that one scene could be worse than any of the problematic elements of the other two games, which is especially jarring in a game with overall relatively progressive themes. If this makes you want to not buy the game altogether, keep that in mind.

TL;DR
Good game, way too easy, good writing at the start, okay writing towards the end, and Akechi's far and away the best character, while much of the cast suffers from being bland.

Introduction

Now, lets get a few other things out of the way. If this is your first Persona game, these games are essentially part dungeon crawling RPG and part life-sim with an overarching story. If you've played any of the Yakuza/LAD games, they're sort of similar in this aspect, with Persona's fundamental difference being its use of a calendar system making you have to time and plan your actions accordingly. Next, if you don't like it when things feel very "anime," this game is probably not for you. Basically, its got some power of friendship and all the other baggage; not necessarily a good or bad thing, but if its something you don't like, the game's probably not for you.

Gameplay

So, lets actually talk about how I felt about the game, starting with my feelings towards the life-sim aspects, which in this entry, might be at their best. The game gives you a ton to do, more so than the other entries, all with a world that you can walk around in an explore. Its got all the little details of past entries, like listening in to people talking, and more, plus more new minigames than the other games.

Not everything is sunshine and rainbows here though, and its in regards to one of the most important parts to the life-sim: social links, or in the case of Persona 5, confidants; these are basically friendship points you get each time you talk with someone that maxes out at the 10th rank. I don't think the game has many, or possibly any, outwardly "bad" confidants, but its also lacking in any confidants that I could really call fantastic; most of them just feel decidedly average, and I would probably lend a lot of that to this game's larger cast not having enough as far as interesting flaws and quirks. You don't have social links like 4's Ai Ebihara where you can fuck up the social link by enabling a shitty choice by the character, you're not getting social links like Shinjiro's from P3P's FEMC route where you see a softer side to a rough and gruff individual that tries to stay far away from you, even during the social link, and you don't get stuff like the dying young man from the same game that really encapsulate all the game's themes in a single social link. Much of them are just, generally good people have a few external conflicts that Joker helps solve by eventually changing someone's heart or just talking to your friend (we'll get into the changing heart stuff later).

The exception to all of this is Royal exclusive confidant Goro Akechi, and for a simple reason: he's the only character in the game that feels truly gray and muddied, at least in the entirety of his screen time. There's another character that's pretty gray, but they go from being a character that is liked to a character that is an enemy in much more of a coin flip, not that it was an undeserved coin flip, but one that had much less nuance around it compared to Akechi. Its weird including all this describing a confidant, which is supposed to be a side section, but you really won't be getting the most out of this character if you don't do his confidant. But to say all that shortly, his confidant plays very differently from the rest of the cast, and just makes him stand out in a sea of otherwise mostly bland relationships.

One last complaint for the confidants I have as far as writing, is how many adults your teenage protagonist can romance. They all come off as kind of creepy, with the worst offenders of these being the ability to romance your teacher; the other adults have issues for this, but that dynamic's certainly the most egregious of them. To those that say, just don't romance the adults, which I didn't, that is not the issue; when it is possible for your teacher character to romance their student, you're just making the perception of that character actively worse. It would've been so much better if these slots for romances were switched to characters like Ryuji and Yusuke, but I'd be beating a dead horse if I was to go on again about how Atlus thinks its better to have a teacher be a pedophile than it is for your protagonist to be in a gay relationship. Hopefully things get better in 6 with Hashino out of the picture.

My final note on confidants are the confidant abilities; basically at certain ranks of these, you will gain special perks that apply in palace's, in the life simulator, or both; basically all of them are stuff that make the game easier. Not inherently bad, but the easier part may be a problem.

Speaking of that problem, lets talk about the other half of the gameplay: the dungeon crawling RPG combat. Its very similar to the other Persona games, in that each combatant has weakness and resistances you need to learn to exploit, so you can eventually get your enemies into a knocked down state, made easier with "Baton Passes," which effectively let you chain attacks between different party members, amplifying their strength with each one you pull off temporarily. Once you do get everyone into a knocked down state, assuming you didn't just kill them all already, this game changes things up: instead of having just an all attack option for immediately ending the fight (most of the time), you can now negotiate with Persona's, asking them to either join your cause and adding them to your inventory of Persona's, give you money, or give you an item. Its a logical shift from the shuffle time mechanic of past games that feels much, much more rewarding, and is probably the most welcome change for the combat experience.

Now, as fun as the combat can be in this game, it has a very, very big problem: its too easy. That's not to say my previous experiences with the games weren't easy; I wouldn't call P3P or P4G difficult games, to be blunt, but there's just something about P5R that's even more ridiculous of a cakewalk, as there's just too many tools handed to you to make the game easy, the most offensive of these probably being the ability to unlock Persona's that are a higher level than what you are. It isn't that hard to stock pile a bunch of money, and if you just coerce some enemies into giving you a lot of cash, you'll be casually playing around with level 65 personas on your level 30 character. I understand why they wanted to try something like this, but the execution is just off and ruins any challenge this game has; this is exacerbated by the fact that the game isn't even really difficult using normal Personas. Its a tool that solves a problem that did not have to be solved.

Next, as far as the biggest change that this game had gameplay wise more than anything else, was the method to navigating dungeons. Gone are the procedurally generated dungeons of the previous two titles, and in are relatively linear palaces with numerous puzzles and enemies to navigate around, with their fair share of mini bosses. Now, while P4 did have some fixed dungeon floors, none of them are to the level of detail you'll find here. There's just a much more rewarding exploration experience that is just better suited to what P5's dungeons go for, as they're an exploration into an individual's psyche. Having that be a meticulously designed linear level rather than a procedurally generated set of floors is much better for that; the procedurally generated stuff is honestly best suited for P3 where it just makes sense that everything would be randomized. My only complaint to this method is that it probably makes NG+ a worse experience, as you won't really be surprised by anything.

The last thing I want to cover gameplay wise is mementos; for those of you that played P3, its just Tartarus, except you drive around, and there's no mini bosses.... kinda. You get requests to deal with mini bosses in the area over the course of the game, but these are all optional. Navigating around mementos is much faster than Tartarus as well despite the amount of floors, as once again, you can just drive around and evade enemies. Its overall very, very okay, but it does pale in comparison to the game's palaces, as the environments in this area in the game are very, very similar from start to finish.

Presentation

I'll be brief here: the sprite work is beautiful, the music is as great as always, and the game avoids aging poorly with its approach to anime stylized graphics. There are a few funky stuff with the models, mainly with how jarring the gap between some character's eyes can be, but the game usually doesn't draw too much attention to that stuff. I don't think its my favorite Persona soundtrack, but its got its moments for sure. The performances from the entire voice cast is also very, very good, and I have zero complaints from them. Ryuji's performance is surprisingly up there as far as my favorites from this game. I think Ann has some really good moments early on, as Erika Harlacher just has this unmatched ability to make her characters emotionally explode, but most of her shining moments are in the early game, unfortunately. DC Douglas also deserves a shoutout for his performance as Kamoshida; he is the first villain in the game, and sets a high standard that I don't think the game ever manages to reach again, both from a performance and narrative standpoint.

Characters

I touched on this a little already with the confidants, though those interactions aren't the end all be all for this game's characterizations, though they have similar issues. Most party members follow this pattern: when they're introduced, they have some kind of interesting flaw or quirk, or just element to their character or dynamic to someone else that you want to see more of, but over the course of the game, those elements fade away and most of their screen times feels dedicated to saying how awesome Joker (the protagonist) is. Stuff like Ryuji and Ann's brother-sister dynamic and Makoto's empathy and care towards Futaba in the latter's early appearances stand out to me, and are all things get lost as the characters stick around. Despite this, I wouldn't call any of these members bad characters, even with Haru being a little bland and under characterized, with a single exception: Morgana. He doesn't have the same problem where he fades into the background, but instead has the issue of just being really, really annoying; if I was to make a comparison, he's a combination of the worst parts of Rise and Teddie, except he's not flirting with the protagonist and is instead flirting with Ann, while lacking any of the things that made Teddie funny, that being his disconnect from humanity, which Morgana has none of. I would not even mind the character's attitude that much if the first scene where we see Morgana being horny is over a cognitive version of Ann that represent's how an adult, Kamoshida, wishes to exploit the character; there is a time and place for the childish character fawns over woman in bikini anime scenes, and that was the absolute worst timing for that, with nothing following that incident repairing the character. He's just constantly annoying, and is a center to one of the worse Persona angst arcs, though me going into details in that heads into mid-game spoiler territory.

There are two other characters that follow very different dynamics from the other members of the Phantom Thieves, though calling them members would be a stretch. I've already touched on most of what needs to be said on Akechi, and touching any further here would probably go into spoiler territory, so just trust me when I say he is far and away the best member of the cast. As for Yoshizawa, aka, the game's spin-off girl, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the character's later developments. She isn't much of interest till we reach the Royal parts of the game, but has some neat elements there that would land me into spoiler territory. I don't think its as good as Akechi or anything, nor do I like it as much as my other favorite member of the party, Ryuji, but its definitely a fine change of pace.

Story

The other half of the writing that needs to be covered is the story; I will be limited here as I want to keep spoilers to a minimum, but I'll explain the premise of the game. Basically, Joker's went through some false charges and sent out from his home to live in the Shibuya area for about a year, taking residence in the attic of a cafe, and during his time in Shibuya, awakens to the power of Persona's and the ability to navigate these things called Palaces, a representation of the most distorted parts of one's mind. Throughout the game, he makes friends with others that awaken to these same powers, constantly using these palaces to attack authority figures and expose their crimes to the public in an act of rebellion and justice. The whole theme of rebellion is ever present from this game from beginning to end with little subtlety, not that a lack of it is inherently a bad thing, but its worth pointing out; even the start of every confidant reminds you that this is a game about rebelling against the power structures of society. I think this theme's overall executed well, aside from a few blemishes here and there with a character expressing that they'll become a cop once you finish their confidant. Still, there isn't anything as egregiously self-contradicting here like the previous entry, and most of the time the game does a good job of making you feel invested in the struggles of the Phantom Thieves and showing you both the highest and lowest points of the acts of rebellion.

This isn't really a primary theme, but this game definitely has a power of friendship kinda theme; I know, I know, those words have a pretty poor connotation, but its somehow handled with a decent amount of elegance in one area of the game in particular. I won't go into details, but if you're familiar with P4's antagonist and their relationship to the protagonist, something similar takes place in this game that makes much, much more sense and comes off as genuinely strong.

Lastly, I do want to say that after what I felt was the game's best palace (the one where you get Akechi as a party member), there is somewhat of a drop off in overall writing quality. Not so much in regards to the events immediately after the conclusion of this palace, as like I've said, its a part of the game I really liked, but more so the time that passed a few weeks after this and the events of the next palace outside a certain incident I really enjoyed. The rag tag rebellious group taking on authority figures stuff kinda gets lost in an escalation of conflict, though I don't think any of this is nearly as dreadful as what happens in P4G after you get past one of the last forays into the TV world, as a frame of reference.

Concluding Thoughts

This game's good, and absolutely incredible at some points, but unfortunately bland in others when it comes to a lot of its cast save for a few exceptions like Akechi, and is way, way too easy. I only have this half a star above P4G, but the game was very, very close to being 4 stars instead and the half a star difference doesn't really represent how much more I overall enjoyed this entry.