Shelved on March 10th 2024, about 65 hours in. I believe I will come back and finish this out, but for now I’m burnt out on it. I’m about 50% of the way through the game. Some thoughts: equally compelling, baffling, and outright annoying, Persona 5 is really my first JRPG besides something like Pokemon. The good aspects include the combat, dungeon crawling, (most of) the visual design, and certain aspects of the life sim sections. But the bad: utterly cringeworthy writing and storytelling, It can be extremely juvenile, homophobic, two-dimensional, and boring. There’s so much story, and not all of it is compelling. Much of it is tedious, and takes too long to make very simple points. So much text, not enough action. Beyond the story, some of the level design is very one dimensional. So much of the dungeons are simple paths that can’t be deviated from, and there’s so many invisible barriers where you character cannot move beyond. The game came out in 2016, but I expected more on this front. Again, this is one of my first JRPGs, so maybe they’re all like this? I’m not sure. Regardless, it did keep me interested for 65 hours, so definitely not the worst game I’ve played. If I were to rate it now I’d give it a 7 or 7.5, but I’ll save the final rating for when I finish it.