The year is 2017, a few days after Christmas was over. I got a game that I knew some things of, but I still wasn't 100% sure what to expect. After the game was downloaded onto my PS3's Hard Drive, I started it up.
The game gave me a beautifully animated opening cutscene to watch, with a black and red color scheme. Each character shown had their own unique personality and the music was a great listen!

But then, after that video ended, the game thrusted me into a sequence of trains passing by. I saw the silhouette of the small cat I had seen prior running towards the screen. He hit the camera and then I saw the rest of the main cast. All while this song was playing.

I was now in the world of Persona 5.

Okay, now to provide some backstory to this. When Persona 5 got popular during its initial international 2017 release, it wasn't the first time I had heard about the series. I had heard about the series' name in passing before, thanks to a video on YouTube using a Persona 3 song as its outro. (The song was Joy, if you're curious).
I heard a bit of Persona 3's and 4's soundtracks, but not too much, as I ended up getting distracted by other songs from other games and media.
When Persona 5 got popular, I was reminded of the series, and decided to do a bit more research. What I came across was some parody videos of Persona 5, with the one sticking out the most to me being Yusuke's "Gay or European" animatic.
The characters of Persona 5 stuck out to me a bunch with all of their different personalities and designs. And the overall style of the game was phenemonal and it was super pleasing to my eyes! And that's in addition to the game's soundtrack, which I'll discuss more later.

Thing is... Persona 5 is a turn-based RPG. That put me off a bit, since I tend to be very picky about my RPGs, and turn-based ones don't tend to persuade me much. I mean, it was during 2017 that I found one of my favourite games of all time in Xenoblade Chronicles, but that was an action RPG and not a turn-based one. Was I going to like Persona 5?

Well, I got the game a few days after Christmas after seeing the Ultimate Edition of the game on sale for around 45 bucks. I wasn't an adult at the time, so it was my dad that got it for me.

Starting the game, I was once again enjoying the artstyle of the menus and of the gameplay, and I think I'll start there.
Persona 5 has a great sense of style! The Persona series has this tradition of each game having its own unique color. Persona 1 has purple, 2 has red, 3 has blue, and 4 has yellow. Persona 5 decides to use red once again, but it contrasts against black, offering a nice red and black color scheme that you'll see in much of the game's UI.
While Persona 5's UI is not the easiest to read, it's one of the most stylish out there, providing fluid 3D animations with flat, bold colors. The fonts seen on the menus are reminiscent of the calling cards the Phantom Thieves send in the game, having letters in a word being different from one another, like if they were taken from different parts of various newspapers.

And this applies to the gameplay as well! Stuff as simple as the battle menu is overly stylish and the attacks themselves have a lot of visual effects surrouding them. And that's the thing, if the game only had 3D animations or 2D ones, the game could've felt undercooked or flat. But the combination of those two help the game feel unique!
And the thing is, Persona 5 is not the first Persona game to do something like this. From what I've seen, Persona 4's UI was also pretty stylish by itself. It feels like one of those "Persona 4 walked so that Persona 5 could run", and this is not to discredit Persona 4, by the way.

The anime cutscenes seen in the game are also great to watch, even if they're not too common. Although since they're not too common, it makes it so when one appears, they end up feeling more special!
And continuing on the game's persentation, the soundtrack of this game is FANTASTIC!! As a person who is an imense lover of the jazz genre, having a game that pays a giant tribute to it is amazing. Of course, not every single song of the game is of that genre, but a lot of them are. There are so many songs from Persona 5 that I love, like Layer Cake; Phantom; Price; Alleycat; The Days when my Mother was there; Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There; Beneath the Mask, and of course, Last Surprise.
That last one was quite the meme for a while, but I still love it even with that. It's just a very catchy battle theme that surprisingly, never really annoyed me in spite of its frequent use throughout the game.

But of course, what is the story of this game about?
Considering it's an RPG, this game will take players a long time to beat. I remember my original playthrough of this game took a little over 86 hours to finish, and that's because the game has a lot of dialogue and a lot to uncover.
Honestly, I find it a bit difficult to describe the game's plot without spoilling it, but I'll try my best.

To keep it simple, a dude who tried to save a woman from getting sexually assaulted, gets sued by the perpetrator. Because of this, he is put under probation and moved outside of his rural town into the city of Tokyo. There, he is put under custody of Sojiro Sakura, the owner of a coffee & curry shop named Leblanc.
After he gets settled into his new school, he is weirdly transported into the inside of a palace where he awakens his Persona, described as the physical manifestation of one's will. He meets a cat-like creature named Morgana, who helps him get used to these Palaces, and meets a guy named Ryuji Sakamoto, who he bonds quickly.
The Palaces are the manifestation of one's desire, as when a desire is so big, it gains a Palace and a Treasure associated with it. These Palaces take place inside of a cognitive world named the Metaverse, unable to be seen by most people.
From there, the story takes many twists and turns, as the protagonist's team grows larger and they call themselves the Phantom Thieves.

The game's plot definitely tackles some very interesting themes, ranging from corruption to rebellion and the fight against injustice. The game is not really subtle about the latter, and sometimes can get a bit repetitive with that, but the differing situations that the Phantom Thieves encounter throughout the game help it stay fresh whenever it feels like it's starting to get stale.

In addition, the game's voice acting is really well made! Considering the game's large number of characters, we have plenty of voice actors, ranging from Max Mittelman, Cherami Leigh, Erika Harlacher, Matthew Marcer, Cassandra Lee Morris, and so much more! Definitely the standout for me, personally, is Xander Mobus as the protagonist (or Joker, his codename). He may not have many lines, as he's the silent type, but whenever he speaks, he just sounds cool.
All of the actors do a fantastic job as their characters and it helps the game immerse you more into its world and characters.

While many of the personality types seen in the main cast aren't necessarily 100% unique within the Persona series, or even in RPGs in general, I came to love them for how well they were written, and just seeing their many interactions.

And that leads me into my next topic, the gameplay! The Persona series is generally known for having two sides to its gameplay. On one hand, you have the turn-based RPG, which in the case of this game, you go to palaces, you fight enemies, you level up and eventually you fight a boss.
On the other hand, you have the social simulation elements, where in Persona 5, you walk around Joker's high-school and the many streets of Tokyo, where you talk to various characters, form bonds with them and do various activities to increase stats like Charm or Guts.

Persona 5 continues that formula established in previous titles but, in this case, I can't really compare it to them, because I haven't played the other Persona games. However, from what I've heard, Persona 5 decides to make each of the dungeons (the Palaces) unique and with their own level design. There aren't any randomized rooms, and all of them have their own unique aesthetic and puzzles to solve.
With the exception of one particular palace (cough Okumura cough), I had a lot of fun traversing through the Palaces.
In addition, even though this game is a turn-based RPG, I didn't really mind the gameplay, but I think that's also because of one little tiny detail... I played the game on the easiest difficulty.
Yeah, I was getting a bit frightened early on in my playthrough, and decided to make things easier, so I wouldn't really stress out over the game's time limit, which I'll discuss in a bit.
Even with that though, while the game isn't revolutionary with its RPG mechanics, I did enjoy them. Like the One More mechanic or the Baton Pass move. These are relatively simple mechanics that allow the characters to continue their streak of attacks and pass their turn to another character, respectively, but they keep the game's system from getting stale.

Another interesting thing about the battle system is that you can recruit enemies into your team, very similarly to the Shin Megami Tensei series (part of the Megami Tensei franchise, just like the Persona series). If you hit an enemy with their weakness, you'll initiate a Hold-Up! You can either cancel it, do a finishing move with the All-Out Attack (which is badass) or initiate a conversation where, by picking the right options, you can let the enemy become one of Joker's personas.
This is a pretty cool mechanic, honestly, as it allows each enemy to have their own little personality, and it makes the process of obtaining them more interesting. From what I researched, previous Persona games didn't have this feature, so it's nice seeing it in Persona 5.
In addition, the game also has a big dungeon that you'll slowly progress through more and more throughout the game, called Mementos. The floors on this one are randomly generated, but they provide a way for the player to grind for experience or to complete certain side-quests.

Switching things over to the social simulation part of the game, this is where the game introduces the concept of time. Like Persona 3 and 4, time always passes whenever you do an activity of any kind. Whether that be eating an hamburger at a restaurant, visiting a Palace or going to sleep, one must consider how they organize their day to make efficient progress.
Unlike games like Majora's Mask for example, time isn't always passing, and you are able to take your time making decisions and planning out your next move. Even the game itself encourages this, as the loading screens will usually say "Take Your Time", which I like.

Probably the biggest thing you can do in these segments is establishing Confidants with people. Confidants are a series of conversations that Joker can have to form bonds, and by getting these to Rank 10, he can receive new abilities that help his team's journey in the Palaces. Not only that, but you are able to learn more about the various characters that you meet, including the Phantom Thieves themselves.
You can even potentially romance some of these characters if you get them to a high enough rank.
I wasn't able to finish all of the Confidants during my playthrough, but I did finish a couple and I even got to romance someone... can you guess who it was?
These are just really nice to listen to and interact with. It's not a new thing to the Persona series, I realize, but I find this to be an incredibly strong way of optional story-telling that expands on the game's world.

And that's one of the things that I love the most about Persona 5, its world and its characters. They're all relatable in various ways, and they're all uniquely designed. Of course, depending on who you ask, some of them might be more interesting than others, and I agree there were some that I cared for more than others, but I think all of them are varied and tell interesting mini-stories.

Additionally, like mentioned earlier, you can do activites that let you increase one of 5 stats: Guts, Charm, Proficiency, Kindness and Knowledge. These not only allow you to progress certain Confidants, but allow Joker to make certain things easier, like building weapons to be used in Palaces, or study better for any quizzes or exams he might get in school.

Persona 5 for me was a getaway into more complex games. With the exception of Xenoblade 1, I hadn't played many games that took many hours to beat, nor had very big stories that talked about mature topics.
The game might be rated PEGI 16 here in Europe, but like I said previously, the game is not shy about discussing topics such as sexual abuse, plagiarism, greed, corruption and the true meaning of justice. There is certainly a discussion to be had whether or not the game presents these themes well, but in my opinion, I think it does.
Maybe some of the themes could end up feeling slightly less undercooked than others, but when I was playing this game for the first time, I found a lot of what it presented very intriguing.

And thanks to Persona 5, I got more curious about other more mature games, which would eventually lead me to discover series such as Yakuza or Halo.

Would I classify Persona 5 as a perfect game? No, not really. There are certainly things that can be seen as either repetitive or undercooked about it, but even with the game being part of a genre that I'm not the biggest fan of, Persona 5 left me with a great experience through and through, that I'll never forget.

Fin.

I have tried on 4 different occasions to try and finish this game and I always end up dropping it. Not because it’s a bad game and I find it unplayable, I just don’t want to. The music is fine, the gameplay has some good ideas but needed to be thought out more. The story goes by so quick that it feel rushed and leaving me feeling empty. I just don’t care for the characters, world and story. I was only playing to say I finished all persona games. But I don’t wanna spent time with a game just because it’s a series I love. I know a few people that can still find love in this game I just cant.

My first Soulslike, and it looks nothing like the common associates with the genre, perfect for me!

It has a good blend of action adventure combined with 3D platforming. The combat is easy enough to understand with a charge attack, parry, dodge options, all that jazz. There are also special powers from either shells or the powers you pick up from bosses, though I found myself mostly using the latter of those two. The shell mechanic is the big mechanic meant to help this game stand out. A neat idea, but I think a lot of the shells blend together too much for my taste, but that's mostly just a nitpick because the game encourages you to swap shells due to the difficulty.

The platforming is very well made. It gets creative with various mundane objects providing challenges and Kril's movement options like the floating and fork throwing used as a grappling hook. I would even call the whole gameplay great, if it wasn't for, well...

The biggest issue with the game is its performance. There are several slowdowns that happened to me (which I heard is a problem on other consoles as well), the game is sometimes hacking because of way too much going on, and there are moments when hitboxes on both Kril and enemies made no sense to me, and I don't know if it's because of glitches. Speaking of glitches, hoo boy, this game has a lot of them. I fell through the floor a few times, music cuts off, the aforementioned hitboxes, etc. These problems actually made me use the assist mode at certain points because I was getting my butt kicked in ways that didn't feel entirely my fault.

So that dragged down the gameplay for me, but I'm gonna be honest, the story made up for it for me, because... goddamn. I didn't think the cute funny crab game was gonna make me cry. It may have a lot of themes that are preachy but the way it works into Kril's arc just really got to me, and the direction that it was taken was definitely not what I was expecting. I bumped up the score to what it is because the story got to me that much.

Gonna go sit somewhere and reflect on myself for some time now.

I am a straight man, this was not a game made for me and I am aware of that fact. I watched my girlfriend play it and that was the fun part for me, watching her give very loud reactions to it and the choices made to a virtual failman babygirl make me worry for my personal future.

The arts really good, musics good but I'd prefer more variety as it does start to loop very quickly. Writings funny and enjoyable, and it's free so if you are a person who you think this would appeal to, get it idiot, fuck that twinky man, go now! the steam page is right there!!!!

ALSO SLAY THE PRINCESS MENTIONED!!!!! THEY'RE BASED!!!!!