Please, for the love of god, never ever do the confidant timeline thing ever again. I do not want a recap of whatever just transpired in the story 5 minutes ago. With that said, this game took around 100+ hours, and I came out wishing instead that I would watch paint dry. Absolute nothingburger from the story. In theory, the narrative should be interesting since it deals with “rebellion” and “people’s twisted desires,” especially with the cast members being students. Perfect for the theme of rebelling against injustice, shaping your identity, and confronting bullies. Somehow, they managed to fumble it in more ways than one, whether it's the overall story arcs or characters.
If someone were to ask you, what would you do with a corrupt politician? You might be tempted to say, “Let’s make sure to persecute them to the full extent of the law, find out all their wrongdoings, and make laws to prevent it from happening again.” Great, sounds fair! But what if I told you we’ll make sure they apologize on national television and then throw them behind bars? No account for their accomplices, no reparations for their victims, and no effort to make laws to prevent systemic abuse of government funds from happening again. Every single time the Phantom Thieves resolve a problem and pat themselves on the back, it feels so performative, so meaningless. It all feels so non-committal to the theme and message plastered all over the game. There is nothing about diving deep into the actual core problem of each arc but more on sightseeing society’s most evil people. And this goes on forever, every arc until the Royal expansion. By that time, the foundation of the story and characters feels so unstable that it becomes unenjoyable. Even the social links outside the main cast feel terrible, as they amount to Joker just using his powers and affable nature to solve their personal problems. There is very little development from the characters themselves other than swooning over Joker.
I don’t know if this is a popular opinion or not, but Morgana might just be one of the worst video game characters ever made. He is terribly annoying, utterly useless, devoid of any charisma, and has the most selfish of attitudes. The fact that the main story tries to push his arc alongside itself makes me think the writers bet that Morgana is charming enough for the player and acts as a sort of motivation to see through his mystery. This brings me to my next point: how is it that every time a main character’s main story arc is finished, they immediately become the most uninteresting character imaginable? While yes, some of them do have additional stories in their social links, even then, it’s very hit or miss with way more misses than hits. I would equate it to hanging out with someone who’s a friend of your friend, and your friend left, so now you're stuck, and they begin trauma dumping on you after 1 hour. I would just be extremely confused—what do I do with this information? Maybe this is a symptom of another problem: there are way too many characters. I ran out of cares to give once I had to move on to the next social link and just act out as a therapist.
Akechi as a character is also incredibly absurd. Without spoiling too much, he acts like a 13-year-old edgelord. At the end of the day, the interactions between the main cast feel so shallow. While you can call them friends, what I felt more was akin to “people who are stuck in the same situation” sort of arrangement. I don’t think it’s in my good heart to recommend a 100+ hour game for its story when it’s this lackluster along with characters that seem to be hollow shells by the end of the playthrough. But if you do want to try, at least some of the main cast are kind of likeable during their story arcs along with some plot points being semi-interesting.
If someone were to ask you, what would you do with a corrupt politician? You might be tempted to say, “Let’s make sure to persecute them to the full extent of the law, find out all their wrongdoings, and make laws to prevent it from happening again.” Great, sounds fair! But what if I told you we’ll make sure they apologize on national television and then throw them behind bars? No account for their accomplices, no reparations for their victims, and no effort to make laws to prevent systemic abuse of government funds from happening again. Every single time the Phantom Thieves resolve a problem and pat themselves on the back, it feels so performative, so meaningless. It all feels so non-committal to the theme and message plastered all over the game. There is nothing about diving deep into the actual core problem of each arc but more on sightseeing society’s most evil people. And this goes on forever, every arc until the Royal expansion. By that time, the foundation of the story and characters feels so unstable that it becomes unenjoyable. Even the social links outside the main cast feel terrible, as they amount to Joker just using his powers and affable nature to solve their personal problems. There is very little development from the characters themselves other than swooning over Joker.
I don’t know if this is a popular opinion or not, but Morgana might just be one of the worst video game characters ever made. He is terribly annoying, utterly useless, devoid of any charisma, and has the most selfish of attitudes. The fact that the main story tries to push his arc alongside itself makes me think the writers bet that Morgana is charming enough for the player and acts as a sort of motivation to see through his mystery. This brings me to my next point: how is it that every time a main character’s main story arc is finished, they immediately become the most uninteresting character imaginable? While yes, some of them do have additional stories in their social links, even then, it’s very hit or miss with way more misses than hits. I would equate it to hanging out with someone who’s a friend of your friend, and your friend left, so now you're stuck, and they begin trauma dumping on you after 1 hour. I would just be extremely confused—what do I do with this information? Maybe this is a symptom of another problem: there are way too many characters. I ran out of cares to give once I had to move on to the next social link and just act out as a therapist.
Akechi as a character is also incredibly absurd. Without spoiling too much, he acts like a 13-year-old edgelord. At the end of the day, the interactions between the main cast feel so shallow. While you can call them friends, what I felt more was akin to “people who are stuck in the same situation” sort of arrangement. I don’t think it’s in my good heart to recommend a 100+ hour game for its story when it’s this lackluster along with characters that seem to be hollow shells by the end of the playthrough. But if you do want to try, at least some of the main cast are kind of likeable during their story arcs along with some plot points being semi-interesting.