The Lodge Blog

Persona 5 - A Distilled Experience

I've been a huge fan of the Shin Megami Tensei games since my introduction to SMT3 Nocturne many years ago. I've played all of their PS2 games and have explored titles since. The one sub-series I struggled with was Persona 3. 

I thought Nocturne was a tough cookie but ultimately I overcame it's "true" ending. The very friend that introduced me to Nocturne pointed me towards another entry; Persona 3. A game I got very absorbed in to but I always struggled to progress, being or feeling underlevelled and generally hitting road block bosses. My initial two attempts ended in failure. One factor I found especially difficult was the fact you lacked control of your allies in combat adding in a sense of RNG if they would exploit enemy weaknesses of heal the Protoganist before the killing blow.

Now I do know that the PSP version of Persona 3 and Persona 4 allow you manual control of your party members but I never returned to the series until two months ago I borrowed Persona 5 from my brother. I was desperate to play it, the game seemed to garner rave reviews and wild fandom. It was the talk of the town at release and I was getting hungry for some SMT style of JRPG.

Persona 5 starts with punch but then immediately drops down to first gear, and it's not for around five hours we're actually into the meat of the game; the Palaces. 

You've got to be enthusiastic and open minded with this one. If you're not in the mood to invest the hours P5's slow pace will see you off very quickly, because what lies within is a wonderfully designed and engaging game. But it is buried under a mountain of dialogue.

I found most of the Palaces took me between 3 hours for the simplest, up to around 5 to 7 hours for the more complex. There are seven palaces (technically 8 including the second to last gameplay area) Which if we said on average took 5 hours to finish we're talking around 40-45 hours to finish the game. At the point of saving after the final boss in true ending my playtime was a staggering 95 hours... double the approximate for finishing the games dungeons. (and excluding the last boss run that takes just over an hour and the last boss who clocked in at about 30 to 40 minutes so I spent 45 reading through dialogue and watching story cutscenes... That's a lot.

And it's one of the game's biggest criticisms and I'm still aghast at the hours I put in to finish the game. There is so much dialogue and I started at about halfway, skipping any non-story dialogue. So we're mainly talking about the confidant interactions which is shame as it's a pivotal element of the game's character building. 

The loading icon does say; "take your time".

That said, if you the fortitude to push through this barrier the Palaces are quite enjoyable and a break of pace for those familiar with most SMT games corridor come puzzle environments from the past. 

Combat feels fresh and fun, the press turn system isn't a part of Persona instead opting for the "One More" bonus if you hit an enemy weak point of score a critical. Sadly there is no bonus for getting your defenses right other than damage mitigation which means you can still be punished and possibly heavily so if the enemy exploits your party's elemental weakness. (Though this behaviour is only really seen towards the endgame)

Two new elements appear Psy and Nuclear, they don't particular add anything to combat but they do help stop the party roster from stepping on each other's toes in regards to resistances and attacks. 

This is one of the easiest SMT games I've played (aside from the Kuzonoha Raidou games) with only one game over (thanks Casino boss) however there are extra difficulty modes for those that want more upfront challenge. I felt the standard difficulty was pretty good. I didn't feel the need to grind until I hit the second to last Palace in December but it doesn't take very long to do so.

And I still felt like I could lose altogether if I made poor decisions in boss battles but overall random encounters lacked true fear. The one big scare is that regardless of anything; it's game over if the Protagonist dies which is always a bit of a cop out mechanic for me, can't Morgana use Samarecarm on him?

Confidants have been enhanced; instead of just affording extra experience to fused personas they unlock extra abilities. Team mates abilities will be enhanced and at max relationship their persona's will upgrade for bonus stat points and a unique skill.

Other confidants will allow you to buy new items or receive discounts or learn useful combat skills such as switch out team mates and flawlessly knockdown enemies at the expense of ammo.

There are a lot of quality of life features built in to Persona 5 which is good because failure can result in a lot of lost hours on top of the hours you're going to pushing in to this.

Regardless. This is a gloriously fun game to play, brisks close to outstaying it's welcome but when the credits roll it's satisfaction guaranteed!