Current Events > Started P5R two weeks ago. Just beat it. Thoughts. Tons of spoilers.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Writing was mostly really good. Story was marginally above average. Game was consistently fun. Voice acting was top tier, as well as general direction of the game.

Story felt pretty typical of a JRPG, but the whole, "We don't grow as characters until the plot dictates it" aspect of the story is clownish at times. Particularly with the Ryuji/Morgana shit. A lot of stuff started to feel rehashed as the game went on, like characters feeling "useless" on multiple occasions and it being the driving force of an arc.

Personal note, Makoto's persona is dumb IMO. A lot of times where she should have busted it out and it just never shows up again in story after her awakening. Ryuji running for a lifeboat while she has a motorbike is certainly something. It's more than just that one time, it's just a really weird omission in general. Honestly, the way the team kept gassing her up during the Kaneshiro arc was also really obnoxious. I know it was to contrast her lack of appreciation in every other aspect of her life with the support of a newly found friend group, but they honestly made a character who is absolutely NOT a Mary Sue come off as one at times with that horseshit. It's like you have this dynamic of friends who rag on each other and call each other out, but once Makoto joins in that arc even the shit she gets from the others is, "Wow, you're just so competent and sexy and cool. Queeeeeeen." It immediately gets better following her arc, and again, I don't think she's a dumb character or a bad character by the end, but her individual arc within the story was....grating.

I can't imagine how shit Akechi's arc was before Royal rolled around. What an incredible salvage job of his character and letting him be a driving force behind Joker's actions of the third semester was an excellent choice. He's never likable, at least in Royal he has definitive strong beliefs by the end of his story arc.

Writing was good. I don't remember having any secondhand embarrassment moments when JRPG's are normally good for a couple. The fanservice is....tolerable, the FMV's are passable, and the dialogue that isn't intentionally stupid isn't unintentionally stupid. That's way above the standard.

Maxed all the confidants except strength in the regular story, mostly because I missed their second quest and was never able to find or fuse Ame-no-Ushi or whatever the fuck it was after the second palace. I'm not upset about it, apparently they just further break the balance of the game, and honestly, it was busted AF after the third palace anyways. Mementos with Instant-win and money boost is the tipping point of the whole game, and I only really felt challenged once after hitting that point.(Of course it's the 5th palace boss.)

Fun fact, I spent the entire last semester outside of further strengthening my teammate's persona's at the Gym and Shrine. I found this unintentionally hilarious, because my wife kept calling Maruki a fucking nerd the whole playthrough, so spending the last semester getting ripped for a confrontation with him is pretty funny to think about. He sees you early in the month, gives you a month, and you show up absolutely fucking ripped. I had over 800 HP and 500 SP by the time I wound up starting the last sequence.

It's a good game, I'd give it a 9/10. I'll probably start P4G sometime during the summer after I have a surgery to rehab from.

Phantom Thief final Tier List:

Haru
Yusuke
Ryuji
Akechi
Yoshizawa
Ann/Makoto
Morgana

Wound up romancing Chihaya, her arc was solid, her design was cute, and she's a legitimate supernaturally endowed fortune teller. Probably would have chosen Haru if I hadn't already chosen Chihaya by that point.

Yeah, questions, comments, impotent rage, go ahead.

Did they talk 90% with 10% gameplay? Ill let mine remain sealed.

Lairen posted...

Did they talk 90% with 10% gameplay? Ill let mine remain sealed.

Ah, you don't understand the appeal of RPG's. The 90% talking is balanced out through excessive grinding and leveraging the game mechanics to turn the game into a steamroll at some point.

xXfireglzXx posted...

Ah, you don't understand the appeal of RPG's. The 90% talking is balanced out through excessive grinding and leveraging the game mechanics to turn the game into a steamroll at some point.

Can i press start and skip the talking parts?

Lairen posted...

Can i press start and skip the talking parts?

Pretty much every cutscene and dialogue in the game can be either fast forwarded or skipped.

Additionally, the game literally has an accessible "Story summary" at any point that literally gives you the cliffnotes version of what has transpired thus far.

And any actual important dialogue can be retroactively looked up and replayed through the log. Big quality of life function in the dungeons of the game that lets you avoid a lot of potential backtracking.

xXfireglzXx posted...

Pretty much every cutscene and dialogue in the game can be either fast forwarded or skipped.

Additionally, the game literally has an accessible "Story summary" at any point that literally gives you the cliffnotes version of what has transpired thus far.

And any actual important dialogue can be retroactively looked up and replayed through the log. Big quality of life function in the dungeons of the game that lets you avoid a lot of potential backtracking.

Wow this was actually a very informative post. Thanks!

I had an urge to play this today. Close to beating Futaba's palace you can definitely break this game much easier than the original that is for sure.

Ive had this game for like 2 years ago or so, put 80+ over hours into and still havent completed it.

Also, the last arc for the actual game, and the final added arc for P5R are incredibly similar in concept. The whole idea of forgoing conflict for an easy subservient life.

I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a rehash, because the motivations were different, but it's strange to me that two very similar arcs occur back to back like that. Obviously the final arc in p5r is the better of the two, but it's less impactful because of the one that precedes it. Still good though.

Final question. As someone who likes the genre, how is strikers compared to something like Hyrule warriors? As in, does completing the content have any tangible benefit to changing gameplay? or is it small changes/cosmetic.

Damn you beat a game that took me 4 months to beat in just 2 weeks? You musta been straight rushin hehe. Really liked that game. I found out that everything I loved about this game (at least gameplay wise) was a Royal addition, so I honestly don't even know how vanilla P5 was playable. I never got to play vanilla P5, it was sitting in my backlog for years and then Royal came out so I got that instead to play. Everything I loved about Royal wasn't in the original game, to the point where my perception of things is completely changed (eg I learned that everyone whines about Morgana telling you to go to bed, something I didn't even notice and thought weird that others did and harped on)

One thing I will say is that I liked vanilla P5's ending more than Royal. Disliked Royal's ending and really the entire Royal portion/premise, plus I've never been particularly crazy about Akechi at all. In fact, I- oh you haven't played the previous Persona games? Never mind.

I've noticed this being pretty common, people starting with P5 and going backwards, not starting with P3 and 4? Wonder why.

Overall, I like Persona 5 Royal gameplay with Persona 5 vanilla story.

saspa posted...

Damn you beat a game that took me 4 months to beat in just 2 weeks? You musta been straight rushin hehe. Really liked that game. I found out that everything I loved about this game (at least gameplay wise) was a Royal addition, so I honestly don't even know how vanilla P5 was playable. I never got to play vanilla P5, it was sitting in my backlog for years and then Royal came out so I got that instead to play. Everything I loved about Royal wasn't in the original game, to the point where my perception of things is completely changed (eg I learned that everyone whines about Morgana telling you to go to bed, something I didn't even notice and thought weird that others did and harped on)

One thing I will say is that I liked vanilla P5's ending more than Royal. Disliked Royal's ending and really the entire Royal portion/premise, plus I've never been particularly crazy about Akechi at all. In fact, I- oh you haven't played the previous Persona games? Never mind.

I've noticed this being pretty common, people starting with P5 and going backwards, not starting with P3 and 4? Wonder why.

Overall, I like Persona 5 Royal gameplay with Persona 5 vanilla story.

It's funny, I had a similar moment afterwards when I was looking over the differences. Especially the stuff like Gun ammo reloading, showtimes, and Baton pass/technical levels, which to me were some of the most enjoyable aspects of combat. Tons of QoL fixes that I really couldn't imagine being without.

I did wind up going and watching the P5 vanilla ending and I see where you're coming from there as well. I enjoyed Royal's added arc(especially the music.), but feel it's slightly redundant given the arc it followed. Nothing to be done there though, can't restructure the whole story.

I mean I do agree with you that "akechi" was improved in the Royal portion of the game, if we concede that's Akechi and not a figment of joker's imagination. But boy did I hate the psychiatrist dude. Disliked him from the moment of his introduction, not knowing he was a royal addition, and definitely hated him when he came barging back into the story. He's definitely the Mari of this game, ironic that it's not the new redhead. I'm just not a fan of these types of villains/antagonists, the misguided "heart's in the wrong place" types. People whined that p5 was a slog near the end but I never felt that way at all, not until the specific Royal portion which felt a bit tacked on tbh.

Still I had a blast being so overpowered in the final portion. I sometimes like the 3rd transformation of the party members' personas. I love when my party becomes so broken that I actually have to take it easy on the bosses just to hear the rest of their dialogue. Feels good to run circles around what is supposed to be a "godlike being" and me just completely crushing him with joker almost singlehandedly

Lairen posted...

Can i press start and skip the talking parts?

Sounds like you don't really like RPGs.

Also that problem you have with the overpraising of Makoto is unfortunately a quite common trope in Japanese media that I've noticed in anime too. Persona does have a few missteps with the writing that I wish I could improve, but overall it is pretty much the only "traditional" turn based jrpg I'll ever play now. Or jrpg in general besides Ys. I haven't liked anything else, with most of the recent jrpgs neither improving in story/gameplay/writing from the 90s/early 2000s era and if anything, regressing. With only 1 or 2 standouts I can recall off the top of my head.

And I really wish they handled the Ryuji/Morgana thing much better. It came off entirely mean-spirited and unappealing and a better approach would have been "friends ribbing each other" where they include scenes like if someone else started to rag on Morgana, Ryuji would immediately leap to defend him like in a sort of older brother role, or a scene where morgana rescues Ryuji from some danger scenario in a "show don't tell" that he cares sort of way which makes their constant bickering actually charming and not off-putting.

Are you implying you like Haru most? She appears so late game and in what many describe as the worst arc because of the above so that's rather surprising. I was hoping for someone sassier when I saw her in the original P5 intro and she was quite bland to be frank. Honestly the characters this time around weren't as strong as the previous game's but P5 makes up for it by just oozing style from every corner. And the music. Good god the music. Topping P3 and 4 seemed nigh impossible. Loved this game's soundtrack.

xXfireglzXx posted...

Final question. As someone who likes the genre, how is strikers compared to something like Hyrule warriors? As in, does completing the content have any tangible benefit to changing gameplay? or is it small changes/cosmetic.

All I can say is, as someone who has never liked dynasty warriors type games, I absolutely loved persona 5 strikers. It's nothing like those dw games. It's basically a sequel to p5 and I love it way more than the royal portion. While that hyrule breath of the wild warriors game was basically just another reskinned warriors with high production values, p5 strikers definitely does not play like a dynasty warriors (at least, you'll definitely lose if you try to play it that way). It only looks that way in the first 5 minutes of the game and then you realize it's just a straight up condensed sequel to Persona 5 that's super fun and not to spoil too much, but basically provided what I felt was missing from regular Persona 5.

I can't praise it enough, it was just fun from start to finish. Definitely worth getting

saspa posted...

I mean I do agree with you that "akechi" was improved in the Royal portion of the game, if we concede that's Akechi and not a figment of joker's imagination. But boy did I hate the psychiatrist dude. Disliked him from the moment of his introduction, not knowing he was a royal addition, and definitely hated him when he came barging back into the story. He's definitely the Mari of this game, ironic that it's not the new redhead. I'm just not a fan of these types of villains/antagonists, the misguided "heart's in the wrong place" types. People whined that p5 was a slog near the end but I never felt that way at all, not until the specific Royal portion which felt a bit tacked on tbh.

Still I had a blast being so overpowered in the final portion. I sometimes like the 3rd transformation of the party members' personas. I love when my party becomes so broken that I actually have to take it easy on the bosses just to hear the rest of their dialogue. Feels good to run circles around what is supposed to be a "godlike being" and me just completely crushing him with joker almost singlehandedly

I like him so much more after NG+. He's a coward, and he's fully aware of it. His meetings with you are a literal cry for help if you read the shit he's saying after knowing his circumstances. He's not a strong villain, but I really do like his weaponized weakness. He basically comes out and admits it's too hard for him to keep living as a person, and his savior complex is born of escapism from his reality, rather than the good intentions he purports himself to have.

It's like if someone got so hurt over a breakup they decided nobody can ever date again.

It also speaks to why an "extended savior" doesn't work as a concept. A savior has to be a wiping of the slate clean and a fresh starting point, otherwise you're just ending the autonomy of those you claim you've given salvation. Which is the whole premise of Akechi's revival.

saspa posted...

I've noticed this being pretty common, people starting with P5 and going backwards, not starting with P3 and 4? Wonder why.

5 is the more popular game for outsiders to the franchise and until recently was also the most accessible in modern platforms, so yeah.

xXfireglzXx posted...

Final question. As someone who likes the genre, how is strikers compared to something like Hyrule warriors? As in, does completing the content have any tangible benefit to changing gameplay? or is it small changes/cosmetic.

5S is basically an ARPG pretending to be a musou, and it's better off for it tbh. As for completion bonuses i don't think they're any

Yusuke sucks

I don't use Yusuke in combat much meh but as a character for the party he's alright though as I've been picking up on my Royal game where I left off and Yosuke kept coming over and wanted to hang out and I felt bad that I blew him off everytime. All he wanted was to watch a DVD with me but there was just so many other things I wanted to do instead.

Also I started with Persona 1 though tbh I never made any real progress until the PSP release ( got the best ending). Persona 3 was my true entry point for the series other than mucking around with Eternal Punishment just before that came out.