Current Events > P4G made Persona 4's story worse. P5R made Persona 5's story better.(Spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

First off, I'm pretty much talking exclusively about the story changes. Shuffle time is an excellent mechanic and is honestly one of the best grinding mechanics I've ever seen in any RPG. Turning every post fight into a lootbox is a brilliant idea and I'm shocked more games didn't outright copy it. (I know it came from Persona 3, the point still stands).

Storywise, it's not very good though. The added content really makes the ending of the game drag, the bonus dungeon flat out sucks and doesn't offer anything new or exciting, even though they tried with the whole, "Your equipment and items are gone!" Move they attempted. In P5R you get a better version of the original last boss as the added content.(He still wants to control humanity, but for the "right reasons.")He has motivations, and more importantly, flaws as a character. A flawed villain is so much more interesting than an omnipotent being with purpose but no real motivation.

It really feels like you're just fighting the giant floating eyeball fog spewing submarine of omnipotence over and over again in P4G. The motivation between the last several fights isn't varied enough and the characters aren't interesting enough to provide compelling fights. They feel like the twins fight in Persona 5 Royal in that they feel like optional fights, not story battles. At least the boss themes in Golden are sick...I guess.

I don't really know what quality of life improvements came from P4G other than shuffle time, but it really feels like they crammed in the extra story content and it doesn't really fit within the majority of the story. I will say, having recently watched the P4G anime, that does the added content much better than the game did and probably should have been the route they went tbh.

As for Royal, Kasumi is a nothingbomb of a character, I don't like her, I don't hate her. She's just sorta there like a Joker obsessed remora.

The one exception to the added content being good in Royal is the summer visit to the "Mystery palace" and the subsequent keeping it a secret and not talking about it until it becomes plot relevant again. That's honestly really dumb, but it's the dumbest thing Royal added so it's mostly excusable.

I understand why people prefer P4 to P5(I don't though), and both games start to have bad pacing problems after a certain point in each story, but everything from the end of December onward in P4G just feels like such a slog to get through.

Did anybody else get that same vibe? I play a decent amount of JRPG's so I feel like my tolerance to tedium is pretty high, but this was pretty grating experience in retrospect. It didn't sour me on Persona 4, but It definitely worsened the overall experience by the end of it.

Nah the original P5 ended perfectly and tacking on a new threat after was a disservice.

No it's literally the opposite

I liked all the P5R content, I just wish it was better integrated into a more fully remixed story than kind of just stapled to the end.

EmbraceOfDeath posted...

Nah the original P5 ended perfectly and tacking on a new threat after was a disservice.

Yalby is an awful final villain. The art direction and cinematography of the final act is really cool, and the Igor reveal is....okay?(I know about the voice actor shit) but man, it's just such an underwhelming finale that escalates super quickly in scale out of basically no where. It feels like they looked at the game, saw that it was a JRPG and collectively said, "Wait a minute, how can this be a JRPG if we haven't collectively killed god yet?"

As I said in the other topic, it doesn't matter how much more interesting Maruki is as a character than Shido or Yaldabaoth. Fact remains that the story had a proper ending and welding a random bonus episode onto the end of it doesn't make it better, even if the episode itself was actually good (it's not). The 80 - 100 or whatever hour main game has a structure that concludes and doesn't include the Royal scenario in that conclusion.

I agree TC. Screw Marie.

BurmesePenguin posted...

As I said in the other topic, it doesn't matter how much more interesting Maruki is as a character than Shido or Yaldabaoth. Fact remains that the story had a proper ending and welding a random bonus episode onto the end of it doesn't make it better, even if the episode itself was actually good (it's not). The 80 - 100 or whatever hour main game has a structure that concludes and doesn't include the Royal scenario in that conclusion.

The original ending post Shido feels every bit as "Tacked on" as the bonus content from Royal does. Both needlessly increase the scope and scale of the final big bad, but it's less egregious with the Royal content because at that point the original game has already fucked up the scale of the conflict with Yalby so there's not a whole lot more they can add to the stakes in terms of absurdity.

xXfireglzXx posted...

The original ending post Shido feels every bit as "Tacked on" as the bonus content from Royal does.

That is nonsense.

I completely agree. The god stuff is the worst stuff in Persona 4, and is just aggravated by Golden. But of course the friend hanging out stuff in Golden are great additions to be clear.

Maruki is everything a Persona antagonist should be, absolutely excellent and brings the story back down to something personal and emotionally powerful. It expands the themes of the original while putting a new great twist on palaces, and frankly it's the first time an ending choice in modern Persona actually convinced a lot of people to choose different options.

I've actually pretty much expressed your feelings about Maruki vs the Giant Eye Ball in a topic(s) before and how the former is so much more effective than the latter, and how the latter totally sabotages the confrontation of the narrative's human antagonist in 4. Although a lot of responses I got were like "errrm the god's name is dropped in this one text box four months earlier in the game, so it's actually smart and well written"

BurmesePenguin posted...

That is nonsense.

How so? Yalbadoth is some omnipotent destiny deciding god.....except for when he decides to have a bit of fun pretending to be Igor and channeling his inner Jigsaw to have Joker "Play a game." I can't even say it's out of character because Yalbadoth has no character. This is the issue with an omnipotent being as a Villain in general. Maruki acting out of his own weakness is a good motivation because you have the ability to converse and exchange ideas, even if it's ultimately pointless due to the steadfastness of each person's ideology.(Which, honestly, you can't even say. Maruki doesn't let Akechi exist the way he did if he truly believed in his own actions. Akechi is there because Maruki is aware of the flaws in his ideology and I think while he doesn't want to be stopped, he does want to be challenged.) There's even conversations in early may where he straight up admits that he's speaking about his ideas from a place of weakness, and if he was a stronger individual he wouldn't be pursuing any of this.

The twins shit is stupid and there just to make people who completed their social link feel better about having done so. There's no real foreshadowing and it basically comes out of nowhere to most players.

Joker staying completely silent about the Velvet room is really stupid as well, but that's stupid in Persona 4 as well. It's almost like a Persona stupid story staple at this point.

I wish I didn't replay all of Persona 5 for the content tacked onto the end of Royal, tbh.

I mean the game is still great, I have no major issues with the stuff added on, but it was not worth replaying that entire 150 hour game when I barely finish games as it is. XD

Doe posted...

I completely agree. The god stuff is the worst stuff in Persona 4, and is just aggravated by Golden. But of course the friend hanging out stuff in Golden are great additions to be clear.

Maruki is everything a Persona protagonist should be, absolutely excellent and brings the story back down to something personal and emotionally powerful. It expands the themes of the original while putting a new great twist on palaces, and frankly it's the first time an ending choice in modern Persona actually convinced a lot of people to choose different options.

I've actually pretty much expressed your feelings about Maruki vs the Giant Eye Ball in a topic(s) before and how the former is so much more effective than the latter, and how the latter totally sabotages the confrontation of the narrative's human antagonist in 4. Although a lot of responses I got were like "errrm the god's name is dropped in this one text box four months earlier in the game, so it's actually smart and well written"

The P4G animation handled Adachi and Yu so much better tbh. It gives much needed depth to the conflict and "mirror" between them. Introspection is ultimately what motivates both of them throughout the story, with Adachi coming to a conclusion of Nihilism and Yu coming to one of optimism as a result of their experiences. Even Yu outright rejecting Adachi's ideology is refreshing. They are incompatible ideologies with one another and Yu being damaged emotionally by not being able to get through to somebody for the first time is a nice touch that should have been in the game. But yeah, you're 100% correct. P4G is a game built up on the strength of human interactions. To throw all of that away to set up a series of God battles just felt so meaningless. You still have solid interactions with your friends, but discarding the strength of Persona 4's storytelling feels like such a strange overall decision.

Number090684 posted...

I agree TC. Screw Marie.

I see what you did there.

Heyitsan_alt posted...

As for Royal, Kasumi is a nothingbomb of a character, I don't like her, I don't hate her. She's just sorta there like a Joker obsessed remora.

This comment made me lmao.

Marie fucking sucks but she's hot

I just finished Golden today actually. I really liked Marie.

Marie reminds me way too much of my sister so uh, icky

Yoshizawa is nice because she's a lady friend away from your phantom thieves work group and I like when you hang out with her and Akechi

Heyitsan_alt posted...

Yalby is an awful final villain. The art direction and cinematography of the final act is really cool, and the Igor reveal is....okay?(I know about the voice actor shit) but man, it's just such an underwhelming finale that escalates super quickly in scale out of basically no where. It feels like they looked at the game, saw that it was a JRPG and collectively said, "Wait a minute, how can this be a JRPG if we haven't collectively killed god yet?"

Gotta agree with this.

Plus, Maruki is an awesome character.

Uta posted...

I liked all the P5R content, I just wish it was better integrated into a more fully remixed story than kind of just stapled to the end.

Agreed. It annoyed me that they introduced Kasumi early on, but she doesn't join the party until after the original story. Don't get me hyped up about the new character if I can't even use her!

The majority of Atlus rerelease content are tumors on their original release.

Strikers was a good addition to Persona 5 though, even if a lot of the plot points were rehashes of earlier Persona plot points.

It was nice to see Ann, Haru, and Yusuke fleshed out better than they were in the base game, and some of the Jails were better than some of the palaces in terms of atmosphere and theme.

Also rare for a game to add characters to a franchise and none of them get the "Poochy treatment" or feel obnoxious and tacked on.

Just finished P4G for the first time, but I missed the last dungeon because without looking up a guide, it's incredibly esoteric. I didn't even know I missed a cutscene on the Ski Trip because I thought I was just waiting for the extra content.

That said, I think Royal is a straight upgrade story and all. Kasumi and the new palace Ruler both felt like good additions, albeit backloaded.

Yaldy as a final boss is worse than Shido in every way and I could not give less of a fuck about him. The new one is several orders of magnitude better than Yaldy. Not the strongest palace in the game but it's done well imo. So is the boss fight. Holds a lot more thematic weight with what it does to the third semester and the characters in it.

Playing NG+ in Golden now to finish it and play what I missed, but I intend to make a topic about my full thoughts when that happens.