Persona 5- Spoiler Zone

Almost like a real person who's close enough to badass rebel thieves but can't be part of them.

I find it interesting that while the Phantom Thieves do want to reform society, most of their initial reasons for joining are actually kind of selfish - Morgana wants to restore (what he thinks is) his human form, Ann and Ryuji wanted revenge on Kamoshida, Yusuke wanted to break out from under Madarame's thumb, Makoto was assigned to infiltrate the group in exchange for a glowing college rec from the Principal, Futaba wanted to find her mother's killer, and Haru wanted to avoid her arranged marriage.

edited 24th Apr '17 5:29:14 PM by HamburgerTime

I certainly don't find him as annoying after finishing his confidant as I did before.

Indeed. The scenes where they're forced to confront their own foibles and flaws make for some of the best in the game.

I really like Persona 5 you guys.

I believe I went over that when we last spoke about him.

edited 24th Apr '17 5:30:22 PM by VeryMelon

That wasn't Makoto's reason but yeah they were all selfish but also completely caused by society in general.

Speaking of Makoto I finished her Confidant and made her this run's girlfirend. Anat is a slick looking Transformer.

I found the fact that you didn't even need to fight his Shadow interesting. It's like he was already wondering if he was starting to cross the line, and then the thieves appeared in front of his shadow, it they pretty much shamed him into getting his head back on straight, which is better than what they usually have to do. It's just good that Mishima pulled back before he was too far gone.

Anat is like the only good Ultimate Persona in the game, even if a Persona motorcycle Makoto does donuts on is pretty groovy.

My first thought when seeing it? "RC, what the heck are you doing in a Persona game?"

Kind of interesting that new party members will immediately jump into a battle after an awakening, when in P4 everyone but Rise had to leave and recuperate.

Then again, you get kicked out of the palace immediately after that battle, and new members come in with you on that day, as opposed to in P4 where they spend at least a few days in the TV world.

edited 24th Apr '17 5:55:03 PM by Ekimmak

Makes sense.

You know, no matter how many ways I looked at it, Futaba's palace has some persona 4 vibes, what with her entering her own palace, meeting her shadow, and then accepting a truth that lets it become her persona and all.

It's not one for one, but it's funny how it's so atypical due to a (admittedly weak) resemblance to how it was done in the last game.

edited 24th Apr '17 6:06:01 PM by HandsomeRob

Sad we don't hear the Persona's talk more.

Cause it is a majestic sensation hearing them speak during the awakenings.

So I beat it and final verdict is it just is not better than P4. Better than P3 and any other RPG in a very VERY long time though.

The biggest disappointment was the soundtrack, Life Will Change is really the only super special awesome memorable track that gets used a lot, especially when compared to P3 and 4. The only other memorable track was dungeon 5's I think. Listening to the full soundtrack there are quite a few decent tracks on it that you rarely hear sadly.

And a bunch of minor annoyances like the velvet room UI just sucks, it too way too long to do your shit than it needed to, it was odd compared to the rest of the game's UI which was just as stylish but also functioned well. The lack of tri-fusion and the fact that the special fusions were almost exclusively 70+ was a real annoyance.

The final dungeon just plain sucked, it abandoned much of what made palaces so great as well as was way too short.

Characters were great aside from Yusuke being bland and completely and utterly out of place, Ryuji's serious dumbass moments and the fact that Haru didn't exist as a character earlier were really the only problems I had.

If they fixed the Velvet Room UI a bit, had a Monad Block like bonus section to the game, and diversified and played up the sound track a bit it would have been much better.

Also call me a fanboy but I would have really liked a real cameo damnit.

edited 24th Apr '17 6:13:32 PM by Memers

You should never expect a cameo outside of minor mentions in the mainline games tbh. Persona 3's only returning character in 4 was a minor social link and Persona 2 only had mentions on a TV.

edited 24th Apr '17 6:41:32 PM by Nap1100

You forgot Yukiko and Kashiwagi in Persona 3 Portable.

I think the selfishness was deliberate because, as I understand it, in Japanese culture putting yourself before society at large is seen as a really, really bad thing, thus the idea that a selfish person can also be a genuinely good person is pretty radical. The entire game basically says that the "society-first" mentality is actually bad because it allows horrible people to get away with horrible things because nobody wants to rock the boat too much.

I just took those as a benefit of the Visual Novel format.

I would say that Persona 5 is actually better than vanilla Persona 4. Golden is ultimately better but it definitely leaves the gate open for the inevitable remake to be legendary.

I've got a personal ranking for modern Persona games and their re-releases.

Persona 5 > Persona 4 Golden > Persona 3 Portable > Persona 4 > Persona 3: FES > Persona 3.

P 4 G > P4 > P5 > P 3 P > P3 FES for me. Not a fan of P1 and 2 at all, they don't even rank.

P5 was on pace to be better than 4 but dropped the ball at the end.

edited 24th Apr '17 7:16:53 PM by Memers

Lala Escargot becomes a confidant, a "Use Go-Hom on Traitor" option because I hate missing out on a party member, have the Psiodyne member have more plot relevance earlier on, extra month of free time, and go back into Sae Nijiima's palace just to double check, because it feels weird that it's the only one that doesn't get collapsed.

Oh, and a new bad ending: instant game over when you start Makoto's romance link before sending the sixth calling card, because Nijiima immediately stops the interrogation and throws the book at you.

Morgana and Ryuji take 5 below 4 for me. I don't find their redeeming moments actually make up for how terrible they are for so long.

I found Morgana to be infinitely better than Teddie.

Morgana himself isn't bad at all, everyone has that sore spot. The party ignored it and Ryuji hit that spot with a baseball bat consistently over a long period and never let up even though it was obvious. Had anyone actually sat down and asked what the problem was things would have been great.

In terms of the non-human persona characters I think it's Aigis > Morgana > Ted > Koromaru for me.

edited 24th Apr '17 7:36:43 PM by Memers

If Morgana was just a normal character I'd agree. But he's essentially the voice of the game, by half way through I was just sick of hearing his voice lines for every single in game activity I did.