For me, the most anticipated anything ever has been Persona 5- I waited eight long years for it, I obsessively followed media, news updates, rumors, speculation, everything for it. I watched the same trailers as many times as I could, I pored over the soundtrack, and every single delay (four of them!) to the game's release killed me a little on the inside.
The long, torturous wait for me came to an end on 4/4/17, when, at long last, I got to play the follow-up to what was at that point (and may still be) inarguably the most important game in my life, ever, period.
My feelings towards Persona 5 are extremely mixed. When I started playing it, I was unhappy for the longest time- to be clear, the first 10 hours or so. The first palace of the game is absolutely terrible in just about every way (it's not complex enough to be engaging, not simple enough to be completed by a disengaged player, not short enough to not matter), and the pacing was an utter, total, absolute disaster. A lot has been said about Persona 4's slow start- but in the end, i think I prefer Persona 4 not giving me much control for the first few hours over Persona 5 giving me control, but then railroading me, because to me, the latter situation is a lot more frustrating. If you give me control, cede control to me- don't give me control to give me the illusion of agency, and then proceed to railroad me and get me to do what you want.
Happily, I started to really come around to the game by the second palace- it opens up then, it lets me do what I want, and the story kicks into gear, too. I proceeded to love the hell out of the game from then on through to the end, and by the time I was finished, I was so happy that I promptly declared that it was my favorite game of the year, beating even BotW, which I thought could not be beaten.
I did take a bit of a break from games after it- playing BotW and P5 (both of which I had been waiting for for years, and which are both enormous games) burned me out. However, after a few months, I decided I wanted to replay Persona 5. This was not the best idea in the world. This is when the cracks and flaws in the game began to show.
Multiple problems immediately begin to become apparent to me on a playthrough. In order to keep things short (because this would be a really long thread otherwise), I'm going to list them out as bullet points:
But I am capable of loving something and seeing its flaws, and Persona 5 is full of them. I think that, objectively, it is a step back from 4 Golden in gameplay terms (the one area where it is indisputably better is dungeons, and that's it). 4 was better paced, integrated its character arcs into the main story far better, balanced the time resource management with the amount of things on offer the best, and never became as overbearing in general as 5 does.
So, I love Persona 5- it's a fantastic game. But it had an eight year long, fractured development cycle, and I think in many ways, that shows. I really hope a Persona 5 Rebellion or whatever comes along- polish up the problematic elements, and you will have what might be the best game ever created if you do. Until then, you're left with something that can be one of the greatest, but there's too many flaws that many will just check out of the game rather than put up with its bullshit.
The long, torturous wait for me came to an end on 4/4/17, when, at long last, I got to play the follow-up to what was at that point (and may still be) inarguably the most important game in my life, ever, period.
My feelings towards Persona 5 are extremely mixed. When I started playing it, I was unhappy for the longest time- to be clear, the first 10 hours or so. The first palace of the game is absolutely terrible in just about every way (it's not complex enough to be engaging, not simple enough to be completed by a disengaged player, not short enough to not matter), and the pacing was an utter, total, absolute disaster. A lot has been said about Persona 4's slow start- but in the end, i think I prefer Persona 4 not giving me much control for the first few hours over Persona 5 giving me control, but then railroading me, because to me, the latter situation is a lot more frustrating. If you give me control, cede control to me- don't give me control to give me the illusion of agency, and then proceed to railroad me and get me to do what you want.
Happily, I started to really come around to the game by the second palace- it opens up then, it lets me do what I want, and the story kicks into gear, too. I proceeded to love the hell out of the game from then on through to the end, and by the time I was finished, I was so happy that I promptly declared that it was my favorite game of the year, beating even BotW, which I thought could not be beaten.
I did take a bit of a break from games after it- playing BotW and P5 (both of which I had been waiting for for years, and which are both enormous games) burned me out. However, after a few months, I decided I wanted to replay Persona 5. This was not the best idea in the world. This is when the cracks and flaws in the game began to show.
Multiple problems immediately begin to become apparent to me on a playthrough. In order to keep things short (because this would be a really long thread otherwise), I'm going to list them out as bullet points:
- The pacing of this game is an utter disaster. To me, this is the most inexcusable flaw any story can ever have. There's no consistency to the flow of the story, it hits the ground running, slams headfirst into a brick wall, slowly begins to pick up, gathers momentum, hits a brick wall again, continues gathering momentum as if there was no dip in pacing, builds to a conclusion, grinds to a halt to put you through a protracted gauntlet, has an extended coda with some extremely unnecessary story developments, and then ends. This is not how a good story should be structured, and it is frankly exhausting. The pacing exacerbates, and is further exacerbated by, a second issue this game has:
- It is too damn long. It is a game that does not know how to end. It outstays its welcome. An average Normal mode playthrough of Persona 5 is 90-110 hours long. That's absolutely ridiculous, especially because so much of it is unearned. The game is replete with padding- characters repeat 5-10 minute long conversations all the time, you are spontaneously railroaded without reason because the game decides it is necessary, some dungeons are unnecessarily long, the final gauntlet is absolutely ridiculous, and most importantly, once the true final boss is defeated, the game proceeds to go into an extended epilogue where literally nothing of consequence happens.
Joker is imprisoned (for reasons that are never made fully clear, this is necessary to indict Shido), and then he is... released from custody. So what was actually the point of him being arrested in the first place?
- Related, but the game likes to undermine a lot of its own plot developments. The most egregious example of this is not one, but two death fakeouts near the end- the first one feels poignant and almost well earned (and I do feel if it was not a fakeout, the character involved would have had a better arc overall); the second one is absolutely cheap, comes five minutes after the game assures you the character is gone, and cheapens a lot of the message the game intends to sell you on in the first place
- Repetition. There's way too much repetition in the game. Characters have an important conversation that excruciatingly explains and lays out everything that happened- while I am not a fan of the tell, don't show form of storytelling, I recognize it is endemic to a lot of Japanese media, and Persona games in particular, so I'm fine with that. But then they proceed to have that conversation again. And again. And again. And again. They drive the point home by hammering you over the head with it, and by the end, you are groaning when Ryuji, Ann, and Yusuke start discussing the mysterious masked interloper that Madarame talked about in the Metaverse for the fourth time straight.
- The game unnecessarily restricts the player in the name of storytelling. So, for example, take dungeons- you will end up spending at minimum four days on every dungeon, no matter what. You spend one day for recon (this is a story event, it cannot be skipped), one day at minimum going through the dungeon, and then you send the Calling Card, and... for some reason, you skip that day, and you also skip the next day, which is dedicated to the boss fight and nothing else. Why does the Calling Card take two days? Why can it not take one day? Why can you not send it in the morning and then fight the boss later in the day? Or if the plot demands that you send it a day before the actual fight, why is the day you send the calling card locked out? You don't go into the Metaverse, but all Social Links and side activities are also locked out. Why? This is especially problematic because
- The game randomly decides to lock you out of its wealth of side activities without cause or explanation. There are multiple nights when Morgana will refuse to let you go out without any proper cause, and restrict what you can do during the day. This further limits the time you have to actually go out and do things. This is another problem because
- Relative to the amount of things you get to do, Persona 5 offers you the least amount of time to do them compared to 3/FES/4/Golden. It adds more to the sense of being railroaded, and removes agency further
- Actual palace design is wildly variable. The second palace is great, the fourth is fantastic, the sixth is a highlight; meanwhile, the first one is trash, the fifth one almost made me want to quit, the third and seventh ones are good but way outstay their welcome, and the final challenge is... well, you know what, I'll excuse that because, again, it's end game, so whatever.
- The writing is weak, the translation is a mess, and there are some jarring story elements (the story is about rebelling against conforming to society, the themes are about that, and then the game proceeds to make fun of gay people. Real classy).
But I am capable of loving something and seeing its flaws, and Persona 5 is full of them. I think that, objectively, it is a step back from 4 Golden in gameplay terms (the one area where it is indisputably better is dungeons, and that's it). 4 was better paced, integrated its character arcs into the main story far better, balanced the time resource management with the amount of things on offer the best, and never became as overbearing in general as 5 does.
So, I love Persona 5- it's a fantastic game. But it had an eight year long, fractured development cycle, and I think in many ways, that shows. I really hope a Persona 5 Rebellion or whatever comes along- polish up the problematic elements, and you will have what might be the best game ever created if you do. Until then, you're left with something that can be one of the greatest, but there's too many flaws that many will just check out of the game rather than put up with its bullshit.
