(this post is spoiler free)
for a while now, I kinda thought singleplayer games were fundamentally too boring, since I’ve played so many at this point. Most of them become too formulaic and I more or less “solve” them too quickly and get bored, especially if the core gameplay loop involves PvE.
as a self proclaimed PvP fiend, I only really enjoy games when the challenge and difficulty is determined by the other humans in the game; when enemies are making decisions based on your decisions and you have to respond dynamically, I think it makes for a more fulfilling experience where your brain is stretched in the correct ways.
PvE difficulty often ends up just being a matter of lever flipping or slider moving where the “challenge” of the game just involves memorizing some boss’s dumb attack patterns or having to fight more enemies with more hp and so on. I don’t really see those mechanics as challenging, they’re mainly just annoying time sinks.
anyways,
for whatever reason, I decided to buy p5r during the thanksgiving sale and play it
before we continue, I have a confession: for the longest time I thought persona 5 was another one of those weeb hyped games, so I kinda ignored its existence
why is p5r such a standout singleplayer game?
the number 1 thing I look for when playing a new game is how polished the game is. Does it feel like the components of the game had a lot of thought put into them?
- Does the story have some thought put behind it or could it have been written by a middle schooler?
- Will the gameplay get mind numbing after a certain amount of hours, or does it manage to stay fresh and engaging?
- Is the user experience fluid? Do I have to click an excessive amount of buttons in the menus to get what I want? Do all the menus work intuitively?
- Does the production value of the soundtrack and sound design match the rest of the game, or was it an afterthought?
and most importantly of all - does it feel like the people making this cared about the quality of the final product?
that being said, I’m not sitting there in a game actively critiquing every aspect of it, this is mainly something that makes itself apparent as I subconsciously compare it to other games I’ve played in the past.
for example, genshin is super polished in almost every aspect: the soundtrack is phenomenal, the user experience is seamless, and the cross platform integration is top tier. The main things that I don’t like about genshin is how the gameplay can get stale if you don’t have a large enough pool of characters that you can swap around with, and the fact that the writing is incredibly generic and the characters are bland. Personally, I’m not invested in the story at all.
my favorite PvP game of all time, apex legends, is super polished in the gunplay, movement, sound design. The fundamental gameplay loop allows for incredibly dynamic macro and micro strategy at the top level, but this is hard to experience for yourself if you don’t play in tournaments. I could gush on for hours about how the movement system in apex is everything I’m looking for in a shooter, and how it’s even better than something like titanfall.
anyways,
persona is another one of those games that checks almost every single box imo - the only parts I would take points off for were the writing in the first ending, and the fact that some of the bossfights had cringe mechanics that seemed too random. Such fights felt like the outcome was based on when the boss decided to play an OP move.
but enough complaining about the things that were bad -
story
the story / narrative is incredibly intriguing as a first time persona player, the premise is much cooler than I thought it was gonna be, and really brings out my inner chuuni (no shame in admitting that). I really love how they leaned into the theme of thieves pulling of a heist for ever single palace location, every location seemed perfectly tailored to the theme.
the characters are charismatic and really make you want to listen to them, both through the writing and the voice acting. I played on the english dub, and the actors all had stellar performances and really got me invested. There were so many iconic voice lines throughout the game.
I think the writers struck a pretty good balance between making the dialogue anime but not too anime, for example characters that were meant to be silly and goofy really played up that role past the point a normal person would, but not to a nauseating extent (maybe that’s just the anime brain rot speaking though).
my favorite part about visual novels (or any other piece of media that takes multiple days to consume) is how the level of detail makes predicting the plot more difficult. I made 3 predictions about the plot once I was a few hours in and whiffed on every single one of them. It’s been a while since there was a story I was so invested in, to the point where I considered sacrificing some sleep time to play.
I really enjoy stories with big casts, and the sheer amount of hours it takes to get through the story really facilitates their development and allows them to be fleshed out.
gameplay
while the gameplay can be considered generic repetitive JRPG gameplay to some, I think it strikes a great balance between mentally engaging and too complex that it’s annoying. As I mentioned before, PvE is not something I generally can enjoy, but I think they injected enough depth into the turn based gameplay to make it require enough thought for me to enjoy it. If I had to summarize it briefly, it’s basically pokemon but with more options on your turn.
personally I’ve hit a point where I do not care about games to the point where I’m opening up wikis and reading into every single game mechanic - I used to do that but I don’t really care to sweat that much anymore. P5 does a great job with the pace at which it introduces new mechanics, so you don’t feel overwhelmed or compelled to open up the wiki or a guide.
soundtrack
I think the soundtrack was great and has some iconic songs in it, but comparing it 1:1 with another JRPG with genshin, the genshin soundtrack still clears… don’t get me wrong though, the soundtrack is still definitely an A tier soundtrack, but it really doesn’t match up to the gold standard quality of genshin.
rating a soundtrack is something that is pretty subjective tbh, but imo a lot of the songs lack depth where it should be, as in my ears weren’t really filled with sound in moments that should have had high impact. The short explanation is that I find it hard to enjoy a track if I can count like 4 layers of sounds/instruments when there should be way more. I’m not really that qualified to comment to a technical level on something like this so take it with a grain of salt.
that being said, “The Whims of Fate” is a banger:
(warning: spotify embeds play at max volume)
my overall rating: 9.5 out of 10
can’t wait to play p3 reloaded in february :3