Persona 5

JRPG’s have always been somewhat of an enigma to me. Of the many genres of games out there, they’re the ones I want to like the most. There are so many things about JRPG’s that are instantly appealing to me. Eye catching character designs and art styles, often with gorgeous anime aesthetics, the vast inviting overworlds, the epic action sequences and soundtracks that go hand in hand and you’ll normally get some cute anthropomorphic animal thrown in for good measure. I will ALWAYS be on board with that.

However, when I actually bite and settle down with one, too often does the dreaded tedium slowly sink in. That repetitive gameplay loop, the grind, it wears me down everytime. The part that so many people love, I just can’t stand it, I’ll try and push through for the sake of all those other aspects that I’ve leant so heavily towards, in the end it’s never quite enough to prevent me from calling it quits. Final Fantasy, Xenoblade and Mana games to name but a few, have all gone down that same road.

So Persona 5 comes along and immediately sets off those alarm bells once more. Wanting to avoid another disappointment, I begrudgingly put off playing it for months. Eventually, after reading many, many glowing reviews and end-of-year accolades, I caved, and succumbing to peer pressure might’ve been one of the best decisions I ever made.

Persona 5 really goes out of its way to not only tick all the boxes that draw me in to the genre, but to paint those ticks big and bold onto every wall of my inner skull until it’s all my brain can think about. The first thing that got me was that iconic art style. The bold, simplistic, sleekness that blends into the natural anime look makes the whole game buzz with a vivid energy. Even the pause menu pops out of the screen demanding your entire attention. As well as looking impeccably stylish, it made using the various in game menus a breeze. RPG’s can be pretty menu heavy, Persona 5 remedies this beautifully.

The characters in Persona 5 were a genuine joy to get to know, massively helped by each ones individuality. It’s not always the case in other RPG’s, as swathes of new characters get hurled at you, it’s easy to get a little overwhelmed with it all. I’ll be honest, after ten hours spent with Final Fantasy XV, I still couldn’t remember which of my party was which. Whether that says more about me or the game, I’ll let you decide. As each character got introduced to me one by one, the game dedicated ample time to getting to know each of them and through the mix of in game models, on screen static animations, aswell as the fully animated cut scenes, I found myself quickly picking up on their personalities. There was a lot of pleasure to be had as I chose who to spend my free time with. Even though deepening my relationships was vital in maintaining teamwork during combat, I found myself prioritising those with interesting stories and relatable traits. Be it Ryuji’s misunderstood volatility, Futaba’s dehabilitation at the hands of grief or Mishima’s battle with identity and confidence, each person had a surprisingly deep side story that was always intriguing to explore further. Obviously I need to mention Morgana, Persona 5’s own cute anthropomorphic animal of choice. He’s a cat, he’s awesome, ’nuff said.

Considering my own ongoing love affair with Japan, getting to explore whole areas of Tokyo in Persona 5 made this games overworld pretty easy to get onboard with. While not as open as I might like, exploring the backstreets and the busier hubs aswell as visiting popular landmarks and hotspots felt great and made me feel an incredible yearning to drop the controller and head over there myself. Meanwhile, the Palaces (essentially Personas version of dungeons, each one portraying someone’s heart) are where the more fantastical elements can come into play. As a metaphorical representation of each of the owners distorted fantasies and desires, the Palaces can be quite on the nose. However, there was still an unbridled excitement when it came to bringing each palace down and in doing so, I felt that I was making a genuine impact on these characters lives.

That soundtrack then, ay? As a music lover, a games soundtrack is so important to me and how it helps me experience a game and Persona 5 throws a glorious curveball from the second it loads up. Effortlessly cool, the jazz fusion soundtrack is so unexpected for a game of this nature and yet it slots into the overall style so perfectly. You get low-key lounge jazz accenting the quieter moments in the game, going all the way up to big epic jazz rock mashups for the big boss fights. Having a full on song as the main battle theme should be a risky move that most players would be sick of hearing for the 12th battle in a row but everytime the string section started up I couldn’t help but get pumped up and ready to fight. This soundtrack pretty much lives in my head now and I couldn’t be more happy about it.

Which just leaves the gameplay. This is the point where I would normally start grumbling about the repetitive fights and the overtly complex menus, sub-menus and sub-side-secondary-menus. But Persona 5 was different. At its very base, Persona 5’s combat still revolves around turn-based movement, utilising player stats, strengths and weaknesses to determine your overall damage. What I wasn’t expecting, was how integral all the other games components would be in making the combat so absorbing. The art style instantly makes each battle immensely more dynamic; the menus pop out and react so vividly to each button press it almost feels like you’re fighting in real time. Plus, if you’re good enough to knock down each enemy in a single turn, you get the chance to perform a team attack that’s accompanied by an animation so wonderfully bold and slick, I literally never got bored of seeing it.

However, the thing that REALLY set the combat apart was how your relationships with each character directly influenced team play. The more time you spend with each of the main characters, the closer your relationship becomes and as your friendship status gets higher, you begin to unlock moves and perks that can be used in battle. It meant getting the chance to pass an extra turn to a team mate, being relieved of detrimental ailments mid-battle or receiving support fire from a cohort after attacking. There were times where an enemy attack would’ve left me for dead, were it not for a team mate stepping in at the last second and taking the hit for me. Anyone who knows the pain of fainting mid-dungeon and losing the last hour of progress can relate to how much of an actual life-saver this is. And this was all owed to the choices I had made earlier in the game. Choosing who I took out for lunch, who I listened to, who I supported during hard times, the moral dilemmas I helped solve, it wasn’t all for nothing. It wasn’t all just for the sake of padding out the game time, all these choices I made were fundamental to ensuring my team had my back. Suddenly, combat became so much more than just picking the right move, there were much deeper systems at play that made me feel so much more emotionally involved and invested then any other RPG had done before. It made the long palaces and time consuming boss fights turn from potential slog-fests to excitingly involved show downs and I was fully invested to the very end.

100+ hours later and the credits rolled. Normally I’d be burnt out, happy to move on, but now I was slightly disheartened. I wanted to carry on, I wanted there to be more to explore and more to experience. Persona 5 had engrossed me so heavily into the story, the characters and made me feel so directly involved that I wanted to see what happens next, however insignificant*. And it’s all thanks to the way the developers interwove the games different aspects so seamlessly. It gave me an experience I wasn’t expecting and made me appreciate gameplay aspects of an entire genre I would’ve otherwise dismissed by creating emotional connections. Throughout the game, the tagline ‘Take Your Heart’ crops up a lot. It didn’t make much sense to me to begin with but once the game was over, it’s meaning became a lot more clearer.

Mike Tapia

*Perhaps I’m not the only one that felt this way. Later in 2019 (2020 in the West), an expanded edition of the game ‘Persona 5 Royal’ will be released. It adds new everythings and extends the game past its original finishing point. There aren’t many games that I go back and replay, I might be tempted with this one though