#been living almost completely stealth for ish 3 years and at the same time parties are adopting american altright speaking points

[ultrasopp]

Want to make a zine with these kinds of doodles eventually

[biscuitreviews]

Biscuit Reviews: Persona 5 (Minor Spoilers)

WARNING: This review will contain minor spoilers regarding Persona 5’s final dungeon. I will not be discussing the story reasons of the final dungeon, only how the game treats elements that lead up to the final dungeon. I will place another warning label within the review when I get ready to discuss this portion of the game.

Persona 5 (P5) is the fifth entry of the Persona series and it also the game that celebrates the series 20th anniversary. The game is available for both PS3 and PS4. I played this game on the PS3. As for differences between the two versions, I do not know, my guess would be technical performance and better resolution, but again I’m not sure.

Once again, you start the game as a self-named silent-ish protagonist. You read that right, silent-ish. What I mean by this is that although your character does not have major speaking roles and you mostly pick responses, there are moments that this character does speak in anime cut scenes and even in other moments in the game. They are not grunts and yells either, these are actual bits of dialogue which give your character a little bit of personality. Normally, silent characters are a projection of the player. This approach allows you to not only project yourself, but to also tailor that projection to the character itself, making it a nice fusion between the player and character.

Another moment that I found interesting about your character is that he has a back story and this back story has ties to the overall plot of the game. This forms an even stronger connection between you and the character. It’s this bond that brings you to care more despite the fact that the character you control is silent for the majority of the journey. It’s this formed connection that P5 has allowed you to have with your character that I believe has set a new standard for the silent protagonist in future games and for other developers to take note in creating that connection between player and character.

The story of P5 actually begins with your main character’s back story. One night, going home, your character hears a woman screaming. He investigates it to find a man trying to assault her. He attempts to stop the man only to find out that he’s a powerful politician that turns the situation around to where you assaulted him. This false charge brands you as a criminal and you are sentenced with live with your parole officer for one year.

Later, you have a mysterious app that downloads on your phone that allows you to travel to a place called the Metaverse, a place where cognitive distortions are manifested. It is here you discover the power of Persona and you and your party members take up the mantle of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, which I’ll discuss a little more in detail shortly.

Almost immediately, you’ll notice the first overall change to the narrative of P5, compared to other Persona games. In P3 and P4, you were the new student that people wanted to know and were curious about. In P5, you’re the student that everyone shuns and wants nothing to do with. It’s a nice breath of fresh air to have NPCs of the game react to your character in a completely different way than how past entries of series normally introduce your character.

As a Phantom Thief, you’ll be attempting to steal the hearts of corrupted adults in positions of power to change their ways and admit the crimes which they have committed. To do this, you will enter their Palace, which are the games dungeons, through the Metaverse. These Palaces are all uniquely built with different paths, traps, and ambush points. These Palaces feel more personal to the target whose heart you’re trying to steal, rather than just 4 to 5 different floor variants with different aesthetics, like in Persona 3 and 4.

As you navigate the Palaces, you’ll have to go through them with minimal sightings by the enemy. You’ll have to ambush your enemies and even hide behind walls and other obstacles. I was initially worried as this game is mainly an RPG and that the stealth elements would be non-existent. In actuality, these Palaces were built with stealth in mind. The game even encourages the use of stealth to gain a first strike advantage in fights. If you have been spotted too many times, you will be kicked out of the Palace for the day and will have to wait until the next day to continue your infiltration. However, there are some technical mishaps with the cover system. There will be times that instead of moving to the next hiding point, your character will simply move to another angle of the hiding point you are currently at, this is can be frustrating at times, but is easy to readjust.

Combat works the same as the previous Persona games with some slight differences. Rather than picking Persona’s that come to you at the end of battle, the Shadows you fight are the Personas you will be gaining during battle. The way to gain them is reminiscent of other games in the Shin Megami Tensei series. You have to find their weakness or land a critical hit to knock them down. Once they are knocked down, you will attempt to negotiate with the Shadow to have them join you. This helps create more of a connection to the Personas you gain as you had to convince them to join you rather than obtain them at the end of a battle.

Social Links also make a return under a new label, Confidants. Increasing a Confidants rank will give you bonuses and new skills you can use to accomplish tasks and even give you additional skills and advantages in battle. In Persona 4, this was exclusive to only your party members. P5 has expanded that even more to where every Confidant in the game gives you some sort of unique skill in the game. This gives you a motivation to increase Confidant levels other than having a higher level to create a stronger Persona.

P5 also has an online feature known as the Thieves Guild. It’s minimalistic, but helpful for the purpose it serves. The Thieves Guild can help you with school questions, plan on how to spend your day by seeing how other players chose to spend theirs, and saving a downed party member if they are taken hostage during battle. It’s a nice change of pace from having half put together co-op missions or versus matches, showing that online functions can serve other purposes.

Now, I’m getting ready to discuss the spoiler section of the game. The reason I am discussing this aspect is because of how it can affect your overall experience with the game and I feel is worth mentioning in the review.

While you are not in a Palace and waiting for the next mission, there are side quests for you to complete. All of these side quests take place in a dungeon known as Mementos. Mementos is a randomly generated floor dungeon that grows bigger with each Palace you complete. The game treats Mementos as a side dungeon you don’t have to complete, but might find something really cool or fight a really powerful enemy when you reach the bottom.

This is where my major complaint for P5 sets in. The final floor of Mementos is the Final Palace of the game’s main story. This means that if you do not venture through Mementos as you are progressing through the story, you will have to navigate a 60 floor plus dungeon before you get to the Final Palace.

This can be extremely demoralizing for the final moments of the game if you have not been keeping up with Mementos. Luckily, in my playthrough, I kept up with Mementos and did not have to face this issue. It’s the possibility that this can happen is what really hurts the game.

Despite this major issue, P5 is an excellent game that might show other Japanese developers that there is still a market for turn-based RPGs with this title being a serious contender for Game of the Year.

Persona 5 gets 9/10.