#joker in interrogation: then akechi said something about pancakes and we--

[tamaharu]

the pancake reveal is SO funny. you completely miss it because youre so used to mona talking but hey. our good friend joker knew the entire time. he just didnt bother to fill us in. but its okay, i forgive you! my god! game of the year. i hope akechi is embarrassed for the rest of his life.

[bidickgrayson]

i’ve been really loving persona 5 so far, but i’ve been too busy playing it to actually write down my thoughts so far lol

i think persona 5 is going to be the first persona game i actually finish!! amazing. i got like, 65-75% through both persona 3 and 4 and haven’t played them in over a year lol....probably going to go back and restart them after i finish p5 so i can finally finish them a couple years after starting them. i can barely even remember what happens in both of them lol

the palaces are surprisingly fun?? also i’m super duper glad that safe mode is a thing, my enjoyment of the game went up a lot when i finally switched. dungeon crawling in p5 is fun, but i’ve never been all that invested in the actual fights themselves in any persona game, and to me they’re just annoying obstacles in the way of all the other stuff about the game i’m a whole lot more interested in. i honestly doubt i’ll ever play a persona game on a difficulty higher than easy

i’m also really impressed by how different each palace is?? i really thought after the first one that they’d all follow that same basic blueprint of like, you go in, fight enemies, find the items you need to progress, and you’re done, with different aesthetics for each one. but each palace has kind of a new gimmick/puzzle, so it’s not just finding the right order to pull levers or whatever, it’s figuring out how to beat an unwinnable game or interrogate a guard the right way for a password. it’s all so fresh and different and never feels like a slog because of that. and i love the connections between the palace and the person’s cognition, like “oh, this is that way because this person thinks of this thing like that”. lots of cool connections that way, lots of cool explanations for why a palace is a certain way

this game feels so cool??? cool isn’t even the proper word for it, because i don’t think it conveys the my strength of feeling enough. like, everything about the game’s design and the whole phantom thief thing makes me feel cool and competent as hell. infiltrating a palace by sneaking in and solving puzzles and beating up or sneaking past guard and making thieves tools and taking cover and jumping up and across obstacles and sending calling cards and assigning different tasks in the middle of a boss fight to accomplish something and hearing the awesome music after you’ve sent a calling card and getting contacts to help with various aspects of thieves’ work....everything down to the menus and loading screens, the whole game is just a whole lot of fun and looks rad as hell and makes me feel rad as hell playing it. it really feels like a group of thieves planning a whole involved operation, and that’s awesome

related, but damn, pretty much everything about the protag is cool as hell, he’s so slick, and i went from thinking his mask was kinda goofy to thinking it really suits him and it’s great

i love the group a lot. like, a lot. and i know that because i don’t want the game to end, and also because i’ve been listening to the (awesome awesome awesome) ost, and there are some endgame songs that make me almost queasy with how much emotion i feel from them, which is directly related to how much i love the group. and the last time i remember that kind of feeling was in me3 and the batfamily lol

like i said, i don’t remember much from p4, but i like morgana a helluva lot more than teddie lol. which i mention just because they’re basically equivalents in the role they play, and also because i genuinely very much like morgana

i love the confidants. it’s hard for me to think of a confidant i don’t like (although i haven’t done them all). i like that they’re all likable people, and i love that so much of the game is about the thieves finding commonalities/connections with each other and with other people. i can’t remember a lot of p3/4, and maybe i’ll change my mind when i replay, but i feel like at least in p3 there were some social links for people who.....i didn’t really like a whole lot. like maybe they were interesting or whatever, but not really good people. which is totally different from my experience with p5 for me, because basically everyone is a good (misunderstood/unfairly judged) person (with some problems too probably, sure)

related, but i feel like this game is very sympathetic to its cast of characters, which i really love. like with futaba and her extreme social anxiety. the game/characters don’t shame her for having a hard time with people and needing time/whatever (and they praise her when she does something hard for her that’d be easy for others, like going out in public!! love it) and that’s really nice. i feel like there’s a lot of compassion for the victims of the story, which in a game that’s all about questions of justice and doing right or whatever, really makes the story a lot better and more compelling to me. it’s not just about going and beating up the bad guy, it’s going and beating up the bad guy so there is justice for all the people the bad guy has abused. and characters can be angry at their mistreatment! really like that too. 

like, there are legitimate reasons to kind of question the power to change hearts how they want, and the morality of that, but i liked that it was never like “these poor people whose hearts we changed didn’t deserve that :(”, it was more like “these villains fucking deserved whatever was coming to them, but is this the right way morally to handle these situations of injustice?” i liked that they never let abusive people off the hook for being abusive, no matter their reason

it’s been nice playing because i feel like i feel the things the story wants me to feel. which is a roundabout way of saying the game has good writing lol. i like that the game doesn’t just say “these are the good guys and that’s all there is to say about it”, i liked that there were questions of whether the phantom thieves were right or not, and while they’re the protagonists and clearly who you root for, there’s also an understanding for why some people might find it questionable that there’s an option to change a heart arbitrarily. and like, i hated when they were uber popular (and being set-up), but in-story, the characters were also a little bit wary and overwhelmed, and there was some evidence that maybe this overwhelming popularity wasn’t the best. and now that period of popularity is over, and the characters are like, yeah, that....wasn’t good, and i’m like, thank god i wasn’t the only one who thought so. there are dozens of other examples. like now that they’re back to being distrusted/ppl not believing in them, they’re all like, this is actually kinda better, and i’m like, YES, i love you best when you’re doing good things in the dark basically

and my final worry on this point of matching what the game expects me to feel versus what i actually feel was finally put to rest today! yay! i’ve pretty much always disliked akechi, and i fcking called that akechi was the gonna be a baddie (or at least not who he pretended to be) from back when he said something about pancakes when he shouldn’t have understood morgana saying it, and i’m relieved that i was right. persona loves to throw in little things that are just weird enough to make me ask “now why did that happen that way” and figure it out, which makes me feel smart when i figure something out 60+ hours before it’s revealed in game lol. and persona loves the “this seemingly benign character is not what they seem!” and that makes me 3/3 on that character in each of the persona games i’ve played. which i like, honestly. i like that the clue is there, enough so i can grab it, and feel clever for it. it’s why i like the puzzles in the game too--they’re not super challenging, but figuring them out usually makes me feel pretty clever and competent without getting frustrated, which is a great feeling

ALSO!! ALSO!!!! i love it when something the game has been teasing and building expectation for for a while turns out to be even better than i was hoping for. (which last happened with olivier in sora no kiseki sc). and the whole operation where protag gets caught and interrogated by sae?? SO MUCH BETTER THAN I THOUGHT. i fcking loved their whole ridiculously complicated and involved plan, and them figuring out akechi without him knowing, and i loved all the tiny details, and i loved that once again, hours before it was actually revealed, the game gave me enough of a hint for me to realize, oh, they were wanting protag to get captured coming into this operation....(when makoto asked sae very specifically about the interrogation room in the basement). it was really frustrating to watch the phantom thieves get set-up in the badlands of september/october, but it’s gonna make it even more satisfying when the phantom thieves outsmart their enemies (which they’re already largely have so far, and it’s GREAT!!!). shido and akechi are good villains, they’ll be satisfying to beat

because i’ve never beaten an persona game, i have no idea what to expect for the ending. are we gonna go all the way through march to finish the year? is it going to finish at school or something (??) or with a big final boss?? is the protag gonna leave after his year is up and (presumably) his name is cleared? i don’t expect the game to end in december after they take shido’s heart, because the cruise ship doesn’t really feel like a final dungeon, and i think akechi is gonna have more significance than they’re giving him right now. but idk, maybe i’m wrong! i’m kind of dreading the ending just because i want to keep planning heists and playing indefinitely, but if the ending’s anywhere near as satisfying as the whole plan to get joker captured, i’ll be happy. i’m gonna really miss the phantom thieves and the feeling i get while playing no matter what tho