Unwanted Impression - Persona 5 Royal

The last time I had "Unwanted Impression" it ends badly because I never finish Cyberpunk 2077. However, I look back at that post and it reminded me about how much I hope to remember the small little details of enjoyment I had in games. So here it is, Persona 5 (P5 for short) that I had 120 hours in it with 1 complete playthrough.

Do note that there are no avoiding spoilers here, because I felt like I had to remind myself in the future how good this game is with its story.

Spare the long introduction, I will try to make it short. Persona 5 is not a new game, it's been released as console exclusive for years, and later on updated with the version that consists of DLC, Persona 5 Royal. Atlus Studio decides to release P5 on all platforms in 2022, with the inclusion in Xbox PC Game Pass, I had my hands on the game for the first time.

IMPRESSION

P5 is a standard JRPG, turn based combat, map that looks empty to walk around, have to hit or be hit by enemies to load into combat phase. Just a personal preference, I do think turn based JRPG games like this is slightly outdated, unless you have a good reason (like porting to mobile phone). Sounds like knit picking, but in truth I don't have much complain about P5, the combats are still fun that being said!

The best impression I had on P5 is, Atlus Studio basically blended visual novels into a standard JRPG. It is so smart to implement a time feature, so player can only do limited set of things based on how much progress you currently have. Always struggle if I should bond with certain characters first, or increasing my stats for combat, or getting more Personas to play the game like Pokemon. There are much much more to do in the game, always felt like "ah I wish I had more time" just like in real life!

LIFE WILL CHANGE

Story writing, characters development, they fit perfectly. It is a good starting point for players who are not familar with visual novel and want to get a taste of what it is. Although, story can get a little childish, but on the grand scale of entire story, there are points that I feel like I can take in and have my own interpretations in my life. The main theme is to "refuse to settle, stand up and fight injustice, make changes". Even if story can go childish, the theme is not. For that, I have a lot of respect on how the author write the stories and characters.

Can't move fast without breaking

Can't hold on or life won't change
And our voices ring out, yeah
Took the mask off to feel free
Fought it out in the debris
Now we know that life will change

The lyrics of the theme song "Life will Change" hits me so hard. Maybe it is due to what I have been experiencing in recent years, but I guess it suits a lot of people too. A lot of us are too afraid to leave our comfort zone, it can be anything in life. We always hold on to it but we want things to change for the better, not knowing that gripping it too hard leads to nowhere. Staying true to ourselves, not forgetting the adults we don't want to be when we were kids, accept changes in life. I felt like I learnt something from the game, I hope people do too. 

MEMENTOS

For future reference, ChatGPT is released on late 2022. ChatGPT is an AI model that trains itself with data from the Internet dated to 2020. Machine learning is an interesting study, ChatGPT model in some ways are just mimicking human behaviours on Internet until 2020, including all the knowledge that it can get from it.

Reason why I brought ChatGPT up is, I learnt and gave a good thought about Mementos in Persona 5. To explain, Mementos is a dungeon in Shinjuku in the game, it represents the collective unconscious of general public. This means the tendency of people leaning towards something, their thoughts and desires, is always show in Mementos. Now, does it sounds familiar to something I just mentioned?

Just for the fun of it, I asked ChatGPT's opinion on this and he gave me the answer that I expected. Yes, Mementos in P5 is very similar to ChatGPT. They are both general cognitive of the world that we live in, Mementos reply to human by appearing as obstacles or enemies to fight in the game, ChatGPT talks to human by text. This idea about Mementos is just so much fun, I have to bring it up in this review.

VERDICT

There are reasons to not like Persona 5, although for me they are not such a big deal:

1. Some boss fights are just not fun, I was basically grinding a damage sponge. The lack of strategy in a turn based RPG is not ideal.
2. Lengthy puzzles and dungeons, in a game that is so similar to visual novel is very weird! I really wanted to replay the game to try other routes for different characters, but knowing that I have to go through all the hassles for hours again just made me uninstall the game.
3. Tutorial is sometimes annoying, typical holding hands tutorial that limits what you can do. At the start of the game, it felt like there are so many things that I can do but they were locked for not progressing the story.

With that being said, I don't have a lot of games that I played for more than 100 hours. This might have been the third or fourth game, and I spent 120 hours in this game. Knowing that I don't have much time for games ever since I started working, this 120 hours playthrough felt very lengthy but I still enjoy it very much. There are other remakes for Persona 3 and 4, but looking at it they looks very outdated and I'm unwilling to commit that many hours into them. There might be Persona 6 in the future, and if there are any creative changes for it, I can't wait!

Persona 5 is a really enjoyable game for me! Probably due to the fact that I like stories and it is such a heavy plot game. Some game designs like characters affection, time limit, definitely inspires other games in this era whenever I play them. Atlus Studio made a giant in the game industry, that it is still a lot of fun even if it is a JRPG for players who don't usually like them much. Personal opinion would definitely be a 9/10 game!