Persona 5 Review
Image from wikipedia.org
It’s finally time. It’s one of our favorite games (or at least Jerrod’s favorite).
You’ll never see it coming, your last surprise. But you probably did if you were at the last meeting.
Persona 5 is the talk of next week. Meet at the hideout in Gaylord 2030 at 6 p.m. on Tuesday to learn more, and get free pizza that was purchased legally.
For those who don’t know the stylishness of Persona 5, the game follows a ragtag group of teenagers who discover they have the power to change people’s emotions. How do you ask?
Stealing their hearts of course.
The player starts as a kid who moved to another school and town because he was wrongly convicted of violent assault. After a chance encounter with a cat and a random classmate, he stumbles into what is known as the Metaverse.
The Metaverse is basically the inside of someone’s mind in physical form. Those who are corrupted by evil desires have large Metaverses called Palaces and become Shadows.
But those who have strong hearts or are able to show their true self can control Personas, or strong Pokemon-like creatures that resemble emotions.
You and your friends, as well as your cat (who’s name is Morgana and is actually originally from the Metaverse) become the Phantom Thieves, a group dedicated to righting the wrongs of those with power and abuse it.
But you’re also still a highschool student, who goes to school, hangs out and goes on dates, studies, plays arcade games, watches movies, plays baseball, visits the bathhouse, and a bunch of other things.
And all of this is done with style and substance. Persona 5 is a traditional RPG and visual-novel with some of the best looking art, UI, and splash screens ever seen.
In the Metaverse, you invade Palaces to take down the ruler and steal their desire. This part of the game is a dungeon crawler with turn-based combat like that of Pokemon, with some extra twists.
Personas have elemental attacks, strengths, and weaknesses. Deciding when to strike and with what is important.
Abilities such as “Hold Up!” allow for strategic thinking. If your party manages to hit every enemy on screen with a critical hit or weakness exploit, you can perform a “Hold Up!” and either get a new persona, some items and cash, or perform an “All Out Attack!”
That attack highlights the stylish art I mentioned earlier. After performing the attack, you get a stylish splash screen as your rewards pop up.
It’s incredibly satisfying and the game offers plenty of it, with other attack animations, the text for dialogue, and even UI and the pause menu looking cool as hell.
But not only that, you’ll get to know your teammates and others in daily life as well. Through the Confidant system, you’ll do visual novel segments to become better friends with other characters.
But first, you’ll need to build up social stats. You do this by doing everyday tasks, like the ones I mentioned. For instance Makoto wants you to have a knowledge stat of 3 before you can hang out with her.
Then after meeting a required stat, you’ll be able to hang out with friends. Through choosing the right dialogue and giving gifts, you’ll level up your friendship, which gives you even more abilities to use in the Palace!
The rewards from the visual novel part feed into the real life part, making for an incentive to take part in the story and learn about the characters. It helps that the characters are interesting and fun.
But here’s the icing on the cake for me: time management. I had to plan out my days, wondering when I should hang out with friends or continue my heist.
I love making decisions like these. And it also helps that people have different times they can hang out, or you have different options of what to do depending on the day.
I think this game has stuck with me for so long because I first played this game my senior year of high school. It drew me in because it felt like my life, but a little different and a lot more stylish.
I saw myself and my friends in it, I had to take time to plan out the week, and I could make change. Its themes of positive change, how we view the world, and mental well-being really struck a chord with me.
Combine that with the fact it just looks awesome, you’ve got yourself one heck of a masterpiece in my humble opinion.
But don’t just hear it from me. Come to our Phantom Thieves meeting to hear from all the wonderful confidants about Persona 5!
