"Persona 5" Review (For real this time) - You never see it co-miiiiing!

Available for: Playstation 3, Playstation 4

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

Toward the end of last year, I lumped Pokemon: Ultra Sun, Sonic Forces, and Persona 5 together into one large review in the interest of getting all my reviews out so I could finish the GOTY lists before the end of the year. I hold that my impressions of the first two items of that article remain accurate to this day. However, I have no choice but to admit that my treatment of Persona 5 was rushed because of the length of the game and the proximity to the end of the year at the time the review was written, even if some of the criticisms I had still ring true. With that in mind, I've now completed the game twice and am seriously debating foregoing my strategically-placed save files (placed at key points to simply resume the game with a different love interest) to start a third run-through. I've maxed out all my confidants (with the exception of the twins, but who cares?), maxed out all my social stats, completed quite a bit of the persona compendium, and I still find myself hungry for more. Even after over 120 hours spent (or perhaps because of that time spent) with these characters in this world, I still find myself wanting to brave this game's slow opening a third time just so I can experience this story and get to know these characters all over again. Dear readers, Persona 5 has its issues, but I can't remember the last time I enjoyed my time with a game as much as I have with this one. Since my initial review, very few of the criticisms I had have been overturned, but I can now look at them through the kind of perspective that multiple playthroughs and over 120 hours of play time can provide. Though the score will likely not be all that different, I'd still like to take this time to review Persona 5 properly: to examine more aspects more closely, and to really take the time t tell you why you owe it to yourself to wake up, get up, get out there, and purchase a copy. Let's get started!

For those who might be intimidated by the fact that this is the 5th game in the Persona saga, don't be. This game is an entity all its own, as I can attest to, since this is my first foray into the saga. Persona 5 follows a player-named Japanese high school boy who is forced to move to Tokyo and attend a different school after being framed for assault by a powerful man. When he arrives in Tokyo's Yongen district, he finds that he will be living in the attic of the cafe that his new (temporary) guardian owns. The next day, when he's introduced to the administration at Shujin Academy, where he'll be attending school, he finds a staff immediately prepared to kick him to the curb the second he shows any sign of trouble. Throughout all of this, a sinister-looking app appears on his phone, and it won't seem to go away no matter how many times he deletes it. Then, our hero wakes up to find himself temporarily in an otherworldy prison run by two short blonde twins and a crooked-nosed little man named Igor, who speaks to him about his "rehabilitation" (just another average day in the land of the rising sun). Suffice it to say, things look pretty bleak for our hero at the start of the game.
However, things take a sudden turn when, on his first day of class, our protagonist and another troublemaking student take the route to school and end up at a medieval castle instead. Once inside, they find that the school's world-famous coach, Mr. Kamoshida (whom the protagonist encounters only briefly before arriving), rules the castle. Kamoshida sentences the two to execution, at which point our protagonist (who will soon come to be known as "Joker") "awakens to his true self," and finds he has the ability to summon a persona (a reflection of his spirit of rebellion) to fight for him. Confused yet? Not to worry, this gets elaborated on a ton. Having now fought off Kamoshida, our heroes attempt to escape the castle, but have no luck until they run into a mysterious talking cat named Morgana. Morgana informs them that they're essentially in the real Kamoshida's cognition, and that this castle is how he sees the school: the girls are bikini-clad airheads who throw themselves at him, while the boys are slaves to be tortured for fun. All of this aligns with existing rumors about Kamoshida sexually harassing female students and physically abusing his volleyball team. From there, Morgana teaches our heroes about the inner workings of the metaverse, about these "palaces", and about the possibilities that can come from these worlds. Essentially, if a person can steal the palace ruler's treasure (the thing that caused their desires to become so distorted in the first place), they can cause the ruler to have a change of heart and confess their crimes. From there, our protagonist and a growing cast of characters become "The Phantom Thieves," and they set out to bring the world of rotten adults to its knees.
A large paragraph containing nothing but story, and we're not even two hours into the game yet. It took over 80 hours for me to finish my first play through. That's how rich in story Persona 5 is. What I've just described is just the tip of the iceberg, but I dare not say much more about the plot given just how much there is for you to experience for yourself. Of the overall story, I'll say this: there is an insane amount of attention to detail that you probably won't notice unless you start it up a second time or unless you're really paying attention. You could be forgiven for not realizing that in the end you'll end up fighting a series of unnamed characters you happen to meet relatively early in the game. You could also be forgiven for not seeing the foreshadowing that certain school lessons have. Beyond bits of foreshadowing, there are other interesting little tidbits that could easily be overlooked. For instance, there comes a time when one of the lessons in school is about the suits in a deck of cards. The end of the lesson talks about how the Joker card is thought to have originated from the Fool card in a Tarot deck. Well, our protagonist is obviously referred to as Joker, and the being that allows him to grow his powers is the "Fool" confidant. For another example, the persona "Goemon" is weak to fire. This is interesting because, as another school lesson points out, the historical thief Goemon was boiled alive. Little bitty details like that are everywhere. This game is meticulously laid out, and I simply can't imagine the research that went into making Persona 5 the way it is.

As much as I've been going on about the greatness of Persona 5's story, it's worth noting that I do have issues with it. There are times where the game will be so proud of itself and of its plot that it'll spoil events before they happen. This usually comes in the form of a cutscene wherein a villain practically rubs his hands together while talking on the phone about how "everything is proceeding exactly as planned" to some bigger baddie in the shadows whose identity you'll probably guess before it's even hinted at. There was one event in particular that would've been completely shocking and more than a little devastating...if we only hadn't been literally told it was going to happen. What should've been a moment of sheer shock enough to make me ponder the moral validity of changing the hearts of criminals just ended up as a dud. What's more, the game seems to be terribly insecure about its ability to do drama. Every time it starts the emotional buildup, it then throws away the drama completely with an off-handed comment or joke. It isn't a huge deal, but I did find it frustrating to constantly face this.
Unfortunately, Persona 5's evident insecurity isn't limited to its ability to handle dramatic events. There are three other pain points that I'd like to identify and elaborate on.
First, we have the game's insecurity concerning whether or not the player will be able to understand the concept of the cognitive world. The first few hours of the game are filled to the brim with unnecessary explanation of every tiny little thing, and these explanations get repeated ad-nauseum because one of the characters doesn't get it, but one can tell that it's there to ensure that the player isn't lost. That's a noble goal in and of itself, but in my second playthrough, when I was fastforwarding through that dialogue, I realized just how merciless Persona 5 is with its beating-you-over-the-head approach to explanation.
Secondly, we have the game's insecurity concerning whether or not the player will remember the stakes of a particular mission after stealing the treasure. I'll be going into more detail about how treasure stealing and time management work in the gameplay section, but for a brief overview, you have a set amount of days to complete certain missions. You could finish the mission in one day if you're prepared enough, it's all up to you. If you finish early, then the rest of the allotted time will be spent "awaiting the change of heart." During this time, you'll receive texts in the group chat nearly every night to the effect of "I hope the change of heart works. We're totally screwed if he doesn't call it off..." Everyone will chime in over the course of about 10 texts until you have the opportunity to say some variation of "All we can do now is wait." This is repeated non-stop until the deadline, as if anybody playing doubts that the change of heart will succeed. In my second playthrough, I found myself rapidly pressing x to get through these conversations because of just how insubstantial and repetitive they are.
Finally, we have the game's insecurity concerning whether or not the player will understand that the bad guys are evil. At the end of every mission, there's a boss fight with the ruler of the palace. There's always a little standoff shortly before the fight wherein the ruler spouts their twisted ideology and our heroes are somehow shocked about it despite having gone through a palace that clearly shows this ideology in play. Then, every character will yell something about how the ruler is evil, one after another. Every time. For pete's sake, Atlus, we get it! The guy just views people as a way to make money! The whole palace was centered around that fact! We don't need to hear: "He only views people as a way to make money!" "You're truly disgusting! People are more than that!" "He truly is unforgivable!" "Man, I've had enough of this money-grubbing dirtbag, can we take the treasure already?" "People like you are exactly why so many workers are miserable!" "You act like you're just a businessman, but you're really a monster!" in different variations for every single palace ruler to understand that the bad guys are evil. What's more, these constant reminders that bad guys are evil aren't exclusive to the before-fight standoffs. Many times, we'll get treated to a round of each character reminding us of the obvious at various points in the palace. The second and third palaces in particular are guilty of this.
Ultimately what these insecurities take shape as is a lack of much-needed subtlety on the part of the story. It's such an odd thing, especially given how well the game leverages subtlety to the benefit of its sense of humor. There were moments or two that had me howling with laughter not because they were that funny, but because of the understated way in which the humor was delivered. Because of this, we know that developer Atlus was definitely capable of leveraging subtlety in a different way, but they elected not to. Whether this was because they didn't think they were overdoing the three aforementioned areas or because they think we're dumb or because they really are insecure about their abilities, the time spent progressing through the story had a few bumps that could've easily been avoided with just a little bit more care.
I know I've spent a lot of time talking about the negatives of the story, but they really aren't all that bad. Yeah, in a second playthrough you'll find yourself skipping and fastforwarding a lot, and you'll find yourself rapidly pressing x at the pre-boss standoff even in your first playthrough, I'd bet. However, the story, for all its flaws, is still brilliant.

The story and attention to detail all serve to make this experience great, but what truly makes it memorable is its characters. Persona 5 exceeds Undertale for me in terms of the sheer lovability of its cast, a feat I previously deemed impossible. Every member of the Phantom Thieves is compelling, and they're only a portion of the characters you can interact with. There are plenty of confidants who exist outside of the Phantom Thieves, and most of them are as compelling as the confidants you go into battle with. Similar to companions in any Bioware title, the more you talk to a confidant, the closer you'll become with them. Persona 5 ranks closeness on a scale from 1-10, and assuming your bond is on the verge of increasing, talking to the confidant will cause that rank to increase.
In keeping with the comparison to Bioware titles, some of these confidants can be pursued romantically. In fact, I should say that the entire female cast of confidants can be pursued romantically (but anyone who has played and is worthy of living knows that there's only one worthwhile route...even though this character's fandom, "The Queen's Guard," kind of makes me uncomfortable). That's one way in which this title is not like a Bioware title: our protagonist is decidedly heterosexual, unless you decide to roleplay otherwise by not choosing a love interest. There are undoubtedly those who think that this should be a point of controversy, but I'd argue that there are other aspects of the romantic side of this game that are a little better fitted for that...but I'll get to that in a second. As romantic subplots go, it's a slow burn for sure, with the sweetest, mushiest moments happening towards the end of the game (we're talking around 80 or so hours). Depending on who you choose, you could possibly end up in the romantic side of things at around the 30 hour mark (making this a really slow burn), but regardless, it's (for the most part) a really sweet, innocent kind of romantic subplot. Not only that, but in terms of seeming like they're into you, the love interests of Persona 5 easily trump any love interests that Bioware has put out since Mass Effect 3. You and your interest of choice can do cute things like ride the ferris wheel at the seaside park and go to the planetarium and make really mushy and unrealistic promises the likes of which all High School couples do about how much you love each other despite the fact that she'll probably stop calling you after a year in college (*sniveling and sobbing* CYNTHIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!) with nary a cringey sex scene to be found. This is good for a number of reasons:
1) You are a minor
2) Most of the love interests are also minors
3) With this animation style that would be really awkward.
Now, if you're a sharp little lemming, you'll notice something a little off in the reasons I just listed for why it's a good thing there aren't any sex scenes as far as I know (I mean, I still have about 8 interests to go, so who knows).
Have you found it yet?
No?
Ok. Let me point it out. Reason #2: Most of the love interests are also minors. Most. As in, not all. As in, some of the love interests are adults. And you're a minor.

This is where that earlier comment about controversy comes into play. I believe the Japanese have very different ideas about age and consent than we do in the states, but surely Atlus knew that an international audience might feel that a romantic subplot where you can pursue someone technically in a position of power over you is a little sketchy? Look, articles have already been written about it, and it's been covered thoroughly as far as I'm concerned, so I'm just going to lay it out there: One of the love interests is your homeroom teacher (and some of the fan art you come across when looking for a picture relevant to this section is...educational, to say the least). Now, I'm sure many of us have had a teacher or professor we've been at least a little attracted to (CYNTHI....*clears throat*), so some might just view it as a way to scratch that particular itch. Some might think the same of the general practitioner or the hippie dippie fortune teller who brings back memories of some of the women they saw at ACL when they were 15. To that I say...*eyes shift slowly and guiltily to the strategically-placed save reserved for the teacher*...It's a discussion worth having, and it's a topic that I've been tossing around in my head quite a lot since starting this game.
At the end of the day, I'm an adult and this game is rated for adults only. Yet, in spite of this, most of the love interests are minors. The reason this is ok is because the character we're playing as is also a minor. We're roleplaying as a high schooler, so it only makes sense in this context that love interests would be in high school as well. It's the same thing with Mass Effect. I imagine that if aliens came to Earth today, falling in love with one would be considered highly taboo. However, we're roleplaying as a person for whom aliens are as frequent an occurrence as breathing, so it's only natural that falling in love with one is a possibility. That's the way I've always rationalized this kind of thing, otherwise it would be a no-brainer that I'd go for one of the adult love interests of Persona 5, and there'd be no way I could handle the cringey anime dating sims that I sometimes cover on this blog, given how they all take place in high schools. How, then, does one rationalize going after an adult romance option whilst roleplaying as a minor knowing full well that the context is screwy? Well, let me lay out my thought process. At the end of the day, even though it isn't actually much different, I would be up in arms if you played as an adult with love interests who are minors. I know it's morally sketchy either way, but it just feels less so when you aren't playing as the person technically in a position of power and when you know that the person you're playing as isn't being taken advantage of. The latter, for me, is what makes a difference. Knowing full well that the protagonist has a level head and isn't being taken advantage of makes the whole situation more palpable. In addition, before writing this section I loaded up that aforementioned teacher save file and saw it through. No sex scenes there either, nor is there any real implication to that effect. Now, I only delved a little in that save file. I didn't finish the game with the teacher as my interest, so I can't say for sure if that changes in the mushier moments later in the game, but at least as far as I've experienced, it doesn't appear to be much different from any of the other interests. That being said, it's still morally sketchy, but in the end it could be worse. Sorry to have wasted your time with such a large paragraph on the subject only to arrive at that staggering conclusion. But if you read my stuff and don't expect me to go off on unimportant tangents, then you must be new here. Getting back on track...

Even if you don't feel like pursuing any of these characters romantically, and even if you don't like these characters at all and don't want to be friends with them (also known as high-functioning sociopathy), you'll want to strengthen your bonds with them anyway. The reason for that is that the characters I'm referring to actually serve gameplay purposes depending on your relationship with them. They (knowingly or otherwise) provide Joker with skills that can be used by the Phantom Thieves, making them essentially co-conspirators, or as the game calls them, "confidants". For instance, you can gain skills such as the ability to switch out party members mid-battle or have the chance to instantly win a battle if you become close enough with the correct confidants. In my first play through, I never even spoke to two or three of the possible confidants, and when I started my new game + with the intention of maxing them all out, I was surprised at how many benefits I'd been missing out on. Towards the end of my second playthrough, I happened upon a confidant that I'd never met in the previous 130 hours and was amazed at how many additional benefits I'd been missing out on even after so many hours played.

And now, the usual length of one of my reviews later, we arrive at gameplay.

Let's roll.

I'll start off with the combat side of gameplay. Imagine a turn-based combat system like Pokemon, but with a less confining rock-paper-scissors style. Essentially, every party member's persona has strengths and weaknesses and can use a number of attacks. The types of attacks are: physical, gun, fire, ice, electric, wind, psychokinetic, nuclear, bless, curse, and almighty. Beyond that, there are also buffs and debuffs (which either raise stats for you or a party member or lower stats for an enemy), status moves (which inflict impairments on enemies, a topic we'll cover later), and restorative moves (which cure ailments and restore health). Now, imagine the dragon and ghost types in Pokemon: dragon-type attacks are super effective on dragon-type pokemon, meaning that it's a double-edged sword to use a dragon against another dragon. The same is more-or-less true of personas. While personas don't have types, personas who use ice are more likely to be weak to fire (sometimes), but on the other hand, personas who use fire are more likely to be weak to ice as well. In other words, if your persona's attacks are strong against a persona who uses another type of attack, then chances are you'll be weak against the type of attack the other persona uses. That's only a rough guideline, however, as there are several personas that don't follow that rule. Basically, it amounts to trial and error based on what you think the enemy might be weak against.
When it comes to Joker, he's a bit of a wildcard (hence his codename) in that he can wield multiple personas. Surely you can understand the implications for combat? The idea is to gather an assortment of personas that will have you prepared for any situation. Because you can only take three party members with you (when there end up being around 7), you'll likely find yourself using Joker to fill the void left by a lack of space in your party. You may find yourself facing an enemy that is weak to wind and realize you don't have Morgana in your party. In that situation, you'd scroll through your personas looking for a persona that has a wind attack or two or a persona with a resistance to whatever your enemy has in store.
I should reiterate that personas don't have types like Pokemon do. The fact that a persona has a fire attack doesn't make them a "fire" type. Any persona can learn any type of move. In my case, I built up an arsenal of personas each with talents all over the radar (I had one that had bless, curse, electric, wind, and psychic attacks), and I ended up choosing which one to use based off of resistances rather than attack types. There's a lot of freedom in this system, to say the least.

Weaknesses are the crux of what your strategy in Persona 5 will likely revolve around. Whenever you successfully land a type of attack an enemy is weak against or whenever a physical or gun attack does critical damage, you knock the enemy in question down. This results in a "One More," a second turn for the party member that landed the hit. If every enemy ends up knocked down, Joker and team will hold the entire enemy squad at gunpoint in a "Hold Up." During a hold up, Joker can do a number of things: 1) return to combat (which is a stupid idea), 2) demand money or items in exchange for the enemies lives, 3) ask an enemy to join his persona arsenal, or 4) execute an all-out attack. I'd say that 95% of the battles you fight will end with hold ups where you decide to go the route of #2 or 3. All-out attacks (which are essentially massive critical hits in which every non-ailing party member strikes at the same time) are typically used on bosses or other enemies that won't yield to #2 or 3.
The strategy in Persona 5's combat system relies on more than just type weaknesses, however. There are also a number of ailments that can be inflicted. There's brainwashing, shock, burn, freeze, rage, hunger, being turned into a mouse (not kidding, the voice actors go "squeak" and the mice wear the respective masks), despair, fear, dizziness, forgetfulness, sleep, confusion, and I'm sure I'm missing one or two more. Some of these ailments deal damage with each turn, some of them cause a party member not to be able to fight, some of them cause attacks to deal greater damage, and some provide benefits alongside a negative effect. Feeling overwhelmed yet? Not to worry, it's a lot more straightforward than it sounds. Ailments are introduced gradually, so it's not like you're going to have to learn to strategize around all of these at the same time.

The thing about strategy in this game that sets it apart from other jrpgs is that it extends to more than just combat. Persona 5 is part-jrpg, part-life simulator. As a high school student, your time is limited. For every palace that you're tasked with taking down, there's some kind of hard deadline that you need to succeed by. Because palaces are so large, it's unlikely that you'll have the stamina to succeed over the course of one afternoon, so you'll need to space out your infiltrations. You essentially have two time slots in each day that you can do things during: after school/afternoon and evening. In either time slot you can purchase weapons and medicine and increase your bonds with your confidants (with some only available after school and some only available in the evening), but palace infiltrations can only happen after school. What's more, after infiltrating a palace you won't be able to do anything at night (until you max out your relationship with one of the confidants). How you spend any day will depend on your own priorities. It's consistently a question of "How many days do I have left?" "Do I want to make some progress or increase my bond with this character since they've offered to hang out?" and "Should I use this time to increase my stats instead?"
Now that I've laid out the questions you'll likely end up asking yourself as you progress, let me say this: You will not be able to max out all the confidants in one playthrough. The reason for this lies in the last of the questions I listed (and the one aspect of the life side of gameplay I haven't covered yet): stats. Joker has 5 "social stats" that he has the potential to raise each day: knowledge, charm, kindness, guts, and proficiency. You start out at rank 1 for each of these, and you can slowly raise them up to rank 5 as the game progresses. Unfortunately, the game doesn't do a good job of letting you know how close you are to raising your rank in any of these stats, so you could be forgiven for thinking that there's a bug or something. Your stats increase by doing things that you might think would increase them...that was a weak sentence, but just use your head. For instance, you can read books and watch movies with particular content that enriches you in some way (i.e. a horror movie would give you more guts while a book about a loyal dog would give you more kindness). Likewise, doing things like studying increases your knowledge, going places like the batting cages increases your proficiency, and going to one of Japan's infamous maid cafes increases your charm. This is a basic list of things that can be done to raise stats. You'll just need to go places in the city and try new things to see what effects activities can have. While stats don't really have much effect in combat, many confidants cannot be maxed out without achieving certain ranks of certain stats. It's impossible to raise all your stats to the max rank in one playthrough (your stat progress is ported over to new game +), so you're going to want to put your attention into the stats that let you progress with your favorite confidants. Unfortunately, the game doesn't let you in on what stats you'll need raised for particular confidants until you're at the point where you need the right rank to progress. With that in mind, allow me to let you in on a few things...

If you want to go the Queen route (i.e. the correct route), you'll want rank 3 knowledge and maximum charm.

If you want to go the Noir route (not that you'll know, given how late she comes in), you'll want maximum proficiency...in fact, you'll need it to progress past bond level 1.

If you did really poorly on your last test and need some extra tutoring, you'll want high (but not max) guts (I can't remember what rank).

If you're basic and just want to go the Panther route, you'll want rank 2 kindness.

If you want to go the Oracle route, you'll want rank 4 kindness.

If you want to learn other moves outside of the ones in Shogi, you'll want rank 3 charm and max knowledge.

If you're so in love that you feel sick and need a thorough examination, you'll want rank 2 guts.

If you want your cards flipped or for a woman to get the latest scoop on your love for her (how about you try to think of an innuendo related to journalism!), you just need to exist.

I'm leaving out quite a few confidants (namely, the male ones), but to get closer to any of them, it would be a good idea to increase kindness, guts, and proficiency.

In addition to stat ranks, sometimes confidants will be locked off from increasing until you complete a mission for them, which provides a seamless segway into the final aspect of gameplay to touch on: Mementos.

In-between overall missions, you'll have the ability to investigate the palace of the general public, named "Mementos." This is essentially a fixed-size randomly-generated series of dungeons, and it's where all the game's side quests take place. The Phantom Thieves will receive requests to change somebody's heart as the game progresses, and as you go through certain confidants' arcs, you may need to change the heart of a toxic person in that confidant's life in order to increase your bond any further. Because Mementos is the palace of the general public, all of these targets can be found at certain points in Mementos. In addition to side quests, this is where grinding can be done and where personas you weren't able to get from previous palaces can be acquired. I'm normally against randomly-generated content, but this is the good kind. There's reasoning behind it (the general public's consciousness changes pretty consistently), and it adds to the air of mystery and fear to never have a map and to have every area you visit change once you leave it.
Also, for the record, I'd recommend going and exploring it after every mission deadline passes. It'll make you more prepared for the next palace, and it'll also have other benefits that won't become evident until much later in the game.
Before I move on to the technical side of things, there are a few unfortunate things to note about gameplay.
The first is the relative lack of saving opportunities. You can potentially lose a lot of progress if you happen to come across an enemy with an insta-kill attack at the wrong moment. You can only save in select places in palaces, and while you can restart boss and mini-boss fights if you lose, if you die against normal enemies, whatever progress you've made since the last save is gone. In later palaces, this can mean you need to do a lot of backtracking to ensure that you don't end up losing progress later down the line. Gradually, you learn to space out saving and making progress pretty well. However, towards the end things get kicked up a notch. Take my advice: Before you go up against the "cleaner" for the final letter of introduction (you'll understand when you get there), exit the palace and make sure that you're as prepared as freaking possible before you proceed. Starting from that point, bosses start having as many as 3 forms (out of the clear blue), and if you're even the slightest bit unprepared, you're going to get your behind handed to you. Even on easy difficulty, these bosses can take as long as an hour and a half. The same goes for the ruler of that particular palace. Before you go up against that ruler, you need to go broke from buying preparation items. I was lucky in that I'd already done that in anticipation of a challenge, but if you don't take the time to prepare, because of the game's save opportunity spacing, you could potentially end up losing hours of progress. With the palace ruler it's less offensive, just because you tend to end up saving right before fighting those anyway. However, in the first situation I mentioned, this challenge appears out of nowhere. I personally didn't run into frustrating save situations very often, but I wanted to bring it up for your sake, dear readers. Moral of the story: Save as often as possible, or you're going to regret it.
The second negative is that combat tends to get repetitive. This is part of what I meant when I said you likely won't have the stamina to tackle a palace over the course of an afternoon. There's tons of enemy variety, but there's hardly any variety in enemy squad layouts. It'll be the same 5-10 assortments of enemies over and over again for entire palaces. Once you know enemy weaknesses, getting a hold up becomes a piece of cake and battles end up taking only a few seconds, so you'll end up hearing the exact same few seconds of the exact same battle theme song over and over and over again. The result of this is that combat ends up becoming more of an interruption than anything else. Were it not for the universally well-thought-out boss battles, the repetition that takes place in the game's combat would be quite the drawback.

With that in mind, it's at least a positive that the same few seconds of music you hear are from a good song on a great soundtrack. If you read my best of 2017 lists, then you know what a huge fan I am of Persona 5's soundtrack. For those who don't know, one of my other hobbies is music. The music I write and cover typically falls under the singer/songwriter category, but lately I've been working on a cover of one of Persona 5's soundtrack pieces ("Rivers in the Desert," to be specific). I'd sincerely hoped to have it done by the time I finished writing this, but there's still too much work to do on the mixing. Ah well. Maybe I'll just put a link up to it once it's done. Anywho, composer Shoji Meguro brings a dash of jazz and a whole lot of pure, unadulterated funk to create one of the most uniquely appealing soundtracks in recent memory. The sheer style that emanates from the music here is incredible. However, the style isn't exclusive to the soundtrack. Everything about this game radiates style. The color palette is mostly made up of reds, blacks, whites, and grays, so the name of the game when it comes to style is "high contrast." Combine this with the killer UI in battle and the one-part anime one-part handheld game art style and you have a game with an aesthetic so intentional and stylized that it gives a back-end developer such as myself a headache from imagining all the little bitty adjustments that had to constantly be made during production.
It would've been enough if the game had simply looked and felt good, but it's also a strong technical offering. At time of writing I'm at about 150 hours in, and I'm at around the second palace in my third playthrough (If you're scratching your head and looking back up at the first paragraph, you're right to do so. This review was written over the course of about a month). That's a lot of time with a lot of chances for issues to pop up. However, I haven't once seen any texture pop-in, poorly-rendered textures, framerate drops, hard or soft crashes, or animation glitches of any kind. What's more, loading times are mercifully short. That's the kind of technical quality you just don't find nowadays.

Folks, given how I'm on a third run bringing my time spent with this game up to 150 hours, I hope it comes as no surprise that I'm deeply in love with Persona 5, in spite of its flaws. Its story manages to keep stakes high and bonds of friendship deep, and it culminates into one of the single most energizing "Hey main villain, we're coming for you!" scenes of any game I've ever played. Though it does go the route of your standard JRPG in its final act, Persona 5 distinguishes itself from just about any game on the market with its lovable cast of characters, innovative turn-based-combat-life-simulator fusion gameplay, and overwhelming sense of style. In one review I watched, the reviewer said that after he finished the game, he found himself legitimately missing these characters. I must admit that I see what he was talking about. It's impossible to spend 150 hours with a group of characters and not miss them when you put the controller down. Though I'm not yet done, my plan was to be done after my second run. However, at the end, I just couldn't bring myself to let Persona 5 go yet. I wanted to go through and get to know the characters and the world all over again for a third time, and thus, here I am. Dear readers, Persona 5 is not without its faults. There's a lot of repetition in the music, combat, and writing. The save system lends itself to the possibility of frustrating lost progress. Obviously, these things make this an imperfect experience, but think about it this way: I've noted the problems, yet I'm still going strong at 150 hours in. As a parting message, I went through the 2017 GOTY stats and did some recalculations based on what I would score aspects of Persona 5 on various lists. Had I started this game early enough to finish it in 2017, not only would it have moved from spot #7 to Game of the Year, it would've been impossible for anything else to win GOTY unless I put a handicap on Persona 5. It's fragile praise, given how the year has already passed and how I already crowned Yakuza 0 as the 2017 GOTY, but I'd like to posthumously note that Persona 5 is the true Game of the Year for 2017.

Let us review:

Repetition in combat, writing, and music - 1.0
Frustrating save system - 0.3

The final score for the posthumous Game of the Year for 2017, Persona 5, is...

8.7/10 - Quite Good
Excellent work, Atlus, excellent work!