Persona 5 - PlayStation Hits - PlayStation 4 Standard Edition

In a twisted sort of way, which is the only way Persona knows, these games are a bizarre 21st entry heir apparent to John Hughes high school hijinks and angst. Persona 5 continues a very unique evolution of the SMT JRPG system which by this point is a genuine formula involving dungeons, Pokemon, high School, social links, group battles and dating. Yeah that's all Persona. All of it.After many, many P4g and P4 PS2 play throughs, I can attest that P5 is a well-made follow up to P4. The lineage is clear. The music is great and the story is solid. Atlus did a great job in some areas in particular:- The Tokyo details. You didn't have to spend time in Shinjuku to pick up on everything, but if you've spent any extended time anywhere in metropolitan Japan - Osaka, Kobe, etc - there is so much here to connect with. From the convenience store layouts to lines of subway ticket machines, the environment designers hit all the right notes. THERE IS EVEN A POLLEN WARNING FOLKS.- The music. Now arguably P4 had better music, but the soundtrack is still pretty awesome stuff.- The visual design is as colorful and as lively as walkthrough through Shinjuku or Dōtonbori in Osaka after sunset. Atlus sort of took the Catherine graphics design and went nuts.- Offering a Japanese audio track for free. Confession: I haven't actually heard a single word of the English track. I have a Japanese copy I brought back from Osaka and I played through the American release from start to finish with the Japan audio. I know some people have ranted about flaws in the localization, but if that stuff bothers you so much, just get the full Japanese version. If your kanji isn't really up to snuff like mine, but you can get through the audio, the American release is an easy choice. The Japanese audio track is a free download on the PSN store.- 100 hours from start to finish. This shouldn't be a surprise to any Persona vets. The truth is, a lot of this play time is more about watching the story unfold and fulfilling character stat boost tasks than some grueling marathon. It's like a Netflix season really.- Though the difficulty spikes are still there, the combat is also still tons of fun, strategic and really satisfying.Now some complaints. Persona 5 is not perfect. Neither was 4 or 4G. Or 3. Or 3 FES. Or Q.- Main dungeons are not half random like before, but honestly, they're still a little bland. Some have some really great bits and the use of color is fantastic on all of them, but you're still essentially on rails waiting for a button prompt to hit shadows for combat. I actually think Persona Q felt a little better than this even if you were just moving on squares. Traversal in a Persona game has never been a focus of the designers and it's not really much different here than past titles, but it feels limiting. Mementos - the side mission grind playground - IS made of randomly generated room branches and mostly a good edition since dungeons disappear permanently after you beat them, but it's sort of small scale simplistic stuff that often feels a little weak in comparison to the rest of the game. However, you finally do get a mystery machine van that we didn't have in P4.- 100 hours from start to finish. The downside to this? Well a lot of that time has to do with Morgana telling you what you can't do on particular days early on (this was something the game used to force on you in P4 but now handled through a screen character). Another chunk of time is the infinite cross fading loading screens between any action that happens in the game.- Persona 4 was a little slow moving until you hit the 8-10 hour mark. Persona 5 is marginally better, but arguably, the game doesn't actually begin until when the 3rd dungeon begins which is roughly 18-20 hours in.- Lastly, and this is 100% subjective, but as good as this game is, it is lacking the immeasurable charm and heart from P4 or P4g. I'm not taking anything away from the full group of characters in P5, but overall, it's maybe 9/10s of Persona 4. There is a distinct lack of freshness to many of the game's systems too as some aspects of the game feel lifted from Catherine too. But as I type this, I know there were plenty of people who said similar things about Persona 4 coming off P3. Your mileage may vary.You can't go wrong though. Person 5 is in line with the other life dominating Atlus entries to the series and is so dang amazing that my complaints above came after much thought from a player who has braved the Tartarus, Midnight Channel and now the Metaverse. This is a great game and in many ways is the opposite of open world games in good and bad ways that are dominating video game releases these days. By the end, it's not really about stats or how many cars you have in your GTA garage, it's about looking back and truly earning the right to say, you went on a real journey and you did it among friends.But I still miss Yukiko and Rise. And maybe Chie.

Wow! I am impressed with this game. You must like turn based games and JRPG if you want to invest in this game. I been playing RPG and JRPG a long time since the first Ninitendo LOL...on a serious note, this game as ALOT of Story telling so be prepared to read a lot of the story, that being said, the story is great and has a lot of character development which is I find it important. It makes me want to log in every day to play. If the story doesnt develop enough for me, I usually stop playing and move on to another game. For example I was playing Horizon zero dawn ( 60 hours into it) and was totlaly bored than I moved onto Persona 5 and haven't loolked back! Thelast RPG I played before that this year was Final Fantasy 15 which i finished right before i did Horizon but i try to finish one RPG at a time... Anyways on to the Persona 5.The game is also very straight forward and so if you are new to JRPG you wont get lost because you can use your third eye to unlock hints in the game. I have never played any Persona series games and found this very easy to get into! When I say straight forward, i mean it guides you pretty much what direction to go in the game, so this is not an open world exploring game like Final Fantasy 15. you have time limits in the game to finish these palaces in the game and if you dont meet the time limit it is game over. The game can be very unforgiving at times too so saving is crucial in case you screw up! I learned this the hard way because if you dont save and save... and you dont meet the timeline it will put you back the earliest a week of work from the game! So remember to save when you can, it will immensely.However, I will tell you I am already over 80 hours in the game and no where near done, i am estimating 100-150 hours game play at this point for me. As this isn't one of those games you just breeze through... it takes time and effort but well worth it! I love the whole concept for going to class ( trying ot answer these quiz questions) and then fighting the palaces at night! i love doing all these other activities in town when you are allow to and the characters personality are great! If you really like in depth story lines this is worth it. The who concept of using Tarot cards to improve your confidants and strengthen your personas are so fun! Each character has theri own special persona except your main character! Make use of your main character because he can be whatever you want him to be and i love using him because he covers all my weakness on my team when I sub out a character! he does it all from fighting ot healing and debuffing!Keep in mind this game doesnt really allow pwerleveling... Its not that easy to do that. I was able to do that with Final Fantasy but thats because of the whole open world and freedom to roam. You won't have much time to do that either, there are limits in what you can do each day! There is alot ot do too! The games complexity makes ikt a great challenge!. If you have patience to develop your team , then this will be very enjoyable. No character is useless in this game either. The story line is worth it! Check it out if you love JRPG!