Spoiler Warning ▶
Don't read this if you're trying to decide if you should play Persona 5.Read this if you want to know why Persona 5 is not very good, even though you like it.
Not that I need one, since everyone and their grandma has played Persona 5. Except me, it seems, until now, 9 years after its 2016 release. Which should really speak volumes about how enticing it is.
To be clear, I like Persona 5. I just don’t think it’s that good. Here’s why.
Story
Think back to Persona 4. Right from the get-go, you’re made to think “whoa, who’s killing people?” and you’re invested and interested to find out more. This is what creative writers call a “hook”, and my biggest issue with Persona 5 its lack of a hook. The story doesn’t even start moving until the end of November, and even at that point it’s only at a glacier’s pace with all the extra fluff you’re forced to do.
You could argue that the tutorial showing Joker’s arrest was the hook, but if it was then it wasn’t a very good one. You’re probably like 80 hours into the game by the time you get to this point in the story, and you definitely didn’t make it there because of this because it’s so disconnected from where the story actually begins.
All you really have for the better half of the game is a bunch of disjointed epiosdes that don’t relate to each other, and a couple of goofy villains that you probably can’t even name because that’s how memorable they were. It reads like each arc had different writers working independently, and the last guy was unreasonably tasked to put it all together somehow, but decided he wasn’t paid enough for that shit.
Also you’ll have to forgive me for getting all fedora tippy here but I also didn’t find the plot twists all that controversial. I know it’s not a mystery game where you’re supposed to piece together clues and figure things out, but they really do not give the player any credit. And just in case you didn’t get it the first four times, we’ll explain it again after the fact too.
Characters
If it weren’t for the (well-casted) cast, I doubt many players would’ve made it further than the second palace. I’m beating a pretty dead horse but it’s a point that Josh Strife Hayes makes a lot; you need to front-load the good stuff to keep people interested. Nobody’s going to play for 100 hours for it to get good if it isn’t already good from hour 1, and the characters absolutely carry the start of the game. It’s pretty easy to get the player on your side when you show tolerable characters being treated unfairly.
On the other side of the coin, the villains do sell the game quite short which I briefly alluded to earlier. Their motivations are somewhat forced at best, and outright ridiculous at worst; either way, it’s hard to maintain interest when every one is just a nebulous “bad guy” without any distinctive traits about why they’re bad. I’m aware there’s in-universe reasons for the involvement of each of the villains, but the player with the controller still has to sit through dozens of hours of tedium before the “big reveals”.
Even when you do get there, it all feels very over-the-top. Maybe I’m too cold and emotionless, but I don’t find abhorrent injustice all that captivating when literally everyone is subject to it. We need more Adachis, villains who are just evil because they’re incels and they’re bored with their lives. That should be a lot more relatable to the majority of Persona fans than some grandiose bullshit about becoming the prime minister of Japan anyway.
This one is a bit of a minor complaint, but I also didn’t find any of the romance options all that appealing. I was tossing up between a couple of options, not for being unable to decide but due to not really being all that interested in any of them. This was disappointing in contrast to P4, which had a clear winner. Granted this may be more of a taste thing, though considering the number of Chie fans out there I hesitate to lean on popular opinion for this one.
Gameplay
This isn’t exclusive to Persona 5, but the SP balancing is simply not there. For context I played on challenge (merciless?) on NG and for the first couple of palaces I was conserving SP like my last few dregs of sanity. I was religiously buying 5 SP heals from vending machines every in-game week but never used them, saving them for when I would need them.
I never needed them. A few arcs in and I could just outright buy the SP recovery accessories from the goth mommy doctor. This compounded with network fusion which gave me access to Victory Cry (and various other skills and traits) way earlier than I feel like it should be allowed basically eliminated this problem.
In fact, network fusion is probably the most busted mechanic in the entire game. There’s the age-old question of how much balancing matters in a single-player game, but choosing to use network fusion is basically just playing on easy with extra steps. I’m not sure if its main purpose was to appease egos, but it does allow for more options for enjoying the real fun of the game: spending 3 hours of every play session in the velvet room to autism together an arsenal of impractically optimised demons.
Personally the familiarity of the fusion system and the demons in general is primarily what kept me interested. It’s probably a comfort zone thing. The system is there, it’s good, and it needs no explanation. I know that Jack is a good boy and that he doesn’t like Agi and that I can teach him Megidolaon. In classic Megaten fashion, your autism gets rewarded too because there’s proper end-game and NG+ content to make it actually worth your time to go crazy on the fusions.
Visuals
I’ve seen “studies” (I use this term loosely) about all the intricacies of the menu design in Persona 5 contribute drastically to the pacing and tempo and overall gameplay experience, and how it’s inspired the user interfaces of numerous other video games. I won’t pretend to understand this, but it’s definitely stylish and fun to look at.
It’s to the point where people who normally wouldn’t enjoy the core gameplay loop feel like it’s been compensated for. I can’t really empathise with those who kneejerk reject turn-based combat, though. I’m definitely in the camp that thinks you should lay off the TikTok and adderall and go read a book or something if you need guns and explosions in every video game to keep your attention.
Soundtrack
I’ve never really understood the comparison between the Persona 4 and 5 OSTs because either way Meguro Shoji is eating good, but P4 definitely had the lion’s share of memorable tracks if you ask me. Nothing wrong with P5’s—it’s very good, as you’d expect—but you can’t be out here telling me Backside of the TV isn’t kino, especially if you’ve heard the Lotus Juice P4D mix. You’ll never see it coming.
The Point
I’m aware of the hypocrisy in putting the point at the end instead of the start when this is one of my main criticisms of Persona 5, but this is more of a culmination of all of the above thoughts. I had a fun time playing P5, but as you’ve (hopefully) seen, I still recognise its many shortcomings. What I’m trying to say is, you can like things without pretending that they’re good.
I like plenty of things that I recognise are bad, ask any of the bozos I watch cartoons with. So I really struggle to comprehend why everyone collectively larps as a martyrish bastion to defend Persona 5, as if the idea of liking something not everyone agrees is objectively to the highest standard is somehow antithetical to their moral character.
Although the memes write themselves, a large part of Persona 5’s popularity likely does stem from its low entry barrier and the lower percentiles of the bell curve just don’t want to admit it. There are plenty of other great Atlus titles like Devil Survivor and Catherine that deserve more recognition though, and I don’t think they are particularly difficult either. That said, I do know people who’ve been hard stuck on Pokemon gyms so maybe my perception is skewed.
Perhaps what I’m really tired of though, is this world line where Persona 5 never ends. Can we all just agree to stop liking Persona 5 for a while? I don’t want to hear about any royal, or dancing, or q2, or scramble, or tactics, or phantom x. I might entertain discussion of an arena, but really just show me a Devil Survivor remake or maybe even a Persona 6.