Persona 5 Review | Green Ornstein's Bucket List of Games

Special thanks to Curmudgeon Film Talk for providing the drawing

87 hours and 36 minutes.

That’s how long it took me to get to the end of Persona 5 (2016). Oh, I mean get to the end of the plot, it’s not like Skyrim (2011) where you can complete the main quests in a day but fill out the time with endless side missions. It’s nearly double the play time of NieR: Automata (2017) and you had to play that game 3 times to get the true ending.

Persona 5 is one of the longest games I’ve ever played.

And one of the best. 

Anyway, let’s start with the hard part: summarizing the plot.

Within the Persona universe, there is a dimension running parallel to it - referred to as the Metaverse - which reflects the strongest and darkest desires of humanity. These evil impulses manifest themselves as “Palaces”: labyrinthine structures that embody how an individual views the world and themselves.

Palaces, and the many monsters dwelling within, protect a treasure that the individual values above all else. Steal the treasure and the Palace collapses, along with the darkness inside the owner’s heart.

That’s where you come in.

You, in a bold move for a JRPG, are a high schooler. You’ve also got a criminal record due to a falsified accusation and are sent away to attend the only school that will take a renegade like you. Your probation deal is simple: cause no trouble for 1 year, you can go home. Fuck that up, off to the juvy to be part of the Prison Bitch harem.

Inevitably, you get wrapped up in the workings of the Metaverse and learn the ability to steal a Palace’s treasure and turn the person’s heart, causing even the most bastardest of bastards to change their tune and act like reasonable human beings.

Oh yeah, you’ve also got a Persona; essentially an embodiment of your will and named after an obscure folk tale or a literary character from the 1900s. The Personas are basically a midpoint between the Stands in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (1987-) and the Servants from the Fate (2004-) franchise.

Under the codename "Joker", you gradually befriend a merry band of misfits to take into the Metaverse with you, creating a name for yourselves as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts!

Is that everything?

No of course it isn't!

Gameplay consists of 2 halves. The first half is when you don the trench coat and red gloves and go on a heist for hearts at whatever dickswab deserves it this time. You’re off navigating through the layers of the palace and battling monstrosities with your pals and Personas.

The second half is the building of relationships in the real world, engaging in activities to buy equipment and levelling up your personality stats by performing innocuous tasks.

The idea of having 2 halves to a game seems to be a recurring theme in my work (see my Supergiant Games retrospective to listen to me gush all over Pyre [2017]), but mainly because it works so well. The 2 halves do what they should, which is complement one another.

They compel you to be strategic and resourceful. You have a set amount of in-game days to capture an individual’s heart, during which you have the option to retreat until the next day to gather resources and restore your stats. You can either take the palace bit by bit with constantly replenished stats, or you can keep edging as close as you can with the 5 points of magic you have left.

Although a problem with this is that, assuming you’re resourceful, the palaces only take 2-3 trips to fully complete, then you’re left with 20 or so days of hanging out. This makes the deadlines feel somewhat generous. Though I assume it’s much tighter on harder difficulties.  

Those 20 days should be used to level up your personality stats to a particular point to do certain objectives.

This encounters the Mass Effect (2007-) problem whereby the means to level up your personality are unrelated to the end task. For example, there’s one gun vendor (more on that later) but in order to ask him for the good stuff in the back, you need your Guts rank to be at least 4 out of 5. What’s a quick way to level up your guts? Why, eating massive burgers of course. 

Eating fast food to buy guns…

I wonder how well this game did in the US.

It can be quite funny; you need max kindness to help your guardian whose problems likely require legal and professional advice that are beyond your pay grade. Be sure to max your kindness by watering your plant every few days. You can only water your plant once it begins to wither, which puts you in a cycle of waiting for it to die so you can water it for some kindness points. I tell you, getting angry that your plant isn’t dying has the opposite effect I assumed gaining more kindness would have. You can also gain specific stats by going to the local cinema and watching a parody of a popular film like “The Cake Knight Rises” or rent the DVD of “The X Folders”.

That’s not all - there's the Personas themselves, too. They have to be recruited while battling them, and you can fuse them together to create a new Persona. And by fuse, I mean put them under an actual guillotine.

Your guess is as good as mine as to what they turn into and why. There’s so much to keep track of with these Personas that listing them would warrant a full piece in itself. Just take my word for it that it’s okay to Google if you need anything specific.

There’s a thick layer of silliness that works in the game’s favour, particularly when they attempt to justify certain actions when we all know it's just because they’re cool. This brings us to the guns.

Yep, each character is given a melee weapon and a ranged weapon that is an actual gun. But you can’t have high schoolers with guns, so they concoct an explanation that airsoft guns work like real guns in the Metaverse as the enemies perceive them as real therefore the cognitive scientifi...

JUST ADMIT YOU WANT GUNS BECAUSE THEY’RE COOL!

We won’t judge you! You want guns because guns are cool. You chose to give the sweet, cutesy, pink marshmallow girl a goddamn grenade launcher because it’s cool.

And also really funny.

Not only that, but some monsters are weak to them. As opposed to having set types, the enemies have specific strengths and weaknesses to each type of attack, and your job is to trial and error to figure out what works. You are encouraged to take your time - even Joker says out loud “calm down,” giving you assurance to step back and think. Which, as the anxiety-ridden mess I am, I appreciated.

It never fails to make me laugh as I’m thinking:

“Okay, lightning does neutral damage, it's resistant to ice attacks and its health gets restored by fire damage. What should I do?

Oh I know!

Maybe their elemental weakness... 

is GUN!”

I yearn for the day I can do that in Pokémon (1996-).

Point is, there’s a wackiness that’s beyond explanation, but it doesn’t need one. You don’t have to explain it. Save that for your on-the-nose metaphors in the Metaverse.

Like I said, the Metaverse is a reflection of an individual’s strongest desires, and the architecture is created out of how they view the world. It starts basic with a bastard teacher thinking of the school as his “castle” *wink* but then it goes to a mafia boss viewing a city as his bank and every inhabitant as an ATM machine.

I’m not kidding, that happens, and it’s hilarious. 

Anyone familiar with JRPGs or anime of a similar ilk will know that they are unsubtle as fuck. Every character will tell you everything you need to know at the drop of a hat and the melodrama is played up to heights that’d put Kilimanjaro to shame. It does repeatedly hit you over the head with a sad fact about any given character while sad piano music plays, but that’s part of the deal to anyone in-the-know.

I’m not sure how to describe the game to someone not familiar with JRPGs or Japanese culture. Don’t misunderstand me, when I say Japanese culture, I don’t mean the sushi, Nintendo and green tea surface-level culture that every gap-year twat claims to have experienced. Heavens no, I mean underage girls in catsuits, professional maid “services” and the fact that you can’t date any boys but can date your teacher - I mean that kind of Japanese culture.

Even when in English, they kept in the ‘kuns’ (a suffix referring to those of lower status) and ‘sans’ (a suffix referring to those of equal status) that the Japanese say after every name which makes the English version feel like a fan translation rather than a localised dub. It's even stranger that they seem to use localised language, constantly saying “prolly” instead of “probably” for example.

Having said that, the voice cast is mostly really good, considering the average quality of dubs can range from Cowboy Bebop (1997-98) to Speed Racer (1966-68). I’m grateful for the English voices, mainly because I know it could have gone much, much worse.

Though the varying quality of the voice acting is most apparent in the anime style cutscenes. Major events in the game are shown in cutscenes like it were a conventional anime.

However, these are evidently done for the sake of it and are not really of the highest quality. It's difficult to show fluid movement in anime without a whole lotta money, so typically they remain stagnant figures. I did appreciate them though, it felt like a nice nod to the weebs in the room. 

The silliness and convolution make the game consistently entertaining, but the game’s strongest suit is undeniably the characters. Your merry band of misfits are some of the most likeable bunches in gaming. They’re archetypal for sure: you’ve got the delinquent, the little-miss-perfect, the tech nerd, the hot blonde, the aloof artist, the sheltered rich girl and of course, the talking animal. However, as we’ve learned from My Hero Academia (2014-), archetypes can work incredibly well and can result in some of the most likeable characters. 

This is one of Persona 5’s strongest points; these characters are the embodiment of the likeable underdogs. Every single one of your group has a personal demon to wrestle with and you can allot time to gradually help them through it. Not to mention, spending time with them increases their Metaverse capabilities, so you’re given incentive to learn more about their stories and struggles for the gameplay, simultaneously getting stronger and more invested.

It’s the ultimate positive feedback loop. 

Dare I say, it works better than Pyre, though that may be simply due to the size of the game. This, and the other daytime activities, became preferable to the actual supernatural gameplay after a while just because I didn’t want to stop hanging out with my crew. 

“We must battle the evil Mafia boss!”

“I need to return a DVD and water my plant.”

“Japan is under attack by a Demon Lord!!”

“Yusuke has an art exhibit and really needs a friend to support him.”

“THE WORLD IS ON FIRE!!!”

“FUTABA NEEDS A HEAD PAT!!!”

Fair enough.

I’ve always considered it a sign of good character writing when I could just watch them do nothing important and still be entertained. There are times the plot takes a detour; they go to Hawaii for a few days for no reason, other than it’s illegal to not have a beach episode in Japan.

I’m tempted to make a smarmy joke about how the game emulates what it’s like to actually have friends, but it's more than that. Every one of them is an outcast in some way, whether it be due to their circumstances, interests or past. Anyone familiar with that knows what it feels like. But within your friendship group and the Phantom Thieves, similar to you, they each find a purpose. And I think there’s something beautiful in that.

I promise you, these bunch of weirdos could carry the game on their own if need be with all the quirkiness and chemistry you could hope for. I couldn’t ask for a better group of comrades in a video game.

Except Morgana. Morgana can eat shit.

Morgana is the mandatory talking animal and mascot of Persona 5 and he’s such a smarmy cunt. He comments on everything during battles, arrogantly talks himself up and takes the piss out of one of the other squadmates who is my in-game BFF. He gets better late game, mainly because he gets replaced as the battle commentator, but it didn’t stop me spending most of the time dreaming about drop kicking the little furry fuck.

Speaking of people deserving physical violence, you have the game’s villains. Since you infiltrate their unique palaces to steal their treasure, you encounter a version of them within the Metaverse. Every single one of them, even outside the Metaverse, is an OTT 18 carat stone-cold wanker. They’re like Saturday morning cartoon villains of the worst kind of person imaginable. Even the side characters who aren’t party members have some asshole making their lives hell. You can tell who they are as their idle animation always has their arms folded.

It still works though as it fits with the silliness of the game. Not to mention it's both satisfying and hilarious to take down certain enemies. You legitimately fight through a space station to take on the president of this universe’s McDonalds.

I know you have many questions. I will answer none of them.

If you can just appreciate the utmost silliness of it, you’ll have a blast, even if it’s just through the visuals and soundtrack alone. My understanding is that the original Persona (1996-) games were much more grim and serious but gradually it evolved into a more upbeat and vibrant series, where it peaked with Persona 5. The music boasts a no-holds-barred funk/R’nB mix with sprinkles of disco and bass guitar so thick and creamy you could slather it on a slice of Hovis.

How nice it is to see a game that feels authentically cheerful, not ironic or streamlined “cheerful” by just being wacky. That’s what I love about Japan, whatever they’re going for, they’ll just go for it. And that’s why we love them. The music in this game is so good, they could make a rhythm game with it.

So they did!

It works best combined with the palace infiltrations. It does what it should for a game where you are a Phantom Thief. It makes you feel like a Phantom Thief, with the slyness and cunning it entails.

As opposed to JRPGs like Final Fantasy VII (1997), enemies don’t just turn up everywhere. The enemies in palaces take the form of guards with set patrol routes that you can either sneak past, take on or ambush. Certainly a preferable method as you never feel constantly swarmed, not to mention it allows you to be more strategic in your approach. 

It does suffer from not knowing the enemy's visibility cones, and that pressing the designated “hide” command will make you completely invisible regardless of whether you’re close enough to trip them up.

If I were to criticise Persona 5 for anything, though, it’d be the home stretch. I referenced NieR: Automata earlier about how you have to play the game 3 times to get the true ending. Persona 5 is somewhat similar, in that it felt like it should have ended 3 times.

You know the feeling when everything sets up the ending, but then it keeps going? That’s Persona 5’s problem. On 3 seperate dungeons, Morgana had the gaul to say “This is our last mission!” 

Is it, Morgana? 

Is it our last mission? 

Or is there going to be a bit more afterwards you haven’t told us about? You lying piece of catshit!

Yes.

Let me ask you a question. Let’s say you’re about to go into a battle with an individual. The context of this fight is the following:

1. You are about to fight the main perpetrator for “the evil things.”
2. You have a personal connection to this individual.
3. They are moments away from achieving ultimate power.
4. They’ve been hinted at throughout the entire game.
5. They’re a 3 stage boss fight.
6. They have their own theme.

What goes off in your mind?

The answer is “FINAL BOSS”. 

All these things would signpost as much to the average gamer. What follows is one of the most tense and climactic fights ever. There’s strategy, emotion, raw power, adrenaline and of course that amazing beat. This is it. The Final Showdown. I won while clutching my heart and taking a sigh of relief. It’s over. This long journey has come to a close. 

Little did I know this is the 75% mark.

There were still 20 hours left of gameplay after that fight. What feels like an epilogue is actually the final part of the game where you face the “True” evil, which in my opinion goes on way longer than needed. It’s really difficult to muster the “Final Boss” feeling twice in a game. Once you get it, you’re exhausted. I kept going thinking it was just one more final thing, like tying up loose ends. Nope, you’ve got a whole other dungeon, a shit ton of mini-bosses and an actual final boss you never knew existed until the fight. 

I remember my feeling after completing FFVII - “I’m glad I played it, but I will never play it again.” Its frustrations didn’t make it worth revisiting. I worry through this stage I would feel the same way about Persona 5.

Fortunately, the ending has some saving graces. Firstly, it doesn’t just end abruptly like FFVII, it gives you the opportunity to say goodbye to everyone whom you’ve spent time with over the course of the game, ending it on a heartfelt, bittersweet note. Secondly, the final fight ends in a euphoria of epicness. Finally, as is the case with great games, after it was over, I felt more of a hole in my heart and I wanted to revisit it again (maybe I’ll buy Royal [2020]). 

Because despite that gripe, Persona 5 is a fantastic game. The characters, gameplay mechanics, soundtrack, storyline and style build into this complete experience that is the peak of melodrama and silliness that only JRPGs can successfully execute.  

For a nearly 100-hour-long JRPG, it kept my interest and attention the whole way through. It’s been ages since I’ve been willing to forego sleep for the sake of a video game. My eyes are bloodshot and my parents are deeply concerned, but it’s worth it.

With that, I implore you: get Persona 5! For one reason or another, it’s gonna make you smile, whether it be the Shenanigans with your pals, bassline/jazz soundtrack or the hilarity of the “symbolism.” 

For non-anime/JRPG fans, it's a fun, effective gateway into the genre. For anime/JRPG fans, it’s pure gold.

Persona 5 stole my heart. And it’ll steal yours too.

Thanks for reading. Please share, comment and subscribe for future pieces. 

If this tickled your fancy, have a look at the rest of Green Ornstein's content here.

We also do YouTube channel podcasts if you want to know what we actually sound like.