Persona 5

Bloodborne is supposed to be here.

It’s been awhile since I’ve bought a new game on day 1 release. I can’t even remember the last time I bought a game within the first few months of it being released. Legion? Recently I had to spend some money on some games so I bought Hollow Knight, which came out recently. Funnily enough, I borrowed Persona 5. After long deliberation with a friend who is massive fan; massive being a colossal understatement, I decided not to buy the game. Borrowed it from a friend. Totally regret not buying it.

I played this game for about 120 hours. JRPGs are usually ~60 hours. This one was twice as long. It’s not like the content is artificially inflated or there’s a bunch of stuff to waste time, the game is just that long. There’s so much content in here. It’s not like I play games slow either, sure I try to see everything but not in the extreme sense where I could inflate playtime a significant amount. You know, just make sure you go to the side areas in the dungeons for all the phat loot. Based on sheer size, the game is already worth it. Were those 120 hours fun? They were a blast. Honestly, I didn’t even know I hit that number until I saw my final save game file. I remember the time jumping by like 20 hours weekend and I couldn’t believe I’d played that much. That’s not even including New Game+ that’s totally worth it to play.

Every system in this game is inexplicably tied to one another. Not in a totally obtuse way that the player can’t figure it out, but the game practically beats it into the player that they should be doing certain things. Spend time with your friends to get more skills from them, keep your stats up, study for your exams. Of course the game never wrests control away from the player and then forces you down a certain path, unless they take a few days for the story to progress. Even then they’re so telegraphed that you don’t really feel ‘robbed’ of your time.

The pacing is fantastic. Whenever you feel like you’ve been fighting too much, you can go do something more relaxing or you’re close to when the fighting will end. Same goes vice versa; real life getting too boring? Fighting soon. It might have been easy for them to plan this sort of thing using the time and date system in the game, but I don’t doubt that a lot of care went into pacing. It’s a thing I’ve noticed with Japanese games where there’s a lot of chillness that I don’t seem to see so much in western developers. It’s quite an underrated aspect of the holistic experience of a game.

Alright, the game is huge, they had to cut corners, right? There’s a ton of loadscreens. Every other thing that happens, loadscreen. Of course since your mind is always so active because of the plot and planning your week I found it relatively peaceful. It’s not like the loadscreens are super long, either. The game does have lowres textures in certain areas. A colleague told me that they actually shipped this game for the Playstation 3! They also told me that the game was being developed for 7 years. 7 years! This means that a whole console generation came and went. Still, due to the game’s artstyle, this didn’t bother me in the slightest. It’s not like the ugly textures are popping in your face everywhere, the team was really smart with this. Such as making sure they aren’t seen in too many cutscenes, battle arenas.

Speaking of artstyles, I heard that the game’s UI was fantastic. How great could it be? I thought, skeptical. The first time I loaded into a battle screen I could only cackle. It’s just so cool. Everything the game does just oozes style. Menus, shops, every 2D asset put into the game must have gone through some sort of coolness test. It all just flows so effortlessly. From the combat loop to the overall narrative.

The only bad thing about the game is that it’s probably ruined the other Personas, so I won’t be able to go back and retroactively enjoy the 3rd or 4th title. It also might be the new bar for JRPGs or even turn-based RPGs as a whole. Here’s hoping they release a version with HD textures and an alternate storyline like what they did for Persona 4 with Golden. Then I’ll have an excuse to enjoy it again.