Persona 5: As swag as you'll never be

[Lt Streko]

Spoiler:

I was confused about that as well, but I think that might have been a slight flub in the translation, and they meant that Shadows couldn't open the door once they were inside.

Spoiler:

Wait really? Damn, I had so much leftover money to spend too, I just pushed through it all. Oh well, there's always NG+

Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zix7UBJOHtM.

[Teewee]

Spoiler:

The evidence for Morgana's saying persona users have full control over their emotions is here, from 56:50 through 57:00. So, yeah. Seems like a plothole, as I thought :/ I'd chalk it up to Morgana being an unreliable narrator, but that seems unlikely; he doesn't have that tendency.

One thing I like about this game is how it tackles real social issues in a fairly direct manner. I find it pretty refreshing, as I haven't seen many other AAA games do anything similar. I'd like to see the same in future games in the series, and games in general.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

oh my god

Spoiler:

shido's palace

is so fucking redundant and tedious

whoever put in those backtrack-a-thon mazes between the objectives needs to slapped and then fired

[commandercool]

I've been at the very very end of the game for like a week and haven't finished it off because I don't want it to be over... Probably better just sit down and wrap it up tonight I guess.

[Sect]

oh my god

Spoiler:

shido's palace

is so fucking redundant and tedious

whoever put in those backtrack-a-thon mazes between the objectives needs to slapped and then fired

Yeah, I was done with the mazes after the second time. Way too tedious and unfun. The inbetween stuff was okay.

I've been at the very very end of the game for like a week and haven't finished it off because I don't want it to be over... Probably better just sit down and wrap it up tonight I guess.

Gotta finish the job. A Phantom Thief never leaves a job half done.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

THERE HAVE BEEN FOUR OF THESE MAZES SO FAR

THIS IS NOT ONLY TEDIOUS, IT IS BORING

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING

[Kilgamayan]

Now you know why the game took so long. :V

[commandercool]

Alright, finished.

Persona 5 is the best Persona game, and that's saying a lot.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

I'm up to 12/22. I'm really ready to see the end of this game, but at the same time I really wanna do more Confidant stuff...

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Finally finished. What a tremendously long game.

What a fantastic game. The gameplay and storytelling are unparalleled, and most of the characters are absolutely fantastic. Definitely one of the best games I have played in a very long time. The ending song was so nice too-- I didn't realize

Spoiler:

the track I really liked where personas get second awakenings

was the tune from it, and it was one of my favorite tracks in the game.

All of that said, I think P3 still has the most emotional impact and attachment for me, even if P5 is a better game in almost every possible way.

[commandercool]

I've been thinking for years that Persona 3 has the better social links and gameplay, while Persona 4 has the better playable cast and plot (although I'm nowhere near the fan of the P4 cast that most people seem to be). I think P5 approaches or exceeds both of them in their best attributes, but there are two small places where it loses out.

Persona 3's pacing is superb, and P5 just can't match the contrived-but-great "prepare for a big shadow fight on the full moon" game flow. Those parts where you've beaten the dungeon but just have to kill time for a while bring it down a little, and not having the very rigid year structure means it doesn't feel like it's building up to something the way P3 does.

I also honestly wasn't really a fan of using the Shin Megami Tensei devils as the enemies at all. They look great with their new renders, but they're so bland compared to the traditional Persona enemies, and the fact that they get recycled as personas has some thematic reasons but results in far fewer creature designs in the game overall. Losing the shadow connection to the tarot arcana makes the arcana stuff feel a little out of place when it pops up elsewhere. It's not a huge deal, but I think it is a place where the previous games have an edge.

Still no contest though, P5 is superior in almost every way and I'm thrilled that I get to say that. A lot of people I know are saying they don't like any of the playable cast, but I think they're nuts.

Spoiler:

Ryuji is brutally misused and underused, but Yosuke has similar problems while also being a homophobic piece of shit. Ann is a little underdeveloped, but she's got at least much dimension as Yukiko and maybe considerably more.

Even the party members I didn't care about that much at first (Yusuke) grew on me over the course of the game.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Yeah, while P5 is great, I do have a handful of criticism toward parts of it too.

I agree with the pacing. I get that you're supposed to span out Palaces over the course of the time you're given, but I generally wiped them all out in a day's time, which left a lot-- a LOT of text to get through until the next time I could do some combat again. There was a very strong unbalance in that sense. Partially my fault I guess, but there felt like so few days where I actually did any kind of dungeon exploring.

I know this may be a massively unpopular opinion, but I actually got very tired with parts of the soundtrack. Yes, Behind the Mask is a good song, but did we really need three versions of it that takes up the entire game when you could have mixed it up a little? That's not saying it's bad, but I feel like they could have given more variety. I really did not like the Mementos theme either, and it's a shame, because it's another song you hear for a very long period of time. There are a ton of great tracks too, don't get me wrong, but for the bulk of the game, it felt like I was listening to the same song for over 90 hours. It's still stuck in my head.

I didn't mind the SMT devils as enemies. I always found the shadows in 3 and 4 to be, while flavorful, rather bland and without personality, and just ended up feeling like enemy placeholders rather than actual enemies, I guess. The negotiation mechanic coming back in P5 also felt nice too.

Also,

Spoiler:

Shido's Palace

. Fuck that, it was such a drag to do.

And as far as characters:

Spoiler:

the way Ryuji was written and used as a character made me hate him to be honest. He started off cool but ended up just being the obnoxious clown that wasn't really that funny so everyone picked on him ha ha so funny. He had some good moments (like escaping the 7th palace), but he just became very hard to like.

The rest of the cast was pretty good. Ann felt kiiiind of bland, and I didn't like Ohya much, but I still liked Ann a lot regardless.

Finally, I really wish I would have had more time

Spoiler:

to get to do Haru's Confidant route

. I feel like I had absolutely no time to do it and the only way you would have is if you would have maxed out an otherwise unnecessary stat overall just because. By the time I had it maxed out, it was already late December. Seriously disappointed about the pacing there.

But you can tell that if this is all I can find to complain about, you have an amazing game on your hands. Definitely an incredible game that will be treasured for years to come.

[Third Eye Lem]

So many black walls of text...I'm trying my darnedest not to look, but I accidentally got spoiled on a few things:

Spoiler:

-whom the 4th and 5th palaces were based on
-whom the final party member was
-what happens to Mishima in his social link quest thing, or at least the fact his shadow is involved, I didn't finish it yet
-the fact that Futaba's the "support" character instead of a frontliner, I would have loved her to be a combatant

Right now I'm recording a private playthrough of the game alongside one of my friends, I'm in the 4th Palace now. While it is nice that you can change your difficulty, I've stuck with Easy, and even then some of the dungeon crawls can get...Annoying. I also have to ask who thought it was a good idea to disguise Despair as a doom-like status effect, because those damn Lamias in the 4th palace ganked me (though it was mostly my mistake) and my MC died due to that effect. I was not a happy camper after that loss, especially after picking up some useful personas (like Isis).

On that note...Am I the only one who thought that

Spoiler:

Futaba's palace reminded me of the mental hospital's patients in Psychonauts? Instead of going in to mess up someone's mind for personal gain, you're doing it to essentially save someone's life. The Pyramid also has some elements that aren't typical in a Palace so far, like a distant town, a massive desert, and starting out in your normal clothes instead of your thief ones, as well as potentially having to fight a shadow that isn't the Palace owner itself (though that may change, I only beat the Chamber of Rejection so far). It's a really cool design and I hope the other Palaces do stuff like this.

Also, stalling to refill SP using Adhesives is the most satisfying thing ever...Until you either are forced to use the SP you just regained or the enemy panics and you have to kill them before they raise the security rating. :V On that note, can I also say I love the cut-in art and the cart for the security meters? Yeah, it's creepy having those faces loom over you, but it's creepy in a good way.

Hope no one minds me reviving this thread. I may have more to say as I progress.

[Serela]

Also, stalling to refill SP using Adhesives is the most satisfying thing ever...Until you either are forced to use the SP you just regained or the enemy panics and you have to kill them before they raise the security rating. :V

SP Adhesive 3s are the best thing ever once you do Death enough to hit the 50% discount, and it's hard to imagine playing without them. I was using 2 or 3 in like, palace 3. Best use of my money. I never really stalled to use them, but I did need to use sp recovery items occasionally as a result.

[Third Eye Lem]

SP Adhesive 3s are the best thing ever once you do Death enough to hit the 50% discount, and it's hard to imagine playing without them. I was using 2 or 3 in like, palace 3. Best use of my money. I never really stalled to use them, but I did need to use sp recovery items occasionally as a result.

On that note...I was way more thrilled to brew Coffee and Curry than I should have been, having a few cups of joe or curry servings makes Palace runs more bearable.

Is there any way to reliably save up enough cash to get an SP patch before Palace 3? I doubt it's possible, but I am curious now...

[commandercool]

Rushing the Sun social link would help if it's even available that early, but I don't know if it really is. If you're spending time making coffee and curry though then taking two days to spread out the palace shouldn't be too much of a stress on your time. And I guess you can just use those consumables. Although generally I don't recommend making them, they're a pretty inefficient use of time.

[Serela]

Is there any way to reliably save up enough cash to get an SP patch before Palace 3? I doubt it's possible, but I am curious now...

Just don't spend much on equipment. Upgrading weapons only needs to be done occasionally, I wouldn't bother upgrading guns at all until endgame, and you can get most of your armor from mementos- filling in any gaps (collars, likely) when necessary. After game start (where some upgrades are pretty nice) I think the only armor I ever bought from the store were a couple collars. As long as you reach the Discount perk you can easily get at least an Adhesive for the MC by then.

Only reason I wasn't swimming in cash for most of my playthrough is because I dumped hundreds of thousands of yen on the

Spoiler:

fortune teller's

abilities to save time :V Certainly one way to easily max all confidants if you don't want to bother with a guide.

[Third Eye Lem]

Just don't spend much on equipment. Upgrading weapons only needs to be done occasionally, I wouldn't bother upgrading guns at all until endgame, and you can get most of your armor from mementos- filling in any gaps (collars, likely) when necessary.

I'm a filthy capitalist who buys the most expensive weapons as soon as I'm able. Some of them are nice, like Mona's sleep blade, but it's mostly so I can kill stuff more easily without using too much Magic.

Only reason I wasn't swimming in cash for most of my playthrough is because I dumped hundreds of thousands of yen on the

Spoiler:

fortune teller's

abilities to save time :V Certainly one way to easily max all confidants if you don't want to bother with a guide.

Oh, so that's what that link does? Yikes...Talk about a money vacuum. Seems like you get a ton of cash much later on, huh?

[commandercool]

Yeah, but odds are you'll never have a ton laying around between all the money sinks

Spoiler:

Strength rank 10

and the fact that you can upgrade your equipment pretty regularly if you want to. To some degree the game lets you decide how you want to weight your spoils, money through holdups or experience through All Out Attacks, and there are a bunch of ways to squeeze out extra money, but you probably won't ever find yourself with extra money later in the game.

[Zerviscos]

Yeah, but odds are you'll never have a ton laying around between all the money sinks

Spoiler:

Strength rank 10

and the fact that you can upgrade your equipment pretty regularly if you want to. To some degree the game lets you decide how you want to weight your spoils, money through holdups or experience through All Out Attacks, and there are a bunch of ways to squeeze out extra money, but you probably won't ever find yourself with extra money later in the game.

It's why buying the most expensive SP Adhesive(lmao who buys HP Adhesive?) from the

Spoiler:

Death Arcana with the discount rank

as early as possible is the best investment you'll have in the game early onwards. When you're grinding either money or experience, you'll always find yourself low on SP from healing, and you'll never even want to just attack most of the time, and always want to use on-element skills, because it's a death sentence even on whatever difficulty you're on, unless you really have a high level against those enemies in your current palace. Instead of buying all the SP sodas, which gives very little SP, I mean they're good until the first or second palaces, but once you need a lot of grinding, you need the better way to get reliable SP regeneration. Once you get that, you can either just run around a palace to grind exp or holdup for money, until you get bored of it, because you're more than likely won't ever die if you just keep healing with skills and with a good SP regen.

[Serela]

I'm a filthy capitalist who buys the most expensive weapons as soon as I'm able. Some of them are nice, like Mona's sleep blade, but it's mostly so I can kill stuff more easily without using too much Magic.

The thing is, upgrading your weapons one rank (e.g. once every palace) has  a really minor effect on your damage dealt (and physical persona skills are not influenced by your weapon at all, by the way), but if you want to conserve SP you'll get a much larger return buying an Adhesive than a new set of weapons for the cast. The first one is big since the MC needs it the most, and then with each additional one you can either have a healing ally able to keep on going keeping your party healed up, or an ally whose element hits many enemy's weaknesses in the area, etc. Basically, instead of a slightly stronger weapon, you buy the ability to spam the heck out of magic.

As for the expensive link I mentioned,

Spoiler:

she eventually gives the initial 100k yen back late in her link, possesses an ability to significantly raise gained money if you win via an all-out-attack, and her other powers only cost 5k a pop if you want help maxing confidants from her.

So, she's not necessarily a money vacuum at all, apart from however much you elect to spend to aid in confidant maxing. That initial investment IS painful, though.