So I finally managed to beat Persona 5 after a good 70 hours-or-so of pretty much my undivided attention (with the occasional, compulsive dip into Destiny). That's probably going to give you an idea of how this review is going to turn out.
Persona 5 is bloody good.
I initially went into playing Persona 5 with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth on account of Altus, the people responsible for the game, having a rather archaic and frankly idiotic stance towards streamer's playing their game for too long. That's a story for another day. As opposed to that sour taste developing into full-on revulsion, as D:Ream said in '93, "things can only get better".
So let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. Persona 5 is a JRPG, first and foremost, with a pretty intuitive battle system, likeable characters, decent story, fantastic soundtrack and spot-on voice acting, all of which is wrapped in a slick and stylish artistic direction. Also added to the mix is a more grounded and social aspect to the game, which I'm struggling to describe. Try to imagine "The Sims: Japanese High School expansion" meets "Pokemon", and you're going to get a decent idea of what to expect.
Let's try and explain the Pokemon reference first. The more traditional JRPG elements of the game take place within the "Metaverse", which you can think of as an alternate reality that exists in people's heads. Within the Metaverse, people's hidden natures are made manifest, becoming the "Personas" that handily fill the same niche as Pokemon would in a Pokemon game. There are heaps of these Personas, each with their own strengths and weaknesses that can be exploited in battle. While the rest of your team are stuck with one Persona and it's particular elemental affinity, the main character has the ability to change his Personas as the situation requires.
On the surface, this appears very much like Pokemon and it's rock-paper-scissors approach to exploiting enemy weaknesses, but Persona 5 is able to offer a more strategic and nuanced experience. Say you use Ryuji's Persona (specializing in electric attacks) against an enemy weak to electricity. Not only do you do bonus damage against that enemy, but you also "knock them down", awarding Ryuji an additional attack that turn. Say there's another enemy on the field weak to electricity? Boom, another attack. Later on, you're able to pass this attack between another character who may be able to exploit a different enemies weakness, and so on. It may sound like this makes Persona 5 too easy, but note that there are enemies int he game for which there are no weaknesses. Not only that, but the same mechanics that work for you can also work against you, as well as the existence of one hit kills int he game (which, if they land on the main character, results in a Game Over screen).
Knocking down all the enemies on the field allows you to either do an "All-out attack" (the damage for which was welcome but also not exactly game-changing), or try and "negotiate". Negotiation may award you with money or items, or a chance to recruit the Persona using various multiple choice answers. I was never a big fan of the games negation mechanics, partly because the required answers were a bit too vague for my liking. For example, knocked-down personas have one of 4 various "moods": Irritable, Gloomy, Up-beat (flirty) or Timid, and you need to pick answers that you think will be more appeasing based on these moods. Fortunately this is only one way to recruit new Personas, such as fusing two together in a place called "the Velvet Room", a place you encounter pretty early on in the game's story.
While the events that take place in the Metaverse offer up the "bulk" of the content in Persona 5, we haven't yet touched on the events that can take place within the real world, which also offers the player a heap of content. While experience points improves your ability int he Metaverse, it's various social tasks that help improve the main characters 5 social skills: Guts, Charm, Knowledge, Proficiency, and Kindness. For example, being a high school student necessitates trips to school. At school, the occassional pop quiz or exam gives you the chance to improve your knowledge skill. Hitting a few balls at the battling cages can improve your proficiency. Improving these social skills opens avenues to other social events. For example you can work a part-time job that no only pays more but can improve your social skills providing your other skills are high enough. Hanging out with that lady-friend you have a thing for might require you charm to be relatively high, and completing various "Confidant" side quests may require your social skills to be at a certain level in order to progress.
"Confidants, Tom? What's that?" I'm SO glad you asked! Confidants refers to the more personal relationships the main character makes in the game. Not only does each of your team in the Metaverse serve as a confidant, but so do other NPC's you encounter in the real world. Each of these confidants possess their own quest-line, with relatively involved stories to keep you invested. Improving these social links also has a direct impact in the Metaverse too, such as giving Persona produced via fusion an experience bonus, giving team mates special attacks, or giving access to new items and discounts in various shops.
Thankfully, all the style and flourish that makes the game-play so good in Persona 5 bleeds over into the games aesthetic and music. Both help really draw the line between events in the Metaverse and the game's real world, like using softer, pastel colours an accessible keyboard melodies in the real world to accentuate the more exiting events that are taking place int he Metaverse, which uses harsh lines of bold colour and rocking guitar riffs. As mentioned the voice acting is also really on point, with Altus clearly investing in capable voice actors who's talents I've heard used in various anime dubs over the years. Fun fact, the voice actress for Morgana was also in an anime with a character called Ryuji, giving me nice throw backs whenever Morgana scolds Ryuji. The only criticism I would say is that character dialog sometimes goes on for a little bit too long. I often found myself skipping the rest after the first line, which gave me just enough context to allow voiced conversations to make sense without me getting bored of waiting for one character to stop speaking.
As far as replay-ability goes, Persona 5 fully endorses a New Game+. Your social skills carry over between play-through's, giving you more time to pursue activities with your confidants without having to rank skills up before progressing. certain items, such as equipment and gifts for maxing out a confidant, also carry over, as well as your obtained library of Personas. Certain dialog options denied you early in the game because you social skills were too low also open up immediately allowing you to try and new take on old scenes. The game also allows you to fast-forward through conversations, meaning my next play-through will probably be a lot shorter than 70+ hours.
In short, Persona 5 is a rock-sold JRPG, and perhaps the first really good JRPG I've played in a long, long time. I'm really glad to finally get a look in on a series I've always been interested in but never really had the chance to play. Fingers crossed this results in some remastered releases of the earlier games o I can try them out for myself as well.
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