Was this game translated by Kawaiikochans
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Much easier to read on a phone or a smaller window that gets rid of the funky textbox geometry. And ditch that red theme.
But yeah.
I certainly don’t wanna throw the entirety of the manga-anime industry under the bus or be super totalizing/stereotypical or “smh Japan,” but so much of this is unreflexively repeated across (especially male/shōnen-oriented) manga and anime for humor and the pervasive idea of “fanservice” that in a lot of ways it’s the water media like Persona swim in. That doesn’t excuse any individual instance, of course. We can, indeed, point to a lot of things that are smarter and more sensitive about all this, but the extent to which sexual harassment and on and on appears in gag manga as a more or less neutral source of comedy kinda drags whole genres down. And there are many things that have nominally progressive or sympathetic characterizations and themes, but then in the next cut will have something deeply sexist or homophobic in it.
Why Hashino and co. aren’t more self-reflexive about this I don’t understand. Which I guess is more or less what Isfet said. But I guess I wouldn’t pin it on a larger team of writers (head writers or the director could surely be like “Oh Jesus, man, don’t make the player say that about her!”) than a writing context where this stuff is regarded as fundamentally unproblematic.
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Because Persona 3 remains My Favorite, I find myself most intrigued by the possibility of P3D. On the one hand, I have no interest in Persona dancing games, so I’m hoping it’s something more in line with the original game. On the other, I’m really not into the idea of cramming P3 into P5’s engine or something, so I’d hope that if it’s like a remake it’s just an upgrade of textures to make it work in HD on current consoles or whatevs (PS4 P3 FES+Female MC+The Answer would make me pretty happy, since I find myself itching to return to P3 after I get through this and a few more games).
I remembered while playing this last night that a new SMT project is going to be revealed in more detail later this year and found myself really looking forward to E3. For the most part I’m really enjoying P5 and I’m relieved that it still feels so much like an SMT game.
If by any chance Atlus begins producing SMT/Persona games at anything like a third the rate it did on PS2, I’d be very happy.
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I just got to the part near end of May where they get the flyer about the maids and I’m so frustrated at how hard the game tries to push you to do it. I don’t know if it’s required to go through the game but I got tired of getting pushed in that direction so I gave into the pressure.
In reality, I’m not opposed to sex work if it’s done by people of age who are doing so willfully knowing the possible risks, but I guess I’m really just sad I have to be friends with Ryuji in this game because the whole dudebro attitude is not something I want to be a part of, and the game makes me feel like I have to.
I didn’t intend to get personal but I’ve been drinking while playing tonight so I guess that’s why okay good night
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That social link has the extra “advantage” of also being one of the more mechanically helpful ones. And also, from what I’ve seen, pretty creepy even for Persona.
An important thing to understand about the Persona 3+ Series is that despite presentation, the player character isn’t really an avatar you can shape. Instead, you’ll be performing the same sociopathic dude who, at best, encourages the bad behavior of his friends as a way to win their favor and advance his own goals. How much tolerance you have for this determines how much of the game you’ll be willing to finish.
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Which is why it bugs me so much that he’s not fully voiced
On a more positive note I’m such a fan of the enemy character models
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94 hours later, I’m done with the game. Persona 3 took me a year to beat and I’ve never bothered to complete Magatsu Inaba in Persona 4, so I’m honestly surprised I haven’t burned out until the very final stretch. Handmade dungeons really are an amazing improvement, the constant stream of new gimmicks and wildly different themes always kept me going, and stealth is just so satisfying despite its simplicity. Every press of the X button that makes you jump to another cover or tear down enemy’s mask is just such a cute, small rush of pleasure – the snapiness, the sounds, the animations, it’s all perfect.
Negotiations being back turned out to be a huge boon as well, constant battles are far less monotonous if they don’t always end with All Out Attack (and guns are just so satisfying to use). I’m also impressed at how many fun and seemingly overpowered features I’ve unlocked through Social Links (Kawakami’s evening chores, Futaba’s Position Hack and Final Guard, all the shogi maneuvers and gun skills), but the game always seemed to accomodate them in smart ways. Just as much leeway as they can give you… and, well, Persona’s “just don’t make mistakes or die” M.O. allows them to offer you a lot of useful safety nets.
Wish the game ended on a stronger note, though. The last standard Palace has a pretty good variety of objectives and ends with a very satisfying boss fight: you’ve got the perfectly cheesy vocal theme, cool imagery which is like Revengeance’s finale on acid, multiple creative forms with enemy’s name getting ridiculously long at the end, I-can’t-believe-I-actually-survived-that feeling at the end. And then, the epilogue turns the game into a weak Nocturne homage with no memorable music and a lot of encounters that Atlus has done better elsewhere, possibly multiple times. Not a major problem, but I really hoped for denounement of Nyx battle quality at least.
Agreed with all the complaints about the game’s politics, but nothing here has annoyed me the way P4’s backtracking on Kanji’s and Naoto’s sexualities had a few years earlier. Also: it’s kinda annoying how the supposedly casual offshoot of Shin Megami Tensei realizes the importance of saferooms in dungeon crawling while SMT IV devs keep messing up the tension for me by insisting on that darn save anywhere feature…
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I just started the 4th palace, game still infuriates me with regard to arbitrarily limiting my daily activities during days the plot is developing. God damn am I going to get hit with DVD rental late fees.
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I’m not really having a good time with this game anymore. It’s a total conversion pack for P3/P4, and everything that implies, good and bad. Especially bad.
The beach scene in August is somehow even worse, sadly. Easily the ugliest and most disappointing parts.
Something to look forward to, lucky me
Much further behind but man, do I agree. Sometimes I really wonder why the game doesn’t want me to do things, especially at night. Between the first and second palaces, there’s a stretch where you just have to go out during the day to a store in Shibuya. You come home and can’t do anything at night because you’re meeting your friends… for lunch… the next day. What the hell. Let me just study or something.
I thought for a while you could only save in safe rooms and in your bedroom. Thank god I was wrong. The game doesn’t let you see your own bedroom for days at a time sometimes.
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i’m about to fight the last boss and i’m at about 90:34 hours into this game…
this…this is maybe the most amount of hours i’ve put into one game in one go, ever
the parts of this game that are bad are really bad, but the parts that are good are…well, i’m blown away by them. anyway, yeah, i guess i’m about to beat this game; that’s honestly a first for me with any modern Persona game.
maybe it’s because they SMT’d it up?
I was thinking the other day how it’s funny to think of this as a “modern Persona game” when there were there were 6 years between the last P2 game and P3 and there were 8 years between P4 and P5.
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yeah idk how else to frame them - “the Persona games that are all flashy and shit”
Yeah, totally. I think as much as anything it speaks to how slowed down development cycles have become in the video game industry. This set of “modern” Persona games do present a break of sorts: they are flashy and revolve around more visual novel-inspired time management and social link systems, and are just more united in terms of overall narrative and system approaches.
That said, the reintroduction of demon conversation and all that do a little to bring us back to the PS1 games.
Ultimately, though, a gap of six years between PS1 and PS2 games just necessarily feels like a longer time than an eight year gap between PS2 and PS4 games.
I’d argue that Persona 3 and onward are a completely different series from Persona 1, 2, and 2. Aside from “teenagers summon Not-Stands to fight demons” there’s barely any commonalities in structure, mechanics, storylines, etc. Themes, maybe. Dungeon crawling is the game in Persona 1, and by Persona 3 it’s an activity that’s still required, but has been sidelined by scheduling social stats and going on dates. It’s something you do in one long chunk every half-dozen hours or so, almost like it’s getting in the way of the “real game.”
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yeah, absolutely. the If… -> Soul Hackers -> Persona timeline makes a lot more sense as P3 was really its own thing. but i guess why i’m enjoying 5 is because it is throwing me some Classic MegaTen stuff in there (more than before) and so i’m finding the aesthetic more appealing than i did with 3 or 4.
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