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[NOTICE: This review will have SPOILERS throughout, and this review will assume you know the basic controls of Splatoon. Also, Acht/Dedf1sh will be referred to as a woman throughout this review. Put down the pitchforks, the only reason for this is because in Splatoon 2, she’s clearly given a female gender, and also, I know literally no one who thinks she’s NOT a woman. Seems to only be in the English localisation, so take that as you will.]


Intro

‘Side Order’! More ‘Splatoon 3’ is fine by me and hopefully we get some good lore deets, and GASP, is that Dedf1sh from ‘Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion DLC? Sign me up! Interesting world though. This can’t be Inkopolis Square because the Plaza is so close by. If something was wrong with it, everyone would notice. So, what’s the deal?


SO trailers got me interested in its story. I mean yeah, the gameplay will be fine, but the story? OE and S3 Main Story were so good, so I hope they kept up the pace! With characters like Dedf1sh - now known as Acht - having a relationship with Marina - a main character in S2 - I thought it’d be interesting to see how things turn out. What’s the deal with the scenario? Acht’s still sanitised, isn’t she? Can we trust her? Marina’s in danger? Let’s get her back from whoever’s holding her captive!


The gameplay was taking another turn: a rogue-like, which is a genre I haven’t really delved into, so I wasn’t sure how I was gonna feel about it. And after playing it… hmm…


One step at a time though, let’s dive straight into it.


Synopsis

When you first attempt to travel to Inkopolis Square, your character falls asleep, all while the world digitises around them. Then you awake as an Octoling, named Eight. You can style his or her hair any way you like amongst other options. I made it the standard design because it wasn’t like I was gonna use her in the main game otherwise. Except the yellow eyes. A shadow? Or the real deal? …Let’s proceed.


Eight awakes to the sight of Pearl of ‘Off the Hook’. She doesn’t know why she looks like that of a Drone, but she does know that Marina is not around and the Spire of Order right behind them is giving off noises of Marina in danger. So, the two go in and attempt a rescue. When they enter, they encounter these strange enemies blocking off the elevator they need to use to climb to the top. And then inside the elevator, we meet the DJ of the Deep Sea Metro: Dedf1sh, now named Acht. She entered this strange world and also tried to save Marina, but couldn’t because she’s not that much of a fighter. In fact, so inexperienced, she got hurt by those enemies she dubs, Jellytons. So, now she mans the elevator.


This whole section’s a tutorial and by the time you reach 10F, you fight a corrupted Marina, but defeating this saves her, and the boss we just beat, manifests itself as Order. Order forces everyone out the spire as well as making it three times taller just to stall out the run time- I mean, make it harder on us.


I didn’t see Acht anywhere though. Did she make it out- uh, yeah, she did. So… happy reunion between old buddies? No? Alright, we’re just gonna go back in and beat the story. Let’s go, then.


So… immediately, my original theories went out the window. It all hinged on Marina being the one in need of saving since the beginning. Maybe the trailers showed her doing her hacking stuff, but I must’ve missed it. But still, there could be something with Acht. What’s her deal? No idea, but maybe we’ll find out. There’s still hope of a good story with lore deets.


Gameplay

The gimmick of this mode is chips. You earn these by completing the various floors, and the chips you get vary - you could want a damage build or maybe you’d like a movement-based build. The floors come in four forms of difficulty, ranging from Easy to Rigorous. The type of mission you get is also a mix of various modes - it might be chasing down some fleeing enemies, trying to move this propellor tower to the goal or destroying enemy-spawning portals. The portals are the most important ones in my opinion. I personally detest the Splat Zones missions, especially the dual Zones because it can be difficult to keep track of both of them, as well as those annoying enemies that are designed simply to ruin your progress. But otherwise, everything is fine mostly. The enemy spawns might be overly high at times, but it's fine.


The difficulty of each floor can also depend on the weapon, kit and chips you currently have. With the wrong weapon type, missions can practically be impossible. For example, I had a run where I used a Roller with mostly damage ups, and I was doing a Rigorous Splat Zones map... with two Zones on opposite sides of the map. Enemies spawned too much and my Roller’s pitiful range meant I couldn’t delete the flying enemies well, particularly those annoying ones that sprinkle ink they move. Then I lost the run after a few attempts. Weapons come from Palettes, which you unlock as you open up the lockers. Every 10th floor nets you a key upon completion the first time round with a specific Palette. The Palettes also have their own kits, but as you climb you CAN attempt to replace certain Subs and Specials with another if you don’t like what you currently have, and there are certainly some Subs or Specials that have high usefulness. But you still need to roll the dice on those Vending Machines. I do like this feature at least, as appose to starting with only the Main Weapon and then getting Subs and Specials along the way. And usually, if one part of the kit sucks, another part of it will keep it up as good.


Every 10th floor houses bosses, and they’re randomised except for 30F. That’s always Order, itself. The bosses range from boring to tense (in some situations). The rolling ball boss is pretty annoying due to the limited weak spots and for some weapons, it just takes too long to get to the other side when it flies off into the distance. Then there’s the final boss with those damn portals and hordes of enemies. I hope you have a weapon with good object damage and/or range because if you don’t, you’ll be circling the whole map until you manage to find an opening.


My runs typically focused more on Special-based builds because some of them are really just that useful. The Ultra Stamp is extremely powerful and from the front, there’s a good chance nothing can hurt you. Killer Wail’s global range means I can complete most tasks without the need of getting close. Triple Ink Strike does good general damage. So in my runs, I try searching for Special Charge Ups and Mobility Special Charge to quickly increase my Special Meter and constantly spam them. And it worked most of the time. The main chips I avoided were the Pearl Drone ones because I just don’t think she’s very useful. Pearl can by default, let you glide by pressing B in midair, and also fire a weak beam. With chips, you can give her some Subs or Specials, but they require a lengthy charge time. You can lower the charge time by finding more of the same chip, but I don’t think I want to waste slots on a slow-to-use Drone. Sorry Pearl, but you didn’t help much at all in any of my runs. Since I seemingly got a good strategy regardless of Palette, I kinda got tired. You might be asking why I didn't challenge myself further, and it's because I was mainly in it to get all the lockers opened. So I didn't have time to just weaken myself.


If you fail a run, you’re bumped all the way back to the bottom, but you have ways to help your next climbs. The chips you acquired will turn into Prlz, which are currency to allow Marina to hack the spire. For example, giving you extra lives, allowing for continues, weaker enemies, etc. What will also help runs is simply remembering maps. While there’s a few mode-exclusive maps, most are shared between the same maps. So remembering them as well as the mission in question will greatly help in future runs. And I’ll tell you, after my first successful run, future runs would become easy as I figured out what kind of build to generally make as well as remembering how to comfortably complete some missions.


The only thing that might get in the way of my way up there are the Danger floors. Some floors house Bonus or Danger missions. Bonuses either grant you tons of chips to make the mission easy, or a chance at more Membucks - which let you use the Vending Machines amongst other things. But Danger missions are the opposite. They house extra gimmicks that prevent you from doing or getting certain things. For example, no Pearl Drone or no Item Drops. The worst one by far, is Darkness since you can barely see anything. I think it’s even worse than the Fog of War. It'd be nice if Danger missions at least netted you more Membucks by default.


On the whole, I’d say with all my runs, I thought it came to be quite tedious, having to do roughly 12 full climbs. And what do you get for opening all the lockers? New Palettes, some Prlz, Marina’s diary entries and a few other things. Really, it’s mainly the diary entries I was interested in. Maybe I’ll find some lore there or something.


Story & Lore(?)

So, with Marina saved, that means the story is actually just… beating Order and ending it there, I guess. Order is essentially trying to rid the world of the chaos and despair that seems to be going on in the world. In a way, sanitising the populous. On your first run, Order had already fused itself with the system, so it was about to execute a world-wide, uh, ‘sanitisation’. Marina desperately tries to stop it, and nearly fails, but with the help of Acht, she manages to do it. Then with another Pearl Booyah Beam that totally wasn’t Unlimited Colour from ‘Sonic Colours’, Order is defeated. Order turns from this corrupted floating circle to a tiny Mollusk, affectionally named, Smollusk. It seems quite salty though. Still, it lets you through and you can climb to the heavens for a nice view of the digital world.


…Wait, that’s the story? That’s… severely disappointing. I mean, Acht looked like she was about to sacrifice herself - the game even shows her eyes before aiding Marina, as if she was about to actually die. And even if she was, it wouldn’t be earned because she hasn’t really done anything this whole story besides man the elevator and a bit of banter. Marina has basically no reaction to seeing Acht again after all this time, not even questioning Acht’s still-sanitised appearance. I mean yeah, there’s the occasional banter in the elevator where Marina says it’s good to see her again, as well as getting to know the characters a bit more, but not really much. Acht is essentially there for the ride, and Marina is constantly fawning over Pearl with the occasional mention of their World Tour, which was still on-going during your first climb. Were these two always this clingy to each other? Even Acht was surprised.


How about the 12 diary entries? Anything there? Well… not really. It just says that the digital world, known as the Memverse, was designed to house memories of the population as well as using it to try to give the sanitised Octolings from the Deep Sea Metro their souls back via the Memcakes. This is reportedly how Acht got her memories back. Alright, neat, but HOW did she get into the Memverse? How does anyone get here? There’s probably various ways, but Marina says one way is probably through the phones the populous uses. Most of the diary is otherwise talking about Pearl, how Eight is the first test subject, and the World Tour on top of that. Thrilling.


But I soon found out that climbing up the spire with different Palettes gives more cutscenes, but it’s all talking about the Smollusk’s motives, as well as finishing up the Palettes for a complete data restoration, or something. Smollusk is basically an AI who corrupted the Jellytons to be evil and target intruders to the spire, and also believes that a world of order is better. Smollusk itself is basically a worker in the Memverse, but went rogue. Buuut Pearl, Marina and Acht (I suppose) talk some sense into it and soon comes to ditch this order idea, HOWEVER… the frequent visits up to 30F do at least make it happy despite the many losses. Okay.


Oh, but when you complete the final Palette, which is Eight’s very own, then you unlock new diary entries, but not by Marina. It’s by Acht. Let’s see here… Um, she writes how upon Marina’s leaving of the Octarian Army, the army sorta fell into disarray as they lost one of its best members. Acht clearly never had interest in fighting and just wished to… well, do anything else, I guess. But thankfully, going down underground to where the Deep Sea Metro is, she managed to find a hobby in DJ. So strong was her desire to continue music, she let herself get sanitised, I suppose, and once she got her mind back in the spire, she went to look for Marina. Not all of that was in the diary, but just telling what seems to be her side of the story, for the most part.


Disappointed is all I can say about Acht’s treatment in this story. I feel like SO should’ve been her story. Like, she was not even a background character in OE and now she’s in the forefront as well as a confidant of Marina’s. There HAS to be more to her, right? But all we get is a reunion with no impact, a bit of banter, a climax that involves her even though it’s needless added tension, in my opinion. …Yeah, I’m just not very impressed. Like I wanted to know HOW did she end up in the Order Sector? I suppose it’s possible she heard Pearl’s voice at the very end of OE because of the loud “Booyah!” and that kicked her out of her sanitised state just enough to move out of the Metro. But why did she become sanitised in the first place? The S2 description of her says she did it on her own volition, but with the added detail in her diary, what did she mean by it? Did she know she was getting sanitised, but left it be because she maybe felt like she was worthless? Maybe she knew it was happening to her while she was DJing, but by the time she realised she as losing her sense of self, it was too late? I don’t know, the game never explicitly tells us about it. Truthfully, I would’ve just been fine with Acht NOT being here and just being a tragic lore character of OE, because she adds nothing of worth to the story or Marina’s past. Like I said, I assumed Marina was the one in need of saving throughout the main campaign, but Marina may as well be the one using the elevator.


Lastly, just to be tangentially relevant, Acht has some really soft eyes under her rather aloof-looking exterior. Almost as if she’s actually super shy and insecure, hence my above comments. With cutscenes like the one where she helps Marina in the last second, I can’t help but feel the story we got was simply incomplete or rewritten to be less… depressing, maybe? But this is Splatoon. This entire series in the background is dark and depressing. Lean into it, I’d say. And don’t go mentioning “ah, but kids material” - look, a ton of this stuff would probably be missed by a ton of players young or old because they might assume the first climb is all you need for story. And even if kids get all the optional stuff and don’t understand it, teens and adults probably will. The beauty of media targeted towards kids is being able to weave in simple plots, but compelling deeper stories or themes underneath. That’s what made 2000s era Sonic popular (in retrospect), that’s how we got movies like ‘The Incredibles’ and ‘Puss in Boots 2’. The whole Splatoon series had been doing this since the beginning, and it ramped up significantly in OE and Splatoon 3’s Main Story. But in terms of SO, I think the rogue-like style hindered the writers' ability to actually write. I don't know, but disappointment is what I think of this.


Conclusion

And this sadly concludes this review of ‘Side Order’. It was okay as a game, but severely misses the mark in its story in my opinion. I can’t say much more than what I’ve already wrote.


Well, I suppose I can add that once you beat Side Order for the first time, you can now make Inkopolis Square your main hub if you so wish. Neat. At least you work for it unlike Inkopolis Plaza. Since I did 100% SO, I did at least get access to basically all the extra goodies, including an Acht banner. I’ll use that, it’s pretty. And also, the music… is fine. I have to admit, I’m not the biggest fan of the Splatoon series’ music overall, but I don’t think any of the tracks are bad by any means.


The Expansion Pass as a whole is £22.49 and gotta say with all the paid DLC out… not exactly worth it. If it ever somehow gets a discount, go for it, but I don’t think Nintendo really drops the prices of their 1st party titles, like, ever.


With that, I’m gonna wait until the next season drops. Until then, I’m gonna start ‘Nier: Automata’ and also finish my my long ‘Octopath Traveler II’ review. Okay that’s all. See ya.

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Hey. So, I don’t often do this, but I have time to kill I guess. I got tagged by HeroofLightandDark to do one of these things: 13 favourite Video Game waifus. In this list, besides giving my list of favourite female characters in Video Games, I’m gonna talk about why I like them and why they’re good material for being the-beeg. Also, it’ll only be one character per series.


I won’t be tagging anyone else, so it’s just gonna be if you want to do one, go right ahead.


Starting from A and working our way down to S…


Aubrey [Faraway] (from OMORI)

To get it out of the way, I’m not particularly big on any of the Headspace versions of characters when the vastly superior Faraway (real world) versions exist. I like Aubrey for her story and her way of coping with loss. It wraps itself up very nicely by the end and it looks like the writers gave her a lot of focus. Obviously I also think she’s gorgeous with the nice long hair with the pink dye. I enjoy the delinquent aesthetic, what can I say? Although, I get the impression, this design is a bit of a fluke in a sense that some of her photos indicate she changes it up every now and then and, she doesn’t look as good. Or maybe I just haven’t got used to those appearances. Now, Aubrey is good for the-beeg because of the amount of energy she exudes. I like to think she wants to wreck everything, but she’ll come to her senses in due time. Just give her a hug.


Cammy White (from Street Fighter)

I feel like the reason why I like this former Shadoloo Doll is because she’s British. I like her hair style and she has nice clothes. This was only further accentuated with her SF6 design where she has more casual clothes and it really accentuates her… features. Not that the leotard appearance didn’t either, but you know. She’s also good a good story that’s still on-going, so that’s nice. It’s good to see she’s doing well in the present day. At least, I think so. Cammy White obviously deserves to be the-beeg because… well, duh. That arse is practically begging to flatten some cities!


Castti Florenz (from Octopath Traveler)

At the time of writing this, I have not shut up about this character. Considering the simplicity of most stories in the Octopath Traveler series, it surprised me how much I really liked not only the character, but also her story. In the story, she’s able to exhibit so much motherly energy, leadership and sorrow that I can’t help but root for her every time. In battle, she’s also able to be unnaturally cool, only better accentuated by her Japanese voice (and I guess some of her battle dialogue too). Perfect candidate for the-beeg because she can be the absolute gentlest giant… or the most destructive one. Depends on who pissed her off while making the growth concoction.


Ciel (from Tsukihime & Melty Blood)

I don’t know. I just like the cool nun who uses long knives (keys) as weapons. She’s acrobatic, has a rather horrifying story, and loves curry. Oh also, she has a very wide set of child-baring hips. In terms of appearance, the nun attire is simple and gets the job done. Her Powered Up form I’m less thrilled by because of the amount of tattoos (though this was changed drastically in the remake). Could you imagine Ciel being the-beeg and then accidentally hip bumping buildings because she’s just so damn thicc? I can too~


Cynthia (from Pokémon)

I don’t tend to fall into the crowd of ‘step on me’, but Cynthia’s the only exception to this. I’d let her stomp on me just for her to show off her overwhelming power. But really, I’m just super fond of her character, design and just how cool she is. Of all the champions I’ve ever faced in a Pokémon game, she’s the only one I truly remembered. Everyone else is kinda forgettable, to me. Obviously, with such power means she has very much the energy to be the-beeg and just stomp on all of Sinnoh- no, the whole world of Pokémon!!


Jill Valentine [Classic] (from Resident Evil)

I stress the ‘classic version’ (the games predating RE3 Remake) because I’m honestly not fond of that version of Jill. Forced ‘badass’ energy and some design details were lost in translation from the classic to the modern one, sadly. The things I liked about classic Jill were how down-to-Earth and motherly she ultimately was. And between games, I’m just a fan of how she grew up. In RE1, she threw up at the sight of zombies, but by ‘Umbrella Chronicles’, or hell, even in RE3, she’s shown to resist the gore and this allowed to put herself into more of a leadership role while still being herself. And of course, she’s gorgeous. I know most people prefer the RE3 design because it’s sexier and all, but I actually really like the S.T.A.R.S. uniform more. But both show off her character very well. I know she’s great with guns and all, but could you imagine if she grew super beeg and then used her hands, feet and boobs to crush everything? She does a bit of that in ‘Marvel vs Capcom 2’, minus her actually being the-beeg. How sad…


Kula Diamond (from King of Fighters)

The adorable young girl who has ice powers and a traumatic past. This is the main reason why I like her character and even in KOF15, she’s learnt to at least somewhat respect those she used to, and probably still hates. She’s grown up a lot since her NESTS days. I think I’m one of the few people who prefers her classic design, but really, both old and new are great. Slowly making her one of those overly sexy-looking ice-users… But anyway, I like the idea of her being the-beeg just to freeze a whole city. Beeg power play.


Kyoko Kirigiri (from Danganronpa)

I feel like she gets left behind in favour of gamer girl Chiaki Nanami, but that’s the main reason why I’m not that big on Chiaki. At least Kyoko is down-to-Earth and serious. I like that she’s no nonsense and also she has mystery to her and her past. It goes into how the game’s story is made, which I still think is pretty good, actually. I like her appearances in DR1 and DR3, and though I’m a sucker for the office lady attire, I have to say her detective attire is much better. A lot more distinct. Kyoko definitely fits being the-beeg because… uh… actually maybe not because it’s make investigations harder. But who cares. Grow beeg, Kirigiri!


Narmaya (from Granblue Fantasy)

Honestly, it’s just because she’s so attractive and cute. Big boobs and horns. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves, they’re hard to miss. With that said, I’d by lying if I said she wasn’t cool either. She may be very sexy, but she knows swordplay very well and it’s really nice to see her in action whenever. She’s very short though, as expected of her race. So this is why we make her grow beeger. …And beeger. And beeger. And probably never stops.


Rosalina (from Super Mario)

She’s somewhat similar to Cynthia, except she lacks any of that ‘step on me’ energy. Instead, she’s practically a goddess of the Mario universe. Travels the cosmos, protects the Lumas and whenever she needs to, she can fight, herself. Most have already said this, but her backstory is also a very big contributor to why I like her so much. Most characters in the Mario series lack this, and while it’s not much, it’s enough to add further attachment to her. It’s melancholic, and I like that. Anyway, she’s naturally huge or something. I mean, did you see the ending of ‘Galaxy’? But hmm, nah, she should be even beeger!


Sakuya Izayoi (from Touhou Project)

Both Sakuya and Narmaya are the first characters I ever came across from their respective series, and this might be a main reason why I like them so much. But in Sakuya’s case, I’m also a fan of her affiliation to the Scarlet Devil Mansion, her ability to use knives and control time. There’s definitely a massive Castlevania bias here. She’s got a simple maid attire, but it changes up between appearances. If Sakuya’s playable in a given Touhou game, there’s a good chance I’ll be interested. She was my main in Hisoutensoku and the one I played in ‘Double Dealing Character’. Speaking of DDC, Sakuya would be do great being the-beeg. Rid the world of all its filth, including that dumb, pathetic, smol Shrine Maiden!


Shamir Nevrand (from Fire Emblem)

‘Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ has a lot of really good characters. I had to choose one from this game. I considered Lysethia and Ingrid, but then I settled on Shamir because I think she’s super cool and stoic. She’s also a sniper with her bow, and I have an affinity for this class of weapon users. I think the thing I like the most about her though is her stance on religion and all that, as she’s not a believer at all. She’s one of the most neutral characters in the game, morality-wise, and won’t actively help Seiros even though she does technically owe them. Now, I know she’s a sniper, but I don’t think it’d hurt to ditch the pin-point accuracy of a bow for the large range accuracy of a BEEG FOOT COMING DOWN ON YOU!


Sumire Yoshizawa (from Persona)

A good character to end on. I love Sumire Yoshizawa because she’s such a sweet, beautiful, talented and tragic character. She embodies a theme in a story I strongly resonate with and how she comes to terms with it is inspiring, in my opinion. Her design is one of the most formal in the game as her school attire has very little in the way of pizazz. Her Phantom Thief attire is a very nice gymnastics get up and in action, it’s even better. With that said, she can be quite clumsy and this makes for a good set of scenarios of her being the-beeg. Just grows huge and then accidentally wrecks the city with missteps or her dropping her glasses on the poor city.


Before I end it off, special mention to Shanoa (from Castlevania). I just played ‘Order of Ecclesia’ and I thought she was a good character, but I think I’d need more time with her to see if she’d fit as one of my favourites. She is attractive and cool though, so there’s that. Nice back.


And that’s my list. Thanks for reading~ - GameSquid

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Hello. So, this is going to be a bit of a sudden journal discussing my thoughts on the recent 'Sonic x Shadow Generations' (SSG) announcement from the latest Playstation 'State of Play'. This game was leaked a bit before the SoP and though said source was credible, I had to see it for myself.


And it was true. SSG is coming out in Autumn 2024 for all modern consoles, including the Switch which means I can play it too. Hopefully, it actually runs well on it.


Before going into the SoP, I wasn't feeling confident in a 'Generations' remake, and this was for numerous reasons: The recent Sonic releases have all sucked, from my point of view. 'Lost World' was a one-time departure that got us no where. 'Forces' was beyond disappointing in every aspect. Over 4 YEARS of no games, then we get 'Sonic Frontiers', which though I was a bit kinder to at first, I have come to quite dislike on almost every front, once again, though not as bad as 'Forces'. 'Superstars' was too frustrating and annoying, making it one of the biggest purchasing regrets I've ever made. I hear 'Sonic Dream Team' is quite good, but there's no way I'm playing it - it's on Apple Arcade. 'Sonic Boom'? What's that? The recent Sonic remakes and ports have just made me groan. 'Origins' seemed okay, but then I caught wind that it was buggy. Not to mention the smaller issues like how content was distributed. And obviously 'Sonic Colours Ultimate' with that shoddy as hell port. I was in no way gonna support a project like that. Crappy lighting adjustments, blooming, glitches, worse music - both of these remakes were hard refusals from me. Lastly, 'Generations' is actually my second favourite Sonic game (first place being 'Sonic 3 & Knuckles'). And even if it's not in your top 10 list of Sonic games, most people cannot deny the absolute quality that game had. It may have had a shoddy story (which in hindsight, is a good thing), and was slightly unstable in places, but the stages, level design and music were all fantastic. 'Generations' was a game where all the stars had aligned.


With that all said, what do I think of SSG's announcement trailer?


...It looks good. But I have to see it all for myself when it comes out later this year. Oh goodness, it's gonna be 2011 all over again.


Truthfully, I really just wanted a straight port of 'Generations' to modern consoles because my trust of Sega was just so low. And this game has quality that would suck a ton if it was tarnished by a crappy porting team. Unrealistic, I'm aware.

This trailer demonstrated a few reassuring things, I think. Such as the graphics seem to be unchanged from the original. Maybe a tiny bit brighter? But it's not like the entire game is just glowing in your face. It seems to be running on the original Hedgehog Engine because things like boost effects and textures in general look very similar to the original. Duh, of course, but you know, they probably AI upscale this stuff.

Secondly, music is left unchanged, it seems. We might get new music and remixes in this release as unlockables because why not? But the music in 'Generations' never needed a re-remix, you know? They were fantastic then, and they still rock now.


It seems the 'Generations' essence remains. I just hope that they don't decide to add much of anything to the story, let alone change it. 'Generations' greatly benefits by effectively having no story. And not that I think they'll do this if the port seems super faithful, but I don't think characters will change to suit the modern style. I'm looking at Amy Rose because her character in the modern incarnation is nothing like she used to be - suddenly not infatuated with Sonic and no longer is she the normal girl who likes Tarot Card-reading, but now she's a MAGICAL TAROT CARD USER. What the hell is this?


Obviously the biggest elephant in the room is Shadow's part in all this. I'm gonna be honest and say I'm not fully fond of this. I get that he's popular and the Sonic Movie 3 is coming out this year (I think), but I liked it more when 'Generations' was solely the Sonic and younger Sonic game. Kept it more focused. But I suppose if Shadow is gonna go through his own 'Generations', maybe 1 stage from 'Adventure 2', 'Heroes' and 'Shadow', then bosses, that'd be neat. It could potentially lead to him being suddenly a "bad guy" in 'Generations' or something. Though at that point, why isn't Silver doing the same thing? It's pretty gutsy of them to finally recall 'Shadow the Hedgehog' the game because for a long time, the only thing we got from that game was the fact that he used guns. And that was only ever played as a joke. While I think the realistic guns should be done away with, I think it was be a very nice idea to at least let him wield the more cartoony guns, or at least let the story be sinscere with it. They recently have treated Shadow with a bit more respect out of late, so it's possible, I guess. But here's what I'm concerned about: the level design. As I said before, 'Generations' has some very strong level design, but recent entries even of the same gameplay style have foregone this for overly simple controls, mostly linear paths and blocky structures. The original level designers moved on to other games like 'Zelda: Breath of the Wild', a game no one heard of. I fear that the levels will range from forgettable to "they're obviously not from the original", as in, the quality is a huge downgrade. Or potentially a huge upgrade, but that's unlikely, in my books.


Guys, watch this Shadow stuff be a hint at a complete remake of 'Shadow the Hedgehog'. I'd be shocked. PEGI 16 and M for mature, let's go!!


And this is basically the bulk of my impressions of 'Sonic x Shadow Generations'. I wonder if anyone simply typed in 'Sonic x Shadow' into Google. I haven't and I don't want to. My hype levels will remain at 1/10 UNTIL Sega can prove themselves for this game. My trust of Sega is that low. For every thing I see that doesn't look like a major change from the original 'Generations' is a +0.1 in trust. And for any major changes will be -1. Aaand I hope the 'Shadow' stuff's quality is on par with the original 'Generations'.


That's it. See you guys, later. - GameSquid

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[WARNING: This review will contain story spoilers.]

⁍ INTRODUCTION ~ Kingdom of the Unaware

One day, Atlus announced 2 games: ‘Persona 3 Reload’ - a Persona 3 remake which is something people really wanted for years, and ‘Metaphor Re:Fantazio’ - a new IP that is to come out after P3R’s release. Oh wait, did I say 2? I meant 3. The last game is ‘Persona 5 Tactica’ and I think it’s safe to say that absolutely no one gave a crap save for a select few. I was one of those select few. P3R took over absolutely everything else Atlus brought up, but to be honest, I didn’t really care that much about it. Sure, P3R looks really good, but I had recently just played ‘Persona 3 Portable’ which was also recently released. Also, P5T is completely new, so I was more interested in something new. Metaphor is also new, but that wasn’t coming out for a long while. I also don’t own a PS4 or PS5.


While everyone else was lusting over P3R, I was paying pretty hard attention to P5T, though this required me to follow the Japanese X (Twitter) Persona account because by god, the marketing for P5T was horrendous if you were just paying attention to the Western side. P5T got numerous character trailers, a few more general trailers and also a ton of articles on it (though they were all pretty similar) only in Japanese. Meanwhile, the West got 2 character spotlight trailers, and around 2 main trailers. As P5T neared release, I noticed a few more SMT/Persona YouTubers showing a bit more curiosity, but most of it could amount to them trusting it’ll play well, but they have VERY LOW interest in the story and writing especially, amongst other things. This mostly shifted to mostly positivity by the time of release and when they got to play it, but there was still an air of “So about Persona 3 Reload…” and needless to say, it rubbed me the wrong way.


Talking about P5T or anything of the sort was always a bit lonely and awkward because I was one of the few people who was legitimately excited about the game. The game came out and I decided to make this the game I’d play that break up between my long ‘Octopath Traveler II’ run. After all, P5T is like 30 hours; much less than an 80-hour so game. And I really enjoyed it. Truly. I’m gonna be a bit rude and cynical and say that this review will probably not change the minds of many who were already disinterested, but I just want to write this review because I genuinely liked it and I hope more people can play it, even if it takes a few years for it to catch steam.


So, let’s open that door into the Kingdoms.


This is my review of ‘Persona 5 Tactica’.

⁍ SYNOPSIS ~ Kingdom of the Beginning

The story starts off by showing two shady figures in some political office.


Not long after the defeat of Yaldabaoth from ‘Persona 5’, the Phantom Thieves meet up in Leblanc to hang out, knowing they only have so long left with Joker before he leaves. I guess this is assuming the 3rd Semester of ‘Persona 5 Royal’ doesn’t happen because it’s in Winter, and small spoilers, but the finale of the game takes place in Spring, still before Joker leaves at the end of P5R. While chilling, the news talks of a politician called Toshiro Kasukabe, having gone missing and how it’ll affect the political scene, but before the PTs can get more information, the TV starts freezing. Nothing seems to be working properly during this period and then suddenly an earthquake hits them. The world then freezes before seeing a strange door that the PTs decide to enter, with not many other options to them.


When they open the door, they find themselves in some medieval-like location. They’re suddenly in Metaverse gear and also find these weird soldiers called Legionaries, attacking some random civilians with their rifles. In danger, the PTs start to strike back. Unfortunately, they know not what’s coming to them, and that’s Lady Marie. A tall pink woman who commands her army. After brainwashing the PTs except Joker and Mona, Lady Marie makes her move and severely hurts the remaining PTs by dragging their arse along the ground on her massive vehicle. It’s a pretty raw scene to be honest. Badly hurt, the two are saved by a new face called Erina (also known as Elle in Japan), the leader of the Rebel Corps, and they all make their escape. They make their way to their Hideout, which happens to be Leblanc, or at least in appearance. It’s here Joker, Mona and the Rebel Corps plan to not only save the other PTs, but also to put an end to Lady Marie’s tyrannical reign.


This is the opening set up to P5T. It’s a rather quick opening and takes absolutely no time to introduce the PTs as the game clearly expects you to have played the original game, so it can get right to introducing the new threat and the new characters. On the downside, the pacing takes a pretty steep dive after, and the reason for this is because the game wants to also teach the mechanics of the game. Even when you save all the party members, the game is still teaching the game’s systems. The entire first Kingdom is essentially the tutorial kingdom.


Thankfully, the opening and mostly throughout the game, the game has a rather straight forward tone as it doesn’t intend to throw gags and jokes left and right. Regrettably, the PTs don’t get much development unlike how they are in ‘Persona 5 Strikers’, but they do a decent job of doing their supportive role towards the new characters. Some players might think the PTs are just pulling references out of their arse just to reference, but I don’t agree. Sure it can be a bit on the nose, but there’s never an instance where I thought their moral support was a reach, unlike ‘Sonic Frontiers’. In terms of flanderization, I think the only time this becomes a major issue is during the opening and closing cutscenes from Quests. The rest is played pretty straight, and I enjoy that.


The only other thing that might make players not take this game seriously, is the art style: it looks rather cute. To some, this alone will make the numerous serious and heartwarming scenes hard to take seriously. This is not an issue to me because I’ve read lots of serious and maybe violent manga with cute styles. This is in my opinion, another instance of East vs West since the players saying this typically do not consume Japanese media on the whole unlike some of us idiots.


So mostly positive looks on the whole, but I’ll discuss it more later when I go through the story in more detail.


But staying on the topic of aesthetics…

⁍ AESTHETICS & AUDIO ~ Kingdom for the Eyes and Ears

One of the main things people brought up about P5T, even when the game was first announced, was its art style. Not because it was specifically chibi, but it was the way they went around by it. ‘Persona Q’ and ‘Q2’ were pretty simple in their way of doing chibi, which was basically a simple shrinking of the body and blowing up head sizes as well as emphasising a few notable design features. P5T does the same thing, but it’s not the same artist as the Q series - actually it’s the person who’s been doing the main Persona art since P5, I think: Hanako Oribe. But this particular style has a large emphasis on the arms and legs. To numerous people, it looks very weird, though opinions can vary.


For my personal tastes, I think it’s a character by character basis where it can look a bit off on some characters, but okay on others. This style did greatly grow on me and is not much of an issue in gameplay. And even then, this is only in 3D, as I think the art in 2D is very much fantastic. Despite this, I still have my issues. Not many, but I think the style can look weird on the older characters like Toshiro. It’s like the shoulders aren’t wide enough for someone like him. The other issue I have is only in 3D, but some facial expressions look sorta bizarre. It’s not always noticeable, but the worst case was one of the last cutscenes where Joker has his mouth wide open as he strikes. Too wide.


While on the topic of art styles though, I have to wonder if chibi was the direction since the beginning. When you beat the game, you gain access to view concept art and for literally all the new characters, there are realistically proportioned versions of them. This only makes me wonder if the game was originally going to be a mainline entry to the Persona series like ‘Persona 4 Arena’ or P5S. Was this game even meant to be a Persona game to start with? To make this even weirder, there is one CG late into the game you can find. Upon first inspection, it comes across as odd. Even for me, it took me out a bit because the scene was actually very sad and touching, but after looking into it more, I realised: the art style changed. It’s very strange and I have no idea what happened on the art side, but I’m interested to know about what as going on behind the scenes. I mean, it’s possible they went chibi because the bigger heads make things easier to see them in gameplay, but for some reason, I doubt it.


Graphically, the game’s good. Mostly on the simple side to go with the simple graphics, but they look good. On the Switch, the only textures I noticed that got really blocky was the triangle that appears for the Triple Threats, but even then, that’s only when the thing was reeeeally stretched out. The HUD, likewise, is pretty good. I wouldn’t say it’s as flashy as P5R or even P5S. I notice a few things that are in other original game that wasn’t in P5R or S. Like when a boss fight starts, that bullet page rip is no where to be seen or how the zoom-in cut-ins during cutscenes are not in this game EXCEPT for two instances very near the beginning of the game. And to be honest, those didn’t look good. Everything is readable and that’s what matters.


The audio and voice acting is good stuff. I played in Japanese, as I have been doing a lot more recently out of preference. I don’t think I have much to complain about besides that the Legionaries’ moving voice clips; they can be a bit annoying since they repeat the same voice samples a lot. I hear the mixing is a bit wonky at times. Not sure how it is in English, but in Japanese, I didn’t notice many inconsistencies, although on at least two occasions, the volume of a sound clip was bumped up a LOT. Glad I wasn’t wearing headphones for those. One thing I noticed about P5T, is that the sound effects used in P5R and P5S have been replaced. The sharp menu sounds of P5R are gone, the Skill sounds used in games like P5R and ‘Devil Survivor’ have been redone - again, it’s as if this game was meant to be something different, like this game was meant to start a new generation or new Atlus series entirely. Not a complaint, just something I noticed, although I will say that I prefer the sounds from the original P5R and the like. They had a lot more punch in my opinion.


Musically, it’s still fantastic. Compositions both instrumental and vocal are great. Lyn reprises her role as the singer to the P5 series of games. Lotus Juice himself, surprisingly makes an appearance in one of the DLC songs as he’s been typically absent in the P5 series (though I’m aware he occasionally writes the lyrics). Surprisingly enough, there aren’t many remixes of existing P5 songs. Even P5S had way more remixes, and sometimes even used P5’s score for various important scenes, but even those don’t appear in P5T. This again makes me wonder if the game was made to be a Persona game to start with. I’m being very vague with the music names. Though the game lacks familiar compositions, it does have numerous themes that greatly resemble existing ones. This mainly applies to cutscene songs, but you’ll just hear tunes that utilise similar instruments to those in P5 and in the same general context, but the composition is completely different. I think what impresses me the most about this game is that each Kingdom has their own set of battle and map music. I didn’t think the game would take notes from ‘Kingdom Hearts’, but here we are.


Great stuff in any case. I’m a fan of the opening song ‘Revolution in Your Heart’, ‘Tension’, ‘The Path of God’, ‘The Night we Stood’, and many more.

⁍ GAMEPLAY ~ Ravaging the Kingdoms

‘Persona 5 Tactica’ is a Tactical Role Playing Game, though it’s not in the same way as, say, ‘Fire Emblem’. Rather, it’s closer to games like ‘Mario & Rabbids’ or ‘xCom’ in that they mostly use ranged combat and emphasise cover. I have played none of the above, so P5T is my first time experiencing a game in this style. In each map, you choose three characters to play with, then go in. Each character has their own stats and skills that’ll make maps easier or harder, but they can allow for a lot of creativity.


P5T also uses numerous staples of the Persona and SMT series in ways familiar and also very different. Apart from the obvious shift in genre, things like One Mores and All-Out Attacks (referred to as Triple Threats (aka Tribangle in Japan)) are still in the game. Similar to P5S, the Skill damage is now based on radius with the Ma Skills needing more SP to use compared to the alternative. Unlike P5S or literally any other MegaTen game, enemies and allies do not have weaknesses or resistances of any kind. Skills are basically type-less, but they each have their own affliction which is guaranteed to hit. For example, Agi skills will inflict burn, while Psi will drag enemies towards the caster’s general position.


So if affinities don’t exist in P5T, then how do you down enemies? Just the luck of the critical? Well, no. Accuracy doesn’t exist in this game. I believe critical hits exist, but not accuracy - every attack you make is guaranteed to hit. What downs enemies though, is depending on the status of an ally or enemy. An ally or enemy can have roughly two states: Cover or not in Cover. There’s many blocks in the maps that provide defence against incoming ranged attacks that will either reduce damage or nullify it entirely depending on the cover you’re behind. There are some enemies that don’t abide by these rules such as the muscular Legionaries that counter attack when hit, then you can down them as they’re exposed. Some enemies simply can’t be downed at all like those annoying Shinobi that split up into multiple copies. If enemies are in cover and you lack options to down them, then you can either go beside them and melee them to knock them back and expose them to a second attack that will down them, OR use a Skill that will inflict a status ailment, then they can be downed with another attack. Downing an enemy will give the ally a One More, and this give the user the opportunity to perform the Triple Threat. The only further requirement for an AOA to activate, is by having a downed enemy in the triangle, and any other enemy in the triangle will receive damage too.


The only other mechanics worth mentioning is the Follow-Up, which is when you melee someone off a higher plane and an ally below will strike them. This gives a One More to the one performing the melee attack. Then Baton Pass, which works nothing like P5R or S. Baton Pass is essentially your lives system. If any ally gets defeated, they’ll tag out with another member in reserve. You can only do this so many times before you’re given a Game Over. Difficulty also determines how many Baton Passes you get. As I played on Hard, I got a maximum of 2 per map. Lastly is the Voltage meter. This fills as you dish out and receive damage. Once it’s full, you can have one character unleash a powerful Skill. Not all of them are attacks and in the right hands, they can be very useful. Joker’s is a physical attack that downs anyone in range. Yusuke’s makes decoys that the enemies will prioritise. Etc.


I think the above mechanics are pretty good and make for a fun time, but some of the above systems do bring about some problems. Call this a staple of the P5 series, but the game is just… easy. Now, I’d still say don’t get too complacent because in the wrong situation, you’ll find your ally go from full HP to death. I played on Hard mode for one reason: to allow for friendly fire. Normally, the game doesn’t have this, but by going for Hard or Merciless, you can. It’s not like I ever got allies killed for friendly fire, but there were times I decided to take the risk as even if I don’t kill them, an enemy might on their next turn. One Mores are great and all, but they also completely reset your movement. So in the right conditions, you can move from one side of the map to the other pretty swiftly. Triple Threats damage don’t scale depending on distance between allies. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s totally possible to have allies stationed on opposite sides of the map to more easily wipe out enemies between them just because you downed a single enemy between you lot. Maybe this is a hot take or would make AOAs too weak. I’m sorta unsure I’m a fan of the fact that accuracy doesn’t exist in the game. I’m not even sure they’d mess with the difficulty that much. The only kind of randomness you’ll really get is with afflictions from the guns you equip, which you have to forge, and also where enemies land from explosions or when knocking them away. Though at the beginning, SP is insanely scarce, it’s not hard to maintain it in high degrees in the latter half of the game when you get skills or have Oracle (aka Navi) give you healing or SP buffs. Enemy AI can be very dumb. Like, sometimes, enemies just shoot me and then leave themselves vulnerable to a knockdown after, but there’s like a position where they could easily remain in cover after.


The worst thing about the game in my opinion is the lack of enemy variety. Maybe that’s not the correct way to put it, but a lot of enemies end up being stronger variants of older enemies, with the same attacks. It’s a shame that a game that emphasises ailments is generally only applied to the playable cast. Like I think I only got affected by ailments from enemies around three times in my first run. Maybe what they could do instead is have a mini-boss in each map that has an element that they can use against us. Make those enemies SMT Demons, why don’t you? In fact, no Demons are even present in a 3D format.


Those are quite a number of criticisms, but I still stand by the game being a ton of fun. It can feel good to get One Mores, then get into a great position to wipe out tons of enemies at once with the AOA. AOAs in and of themselves have a bit of risk to consider as sometimes getting the most out of it will also require you to leave yourself exposed to surrounding enemies that aren’t in the triangle. You can bring in any characters and you’ll probably find some good synergy between them. Movement in the game feels great, though just be careful when you need to avoid zones that trigger negative effects. Good thing analog control exists. Hits are super impactful with screen shakes or implementation of hit stop on melee attacks. Since maps are generally really small, you could potentially do numerous maps within an hour and make some good progress. Great for a pick-up-and-play mentality.


The best part about P5T is honestly when it becomes remotely challenging. This can either be by actually being hard or when you’re required to think, and these mostly come in the form of Quests and Awards. Awards are things you can get in the main missions of the game. They’re essentially the star ranking system and most of them are not hard at all. Most of them are also simply of the ‘Complete in x turns’ and ‘Don’t let anyone fall’. But occasionally, I’m thinking to myself “How in the world am I supposed to delete all these enemies all on the opposite side of the map in a timely manner?” Quests are side missions and some of these can really challenge you or at the very least, make you think. I like the ‘Get to the goal in 1 turn’ missions. They tend to act more like puzzles than anything else.


Outside of combat, you mainly hangout in the Hideout. You can do the stuff you normally do in RPGs like adjusting skills, buying or forging guns, fusing Personas in the Velvet Room and then equipping said things. Personas in particular, act like how they do in the Q series as they and their abilities can be additional stats to a character. I tend to focus on Personas that have high melee or gun damage or SP. HP in a way is kinda useless as Skills requiring HP don’t exist. I also prefer to just add offensive Skills instead of Support because the game doesn’t particularly emphasise stat buffs/debuffs unlike regular MegaTen. I mean, in a game where you take turns on a battlefield that can circle around you if you’re too careless, I’d say I’d prefer to do damage, get One Mores and perform AOAs, right? Only Erina can NOT use Personas as she’s not a Persona user. To compensate, she typically has higher HP, SP and better stats in general.


Furthermore in the Hideout, you can talk with the characters. These occasionally pop up after major story missions are complete and they’re good for either some random banter or a bit of a further dive into characters that the main story doesn’t talk about. These are nice enough, but what you want from these are the Growth Points (GP), which are used on the Skill Tree. The Skill Tree is what it sounds like. Use the GP to earn new or upgrade existing Skills. The really nice thing about this system is that if you ever need to, you can remove Skills and gain back the GP for free, then reallocate them elsewhere. I didn’t need to do this often, but you might want to consider this for specific missions. For example, the ability to perform Follow-Ups is useless on maps with a single elevation, so you may as well get something new on them instead.


The last thing to bring up is how the money in this game is kinda useless. Truth be told, I never used money until like, endgame. You can use money to buy new weapons or take Personas out the compendium, and that’s honestly about it. Otherwise, you’re letting that money pile up. A rather rare case in the Persona series where you just have nothing to spend money on. I didn’t necessarily feel the need to fill out the compendium as much as possible as you get no direct reward for it like a discount, which is already not particularly needed. The Persona drops I get from completing maps was enough to make more Personas and then moderately fill out the Compendium.

⁍ STORY ~ Tales from the Kingdoms

But what I was really interested in was the story. It took a while for the trailers to hype it up, and when they did… well, it looked like they spoiled a bit too much, if I’m going to be honest. I suppose people had super low expectations for it given the chibi aesthetic regularly associated with a game with just the funnies, or that the story wouldn’t even be remembered in the long run. I also assume Atlus was thinking, “No one cares, let’s put in some really interesting stuff in this trailer”. …So how is it? Well, I very much enjoyed it! As an aside, this is just going to talk about the main game’s plot. I’ll give more thoughts on the DLC story and the like later.


To recap, the Phantom Thieves meet in Leblanc and on the news, a man named Toshiro Kasukabe has gone missing. Around about this same time, the PTs get whisked away into another world - a French Revolution-esque Kingdom owned by Lady Marie. The PTs except Joker and Mona are brainwashed. The remaining members nearly get killed but are saved by Erina, who then takes them to her Hideout which resembles Leblanc and from there, they plan to rescue the other PTs and put an end to Lady Marie’s rule.


Very soon after establishing this, you rescue someone. His name is Toshiro Kasukabe - the person on the news - and he’s for some reason, locked in one of Lady Marie’s jail cells. Furthermore, he doesn’t really remember much about himself or his past, though he does seem to recognise the PTs because of the Shido incident. Around the same time, we learn of Erina’s ability to create these Flags of Freedom to dispel the brainwashing as well as the Legionaries in the local area. This is repeated a few more times for the other fellow PTs. To be honest, this part of the story kinda stops because the game is still teaching us the mechanics of the game. Lady Marie’s Kingdom is probably the slowest Kingdom in the game as a result.


The game has a very clear theme of revolution, which is fitting to the PTs who wish to rebel against society and those who’ve wronged them before. Each Kingdom essentially displays two things: The story of Toshiro and Erina, as well as how they’re related at all AND the morality and ethics of even starting a revolution. And you know what, think it does both fairly well as they’re woven neatly into the plot as well as how it related to the important cast. Well, mostly. But despite this, a lot of the story beats can be very predictable, which I’ll get into more as we go on.


During our time in Lady Marie’s Kingdom, Toshiro - the man who prefers to run away from all danger - works up the courage to tend to Erina after she’s suddenly shot by a bullet, nearly killing her. In her stead, Toshiro is the one to plunge the flag and rescue the remaining PTs from their brainwashing. This is a cool sequence and all, but the reason why he can do it too is not entirely clear yet. At this point, I thought Erina was based on a person Toshiro knew, like a cognition. Either the real life Erina is his sibling or maybe a close confidant, something to explain why they have the same power. Regardless, my belief was that she was dead.


In any case, Erina returns to us, surprisingly quickly, but it’s better than a full bait and switch. Then they all prepare for a final assault after rescuing some of the other prisoners and Erina rallying them. It’s a surprisingly painless revolution with the PTs and Erina wiping out the Legionaries and even Toshiro commands some citizens to fire the other artillery like cannons. And with that, the final flag is set onto the Kingdom. Already, Toshiro’s shown a lot of growth. I guess seeing someone as seemingly important as Erina nearly die, awoke something in him. But then the trauma comes back to him as when they enter Lady Marie’s castle, we find all these photos and wedding preparations. Lady Marie apparently plans to marry Toshiro. But why? She’s abusive and a real bitch, amongst other things.


The Lady Marie boss is pretty simple. Shoot her, knock bombs back in her face with melee and that gives you the chance to AOA her, occasionally you’ll have to get her into position to finish the battle, and that’s that. After crushing her under a bell, she disappears, but not before telling Toshiro that she knows his dark secret and his crime. Logically, we don’t know what this is yet, but this seems to imply that whoever Lady Marie represents in the real world, she knows a secret and is threatening to let out. Blackmail, essentially.


After this, the Kingdom celebrates the dethroning of Marie and after all is said and done, they find a door similar to the one the PTs used to get here in the first place. Entering it leads them to the next Kingdom: The ancient Japanese-esque era Kingdom of Yoshiki.


Right from the get go, we notice that there’s cameras all over the village and since the PTs don’t fit in, they are immediately attacked. They’re then saved by a woman called Yuki who takes them to the Hideout, which guess what, is like Leblanc. Hmm, I wonder why. Yuki explains about the Kingdom how everyone is under the rule of this person called Yoshiki. Everyone seems to be forced to ‘love’ him and he keeps everyone in check by spying on everyone. More disturbingly, families have been separated and put into Labours of Love. On the surface, this sounds pleasant and all, but in actuality, they’re being treated like slaves. Probably even killed off once they aren’t of use anymore.


With that said, the PTs assist Yuki in rescuing the citizens, all by dressing up in similar garb to the Legionaries of this Kingdom. One side goes to distract the soldiers while the other group tries shutting down the cameras. Joker can choose which group to go with and I think this is the first of a few sequences in the game where you can just view a long cutscene just to show characters being themselves a bit. Although these are also the most ‘Persona Q’ the games get within the main story. As in, the flanderization picks up a bit more here. But once they’re done, they quickly leave, but when outside, everyone meets Yoshiki. He’s some giant mecha Buddha thing. Not only does he recognise Toshiro and even says they’re father and son, but he also recognises Yuki. With family being brought up here, my guess regarding Yuki was that she’s Toshiro’s mother and Yoshiki’s wife.


Getting closer to breaking through Yoshiki’s defences, the PTs start their final assault. And in Yoshiki’s castle, we find out that Toshiro’s mother was deeply ill and one day while she goes to the theme park with a young Toshiro, in secret against his dad’s wishes mind you, she dies from her illness suddenly. I presume she used the last of her strength to be with her son one more day as she knew she wasn’t going to live much longer. However, Yoshiki has been trying to make sure Toshiro never saw her and just to focus on his studies and the like. His mum dying on that day with him, Yoshiki uses this to guilt trip Toshiro into thinking he’s responsible for her death. He nearly has another mental breakdown, but thanks to Futaba, he calms down.


Near the end, the PTs rescue more citizens and are able to rally them to try and dethrone Yoshiki. However, this time, the one rallying them wasn’t Erina, but it was Toshiro. In this instance, it’s because Erina was being too forceful in her tone. The Yoshiki boss is a bit annoying because you have to navigate around elevators, which to be fair, the game already teaches you by that point. But it’s not those. It’s the cameras’ line of sight you want to avoid before you summon more Legionaries and also take some damage. But the challenge for this battle is reaching Yoshiki at all. At the end of the battle, revolutionary citizens barge in the room and aid the PTs and soon after, Yoshiki is defeated. But not before using the last of his strength to attempt to kill Toshiro… only to strike Yuki instead. It’s at this point the obvious comes to light, Yuki is Toshiro’s mum. In her dying words, she gives more words of support before perishing.


During the whole fight, Yoshiki taunts the PTs about the revolution and how much chaos is being caused as citizens are now dying because they chose to try and dethrone him. You even see citizens being offed or children screaming for their parents. By the end, it’s said that there were casualties, but also understood that it was a necessary sacrifice. I find this neat and all, but the obvious black spot here is that none of this would’ve happened if Yoshiki wasn’t always eyeing everyone and hoping they didn’t talk crap about him or something. But I can see how this can be relayed into a more realistic scenario.


Just like last time. after plunging the Flag of Freedom into the Kingdom and a celebration, the PTs enter another door to its next Kingdom. Although with a bit of a difference. That being Erina’s mental state. I neglected to talk about her in this Kingdom because she wasn’t necessarily important, but after meeting Yuki and seeing her significance, she started getting existential about WHO she is. And we’re about to find out a lot more in the next Kingdom: A school-like Kingdom of ???.


At first glance, it looks like the PTs minus Erina, have returned to their world, but upon further inspection, the school is unfamiliar to all. Not only that, but speakers are plastered everywhere. These speakers seem to throw orders about from the principle of said school, but also serve a gameplay purpose of disallowing a certain type of action within a certain zone. It’s like ‘Tower of Heaven’, if any of you have played that.


To be honest, this Kingdom’s story is rather straight forward. The current rebels are planning to raid the principal, Ichiro Nakabashi, but they need keys. Four of the rooms that they can access house keys, and once defeating those guarding it, we can retrieve them. The keys are in the form of items important to Toshiro and another girl we come to know called Eri Natsuhara. Upon getting each key, a new memory is unlocked. Eri was merely a senior to Toshiro, high energy and rebellious. Not only that, she became aware that the school was hiding a secret and it all revolved around Nakabashi as he was blackmailing students among other heinous things. So, Eri started to rally up the students to stage a revolution against him, backing him to a corner and getting him arrested. Good end, right? Well, that’s what the first four keys tell us. Upon beating the boss version of Nakabashi, another memory is revealed. Despite getting him arrested, numerous students who had previously rebelled wanted more and went as far as following him to his home. At some point, he snapped. On a train station where Toshiro and Eri were discussing whether what they did was right in the end, a rage-induced Nakabashi dashes for Eri and attempts to kill her by shoving her into the train tracks while a train was still coming in. For now… that was it. Was I right? Did she die?


Despite defeating the supposed Kingdom ruler, the Kingdom wasn’t over yet. The rebels previously on our side started turning on us as this is how Toshiro assumed they acted after. After all, the ones that went too far all got in trouble, clearly showing the horrendous side of when a revolution goes too far. Not only that, but Erina suddenly vanished too. Back in this world’s Hideout - another Lebanc - Toshiro is reasonably rattled even further by this. He contemplates giving up, but it’s not over yet. Before they can fully rescue Erina, the PTs encounter the true ruler of this Kingdom: Toshiro’s Shadow. Revealing the true version of the Kingdom, Shadow Toshiro taunts his other self and threatens to kill Erina. He claims she’s been nothing but a burden. She’s been bossing him around, getting him to do things that he wasn’t even keen on and in the long run, it’s got him in this situation where he’s been no-clipped out of reality, so to speak, into this realm just to be mentally and physically tortured. But this is when Erina regains consciousness and tells him the rest. In hospital, Eri mentions how even though she’s done with this revolution business, she informs Toshiro that they did good as one of the students did indeed get a good ending out of this, and as Eri’s completely crippled, Toshiro will need to carry on what she started. As Erina is Eri, she tells Toshiro to not forget this and with that, he gains the courage to fight back against his Shadow self. By the way, I mentioned earlier how there was a piece of art that doesn’t use the chibi style in the main game? It’s here. Jarring. And here, I guess I can go and mention that it’s now more than obvious that this whole world is based around Toshiro’s cognition; the reason why Leblanc is the Hideout appearances is because it’s the place where he could just be himself. Anyway…


Before I carry on, can I just say WHAT? This was the biggest plot twist of all in my mind. I know it’s not impossible, but I was so convinced she died after being RUN OVER BY A TRAIN! But I can at least say this, I was 100% right about the eye. See, Erina’s character design always hides her right eye. There are two main reasons a designer might do this: it’s just a hair style (like Mitsuru Kirijo) in which case enough wind will reveal the other eye. OR it’s to represent a level of mystic (like Rosalina from ‘Super Mario’). Erina does neither, which means there’s a secret behind it. Which I was right about.


Now, if you watched the P5T trailers, you already knew this was happening… but Toshiro is about to have an Awakening. But the one to become his Persona is not Shadow Toshiro. In fact, he seems to act more like a ‘Persona 2’ Shadow as his comments are far more vile than a P4 or P5 Shadow and he also doesn’t become Toshiro’s Persona, like I said. The one to become Toshiro’s Persona is the one who managed to let him survive for this long in these Kingdoms to begin with: Erina. After all, she manifested because she’s the representation of his soul and want for revolution that he had yet to fully accept. And so, Erina becomes Ernesto. A, uh… marxist in real life. Am I allowed to say that here? I guess Atlus wanted a revolutionary figure that was important to history, so be it. A military hat, leg guns with one being longer than the other, representing the one that was damaged in real life. Cool.

The next boss fight is a two phase boss. First is against Shadow Toshiro who has a shield only breakable by using his Persona’s gun skill, Baywell 45 MkII. After breaking the shield, you can deal damage, including AOA damage. This one’s easy and just to show you how Toshiro works as he doesn’t act like a regular Persona user. He doesn’t even get an outfit change, though his right glove is ripped off, showing his scar from when he tried to save Eri. Toshiro is from now on, a 4th guest member on the team. He doesn’t have gun and melee skills like the rest, but he has skills with the gun skill above being a 0 SP attack. He can still down enemies and initiate AOAs, however, he doesn’t directly attack. So the triangle is dictated by the other three. It’s a unique case where you can basically get an AOA ready from anywhere. After beating the first phase of Shadow Toshiro, he dips into the ground and then the second phase starts: a giant corpse that resembles Eri. This is a boss where you can’t AOA her, so you basically have to just barrage her with attacks until she’s down, with a few exceptions. During the fight, she summons bombs that do… something. I literally have no idea what they do because enemies are always stationed around so that you can AOA the bombs and delete them. This boss fight is a spectacle to be sure, but is stupidly easy.


I’m going to be a bit honest, this whole sequence with Shadow Toshiro, the Awakening, all that, it’s great, but I also think it should’ve been rearranged. I think what should’ve happened was Shadow Toshiro taunts Toshiro with Erina on the verge of being thrown off the building. Toshiro saves Erina from death, shoving his Shadow out of the way. Then I think Shadow Toshiro should use a cognitive version of Eri to tell him that she’s being a burden and the like. She looks completely like her real version, so Toshiro is stuck between an imitation and his soul that’s trying to guide him down the right path. Ultimately, Toshiro chooses Erina, leading to the Awakening. Eri, still trying to convince him in the ‘nicest’ way possible, begins to fight back using the same kinds of skills Shadow Toshiro has. But once she fails, she falls off the building, and then she grows into the giant corpse in the fight as some kind of desperate plea to get Toshiro to change, but it’s too late and Shadow Toshiro is no more. I basically think the Awakening is slightly a bit too early, but that’s just me. It’s fine as is, I’m just massively nit picking.


With Shadow Toshiro gone and no other real choice in the matter, the ruler of this whole realm comes. It’s Salmael - the God of Stagnation. Bitch has the audacity to say he’s trying to kill Toshiro out of love because he’s just that tormented. But now Toshiro has overcome his fears, Salmael can’t just create another Kingdom based on his traumas, so Salmael’s gonna do it themselves. But there’s a chance to reconsider, so it screws off. Well, that isn’t gonna fly, so what’s the next course of action? Get Lavenza and her train to ride us to Salmael’s domain and finish him there!


Salmael’s Kingdom is basically a boss rush, so that’s fun… But I suppose they had to get the most out of Toshiro as a playable character. At least it gets to show how much Toshiro’s grown, no longer scared of Marie or Yoshiki and their attempts to hold him down, or even be deceived by his Shadow self. With Erina being his Persona though, what’s gonna happen to her? I mean, Erina is her own playable character with her own Skill Tree. Toshiro has none of that. You can’t just delete her from the game. Well, since she’s just the representation of Toshiro’s memories of Eri when she was a revolutionary leader, she’s able to have her own body separate from a Persona. So she’s still playable. Whenever Erina is on the battlefield and Toshiro needs to summon her, she’ll vanish from the field just to be his Persona, then she returns to where she just was.


In due time, you catch up with Salmael and one more two-phase fights starts. They’re basically the same fight, but one just has more stuff going on as the battlefield is always the same. Once again, you’re basically just throwing out attacks onto the giant boss and AOAs are out of the question. All the while, you have to manage not getting hit by other enemies being spawned on the rotating platforms. Not rotating as in the platforms turn, but rather, you’re on a bunch of small platforms and they shift position whenever Salmael wants to. It’s telegraphed, so you have time to move, but just be careful of which way it’ll be turned as only five platforms are around at a time. Not that I know what happens if someone falls into the pit because I never let my squad do this. It’s a long fight. A bit tense, but not difficult.


After all is said and done, a sequence occurs where the PTs and Erina dash around cogs Salmael is throwing about. It’s a bit too long of a cutscene, but it’s cool. Cooler when Erina gets ‘crushed’ between a bunch of cogs, but then breaks into her Persona form, and dashes with her gun legs, de-transforms and now in a good position, plunges one more Flag of Freedom into Salmael’s face with the aid of Joker. With Salmael no more, the place starts crumbling, and everyone gets out of there, thanks to Lavenza.


Lavenza rides everyone back to the first Kingdom previously owned by Marie. On the way, they all see the happy citizens in the various Kingdoms, even the ones that had turned on us in the third one. Upon landing, everyone disembarks the train. With Toshiro safe from danger, Erina’s job is done as are the roles of these Kingdoms. With some heartfelt goodbyes by Toshiro and the PTs, Erina vanishes in a flash of light as well as the whole world around them. It was sad, to be sure, but I was also waiting for the dreaded ‘you’ll forget’ dialogue. So imagine my surprise when this doesn’t happen! The PTs return to Leblanc safely with their memories in tact. They wonder where Toshiro went, even. But mind you, he entered in a different way. However, they’re at least assured he’s safe thanks to the news. Meanwhile, Toshiro’s with the real Yoshiki and Marie, wonder where he went, but they don’t care. They just give him this dumb story as to why he disappeared in the first place to read to the media. He’s not having any of this. Toshiro rips up the script and gets to work exposing the two.


A few weeks pass and he’s succeeded. But why has he not visited Leblanc, let alone contact the PTs - not until this day, that is? Well, it’s because he didn’t want them roped into the whole thing, so he refrained from letting them know of anything directly for the time being. This is already a great ending in my eyes, and it’s near the time Joker’s about to head back to his other home. But one question lingers in my mind: What about Eri? Is she alive? The story has been vague as to whether she died while in hospital, but all Toshiro says is that they hadn’t really been in contact ever since that day. Well, wait until the credits ends and you get the answer.


The cutscene opens with messages talking about what Toshiro is doing. Apparently, it’s good stuff though obviously as all politicians get, it’s with some doubt. But where’s this being viewed? A computer or something? Who was even looking at it? As the camera zoomed out, only one person I could think of came to mind. Revealed to be Eri, she’s alive and well, albeit now needing a walking stick to move. For the first time in years, the two have interacted. Finally, she has caught up. But there’s more catching up those two can do, hehe~


That’s it. I got the endings I wanted and I was satisfied. I’ve already given my thoughts of the plot, but I think it was pretty damn good. A quick start, but it drags to teach the player the game mechanics, but then is steady for the rest of it minus the boss rush at the end. The rest are nit picks. Toshiro and Erina are very good characters throughout, though this sorta leaves the PTs left to dry, and unlike P5S, they don’t get much development at all. They are more so there to keep Toshiro from going down the wrong path as the vast majority of the cast relates to him in some way. They serve their purpose, even if it’s just moral support overall. To compare to the other P5 stories, I’d probably say I think P5T is better than P5S, but still below P5R’s 3rd Semester. Although between Zenkichi and Toshrio, my choice goes to Zenkichi. Big dad energy never disappoints.


Now why was I ready to hear that ‘you’ll forget’ dialogue? Can you blame me? It’s been in every Q game, it was in the 3 and 5 Dancing games, though that game matters even less anyway. Well, there’s one more thing I have yet to discuss in this game.

⁍ DLC ~ Kingdom of… Rats

I’m going to tackle this section in one go. Most of what I’ll talk about is related to the story anyway. There isn’t too much to discuss about the gameplay because it’s largely the same as the base game. The main difference is with the paint mechanic. I moved away from ‘Splatoon 3’ for a bit… only to play more Turf War. To be honest, I don’t necessarily mind this gimmick. By hitting paint barrels or any target, you make a splash in your ink colour (blue). Enemies in your ink cannot attack at all and are always in a vulnerable position, even if behind cover, but they can still move. Enemies can however, do the same to you with their ink colour (red). If you’re not careful, it’s fairly easy to get One Mored by them because one enemy will shoot you and spread their ink below, then another enemy will deal at least two sets of hits because of a knock down. The enemy types are the same as the base game, though I don’t think any of the umbrella girls appear. Apart from the new major characters acting as bosses, there are no unique bosses; all you’ll get is beefed up bulky ones that counter attack. It’s honestly quite disappointing. Persona fusion is not a thing in this mode, but as a result, you not only level up very quickly, but also quickly gain new much stronger Personas. This also includes getting a lot more Growth Points to gain whatever skills you want in the Skill Tree, which otherwise works the same way as the main game.


This entire campaign should take you around 3 hours and it’s not that hard. But speaking of difficulty, what about the Challenge Missions that you unlock after beating the main campaign? No, these aren’t hard either. They’re touted as the most difficult challenges in the game, but I don’t know man, of the five challenges, around three of them were piss easy. The others just required a lot more brain power, but nothing near impossible.


Now, the story, more spoilers coming, so you’ve been warned!


On the news, the media talks about this massive graffiti on one of the buildings of Tokyo. While Joker is just maintaining Leblanc, he gets a message from Kasumi Yoshizawa to meet him down this alleyway. He promptly goes and also meets her and Goro Akechi there, who was interested in what was going on with all this graffiti being spread along the walls. With Kasumi and Akechi both here, it indicates this story takes place maybe during Sae’s arc of P5R. While looking at the graffiti, Joker hears someone seemingly call out to him. Not only that, but they all notice this one wall of graffiti that looks like a rat holding Arsene, as in, Joker’s Arsene. Everyone is a bit freaked out, but before they can ponder any further, the graffiti suddenly sucks all three in, plunging them into you guessed it, another world. All three are separated, but they don’t take long to reunite. Once they do, they notice a small guy in a rat hoodie which explodes right in Kasumi’s hands. But this wasn’t the only one as a massacre on these rat guys was occurring not far from them. Meet Guernica, a famous street artist currently armed with a giant paint ball gun. Oh, and also her Parrot, Jerri. These two have been the main cause of all this commotion. Unable to stop them in the moment, the three retreat, or try to. But that’s when a hole suddenly appears beneath them, and they fall down.


Down below, the three encounter a young girl called Luca. She has her hoodie off, so you know she’s important. It’s explained here that she was the one who called for their help to get Guernica to stop her rampage and she’s not usually like this. To stop this, they need to get these three slabs that have been spread out around this city. So, they do just that. Along the way, the group get to know more about Luca and her relationship to Guernica. The two were orphaned siblings, left on the street with little-to-no food for them to keep healthy. The only thing that kept their minds off food was drawing on the walls around them, but this only lasted for so long as one of the sisters would then perish, likely due to starvation. That we would soon come to know, is Luca. As the group gets the slabs, they get run ins with the enemy faction, including Guernica and Jerri. Guernica’s sassy way of talking suddenly stops when she sees one of the slabs and as this goes on, her head starts to split, figuratively. Whenever this occurs, Jerri will just use some of her power to make her hate and rampage grow stronger, but the slabs’ counter was too effective.


It’s revealed the slabs represent Guernica’s most important memory and were separated by Jerri. With all three pieces together, Luca uses it to kinda power herself up and help finally free Guernica from the mental prison. But not before Jerri completely hijacks her mind and becomes a beast. Guernica’s actions become far more violent with a simple intent to kill, but once Joker, Akechi and Kasumi take her down, Luca uses this opportunity to awaken Guernica back to her true self. The black and white of her design vanishes in favour of the skin tan and blue hair similar to Luca’s. Once again, it felt like Guernica lost her sister again, but vowed to never let scum like Jerri take control of her sorrows and vulnerabilities again. With that, the final boss commences as Jerri turns into this… mecha bird… thing. The boss is in a way, similar to Yoshiki’s fight where you have to navigate your way to the threat and then pummel her with bullets, where after a while, the field will change. The main difference is now you still have to lay on the damage on Jerri and you don’t have any elevators in your way. What you do have to go past is all this black ink which you cannot traverse at all, though enemies can. To get past it, you either fire your weapons like before, or let Guernica make a path for you, which happens a bit after the beginning of each player phase. Insanely easy and kinda boring. But hey, at least Guernica gets a cool moment where she splashes paint all over Jerri and then she’s finished off.


Jerri vanishes without revealing any of her knowledge, but we know that she’s got ties with the true final boss of P5T. Meanwhile, Guernica, real name: Tao, expresses her thanks towards the Phantom Thieves. There’s a short back and forth including how she actually idolises the PTs and that’s pretty cute. After this, the world starts to glow brighter as without Jerri maintaining the world, it’s gonna disappear. Then Guernica goes and says that they’ll all forget the events of this, but hope to meet out there in the real world. Do you guys see why I didn’t trust the main game’s story would even be remembered? I played this first and I immediately went “oh no…”. But knowing the main game doesn’t have the ‘you’ll forget’ crap, it makes me wonder why they did it here. The only reason I can surmise is because Joker would then have to be like ‘huh, this is familiar’, but this reason is a reeeal streeeetch! Maybe it’s because Salmael is still around? Anyway, back in the alleyway, the three wonder why they even went there, but felt like they did something important. But oh well, they all head home with Morgana greeting Joker back to Leblanc.


Anyway, this story is okay. I do wish we got to know Guernica a bit more in the present because she’s mostly an antagonist for the story and the only time she aids the player in gameplay is in the final boss. Call this wishful thinking, but I wish after freeing Guernica from mind control, there should’ve been some more stages where you can even play as Guernica, even if she was a guest party member like Toshiro was. I mean, look at that paintball gun! That looks so cool! And look at Guernica herself! Bad bitch written all over her. I’d love to play as her. I think by the end of the story, Guernica herself, did remember the events, but I don’t know and I honestly don’t think it matters too much because of the memory wipe on the PTs part and also whether these characters of P5T re-appear in another game is completely up in the air anyway. As for Luca, she’s fine enough. Cute and caring older sister. She only appears young because she died young, in case you’re wondering. But like the base game where all the PTs related to Toshiro in some way, both Akechi and Kasumi relate to Luca (and Tao) in some way, which does indeed mean we get a few more cutscenes with characters going ‘I know how you feel’, which I know annoys some people.


In the ending, we see Guernica do more of those giant graffiti murals. Honestly, I have no clue how she does this. I’d say maybe using a crane to painstakingly paint over the building, but no way, man. That’d be seen by everyone and she’s someone who lurks in the shadows. She totally grew giant and then painted… at night? I don’t know, you tell me. But also one of the people who saw this was Toshiro. It’s possible alongside the PTs scuffle with Shido before, made Toshiro awaken to his rebellious side a bit more just before getting no-clipped out of reality.


Once you beat the DLC and base game’s stories, then in a New Game+, you can play as Kasumi & Akechi (after passing a certain point), but they’re only there as more character options as they have no extra cutscenes, which is disappointing, but not unexpected. The DLC Story is around £15.99. The whole DLC bundle is £24.99. I’d say the base game’s price is okay enough, if not a bit on the expensive side. But the DLC? Noooo. Wait for a price drop. I mean, preferably, it was in the base game because it was out at the same time as the base game, but if you want to get it, wait for a price drop.

⁍ CONCLUSION ~ The Revolution Ends For Now

…I just want more people to play Tactica. I think it’s legitimately good. If you’re still not convinced, buy the main game on discount and maybe wait on the DLC. I think P5T has a strong gameplay loop even if the odds are stacked in your favour, it has a great story and its new characters are done well. Most importantly, it’s a story that’s not just forgotten. Now whether it’ll be recalled by future P5 stories is another thing, though I’m certain that no one wants another P5 game even if it ends up being ‘Persona 5 Arena’.


With that said, I still struggle to see why this game had to be an in-between game. Why wasn’t this a sequel to Strikers? Why did the game have to use a chibi aesthetic when the concept art seems to imply this was meant to be a game of realistic body proportions? If the game was at least the above, then I feel like the perception would at least be better because it would automatically make it seem like the game was mainline instead of a to-be-forgotten side story. I imagine it’s due to budgetary reasons, so they simplified everything including the art style.


Alas, ‘Persona 3 Reload’ is coming out next month at the time of this review. So, enjoy that when it comes out and I hope people come back to this game at some point. Please.


Anyway, that’s he end of my review. Thanks for reading~!


-GameSquid

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[WARNING: Persona 3, 4 and 5 spoilers will be abound in this journal.]

[Game abbreviations: ‘Persona 3’ (P3). ‘Persona 3 FES’ (FES). ‘Persona 3 Portable’ (P3P). ‘Persona 4’ (P4). ‘Persona 4 Golden’ (P4G). ‘Persona 5’ (P5). ‘Persona 5 Royal’ (P5R)]


INTRO ~ Moving In

I put this journal off for a few months, but now it’s complete. Enjoy~


It was 2017. A small game called ‘Persona 5’ by Atlus came out. Everyone raved and talked about it whether it was for its style, gameplay, characters or maybe just the memes. I didn’t have access to a PS4 or any of those consoles, so I didn’t have a chance at playing it. Even then, at the time, I was still in the mindset of “Persona’s too edgy for me”. But one day, my friend who had been following P5’s hype cycle, showed the game to me. I showed fairly little interest, though being able to see it in action did pique my interest just a bit more than before. Over the following months, the game steadily stayed in my mind, if only for the memes and music; my friend let me borrow the CDs so I could then put the music on my phone. After watching a Let’s Play up until the Madarame arc, I decided to keep myself unspoiled until I could play the game for myself. Which I was able to since ‘Persona 5 Royal’ was now out, and me and my friend decided to play it together.


Besides one major thing, I was unspoiled by P5R and in due time, we beat the game. I felt pretty damn accomplished. And then the game came out on Switch, and I would buy and beat it there too. In fact, all the modern Persona games had come out on Switch and modern consoles.


By this point, I had been watching retrospectives on the Persona series, with the exception being ‘Persona 4’ because that was the other game I saw Persona fans rave about and I had to see it for myself. Also, I had this weird impression ‘Persona 3’ would never be re-released. Boy, what a fool I was.


It’s safe to say, my tastes in games and media in general had changed substantially since then and I’ve beaten all the modern Persona games. And here I am, going to discuss what I liked, disliked and my own tier list of sorts regarding my favourites. I expect my opinions to be a bit unpopular in some areas, but please keep an open mind. This isn’t to invalidate anyone else’s opinions, but these are just what I had as I was playing the games and reading the stories. This especially goes for ‘Persona 5’ detractors - I see you there.


So enjoy~


Oh, also, this is only talking about the mainline series. So, no spin-offs will be discussed like ‘Persona Q’, HOWEVER, I may occasionally refer to them to make a point or just comparison.

I should also note that in this journal, the games I’ll mainly be drawing from is ‘Persona 3 Portable’, ‘Persona 4 Golden’ and ‘Persona 5 Royal’.


AESTHETICS & MUSIC ~ New Places, New Experiences

Now this might sound like cheating. Like… duh. Persona 5 has the best. Yeah, in aesthetics maybe. But let’s take a step back because design is more than just ‘does it look nice’? This is sorta the same for music, which I’d say is even more subjective.


Let’s start with Persona 3. The aesthetics of P3 change a bit, uh, actually a lot, between P3, FES and P3P. The first two are very similar, but P3P sees numerous changes. But on the whole, it’s very… simple. Functional and fine, but compared to Atlus’s modern games - not just Persona - it’s very standard. The colours don’t particularly pop all the time, especially the command menu, even with the cool revolver-style design. Icons on the overworld are very regular. Even the main menu just looks like a normal menu, if that makes sense. Again, it’s all functional. The differences between FES and P3P start in the overworld, and it’s obvious. P3P uses a Visual Novel style because of the PSP’s limitations. Doesn’t explain why they had to use this for the remaster, but I’m not here to talk about the game or port quality. And to be honest, I’m not too bothered by the Visual Novel format. I, of course, prefer the completely 3D approach, but I’m not really losing my mind over it. That being said, I do wish more stills from the CGs of FES were still used in P3P. They’re used much more sparingly than I expected. One thing I do miss from P3 and FES is those character cut-ins when a shocking moment happens or something. In battle, the design is not as radically changed as it’s all in 3D. The camera in Tartarus is different, but that’s about it. The battlefields still look nice, there’s this Mystic Mansion vibe I get from those floors that connect Blocks. I enjoy Tartarus in its design. I just wish I saw more of it in the main floors. Some UI like the navigator box was changed. In FES, it’s like a TV where the nav would direct you, but in P3P, it’s a diamond. I think the TV design is fine, but I guess I just like the diamond shape more because I sorta prefer the P3P look. Though maybe some animated static on the portrait would be nice. But also, things like the ‘Player Advantage’ sign also changed to be in this diamond shape, much better than the glow text the original had, in my opinion. Musically, P3 surprised me with how good its soundtrack is. Like, I only knew about ‘Mass Destruction’, ‘Joy’, ‘Memories of the School’ and a few other tracks before playing, but really most tracks are excellent. I’m a fan of ‘the Voice Someone Calls’ and most other Tartarus themes. I think P3 has the most amount of songs I’ve hummed to. The main negative about P3’s music is that there… isn’t really much of it. The Tartarus themes as you go up the blocks are technically not the same song - it’s a previous song with more instruments added. It’s still good, but a bit of variety would’ve been nice. In terms of the opening themes, I actually vastly prefer ‘Soul Phrase’ to ‘Burn my Dread’.


To Persona 4. P4G greatly resembles FES as they ran on the same engine. Compared to P3 and FES, P4G looks fine. I can see the design be much stronger here in both UI and even things like animated cutscenes look fantastic. Text boxes and other similar things look much colourful, flashier and in your face. Flashy enough that when P3P was being made, they’d adapt some of its design into its UI. The game also makes good use of the TV aesthetic with things like a TV dial being the command menu or how there’s red, green and blue streaks when you initiate a battle. It’s pretty good. One thing I was sorta surprised by, was the lack of those exclamation boxes during cutscenes - like when something shocking happens. P3 has it and so does P5, but not P4. Small thing, but something I noticed. In terms of battle, it’s rather similar to FES. Camera, audio, they’re basically the same. The animations are much snappier in P4G than in FES, or at least compared to P3P. Each dungeon is at the very least different, and they all fit the theme of the dungeon owner. I just wish it would evolve as you went deeper into one since it’s just the same throughout with maybe a few exceptions. Musically, it’s fine, but I’m not going to sugar coat it, I’m not very fond of most of the dungeon themes. It took until around Naoto’s dungeon before I started going “huh, this is pretty good”. Overworld and opening themes are good too, but I didn’t really hum most of them. I do think that the battle music is good, and I’m one of two people who thinks that ‘Time to Make History’ is better than ‘Reach Out to the Truth’.


Now Persona 5. Without a doubt the flashiest game in the whole series. In fact, this game is a major inspiration for me. But let’s just casually talk about it for a bit. Can I mention how this game obviously took notes from not only Persona 4 Arena, but also the Persona 3 Movies? As far as the Persona series went, P4A had blown it out the water in terms of style - animated text boxes, the in-game font, etc. But P3M also has a role in this mainly because P3M introduced the idea of multiple character awakenings (as P3 only had the protagonist and Fuuka get cutscenes) as well as just making P3M way more fancy than the games ever were. Anyway, P5 may take a lot of notes from P4A, but colour-wise, it was dialled back to be similar to P3 in a sense that the colours are far more focused. Yes, P4 was mainly on yellow, but it also didn’t shy away from just blasting every colour in the spectrum as accents too. But despite the limitations, they manage to make a lot with it. Animated text boxes, the red shadows on top of the characters during command selections, hell, that command menu is so amazing - it makes a diamond shape like the 4-face buttons with some extra commands to the side. Some commands were even put into the same category when in the previous games, they’d be separate. The diamond command menu though, heavily reminds me of ‘Super Mario RPG’ on the SNES. I guess you could say there’s less thematic harmony with the HUD design and the themes of the game. I mean, I see it as chaotic because well, we’re basically controlling a group that would probably be chaos-aligned in a traditional SMT sense. Everything about P5 is very chaotic after all, so I think it fits very well. It’s easily the game that gets me the most pumped. A small thing and as I noted before, I’m happy those portrait cut-ins were elaborated on. They now function as separate portraits, which P5R already enhanced by making extra drawings, and they really show more emotion in the characters. Musically, I think P5 is fantastic. I think I prefer P3’s overall, but I can’t deny the amount of music really puts it in a way, a step up from P3’s. Every Palace has its own music, Mementos has different music per block (though that was introduced in P5R), the day and night music is great, and there’s even more Confidant music. I have a feeling they took notes from ‘Fire Emblem Awakening’ with how many Support music there was and they made that addition to P5, and I think it elevates most scenes in the game.


To conclude this section, I think P3 has the best music, even if the variety in P5 is higher. But P5 very obviously takes the win in the aesthetic department. I think P4G is fine in the way it looks and I’d take it any day over P3, but it’s still not particularly superb in my P5-coated eyes, maybe. And P3 has far more instances where I’ve hummed the music. I do so with P5 too, but I feel like I do it in a jokey way more frequently. The only time I might make fun of P3’s music is the “BABY, BABY, BABY, BABY!!”


GAMEPLAY ~ Come, Persona!

This will cover both the dungeon and overworld gameplay. Though to be honest, most of the gameplay differences are on the minor side. But that being said, this section might have a strange opinion.


And it starts with Persona 3. So as I said, P3P is the version of P3 I played and what does this have? Direct Commands. In fact, the game probably prefers you to play it with Direct Commands because the Tactics options given to you never go beyond Full Assault, Conserve SP and Heal/Support. Meanwhile, P3 and FES have a wider range of options such as the ability to single target enemies, try to strike weaknesses, etc., which is needed to trigger One Mores and those All-Out Attacks. I did sample the Tactics options while playing the FeMC route, but it wasn’t… fun. No matter my tactics, my allies would refuse to try and down all enemies or use stat altering skills. It just doesn’t happen. I hear P3P’s Tactics system is done differently to P3 or FES, but don’t quote me on that. With me playing P3P with Direct Commands, the game is… not specifically easy, but it helps a lot. Some characters in the team are just clearly better than others - Akihiko has all the enemy-wide stat debuffs, lots of characters have a healing move to compensate for the fact that the game was designed with Tactics in mind. But that’s the thing with P3P. There’s a lot of things carried over from FES that aren’t necessarily needed here. I mean, things like replacing Bufu with Bufula is a ‘duh’ thing, but what if there was a challenge run of sorts? Auto skill-replacing is still in, as well as numerous other things. But this isn’t too bad in the long run. But what I DON’T like about P3P is the dungeon crawling. Please excuse my rudeness, but I don’t like randomly generated dungeons or the kind of dungeon crawling P3P has. Tartarus is incredibly boring and battles were mostly stress-free. Only the bigger Shadows caused any level of stress. Side Quests given to you by Elizabeth (or Theodore) or rescuing those trapped in Tartarus don’t really help me much. In fact, they tend to only bloat the game time more, even if some of the things you get from it are very good. Though on NG+ I just ignored most of them. The overworld segments are fine. They have what they need. A day time, a night time, schedules, but one thing this game does a lot more than the next two games is a much higher chance for allies to simply be busy or unavailable. Most Social Links are in the day and the night time is honestly mainly there to build up Social Stats (via that arcade). On NG+, you’re honestly mostly just gonna go to sleep, I assure you.


Persona 4 is honestly not that different. At least, not in the battle department. All the rules from P3 seem to apply here, and it’s not like there’s Demon Negotiation either, so you just have to worry about slapping the Shadows silly. There’s no new elements, but maybe a few new attacks, and brand new Shadows. The Tactics stuff is still there, but like P3P (which came after), it recommends you to use Direct Commands. Although the game always starts out with a member being on Act Freely, and I don’t know why. I’m going to be honest, I don’t see why Shadows needed to be used in this game. With the character specific dungeons, I think the game could’ve easily used regular SMT Demons as the enemies you fight, and subsequently bring in the Negotiation system back. But I wager it’s because of the engine, it’s based on P3’s. One thing that P4 does much better than P3 is the Shuffle Time. In P3, Shuffle Time exists, but it’s literally you seeing the deck, it shuffles, then choose a single card. It’s boring, but does the job. In P4, Shuffle Time lets you freely choose the card from a deck, but as a result, there are a handful of cards that give negative effects, like less EXP. Why would you want to choose them? It’s because those cards grant you the ability to choose another card and clearing the deck will grant benefits for the next Shuffle Time. Shuffle Time does break the game though. There are some absurdly powerful cards like increasing the tier of a random skill of your equipped Persona. You can grind a little bit in a dungeon and easily get -dyne skills before you reach the first major boss. Shuffle Time may sound longer than the straight forward P3 version… and you’re right. But to compensate, the dungeons have significantly less floors. But they’re also generally larger than P3’s floors. Not only that, but specific floors in a dungeon are fixed in layout and have gimmicks to them such as invisible warp zones and you have you find your way to the boss and exit. These make the dungeons a bit more interesting, but ultimately, I’m not fond of them for the same reason why I’m not fond of Tartarus: it’s boring. Undeniably better, but boring. Overworld and Social Links are again similar to P3, but there’s much less instances of the story making characters unavailable for set periods of time. Instead, we’re given the uncontrollable thing of nature: weather. There’s still many more Social Links in the day time, but there’s also more prerequisites to starting or continuing them. By that, I mean the Social Stats has been increased from 3 to 5. Really the game just introduces more things of everything, but more ways to gain the things. It’s a generally good improvement and there’s little to actually complain about.


Then Persona 5. Now this is it for me. At least in the battle and dungeon department. First off, Mementos I dislike for the same reason why I think Tartarus is boring, but it feels less boring with skills like ‘Insta Kill’ to just bypass weak enemies. It’s still time consuming and boring, but it feels a little bit faster. And this game needs it. But the best thing about P5’s dungeons is that they now have actual level design, at least in Palaces. Not only do I think it’s done very well, but I have always enjoyed them as a deep dive into the owner’s heart. The metaphors and imagery used is very good, but they still maintain important aspects of the dungeons like mini bosses. But the addition of set pieces just helps drastically. Likewise, the battles have seen a significant upgrade, in my opinion. Now we’re fighting actual Demons of the SMT series, and the Negotiation system is back. It’s a very easy system and it’s super forgiving, but it’s at least consistent and the ease keeps the pace up. This makes gaining new Personas much faster and easier than ever before. The One More system still remains, but the major new change is Baton Pass (which became a default skill in Royal). Getting a One More allows you to switch to another party member and continue the beat down or just do some emergency healing or something. I think this system is important because the Negotiation is triggered when all enemies are downed. However, things like Baton Pass give P5 and especially P5R a major problem: the game is incredibly easy. The first two dungeons and a few bosses might give you a hard time, but for the most part, you’re not getting a game over - not even close. This is also compounded by the introduction of DLC where you can get some stupidly powerful Personas for free. Please, just never use them in battle. Please. The overworld is primarily the same as P4, but both the day and night have quite an ample amount of Social Links- I mean, Confidants, you can do. Weather is back to lock out certain characters, but really, as long as you don’t get tripped up by Sojiro’s story-locked Confidant, you’ll probably get all of them done by the time you finish the game. It’s really not that difficult, even without a guide. The Confidants also grant special abilities. This existed a tiny bit in P3 and for party members in P4, but P5 really goes in. And these are what make P5R extremely easy. Insta kill, retries in Negotiations, reverse an Enemy Advantage, etc. So yeah, the game’s super easy. If I was to change it up, I think changing Baton Pass to have the Tactics menu would help. Like if you want to Baton Pass, you can only choose between say, an offensive option, a support option and maybe a random option for good measure. And the for Confidants, just nerf or outright remove some abilities.


I’m gonna have to give this to Persona 5 again, but that’s mainly because though the game is far easier, it’s also the game that has the systems that keeps me invested the most. The dungeon level design, battle pace, etc. With that said, it’s very true that P5R also has some overworld pacing issues. Namely with the fact there’s a lot more to do and just a much wider world to run around in and explore. This alone will without a doubt, increase your play time a lot.


THE PROTAGONIST ~ ……

Normally, I would start with discussing the story, but Persona is a special case. So that will be tackled last. For now, let’s talk about protagonists. This shouldn’t last long.


Persona 3’s protagonist is interesting for one simple reason. There’s two to discuss. Let’s start with Makoto Yuki (also occasionally known as Minato Arisato). In terms of design, I’ve always quite liked him. Straight and nice blue hair that has the emo effect of covering one of his eyes. I’d say it fits him if his in-game personality wasn’t non-existent. Makoto, for me, is a pretty clear case of a straight blank slate. Dialogue choices are typically worded very simply and though I like to try projecting the movie’s personality onto him wherever possible, it’s also stated that he’s very nice and occasionally even outgoing. This isn’t how I view him. Speaking of the movie, I’m actually a fan of its depiction of him. Having gone through P5 previously, it really looked like that game took inspiration from P3M by having the protagonist’s motives and even past trauma be a reminder and driving force in the plot. It helps that there’s a clear change from his “I don’t care” attitude, to going to care about his friends, the world and life in general.


Then we have Kotone Shiomi (also known as Minako Arisato) from P3P. P3P and Persona Q2 are her only appearances, and I adore her in both games. On the surface, she is absolutely adorable and cool. But adorable most importantly. I think Atlus knew they only ever intended her to be in, like, one game, because they really tried to make her memorable. Her appearance already is memorable, but her personality is just the same. Oh yeah, she has a discernible one, and I’m always for that. I always loved that her attitude is a complete contrast to Makoto’s. Where he’s reserved and shows his emotions very clearly, Kotone is outgoing and doesn’t really reveal her true self. I love how in her dialogue choices, she’s got so much wildly-ranging expressions from sass to humour. Even in some of the mandatory scenes, she gets a few dialogue changes to the male protagonist. Typically, I view her as someone where when things get stressful and especially when her allies start fighting amongst each other, she’ll get extremely stressed to the point of shouting. Q2 even elaborates a bit on her personality. It’s not much, but I like the added detail like how she actually is scared of being alone, amongst other things.


Persona 4’s protagonist is Yu Narukami. The only protagonist without any canonical naming problems. Gonna be straight with you all, he doesn’t really tickle my fancy. I mean I think the character design is fine. Slim, relatively handsome (I guess?)… yeah. Like the P3 protagonist, Yu is a pure blank slate and my opinions on it are the same as Makoto’s. He is obviously given more personality in the anime, which I haven’t watched in full. I know he’s a bit of a joker, he’s popular enough to get all the girls. Uh, let’s see… That’s all I know. I do notice that people like to use the ‘he’s a chad’ thing as a defence for him. I don’t specifically object to it (especially in fiction), but I treat it more as a joke or gag and is not a pro or con in my books. In my run in P4G, I did tend to go for the wackiest dialogue choices whenever possible. Like, I would have him proudly strut to the women’s seat when testing out the school cafe (I think it was) or having him really get into the cross-dressing competition. That was fun.


Persona 5’s protagonist is Ren Amamiya (though I vastly prefer his alternate name Akira Kurusu). This guy has too many names from the various official media… Design-wise, I think Joker (along with P3M Fuuka and Aigis) awoke something in me: I like my characters to have some level of messy hair. I think he’s actually quite attractive and cool, even coming from someone not attracted to men, and part of my love of Ren is because of his personality. I’m just a fan of the way he conducts himself. Lad is clearly a kind dude, even going out of his way to help some woman getting assaulted, helping those in need in general, but most obvious is how he acts in the Metaverse - all that flippy-dippy stuff, it’s just so cool. I’m sure Joker alone is the main reason I’m such a fan of the Phantom Thieves concept. Other than that though, he’s got a very jokey mannerism, he’s quiet and thus a good listener, amongst other nice traits. Though for the quiet trait, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword because even in the anime, he’s practically silent - unrealistically too quiet in my opinion. With that said, I don’t think I need to even refer to the anime here. Not because it’s crap, but rather because all the personality I need from him is in the game.


In conclusion, I am the most attracted to Ren because of his lovely hair and funny personality, and uh- oh um… Let’s try that again. I think it’s clear that I think Ren and Kotone are my favourites while Makoto and Yu are on the bottom. None of the latter two are bad, but it’s just that I prefer my protagonists to have some degree of personality separate from my own, that’s just my preference. If I had to make my totem pole, then Ren is on top while Kotone is in 2nd. Then it’s Makoto and Yu. Again, I just like Makoto’s design, so if Ren rejected me, then I’d ask Makoto- I MEAN WHAT?


ALLIES ~ Together

This will be longer for there’s numerous characters to discuss, however, I don’t think I’ll discuss them all, or at least won’t give all of them equal time. And this is just the playable characters of each game as well as discussing them as a group.


Persona 3’s group of S.E.E.S. As a group, I think they are the most focused as they have one goal and they consistently see it through to the end with very little outside interference as everything they end up encountering aids or is directly associated with the group and/or someone within it. The main negative to S.E.E.S. is that that don’t necessarily feel like a group of friends - not all of them anyway. More like certain pairs are let to grow while others never get to interact, Yukari and Mitsuru, Mitsuru and Akihiko, etc. Honestly, this isn’t the worst thing in the world considering the game doesn’t exactly make it sound like the group all get along perfectly - like some are literally just acquaintances, which is fine. But then P3D comes in and is like “You brought us all together” and I’m like “…I did?”. With that said, I think most, if not all of the individual cast gets to shine very well. I enjoy Junpei’s growth throughout the game partially because of his relationship with Chidori and how she ends up changing him. The only issue with him is how he’s developed with the protagonist since, well, they make it seem like he’s great friends with them by the end, but it’s built up rather artificially, not unless you’re playing as Kotone where you can actually further develop with him via Social Link, then it feels more earned. Akihiko is a very big stand out since his backstory reveals that he wants to grow stronger to protect his loved ones, but when he realises that even this isn’t enough, he goes through that heartbreaking scene of losing yet another one close to him, blinded by his own desire. Mitsuru is in a sort of similar way. Like, I’m pretty sure she acts like the big sister of the group because she feels that she needs to. Being around S.E.E.S. does make her see things in a different light and being around the protagonist makes her see more of what she needs to do to make life worth living. Aigis, our favourite little toa- uh, robot girl, is definitely a significant character not only to the main story, but also its themes. Shorthand, she finds what it means to live, even questioning what she’ll do after the Dark Hour is over. The scenes where she’s discussing this stuff and especially that ending, are very powerful, in my eyes. I will admit though, that the change did happen a bit more suddenly than I was expecting. I guess it was gradual, but before Ikutsuki’s betrayal, it almost seemed like her personality remained as ‘funny robot girl’. Yukari, Ken, Shinjiro, they’re also all great. Although I’d probably put Ken kinda near the bottom. A fine story he has, but I do feel like his story is more so overshadowed by Akihiko’s part. Oh also, Koromaru is a very good boy. I guess Fuuka is the one I’d put at the bottom because she really doesn’t get many scenes. Once she’s recruited as the navigator, that’s about all she is. She gets a few scenes where she talks to her best friend, but that’s it. The game says she develops, and uh, yeah. I suppose, she does?


Persona 4’s Investigation Team. Uh, well, they tried. Let’s be real, until Naoto directly joins the group, the IT just meander with leads that go nowhere or are just plain wrong. For a good chunk of the game, it feels like they go nowhere. But to make up for this, this is the one group of all three games that genuinely feels like they’re all friends. I think this matters to P4G because it’s the game that emphasises bonds and relationships the most. Unlike P3, P4G would go down the route of episodic as apposed to one concrete goal. I mean, there is one main goal in the IT - the Midnight Channel - but it’s usually interrupted by important characters that go into this place. Not every character gets to shine in the same way that S.E.E.S. do, but everyone at least does their part… for the most part. This game really likes to remind us that these guys are teens. In any case, most of the character development comes from their Social Links. I actually think the cast, especially on the girls’ side, progressively gets better as you go through the game. Starting with Chie who I have nothing to say on. I mean, she gets that SL development where she’s trying to balance out her femininity with what she’s interested in, which is something typically more masculine. But otherwise, I think she’s one of the worst girls in the series. Yukiko somewhat likewise, has an okay story. She feels shackled to the Inn she works at and at some point hopes to just not inherit the business, but does so under her own will. So yay. She’s otherwise very beautiful. Um, I hate her giggling fit trait, but her saving grace is her occasional burns. And I don’t mean Agi. Kanji is without a doubt, one of the best male characters in the series, in my opinion. I actually do really like his story of balancing his feminine hobbies with his want to appear more masculine. He’s just a good dude, which is a shame when I see the online discource regarding him go in the direction of something that I don’t care about. Naoto likewise, is one of then best girls in the series. A want to be something, but society says no because she’s a girl. So she’s actively tried to shed that side of her. Not in the way modern social media expects, but rather just by the simple act of cross-dressing. Teddie is… annoying. I guess his mystery is interesting enough as a Shadow who isn’t hostile and even took the form of something much more pleasant. It’s just that I’m not very fond of his personality. People like Nam compare him to a younger brother, and that’s nice I guess, but I’m not in that demographic. Shout out to Rise since I do really like her and even relate to her more than Naoto since she’s someone who works in a place where she can allow herself to grow popular, but this has caused her to lose her sense of self. I myself have fell into this state and I don’t want to again. That’s why I do what I do mostly for fun as appose to profit. But yeah, overall, I’m not really that big on the IT. Truly the most annoying thing about them in my eyes, is that all the girls except Naoto, can’t cook. It’s a common running gag and it’s never funny. Well, maybe one time it was. Honestly, going into games like Q2 and then back to the mainline games, I was stunned how it kinda felt like P4G wasn’t that far off from Q2’s renditions of them, which is a shame because when the characters show genuine development, it’s nice.


Finally, Persona 5’s Phantom Thieves. So, this is a bit more complicated. I’m actually quite a fan of the Phantom Thieves. Individually, I think the characters are good, even if they can get quiet shafted in the main plot - like P4G, the game wants you to understand them via Social Links- I mean, Confidants. I do believe the gang feel like friends as they still keep in contact. A lot, actually. Maybe sometimes too much as text messages are rather constant in necessary and unnecessary moments. The way party members roll in, it’s more like “You saved me. I shall join your cause to repay my debt. Oh also, let me hang out with you guys, anyway.” This by itself, is fine, in my opinion. I just don’t think the game really intended for it go go that way. Ryuji is the most obvious example of a P5R character who actually got development throughout the game. From a kid who wanted attention, got it, had it ripped underneath him, and then remembering what the PTs stood for. This by default, makes Ryuji one of the best characters in the game for me. I don’t think he’s got the most interesting in personality, but his development throughout kept me invested. As an aside, I’m personally not bothered by the girls-beat-him-up scene. I mean, I kinda get it, but for my style, the threat had gone, let there be a bit of humour, even if it misses the mark. Makoto gets some development in the story because by god she barely gets it in her Confidant. She wants to prove herself and being in the PTs is a good place to start as she effectively becomes second in command. She can end up talking in place of Joker (or Morgana) sometimes which I get why it rubs people the wrong way, but it never bothered me too much. Look, it’s not Seteth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Morgana is interesting because I kinda like his slightly more mature side compared to Teddie’s very immature personality. It’s just that Morgana can act very irrational at times and especially when it comes rather suddenly in the Okumura arc, then we have problems. They tried to build it up throughout and they kinda did. Kinda. But overall, I’m fine with Morgana. And to be honest, this is as much as I can say. I mean the rest of the cast are good too. Yusuke is my favourite male character outside of Joker because he’s just fun to hang out with, but I’m also convinced that his school is filled with freaks. Haru plainly enough, doesn’t get enough screen time. Her Confidant helps out a ton and she’s hilarious with her sadistic tendencies. Futaba is a lot of fun to hang around and I get the anxiety she faces. I’m sure most of us do (sadly). Let’s add Goro Akechi into the list as he’s playable and a good lad. I mean I enjoy his character a lot and he’s quite a good mirror to Joker as someone who was badly wronged and he wishes suffering to those responsible. I wasn’t there for P5, but P5R’s Confidant definitely made their friendship or relationship at least, become quite strong. HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER! Kasumi Yoshizawa. Oh no, wait, I’m sorry, Sumire Yoshizawa. Some of you might know this, but she is one of my favourite female characters in fiction. When I first did her 5 ranks, I was worried she was this boring, but once things really landed and we got access tot he remaining pieces to her character and story, then yeah, she went from mid to amazing. Her story is rather intrinsically tied to the themes of P5R’s bonus chapter, and as a result, I’ll save it for later, but just know that the themes is part of the reason why Sumire is so high up my totem pole.


Overall, I’d actually rank S.E.E.S. as my favourite group of the three. I think there’s some faults with some characters, but I like how they’re basically all developed and throughout the main story as appose to Social Links and other side content. P3 is just written in a bit of a different way compared to the other games. I guess I could argue that I can relate with the P4 and P5 characters more since the P3 cast is much more focused on that game’s plot, but for me, there’s something really nice about having a story that wants to just tell its story and develop its cast that way, if that makes sense.


SOCIAL LINKS ~ My Homies

Next is all the friends or people that the main protagonists decide to hang out with in each game. Well, not ‘all’, I’ll only talk about those who stood out to me the most, just like with the previous segment.


Persona 3. …Shall we? Okay, the game doesn’t have awful Social Links, but it’s a clear ‘first attempt’ kind of thing. Not only that, but the writing and/or characters you talk with can be VERY hit or miss. Akinari Kamiki is basically the first SL I think of that I really enjoyed. It’s a rather sad story of a young lad dying from an illness with no cure. Yet, he’s still trying to find some level of joy or meaning in his short life and that’s where writing his story comes in. It is a bit of a shame that he decided to have Makoto be the one to hold onto the final version of the story as appose to his mother, but I suppose that’s the thanks he gives us for taking the time to hang out with the lad. Not to mention the somber talk with his mother at the end of the game, which was bittersweet. Maiko Oohashi is a bit of a strange one, but I did like overall. It’s a young girl dealing with her parents who don’t love each other anymore and want a divorce - something I relate to quite well. I did like how the story progressed for the most part, but the weird part is definitely when she decides to run away… which we encourage. But that’s honestly a bit less of a concern to me, at least as far as writing. I was honestly expecting one rank where she has vanished, or maybe her SL is disallowed for an in-game week before returning. Maybe that’s too cruel. But I did like her SL overall. Chihiro Fushimi has an… okay SL. She’s a girl who’s super shy with men and that’s where the handsome Makoto sweeps in! Well, really it’s just him hanging out with her and they start to get along and all that. I love that one moment where you can really go in for either an embrace or kiss and this will reverse the SL. It’s so funny and just like “Why???”. But yeah, she’s okay. Not as amazing as I had hoped, but she does at least get development. President Tanaka is a nice enough one. You might recognise him as the guy who sells stuff on the TV in P3, P4 and also the Shady Commodities in P5. Really, the guy’s just egotistical and a dick, but the SL is okay enough. I don’t really know how, but we essentially made him go from an egotistical arse with little care for his co-workers, to an egotistical arse who cares a bit more… and is willing to spend his money on other charitable organisations, if just to make himself look better. Huh. Honestly, that’s the main ones I can even think of as remotely enjoyable. Not that the rest are bad necessarily, but they’re subpar. The Old Couple is kinda boring, in my opinion. Maya’s is mildly cute, but I enjoyed it more for the little reference to Persona 2 Innocent Sin/Eternal Punishment. Mutatsu confused me at first, but it became… touching by the end, maybe? The less we talk about Nozomi the better. He’s just a piece of crap that we have to defend for some reason. Though I will say that the fake reverse social link was pretty funny. Freaked me out at first.


Persona 3 Portable. There isn’t many new SLs that aren’t your party members, but still, there’s a few. Truthfully, only Saori’s was good, I think. I mean, hers is her stepping up for herself even if it means she’ll get in trouble. It’s almost Phantom Thief-like in its way. She’s wronged, but she does a gutsy thing that makes her feel better in the end - she’s just not doing it in the shadows. Rio on the other hand was rather peculiar. I assumed it’d go into the direction of the one that is talented, but rude, but that’s not the case. Turns out, it’s mainly caused by this crush she has with Kenji of all people. Whatever she thinks, but I’d recommend someone else.


Persona 4. I have a confession to make: I didn’t do many of them. Not because I didn’t enjoy the game or its cast or something, but some of the unlocking requirements I didn’t catch or simply made horrid mistakes. I did read numerous ones after my run, but I didn’t do well. With that said, the quality of the SLs vastly improved since last time. I recall I very much enjoyed the Dojimas - both Nanako and Ryotaro. I liked the family-building with them, especially with Ryotaro trying to treat Narukami like one of his own family, but a bit of awkwardness gets in the way due to past trauma. Nanako’s part on the other hand focuses more on her relationship with her father, who she thinks doesn’t love her anymore, but it’s just work getting in the way. I do relate to this in a way. No where near as extreme, but I see where she’s coming from. I’ll stop there… Yumi Ozawa is one I kinda remember because she was one of the first non-party SLs I completed. I liked hers enough. She’s really good at drama and feels somewhat obligated to pursue it, but as you progress through the SL, family issues get in the way. Ends in a sad way, but the only real issue here is that Narukami has very little to do with the story. Sayoko Uehara I first recalled because she’s the flirty nurse. I didn’t get far to actually see what was going on with her story, but it’s pretty sad. She essentially lost a patient from a previous hospital and this has caused her to work to an unhealthy degree, but she eventually comes to terms with it. I wish I was able to actually beat this story. I’m going to back out here because I regrettably didn’t remember much after. Not to say they were bad, but again, didn’t do many. I will say though, I didn’t like doing the Fox’s SL. Ai Ebihara’s was sorta surprising as she actually tried offing herself because of the stress she accumulated throughout her life. Margaret got an SL as appose to the Elizabeth dates and… yeah, Margaret is my least liked Velvet Room Attendant.


Persona 5 has Confidants. They function the same way. I was honestly pretty astonished with how easy it was to max out all Confidants before the end of the game. In P3 and P4, it’s super tight, only barely possible, but you will need a guide. Anyway, the Confidants are now a bit more formulaic as most have a start, middle, Mementos, end. It can at least add stakes, but does end up being unnecessary at numerous times. Sadayo Kawakami I liked because I just like how she acts tired of her job, but really, it’s just because of the stress on her life. She balances two jobs and it’s been badly eating away at her soul, only made worse due to the family trying to extort money out of her. But spending time with the supposed problem student made her recall why she actually enjoys her job as a teacher. Tae Takemi. Now here’s a popular one, and I agree. She goth! But I think her story’s also good. She’s trying to perfect a medicine to try and heal someone, but her efforts are trying to be stopped by some prick who wants to take her work and also maybe pin problems on her, even blaming her for deaths of certain patients. But not if Joker has anything to say about it. Munehisa Iwai is a cool dude. The man feels bad about his past of being a Yakuza member and though he doesn’t associate anymore, the others still operate and even try to turn his adoptive son against him. It’s another ‘am I a good dad’ story, and I approve. Hifumi Togo. I must be a fan of Japanese beauty because um… she’s that. But to be honest, her story isn’t as amazing. I do think her story has more so a good show of character. The main issue is that the conflict happens a bit too late, and it starts and ends too quickly. But I do at least like that she wants to try winning a match of Shogi without any rigs. And yeah, she’s no where near as good as the media makes her out to be, but that’s fine. She took it like a champ! I’d say most of the Confidants here are fine in execution. Like, I like Toranosuke Yoshida and Shinya Oda for example, but I don’t think they’re that incredible, even if they have some morals worth noting. But Yuuki Mishima is one I should bring up. On my first run, I didn’t like him - I thought he was annoying, though I acknowledged he has a good story. But I came to like him more my second run. People compare his arc to Ryuji’s because they’re similar and that’s true, but here’s the difference: Ryuji is always around us as a member of the Phantom Thieves. So between the times where he’s annoying, there’s also lots of times where he’s… not that. I think only Ichiko Ohya is the only Confidant I didn’t like. I don’t think I necessarily disliked the character, but I also don’t think I remembered anything worthwhile in her story. Some twat is trying to prevent her from researching a certain story, but thanks to Joker, she can now. But until then, it may as well be plot recaps of P5.


For my experience, I’ll only compare P5’s Confidants to P3’s SLs and… yeah, P5 wins. P3 may have some VERY good SLs, but it also has some of the worst. At least P5’s are good reads for the most part. I would also go and say that the characters of P5 were more fun to hang around too as well as having much less instances of Joker just being there for the sake of being there. Part of that is because the Confidants are framed as a deal - both parties are to gain from this as appose to simply making friends, which works into the gameplay (for better or worse).


STORY ~ A Mystery?

Now for the stuff that get players invested: the roman- uh… Oh. Well, I’m talking about the stories now. This also includes its themes and I’ll also be talking about any extra stories, though they’ll be separated by paragraph.


Going backwards in order I played the games, let’s start with Persona 5. I do enjoy this game’s plot quite a fair bit, but it’s got a few pacing issues. But let’s start with positives, starting with the general over arching plot: that being to do with Yaldabaoth’s grand plan. I enjoy that this whole thing is slowly built up throughout the game. At the very start, there’s even an oddity with Igor as he says his greeting to the main character differently to the previous titles, though this matters more if you’ve played the previous Persona games. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. But throughout, you get instances that are just weird, such as when Makoto questioning where everyone even got this shady app from. And even on my first time, I was thinking why this whole journey is called a ‘rehabilitation’; Joker was wrongly incarcerated, not in need of rehab. Speaking of which, one thing I actually really like about P5 is its opening. It’s a great opener where you can briefly see how the Phantom Thieves operate and also what allegedly went wrong with it this time, as well as also giving a taste of the battle system. But then the game flashes back to Joker moving to Tokyo and basically starting his life anew… because he was arrested for physical abuse, wrongly, I might add. He sorta just let it happen for now because well, any wrong move and his life’s gonna get even worse. So it’s good for him that he found a level of purpose by becoming a Phantom Thief because this random app came up on his phone - he can do some more shady stuff without most people knowing. Like P4, P5 takes an episodic route where characters join one at a time (minus the Kamoshida arc), during which you meet new characters and all of them link back to the main plot in some way. Sojiro, Joker’s caretaker, is connected is Futaba Sakura, who is the daughter of a scientist who allegedly offed herself because Futaba was a nuisance, apparently. But one of the more important things in this story is the appearance of another Metaverse user who’s been using it to kill oppositions to his father, a politician. This other person we learn, is Goro Akechi, who is a character I like, myself, if at least for empathetic reasons. I mean he’s cool and all too, especially in P5R. I should remind you all that in P5, Akechi’s Confidant is handled differently to P5R, but I don’t know as much about that besides it was automatic. But with what I know about P5R’s Akechi, I enjoy the dynamic between him and Joker, that is, a relationship based on hate and jealousy. The two respect each other greatly with both being treated poorly by society and wish to rectify that, but their ways of doing it differ. In this way, they’re two sides of the same coin. Nam also looks at it from an Order vs Chaos lens, a staple of the SMT series, but I’m not entirely sure the writers were going down that route. Everything though, links back to Yaldabaoth and its want to control how humans think. This time, it’s by having their fate locked in based on how society views them or by the higher ups/government controlling them. The finale where Joker says ‘begone’ and shoots the god in the head was pretty based. Sticks with me. I’m actually quite a fan of this whole aspect of rebellion. I mean, it’s the theme of the game - ‘corruption’ more specifically - and I like seeing the Phantom Thieves step up to the scum of society, I actually find this part quite inspiring, though obviously real life rebellion should sometimes be done in moderation. It should also be noted that as P5 has a bunch of teenagers doing this, it stands to reason that they’d mess up as they go on. One thing I noticed, is that their targets became less and less monstrous during their boss fights. They’re still scum, however, going from Kamoshida’s WTF form to Okumura in a Dr. Doom chair is quite staggering. It shows visually how these targets aren’t as horrible as some of the others. This leads to pretty good character development, mainly with Ryuji, who is the one of the first members that creates the PTs, loses sight of his goal to inspire others, and then rectifies it after the Okumura incident. But these are a bit rarer because of the episodic nature, and the game clearly wants you to do Confidants to get to know the characters more. With that said, yeah, I think the plot has a few snags. One of the more major things is the overall pacing, or rather, the large amount of gaps between important story beats. The thing is, is that P5 is a really huge game with lots of locations, a day and night time slot and lots to do. This could be exploring Palaces and Mementos, Confidants, maybe some cutscenes too. The latter of which, is basically just the texts. I feel this is the main reason why some say that the PTs don’t feel like friends, but I honestly think it’s because the gaps between the moments where they actually meet is larger, therefore, feeling like there’s less camaraderie between them all. But of course, talking about pacing or weird story issues wouldn’t be complete without talking about the Morgana drama. I mean, there’s lots wrong with it that has been documented. But things like the PTs suddenly going “are you sure we should go for this target” is odd. Morgana snapping is also odd. There’s the misconception that he was angry at Ryuji specifically. Also the gameplay halting completely because we literally can’t do anything without that cat. This whole thing was kinda being built up throughout the game with Morgana’s role in the group being phased out, but I don’t think it was done clearly enough, hence leading to this weird moment in the whole plot. The message at the end is good though, I think - treating your friends as friends as appose to a team member with functions, so to speak. So yes, I like P5’s plot a fair bit. Even thematically, I kinda like it. I’m a fan of the concept of standing up to higher authority, which does kinda goes into the political side of things, however, it’s not talked about much in P5… thankfully. With that said, I definitely enjoy the theme broadly more than the overall story, even if it’s good by itself.


But we have to talk about ‘Persona 5 Royal’ and it’s 3rd Semester. Some of you might know this, but I actually really like this extra story and is leagues better than any of the previous chapters given to us… which is quite sad, actually. Throughout P5R’s main plot, we’re introduced to a student named Kasumi Yoshizawa. She’s a gymnast and an honour student. She’s liked by most, they see her as talented, nice, cute and all that, but from Kasumi’s own perspective, something’s off. Every now and then, she gets these waves of slumps and feels like she’s lost her way. Even her coach has told her to basically stop for a bit and rethink her life. There are many plot points regarding her character with major ones like how her sister Sumire Yoshizawa passed away, to minor ones like her cooking is bad… selectively. Once we reach the 3rd Semester, it’s quite clear that Kasumi is not who she seems to be. It turns out that who we’re with all this time, is Sumire Yoshizawa, the sister presumed dead. So what’s going on? The shorthand is that Sumire is insanely jealous of her older sister, who’s extremely talented at her field: dancing and gymnastics. Eventually, this caused Sumire to try and off herself, but this attempt failed… because Kasumi stepped in to take the hit for her. It was a truck by the way. Obviously. While this certainly stopped Sumire from killing herself, this didn’t stop her horrendous depressive state. So she went to talk to a counsellor: Takuto Maruki. By talking with this counsellor, he was able to completely alter her way of living… by altering the reality around her. It’s pretty creepy too. The camera goes from one side of Maruki’s head to the other. One side is where Sumire sits, and when the camera pans to the other side of Maruki’s head, she’s ‘Kasumi’ now. Right now, she genuinely thinks she’s her sister, and this made her feel better in the moment, however as we see throughout the game, the real Sumire is still somewhat present. It turns out Maruki can do this because he has a Persona, the false god Azathoth. His goal is to change the world so that pain and suffering can no longer exist, just like how he suffered. Now, I’ll say that I’m not sure how or why he can even use his Persona in the real world, but this is honestly my only major flaw. Maruki’s backstory is rather tragic where he lost his girlfriend, Rumi, after an accident where her parents died in a burglar incident. Oh no, Rumi isn’t dead - she’s just left mentally scarred. With the partially newly-awakened Azathoth, he altered reality so this pain she was experiencing is gone… but she also no longer recognises Maruki. This then led him down a depressive spiral to figure out how to make the world a better place and with Joker via Confidants, he was able to find out about the Metaverse and with Mementos, he can grant desires to the whole country. This includes bringing the dead back to life, making an art teacher not scum and even changing the professional interest of certain individuals entirely. Any level of development that one may have had would be stripped away because their desires would simply be given to them. Thematically, I resonate with this VERY strongly. I get the idea that some people just want to be given talent or something, but that’s just not how it works, you need to earn it. In Sumire’s case, she already had talent, but she was so desperate to be someone she’s not. When we make her snap out of it, she’s still trying to be someone she’s not, but with supportive friends and helping her figure out who she is, we help her become her truer self. Maruki… probably didn’t have a true self. He lost it all when he left his girlfriend and instead of lashing out to the world like Akechi did, he decided to attempt to help everyone else. He’s genuinely a nice guy and he really thinks he’s doing the right thing. In fact, if you so agree with him, you can accept his reality. I didn’t because like I said, I disagree with his stance completely. But this sincerity to help the world just hits me really hard in ways that the main plot of P5 just doesn’t really do. And not even my favourite character, Sumire, does it as well as he does. The last fist fight between Maruki and Joker was a perfect way to cap it off. Just let Maruki let out his frustrations, but he comes to eventually. He follows Joker’s footsteps and decides to start life anew. All of them do. I should also note that with the 3rd Semester, the ending also changes from the original P5. The original has this air of happiness, confidence of the future and the gang’s relationship in general. Meanwhile, in P5R, while there’s still confidence in the future and the overall relationship, there’s also this sense of sadness. The reality Maruki showed them made them sorta think further about their futures individually. Some even thinking about going abroad to broaden their horizons. Both are ultimately happy endings, but one feels more… melancholy. I’m kinda fine with both, but I appreciate P5R’s attempt for a probably more grounded ending.


Next up is ‘Persona 4’. The overarching plot is figuring out who this mysterious murderer is… is what I’d be saying if it wasn’t overshadowed by the amount of friendship building and filler moments between major chapters. To be fair, the game is very good at handling its main theme of bettering yourself. This is going to get me a lot of hate, I can feel it. To give the story credit, it’s very good at hiding who the true villain is. It’s a mix of character and the things he does or doesn’t do. It’s Tohru Adachi. He comes across as a well-meaning lad who is just kinda dumb at the job of being a detective, but then you go ‘wait a minute’. And then it’s piled on top of a bunch of things that wouldn’t make sense if it was some of the other people the Investigation Team have accused, so it ends up leading back to Adachi. I’ll admit, once the game started actually getting us closer to the reveal of the antagonist, I was rather hooked to the plot because it is relatively well done, but this is after HOURS of gameplay and alleged suspects that go almost nowhere other than to get Adachi away from trouble. I feel like it’s not until Naoto joins proper that is when the IT actually starts going somewhere as she is the most capable regarding detective work. Until then, I was just going through the motions, much more interested in how the characters would interact and better themselves throughout. This is the first game in the modern Persona series to have an episodic format where once you recruit a character, you get to know the rest of their story through the Social Link. But I think this game does a good job at portraying the issues the individual is going through via their particular story arc. Now, it’s not as good as P5 in my opinion - which does the opposite - in a sense that a lot of the issues one is going through is said rather than shown to you. Dungeons in P4 give a brief outline of how one feels unlike in P5 where the Palace will tell you everything about how the ruler views the world. It’s still fine, regardless. At least it’s direct and shown in other ways. The game has plenty of scenes where you and the IT are just chilling, doing school stuff or going to beaches and this definitely helps with them feeling like friends, it’s the game that does it the best, but I feel like this is a necessity because of the game’s overall theme. In a way, I think it works to the overall story’s detriment as it takes focus away from the main plot. This also somewhat extends to the location of Inaba itself. I’m not as thrilled by this part, but it’s a neat addition where the location is also built upon. At the beginning of the game, it’s a place where people are kinda iffy on it or people are complaining about the city infringing on the small town, but by the end, is a place where people are just happy to be because of its small community and certain individuals feel much better about living in such a tight knit community. One of the more interesting things about P4 is how easy it is to miss the true ending. I mean, once you say your goodbyes, you have to do a few extra things and this leads back to the person that Narukami initially shook hands with, and that’s the gas station attendee. And it makes so much sense. I mean, Narukami started a Social Link with the guy- uh, girl, and forgot about her! How rude! The game’s climax against the Amano Sigiri was already climactic enough, but Izanami no Okami is where it’s really at. While I think the bullet shot against Yaldabaoth is more impactful in my eyes, the rather cool final clutch of your Tarot Card into a final f-you beam is pretty sick. If you’re wondering what Izanami’s deal is, well she’s been trying to cloud everyone from the truth. She thinks it’s better if everyone is ignorant to the truth and that’s where the Midnight Channel, the fog, and even the TV News symbolism comes into play. It’s kinda brushed off til the very end, but hey, makes sense, I guess.


But then there’s the ‘Persona 4 Golden’ content. So uh… yeah. Marie. She’s cute. I like her design. I liked using her in P4AU. Um… Oh yeah, she also has something to do with the fog and when she figures that out, she runs away and lets herself die so that the fog can be lifted. But not if the Investigation Team has anything to say about it, haha! I honestly can’t believe it. Like, I hear some of my friends say the Persona series is a ‘power of friendship’ series… and they’re not wrong about it, but I usually dismissed it because there was always a lot more to the Persona games that let me overlook the trope. But this? The IT just go and say to try this dangerous method that eradicates the one that’s causing the trouble instead of Marie herself, and it’s fine because they’re all friends. Trust in them. It’s so dull. Now to the game’s credit, I actually think Marie’s dungeon is the best in the game because of its gimmick: you lose half your SP after every battle. This seems bad, but you get items to help replenish SP each turn while in battle, and also some items that are used for the boss. But this isn’t story content. I should add that I don’t really mind Marie as a character. Very one-note, but I kinda like her. …Yeah, that’s all I got. Moving on.


Finally is ‘Persona 3’. You know, when I look at P3 and then look at the other modern Persona entries, P3 is probably the closest to feeling like a traditional JRPG. What I mean by this is that P3 doesn’t have an episodic structure - while P4 and P5 have arcs, P3 more or less has chapters split between things like Yuki joining S.E.E.S. and the team’s resolve after Shinji’s death. I think the pacing of the story - the whole game to be honest - is rather smooth. In no time, you’re told the events unfolding, introduced to the members of S.E.E.S., Tartarus, and once that’s over, you can begin doing your daily stuff alongside climbing Tartarus. And unlike the next two entries, cutscenes just play out on certain days, and they’re all important. It helps keep the pace up instead of having major story beats happen in massive chunks after a Full Moon comes. Not to say there isn’t massive sections of story, but those tend to come after something REALLY major occurs. I think my only major complaint about P3’s story is how team members just kinda join without much fanfare. I mean, I guess there doesn’t need to be, but I don’t know, it sorta feels hollow when the game’s just like ‘oh yeah, this person joined now’. Which is why I actually like that the movies added really cool introductory sequences for almost all of the S.E.E.S. members as they join. That’s honestly about it though because minus a few characters clearly getting a ton more love, I think this story is simply the best of the modern era. Oh yeah, also the optional Chidori lives thing, but yeah. Some of my reasons for my love of this story is already mentioned above. How the members of S.E.E.S. interact and the great amount of character development, but there’s a few other things I really enjoy about P3’s plot. First, the antagonists are very sneaky. I thought Adachi was good, but you really need to squint your eyes with Shuji Ikutsuki’s dialogue and certain events that play out in the story. It makes his reveal, surprising, but when you dive through all his dialogue you find the one very tiny slip up or thing that makes you go “how?”. For me, that moment was Chidori just letting herself into the dormitory. Though I will confess that Strega is kinda just there. They exist to fill an agenda. Next, is a bit of a continuation of the previous point, but… the theming. Throughout the game, story and Social Links, there’s an air of “what’s the point of living” or “living is suffering” or “what does living mean”. Most characters ask one of these questions in some form and I enjoy the conclusions they come to, even when they’re at death’s door. This goes back to the true antagonist, Nyx, who is only around because she came to the conclusion that humanity has a secret yearning for death, and as the end of the world draws near, there’s a fairly sizeable amount of people who’re suddenly going insane or joining death cults. But much like P4 and P5’s finale, you show off more of humanity’s nature and will to live, even if things are stacked against them. ‘Life and Death’ is not exactly a theme I feel strongly about in the same way as say, P5R’s 3rd Semester’s moral, but I have a strong affinity towards it. I think that seeing people find their own meaning to live, facing the fact that one day, it’ll just end, I think all that is very inspiring. And I think it’s something I’ll understand more as I grow older. Persona 3 made me realise this, even if I may have subconsciously agreed with it years before (I say as I stare at Touhou’s characters that are all practically immortal). The ending of P3 is one of the best endings I’ve ever seen in a video game. Everything the game was leading up to and it finishes with Yuki by the one that means so much to him, Aigis. And she’s finally explaining her reason for living. The scenery and music is perfect, it was the best send off. I nearly cried - although it didn’t destroy me like ‘Super Paper Mario’s ending, for example.


Before I finish off this segment, I should briefly bring up ‘Persona 3: The Answer’. So um, I’ve never played this for I played P3P. I have little to say about this other than I tend to forget it exists. What I do know is that S.E.E.S. didn’t really take Yuki’s death very well in the long run. Characters end up in a mini civil war as they fight between turning back time or letting them live on as is because not doing so would go against what they were striving for in the first place… as well as ruining the ending of P3. Actually, it was just Yukari that wanted Yuki to return so desperately, with Mitsuru joining her side because friends. Doesn’t make much sense. This is the only part of Yukari that I can agree on where people say “she’s a bitch”. Other than that, that’s all I know. I’m not particularly interested in playing it either, I heard it’s not fun due to the way it’s designed.


So yeah, it should be pretty clear by now: Persona 3’s story is the one for me. Great theming, pacing, the best core cast of characters, down to earth, any negatives I have are mostly nitpicks. P4 and P5 try to refine it, but I don’t think they beat it at all. My totem pole for best stories in the games will probably go like this: P3TJ > P5R3S > P5 > P4 > P4G > P3TA. I feel like I’ll gain a lot of enemies by putting Persona 4 so low comparatively, but this is simply how I feel about the game’s story.


OUTRO ~ Memories of You All…

Is it cringe and maybe too common to hear “Persona ?? Changed My Life”? Yeah, probably is, but I’d say the series did.


Persona 5 taught me to stand up for yourself. Royal taught me to pursue my own talents and not let other people directly or indirectly drag me down. It should also be said that Persona 5 taught me a lot about art and UI design.


Persona 4, though it didn’t teach me much in the moment, did remind me to make sure I never lose sight of my self.


And Persona 3 taught me how to live.


For this, I’ll treasure the experiences I had with each of these games. It was great to finally play all of them in some form, even if I had to play inferior versions on occasion (Portable).


Of course, the games are fun to play, even if some of their difficulty just breaks in half at some point in the adventure or something. But regardless, I think P4’s is the best. Too easy and in dire need of refinement, but I think it’s simply the most fun. Though I can understand why some might go for the simpler P4G style or even find joy in the tactics of P3/FES.


And this is where I shall end off my long journal. If you read this far down, then thanks. But otherwise…


Onwards to a better tomorrow!

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