Persona 5: The 100th hour review

CONTAINS MINOR SPOILER FOR PERSONA 3, 4, and 5!!!

My palms are sweaty, it's been hours since I first started running around the furthermost floor on Tartarus, reached the penultimate level and back again, grinding every enemy into dust while collecting their items through stealing and/or by the grace of RNG dropping them, since the fatigue system was removed I can do some infinite powerleveling and farming in here without wasting my SP, I don't know about my personas, will they be enough for tomorrow? I know tomorrow in-game I will be facing some serious battle, probably a phase-chained one without the chance of saving and/or recovering between them, I don't know, I'm just stockpiling things and leveling everyone before I got sleepy in real world, one thing I know that tomorrow is the last boss time

In persona 3, the first entry in the franchise who utilizes the social-life-simulation (or by japanese standard: dating simulation a.k.a dating sim) you are a highschooler with double life as a demon hunter at night, aided by personas a.k.a your 'real selves' you punch through days splitting your time between studies, hanging out with friends, dating, polishing your social skill and destroying forces of evil (or take them to aid you in the process), tied with the story every month there are foreshadowing about your next big baddie, giving you 'deadlines' to be considered in your time juggling between romancing a girl or collecting drop money for that fine battle axe.

Neat,

The formula proved success, persona 4 and 5 followed that roadmap while polishing it to be more rewarding and satisfying in every other way. The latest entry, persona 5 make it so it was more rewarding on every activity you choose to 'build' your character, your hierarchical social links now have traits that can help you in battle and/or activities although your friend characters wasn't go as explored deep in persona 3 and 4 (except Morgana) but they just quirky enough to add to your emotions. The battle tailored with the same strategy used in persona games which revolved around enemy weaknesses and how much you can exploit it, the boss battle in persona 5 however is not another turn based hack and slash but utilizes some special moves and strategy, like sending one of your teammates to weaken a boss or a minion. Unfortunately it wasn't fully explored in later bosses because whether you're too overleveled for them or the strategy was just another waiting games, and then you just beat the boss to death before it did the same to you anyway, harder difficulty is easily circumvented by cultivating your teammates and cheesing and grinding your way through encounters

Persona series as a spin off from Megaten series is essentially always a dungeon crawler so the battle have to be interesting enough to keep you looking forward to it, all the activities you do beside dungeon deep diving is solely purposed to help you in that area (beating enemy to pulp or extorting money/items from them) persona 5 took one thing right by keep SP restoring items a rarity and available as crafted goods so even when you're cheesing your way through a dungeon (or a palace in their terms) you're still in danger of running out SP and limiting your moves, guns now have bullets which only replenished when you exit the said palaces and since you can't survive with physical attacks alone the feeling of dread is always with you, until a certain point on the story anyway, similar to the lifting of fatigue system on the later days of persona 3, fortunately the tracks still composed by Shoji Meguro which is provide great tunes during dungeon exploring and battles. Story in persona series are always revolving around the player character, about their close friends, enemies, rivals, local government and business, and just ordinary folks trying to live their way from day to day basis (pictured in day to day activities on the game), the main story was complemented by side stories about the player's companions adding depth to emotional scenes and reveal some unexpected twist (usually dark) that made you want to think, perhaps the real enemy is not a shady-ass government/global business venture/questionable research megacorp, but the way ordinary people treat other ordinary people, daily, weekly, until it break down others and culminating in conflict and submission, or make an unexpected twist towards scarred adaptability and partial acceptance. The push'n pull of human emotion which can not be solved just by dungeon delving and defeating monsters.

We're dealing with societal issues while accompanied by anthromorphic cats, awesome!

 

Speaking of dread feelings, Persona 5 probably good enough to feed your fear of too much dungeon delving, however, they failed to infuse that fear to you for the endgame story, you see in persona 3 a month from the endgame the story revealed itself and cast you that dreaded feelings over the next in-game month while you still schooling and shooting arcades, at the night before the D-day (and every other night if you prefer it) you will be out there in the dungeons recruting personas, fusing, stealing items, look for rare monsters, amassing wealth and stockpiling recovery item, and leveling things up, all for the sake because you know, tomorrow (probably) will not last. I apparently made mistake by playing persona 4 golden rather than the original version which cast similar feeling to persona 3 towards endgame (persona 4 original however is not, based on what I read). In persona 5 the dreaded feelings is lost towards endgame because the story forced you, unexpectedly, thrust your ass to the last dungeon because of some  (bleh) 'circumstances' in the real world, suddenly you have no closure at all for your all activities and social links because you lost sense of time due to simultaneous cutscenes that push you towards this circumstances, worst of all these cutscenes sometimes took all your free day leaving you without nothing to do at night (except sleep and advances your day). I have several loose ends in my soc link before the 'dreaded cutscene marathons' (haha) leaving several my buddy's persona unevolved and one memento request (which will be a breeze in my current level). When I suddenly thrusted in the 'final' dungeon I got so angry because I don't know which save I can load to make up for this day to day fiasco, then I just powered through it for a whole real world day, just grinding and fusing, and collecting things, back to entrance, refresh, repeat and as a result I bagged the final boss battle in two tries (one didn't go through because I misclick during a crucial moment, talk about sweaty hand), however epic the boss fight is and the tear-jerking end, the game add salt to my wounds by adding personal cutscenes after the boss fight, it's like a kinda 'haha you failed to raise this guy persona so he didn't appear on this scene' I ONLY NEED ONE MORE STAR AND ONE MORE DAY YOU JERK )(&(^%^%%!^&#$!*^!!!!!!!

Pictured: Jerk

I fell asleep during the end credits, fortunately at the day of my dungeon marathon my two year old is sleeping early so I have more time to finish the game

Oh look, now there's a new game+ which carried your initial persona, level, social and traits level, and items so I planned to do just so just to complete my social links loose ends (after I finished FFXIV's final story arc) , but it still a dick move Atlus/Sega, wasting days by adding cutscenes after a cool penultimate job, culminating in shoving everyone to a no exit dungeon, it's not okay, very very not okay.