Having come to this game following Persona 5 Royal, which was one of the first true narrative games and the first ever JRPG I played, I am perhaps biased when I say that this isn't quite as good. However, it's still, largely, a tremendously entertaining 100+ hour playthrough, and once again, I know I'll come back to it. I'll want to re-experience the world of Inaba, which has a very different vibe and pace to the Tokyo of P5R, hang out with (most of) the cast again, explore different angles on the story, and do the many things I didn't entirely figure out.
On the plus side of the game, the story is great fun with its mix of the darkness of its murder mystery, the characters you get genuinely attached to and quite a few very silly moments. The social links with your party members really develop them as characters, from a solid starting point in the background to the dungeons that feature them.
The gameplay loop remains satisfying, fusing personas, figuring out enemies and their weaknesses, ranking up your party and deciding who you're taking into a dungeon with you is always something you need to consider (I almost always stuck with an all female party, bar the MC, because Chie and Yukiko, in particular, became stupidly powerful).
Though the dungeons are a bit samey to progress through, I took that as more indicative of the limitations of the system this was initially designed for, and at least each dungeon felt individualised to the character who was its focus.
On the downside, great as the characterisation often is, I wish the game had the courage to follow through on some of its initial ideas. The depiction of the second main dungeon boss is ROUGH, but immediately snatching back what had seemed a major part of their identity feels tone deaf even for when the game initially released, and the same goes for another character that could have been extremely groundbreaking had the game followed through. However, both these characters still ended up among my favourites in the game, despite these issues.
Persona 5 clearly built on everything that worked about this game, but those bits that do work are every bit its equal, and the bits that don't are minor, and hardly take away from a fun and involving time.
On the plus side of the game, the story is great fun with its mix of the darkness of its murder mystery, the characters you get genuinely attached to and quite a few very silly moments. The social links with your party members really develop them as characters, from a solid starting point in the background to the dungeons that feature them.
The gameplay loop remains satisfying, fusing personas, figuring out enemies and their weaknesses, ranking up your party and deciding who you're taking into a dungeon with you is always something you need to consider (I almost always stuck with an all female party, bar the MC, because Chie and Yukiko, in particular, became stupidly powerful).
Though the dungeons are a bit samey to progress through, I took that as more indicative of the limitations of the system this was initially designed for, and at least each dungeon felt individualised to the character who was its focus.
On the downside, great as the characterisation often is, I wish the game had the courage to follow through on some of its initial ideas. The depiction of the second main dungeon boss is ROUGH, but immediately snatching back what had seemed a major part of their identity feels tone deaf even for when the game initially released, and the same goes for another character that could have been extremely groundbreaking had the game followed through. However, both these characters still ended up among my favourites in the game, despite these issues.
Persona 5 clearly built on everything that worked about this game, but those bits that do work are every bit its equal, and the bits that don't are minor, and hardly take away from a fun and involving time.