The cast of Persona 5 continues to trek into new genres, and does competently in them. In this case it doesn't go much further than competent though.
Maybe it's just that I'm not a fan of the genre (I've played very few of them) but this game felt very bare bones compared to the main Persona 5, or even Strikers. When you're not playing the levels you're either watching cutscenes (and I'll talk about that soon), fusing personas or exploring the skill trees. The only real break from the main campaign comes from the handful of side-quests you get. There's only about 10-15 of them in the whole game, but they have much tighter restrictions than the main game. However they very rarely actually deviate from the basic formula of "kill all enemies" or "get to the end of the level". The ones that make you kill everyone in 1 turn are more like puzzles though, so I guess it's technically different. The one standout was when you had to push a box to the end goal (by characters hitting it). It was a fun change of pace, but it also stands out just because of how incredibly rare a change in the 2 basic mission types are.
Even when it comes to unique enemies, I can think of only 1 level that had a one-off enemy that wasn't a boss, which was the one in the 2nd Kingdom that created clones of itself and you had to find the right copy. I don't understand why they didn't base more levels on gimmick enemies like that, it was easily a highlight.
Enemy variety itself only really stopped at being acceptable. They get introduced at a weirdly paced rate, it feels like a very slow drip feed in the first 2 Kingdom's, then suddenly we get a lot at the end of the second and through the third, before the fourth Kingdom generally acts as a "here's everything you've fought before, but harder. Including bosses". I don't think it introduced any new ones, but I may be wrong.
The level design was usually just some pocket dimension made of lego bricks to make use of whatever abilities the Phantom Thieves had, it was rare that it felt like it actually took place in any kind of natural location. Those were some of my favourite levels though, like the wedding hall where you had to weave between tables to make it to the end.
Anyway what really made the game drag was just how much dialogue there was. And I get it's a Persona game so it's going to have dialogue, but at least the other genres allowed for long play sessions between the long cutscenes, here it's a 20 minute cutscene followed by 5 minutes of gameplay followed by another 20 minute cutscene. So much of the dialogue is so superfluous too, and many points are repeated ad nauseum. They also keep the option to let the player pick between 3 dialogue options when Joker needs to respond, except with no confidants to increase these are all completely redundant with maybe the following line being a tiny bit different. There's only 2 times I think it had a more notable change - the one with the wedding fantasies of course, and the biggest one when you decide which group to go with in the second Kingdom, which of course determines which scene you see.
On the plus side, when the game isn't doing it's dialogue through cardboard cutouts with speech bubbles, some of the cutscenes are pretty cool to watch. The music of course is up to classic Persona 5 standards. The characters are the ones you (presumably) know and love - seriously if you didn't already play Persona 5, don't play this because they do nothing to catch you up.
So yeah, the game itself is fine. But it's also very bare minimum with only the odd idea that feels fresh in the repetitive locations and enemy types. But it's dragged down further by overly padded writing.
Maybe it's just that I'm not a fan of the genre (I've played very few of them) but this game felt very bare bones compared to the main Persona 5, or even Strikers. When you're not playing the levels you're either watching cutscenes (and I'll talk about that soon), fusing personas or exploring the skill trees. The only real break from the main campaign comes from the handful of side-quests you get. There's only about 10-15 of them in the whole game, but they have much tighter restrictions than the main game. However they very rarely actually deviate from the basic formula of "kill all enemies" or "get to the end of the level". The ones that make you kill everyone in 1 turn are more like puzzles though, so I guess it's technically different. The one standout was when you had to push a box to the end goal (by characters hitting it). It was a fun change of pace, but it also stands out just because of how incredibly rare a change in the 2 basic mission types are.
Even when it comes to unique enemies, I can think of only 1 level that had a one-off enemy that wasn't a boss, which was the one in the 2nd Kingdom that created clones of itself and you had to find the right copy. I don't understand why they didn't base more levels on gimmick enemies like that, it was easily a highlight.
Enemy variety itself only really stopped at being acceptable. They get introduced at a weirdly paced rate, it feels like a very slow drip feed in the first 2 Kingdom's, then suddenly we get a lot at the end of the second and through the third, before the fourth Kingdom generally acts as a "here's everything you've fought before, but harder. Including bosses". I don't think it introduced any new ones, but I may be wrong.
The level design was usually just some pocket dimension made of lego bricks to make use of whatever abilities the Phantom Thieves had, it was rare that it felt like it actually took place in any kind of natural location. Those were some of my favourite levels though, like the wedding hall where you had to weave between tables to make it to the end.
Anyway what really made the game drag was just how much dialogue there was. And I get it's a Persona game so it's going to have dialogue, but at least the other genres allowed for long play sessions between the long cutscenes, here it's a 20 minute cutscene followed by 5 minutes of gameplay followed by another 20 minute cutscene. So much of the dialogue is so superfluous too, and many points are repeated ad nauseum. They also keep the option to let the player pick between 3 dialogue options when Joker needs to respond, except with no confidants to increase these are all completely redundant with maybe the following line being a tiny bit different. There's only 2 times I think it had a more notable change - the one with the wedding fantasies of course, and the biggest one when you decide which group to go with in the second Kingdom, which of course determines which scene you see.
On the plus side, when the game isn't doing it's dialogue through cardboard cutouts with speech bubbles, some of the cutscenes are pretty cool to watch. The music of course is up to classic Persona 5 standards. The characters are the ones you (presumably) know and love - seriously if you didn't already play Persona 5, don't play this because they do nothing to catch you up.
So yeah, the game itself is fine. But it's also very bare minimum with only the odd idea that feels fresh in the repetitive locations and enemy types. But it's dragged down further by overly padded writing.
2 Comments
@Aecease
It's much much shorter than the main RPG games at least. I can't remember how long Strikers was, but I definitely think this one is shorter than that. It took me about ~25 hours to do as much as I could in a first playthrough, and then 5 more hours to do a NG+ so I could get the platinum. If you don't go for 100% completion I could imagine it being about 15-20 hours.
It's much much shorter than the main RPG games at least. I can't remember how long Strikers was, but I definitely think this one is shorter than that. It took me about ~25 hours to do as much as I could in a first playthrough, and then 5 more hours to do a NG+ so I could get the platinum. If you don't go for 100% completion I could imagine it being about 15-20 hours.
Aecease
5 months ago