A stylish game with and incredible artistic direction and soundtrack.
The story is good enough, but it really feels like It was written by an angry, edgy teen. The whole "All adults bad, society bad" felt cringe to me when I was barely 16, and playing the game again as a 21 years old dude just made me feel the same.
Persona 4, the game that was criticized for being too "happy" and "friendly", ironically had a much more mature plot and message.

My biggest complaint with the game is the heavy walls of text you have to go through to actually play the game.
I appreciate a good story, but Persona 5 feels more like an interactive visual novel with some JRPG elements put here and there just to make you feel like you're actually playing the game like a classic Megami Tensei. The previois titles in the Persona series were also heavily text-based, but not nearly as much as this one.
After 15 hours of game I was barely at level 14 and had been in Mementos (the game secondary dungeon) only once, without counting the tutorial.
Talking about tutorials, I feel like the game tends to guide the player too much. The game is already ridicolousy easy (to the point where I could just put Auto Battle on for any enemy, despite playing in Hard mode) and it refuses to let you think without Morgana or some other character guiding you in any situation: the dungeons were cool, but ultimately felt not much more interactive than Persona 4 randomly generated ones, since any puzzle's answer was handled to you before you could even try to solve them alone.
I mean, how can you make a character say the puzzle's solution in the finale dungeon? Just don't put the puzzle in there, at this point.

The narrative was really strong at the beginning, but became stagnant After the second Palace.
Luckily, It became interesting again towards the end, but the emding felt rushed and inconclusive.

Overall, I enjoyed Persona 5 and I think it's probably one of the most interesting experience for anyone who loves a good visual novel/JRPG, a game with a strong identity and clearly a lot of love put into it.
But if you're looking for a challenging game or are not fan of reading for literally HOURS just characters talking about the same things over and over and over, then this game probably isn't for you.

Reviewed on Apr 24, 2024


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