started playing Persona 5 Royal after finding out i accidentally bought Persona 5 regular (i was already about 4 hours into Persona 5 on merciless and had stopped at the shop where you buy stuff for the first time after the first dungeon when i found this out) instead of Royal and jesus fucking christ, i forgot how slow this game's opening is it's like two hours long before you actually even get into the game, just like an hour of (really well made!) animated scenes and cutscenes with minor (pretty pointless) sections of walking to locations before you even get to the actual school portion, which takes another fucking hour to really get going like, oh my god, this game does not understand what the word pacing means. every scene goes on for like 10 fucking minutes longer than it has to, it's a lot of pointless (attempts at) building intrigue which don't work because you're just being bombarded with them back to back and have no idea what the status quo is for any of it to have really any impact! i know it's like a 100-hour RPG or whatever but good god, just drop me into the school instead with a lore dump and let me PLAY THE FUCKING GAME ALREADY.

like it's truly nonstop, it's just going from establishing one thing after another like oh we're a stylish thief to oh we're fighting monsters to oh we have a friend to oh we were captured by pigs to oh we were betrayed to oh police brutality to oh we have a lawyer(?) to oh we stole someone's heart to oh someone's speaking to us from another realm(?) to oh we're back in time to oh cars keep crashing randomly to oh we were sued by somebody trying to SA someone to oh there's a weird app on my phone that somehow slowed down time to oh we were sent away by the courts and our family to oh we're living above a restaurant to oh we are talking to a guy in a dream who is talking about the world being ruined like it's NON FUCKING STOP. AND THE JOKE IS YOU CAN'T REMOVE ANYTHING WITHOUT A COMPLETE REWRITE OF THE OPENING OR A STRUCTURAL OVERHAUL OR 30 MINUTES OF NONSTOP TUTORIALS OR JUST AN ENDLESSLY LONG PARAGRAPH TYPING ALL THIS LORE OUT INSTEAD OF HAVING CHARACTERS SAY IT. like the casino scene is necessary to introduce you to context sensitive actions and what combat will look like, so you can't start in the interrogation room or start with you getting captured, the interrogation scene room is necessary to establish that it's a flashback and for you to select your name and shit and to establish that you're talking to someone and a lawyer and that you're a famous criminal and to establish that this larger spirit world exists and that your character has amnesia(?), you can't remove the going to the dude's house bc it's necessary to get you acquainted to the map and neighborhood and daily routine, you can't remove the scene with the app bc it becomes a running theme soon, like the opening HAS to be this way bc otherwise you'd overwhelm every player, even ones as diligent as me and as enthusiastic about playing in menus as outside of them, and you have to dole out the story in this way because there's so many concepts they don't expect you to know and that they have to effectively and efficiently introduce to you so that the rest of the game isn't constantly bogged down in pausing every ten seconds (though somehow i get the feeling it still will) to explain shit to you your character should already know like it's maddening bc it HAS to be this way but also it kinda doesn't.

anyway, i did enjoy the new fight in the opening that wasn't there in the original, definitely does a lot for building intrigue and making the identity of the person who apparently turned us in even more suspect since we have more of a connection with one of them because we fight next to her, which makes me think it's almost guaranteed to be that person whenever the reveal happens but anyway. i'm just like really exhausted at how slow this opening is, even though i know why it is this way. and how structurally they are fucking trying their best to be effective and efficient while setting and tone and a mood and an atmosphere instead of just having you read about it in a text box. i kinda can't stand all the vague shit in the dialogue tho, it's too much intrigue building crammed into a very small space and after a point you just start spacing out or ignoring the intrigue bc you know you're not gonna get answers for quite a while.