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retphienix · 2 years

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Persona 5 Royal.

Hm.

I think even with the newform of post shortening I'll read-more this, so let me get a gist out of the way.

This easily became one of my favorite games. It's on the list, it's embedded in my mind, it's granted me interesting plot lines and characters and it's quickly given me something I'm happy to love.

There's the gist; And the elephant in the room is that I got a smile out of the mysterious glance at what appears to be Akechi in the background, that's fun.

Now to say.

Much.

I'll try to separate different thoughts with a header of sorts because this is gonna be a mess.

This game is honestly pretty incredible.

I feel like this is a weird way to start this out but, I didn't expect to so quickly play an RPG that so enraptured my mind and heart after DQ11.

I've played a ton of games that have touched me in various ways, but it's rare for me to play one that so thoroughly entrenches itself in the miasma of experiences that make up who I am; Just finds my core and sets up shop. Offers a mirror, offers challenges, offers a shoulder, and plenty more.

Playing a game like that isn't common; It's a matter of having something to say, or do, or show, and it's a big matter of personal bias.

It's just how art can hit ya, or miss entirely. Sometimes you find one that stops you in your tracks and you dwell on it for years after.

Despite playing a lot of games, I, and I assume most others, don't play games that hit that note too often.

It's rare.

I've played so many games I would happily recommend for being phenomenal in their own ways, but that list isn't fully comprised of titles like that.

When I played DQ11 I found myself with a story so dense with things I appreciate that it took over my mind for months. It's still left quite the impact, being a title that can easily bring a happy tear to my eye if I dwell on it too long as I find what they've told to be such a beautiful heroes' tale.

Persona 5 has hit that same deep place in my mind, and, in the grand scheme of things, so quickly after I just found a different title that did the same.

And this isn't by any means a ramble on how P5 is perfect; Far from it because that doesn't exist and because it was created by people- people aren't perfect- people don't make perfect things.

Just in the way of cultural differences and personal morals there are things in P5 that I simply believe weren't handled as well as they could have been, be that gay characters, flip flopping on whether sexual assault as a subject deserves respect or laughs, or the ways in which relationships with minors and adults are presented and treated.

While conversely at least some of these faults could be argued for by virtue of life itself not being perfect, but then it becomes a matter of what is your art's morality; What is it trying to say, and is it being presented because it's true to life, or because it's titillating, silly, or something a creator believes to be right.

I digress.

This is a ramble on how what P5 is is something extremely special to me. And an incomplete one at that, as I couldn't possibly revisit every important moment in this 236 hour (inaccurate*) long story on a post made at a whim at the end of said playthrough.

*= I was AFK a lot, and my gameplay included a lot of rendering video, it wasn't this long but my save sure was lol.

I don't (currently, maybe I should) keep notes of my playthroughs- the posts themselves are catalogues of my thoughts at each time. The finale post is more to sum up where my heart lands me, not to substitute a well rehearsed and scripted video essay.

I guess that makes this even less than an essay- it's just a ramble, lmao.

Let's start with the end because it's so fresh.

I'd say what I understand to be the base game ending (I'm assuming it's just the previous god going) was bombastic, exciting, and even had the bite of the metaverse disappearing and Mona potentially dying. I fucking adore that.

The ending of Royal is a lot more clean... and reminds me of something I already mentioned lmao.

Spoilers for DQ11 skip to next red text:

but both include a Perfect ending and a Broken But Hope Filled ending but inversely placed in the story.

DQ11 ends on the Perfect ending, with the weight of knowing you created the Broken But Hope Filled ending and effectively killed yourself out of that ending to create the perfect ending.

The point of it all being that you did the best you could for the world, then found a way to try to do even better for another cursed world (parallel timeline shenanigans), so you sacrificed the life you've fought for, and the relationships you've forged to 'try again'. The Perfect ending in this case IS perfect, just not for the Hero. They gave everything up for this as a sort of ultimate sacrifice.

P5R ends on the Broken But Hope Filled ending and you spent the last dungeon literally killing the Perfect ending because you refuse to give up the relationships you've forged and the meaning you find in the struggles you're lives have experienced.

I find that interesting. (continued but not spoilers anymore)

Royal's ending is bittersweet. We're saying goodbye (THAT SUCKS), the metaverse is (I believe) gone again- but that sting isn't as bad since it's already done that before, Akechi is 'dead' but he simply doesn't compare to Morgana who was a true friend through the entire game, and we gave up a utopia to get this.

The entire moral that lead us here is literally golden in my book- I appreciate the insistence that our experiences hold value, including the negative ones as we grow from them. But I think as far as ending on a bang or whimper it's a lot less flashy than the base ending seems to have been assuming assumptions assumingly on what that is lol.

Basically, I think base had a better ending, but Royal had more to say and what it had to say was very good in my book, it just then had to end and kinda went "Uh, then we ended, shit."

I still teared the hell up multiple times doing my Earthbound walk about in the post game. And I still wish desperately that I got to get closer with Yusuke and Haru.

AH I love all the damn characters so much.

I feel I've said it all on these fuckers, I love these dunces and they are the best. The party is one of the absolute best out there- it's truly a crew you WANT to be in, you want to go hang with these guys at a ramen place, you want to go hang at a library because one of them needs help with something, you want to go wander the shops with them, you just want to be friends with absolutely all of the party members (maybe not Akechi in the later game when he actually joins the party but that's a whole other complicated goof).

It's an accomplishment to go and create so many likable and befriendable characters- I love em.

And the side characters and confidants are just a fantastic eclectic group- I'm being so vague simply because due to how P5 is formatted, I'd argue 99% of my posts are just me talking about the characters because you GET to do all these things with them. You GET to go to the movies and study and hang at the baths- so I've said all there is, I'm sure.

But I love them. <3

Another thing I've talked plenty on already but is worth mentioning in this finale post is that fantastic gameplay

I literally can't expand on it much in one post so I'll leave it simple.

It's flashy, it's EXTREMELY involved, it's combo heavy in a fantastic way (and with multiple avenues for combos!), and the worst I can say about it is that on Normal difficulty it became exploitable pretty early on and didn't really challenge directly much until the end, but, difficulty is not the end all of the gameplay's quality.

You want to feel involved and challenged in *some* way (if not direct difficulty), and I felt both of those things- just without much risk of failure. Arguably- ARGUABLY- that's damn near perfect. But for preference, I'd have preferred a slightly harder time- more HP on enemies and more risk of losing- but this isn't a complaint- it's a recognition that I will probably highly enjoy replaying on a harder difficulty :)

Simplifying the entirety of the gameplay to combat would be a crime though because this game was also half life sim, and quite an enthralling one at that. Hell, half isn't enough, MOST of this game was life sim, and I loved it so much more than I thought I would.

It also kinda screwed me a bit because I LOVE reading everything I have access to at any given moment.... and this meant a metric ton of reading every day, sometimes accomplishing next to nothing.

You could easily do all the things I did in this game in like 10 hours of gameplay, but it took me 23 times that because I would regularly take trips EVERYWHERE to seek out new NPC dialogue that added nothing to the game itself but was quintessential to my experience.

Loved it.

And before I close for good on this playthrough, I want to just speak some appreciation towards some of the morals and themes in here.

Not all, I'm stupid (for one), and tired (another), and some fucked up third thing as well so just a couple that I feel like talking about.

For one, RIDICULOUSLY big fan of the personal justice angle. It lent itself to so many narratives about the problems with the world from the angle of these things being normalized, expected, or accepted by society at large- but that doesn't mean we should accept them and stop trying to make things better.

It's just a solid theme to build around and it tied itself to the motivations of our characters so damn well with many of them being upset at how Adults handle the world or mistreat others and seeking to make things better.

Also, if the like 8 times I brought it up didn't make it clear, a big fan of the strength of kindness in the Akechi - Joker storyline. It's really a show of how Joker's refusal to turn his back on others, even people as, to be frank, shit as Akechi with his murder fun time nonsense, is literally what grants Akechi his moment of redemption.

That murder kid really tried to turn self sacrifice into a selfish move for personal revenge, and Joker's refusal to be insincere to him left Akechi stunned as his motivations were changed in real time right before he died- that's just a fun narrative, man.

And while I think it made the stakes feel less "scary" than the prior chapter, I really do enjoy how Maruki was our final baddie since he's quite literally a goodie.

It offered a completely different angle to challenge the PT's morals and allowed us to end on a narrative about the worth of our whole life experience rather than a narrative on defeating evil, it was honestly a really good choice in my book.

And I suppose that wraps up this mindless ramble.

To close I just want to say, I fuckin' love this game. It's a favorite now, as I've said.

I'd also like to say I'm surprised that getting to the post game wasn't as demanding as I was initially lead to believe.

I had been lead to believe, since launch of Royal, that this game was some weird "Do it perfectly or you're fucked" kind of game.

I avoided playing Royal for YEARS, because I thought I'd HAVE to shove a guide down my throat in order to experience half the game.

But as it turns out the Royal content is rather short, all things considered. And the requirements are MILES less intense than I was lead to believe- like- MILES. I thought you needed all confidants or else, like, it's not that hard lol.

Getting a perfect run on a blind run is a bit rough, but even that isn't remotely out of the cards if my playthrough is anything to go by.

And on whether / when I'll play more; Now that I've seen the credits, I'm not sure.

This playthrough was.... strange for me. When I pick a game up for the blog I usually stay pretty consistent with it. I've had flubs here and there over the years, but this might be the single most disjointed playthrough I've ever done- with months of no updates multiple times throughout just because of where I was outside of playing.

But because of this, I've basically been playing this game for 8 months. That's a long time to be on one single player game that I think a few weeks coulda done.

Kinda want something else. But my desire to play through on a harder difficulty, on NG+, and to get a perfect end to my playthrough with all confidants maxed remain.

Part of me wants to just jump right back in- especially since very very little of it would "need" (I do this for fun lol) to be blogged about in the first place, but a lot of me wants to sit this on the shelf and come back later in life.

And a lot of me also worries that doing that might table it too long, as I table many things and then decide new experiences trump them.

This game has the benefit of being one of my all time favorites now, so it's less likely, but I mean. FFT is an all time favorite. Doing modded runs of that for the blog has been backlogged for years. I don't want to put replaying P5R off that long at all.

But enough idle worrying in my game diary.

I am going to play something else for a while. That's my current plan. Mostly because that whole mishap with myself that caused this playthrough to be so disjointed is very much still a struggle- so I don't want to dive into a full new playthrough that's just as disjointed.

I might set a date for myself; Come back in a year's time perhaps. I have nothing set in stone. But I want to replay this. Harder difficulty, NG+, perfect confidants. I want that.

We'll find out when.

In the mean time I'm going to bask in the post-game joy of this phenomenal title.

I'm grateful for the opportunity.

And thank you to all who saw fit to interact through this playthrough- I doubt many would get this far into this nonsense post to see said thanks, but I'm sending that out there into the world all the same.

This was a ridiculously positive gaming experience in terms of the game, and a pleasure to chat with some fans.

Everyone, have a good one :)

#Persona #Persona 5 #P5 #P5R #Persona 5 Royal #RetPlays

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