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Persona 5 discussion - please use spoiler tags!
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Topic Started: Apr 1 2017, 02:22 PM (690 Views)
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Reach
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Apr 1 2017, 02:22 PM
Post #1
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[uncomfortable whimpering]
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After almost a decade since Persona 4, four years since the initial announcement, three years of delays, and seven months since the Japanese release, Persona 5 has almost finally, finally released worldwide in English. The game has obviously been hotly-anticipated by most of the forum, so it's only fair to set up a thread to actually discuss the game now that it's nearly graced our shores.
Discuss anything and everything related to the main story here. That includes plot revelations, dungeons, battle and fusion tactics, and anything else that sticks in your mind. However, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that Persona, being such a story-driven game, is highly susceptible to spoilers. To prevent this, please include some liberal use of spoiler tags for anything and everything. The simplest way to do this is to include the in-game calendar date on your spoiler tags, as such:
April 4th Persona 5 releases! ...and so on for everything else. This approach is an easy way of preventing others from becoming spoiled - if you're not yet that far in the game, just don't click the spoiler tag.
Also, please be wary of spoiling optional side content, like sidequests, secret Fusions, and the Confidant system. It's not quite as simple to spoiler tag these, so please do so in a way that’s vague enough so as to not spoil the surprise for others.
Beyond that, happy thieving! It's time for hype.
Edited by Reach, Apr 4 2017, 08:32 PM.
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Reach
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Apr 5 2017, 05:42 PM
Post #2
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[uncomfortable whimpering]
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Some assorted thoughts on the game's first story arc:
May 1st Jesus, I was not expecting the game to get this heavy this fast. This is a lot more personal than the plots of P3 and 4, and Kamoshida makes my skin fucking crawl in a way that even Persona 4's Killer didn't. If the game wanted me to feel satisfaction in taking him down, then mission accomplished.
Ryuji is fantastic. He's incredibly entertaining, and a great contrast to Joker's silen protagonist-stoicism. His voice work is phenomenal - the dub is pretty good in general so far, but Max Mittelman is really, really bringing his A-game with Ryuji - and it adds a lot of emotion and anger to his character.
Ann and Ryuji's awakenings were really enjoyable scenes. It's great to see them actually kicking ass right after they get their Personas like the protagonists and Fuuka, instead of the P4 method where they got their Personas after the super personal boss fight.
The soundtrack is a lot more melancholy than I was expecting - not that that's at all a bad thing. I really miss the goofy English vocals from 3 and 4's overworld themes, though, but otherwise I'm digging the soundtrack. Meguro shines as always. Overall, I'm adoring the game so far.
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Wagoo
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Apr 5 2017, 06:15 PM
Post #3
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Response to Reach Listen when you head back to Leblanc in the evenings. One of the tracks gets a reprise with lyrics added in then. Of course, it's still pretty melancholic, but it's still there.
I love how Atlus actually went straight for the jugular regarding societal issues in their country. The whole police brutality bit at the start is criticizing how Japanese police get such a high confession rate; showing them doing whatever it takes to hurry up and get it over with (including torture!) is straight up political commentary.
Of course, that says nothing on how the protagonist ends up in Tokyo in the first place. Apparently, according to the writers of Persona 5, preventing a sexual assault will land you getting arrested, dumped with a criminal record, expelled from your school, and shooed off by your parents to basically live in an attic by a man who clearly wants to keep you out of his mind at the start. Of course, since the cultural norm is that you shouldn't bother older people and politicians based on seniority alone, the protagonist is ergo in the wrong, to say nothing of Shido's blatant corruption, classism, and nationalistic tendencies pretty much meaning he's the last person you want to respect. But, norms say you should kowtow to him, and with the shame, the protag's parents ship him off with a stranger.
Really, you can hardly blame how the protagonist decides brainwashing people is a smart move.
Edited by Wagoo, Apr 5 2017, 08:15 PM.
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The One True Nobody
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Apr 5 2017, 07:04 PM
Post #4
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
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Response to Wagoo - with minor spoilers The moral implications of what the Phantom Thieves are doing is kind of a big deal in the plot, though, considering the player is basically not allowed to decide to follow through on the plan until the absolute worst-case scenario has happened, all three students in the party have a personal reason to oppose Kamoshida, and Ryuji's confrontation with Kamoshida backs him and the protag into a corner. The deadlines in this game, rather than being nebulous "someone will die soon" weather patterns or based on lunar phases, are there to remind you that there is a unique, specific real-world circumstance that the players must act in time to prevent, on top of pursuing their agreed-upon sense of justice, made worse by the knowledge that it's something other real-world people could prevent if society were working the way it was meant to.
Of course, that doesn't make it something truly justifiable. It exists in a very clear moral gray area, along with every other thing about the Persona-users in this game (including the more cynical give-and-take "Confidants" versus the idealized power-of-friendship "Social Links" of previous games) and the majority of the world around them as presented through the story. The theme of "cognition" is a very important one here: the game is about how people see the world and how those worldviews come into violent conflict. A natural negative progression of this (in the real world) might begin with an individual not unlike Kamoshida turning a teenager not unlike the protag or his friends against authority figures through actions that breed mistrust, which inspires such a youth toward actions that wouldn't likely be "approved of" in polite society but seem more important than that approval. It's a form of social self-destruction that some authority figures (or people with a very thoughtless take on a law-and-order worldview) tend to underestimate when they put too much pressure on the young and not enough on their own fellow adults to follow the laws and be good citizens.
The upshot in this scenario is that while the Persona-users in this story may be the heroes, they are not necessary correct in their methods or priorities; they're at best debatably the lesser of two evils. "Brainwashing" Kamoshida (funny you use that word, since "Charm" has been renamed "Brainwash" for this game) might seem morally bankrupt at first glance, but it was an extreme to which the protag and his teammates were pushed to by an equally extreme circumstance that hit them all like a truck made of tragedy and cruelty. It's easy to call it wrong, but it's also easy to empathize, and that's what makes a "chaotic good lawbreaker" type character really go.
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Reach
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Apr 7 2017, 07:41 AM
Post #5
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[uncomfortable whimpering]
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May 5th I'm curious - what did everyone name the crew?
I liked the playing card motif of the Joker name, so I came up with "Stacked Deck".
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The One True Nobody
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Apr 7 2017, 03:55 PM
Post #6
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
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Response to Reach I named them after the commentary channel I work with on YouTube: "BrainScratch."
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Wagoo
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Apr 7 2017, 04:45 PM
Post #7
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Regarding Reach's Topic: Come on, guys. Nobody has thought of calling yourselves 'Devil Busters?'
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FirebreathFishslap
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Apr 7 2017, 08:25 PM
Post #8
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I'm the best! I'm the king of me! I'm gonna eat chips out of the garbage!
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In response to Reach I just used the default, because I'm amazingly boring and couldn't come up with one at the time.
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Super Dog Coin
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Apr 10 2017, 03:53 PM
Post #9
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Watch me Swooce
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Game play
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Wagoo
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Apr 10 2017, 07:01 PM
Post #10
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Response to SDC Honestly, looking through the people streaming at various difficulties, even on easy doing a max run, it's still really hard to get money in P5. It wouldn't surprise me if it's a bit of intentional gameplay and story integration; one mention of a criminal record of any sort is more than enough to keep you from making any sort of meaningful money, and most of the work is menial yet grueling, such as Triple 7s (7-Eleven) and fast food, or pretty shady and don't necessarily result in money (Death's Confidant). Yu Narukami was in much better standing to make money both legitimately and without going apeshit inside Carl Jung's wild ride than Joker ever is.
Dang, now I hope in the inevitable spinoffs where the Phantom Thieves interact with the Shadow Operatives, the money situation is brought up.
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