Persona 5 released to the world in April of 2017. It was released to an uproar of praise, from critics and players alike. This is despite other heavy-hitters like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn releasing around the same time. Additionally, the shonen anime style is in no short supply these days. However, Atlus is not known for being a slip-shod or lazy developer. Persona 5 marks the second major Persona game to be a hit in the West, but P5 in particular reached a broader audience than past entries, pulling in fans from places like South America! Joker's later appearance in Super Smash Bros Ultimate via DLC practically confirms Persona 5's place in gaming history as one of The Greats.

That said, I am writing this review in 2024, after P5 Royal, P5 Strikers, Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, P5 Tactica, and P5 Dancing in Starlight have all come out. Some are side-stories, but some are soft prequels or sequels, so if JRPGs aren't your thing, Persona 5 has a few other genres that it shows up in. This review will focus exclusively on the base Persona 5, for Playstation 3. This means I won't be addressing the new content in Royal, which is a remix or director's cut of sorts.

Initial Impressions

From the beginning of the game, Persona 5 hits you in its intro with sick urban shots and acrobatic dancing to bass-heavy jazz music. This ain't your typical JRPG with wizards and slimes! Although yes, they are sort of there in the game. :)

The plot begins with the main character encountering a man harassing a woman, stopping him, and later being sued for assault in his defense of the woman. During the altercation, the harassing man makes it clear he is socially powerful and will not let the woman tell the truth. This results in your character's arrest. As punishment, your character is to go to a different school under the care of a man named Sojiro until your probation is over.

So, you did the right thing and defended someone, but an adult misusing their power damaged your life for stopping their abuse. This sets the stage for the vast majority of the game. As you make new friends throughout the story, you also encounter numerous situations and problems that people are dealing with. The core theme is innocent people being taken advantage of by those with power over others in some capacity or another, be it emotional, financial, or political power.

Soon after settling into school, your character wakes up in a dream to a jail cell and a man named Igor tells him he must carry out tasks for his "rehabilitation", if he can muster the power to carry it out. The power of the Fool Arcana unlocks soon after, and you awaken as Joker, the Phantom Thief.

What do the Phantom Thieves do? Why, they steal the hearts of evil adults who misuse their influence of the world to harm others, of course! Seriously, using a mysterious smartphone app, a group of teenagers gains access to a "Metaverse" where they can steal the Treasure from a distorted mind's Palace, and reform evil-doers by compelling them to confess their crimes. Stealing the treasure of their distorted heart removes the distortion, and returns them to a reasonable person, but there have been rumors of mental shutdowns in Tokyo...

Given how much I've blabbed about the premise above, I don't want to spoil. There is a lot to read, see, and experience in this game. This game has an edgy anime style to its art, but the subject matter includes everything from financially abusing the elderly, to sexual harassment and extortion, art fraud, overbearing vicarious parents, exploitative CEOs, and corrupt politicians trying to steal an election. Between you and your rag-tag group of misfit teenagers, the group will witness or undergo many trials that will keep you playing "just another (in-game) day" for that new Persona or next story beat.

Visuals

The artistry on display in this game is absolutely top-of-class. Menus are the most dynamic and interesting I've seen them since Meteos on the Nintendo DS. Each and every menu of the game is a different layout and feel, with different arrangements of the signature red, black, and white motif for the game. Palettes and shapes change between various menus, such as Takemi's white, black, and blue palette, Iwai's white, green, and sometimes orange palette, and so on.

Each element of style in this game is clearly inspired from other things, but by combining it in the fashion that Atlus has, it takes on a flavor of its own. The edginess of ransom-note text and graffiti-style cursor boxes is great. The readability definitely takes a hit to pull this off, but after a while, you learn to adjust and not get too hung up on it.

Music and Sound Design

It goes beyond just the art, too. The music and its track names are references. Iwai's gun shop theme is "Layer Cake", which not only refers to the progression of the piece going through phases, but also how Iwai himself is a character with a rough layer on the outside and softer layers inside, like a cake. The game and its OST are filled with these little nods to their own designs. I can't talk enough about this game's music. I love everything from the infiltration music to battles, daytime in Tokyo, there is SO much music in this game to enjoy. There have been times I've just left the game sit so I could listen to the music, especially inside Futaba's Palace.

Sound design is often overlooked by a lot of reviewers, so I'd like to include that. Many of the confirmation sounds in the game sound like some sort of weaponry or gear you're preparing. It's a satisfying motif that I never got tired of, even after beating the game. Sound effects all sounded believable and were mixed really well. Nothing ever stood out as "that's way too loud" or "I can't hear that effect". Top notch sound, as I would expect from Atlus.

Design Inspired by Real Mythology

The references don't stop there. This game is FULL of references, to all sorts of occult and legendary stuff. Personas come in many different flavors, from things like Yamato-no-Orochi and Kushinada to Thor, Dionysus, Hanuman, Quetzalcoatl, and tons more. Most of the world's religions or pantheons are represented somewhere in Persona, with their own crazy Atlus flair.

The most present references are the two main themes: picaresque fiction where plucky, noble thieves overturn unjust societies, and tarot houses, known as Arcana in the Persona series. Each of the main characters gets a Persona representing a noble thief from some mythology or another. Think of characters from folklore like Robin Hood, Zorro, or Goemon. Each Persona and confidant also has an affinity with an Arcana, which influences various aspects of gameplay.

Personas in general tend to be references to existing cultural relics or legends from history, so each one you meet and add to your ranks is also a little archaeology lesson with the flavor text telling you what they were inspired by for the monster design. Really fun stuff for cultural nerds.

Gameplay

So, what about the game itself? Persona is a series typically about high school students fighting through some sort of supernatural event and saving the world. Part of the game is also a constant dichotomy between RPG mechanics and Social Simulator mechanics, which build on each other as you progress. Certain breakpoints come up throughout the game's calendar where you need to meet certain social criteria, or you cannot continue down a particular social pathway. Sometimes it's only a temporary block, but there are multiple hard blocks too, where you either have the Knowledge, Guts, Profiency, Kindness, or Charm to Do The Thing, or you don't.

That's why they give you a million save slots. You will save-scum a lot if you don't like missing things. Personally, I played through mostly naturally, and used YouTube videos to catch any cutscenes or moments I may have missed. Considering that it took me nearly 200 hours to play through it the first time, I think that's a better use of one's limited life.

Speaking of limited life, that's the name of the social game. Every day, your character gets one (and later two) actions to choose to do with their in-game calendar day. Since you're a high schooler, you have a school schedule to keep that you have no say in. The leftover time is when you choose to hang out with people, go out to Shibuya or other places to do business, get a job, and so on. There's always something to do in Persona 5, as long as Morgana isn't telling you to go to bed...

When you make your way back to the Metaverse, you can take as long as you want for that one visit. This is where the role-playing and dungeon-crawling of the game is. It's my favorite part of the game because it's also the most interactive and dynamic. In the story dungeons there is a ton to explore and uncover, with fun puzzles to break up the stealthy monotony. Some of the puzzles got a little obtuse, and one of the later ones really overstayed its welcome, but overall I would say each major puzzle mechanic is interesting and compelling long enough for it to be a fun distraction between grinding.

While you're out hunting Shadows, sometimes you'll corner them after smackin' a weakness or two, and they'll beg for forgiveness. When you corner enemies, you have the options to take their money, an item, or recruit them to your team, if your level is at least as high as theirs. This is how you "capture" Personas, and where the game starts to feel like a grown-up Pokémon. During negotiations, you have to appeal to the personality of the Persona you're trying to convince to join you, so it throws a little social sim action at you in the middle of the JRPG action. Atlus really knows how to throw gameplay elements together!

Old-school JRPG fans might already be thinking of Dragon Quest Monsters, which has a similar mechanic, including fusing monsters together! Persona 5 has its Fusion system where you lose both original Personas and get a more powerful one out of it, with bonus EXP based on your relationship level with that Arcana. Setups like this are how the social stats you build in your "normal" life will affect your performance in the "real" game, where your relationships alter the gameplay options available to you. However, you can also summon any prior Persona you've had, for some Yen, and re-use them to fuse other Personas, or just bring one back that you liked! (Hello, Rangda and Trumpeter!)

I could spend another entire post covering the mechanics, match-up dynamics, status inflictions, and gear setups you could use across this game. Rest assured, the turn-based gameplay of Persona 5 is some of the best you'll find in what amounts to a fancy "monster battler". You can get a preview of who's acting next turn, relationships unlock various perks like auto-recovering from status effects with a team-mate's help, to active buffs and healing from Navigators, completely new mechanics like the shoot-up you can unlock when a battle starts, taking would-be-fatal hits for other team mates, and so on. If you're looking for impactful decision-making in a monster battler, it's here for you to bask in.

Characterization

The last major thing I want to cover is mostly for the skeptics. Don't let Persona 5's anime exterior keep you from enjoying a heartfelt and hopeful story full of excitement, despair, righteous fury, sadness, relief, joy, and every other human emotion. Many of the cast come across as somewhat trope-y when they're first introduced. Like a person, you can't judge how they come across and run with it. I found myself pushing away characters at first, who actually turned out to be deep characters during the story, and invaluable allies in combat.

Part of the trouble I had is my inexperience with Persona (5 is my first), but also, I was sticking to the goal of staying on the down-low, so I assumed I needed to hold off on relationships for a while. Don't do that.

And, that leads me to the reason for the review to begin with... An RPG hasn't touched me on such a relatable and human level in a long time. Even when I'm done playing, I reflect on how characters reacted to events in their lives, or how I would feel in one of the characters' positions. I don't remember the last time an RPG's characters got me thinking of them off the screen.

In one of the major goals of the game, you're trying to save a teenage girl from her self-isolation and hallucinations induced from losing her mother. The pain and distress is well-conveyed in this section, having gone through my own fair share of witness to things I was too young to process. Futaba's Palace holds a special place in my heart; Midway through my playthrough, I sat down to listen to the music for a while, and eventually nodded, "I get it."

Persona 5 isn't about teenagers, Personas, or Big Bads. It's about Life, the decisions you make with the limited time you have each day. It's about viewing relationships and self-improvement as keys to progress in life. It's about planning for the times where life is going to kick your ass, or accepting that some decisions are forever locked behind prior mistakes. But most of all... Persona 5 is about seeing requests for help as opportunities to reverse injustice in the world, one stolen heart at a time.

Final Verdict

If you like JRPGs and are looking for a monster battler to take up 200 hours of your life, piss you off, make you laugh and cry, rage and despair... then hell yeah, do it! I cannot recommend this experience enough for anyone who enjoys a good story and RPG mechanics. This game is one of the greats, wholly deserving of the accolades it's received over the years.

That said, it's a long game, and you will miss things. Some decisions open doors and close others. You cannot 100% this game in a single run, since there is New Game+ content. If you are a completionist, do not like missing things, or are getting exhausted from longer games, then I wouldn't blame you for skipping it, but at least watch a Let's Play or something if you don't. The characters and plot are worth it!

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