Persona 5 Retrospective Part 1: Why Persona 5?

Why cover Persona 5? Why did I write 45,000 words analyzing a 5-year-old JRPG? It's because, of all of gaming's big-ass epics, I don't think there are any quite like it.

Persona 5 is an immense game: a typical playthrough will last around 100 hours, and it's nearly impossible to see everything the game has to offer without also going through New Game Plus. That puts it on a plane with Final Fantasy 10, The Witcher 3, Skyrim, or the Mass Effect trilogy.

But those are games that span continents, planets, galaxies. They're massive stories with a bevy of characters, factions, historical events, optional side stories. Epics by any standard. Persona 5 is... about small group of teenagers living in present-day Tokyo. Almost all the other characters are mundane civilians: the local doctor, the homeroom teacher, and so on. Aside from a Hawaiian vacation, the entire game takes place in Tokyo's city limits¹.

The story is still epic, but more akin to a multi-season TV show than a big movie. Characters learn and grow, they betray one another and reconcile, they confront their pasts and flaws. Sometimes they even fail to internalize past lessons.

Gaming has many sprawling stories where the scope is the point. Gaming also has personal stories about character's rich inner lives. But I can't think of almost any games that are at once epic and intimate like the Persona games. This gives Persona, in my mind, an influence on gaming that's outsized to its popularity.

These games were ahead of their time too. In a time when mainstream video game writing was on par with the worst action movies, Personas 3 and 4 were tackling themes like suicide, gender identity, depression and sexuality. Fast-forward to 2016 and just about every game with the slightest emphasis on storytelling is interested in those sorts of heavy themes. It isn't fair to say Persona was responsible for this trend, but I do think it contributed.

Finally, a video game that lets me be bored at school! 

Why review 5 specifically? One, because it's the most relevant, and two, because I have the strongest feelings about it. This retrospective will contain both glowing praise and harsh criticism. Overall I think Persona 5 is an excellent game that succeeds in most of what it tries to do, but I object to people characterizing it as a masterpiece.

This retrospective will cover Persona 5 and its remake, or rerelease, or glorified expansion pack, or whatever you want to call it, Persona 5 Royal. Royal is 90% the same as the base game, adding a lot of side content, modifying some of the main content and totally reworking the endgame including a new final dungeon and boss. Since the two versions are so similar, assume that anything I say applies to both the base game and Royal unless I state otherwise. For those who want to play before or while reading, I strongly recommend Royal over the base game as I find it to be a direct upgrade.

I'll be roughly following events as they happen, e.g. I'll only discuss the character of Makoto when she's introduced in the third dungeon. I made this decision because it’s the most natural progression and makes it the easiest to follow. Also, I’m lazy.

This retrospective will only cover P5 and P5 Royal, while other games in the series (such as Personas 3 and 4) will only be discussed as relevant to 5. I don't think there's any meaningful DLC for Persona 5, but none of that is covered either. While I try to stick to facts, there are points where I extrapolate or speculate. Those are mostly when it comes to the popularity of characters: I'm just as interested in how audiences received the game as what's in the game itself, but something like "how popular was this character?" is tough to measure objectively.

I'll also not be covering the game's aesthetics, at least in detail. I love Persona 5's visuals. I love the soundtrack. I love the sound design and jingles. I love the menus. I love the character designs, especially the beautiful HD versions of the Shadows/Personas. I love the dialogue boxes. All of this is best in show. I lack the knowledge of art direction or music to write any interesting critique, however.

Personas 3, 4 and 5. Kinda weird that they started numbering this series at 3. They must have hired the same people who number the Fallout games.

3 & 4 and considerations

At the elemental level, Persona is like if Final Fantasy and a dating sim had a baby. Turn-based JRPG combat makes up one half of the game, and choice-based gameplay that revolves around developing (both platonic and romantic) relationships is the second half. This sounds like a weird combination but it works shockingly well. The real world scenes allow us to see characters in all sorts of different situations, which lends to a level of characterization rare in this kind of game. They aren't hyper-fixated on their quest to save the world; they also go to amusement parks and study for exams and fret about crushes and all the other stuff teenagers do. That level of attachment really helps to create investment in the characters' plight when the plot kicks in.

The Persona games are spin-offs from Shin Megami Tensei, spin-offs that garnered so much acclaim and popularity that they've totally overshadowed their parent in the West. That's why Personas 1 and 2 feel like franchise black sheep these days: they're much closer to typical SMT games with a somewhat larger focus on characters. 

Then came Persona 3, which pioneered the new formula. It doubled down on character development by trading in the series' trademark demon negotiations² for "Social Links". These are friends and acquaintances of the protagonist scattered around the city. Strengthening your bond with them by spending time together (and selecting correct dialogue choices) makes the Social Link rank up. Each Social Link is also tied to one type of Persona (the weapons you use to fight monsters) and so a higher Social Link leads to stronger Personae.

Persona 3 waifus. From left to right: a toaster, my wife, some chick, and girl with the worst voice actor in the series.

3 has a bleak, melancholic tone with recurring themes of suicide and self-sacrifice. It's clear they were still trying to figure out certain aspects: for example, the male party members don't get Social Links, but the female party members do, presumably so you can romance them. 3's gameplay also wears out its welcome looong before the credits roll, since the dungeon crawling is a monotonous climb of a 100+ story procedurally-generated tower. 

Persona 4 is structurally similar to 3, but refined in a few key ways. The tower is gone, replaced with individual dungeons with their own aesthetics. The game has a notably more cheerful tone with far more comedic and breezy scenes - although dark moments do occur. The slow-burn murder mystery plot is stronger overall.

But the thing that makes Persona 4 my favorite in the series is a winning conceit. Persona 4's boss fights are your party members-to-be. See, everyone has a "Shadow", a duplicate that embodies everything they hate about themselves. Under the right circumstances, the Shadow can trap the real person in the Shadow World and eventually kill them. 

The player character goes into the Shadow World to perform a rescue, which entails fighting through the Shadow's defenses (a dungeon themed after the Shadow - for example, the pop idol who feels like she's exploiting her good looks for personal gain ends up trapped in a giant strip club) and confronting the Shadow. Once there, it's not enough to defeat the Shadow: the person who created it must verbally accept the Shadow as a part of themselves. This causes the Shadow to transform from a force of destruction to a Persona, a guardian that empowers its creator. 

Encounters with Shadow selves can get very personal. You basically get to watch a stranger have a mental breakdown. Awkward.

I love Persona 4's conceit. It's such a brilliant mode of storytelling: the idiosyncrasies of how Shadows work leads to a ton of exciting self-contained stories, each arc builds up tension leading to a huge emotional pay-off and a brand-new party member. This dovetails perfectly into their Social Link, as the character is armed with knowledge of self and must now directly confront their character failings in the real world.

Persona 3 was a big success, and 4 eclipsed its popularity. Developers Atlus had a bona fide cash cow on their hands. So then, what would Persona 5 look like?

Should it follow an established formula? Should it mimic Persona 4, or go back to 3, or do something completely different from either predecessor? What about tone? 3 is as dark a JRPG I've played, while 4 is super bright and cheerful. Should 5 mimic one or the other, go for a middle path, pursue a different tone altogether? 3 took place in a big, impersonal city while 4 was in a small town with a ton of personality. Where should this game take place?

What were the old games' biggest flaws? People complained about the repetitive procedurally-generated dungeons, maybe it's time for that to go? 3 and 4 were both accused of slow pacing - 4 especially got slammed for taking multiple hours to get going. How can those issues be addressed? 

The designers clearly put a great deal of thought into every one of those questions. Persona 5 feels like the most refined, holistic example of its formula so far. It had the benefit of precedent to build off.

Another day of studying, hanging out, and destroying the psyches of the wicked for the betterment of society.

The Big Conceit 

This part will be short on analysis, heavy on exposition, so if you've played the game you can probably skip this section. 

Persona 5 is a game about corruption and rebellion, symbolized by a parallel world to ours called the Metaverse. Just like in 4, every person in our world has a "Shadow", a doppelganger who lives in the Metaverse. Shadows are reflections of "distortions" in people's hearts, meaning they're basically wells of negative energy shaped like that person. If a person's heart is especially distorted, meaning they've done or plan to do terrible things, their Shadow becomes especially powerful. If they're really, really distorted, then the Shadow will carve out a territory in the other Tokyo for itself and lord over it as Ruler. These territories are called Palaces.

Palaces are territories of the Metaverse that reflect both the mind of the Ruler and the physical surroundings of that area. Shadows live in that area, press-ganged into the Ruler's service. There are also "cognitive versions" of people frequently found in that area, but unlike Shadows they aren't actually living things. They're just projections created by the Ruler. 

While some people can travel between the real world and the Metaverse, most cannot. The Shadow can only affect the real world version of themselves in a couple ways;

• If someone's Shadow is killed, then the real-world version of that person undergoes a "mental shutdown", a comatose state that's sometimes fatal. Killing the cognitive version of someone has absolutely no effect on them.

• If a Palace is destroyed, then the Ruler's heart will be undistorted. Their real world self will be immediately overcome with guilt for their sins. 

Otherwise someone will be totally unaware of their Shadow.

People in the real world can cross into the Metaverse and back using a special phone app. Once there, if that person has sufficient "spirit of rebellion", then they can transform their Shadow into a warrior that serves them called a Persona. If you have an awakened Persona, you also get a snazzy outfit, but it only appears if the Palace's ruler is aware of your presence. That sounds like a pointless technicality but it ends up weirdly important.

You see that blob of shimmering crap? It's actually YOUR VERY SOUL.

At the core of every Palace is a "Treasure", which is the source of their distortion - for example, one Palace Ruler is extremely greedy and money-obsessed, so his Treasure is a briefcase filled with money. It represents the desires that have distorted his heart, so removing it also destroys the distortion.

In other words, If a Persona user wants to destroy a Palace, they have to remove the Treasure at the center. There's an involved process of warning the Palace Ruler in the real world that their Shadow's Treasure is going to be stolen. Once the Treasure is removed, the Palace disintegrates.

There's more to it, but that's the basics. Persona users meet Palace Ruler. Persona users send rulers a "calling card". Persona users steal Treasure. Palace Ruler confesses their sins in the real world. All of this is communicated in the game's first arc, and there's little deviation from this formula. 

You may have noticed that Persona 5 is an inverse of Persona 4. In 4, the good guys generate Castles, you fight their Shadow, and then they join you as a Persona user. In 5, the bad guys generate Palaces, you fight their Shadow, and then they disappear from the plot. A big part of me wanted Persona 5 to be "Moar Persona 4". And it... kinda was, but in a way that I ultimately found lacking.

We'll start next entry by diving into the opening hours of the game.

1. Although, which Tokyo it is exactly varies.

2. Apparently the Social Links are meant to BE the Demon Negotiations, or a natural evolution of them. I can only see it if I squint.
Persona 5 brings the demon negotiations back to the series too, so... it doesn't matter.