I don’t expect anyone to have actually finished Persona 5 just yet. But people should have had enough time with the game to figure out the score, which is as good a point as any for our Community Review.
The person in the office who’s been playing Persona 5 has been Amanda, which has been a bit of a journey for her. It’s her first Persona game, which undoubtedly helps given that Persona 5 is a standalone game within the Persona universe.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/04/persona-5is-a-great-entry-point-for-series-newcomers/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/emjxjasgxdpjonwrjbnk.png” title=”Persona 5 Is A Great Entry Point For Series Newcomers” excerpt=”The most common question we’ve gotten, when talking about how much we love the new video game Persona 5, is whether there are lots of people to kiss. The second most common question is. Can you play it without playing the other Persona games? The answer to both of these questions is yes.”]
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/03/persona-5-the-kotaku-review/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/03/nepnb8r8gyxyjckblu8f1-410×231.png” title=”Persona 5: The Kotaku Review” excerpt=”Imagine your old high school. Picture the doors you’d pass through at the start of each day. See if you can recall the awkward conversations you had with your friends, or the smell of the cafeteria at lunchtime. Now throw all that in the garbage and replace it with something impossibly cooler, impossibly more stylish, impossibly better. That’s Persona 5.”]
Having a generous checkpoint/save system helps immensely too, since Persona has a history of being a bit of a punishing game. There’s also fewer one-hit KO spells, something that never feels fun in any game.
Perhaps the only thing negative about Persona, apart from Kirk suggesting that it probably ran on for ten hours too long, was publisher Atlus’s over-protective nature of the game’s story. Trying to prohibit large swathes of the game being streamed in 2017 isn’t a great way to curry favour or success with gamers, although in the long term I don’t think it’ll hurt the game’s popularity one bit.
How have you found Persona 5 so far?
Comments
14 responses to “Community Review: Persona 5”
Just Finished the 3rd Palace,
Easily the best Persona by far, 4 was great but 5’s character’s are so much more interesting (and that’s saying something compared to 4).
The battle system is way faster which is a welcome change, and the baton pass system is surprisingly fun when you pull off big combos with it.
The best part however is the changes to Social Links (or “Confidants” as they are called now), the fact that they give you actual in game benefits like extra XP or more time in the day to do things is such a great way to make the non-party member Confidants worth it.
Also without a doubt this game has the best UI design i’ve ever seen, it’s so stylish but it isn’t distracting, the way every menu flows to another never gets tiring, sometimes i’ll go back and forth between menus just to check them out.
Probably my GOTY (even over Zelda) unless something really knocks my socks off.
PS: Makoto best girl
First Persona game ever and I stopped playing horizon zero dawn for this game. Loving it. Enough said.
Due to being time-poor and spending most of my gaming testing out the NES Mini (found at Big W after all the JB HiFi stock was depleted, btw), I’m still in the first palace. Enjoying the heck out of it, though.
Yeah. Want. Every other bloody JRPG in the last few years has disappointed me…
Mass Effect for now, though. Just glad it’s so readily available 🙂
I promise not to hijack this article, but as someone who’s up to the
video game dungeon but haven’t found out the identify of the culprit yetin Persona 4 I’m at a bit of an impasse.I want to finish Persona 4 before I start Persona 5. That’s not going to happen for a while yet.
I know the story and plot points don’t carry over, my queries are more to do with the mechanics. Spoilers within:
I’m terrible with the battle system, I’m forever running out of mana and the dungeons are very very long. Does Persona 5 make any adjustments or ‘quality of life’ improvements in this regard?Likewise the card/persona system itself. I don’t think I understood the fusion stuff when I should have, and the game is punishing me for it. I’d hope Persona 5 changes up this stuff a little. Surely.Persona 5 is great. Still early days but its maintaining the quality of previous entries. The presentation is fantastic, so stylish!
I struggle to like these games even though I finished Persona 4 and put 80 plus hours into 3. I can definitely see why people live then but you need to like reading a lot of text it almost requires a love of adventure games. The combat is less boring but still very repetitive though I have probably made it worse by playing on hard. I know I am going against the flow but I find the menus pretty garish and prefer persona 4. Also I hate the big press x for jump, traversal is extremely clunky. I am only half way through the second palace so I am yet to find anything particularly unique about the characters, the introduction of political themes has definitely made me curious to see where they go. If you love persona games you will love this if you prefer action RPGs like I do you may struggle.
Game’s so good, EB Games isn’t even plastering a single poster in its stores and the game is getting sold out.
Question: is this game out physically yet?
I went on an insane search to like a billion JBs and EBS and couldnt find it anywhere!
Can’t you just look on the EB / JB website to see which stores have stock? I think you can order through their websites and choose to pick up in-store, too.
I think i looked on JB and there was no listing at all there. EB says its in stock but every one Ive been to has been persona-less, and i asked my local and they said it was coming in the 21st…
Lol alternatively i could just get the digital. But im a dinosaur
Yeah, I’ll be going digital when I get it. Too long for physical, I’d probably wear out the drive continually putting the disc in and out 😛
P4 is one of my top three games of all time so I had pretty high expectations for 5. Thankfully I am absolutely loooooving it (halfway through the second palace rn). The battle system is fantastic but not a huge departure from 4, and the menus/UI are so well designed. My partner is training himself in game design and can’t handle playing these games (too much text for him) but I’m forcing him to watch me just so he can learn what a good UI looks/feels like!
Japan are nailing it with Western releases this year (Yakuza 0 love), up to 3rd palace and just in awe over P5!