Persona 5 Review: The First 32 Hours
Going in blind
I purchased Persona 5 in mid-winter of 2018, and it sat in my library for the next three years until I finally decided to play the game. I had heard only good things about the game from classmates, it was downloaded on my system, and IGN had given it a 9.7/10 rating.
There was no reason for me not to play it. But, much like getting a new book or starting a much-needed home project, life gets in the way sometimes and the thing you wanted to do gets put on the back burner.
I had originally intended this article to be titled “The First 5 Hours of Persona 5,” but I became so invested in the story, characters, and mechanics that I found myself coming back for more.
This is how I fell in love with Persona 5.
The story — minor spoilers ahead
You play as “The Protagonist,” a typical male high school student who, while walking home one night, stumbled upon a drunk man trying to rape a woman. You step in, preventing the rape from occurring, making the aggressor fall and gash his forehead in the process.
As it turns out, this man is an influential lawyer and he yells out that he’ll sue you. Because you intervened, The Protagonist now has an assault charge and has to transfer schools, staying in a coffee shop owner’s attic.
You run into another misfit at your new school, Ryuji, an ex-track athlete who raised his hand against his track coach. The track coach, Kamoshida, who also teaches volleyball, is a man with a warped personality.
Kamoshida, an Olympic gold medalist, used his fame and standards of excellence to coach volleyball and track at your high school, leading his teams to victory. However, he’s ruthless to his underlings. He regularly beats the male team members and requests sexual favors from the female members. The principal and school board turn a blind eye, and the students are afraid to talk about it for fear of losing their status at school.
The Metaverse, Palaces, and Treasure
The Protagonist and Ryuji stumble upon the Metaverse after both interact with the Metaverse Navigator app they never intentionally installed on their phone. The Metaverse is formed through humanity’s collective unconscious, and those with distorted desires form Palaces inside the Metaverse, personalized spaces that reflect a corrupted individual’s hidden desires.
Palaces are powered by Treasure or an item of significance to the owner. Stealing this treasure allows a change of heart to occur, causing the person with distorted desires to repent and confess their crimes.
Sound confusing yet? That was my initial gut reaction a couple of hours into the game, but it gets better. Here’s what you do in-game.
Gameplay
By day, you live the life of a normal student. You attend school, answer questions, take tests, study, you might even pick up a part-time job. But when you have time in your schedule, you head the Phantom Thieves, an organization of misfits who change the hearts of corrupted individuals.
The game features two primary systems to navigate your double life: a day-based scheduling system and a classic JRPG turn-based combat system.
What will I do today?
The time-based considerations you have to take in Persona 5 are unlike anything I’ve seen in other video games I’ve played before. Taking the time to work a part-time job, study, or hang out with one of your confidants progresses the story and realistically limits what you can feasibly do on any given day.
You have to consciously be aware of the choices you make because it all matters in the end. Want to earn some extra money when you have time? You can, but you might lose an opportunity to build a bond with a person. Want to take a relaxing medicinal bath? Sure, but you might lose out on time to study for that upcoming exam.
This is especially important considering the foes you’ll be facing. If you don’t change the heart of a corrupted individual within a set amount of days, they’ll effectively end the game for you via blackmail, arrest, expulsion, enforcing debt, or some other horrible thing.
Building relationships in the real world over time creates stronger bonds in the Metaverse, allowing for increased combative effectiveness when you are infiltrating palaces. A party member with a strong bond with you may grant you an extra attack, cure an allies’ status ailment, or provide more experience when you alter your Personas.
Turn-based combat
When you’re in a palace or the Metaverse fighting Shadows and bosses, your party has varying strengths and weaknesses associated with their Personas or a manifestation of a user’s personality. These come in the form of masks used for an individual to face some kind of hardship.
Fighting with your Persona drains your SP or Spirit Points. You can only attack with your Persona so many times until you’re only able to use physical attacks, so planning out your attacks among your group is the key to survival.
You also have to pay attention to your HP or Health Points. If The Protagonist’s health runs out, the game ends. Your allies can run out of health, but you can always revive them if you have the right abilities or items handy.
While fighting Shadows, you can either defeat them or hold them up at the end of the fight. During a holdup, you’re given one of four options. You can negotiate with them to become one of your available Personas, extort money from them, extort an item from them, or finish them off with an All-Out Attack.
If you fail negotiation, the combat will continue as normal, so you have to pay attention to what the Shadow is saying to get them on your side. Newly acquired Personas give the player access to more possible moves to use in a fight, or they become fodder for Persona fusions, stronger Personas composed of two collected Personas you sacrifice.
Why I played over 6x what I initially intended
In the first couple of hours of the game, I was exposed to the story details I mentioned at the beginning of this post and all of the information seemed a little overwhelming. The game doesn’t explicitly tell you where to go or what to do in the early stages and I wasn’t getting into the groove of gameplay as quickly as I wanted.
But after the first 5 hours, I was hooked. I’ve never read as much dialogue before in a game, and it made the world-building that much more meaningful.
Persona 5 challenges you as an individual, asking you to schedule your life and balance your preparations for school with the relationships you build and the hearts you have to change. I’ve never experienced a story quite as well crafted in a game like this since I played Red Dead Redemption 2.
This game isn’t Red Dead Redemption 2 in terms of expansive level design but is on par with the length of the main story. According to reviews online, Persona 5’s main story by itself takes around 100 hours to complete (for reference, it took me around 80 hours to beat RDR2.)
I’ve become invested in most of the characters, from the bad-mouthed Ryuji to the bubbly Ann to the annoying but resourceful Morgana (a talking cat who’s pretty sure he was a human at some point) even to the Tae, the gothic back-alley doctor who runs experiments on me and sells health supplements.
Every single character has something to say and some story to explore, and I find myself wanting to develop relationships more with them than study or work part-time for school in-game, despite nearly maxing my “Knowledge” social statistic. I want to scarf down some ramen with Ryuji, sip tea with Ann or make coffee with Sojiro, my caretaker.
At the time of writing, the PlayStation Store is selling the game on sale for $9.99. If you’re looking for a great story, well-developed characters, meaningful decisions, extended playtime, and an impactful leveling system, the $10 asking price is more than worth 100+ hours of gameplay.
I did not expect to like Persona 5 as much as I do now. Persona 5 got me hooked on at least this one JRPG game, a genre I was never really into, and, to paraphrase the iconic fight music, it’s something I never saw coming.
