Persona 5
Calling Persona 5 stylish is like saying ‘It’s just a
flesh wound!’ after having both of your arms cut
off. P5 doesn’t just have style; it IS style. If you were
to slice it open and peer inside you’d find Brigitte
Bardot staring back at you. That’s not to say that
the game lacks substance - far from it, in fact; this
80+ hour JRPG has more than enough content to
go around - but every single thing about Persona
5, from its very first title card to its cool character
and menu animations to its glorious loading screens
exudes class in a way that should make other games
sit up and take notice. Battle menus pulse with life
in such a stylish way it’s already become a meme;
dialogue sequences broadcast reactions with cropped
animated closeups of character faces; enemy health
bars are represented by stylised hearts. Long and
short: it’s cool. And for a Japanese Role-Playing
Game about a bunch of schoolkids who can slip
into an alternate reality and become the Phantom
Thieves, that’s saying quite a bit.
(PS4, PS3, Out Now)
If you’ve played a Persona game, the basic setup will
seem familiar enough. you’re a high school student
that’s just transferred to a new school in Tokyo, but
you quickly discover that there’s a whole other world
out there, a Metaverse filled with aggressive shadows.
Thankfully, you (and your friends) can summon
Persona - spirit beings primarily inspired by Japanese
folklore and legend that act as a thinly veiled
metaphor for a character’s personality - and that
these Persona can cast spells and grant you special,
Metaverse-only abilities. You (and your friends)
will need to enter the Metaverse in order to take on
villains, framed in Persona 5 as metaphysical Palaces,
representations of a person’s inner self, to steal an
item that represents their desires. Doing so will cause
the person in the real world to have a change of heart
- realising the error of their ways and making amends
for their actions.
The battle interface is a masterpiece of design.
You’ll become pretty familiar with the sights of Toyko
by the time you’re done.
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Its not a particularly straightforward setup
admittedly, but the game does an admirable job of
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