explaining the workings of the Metaverse so you feel
as knowledgeable as your character does, at least.
Whilst Persona 4 had the characters battling their
own demons in order to overcome them, this time
around you’re getting stuck in to some real villains,
and the game doesn’t pull any punches with its
subject matter: your first target is an abusive teacher,
and your band of Phantom Thieves will target
everyone from a gluttonous mob boss to a vain art
plagiarist, but the stakes are always made inherently
personal. Not that the other elements of the story
are particularly shy about touching on dark subject
matter - each character’s personal stories are filled
with tragedy, jealousy, illicit side jobs, identity crises,
arranged marriage and depression, and it’s to Persona
5’s credit that these storylines are handled sensitively
and in a way that encourages you to think about the
matters at hand, but that doesn’t feel preachy. That
said, though the writing is generally excellent, the
translation is somewhat spotty in parts, with some
garbled sentences making their way into the game,
but the voice actors do a good job of keeping the
momentum going.
Igor is apparently pretty sharp-eyed.
In a series first, the Palaces you infiltrate are uniquely
designed dungeons now, complete with puzzles and
diverging paths - in previous games the dungeons
were a series of randomly generated corridors and
rooms that randomised on each visit. This lends each
location a strong sense of character, and the unique
setting of each Palace gives the developers the chance
to go nuts with the visual and level design. You’ll find
Safe Rooms as you progress, which you can use to
exit the dungeon and restart from if you need to quit
for the day to recover some health or SP. Given that
each dungeon has a time limit assigned - you’ll need
to complete the dungeon by a certain date in game
- and that SP restoring items are hard to come by,
there’s a bit of a risk vs reward strategising for how far
you can push into the dungeon without dying when
you’re almost out of resources.
Battles are the expected JRPG turn-based affair,
with each party member boasting their own unique
abilities via their Persona whilst your own character
can hot-swap Persona’s mid battle to change his skill
set. There’s a heavy emphasis on damage types and
exploiting weaknesses - identify (and hit) an enemy’s
weakness and you’ll not only do massive damage,
you’ll also stun them and get an extra turn. If you
stun all of the enemies, you can perform a Hold Up to
demand items or money, try and convince an enemy
to become your Persona, or just pile on with an All-
Out Attack with all of your characters.
It might look chaotic here, but in motion the interface
looks glorious.
Smart design decisions really help the flow of battle
to progress smoothly. You can Press L1 to see what
information you’ve learned about an enemy, and
your friendly tactical officer (a talking cat called
Mona) will handily call out weaknesses you’ve
learned when you target a foe. You can hit R1 to
automatically select an attack or ability that will
target an enemy’s weak spot, and there are countless
little touches that make life easier - like the way
the game automatically selects the character with
the lowest HP when you select a Healing spell, or
informs you if there’s nobody that needs ailments
curing when you try to use an item. There’s even a
quick heal button after battles to top up your party’s
health without needing to dive into menus.
The only real frustration comes with the fact that
your character cannot be revived in battle - if you
run out of HP, it’s game over, even if your other
party members are still standing. That wouldn’t be
too bad, but it’s possible for some enemies to take
huge chunks of health off you in one go, and there
are even some instant-kill attacks that admittedly
have a low chance of success, but that doesn’t help
when your main character is the only one hit and
you’re forced to reload or return to the nearest safe
room. Thankfully, safe rooms in dungeons are fairly
frequent, and in the overworld you can save at any