Ehhhh... not so well. They were amazing and unique in their days, but now I'd stick to the new ones.
I'll second that. The original Persona and both of the Persona 2 games (boy that was a needlessly confusing story), are games of their time with all the faults intact. Way too much grinding. Too long for their own good. And very simple translations with lots of story elements getting lost in the process. And while the modern day settings are still fairly unique, the gameplay feels a little more generic. If anything it feels more like the SMT games, and hadn't developed their own unique style yet that would emerge in Persona 3.
Thread resurrection!!!
It's taken me a few months to finally make the time to get and start playing it, but after almost a decade of waiting I finally have Persona 5. Not a remake, not a fucking dance rhythm game, not a fighting game, not a dungeon crawler. The real deal sequel. On a related note, has any game company ever pulled something like this? You have a successful breakout game, and then turn out everything else you can related to it, except for an actual sequel for 10 years? Oh wait, I guess Square-Enix showed the world how that was done with Kingdom Hearts. Atlus just followed suit. Though in fairness, I put the last two years of delay squarely on Sega's shoulders. Pretty sure they're the ones who insisted it needed a PS4 port. Oh well, I'll save that bitching for another day. Right now, it's just time to enjoy it.
I'm about 20 hours in and they've only now fully taken off the training wheels and let me really get into the rhythms of balancing my day-to-day life. That's not to say I've still been doing tutorials the entire time, but the game goes a little slower than I'd like in introducing new abilities, menus, maps, etc. than I'd like. There's probably lots of new people coming into the series though, so it's not unreasonable. And if I'm being entirely fair, I've really only just now figured out the full layout-out of all the stores, buildings, etc. of everything that was accessible at the start of the game. At any rate it's much better in this regard than Persona 4 was, which pretty much had you doing almost nothing for the first 5 hours.
The game is a trip. It's got a visual style that has a real energy to it. Only thing I can really compare it to is The World Ends With you. And I don't think it's a coincidence that both games take place is Shibuya. It's got a nice balance though. It never feels too in your face. The music cool, though I definitely prefer some of the early music from P3 and P4 that had Atlus' resident Japanese hip-hop enthusiast Lotus Juice (that's his name and I can only assume it's considered a cool name in Japan). They do reuse some earlier Persona tunes though, so that's kind of neat.
The dungeons are a nice change from earlier games too. Each chapter has a featured palace, which has an actual predetermined layout. For anyone not in the know that's a huge change as previously the dungeons were randomly generated and frankly generic as hell. Not that I minded though. I enjoyed the grind of those, and fortunately there's a separate ever expanding dungeon called Mementos that still does this. The design change allows for some puzzles to be added to the dungeons, and in that way it's a lot like Tokyo Mirage Sessions. I can't honestly say there's anything real tough, but I've only gone through two so far. We'll see if that changes.
And as far as the story and characters go, it's a little too early to tell, but so far it feels like classic Persona - overacted Japanese highschool mellowdrama, but still remarkable entertaining.
The game is by most estimates around 80 hours long, so I'll be checking in with it for at least a couple months, but so far I'm definitely enjoying it. It's been worth the wait.
Also I have to say something about the Palaces (the main dungeons). They have done a really good job with the theme selection of them. With the exception of the first one, they all fit into the thief heist theme like a glove. An art gallery, a bank, a pyramid for tomb raiding. Great ideas here.
Come steal a glans.
It feels like the end-game is just around the corner, but most people put playthroughs at 80 to 90 hours so there are at least a couple big events to get through still. Time is really flying while I play it though. I still can't figure out how I have put this much time into the game already.
I got to say, Persona 5 is probably the most honest representation of Japanese society that the series has offered so far. Lot of walking right up to that line of "is this perverted and should I feel bad for playing it" moments. Oh and I think I'm going to be having sex with my teacher before the game is over. So I got that going for me.
And on another note, dear god the fucking social links are harder to complete than ever. There's just less than 2 months of in-game time left in the game and after looking at what I've acheived I wonder what the hell I've been doing this whole time.
The opening of this game sucks balls. I can not fucking stand the part of jrpgs that have to treat you like a fucking child and over explain everything. From the heavy tutorializing (I started on hard, I clearly grasp basic shit about video games, jesus christ), to the constant condescension of the most basic mechanics of the game, to the explaining story beats in the most ham-handed way. There is one part with security cameras, and these blue switches that turns them off. I clearly saw the blue switch from a mile away, and naturally went towards it. The game fucking stops to have a character point out the switch, and have you press the button. Instead of just letting it happen naturally. You then press the button, the game pans out to show you the cameras are off, and then your party members are like WHOA, that turns off the cameras.
I WOULD HAVE FIGURED THAT OUT NATURALLY YOU CUNTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And if they explain the fucking metaverse one more time when I get a new party member, I will fucking scream.
It is bad enough that the RPG genre has been built on skilless/depthless shallow video games built for aspies, but Japan's rpgs go the extra mile by just walking you through every little thing. Also of course morgana has amnesia, fucking Japan and amnesia I swear.
Otherwise, I'm 4 palaces in. The story is a mixture of interesting and jrpg bad, much in the way that Persona 3 n 4 are. Some of the characters are cool. I like Yuseke n Makoto, the doctor is rad, the fortune teller is the shit. Ann n Ryuji are throwaway. The social sim/dating sim virtual novel crap is mega boring, because the games condescending ass writing only makes that stuff drawn out as hell. But when I finally get to do the dungeon crawling stuff it's not that bad. Persona 5 actually has hand crafted dungeons so that's a fucking plus, Baton Pass n stuff adds nicely to the "One More" system. I still wildly prefer Press Turn to One More, but hey we can't all be Shin Megami Tensei 3.
The music is fucking amazing. None of the Waifus stack up favorably to Yukiko tho.
I can deal with wackity stupid. In fact I'm on board with games that are more wackity stupid than ones that take themselves way too seriously while being dumb as fuck. But it's over written and routinely shows no respect for its audience. I expect that type of stuff in Pokemon, and it's no less annoying in Pokemon. For a game rated M, I expect a little bit better than that. Especially given that the Persona series actually touches some interesting themes along the way.
Friday night I finished Persona 5. Excellent game, but I am happy to have it done. At 90 hours there's just too much bloat here even for a Persona title. By the end I was barely even reading the dialogue anymore just so I could get it over with. That got me thinking about Tokyo Mirage Sessions, which at the end of the day really is just Person-Lite. I went through that in about 55 hours and was actually surprised when the ending came up as soon as it did. While it sacrificed some of the game's social aspects, I think there's a lot in that game for the next Persona design team to learn from.
I don't want to make it sound like I'm being super critical though because overall I did love Persona 5. Not sure I'd call it the best in the series, but at the same time I'm not sure if I could pick the best in the series yet. Each one (from 3, 4 and 5) still has some flaws and strengths that the others seem to lack. But there's no question the dungeons, social link effects, and overall style have never been this good in the series. I will return to it one day and give it another go, but probably not for a while. I want to go back and give Persona 4 another playthrough first, since I've only gone through that once, though that still won't be for a few months. Next Atlus game on the roster is going to be Catherine since I still need to finish it after all these years.
How does the original PlayStation game hold up?