Persona 5 is a game you’ll either love or hate. Do you enjoy anime, social simulator games, turn-based combat, and Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs), and can’t understand why “style over substance” would ever be considered anything other than a compliment? If so, you’ll fall into the former camp (it goes without saying that existing fans of the Persona series would also be included here).
On the other hand, if you’re not particularly a fan of any of the above, and prefer real-time combat, a minimalist aesthetic, and games that you can dip in and out of without them requiring too much of a commitment from you, then you’ll probably end up in the latter.
I say probably, however, because Persona 5 takes so much joy in how over-the-top it is and revels so much in its style-for-the-sake-of-style approach that it can become somewhat infectious, and you may end up enjoying it despite yourself.
As its title indicates, Persona 5 is the latest in a long-running series of JRPGs developed by Atlus. It’s actually the ninth game in the series and the sixth in terms of story chronology, but four of the games released since the first Persona game in 1996 are considered spin-offs from the main series.
You take the role of a high school student in Tokyo, navigating the usual coming-of-age challenges. There are classes to attend, part-time jobs to do, people to meet and date. But that’s just one half of your life — in the other, you’re a masked vigilante that enters a supernatural metaverse, a realm of mind palaces built by the disturbed thoughts of individuals you encounter in the physical world.
You and your team members use Persona powers, representing parts of your psyche, to battle enemies inside the metaverse. What you do in the physical and non-physical realms affects you and both of these worlds. You level up different skills, gather new Personas and gain powerful new ways of dealing with the monsters and dungeons in the metaverse.
It all sounds quite weird, and it is. Persona 5 has an identity all its own, and it’s never shy to push its sense of style into every aspect of the game. Normal, functional-yet-boring menu system? Forget about it, here the menu system exudes as much style and design hyperactivity as the combat scenes themselves. It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing something mundane or extraordinary, battling a demonic knight or studying in the library, navigating the streets of the city or simply pausing or saving the game, everything is suffused with personality and over-the-top stylisation.
As I said above, this means that if the game’s style doesn’t appeal to you, then chances are you’re going to find it difficult to enjoy. But if it appeals to you you’ll be giddy with excitement, thankful that there’s a group of people out there who were willing to stick to their creative vision and make a game that is never embarrassed about what it is.
The graphics are nothing special, technically speaking, but they do a good job of looking like a well-produced anime show. Again, style is more important than polygon-count here.
The music deserves a special mention; Shoji Meguro’s jazz-infused score is a work of art in its own right, and it’s no surprise that the three-disc soundtrack has been selling rather well in its own right.
Persona 5 offers more than 100 hours’ worth of gameplay, so this is one game where you don’t ever need to worry about value for money. So if you’re ready to take a full shotgun blast of style to the face, grab a copy of Persona 5 and power up your PS3 or PS4; you won’t be disappointed.
Score: 9/10
Platform: PS4, PS3
