Persona 5 – PlayStation 3

Description

. Persona 5 marks the return of the award-winning franchise on home consoles since the PS2 generation, and is the first numbered Persona game in over eight years! With fast-paced Japanese role-playing game mechanics, exciting action sequences, vibrantly stylized characters, enemies, and environments, and elegant anime-style cut-scenes, Persona 5 is unlike any of its predecessors! The first few hours of Persona 5 feel like settling in with the opening chapters of a massive novel. Even though you don’t know the characters well or understand where the plot is going, you can feel the weight behind the narrative like hundreds of pages waiting to be read. As new threads and mechanics are introduced, that depth and sense of intent persist, and Persona 5 takes the requisite time to do its many ambitions justice. The result is an uncommonly complex and satisfying RPG in terms of both story and gameplay, and when you factor in its impeccable stylishness, Persona 5 is hard to put down. Players step into the daily life of a taciturn (but not totally silent) high-school student and divide their time between self-improvement, building friendships, and fighting evil in otherworldly dungeons. The basic structure may be familiar to fans, but Persona 5 builds on it with an intriguing premise and fantastic cast. You lead a group called the Phantom Thieves, supernatural tricksters who enter an alternate world to steal hearts a phrase that boils down to making high-profile villains see the error of their ways and confess their crimes. It’s a great hook, and because Persona 5 doesn’t rush things, you get the satisfaction of seeing your ragtag group gradually emerge from the shadows and get more notorious as you recruit more members and pull off bigger heists. This involves infiltrating palaces, dungeons that represent a person’s perceptions like a gym teacher who sees the school as his castle where he is free to treat students like slaves. Selecting your targets, uncovering their perceptions, and dealing with the fallout from your thefts are major aspects of the story I won’t ruin. I will say that the scenarios are clever and surprising, and artfully deal with complicated themes like freedom, identity, and pride. I especially like how these smaller arcs steadily rise and fall to provide bursts of narrative payoff that propel you through the larger tale. All players experience the core exploits of the Phantom Thieves, but Persona 5 has a layer of self-directed story that is even better. When you aren’t taking down corrupt villains, you are managing your days in a simulation of student life in modern-day Tokyo. I love the process of optimizing my time and seeing the progress in my stats and relationships; you can fill your day with things like part-time jobs, video games, fishing, or deepening your bonds with your friends. That last one is the most important and rewarding, since the resulting scenes answer questions about the backstories and motivations of the people…