Persona 5 is still a masterpiece – and it’s a must-play for those newly able to get it on PC, Xbox, and Switch
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If you’re a fan of Japanese RPGs but somehow not a PlayStation user, what seems like a contradiction in terms, this week undoubtedly marks a momentous occasion. persona 5 royalthe enhanced re-release of a competitor to 2016’s Game of the Year, is finally on non-PlayStation platforms.
At this point, Persona 5 is already six years old. It is, by definition, old news. Even the Royal upgrade is three. Elements of the game haven’t aged well either, especially some story elements and tonal choices that felt pretty archaic and out of date when the game originally released, let alone six years from now. But the thing is, it’s still brilliant. Persona 5 remains one of the best and most important Japanese RPGs of the last decade.
Part of the reason behind this is that Persona takes an interesting path compared to big-name JRPGs. His most obvious companion is Final Fantasy, the series that acts as the patriarch of the entire genre, which I guess makes Dragon Quest the matriarch. While Final Fantasy has spent the last decade or so analyzing and trying to emulate the successes of Western RPGs like The Witcher, Skyrim, and even Mass Effect, Persona 5 isn’t shy about what it is: an anime RPG AF. complete and very traditional. -playing a game.
It’s hard to tell if the attitude is deliberate, but it seems that publisher Atlus and developer P-Studio decided that how distinctly Japanese their titles are is a strength in the West, rather than a weakness. We’ve seen something similar from Sega, the parent company of Atlus, with the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. He leans into his Japanese identity, which is expressed particularly strongly in the story and setting of Persona 5, a fantasy adventure of super-powered high school kids living a double life amidst Tokyo’s boisterous commentary rat race. social over the state. of modern Japan as it is an anime cliché.
Persona 5 is also favored for how it’s, you know, cool as hell. In a classic decision that’s so cool in its simplicity that it’s puzzling as to why no one had ever done it this way before, Persona 5 takes its fairly simple Japanese RPG menus and does it all extra. Menu items slide, click, and spin with a regularity that suggests truly unleashed UI artists and designers to be as wild as they please. But it’s also always careful to thread the needle cautiously: every UI element straddles that tightrope between functionality and style, style and substance, in such a simple way that it’s almost a bit annoying to think about it. Why don’t the heavier menu-heavy games have such nifty menus?
In a sense, this is what makes Persona 5 interesting to people outside of the JRPG bubble and what gives it appeal. It’s like how many gamers from the PS1 era came to Final Fantasy for the CG cutscenes and monster summoning animations; Even if you’re not the kind of person who usually plays with turn-based combat, Persona 5 puts it in its style so densely through a flashy UI and an acid jazz-infused score that in the midst of the action, you can still Feel like an action game.
Top it off with all the things Persona was already doing well and you have a recipe for something special. Persona has long been adept at storytelling and character development, achieving staggeringly high levels of personal connection with a fairly typical cast of young adult media archetypes while finding a carefully crafted balance between life as a heroic adventurer and the grind and the difficulties of being a teenager in a harsh and busy world. Persona has also been good at offering a deep enough customizable level of character progression and customization, and challenging boss encounters, things that descended from its early days as a more straightforward dungeon crawler. When you take a step back and look at it, this game is packed with stuff, a tower of mechanical systems, leading to its mega runtime. But it doesn’t feel as long as it is.
As a JRPG nerd willing to accept a less elegant game, I still personally prefer the small-town, Scooby Doo-esque setting of Persona 4, but for those who haven’t experienced this series before and for those who might not be in tune with more hardcore. , traditional Japanese-style RPGs, Persona 5 is the entry point. And now it’s available on three new platforms, and for Xbox and PC players it’s included with Game Pass.
And how are the ports? Well, they look pretty good to me. I’ve only played the PC and Xbox versions, but both are great – the best versions of the game to date. On PC, you can crank the game up to 120fps and 4K with relative ease, and the art style lends itself well to displaying at higher resolutions. While I haven’t played the Switch version, I refer to my friends at RPG Site who called the Switch version “worthy of serious praise”. Persona 5’s art adapts well to different hardware requirements, which speaks well for its quality.
Regardless, it’s an interesting time for Japanese RPGs. Clearly, Persona 6 is on the way, and we don’t know anything about that game, but it seems to me that the current vanguards of the more ‘traditional’ Japanese RPG experience are Persona, Xenoblade, and Fire Emblem. Final Fantasy 16 is set to tackle a grittier, more Witcher-like world focused on blood, war, and the clash of steel. Even Dragon Quest promises a grittier, more grown-up affair for its twelfth entry. This is fine, and it’s all part of progression and growth. Experimentation is good. But Persona is one of the series that keeps many of the JRPG’s more esoteric traditions alive within a bigger-budget, larger-scale, larger-scope production, and that’s a great thing. And now its reach is greater than ever. That’s even better.
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