Massive Spoilers, naturally.

I cannot BELIEVE that there’s never an exchange with Maruki where you actually discuss anything with him, or address the hypocrisy of the Phantom Thieves, or any number of things. “Futaba, Makoto, and Haru’s parents (and also Kasumi) could all just be alive? Ha, actually, it’s better that they died because it made them stronger. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to my home planet with my talking cat who gets to live because I don’t suffer consequences.”

It’s just such a massive missed opportunity for interesting writing, instead resulting in the blandest and stupidest defenders of the status quo I may ever have seen.

  • The main person pushing you to side against Maruki is Akechi, who is a serial killer. I think Haru mentions this like once and everyone else tells her to just forget about him murdering her dad.
  • The MC is going to go to jail, where by all means Shido’s co-conspirators should just have him killed. Or at least that’s what should happen, but you avoid that by using your powers to mind control people into getting you out. Convenient that you’re allowed to use your powers to solve the problems of yourself and your friends but nobody else can solve broader societal problems. Curious.
  • Maruki is messed up due to his own trauma, but instead of overcoming it and healing people’s pain in a healthier way I guess he has to become a taxi driver lol.
  • The MC really has no idea how personas or the metaverse actually work. If Maruki can create his own palace consciously, someone ELSE (like, say, Shido’s co-conspirators?) are eventually going to figure out cognitive psience (they have Wakaba’s notes, after all), and then what?

I’ve never played vanilla P5 but man, P5R is fucked gameplay wise. Camera Strap accessory gives everyone infinite SP, and you can just summon some of the past game bonus personas and win the game.

As a final aside, it is ridiculous to me that the MC can’t just stay at Shujin for their last year of high school.

  • loathsome dongeaterAEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    My thing with every persona game is that I play them like an absolute fiend but mostly for the social link stuff. The combat is alright but I always set the difficulty to easy to make the experience less stressful. I love unraveling the storylines of the NPCs. Meanwhile I have no idea what is going on in the bigger picture. So much so that I don’t remember at all how Persona 3, 4 and 5 end. It doesn’t grab me at all because the politics in these games are not well thought out.

    With Royal I remember just being tired when I got to the DLC part. I dropped it when I was struggling in the Maruko fight.

    • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      My thing with every persona game is that I play them like an absolute fiend but mostly for the social link stuff.

      Yeah, social links are definitely the highlight of the game. Made me really resent when I had to go into Mementos to do a target for a bunch of them.

      With Royal I remember just being tired when I got to the DLC part.

      Yeah, I was already burned out during Shido’s palace. Main reason I kept going was because I was high enough level to just skip and auto-win every non-scripted fight due to Ryuji’s social link.