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Backwards Dungeon Crawling – how not to play Metaphor

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I’ve been playing a lot of Metaphor: Refantazio recently. The game was released earlier this month and has pretty much consumed my attention whenever I have a few spare minutes to turn the PS5 on. With Atlus and Hashino behind this latest adventure, a lot of people were expecting a Persona game with a fantasy veneer – and whilst it’s a bit more unique than that, I was hoping that this might be a return to glory after I was left a little disappointed with Persona 5. Metaphor drops the player into a network of hub towns and explorable mini-dungeons, where shopping, fighting, sidequesting and dating (there is an equivalent to Persona’s Confidants and Social Links here) are all present and correct as your journey progresses through the weeks and months of an in-game calendar. Fighting is streamlined slightly with a hybrid of real-time and turn based combat, enemies have tiers of difficulty if you scan them (based on their level in relation to yours – enemies three levels below yours die in one swing), and the turn-based combat is given extra flavour through systems such as Synthesis (spend multiple actions on team attacks) and formations (you can move allies to the front or back row à la classic Final Fantasy.) In theory, it’s compelling, engaging and smart – ensuring that the player is always spending their time wisely. However, it’s the way in which Metaphor handles its climactic boss battles which has led me to consider the notion of engaging in backwards dungeon crawling.

Preparation vs completion

one image used for the article backwards dungeon crawling

Whilst I don’t like comparing Metaphor to Persona – when a studio announces a brand new series I try to avoid lazy parallels – it’s an interesting examination in the individual designs and how they lead me to play the games “wrong”. Your objectives for a calendar deadline in Metaphor may vary, but they often involve preparation rather than completion. You’re not necessarily completing a particular area or encounter before a deadline, but you’ll often be expected to prepare for a future encounter. This is comparable to Persona 3 and 5 – where you improve your party before a full moon or a calling card heralds an unavoidable boss battle. A structure that depends on completion is comparable to Persona 4 – where its calendar deadlines assess whether or not you’ve completed the latest dungeon. In P3, P5 and Metaphor, you’re preparing for an unknown threat that you won’t face until a defined date – and in the Persona games you could often measure your preparedness based on your progress in the game-spanning dungeons, Tartarus (P3) and Mementos (P5).

Metaphor has no definitive game-spanning dungeon. You might discover new dungeons through sidequests or story beats, but you kind of have to figure out the best way to develop your party by yourself. It’s why I went into each zone I could still warp to (without the fairy ally Gallica telling me “we don’t need to go there now”) and looked at the levels of the enemies to see where I could maximise experience gains in-between these unknown threats. On the other hand, maybe I was wasting my time with experience gains because the unknown threats were unknown. More often than not, I’d race through the in-game calendar with menial tasks that would push time forward just so that I could see what I’d be up against when the next deadline rolls around – and then I would reload my previous save and prepare accordingly. This is what made me consider the idea of backwards dungeon crawling: sprinting to a future boss battle with no preparation, and then building a strategy around what you found there. I can totally appreciate anyone writing in to call me insane for doing this, but the point is that I was permanently afraid of saving at a point where I would be underlevelled – because I had no metric for how prepared I should be. So what’s the solution?

How to dissuade backwards dungeon crawling

This isn’t an issue of difficulty – it’s a question of how soon a challenge could be presented to a player. Maybe an RPG could allow people to walk up to the front door of a dungeon and face an extraordinarily strong foe that represents the power of the dungeon’s guardian – just so that they have an idea of how to prepare. Maybe an RPG could, in the objective text, include the range of levels of the enemies within the next mandatory sequence. Maybe they could just make familiar areas more dangerous. One of my biggest question marks about Metaphor’s design is why you have (for example) open desert and forest areas where you can fight at any time, but the range of enemies stays the same forever – when instead the game could mix in stronger enemies as you pass certain milestones. Meanwhile, an extreme approach to the idea of open-ended challenges can be seen in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, where each district has a defined “threat level”, and there are some areas of the map that you have to steer clear of for a while. At the same time, there will be districts in Infinite Wealth where enemies are so weak that you can win a battle with a single button press. It feels like the whole gamut of difficulty is presented to you at once, and it’s brilliant.

another image used for the article backwards dungeon crawling

The backwards dungeon crawling continues

For what it’s worth, I am genuinely enjoying my time with Metaphor – it’s caused a lot of lost sleep, the battle system is excellent and the party members are generally likeable. According to the internet I’m closing in on the end of the penultimate dungeon, so I still have more to do, but I’ve been having fun. (I would finish the game a week after publishing this – the final boss was a resource drain, but being able to switch party members in the middle of a battle helps a lot if your current party is out of resources. Also, Bardon’s bond path has a perk where switching members costs fewer turns, which makes this more viable.) That said, I don’t know if my backwards dungeon crawling habits will change any time soon, at least when playing this game.

Metaphor ReFantazio is out now for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series and PC.

Persona 3: The Answer needs work

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Persona 3: The Answer was a murky point in my history with Atlus’ series of RPGs spun out of the SMT franchise. A playable side-story available if you purchased the “FES” edition of Persona 3 (which also comes with a lot of tweaks, additions and improvements to the original story), it was the one game that I refused to commit any time to. It’s telling that I was able to play through the (even more archaic) first and second games before wanting to revisit The Answer – but without knowing where my contempt comes from it’s hard to see what the problem is.

Persona 3: The Answer – the roots of identity

Persona 3: The Answer

The original version of Persona 3 (referred to in FES as “Persona 3: The Journey”) was notable for radically reinventing the spin-off series. With its introduction of calendar events, social links, character attributes that are improved over the course of the game, a new elemental weakness system and simplified battle options (there’s no grid position management, and you won’t be negotiating with your enemies), The Journey laid down the foundations for the next Persona RPGs and gave them a fresh new identity. They’re games that break up the long-term goals of dungeon crawling with snappy character interactions and indulgent school term activities, and so you often feel like there’s always something different you can do on each day of the in-game calendar. And this is why it’s kind of disappointing that Persona 3: The Answer forgets so much of that established identity.

One fundamental aspect of the premise behind The Answer is that time is stuck in a loop where the same day repeats itself, and the main cast are trapped within the dorm – the only other locations available are Paulownia Mall (a hub for item and equipment shopping), the Velvet Room (a staple of the series, this location allows players to essentially craft a new persona) and the Desert of Doors (where the dungeon crawling takes place.) This reduces the scale established in The Journey down to a pure dungeon crawl, and so already a large part of what made the original game so special is lost. Persona 3: The Answer is an expansion pack for people who only enjoyed the exploration of Tartarus and the full moon dungeons in P3, and if you’re expecting anything else then you’ll be disappointed. And that might not be so bad on its own – after all, fans were able to work their way through P3’s dungeons – if not for the fact that The Answer’s dungeon crawl is built different.

Making the grind work

On the surface, you’re doing exactly the same thing that you did in The Journey – finding a door to the next floor of a dungeon, battling Shadows and using the elemental weakness system to your advantage, trying to get useful bonuses in Shuffle Time and opening chests for loot. Eventually you run into a boss, defeat it, and receive an extra cutscene or some new dialogue that propels the narrative forward… before moving on to a brand new bit of dungeon crawling. The process is business as usual, then, but the individual steps have had some tweaks. Elemental weaknesses are present on certain bosses, but many of the bosses have a high chance of evading the element. Certain bosses explicitly target the elemental weaknesses of allies (and some elements instantly KO a party member, so you either leave them on the ground or get stuck in a loop of reviving.) And don’t forget that this isn’t Persona 3 Portable, so you don’t have direct control over your allies. Bosses can enrage the party and then set up barriers that reflect damage so that enraged allies effectively KO themselves, or encounters will leave your healers charmed and supporting the enemy. One recurring gimmick to get used to is when a boss will seem “do-able” on its own but then spawns two or three adds that only exist to ruin your fun. You can keep destroying them, but the main boss will just spawn them again, so it’s a test of patience.

Persona 3: The Answer

I absolutely respect this kind of design as a way of challenging a player’s mastery of the battle mechanics, but in practice it makes a lot of the encounters somewhat tedious, especially when coupled with the occasionally gormless AI of your allies. However, I did discover one or two things that made battles a little more palatable. For instance, if enemies in a boss encounter were repeatedly evading the element that would knock them down, or absorbing other elements, I’d simply stop trying and instead use high-damage physical attack skills. If my party AI is being moronic in the regular battles, I would try and charm the enemies (a skill named Sexy Dance casts charm on every enemy on the field; it’s not a 100% success rate but if it lands the enemy will attack other enemies and support your party) so that they would be moronic as well. The attack barriers that kill enraged allies? Sometimes the enemy doesn’t put them up in time and instead eats tons of damage. And occasionally it’s as simple as gaining more levels and better gear.

Persona 3: The Answer – what can be done?

When I say that Persona 3: The Answer needs work, I’m addressing the player as well as the game. The player needs to make an effort so that the battles can work for them, and the game could be tuned to be a little less tedious. Newer games have already introduced welcome features to speed up gameplay a little – whether it’s unlocking a skill in Persona 5 that allows you to instantly defeat low-level enemies in one strike, or the excellent suite of custom difficulty options in Persona 4 Golden that allow you to independently tweak things like the amount of EXP and/or money earned from battles. If that risks the game feeling like too short of an experience, then perhaps that sheds a light on The Answer’s tendency to pad out its hour count (my last save was at a little under 27 hours.) And if there’s no way to improve The Answer without enraging one part of the community, then perhaps it’s better for the side-story to remain a relic of the series’ history.

Persona 3: The Answer is exclusively available as part of Persona 3 FES – you can read more about this release of the game on Atlus’ website.

New Persona series ports announced

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Disposable Media is updated by enthusiastic fans of games, music, film and TV, but we’re doing this out of passion. We don’t have exclusive press access to the people who bring this entertainment to your screens and speakers, but that doesn’t stop us from asking questions that we’ve never really had answers for. For instance: what, exactly, goes on with Atlus, P-Studio and their decisions to publish their games on selected platforms? We don’t know of any exclusivity agreements with platform holders that would otherwise force such decisions, so it may be a simple matter of development costs. However, we do know that they’ve been happy to develop new versions of Catherine and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, not to mention the Steam version of Persona 4 Golden, so they have already demonstrated that they’re willing to release some classic games on different formats. And now this – new Persona series ports for Windows and Xbox announced during the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase 2022.

New Persona series ports – Signs of Love towards fans

New Persona series ports

My history with Persona began with me picking up P3 for PS2 as an impulse purchase and then following the series from there. New releases in the series were already influencing my decisions to buy new generations of hardware – Persona 4 Golden effectively sold a Vita to me – and so I’ll admit that I enjoy the series enough to buy consoles for new entries. However, the new Persona series ports indicate an exciting future for the series; potentially introducing entire new audiences to the games, and – with the Windows ports – giving the games a home on a platform that isn’t dependent on generational cycles and new-gen remakes. What we know so far is that Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal will release on Xbox One, Xbox Series and Windows PC, with Persona 5 Royal being the first of these releases on October 21st of this year. (It wasn’t until four months after publishing this article that we would find out release dates for Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden – they are due to be available on January 19th 2023.)

With Royal and Golden essentially being deluxe editions of the original P5 and P4, this will open up the best versions of these games to new players. Opinion is divided on Persona 3 Portable, as it lacks some of the content from PS2’s “FES” release, but a new female protagonist and direct commands in battles (as opposed to AI tactics selected in the original) make it a great edition of the game. We reported on the Steam release of Persona 4 Golden when that originally came out, and if it’s any indication of the quality we can expect from the new Persona series ports I’d be pretty happy (provided my PC specification can handle the new ports.)

New Persona series ports – a Last Surprise

New Persona series ports

Furthermore: as we were drafting this article, we also received word that Atlus has confirmed PS5 releases of the three games, and so even if you had been following the RPGs on older PlayStation platforms, it hopefully won’t be long before you can enjoy Persona 3 Portable or Persona 4 Golden on the big screen. And the news didn’t stop there – on June 28th, an announcement during Nintendo Direct confirmed that the games would also come to the Nintendo Switch.

Of course, this leaves the future of the series open to question. Atlus have a couple more Persona-related announcements due this year, and (from comments regarding a new recruitment drive) they’ve already expressed an intent to deliver a sixth game in the future. With these new Persona series ports announced, it invites speculation over where the next game will go. I feel like most people are expecting the Atlus announcements to culminate in a Persona 6 reveal, but that remains to be seen. In the meantime, people can look forward to Persona 5 Royal in October 21st, with the releases of the other games to be confirmed at a later date.

Study Time

New Persona series ports

If you’d like to read some impressions of the three games, I covered the original Persona 5 and the Royal update, I published news on the Steam release of Persona 4 Golden and I celebrated the original Persona  3 turning 10 in Japan. Whether I pick up Royal again could depend on the PC requirements, but I’m sure there will be more Persona-related events to cover later this year. As always, let us know what you think of the new Persona series ports in the comments below.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax returns in 2022

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Persona 4 Arena Ultimax deserved better. Looking at it today, it feels like a late classic of the seventh-gen fighter library, at a time before we were blown away by newer Arc System Works titles such as Dragonball FighterZ. Gamers in Europe didn’t get to see Persona 4 Arena Ultimax reach their Xbox 360s and PS3s until November 2014 – about a year after the Xbox One and PS4 had launched.  Those who left it behind missed out: Ultimax followed up the original Persona 4 Arena in style, offering several new characters, “shadow” alternates of most characters that have tweaked movesets, another generous Story mode, the excellent Golden Arena mode, and a few other adjustments and balances across the game to make the experience balanced and satisfying.

The generosity of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

Even as someone who wasn’t playing competitively online as much as I used to, I still had a lot of fun with Ultimax – the Golden Arena alone devoured many spare evenings, as I’d fight through a gauntlet of matches and “level up” my chosen character so that they would stand a better chance against stronger foes later on. (In fact, my Xbox Live subscription lapsed and I still found enjoyment in Golden Arena, so the game definitely holds value for solo fighters as well as multiplayer fans.) It was one of the most generous fighting game upgrades seen during the seventh generation, released at a time when people were moving on from that generation. However, it seems that it may be getting a second chance.

A surprise announcement

During The Game Awards, Geoff Keighley’s round up of announcements, recognitions, and – let’s be honest – thinly-veiled advertisements, it was announced that Persona 4 Arena Ultimax would be released for PC, PS4 and Nintendo Switch on March 17th of next year. The announcement came from an animated Teddie (a key character in the Persona 4 games) and was accompanied with short snippets of gameplay footage and music from the game. However, this seems like nothing more than a confirmation at the moment – the announcement was around a minute long, and so there were no details of any additional features, netcode improvements, or anything aside from the intended platforms and the release date. I imagine that fans might look at the Steam release of Persona 4 Golden to get an idea of how the new release of Ultimax might be handled, but a fighting game brings added complexities surrounding netcode and matchmaking, so it will be interesting to see if the treatment of online play is done with the care and attention needed for a modern fighting game release.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax – a second chance

Personally, I don’t play fighting games online as much as I used to – it’s hard to keep up with the discoveries of new tech, my internet connection isn’t the best for fighters, and I have a bunch of other games vying for my attention. However, I can certainly see myself picking up Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for a second time, if only to lose myself in the single-player content that’s on offer. At the moment the media shelves chez qazimod hold a mixture of games across multiple consoles and generations, but Persona 4 Arena and its sequel Ultimax are some of the only Xbox 360 games I’ve bothered to keep, because until this announcement the only way someone could play Ultimax was if they still had a 360 or PS3 and a copy of the game. More old games coming to PC can only be a good thing (although I’ll take re-releases for newer consoles as well), and hopefully the game will receive new fans once it re-emerges next year.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax releases on PC, PS4 and Nintendo Switch on March 17th 2022.

Notes from Inaba

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Recently, I finished the Steam version of Persona 4 Golden. We covered the news of the release earlier in June, and since then I’ve been experiencing P4 again on a whole new platform, and recollecting my notes from Inaba. It may seem a bit too far for a fan to move from a home console game to a portable release… and then back to a port that will be played at a desk (laptops are an option, but I’ll probably be playing the game at home.) However – as a place to play electronic entertainment, the PC is pretty much immortal. Whilst I could have found a way to play P4 on a big screen without buying another release, I would have had to find my old PS2 and hoped that it still worked, not to mention the fact that I’d be tolerating the original release which lacks the enhancements of Golden. Meanwhile, the Vita version isn’t going to go anywhere, but if you were late to the party then you still need to track down a discontinued piece of hardware rather than relying on your trusty desktop or laptop. The devil’s advocate in me would say that PC gaming still requires you to track down and keep the right specification, operating system, and – in many cases today – a launcher such as Steam. However, I’d like to think that those things would last for a while once you’ve obtained them.

Notes from Inaba – conversion quality

Notes from Inaba

My notes from Inaba are generally pretty positive – the core gameplay is more or less untouched, but the quality of the port is as good as I could ask for. The visuals look great on a new monitor at high resolution (although things like facial detail on character models are always going to be unvoidably goofy), the game provided a smooth experience from start to finish – the brief pauses that I mentioned in my previous article faded into insignificance pretty quickly; they never impacted active gameplay, after all – and when you plug in a PS4 controller and use a half-decent LCD display, you can retreat to your sofa and forget about any perceived awkwardness of PC gaming. (Well, most of the time – I had one or two moments where everything froze and I had to force an exit, but I can’t say for sure whether that was due to the game or a result of my own background processes that may have been interfering. Also, keep in mind that those one or two moments would be in a 40-50hr experience, so it’s a very rare occurrence.)

Bells and whistles

As far as I could tell, the core gameplay was untouched – there was no rebalancing of enemy properties, or brand new encounters – everything I saw indicated that the people responsible for this release wanted to leave as much of it intact as possible, and just polish certain areas to suit the PC experience… whether that’s via higher resolutions, extra customisation options, or anything else that a Steam user might expect. There’s not a whole lot that I can say about the gameplay that I haven’t said in the past; it has some of the best pacing of any game in the series, the elemental affinity system and social links are as satisfying as ever, the focus on smaller unique dungeons (rather than intermissions from a Tartarus or Mementos) helps to keep things varied, and the characters are charming and likeable. It also has a soundtrack that’s as least as good as Royal‘s, and whilst the investigation sequences in Inaba still feel kind of meaningless, they’re over quickly. Furthermore, it has slightly more relatable narrative compared to other games in the series, with large amounts of dialogue and story revolving around the themes of identity and sense of self. Critics have poked holes in the messaging contained in these moments, but the supposed counterpoint is that games can have characters with flawed ideals. To say more would lead us into spoiler territory, so our notes from Inaba can probably be wrapped up now.

Concluding notes from Inaba

Notes from Inaba

If you’re someone who only held on to their Vita because it was the only place to play Persona 4 Golden, you now have a worthwhile alternative. If the portability is what matters to you, you can keep your Vita or opt for a laptop. If you’re going to invest in the means to play the game – either by improving your current PC, buying a new one or picking up a Vita – let us know what you think of the experience. And no matter what happens, you can be sure of one thing: every day’s great at your Junes.

Persona 4 Golden is available on Steam today

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Earlier this evening we found out that one of Atlus’ most beloved JRPGs will finally find its way to an even wider audience – right now, Persona 4 Golden is available on Steam. Whilst I’ve talked a lot about the Persona series since the relaunch of Disposable Media, I never really covered Golden whilst the site was active, but it remains one of the most balanced games in the series, with plenty of content, a nice snappy pace, an engaging narrative and compelling gameplay. Whilst 1 & 2 were a bit slower due to their more involved gameplay, 3 suffered from the slightly samey nature of Tartarus, and 5 added in numerous ideas but sometimes suffered from ill-advised gameplay gimmicks, Golden finds a much better balance when compared to the older and newer games – it’s more streamlined than 5, but more varied than 3, and discards the complexities of the oldest games.

Persona 4 Golden is available on Steam – the beginning

Persona 4 Golden is available on Steam

Until recently, it seemed destined to remain on the PlayStation Vita, but I saw the rumours begin circulating sometime during Tuesday of this week. Naturally, I was sceptical – anyone following Persona 5’s release will know that the series is a magnet for ill-informed gossip and rumours, and I deliberately avoided publishing anything about this until today. The news that Persona 4 Golden is available on Steam was also shared during this evening’s “PC Gaming Show” – unfortunately, the news broke mere minutes earlier than the stream and people on Twitter were already sharing the Steam store page link – however, rumours had been pointing to the show being a perfect home for the announcement.

Every day’s great

Persona 4 Golden is available on Steam, and you can head to the Store page to check it out (see the link we’ve included below).  The description on the store page is somewhat brief: “With an overall Metacritic score of 93 and a multitude of awards, fan-adored Persona 4 Golden stands as one of the finest RPGs ever made, delivering on enthralling storytelling and quintessential Persona gameplay.Persona 4 Golden on Steam is best experienced with a game controller.” Below this, there’s mention of achievements, trading cards, “Full HD” visuals, “variable” framerates and voiceovers in Japanese or English. The mention of “Full HD” suggests that this will be displayed at 1080P rather than some 2160p upscale, but Persona 4 Golden’s clean style and bright environments aren’t begging for a massive graphical overhaul. The main selling point for me will be the fact that Persona 4 Golden has found a home on the PC, a gaming platform that’s as old as gaming itself. I often made light-hearted comments about the fact that I couldn’t part with a PlayStation Vita if it was the only way to play Persona 4 Golden… today, it seems like this could be the best place to experience the game. That is, if the PC version is any good.

Persona 4 Golden is available on Steam – the future

Of course, we’ll look forward to picking apart this Steam release in the future. You’ll have to bear with Disposable Media for a little while: as a site run by enthusiasts, we pick up games no sooner than any other enthusiast, and trying to deconstruct a new port of a 50 hour JRPG – not to mention one so highly-rated by fans – isn’t something that we can do carelessly. Depending on how the game plays I may end up following the example of Persona 5 Royal and writing separate pieces for early and late impressions, but I’m not sure yet. As always, let us know how you feel about this news, and if you’ll be picking the game up on Steam yourself.

Persona 4 Golden is available on Steam now for £15.99: the Store page can be found here.

Persona 5 Royal Concluding Impressions – The New

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Welcome to what I now call my Persona 5 Royal Concluding Impressions – part two of my two-part “review”. Not only was there too much in the game to talk about in a single article (part one can be found here), but I wanted to separate discussion of the new semester from my thoughts about how Royal tweaks the existing content from the first game. What this essentially means is that you should stop reading now if you don’t want to know what to expect after you’ve beaten the returning “final boss” that came back from the original Persona 5.

When a game concludes its story as successfully as Persona 5, it makes you wonder how you could create a narrative reason for more dungeon-crawling and social activities after everything has been so neatly wrapped up – indeed, when collecting my Persona 5 Royal concluding impressions, I wasn’t sure where the new semester would take me. The answer, of course, is that an alternate reality would be presented to us. As soon as you begin the new semester you’re aware that something’s not right – party members talk about plans to see folk who we know are no longer living, or spend time with colleagues who treated them like dirt. Morgana’s real-world appearance has changed more dramatically than when he used to morph into a car in Mementos. And nearly everyone is blissfully unaware except for the protagonist and another key character from the original game’s story.

Persona 5 Royal concluding impressions – the premise

Persona 5 Royal concluding impressions

The premise of Royal’s new semester is that someone has been toying with cognition to such extents that they can alter reality to suit people’s desires, which is why everyone is suddenly talking nonsense. This provides the core narrative drive of the new semester: if cognition could be changed so that people have no recollection of painful events in their past, could you let them enjoy their happiness if you knew they were living in a lie? It also brings a new deadline – at a certain point on the in-game calendar, you will have to face the mastermind behind this change in reality, and either agree to live in an illusion or – as I chose – reject what they’ve done and demand that things revert to normal.

This sets up two dungeon-crawling objectives for the Phantom Thieves; find the palace of the mastermind behind these cognition changes and confront them… but also deal with the altered reality that the public is experiencing by returning to Mementos and exploring new areas. Some people may be disappointed at the fact that there’s “only” one additional palace, but it has a few interesting ideas, such as opening paths in the new palace by investigating certain areas of Mementos, or answering introspective dialogue-based questions aimed at “the player” but with correct answers skewed towards the beliefs of the palace owner. Of course, if a palace is built from the thoughts and feelings of an individual then the protagonist needs to reject their own instincts and think like the palace ruler. (As a gameplay feature it can feel a bit like trial and error, but the questions and answers appear to be the same every time so there’s no harm in using save files to your advantage.) More conventional “puzzles” come from a locked door situation and subsequent key hunt, and there’s one particular gameplay sequence that recalls the horrors of the spaceport airlocks; tasked with pulling switches that make certain paths open and others close, it can be a bit tedious but it’s over soon enough.

Boss gauntlets and collecting

Should you find the treasure of the palace ahead of schedule, you have plenty of time to revisit Mementos, and in-between drafting my Persona 5 Royal concluding impressions I found all of the remaining stamp pickups (because Futaba’s floor scan ability may be randomly triggered, but it triggers frequently enough to be brute-forced. Ahem.) For a while players are killing time before the deadline, but when that day rolls around it delivers a mammoth boss gauntlet. The first obstacle is similar to the final boss of the base game: it has a number of targetable areas on its body, but each area that isn’t downed grants the boss another action in its turn. Furthermore, certain targets can be brought back to life, and the elemental affinities between targets can vary, so it can feel like a boss designed to waste your time. However, the core of the boss cannot regenerate, so its up to party members to take out the targetable areas whilst chipping away at the core.

Once I had a feel for damage output, my main hurdles came from the moments where I’d run out of resources, and it’s here where Jose and Hifumi can be invaluable. If a player remembers to buy rare items such as Somas from Jose, and can learn to switch party members mid-battle with Hifumi, they can replenish their resources and tag in allies who can deal with the new affinities. It’s challenging in the same way that vanilla P5’s final boss was challenging the first time around, and it almost makes the remaining obstacles in the boss gauntlet feel disappointing. There is a “non-encounter” at the very end of the boss gauntlet, but there’s also a second boss between that and the initial encounter… and I defeated said second boss in one attempt. So it’s hardly the escalation that P5’s original finale was. (That being said, the climax of the new content has some excellent music, particularly when “I Believe” plays on the day of the final calling card, and when “Throw Away Your Mask” sets the tone for the last challenge.)

Persona 5 Royal concluding impressions – mixed success

Persona 5 Royal concluding impressions

Judged on its own, the new semester is a satisfying chunk of gameplay that bolts plenty of content onto a game that already had a pretty long runtime. Meanwhile, the more tactical moments in the final boss gauntlet are genuinely engaging if you enjoy the modern Persona battle system. However, some of the palace gimmicks aren’t pulled off that well, and so it sometimes feels like another jumble of ideas. I’d still recommend Royal if you enjoyed the base game enough to want more P5, but it doesn’t elevate an already confused game into new heights of confidence. And that’s pretty much the end of my Persona 5 Royal concluding impressions; it’s a good update to an engaging RPG but it still runs into some of the old mistakes, and the new content doesn’t always learn from those mistakes. Let me know how you feel about the game’s new semester in the comments below.

Persona 5 Royal is out now on PS4.

Persona 5 Royal Initial Impressions – The Old

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Welcome to what I call my Persona 5 Royal Initial Impressions – part one of a two-part “review”. I’ve been playing the game a lot since getting hold of it, and I have too much on my mind to simply sum up in one article, so this time around I’m going to try something a little different. At the time of writing I’ve encountered and overcome what was the final boss in the original game, and so before I get into the new semester that I’ve heard so much about, I thought I’d collect my thoughts on the more familiar events that Royal revisits. This should at least provide some insight into the new changes without spoiling the new semester, but if you don’t want to know about those changes then you may want to stop reading until you’ve reached the point at which the original game ended. And with that, my spoiler warning ends.

Persona 5 Royal initial impressions – a primer

Persona 5 Royal initial impressions

Persona 5 Royal is an update in the same vein as Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 Golden; the main story remains the same, but a lot of new events, characters and gameplay features have been added. Even before I get to the new semester, this game has a wealth of ideas that easily rivals FES and Golden in terms of additional gameplay enhancements. Take Mementos, for instance – once a lonely drive through barren tunnels and a few random encounters, it’s now been enhanced with flowers (collectibles picked up around each floor) and stamps (hidden interactibles with a fixed total – again encouraging thorough collection.) Both of these can be exchanged at a trading point that appears on random floors and offers special items, and they make Mementos a more engaging experience – instead of racing for the exit each time, you’re encouraged to find every collectible. Maybe you’ll flee a difficult area and miss some pickups when you’re underlevelled, and then try to mop things up later on (as the game shows the tally for each area.) It’s a simple pleasure but one that’s quite compelling.

Similarly, I can’t talk about my Persona 5 Royal initial impressions without talking about Disaster Shadows – these have a unique appearance in every battle, and destroying one sets off an explosion that damages surrounding enemies. It’s a similar thrill to the systematic process of knocking down enemies for an All-Out Attack, but the explosion damages party members as well, so there’s some risk involved. Meanwhile, the Showtime mechanic offers team-up attacks between party members introduced with amusing animated scenes and resulting in high-damage attacks. Persona 5 Royal really wants to make each battle encounter more of a spectacle, and it offers more ways to turn things around than most of the previous games ever did. However, battles are still far from a pushover, and you’ll need every one of the new gameplay features in order to make progress through the game.

Bosses and gimmicks

Most of the key storyline bosses have received an upgrade too, and they often gain an additional phase on top of everything they did in the previous game. Some of these seem a little gimmicky – the art museum boss sends out clones with varying affinities, the boss in the spaceport has a new robotic clone ally that they use against you – whilst others catch the player by surprise and offer an engaging experience for those familiar with the Persona battle system (in particular, the new phase added to the boss in the cruise ship gave me plenty to think about.) And of course, on the Phantom Thieves side we have Kasumi – she’s introduced as a Phantom Thief at the very beginning of the game, but because the events are told in media res, she leaves your party for several of the months that follow – often only appearing in story scenes or confidant events afterwards. I had no problem with the bosses or party makeup in the original Persona 5, so all of these additions are generally fine – the only complaint I can see anyone levelling against it is that the bosses already had enough phases to begin with, and perhaps the battles get stretched out a little too much for some people.

In the original game, my personal elephant in the room came from a few rooms in palaces that introduced gameplay gimmicks that got old quickly. Personas 3 and 4 used their gimmick rooms sparingly – some random teleporting here, some fake doors there – whilst 5 went all out with mice, airlocks, paintings and more. The main reason I criticised these originally was because each one temporarily introduced a different way of playing, and there’s no way that all of those new ideas would hit the mark. Indeed, I found that the airlocks in the original involved too much backtracking and the mice could get lost for a while just because you didn’t catch a small crawlspace with Third Eye. And so one of the most disappointing things I took away from my Persona 5 Royal initial impressions was that these rooms returned and they were largely unchanged. If you didn’t like them before, you won’t like them now. (In the game’s defence, I didn’t find them quite as frustrating this time around because I knew what was coming, but they still feel like they overstay their welcome.)

Persona 5 Royal initial impressions – in summary

Persona 5 Royal initial impressions

Other thoughts? The Thieves Den is a nice little addition, and it serves a similar purpose to the TV Listings area of Persona 4 Golden – by collecting currency in-game you can unlock cosmetic items and customise a room with them. It’s a bit of a throwaway distraction but it can provide some welcome relief after you’ve been dungeon crawling for hours. Also, the Velvet Room has “Fusion Alarm” (or Fusion Alert) events where fusions made during an alarm can produce demons with new stats or skills. However, these events last until you leave the Velvet Room, and come back when the game randomly triggers them, so it encourages you to stop and think about how you could use this opportunity.

My immediate impression of Persona 5’s Royal makeover is that they’ve built a lot of interesting features around a core experience that always suffered – and still suffers – from some fundamental pacing issues. For that reason, it still won’t match the standard set by Persona 4 Golden – a game with lightning-fast exploration but still packed with challenging encounters that force players to stop and think, as well as a bunch of things to do on each calendar day. That said, it’s no bad thing if Royal isn’t the best in the series, and based on what I’ve played so far it’s still worth your time if you liked the vanilla experience and could push past the pacing issues. Thanks for reading, and if you want my thoughts on the new semester, you can read them over here.

Persona 5 Royal is out now on PS4.

An end to my Eternal Punishment

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Before I get started, I want to point out that this was never the plan. I had bounced off the original Persona’s PSP re-release, and thought that a traditional “Let’s Play” thread on a discussion board would motivate me into completing it. I never planned to play both of the Persona 2 games as well, but soon after that first thread was “complete” one or two people started talking about Persona 2 and so it kind of snowballed from there. After Innocent Sin I wanted to take a break from classic Persona Let’s Play activity, but when the traditional summer slowdown arrived – with fewer notable games being released – I saw it as the ideal time to begin my Eternal Punishment; a new “let’s play” of the “other” Persona 2 game. In a way it was both intimidating and exciting: this had become the game in the series that I knew the least about, but it would allow my knowledge of the series to come full circle. Eternal Punishment’s story begins with an urban legend about a “Joker curse” where you can contact an individual named Joker and give them the name of someone you wish to kill. This leads to the central characters pursuing those connected to Joker, but escalates towards talk of “Kegare”, gods and the threat of global destruction in the pursuit of utopia. If I’m being honest, I was more invested in the stories of the other two games because they were more about the nature of humanity, personalities and behaviours… this sometimes slides a bit too close to science madness, but it improves a lot later on.

Understanding my Eternal Punishment

my eternal punishment

The gameplay itself… well, it’s more classic Persona: negotiate with everyone to make dungeon crawling easier, fuse bigger and better demons to deal with encounters more easily, and maybe deal with some traps or light puzzling in dungeons. Again, negotiating through encounters isn’t quite as snappy as it was in P1… but it’s still quite quick, and experimenting in the Velvet Room can be fun. Notable sticking points throughout the game range from the return of Kandori in an undersea ruin (keep a second set of demons with electrical attacks for the adds, then swap them out when Kandori’s on his own… and don’t waste turns setting up too many fusion skills), a boss unofficially known as the “Metal Trio” (even now I think I got lucky here… but get a persona with the skill “Wall of Air” and just hope that you’re fortunate when it comes to status ailments), an encounter at the end of Sumaru Castle (keep the “Phoenix” persona handy for revival duties) and the final bosses (buy 99 100% healing items, 99 revival items and 99 SP-restoring items, keep everyone alive and wait for the enemy to do a useless turn. No, really.)

Technical difficulties

my eternal punishment

On top of everything, I had to emulate this, and I had a few technical issues during my Eternal Punishment experience that nearly halted the entire endeavour, but in the end Retroarch (and the PCSX Rearmed core) proved invaluable. Does the game still hold up today? I’m not so sure – the story is engaging and the battles can be satisfying, but the earlier games benefit from more polished English-language PSP updates. I preferred P1’s journey with Maki, Aki and Mai… but P2 has a less fussy battle system than P1… but Innocent Sin has the winning combination of modern presentation, a nice battle system and a somewhat engaging story. If you had to play one of them, I’d recommend Innocent Sin, but even the best of the “old” games isn’t as rewarding as the worst of the “new” games – P3 to P5 have excellent streamlining and fun design that doesn’t sacrifice challenge, so those will always be more memorable experiences.

Well, unless we’re talking about P3: The Answer, which I still can’t bring myself to go back to. Maybe one day…

Persona Super Live 2019 brings new announcements

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Well, well. It’s been an eventful week for fans of Persona 5. The Persona Super Live 2019 concert finally managed to answer a few questions that people have been holding on to for a while. What’s next for Persona 5? What’s Persona 5: The Royal all about? And why is there a mysterious placeholder website for “P5S”? One of the most widely-circulated rumours –
a rumour perpetuated through Best Buy listings and Twitter comments – was that something Persona 5-shaped would be heading over to the Nintendo Switch. (Needless to say, we didn’t want to report on this until we knew exactly what was going on.) Meanwhile, fans were fairly certain that Persona 5: The Royal was a PS4 game, if only because of the PS4 logo at the beginning of the debut trailer. However, this week was when everyone would get answers, as the Persona Super Live 2019 concert delivered trailers for two new and very different games in the Persona 5 universe.

Persona Super Live 2019 – the Royal reveal

Let’s start with Persona 5: The Royal. During Persona Super Live 2019, the new project for PS4 received a brand new trailer that ran for just over three minutes – teasing new faces, new events and an October 31st release date for Japan (it will come to the west next year.) Although the dialogue in the trailer was in Japanese, the teases of new content confirmed what many were thinking; this is Persona 5’s equivalent of P3: FES or P4: Golden – a new game in the same universe, but with a whole load of new content. This could be particularly exciting if it means that the framework of the original game gets some fine-tuning; I personally felt a bit disappointed by the pacing of certain dungeons, and I know others were quick to criticise the quality of the writing. We’ll have to wait and see if this is the game that finally does everything right.


Persona Super Live 2019 – the Scramble surprise

As for P5S? Many speculated that the S in the name stood for Switch (which is kind of weird when none of the other ports have the console’s name in them, but still) and my mood turned from sceptical to more open-minded as more teases and rumours began to float around. Happily, answers arrived pretty quickly in the aftermath of Persona Super Live 2019; P5S is a Switch (and PS4) game, but rather than being a port of the RPG, “Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers” is a Musou/Warriors game in the Persona 5 universe. In the trailer (just over a minute this time) we see Joker descending upon dozens of demons – series favourites such as Pyro Jack and Pixie can be seen – and sending them flying with spectacular attacks, as well as summoning Arsene to blast the demons with an explosion. It’s certainly an unexpected direction for both P5 and the Persona franchise as a whole… but as you can see from the trailer, it certainly looks the part.

Persona Super Live announcements – wrapping up

It’s hard to know what to make of the Persona Super Live 2019 announcements right now; obviously Persona 5: The Royal could be great if it ends up trimming the bloat from the original game, and I welcome more P5, but there’s still quite a wait before its release. Meanwhile, it’s fair to say that Scramble isn’t the Persona 5 game Switch owners were expecting, but it is a brand new direction for the series and it could provide a means of introducing Musou/Warriors fans to Persona, and vice versa. There’s a lot more speculation to be done in the meantime, so let us know what you think of the reveals in the comments.

Persona Super Live 2019

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