Aaron's Status

10:44 am

It was my wife who urged me to play Persona 5, saying it was among her favorite games ever. I like turn-based combat RPGs generally (I’m a Final Fantasy VII kid) so I was willing to give it a go.

Persona 5 is one in a long (ongoing?) series of Persona JRPGs based on the concept of your combat powers (in unreal “cognitive” worlds) being directly linked to how you develop relationships with people in the “real world.” My wife played Persona 5, but I am playing a well-received remaster called Persona 5 Royal. This is a crucial detail.

It’s a fun game, it’s cutesy in the ways that JRPGs can tend to be, but it has a vast amount of stuff to explore and do, and a ton of storyline to absorb and try to figure out. It’s also not an impenetrable mess like every Hideo Kojima game ever made (I say this as a die-hard Death Stranding lover).

I don’t know what all of the differences are between the original and Royal, but one thing I know for sure is that they totally broke this one boss fight that I just got through, which took me several days and many YouTube videos of research to finally overcome.

It’s a bad sign when changing your difficulty level from “normal” to “merciless” actually makes the fight easier. Also it’s the only fight with a countdown timer (that you can’t pause in any way). It also doesn’t allow a specific combat mechanic called an “all-out attack” that you can normally do when all enemies are “knocked down.”

I just want to ask the people who made these changes: what on Earth were you smoking when you did this? Do you not have anyone in your lives who love you? Do you wish only to preside over the suffering of your players?

So glad that’s behind me.