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[Hyoukokun]

Just finished today. Loved the heck out of the Igor twist - the very first thing I thought when I heard his new Japanese VA was "huh, that doesn't sound like Igor to me," and 80 hours later they hit me with the punchline. I'm glad I wasn't spoiled! Goro's betrayal didn't surprise me, but to be fair, it didn't surprise any of the rest of the cast either.

I'll agree that the last ~20% of the game dragged a bit. I think it's in part because they built up a rhythm of alternating between daily life and Phantom Thieves gameplay, and then (for plot reasons) had to entirely abandon the daily life portion for a ~15hr stretch. It was a bit frustrating to break a million yen and have pretty much nothing to spend it on save Persona fusions and summoning.

I think I'll give it a break before jumping in and going for a second round. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see them announce an expansion a la P4G / P3 FES; I just hope they consider doing it as DLC rather than as a full new game.

(So God help me, though, if they announce a Switch version I'll be in all over again.)

 

[Zareka]

I've finished the game.

People weren't kidding when they said there'd be major post-Persona depression when you complete your journey. This game has been my life for the past three weeks. 99:07 is my final playtime. I bought a PS4 just for this game - this was my first Persona game.

Entire last 2/3 hours of the game I had tears running down my eyes intermittently. This was a magical game, and it's most certainly on my "favorite games ever" list.

I want to go back...

Exactly how I felt finishing P3, P4 and even P4G. I was hoping P5 would hit me the exact same way but unfortunately it missed the mark. I got over it way too quickly.

Also, I have to ask with all these "game is tough" comments: did anyone else find this was the easiest Persona? Maybe it's because I played normal, but I can't remember ever struggling or really dying on any boss. The second I got an inheritable phys repel the game became a cakewalk and even before that it wasn't very challenging. The final boss was so painfully, disappointingly easy.

 

[RalchAC]

Exactly how I felt finishing P3, P4 and even P4G. I was hoping P5 would hit me the exact same way but unfortunately it missed the mark. I got over it way too quickly.

Also, I have to ask with all these "game is tough" comments: did anyone else find this was the easiest Persona? Maybe it's because I played normal, but I can't remember ever struggling or really dying on any boss. The second I got an inheritable phys repel the game became a cakewalk and even before that it wasn't very challenging. The final boss was so painfully, disappointingly easy.

The game can be easy if you upgrade Personas at a decent pace, since you'll know weaknesses before hand. The game has more skills too to help you stay alive, more gameplay perks to keep you from dying and due to the SP accessories it's harder to run out of it.

And you already have experience with the battle system tbh.

 

[Zafir]

Exactly how I felt finishing P3, P4 and even P4G. I was hoping P5 would hit me the exact same way but unfortunately it missed the mark. I got over it way too quickly.

Also, I have to ask with all these "game is tough" comments: did anyone else find this was the easiest Persona? Maybe it's because I played normal, but I can't remember ever struggling or really dying on any boss. The second I got an inheritable phys repel the game became a cakewalk and even before that it wasn't very challenging. The final boss was so painfully, disappointingly easy.

I felt it was probably the easiest Persona compared to OG Persona 3 and OG Persona 4(I heard they made golden easier?), having played all three of them on normal.

That said, if I'm being honest I'm not sure any of those Persona games are that massively difficult on normal, really. Which is fine for me, I'd play on hard if I wanted that much of a challenge.

 

[_Ryo_]

Did anyone else find the final boss too easy? I didnt have any major godly skills, used Ryuji, Morgana, and Yusuke. Just spammed physical on the chest area, with a Persona that blocked physical and guarded when it used the special arms and attacks.. They never healed the chest part, ever.
Felt much easier than 4s final boss, and like a complete joke compared to 3's.

 

[PK Gaming]

Exactly how I felt finishing P3, P4 and even P4G. I was hoping P5 would hit me the exact same way but unfortunately it missed the mark. I got over it way too quickly.

Also, I have to ask with all these "game is tough" comments: did anyone else find this was the easiest Persona? Maybe it's because I played normal, but I can't remember ever struggling or really dying on any boss. The second I got an inheritable phys repel the game became a cakewalk and even before that it wasn't very challenging. The final boss was so painfully, disappointingly easy.

Normal mode is pretty easy, but it's considerably more challenging than 3/4 on Hard mode.

 

[Zareka]

The game can be easy if you upgrade Personas at a decent pace, since you'll know weaknesses before hand. The game has more skills too to help you stay alive, more gameplay perks to keep you from dying and due to the SP accessories it's harder to run out of it.

And you already have experience with the battle system tbh.

I felt it was probably the easiest Persona compared to OG Persona 3 and OG Persona 4(I heard they made golden easier?), having played all three of them on normal.

That said, if I'm being honest I'm not sure any of those Persona games are that massively difficult on normal, really. Which is fine for me, I'd play on hard if I wanted that much of a challenge.

Now I think about it, I played P4G on hard and felt it was around the same as normal on the previous two games. I just remember getting stumped multiple times in my P3/P4 normal playthroughs and that never once happened in P5. That's probably down to a combination of my experience with the previous games + mega OP navigator abilities. Rise/Futaba's stacking protection abilities make it significantly harder to die. Guess I shoulda started on hard.

Did anyone else find the final boss too easy? I didnt have any major godly skills, used Ryuji, Morgana, and Yusuke. Just spammed physical on the chest area, with a Persona that blocked physical and guarded when it used the special arms and attacks.. They never healed the chest part, ever.
Felt much easier than 4s final boss, and like a complete joke compared to 3's.

Yeah, he was pretty weak. The status effects inflicted by the arms didn't seem to do much of anything a lot of the time and they didn't hit very hard.

 

[CrimsonFist]

For a very large portion of the game, hard requires a lot of caution when it comes to normal encounters. If you're not getting ambushes, you're not going to have a good time, since you need that extra turn to mitigate whatever damage they're going to do, and you need to be making use of ailments and the high crit skills to survive some of the tougher ones. Eases off towards the end when everyone has endure/enduring soul and you have final guard though.

Bosses kind of ease off after the first couple though, don't think any gave me as much trouble as Madarame, and the end game bosses were a bit of a joke. I think it's doing too much damage that breaks the final boss, because when he brings out a new sin after a certain damage threshold he won't attack normally as well, and the effects caused by the sins are trivial.

 

[Hyoukokun]

Did anyone else find the final boss too easy? I didnt have any major godly skills, used Ryuji, Morgana, and Yusuke. Just spammed physical on the chest area, with a Persona that blocked physical and guarded when it used the special arms and attacks.. They never healed the chest part, ever.

I found the true final boss pretty easy. I was an unlucky hit away from dying when I took down Shido's final form, though, so that fight felt pretty satisfying to me.

Overall difficulty felt about right considering I was playing on Normal; I died a few times, usually when over-extending myself or exposing a stupid weakness on the MC. I do wonder how much longer I would have put in if I was playing on Hard.

 

[_Ryo_]

Now I think about it, I played P4G on hard and felt it was around the same as normal on the previous two games. I just remember getting stumped multiple times in my P3/P4 normal playthroughs and that never once happened in P5. That's probably down to a combination of my experience with the previous games + mega OP navigator abilities. Rise/Futaba's stacking protection abilities make it significantly harder to die. Guess I shoulda started on hard.


Yeah, he was pretty weak. The status effects inflicted by the arms didn't seem to do much of anything a lot of the time and they didn't hit very hard.

Yeah. I didnt even focus on the arms. I thought maybe it was gonna have more stages and id have to try to get all arms down at once but nah, its just the chest you hit.

Imo, this boss is even easier than P3, on BEGINNER. I beat it on Normal. Never died to any major bosses. I think I died 2 times total the entire game and that was just because of install kill spells.

I mean, I didnt really spend any time grinding either. Avoided most enemies in Momentos, just sped past to get to the request bosses. Probaly have less than 30% of the compedium completed cause I didnt really spend much time catching or fusing personas either.

Gonna replay on hard or mercy at a later date. I was kinda disappointed in how easy the end game was after reading all the comparisons to MegaTen. I never played a MegaTen but Ive always heard it was more difficult.

 

[Guess Who]

I didn't even realize you could target the arms until I read this thread.

 

[CrimsonFist]

Gonna replay on hard or mercy at a later date. I was kinda disappointed in how easy the end game was after reading all the comparisons to MegaTen. I never played a MegaTen but Ive always heard it was more difficult.

Comparing P5 to "Megaten" is a bit weird since "Megaten" is a very large umbrella, with a lot of games of varying difficult levels, and where most titles don't have a very even difficulty curve, and a lot get easier as they go along.

 

[Zafir]

I focused the arms down by just using AoE attacks really. Ryuji and the MC doing AoE physical attacks clears all but one arm.

 

[bigDdestruction]

I definitely feel the cast isn't as strong as p3 or p4. Haru doesn't feel nearly as fleshed out as the other characters, the group as a whole just isn't as connected as the previous entries, and i didn't feel much at the ending. I was definitely feeling something with p3 and p4's ending, but this one it was just like "ok cool". Just my two cents.

 

[mdubs]

Finished today. Was everything that I hoped it would be, and P4G is probably my favourite game ever. Everything just worked so well for me, so hats off to PStudio on topping themselves yet again

 

[Guess Who]

Comparing P5 to "Megaten" is a bit weird since "Megaten" is a very large umbrella, with a lot of games of varying difficult levels, and where most titles don't have a very even difficulty curve, and a lot get easier as they go along.

I feel like a lot of people use "Megaten" as a shorthand for "Nocturne."

 

[_Ryo_]

I used Haru like a total of 4 battles. Ryuji was strong AF in physical, and one of my main Personas had physic skills so I didnt really see a need.

Comparing P5 to "Megaten" is a bit weird since "Megaten" is a very large umbrella, with a lot of games of varying difficult levels, and where most titles don't have a very even difficulty curve, and a lot get easier as they go along.

I feel like a lot of people use "Megaten" as a shorthand for "Nocturne."

Never played a MegaTen so I was just going by commemts I read in Persona 5 OT saying the end game was similar.

 

[CrimsonFist]

I feel like a lot of people use "Megaten" as a shorthand for "Nocturne."

Nocturne's just as bad for having an uneven difficulty curve though

 

[Zareka]

I legit forgot Haru was in my party until some time during the last dungeon when I opened the status menu, lol

 

[CrimsonFist]

Haru gets One Shot Kill, which is really good for enemies with no weakness, especially when paired with Revolution.

Plus dungeon 5 has a lot of enemies weak to Psio, so she's good to keep around then.

Although I neglected her confidant, so no baton pass and endure kind of hurt her utility later on.

 

[PK Gaming]

Haru's really solid, like pretty much everyone in P5. Her potential doesn't shine as much because a lot of people miss out on getting her combat skills due to her Confidant being locked.

The cast as a whole is considerably stronger than P3/P4s cast, lol. Having to work around your mediocre teammates in P3:FES was a pain.

 

[Sub_Level]

Played on Hard mode and Haru was excellent.

One Shot Kill + Psi skills. Amrita Shower is nice to have too.

 

[FHIZ]

Beat the game, finally can come in here...

This part:

Holy shit. Get smoked, Grail. One of my favorite moments of the year, easily.

Had to think back to P4G, I remember after you beat the "bad guy" it does the same thing and goes to "full on anime world is ending god fight" but couldn't remember if Izanagi was ever this cool. Spoilers: he wasn't.

 

[Vamphuntr]

It's very Anime. The giant cup which is also a God turned into a Gundam then your own persona turns into another Gundam and they fight it out.

 

[Absol]

beat the game at 145 hours. p5 might have stolen my heart away from Nier as my goty lol

now to wait for TitS 3rd. man, this year feels weird. going from jrpg to another jrpg.

 

[Zareka]

I dunno, I see a lot of people praising that moment but I thought it was waaaay too much. P4's wasn't as 'exciting' but I still prefer that leagues above P5s ending. I like cheese and corn, but the last 15 minutes or so of P5 crossed the line even for me.

 

[Ydelnae]

Haru should have been introduced earlier, definitely. She's literally absent in the school until her arc begins. I wish she would have obtained her Persona powers earlier and appeared/was teased during the 3rd or 4th dungeon, making the Thieves think that she was the culprit until she crosses paths with Morgana and her arc begins.

Would have been nice to have her "Beauty Thief" act play out as a vigilante type of character that tried to help the Phantom Thieves but didn't know how to contact them and join in. I also thought it would have been interesting if they let you start her Confidant link up until rank 4-6 or so, before she joins the party.

 

[Zafir]

I usually hate cheesy stuff, but I thought it kind of worked with Persona 5 considering the entire game revolved around peoples belief of the phantom thieves.

 

[Zareka]

It did but then again I didn't like the whole phantom thieves business at any point during the game. So that could have played a factor too.

 

[FHIZ]

Haru should have been introduced earlier, definitely. She's literally absent in the school until her arc begins. I wish she would have obtained her Persona powers earlier and appeared/was teased during the 3rd or 4th dungeon, making the Thieves think that she was the culprit until she crosses paths with Morgana and her arc begins.

Her being introduced late and need a maxed social stat almost immediately just lead me to go "well, see you in NG+" Considering how fast tracked the game gets after the 5th palace, it just wasn't possible for me to even bother with Haru that much in my play through.

 

[AgentLampshade]

Did anyone else find the final boss too easy? I didnt have any major godly skills, used Ryuji, Morgana, and Yusuke. Just spammed physical on the chest area, with a Persona that blocked physical and guarded when it used the special arms and attacks.. They never healed the chest part, ever.
Felt much easier than 4s final boss, and like a complete joke compared to 3's.

I just hit super hard with my ma-spells and annihilated them all. For the arms that repelled the spell... It didn't matter, because my Personas had evolved to block it. I feel it would have been better if it took the P3 final boss route.

Spoiler

7 phases for the sins and a final phase that uses Rays of Control like Night Queen.

Also should have been a double attacker.

 

[WrenchNinja]

You can see Makoto in the library pretty early in the game before you even officially meet her. Does Haru really not appear at all early on? That's seems really weird.

 

[R0ckman]

You can see Makoto in the library pretty early in the game before you even officially meet her. Does Haru really not appear at all early on? That's seems really weird.

Nope, she appears in an anime scene during a festival earlier in the game but other than that, not much of her is shown.

 

[FHIZ]

You can see Makoto in the library pretty early in the game before you even officially meet her. Does Haru really not appear at all early on? That's seems really weird.

Pretty sure the first time you see her is during the fireworks festive cut scene.

 

[Ydelnae]

You can see Makoto in the library pretty early in the game before you even officially meet her. Does Haru really not appear at all early on? That's seems really weird.

I don't think she does, her ealier appearances are story related like the one in the trip and when she appears at the front gate. It seems weird to not tease her during the time the party is using the rooftop as a hideout, since she had a garden there. I'm 90% certain that she is completely absent from the game up until the fireworks anime cutscene. Even Futaba was hinted at way earlier in the game with the Sojiro phone calls.

 

[PK Gaming]

Haru should have been introduced earlier, definitely. She's literally absent in the school until her arc begins. I wish she would have obtained her Persona powers earlier and appeared/was teased during the 3rd or 4th dungeon, making the Thieves think that she was the culprit until she crosses paths with Morgana and her arc begins.

Would have been nice to have her "Beauty Thief" act play out as a vigilante type of character that tried to help the Phantom Thieves but didn't know how to contact them and join in. I also thought it would have been interesting if they let you start her Confidant link up until rank 4-6 or so, before she joins the party.

This definitely would have been great.

I think the game really should have given more time as the "Beauty Thief." Making her the main viewpoint w/ Morgana while you do part of the 5th dungeon would have rocked.

 

[MrS]

Joker is cool as fuck. Loved making sassy remarks with him like a boss.

 

[Zafir]

You can see Makoto in the library pretty early in the game before you even officially meet her. Does Haru really not appear at all early on? That's seems really weird.

Nope, I went out of my way to try and see if she did show up on my second playthrough. I didn't see her at all. The first time you see her is the fireworks festival, and even then you don't see her again until just before her arc starts when she's outside the school gardening.

Overall it's just a real shame. Her introduction is just totally over shadowed by Morgana's existential crisis and her dad dying with the bad press that causes. So even when she comes into the spotlight, she doesn't get much attention.

 

[dan2026]

Just finished today. 93 hours 27 minutes.

Damn that was a long as game.

Kinda which I hadn't been spoiled on Akechi being a villain when the game came out in Japan.
But that what you get with a 6 month delay I guess.

How thoughtful that 6 months later Atlus is protecting us from spoilers by blocking streaming and screenshots....

 

[Young Magus]

OH.MY.GOD

 

[Trigonometrize.]

Joker is cool as fuck. Loved making sassy remarks with him like a boss.

Joker is the funniest character in the game

"Time to button mash!"
"Ryuji's a phantom thief"

 

[FHIZ]

"Ryuji's a phantom thief"

one of my favorite moments of the game.

 

[Neoweee]

Done at like 98 hours, but total playtime was definitely a few more than that.

Very good game. Still has a whole bunch of pacing issues, and despite a lot of improvements (namely Mementos, and Side Quests not being catastrophically terrible), it still kind of bungles a few stretches of the game.

If a game is going to have a bunch of fake out endings and multiple epilogues, I think it works better when the last major gameplay section is after the last "run around town" section, like in Persona 4 or (recent-ish RPG title as a spoiler)

Spoiler

Trails of Cold Steel 2

. It ends on more of a high note, especially in those two games having outstanding final boss themes.

Also, I have to agree with a bunch of people that Haru just feels "there". Not only does she show up late, but her S. Link starts even later, and she never feels integrated with the rest of the team. And I don't like her personality.

On a MAJOR plus side, Hard is one of the best (or just least bad?) NG difficulties Atlus has done. Nothing is particularly egregious, but some chunks of Palace 5, and some overly long boss fights later in the game, are the only major marks against it.

It's a great game, but there's definitely a lot of improvements to make in 5~8 years when an enhanced port of it comes out.

 

[Ponn]

Finally finished. Started it early with a save point right before Holy Grail in Mementos thinking it would only be a couple hours. 10 fucking hours later. My main thought right now

GODDAMNIT MONA!! Don't trick me like that you stupid cat!

 

[McMoneyman]

Finished it last night, with Persona 4 Golden(which I loved) as my only Persona experience previously. I think Persona 5 improved on most things, I thought events and holidays were way better in 4. 10/10 and my GOTY so far.

Thought Akachi was great(should've caught the pancake slip of the tongue earlier!), even though I didn't sympatize with him exactly. Igor plot twist I didn't see coming either

 

[Adree]

They should have just done a "Burn my Dread (Last Battle)" style remix of Rivers in the Desert for the final fight.

 

[Guess Who]

They should have just done a "Burn my Dread (Last Battle)" remix of Rivers in the Desert for the final fight.

I dunno about that, but Yaldabaoth's boss theme is definitely a let down. There's good bits in it, but it just feels... sloppy. The Fog and The Almighty were both way better.

I also wish Rivers in the Desert got to stay Shido's thing and that the Holy Grail had a unique theme.

 

[Megawarrior]

I've finished the game.

People weren't kidding when they said there'd be major post-Persona depression when you complete your journey. This game has been my life for the past three weeks. 99:07 is my final playtime. I bought a PS4 just for this game - this was my first Persona game.

Entire last 2/3 hours of the game I had tears running down my eyes intermittently. This was a magical game, and it's most certainly on my "favorite games ever" list.

I want to go back...

I went back and am currently playing P3 FES. I might play Persona 2 EP as well to get my fix.

 

[Adree]

I dunno about that, but Yaldabaoth's boss theme is definitely a let down. There's good bits in it, but it just feels... sloppy. The Fog and The Almighty were both way better.

I also wish Rivers in the Desert got to stay Shido's thing and that the Holy Grail had a unique theme.

Holy Grail should have grown a mouth and rapped at you.

 

[PK Gaming]

The ending epilogue is absolutely fantastic, but I still can't get over how badly they fucked up the dialogue.

Ryuji's like: If you wanna change the world, all you have to do is look at it differently.. am I right?

Aaaaand that is what "aesthetics" are.

1) Aesthetics: The branch of philosophy which deals with questions of beauty and artistic taste.
2) A teenager like Ryuji would never use it like that.
3) The word they're looking for is perspective.
4) ???