3.5/5 ★ – soulfulgamer19's review of Persona 5.

As a JRPG lover I was so excited to play this game, but after 25 hours I just can’t go on. I admit this is the most stylish game ever, and the music is phenomenal. I love the jazz fusion soundtrack and “Beneath the Mask” was my most played song on Spotify in 2021. That being said, after I got to the second dungeon the gameplay flaws really started to wear on me. For one, the difficulty calibration is way off. I found normal mode too hard and not respectful of my time since it required you to grind. But once I switched to safe mode, the game was too easy and the game doesn’t let you switch back. I would have kept it on normal difficulty but the time limit on dungeons made me not want to waste a bunch of effort if I took too long and the timer reset. In my opinion, turn-based games like this should never have a time limit — it completely prevents the player from experimenting with different tactics and learning organically (which is part of the fun). Persona 5 makes the dungeon time limit even worse by taking control of your time away from you. For example, in the evenings I would want to craft an item or go to the batting cages to improve my stats, but Morgana would often say “you’re too tired” and force me to go to sleep, thereby losing another day. What the heck? Either the game needs to have a time limit but give you freedom within that time, or force you into certain events but have no time limit to complete a level. What it should not do is both, i.e. limit your time and take control of your time away from you. This makes it doubly hard to finish a dungeon on time. Maybe if the game was portable I would be more forgiving, but playing on PS4, there’s so much investment already put to just boot up the game it feels like the game doesn’t respect your time enough to warrant your continued engagement. That is a real shame, because when there was no timer (like between levels) I loved hanging out with friends and exploring the city. My other issue was that the game’s vibe is just a little too kiddie for me at this point of my life. As a 32 year old, I am growing out of the anime phase, and while I love some of the mature directions that the plot explores, the vibe was a little too juvenile at some points. I don’t know why anime writers love to focus on high school students, but as an adult, I just can’t relate to that any more. That’s probably why I’m gravitating towards games with more adult themes and characters. That critique is entirely subjective through, so your mileage may vary, especially given your tolerance for anime tropes. Lastly, the gameplay mechanics were just not that fun compared to other JRPGs. The rules of combat were too opaque; like what persona fusions are the best? What do the buffs and debuffs mean? What are the stats for each party member? The game does not explain this clearly, and without that knowledge, the combat does not provide the strategic enjoyment of other JRPGs. The dungeons also prevent you from saving anywhere and force you to reach the next save room before you’re allowed to save progress. Because of this, I would often resort to melee attacking enemies one by one because I’d want to conserve MP (which the game sparingly replenishes) since I would need to go far enough in a dungeon to reach the next save point, lest I exceed the artificial time limit imposed by the game. As you can imagine, this is not the most pleasant or strategic experience. Overall, while Persona 5 is the most stylish game I’ve ever seen, it’s not that engaging from a gameplay standpoint because of how much it guides you into its preferred tempo. As such, I feel like Persona 5 truly is an anime turned into a video game. And therein lies the problem. Anime is a passive medium and not an interactive one. Anime fans know what they’re getting into, and they can skip the “filler episodes” to get to the parts that actually advance the story. Since videogames are an interactive medium, we players cannot fast-forward through a boring stretch of the game, and our experience suffers as a result. Persona 5 would make a great show to watch, but it’s just an ok game to play. Its cheeky disclaimer to “Take Your Time” conceals the fact that time is not something you fully control. All the style in the world can’t transform drudgery into excitement.