Persona 5: The Expected First Quarter JRPG Powerhouse

There are some video game series that has grown into legendary franchises that have their fans eagerly waiting for the next game in the series to come out. One of those such series is the ever more popular Persona series, and with the next installment, Persona 5, on the way we thought we would delve deep into the previews for this game and give you the complete low-down.

For those who are not aware, which I assume is very few of you, the Persona series is a JRPG legend that combines traditional dungeon crawling turn based combat with out of combat social features, and they are developed by the JRPG kings, Atlas. In these games your characters have “personas,” which are manifestations of that character in god or demon-like forms. These personas are images of that character’s inner self that come to life and are used to attack your enemies in combat. What makes these games truly unique is that when you are out of combat you perform typical daily activities just like any high school student in Japan would do. This means that you go to school, join sports clubs, meet your friends for ramen, and even study. These daily tasks help you to build relationships with your peers, which in turn power up your personas. These features make these games more immersive and keep you playing “just for one more day.”

For those of you who are already familiar with the Persona series and are a bit skeptical about this new installment you may be asking, “what is the big deal? I have already played the other Persona games, what makes this one so special?”

Well for starters, the main complaint from the previous Persona game installments is being addressed, the lackluster dungeon design. In Persona 3 especially the dungeon crawling aspect of the game took place in a single tower where every the player would climb through identical looking floors in order to finally reach the top. This to many players became very repetitive and almost made you want to forgo the dungeon aspect all together and instead focus on the social aspects of the game. This was slightly improved in Persona 4 where instead of a never ending tower dungeon we got dungeons designed around different character’s inner feelings, but overall every level of these dungeons looked more or less the same. According to an interview on Destructoid Persona 5’s dungeon design “is vastly different from the previous games,” and instead will focus on the new “phantom thieves” theme which has been making an appearance in the trailers that we have been seeing on the web, and which is the main feature of the full anime intro below. This hopefully will breath new life into the dungeon crawling aspects of the game and cause players to look forward to not only the social aspects of the game, but the combat as well.

That brings us to the next new feature of Persona 5, the new theme for the character designs. In the past installments in the Persona series, namely Persona 4, the overall theme for the game was pop culture and television. In this new installment is instead of focusing on a more Clockwork Orange, or Suicide Squad vibe that has spawned some new interesting character designs. With all leather outfits, cliche masks, and thug-like weapons these new designs are at the very least… interesting, and are a welcome change to the previous pop culture theme from the last game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another feature that is making a comeback and being expanded upon in Persona 5 is the focus on real life Japanese culture. In the previous games your characters can visit ramen shops, shopping districts, shrines, and many other locations modeled off of Japanese culture. One new location in particular is getting more attention than the others and that is the new Maid Cafes that are being added to the game. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I think of Japanese culture and life, I think about girls dressed up like maids serving me tea and baked goods. This new mechanic, which was also reported in Destructoid, acts much like the tea shop did in Persona 4, which will give your characters stat boosts for consuming food and drink in these cafes. It is little touches that like these that tend to bring the Persona series to life and add to the immersion factor when playing.

These new features and the game as a whole may sound great, but you may be thinking, “that’s great, but first quarter JRPG powerhouse?” Well something to consider is that the Japanese release date for Persona 5 is September 15, 2016, while the release date for its biggest competitor, Final Fantasy XV, has been pushed back to November. This has caused the preorders for this game to soar to 450% of its former numbers. This means that fans of the genre in Japan no longer have to decide between the two games, and we can expect a ton of content to be shown in the states after the release, which in turn will enhance the hype factor. This delay for Final Fantasy XV also shows potential flaws with the game, which has caused some fans to completely jump ship and drop their preorders in favor for just waiting to see what the game will be like before purchasing.

Now you may be pretty interested, but you are still thinking to yourself, “well I do want this game, but is it really worth buying a PS4 to play it?” Well that is the next remarkable thing about Persona 5, it is not just being released for the Playstation 4, but also for the Playstation 3! This fact ensures that fan of the series who buy their consoles just for it and other JRPGs, (which are so far lacking on the PS4), will still have access to it. It is little things like this that make Atlus a great game developer and publisher, and has guaranteed its sale to a much larger audience.

Overall Persona 5 is guaranteed to be a fantastic new JRPG that promises to breath new life into the franchise, make changes to the game to address issues with the previous installments, is going to be extremely accessible to anyone who is interested, and is the sole game this writer is actually excited for next year.

Be sure to take a look at the first 18 minutes of gameplay that was released below, and check out our links below where you can learn more about the game and preorder if you are interested. That’s it for now! Tune in next time to learn more about JRPG news and updates and be sure to check out next week’s podcast where we will be discussing this topic and the previous Persona installments!

 

Learn more:
Persona 4 Game Profile
Persona 3 Game Profile
Persona 2 Game Profile
Persona 5 Official Website
Preorder Persona 5