Atlus Persona 5

[roll-a-die]

Don't get your hopes too high, Atlus has been on an obvious decline. SMT IV was one big boring turd. Etrian Odyssey is something mechanically simple and always the same that they keep milking over and over again, even reskinning it as Persona. And they have made so many retarded spinoffs. Even Persona itself is something that they have progressively made tamer and gayer with every iteration. Atlus is gone.

The only hopes for Japanese gaming really are the small niche studios with moe characters, for the most part, where they don't have to worry about pleasing anyone but those dedicated enough to spend a fortune on special editions and figurines. It acts as a filter against retards.

Oh boy, HHR trolling again, almost fell for it. Had about a paragraph written, noped out, not gonna get trolled tonight.

Anyway, HHR? Mind if I ask you a couple questions?

No? Good.

First, why do you think these games are getting tamer?

Is it that their target audience is shifting in both Japan and the US? And that the counter cultures in both those nations have shifted from being assholishly violent and stupidly proud of it. To being assholishly proud of how accepting they are of people.

Or is it that they are literally making the game more "politically correct"?

And if it's because they are making the games more politically correct, why are your jimmies getting so rustled to where you are attempting to claim Atlus is gone?

That doesn't sound like they are lacking offensiveness there.

It sounds like they've actually gotten more left of center than they were before. And that your own political views are being crossed by things you want to enjoy.

And also given the current political climate of the world, with more conservative/rightwards leaning governments being voted in by the day. I'd say that is possibly the least politically correct thing to do.

So to summarize, why you trying to be trolling mate? Your leg to stand on is bravado and lack of cultural understanding. Besides everything about this game seems to be a trend back towards older style atlus structures.

Anyway, ciao.

 

[duanth123]

Humanity has risen! is right though. Play older Atlus games and you'll notice a difference. There's a definite maturity of tone and complexity of game mechanics that is being diluted in favor of the massive profits that casualization brings.

 

[flyingjohn]

There is no mystery here about atlus dumbing down games.
They had to do it considering none of the pre persona 3 games were actually selling enough.(nocturne was a big failure sales wise,sub 500k)
It is the same thing that happened to western rpg's,nobody bought them and then we got interactive movies.
But i would rather have atlus dumb down and survive on their own terms then just disappear.
None of the new atlus games(etrian,new persona,new smt,etc) are bad at least compared to the modern pandering jrpg's.
They are solid games with functioning game play elements and that is all you need.(compare persona 5 to any other jrpg released in the last years)
And no niche studio is dumb enough to bankrupt themselves trying to please a imaginary audience.
In fact the niche studios are doing most of the blatant fan service games while the big studios are trying to copy wrpg open world games.(and no wizardry clones are not niche considering wizardry is pretty popular in Japan)

 

[Lostpleb]

Humanity has risen! is right though. Play older Atlus games and you'll notice a difference. There's a definite maturity of tone and complexity of game mechanics that is being diluted in favor of the massive profits that casualization brings.

As much as I thought that Persona 3 was a good game, I'm going to have to side with this.

Let's take a look at the battle system of the older titles.

Notice the "Contact" command. SMT: Persona 1 & 2 had a fully-developed diplomacy system which was more complex and more rewarding to employ than the usual turn-based brutality. The phase of the moon had an influence over the response that certain types of monsters would have to the various diplomatic approaches, and it even had an effect on the potency of some spells. Bribing your enemies with items was a thing, so you had to figure out what the monsters wanted. Or, you could inflict a status effect by taunting the dumber ones, and give yourself an advantage that way.

The more recent games don't even come close to having any of those options. Persona 3 had a gimmicky "all-out attack" mechanic, which was really just a way to speed up a fight that was already over. Other than that, every battle was rock paper scissor whack-a-mole.

As far as the maturity of the themes go, Persona 2 is a game that I got quite far into because of an interesting moral dilemma that is presented right after the first major boss. Shortly into the game you get to visit a local hospital, talk to all the patients and doctors, then watch as nearly everyone turn into zombies before you have to kill them. Not too long after, you have to decide whether the megalomaniac behind that attack should be killed at the cost of another innocent life. SMT has always been about high school-aged students, but the themes were infinitely more mature before Persona 3 came along and popularized the series to the point where a port of the FES edition was financially viable.

SMT is entering the mainstream, with all the usual issues that entail. There is no going back.

 

[Makabb]

Persona 5 brings back talking with monsters in battle, i don't see how that is dumbing down.

 

[Lostpleb]

Persona 5's monster talk is severely simplified and mostly a replacement to P3/P4's bonus shuffle system. You don't negotiate with the monsters so much as you try to get some extra goodies for defeating them.

 

[Makabb]

the shuffle is still in

 

[Lostpleb]

No, it's not.

 

[Jasede]

And if it hadn't changed you'd complain they went out of business like Troika.
Persona 3 on Hard is more difficult than anything I have ever done in SMT 1 and 2 and this praised 'complex' negotiation was pretty much a matter of guessing things until you got it right, finding a pattern, then sticking to it. The games got more complex in other ways which you so gleefully brush under the rug: there's an abundance of quests now, the social link stuff is neat and gives benefits mechanically, there are more damage types and immunities/resistances, the spell-system has matured, etc., etc.

 

[Hobo Elf]

And if it hadn't changed you'd complain they went out of business like Troika.
Persona 3 on Hard is more difficult than anything I have ever done in SMT 1 and 2 and this praised 'complex' negotiation was pretty much a matter of guessing things until you got it right, finding a pattern, then sticking to it. The games got more complex in other ways which you so gleefully brush under the rug: there's an abundance of quests now, the social link stuff is neat and gives benefits mechanically, there are more damage types and immunities/resistances, the spell-system has matured, etc., etc.

Regarding conversations, they are 100% random in SMT4 with no patterns to abuse. It was shitty as hell until you unlocked all the fail safe apps, like letting you fail one dialogue check. It wasn't fun.

 

[TigerKnee]

The story is dumb, but IV Apocalypse is actually pretty fun despite its complete lack of any consequences for dying whatsoever.

I find the negotiation to be pretty consistent too - once you figured out a personality type, you can generally get pretty consistent results when talking.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

The story is dumb, but IV Apocalypse is actually pretty fun despite its complete lack of any consequences for dying whatsoever.

I find the negotiation to be pretty consistent too - once you figured out a personality type, you can generally get pretty consistent results when talking.

Just the fact that Apocalypse has a really dumbed down story is a big warning sign, when you think of Nocturne and how it had such an intriguing premise, intriguing content and beautiful imagery. Now they have retarded anime designs and a useless story, and nothing disturbing happens in the game, whereas older games had some frightening/disturbing elements.

I mean the first Persona was a horror game, and it well full circle up to the fourth where you have characters complaining about their emotions for the whole game.

 

[roll-a-die]

The story is dumb, but IV Apocalypse is actually pretty fun despite its complete lack of any consequences for dying whatsoever.

I find the negotiation to be pretty consistent too - once you figured out a personality type, you can generally get pretty consistent results when talking.

Just the fact that Apocalypse has a really dumbed down story is a big warning sign, when you think of Nocturne and how it had such an intriguing premise, intriguing content and beautiful imagery. Now they have retarded anime designs and a useless story, and nothing disturbing happens in the game, whereas older games had some frightening/disturbing elements.

I mean the first Persona was a horror game, and it well full circle up to the fourth where you have characters complaining about their emotions for the whole game.

Except it went from external horror being forced upon the protagonists in P1 and P2. Too internal horror, the struggle of the self with the internal fears being predominant. Loss of self, loss of control. This is again consistent with the changing of their target demographic. Their target audience and demographic isn't going to be moved by finding a character they barely know anything about dead in a room. And your characters having an emotion over it.

That doesn't terrify them/us. You know what terrifies us, the idea that we could grow into an adult, and still have no control over our destiny, that shit is terrifying, and is exactly what the first dungeon in P4 is about.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Persona 1 & 2 is make believe fantasy horror though and that shit doesn't phase anyone who isn't a child. Persona 3, 4 and 5 deal with actual relateable horror, such as loss of loved ones, dying to an uncurable disease or getting raped by the school jock.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

The story is dumb, but IV Apocalypse is actually pretty fun despite its complete lack of any consequences for dying whatsoever.

I find the negotiation to be pretty consistent too - once you figured out a personality type, you can generally get pretty consistent results when talking.

Just the fact that Apocalypse has a really dumbed down story is a big warning sign, when you think of Nocturne and how it had such an intriguing premise, intriguing content and beautiful imagery. Now they have retarded anime designs and a useless story, and nothing disturbing happens in the game, whereas older games had some frightening/disturbing elements.

I mean the first Persona was a horror game, and it well full circle up to the fourth where you have characters complaining about their emotions for the whole game.

Except it went from external horror being forced upon the protagonists in P1 and P2. Too internal horror, the struggle of the self with the internal fears being predominant. Loss of self, loss of control. This is again consistent with the changing of their target demographic. Their target audience and demographic isn't going to be moved by finding a character they barely know anything about dead in a room. And your characters having an emotion over it.

That doesn't terrify them/us. You know what terrifies us, the idea that we could grow into an adult, and still have no control over our destiny, that shit is terrifying, and is exactly what the first dungeon in P4 is about.

That is not wrong in and of itself, but it does become more and more about characters being in some sort of emotional crisis, up to a ridiculous point. As I'm growing old, I'm growing tired of seeing characters always going on some sort of existential crisis. It is over the top when it is EVERY SINGLE ONE of them. I mean every dungeon in P4 was about something like this, there even was a gay sauna dungeon.

Not only that but P4 didn't have a single non-randomized dungeon. I am really tired of this sort of "Tartarus grind", I think it is lazy design.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Persona 5 is supposed to have real dungeons though, right? They aren't RNG from what I understand.

 

[roll-a-die]

That is not wrong in and of itself, but it does become more and more about characters being in some sort of emotional crisis, up to a ridiculous point. As I'm growing old, I'm growing tired of seeing characters always going on some sort of existential crisis. It is over the top when it is EVERY SINGLE ONE of them. I mean every dungeon in P4 was about something like this, there even was a gay sauna dungeon.

Not only that but P4 didn't have a single non-randomized dungeon. I am really tired of this sort of "Tartarus grind", I think it is lazy design.

Think of it this way, the plot is happening to them for a reason. Everyone, and I do mean, everyone at the teenage years has some sort of overblown crisis. The events of such games are magnifying it. Add in that P4 was literally about those emotional crisis's, the being that was involved was FEEDING on them, until they wanted to die. It wouldn't be the same game without those crisis's. And in that regard, the characterization was ripe. The being was picking the characters with the most amount of emotional turmoil. The central theme or one of them at least, was grow older, accept yourself.

 

[Malpercio]

The story is dumb, but IV Apocalypse is actually pretty fun despite its complete lack of any consequences for dying whatsoever.

I find the negotiation to be pretty consistent too - once you figured out a personality type, you can generally get pretty consistent results when talking.

Just the fact that Apocalypse has a really dumbed down story is a big warning sign, when you think of Nocturne and how it had such an intriguing premise, intriguing content and beautiful imagery. Now they have retarded anime designs and a useless story, and nothing disturbing happens in the game, whereas older games had some frightening/disturbing elements.

I mean the first Persona was a horror game, and it well full circle up to the fourth where you have characters complaining about their emotions for the whole game.

That doesn't terrify them/us. You know what terrifies us, the idea that we could grow into an adult, and still have no control over our destiny, that shit is terrifying, and is exactly what the first dungeon in P4 is about.

That's a nice way of saying you are playing a wish-fulfillment version of your high school with waifus, over and over again.

 

[roll-a-die]

The story is dumb, but IV Apocalypse is actually pretty fun despite its complete lack of any consequences for dying whatsoever.

I find the negotiation to be pretty consistent too - once you figured out a personality type, you can generally get pretty consistent results when talking.

Just the fact that Apocalypse has a really dumbed down story is a big warning sign, when you think of Nocturne and how it had such an intriguing premise, intriguing content and beautiful imagery. Now they have retarded anime designs and a useless story, and nothing disturbing happens in the game, whereas older games had some frightening/disturbing elements.

I mean the first Persona was a horror game, and it well full circle up to the fourth where you have characters complaining about their emotions for the whole game.

That doesn't terrify them/us. You know what terrifies us, the idea that we could grow into an adult, and still have no control over our destiny, that shit is terrifying, and is exactly what the first dungeon in P4 is about.

That's a nice way of saying you are playing a wish-fulfillment version of your high school with waifus, over and over again.

Actually no, it's saying I empathized with the character of a game that came out when I was of the same age as the protagonists, and that I played during that time. My wish fulfillment comes in the form of Corruption of Champions, Sengoku Rance or Beat Blades Haruka, thank you very much.

I'm not to sure what I'll feel for the protagonists of P5, but given they're statements on themes and playing a character screwed over by the government essentially, I imagine I'll probably empathize with them a fair bit as well.

EDIT: For reference I was 16 when P4 came out. Born '93

 

[Makabb]

First reviews are going in, it got 9.5/10 and 'better than FF 15' 'jrpgs will never be the same again'

howlongtobeat now clocks average 'completionist' playthrough at 177 hours !


https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=15221

 

[Hobo Elf]

Next week, bros.

 

[Krraloth]

I haven't felt this hyped for something in 17 years.

It can still end in tears.

 

[Declinator]

Is this just more of the same or is there something especially exciting about this?

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

No random dungeons?
Return of demons / negotiations?
Amount of content bigger then ever?
First MegaTen run on modern engine since 2003?

Small chances for surpassing Nocturne or Strange Journey but high ones for being best Persona far - that alone makes it hottest release since many years.

 

[GarlandExCon]

Is this just more of the same or is there something especially exciting about this?

Well I sure the fuck hope it's more of the same because that's what is especially exciting about it.