Persona 5 Analysis - Brilliant but Flawed

well this is it out of all the games i've covered on this channel so far persona 5 is by far the most requested one and for good reason too when the game first launched back in late 2016 in japan in april of 2017 for us western players the game received overwhelming praise from both critics and fans alike people were aware of persona 4 everyone played persona 5 when it came out this combined with the inclusion of persona 5's protagonist joker in the long running super smash brothers franchise helped fully bring the persona series into the mainstream the momentum didn't stop with that either much like persona 4 p5 received a handful of spin-off titles a manga run a bad anime and multiple stage plays that i still really want to see [Music] much like the previous persona games persona 5 would eventually see an enhanced re-release titled persona 5 royal this version of the game brings many changes and additions to the table these range from some mechanical changes all the way up to the addition of a new school semester featuring an entirely new palace as well as the addition of new confidants and characters for all intents and purposes this is the definitive version of persona 5 to play if you're interested in picking up the game yourself just like always there's going to be full spoilers for both the main story as well as all the game's confidants this is your spoiler warning now i like to go in depth with my reviews of games so if you wish to go into persona 5 spoiler-free then i suggest you click off the video now and play the game yourself before watching but before we jump right in i believe i should explain why it took me so long to get to this game it's honestly a combination of a few things as of right now persona 5 royal is only available on the playstation 4 and playstation 5 through backwards compatibility when i recorded persona 4 for my video on that game i ended up getting burned because right after getting all my footage the game received a steam port the following day that's right i'm still not over that i'm mostly kidding of course the main reason is actually far more complex than you might first think i started my persona retrospective with persona 3 fps on the playstation 2. if we're counting eternal punishment as its own game that means i started on the fourth major installment in the persona series since then i've not only reviewed every other mainline persona installment but i've also covered a few of the spin-offs talked about my feelings on persona 3 portable and have also dipped my toes into other megami tensei titles on this channel i bring this up not to say that my opinion should be considered more valid but i feel the need to mention this so you all understand my perspective i'm a huge fan of megami tensei as a whole but i wouldn't consider myself to be a blind fanboy these videos have always been about my personal opinion on their subject in question complementing the highs and criticizing the lows i intend on giving persona 5 the same treatment because while i think highly of the game there are plenty of issues that hold the game back in a lot of areas it's not a big deal if you end up disagreeing with my opinion and i'm totally up to continuing the discussion to reach a new understanding i just want to remind people to be respectful of what others have to say on the topic at hand i've never had an issue with this in the past but i've seen a lot of discussion about persona 5 devolve into needless insults just because someone disagrees with another's perspective that isn't an excuse to treat them poorly with that being said let's get started shall we unlike the other games in the series persona 5 is very different when it comes to how the narrative is framed the game opens up very late into the journey with the attempted escape and eventual arrest of a teenage boy named ranamamia leader of the group known as the phantom thieves most of the plot is told through ren's interrogation at the hands of prosecutor sainijima were hinted that the phantom thieves are wanted for many crimes that have been committed all over japan ranging from the possession of weapons to even something as major as suspected manslaughter since rend has been drugged up with truth serum and has no way out of this situation he's forced to recount how things ended up the way they did this is when we're dropped back to early april to witness the origins of the phantom thieves and learn exactly what's going on here much like the previous protagonists ren amamia is a transfer student who's going to be attending shujin academy for one year unlike the other characters however ren is attending this school due to his criminal record before the game began ren was charged for assault when he tried to save a woman from being harassed by a drunken politician things go sour however when the man enters himself and sues ren for assault abusing the power that comes with his status to pay off the woman in question as a result ren is put on probation for one year and is expelled from his current high school shujin academy is the only school willing to accept ren and even so they're only doing it to improve their public image before rent can even attend his first day at school things take a strange turn when an app that appeared on his phone ends up transporting him and another student named ryuji sakamoto to an alternate reality known as the metaverse at first everything seems normal that is until the boys discover that their school has been replaced by a giant castle before they can find out what exactly is going on here the two boys are captured and thrown into the dungeons under the order of the supposed ruler suguru kamashita but this isn't exactly the same kamashita from the real world more on that in a second this shadow kambashita attempts to execute ryuji and ren for trespassing in the castle but the sight of ryuji suffering at the hands of a greater power triggers something inside of ren a mysterious voice rings inside his head a white mask appears in the boy's face and with a firm resolve ren tears away the facade he wears around others exposing his true self the concept of a persona in this game stems from the idea of being wronged or taken advantage of emotionally or physically and wanting to rebel against that when a character awakens to their persona we see that their outfit is altered to represent what that character's idea of a rebel is all this is topped off with a mask that they need to remove in order to summon their persona as i mentioned with ren this is supposed to symbolize the idea of discarding the mask you wear around others and living as your true self it's pretty obvious symbolism when compared to the other games but man does it look cool when a character awakens to their persona [Music] anyways after ren awakens to his persona he and ryuji make their escape from the castle but not before coming across this mysterious cat-like creature named morgana while morgana doesn't have all of his memories he does prove himself to be useful since he has a bit of an idea as to what's going on here much like the midnight channel from persona 4 the metaverse hosts shadows of people in the real world where things begin to differ is actually what these shadows are meant to represent in persona 4 and by extension persona 2 shadows are solely the manifestation of suppressed qualities of an individual usually these are aspects of someone that they bury deep down in their subconscious and are unwilling to accept as part of themselves in persona 5's case a shadow represents the warped desire of an individual depending on the severity of one's distortion these shadows could be complemented with these massive areas known as palaces these palaces and what's inside of them are based on the ruler's views for example kamashita views shoojin academy as his castle and himself as the ruler the students inside are his subjects and the teachers act as his guards but what exactly does this all mean in the context of the real world what's going on with kamashita that's causing his desires to be distorted to begin with after returning to the real world we eventually learn of rumors that kamashita is abusing his power in order to take advantage of the students at shujin because of his reputation of being a former olympic level athlete the fact that he's able to bring shujan academy a good name and his position of power as a teacher he's able to get away with some pretty heinous [ __ ] we learned that kamashita has been physically abusing the students on the volleyball team as well as making sexual advances towards the female students it's unknown how long this has been going on for but it's implied to have been happening for a long time at the very least the students are powerless to stand up against kamashita out of fear of either being abused or even expelled and the faculty is letting his actions slide due to not wanting to tarnish the school's reputation but there is a way for ren and the others to put a stop to kamashita's actions everyone's distorted desires have a source known as a treasure as explained by morgana if someone's treasure is removed from their palace then their palace ruler will forcibly have a change of heart and attempt to repent for their crimes this method is risky however because if something happens to the ruler's shadow then it will have an effect on the real world counterpart in the worst case scenario this could result in death but with no better options this is a risk that the team is willing to take i know that this is probably a lot to take in if you're unfamiliar with this game but what i gave was just the general information needed to understand the premise of the game in actuality this information is spread over the course of the first 10 hours of the game persona 5's first dungeon can be viewed as the origin of the phantom thieves group while acting as the game's basic tutorial we get the introduction of the first few party members and have their motivations established the phantom thieves as a group have the goal of reforming society by changing the hearts of corrupt individuals mainly they focus on targeting people who are abusing their powers to make life miserable for others with the only rule being that the team needs to unanimously agree with who they're going to target next persona 4 had an admittedly very long-winded intro that wasn't to everyone's liking i personally didn't mind it because i found the mystery intriguing enough to keep me engaged but i understand where people are coming from with their complaints persona 5 actively works to fix that pacing issue persona 4 had by splicing in more gameplay and spreading this information out more evenly within the first hour of persona 5 you get a taste of what the battle mechanics are like as well as a teaser to the dungeon design sure it's not a lot and it's mostly on rails but it's a far more exciting way to start the journey than having to wait like 3 hours to get to the first battle come to think of it persona 5 puts in a lot of work to be the antithesis of persona 4 in many ways while replaying the game for this video i took note as to how similar yet different p5 is when compared to its predecessor persona 4 is about a city kid who moves to the countryside to live with his uncle and cousin for one year he is greeted with open arms by his new home makes fast friends and is overall just in a welcoming environment that is until he ends up getting involved with the inaba murder cases of course persona 5 on the other hand is about a country kid who after attempting to help someone in danger is punished for that heroism because he stepped out of line this causes him to be expelled from his old school forced to move to the big city where he has to live in the attic of a coffee shop and is treated as an outcast at his new school because word gets out about his criminal record when comparing the settings of these two games the difference is night and day despite how familiar the idea of playing as a transfer student is that's not to say that one is inherently better than the other i just thought it was worth bringing up the observation as much as i really want to dive into the minutia persona 5 story now i believe i should cover the gameplay aspects first much like the previous two installments persona 5 splits its main gameplay into two halves there's the social simulator aspect where you spend your time improving your social stats and working on confidants this game's version of social links then there's the dungeon crawling aspect of the game where you either infiltrate palaces to steal the ruler's treasure or explore mementos which is a dungeon consisting of randomly generated floors the same basic dna still exists in persona 5 so i'll mostly be covering what exactly this game does to stand out from persona 4. persona 5 introduces two brand new elemental affinities psychic and nuclear while also seeing the return of firearms in combat the game goes out of its way to justify that the phantom thieves aren't using real guns however there's an explanation early on in the game that the guns are using in combat are actually just airsoft guns but due to the fact that the metaverse is linked to human cognition they behave as real guns in the original persona 5 guns would only have a certain amount of ammo to them that you could spend per visit to the metaverse this could be replenished if you crafted ammo boxes in the real world before heading inside i always thought that this was a strange limitation because the game explains that these fake guns only work because of human cognition if someone were to point a convincing looking model gun to you your brain would fill in the blanks and you'll assume that it's actually real it's a very believable explanation that's why it always struck me as odd that the ammo for the guns didn't replenish in between fights chances are if someone were to point a firearm at you there's a high chance that it's loaded so through the rules of human cognition wouldn't guns always be loaded at the start of battle basically what i'm saying here is that guns were pretty useless in the original persona 5 outside of knocking down enemies that were weak to gun skills clearly someone at atlas thought the same thing because persona 5 royal fixes this issue much like the standard weaponry every member of the phantom fees has a firearm exclusive to them ryuji uses shotguns makoto uses revolvers and so on they all function pretty identically aside from ammo capacity and damage the party members on and hardware the exception to this rule as their gun attacks attack all enemies instead of needing to target them individually but it isn't exactly a game changer guns do count as their own elemental affinity as well meaning that new persona skills specifically made to deal gun damage have been introduced they function the same as physical skills meaning that they cost hp to use and are also affected by the physical buffing skill charge they can be pretty powerful attacks especially the mid game skill triple down which sees you dealing gun damage to all enemies three times when it comes to the actual battle mechanics things are very familiar yet different in case you need a reminder the modern persona games use a modified version of the press turn battle system called the one more system whenever you strike an enemy weakness or land a critical hit on an enemy you'll be able to immediately perform another action with the character when all enemies are knocked down you're granted the opportunity to perform at all that attack on the surface it's pretty similar as to how the previous games functioned but there's a lot done here to give persona 5 an identity of its own new to persona 5 is that whenever you gain a one more you can perform a baton pass to switch who you're currently in control of regardless of turn order you can chain up to three baton passes if you play your cards right with each time you switch characters increasing the amount of damage you can dish out this is such a great idea there's a lot you can do with baton passing such as starting a chain of passes and ending off with a healing spell in order to boost its effectiveness or you can end off your passing chain with an attack all skill to really rake in the damage a lot can be done with baton passing if you're willing to get creative with the ability but its primary use is to set up all that attacks another idea that persona 5 brings back from earlier titles is demon negotiation when you knock down every enemy on the field you'll enter what's known as a hold up during a hold up you can either perform an all-out attack or start a conversation with one of the demons on the battlefield this system has been simplified and streamlined for the better in my opinion you still have the general idea of appealing to the demon specific personality trait in order to convince them to join your party but it's far easier to do so now since there isn't an overwhelming amount of contact options demons now only have one personality type and you select your answer from a small list just pick whatever the demo would like to hear and there you go something that i always hated about the earlier persona games was that the negotiation system was far too complex for its own good for the sake of not repeating too much of what i said in those videos i thought that there was too much trial and error evolved with the contact system i go into it a lot more in my persona 1 and 2 videos so you get my full thoughts there persona 5 while making the contact system more limited makes the process of getting new personas far faster and is just more enjoyable overall i also find this to be an improvement over the shuffle time mechanics from p3 and 4. in those games you had to play a mini game in order to gain new personas and while it got the job done it wasn't nearly as engaging as actually talking to the demons persona 4 golden tried to make shuffle time more interesting with a sweep bonus mechanic but i still prefer the way it was handled in this game another mechanic introduced to persona 5 are technical attacks when you inflict an enemy with a status ailment depending on which attack used after you can follow it up with a technical hit for example let's say you cast a fire spell to burn an enemy if you then use a wind or nuclear attack you'll deal out bonus damage in persona 5 royal technical attacks have a chance of knocking down an enemy which could potentially lead into getting a one more i personally didn't rely on technical attacks as much as i did with just exploiting weaknesses but they could really help when taking down a powerful enemy i found them to be at their most useful early on in the game when my party had a very limited skill selection persona 5 adds a lot to the already established formula introduced in persona 3 making this by far the most expressive and deep combat system in the persona series so far i still think i prefer the press star mechanics from the mainline smt games but there's a lot of fun that can be had when you train together a string of baton passes to completely decimate your foes however persona 5 royal suffers from one major issue that could be considered a fatal flaw depending on who you ask much like persona 2 innocent sin persona 5 royal's achilles heel lies in the fact that the game is far far too easy the original persona 5 was already a game that fans found to be much easier than the previous two installments but persona 5 royal with the new additions and tweaks made to the combat system absolutely suffers from one of the most inconsistent difficulty curves i've seen in a while this is one of those games that starts off rather challenging then gets easier and easier with each passing palace an idea that's introduced at the start of the second dungeon are persona traits think of them as passive abilities that every persona has access to these traits range from increasing the success rate of ailments landing reducing the sp cost of certain skills or even just flat out increasing how much damage certain skills can do there's a pretty decent selection of persona traits and you can transfer any trait onto any persona when you fuse them this allows for some pretty decent customization when you're trying to go for a specific persona build every party member also has their own unique traits such as morgana's ability to boost the effectiveness of healing spells and use case trait to increase your party's evasion against physical attacks kijijoji is an area that's unlocked after you finish the second palace in this area you can play darts and billiards with your party members to upgrade your baton pass and technical damage respectively not only that but by visiting the jazz club on certain days you can actually teach your party members skills that are completely outside of their skill tree ever wanted to give morgana a skill like debilitate or on the passive skill spell master all you need to do is just invite that party member to the jazz club and bada boom it doesn't end there for customization either because certain accessories now have skills attached to them so even if you miss out on the jazz club's ranks you can still get some pretty powerful skills to your party member at the cost of losing an accessory slot but that's not even what i consider to be the main game breaker of persona 5. introducing persona 4 was the idea of your social links having more of a gameplay impact than just boosted experience this was exclusively used for the party members by ranking up your social links with your teammates you can gain new abilities for them such as the opportunity to instantly cure status ailments provide a follow-up attack and protect the protagonist against an attack that would kill them this was a great idea because it gave more of an incentive for the player to actually work on the social links and was a much more interesting benefit than what we had prior persona 5 not only brings this idea back but also expands on it by giving every single confident their own unique ability tree the confidant with the character shinya for example will unlock new gun related skills such as the ability to perform a special shot to automatically down one enemy start the battle with a gun based all that attack and even allowing joker's bullets to ignore enemy resistances this is a great way to convince players to max out as many confidants as they can because not only are you getting boosted experience when you fuse a persona but you're also upgrading your character's combat abilities at the same time as good as an idea as this is the problem arises with the lasting effect these skills have on the difficulty it's honestly shocking at how overpowered some of these confidant abilities are mishima's confidant focuses on awarding the player with the ability to earn double experience at the end of battles kifumi gives the player access to switch party members during combat and also eventually lets you earn double money at the end of fights but this is only scratching the surface the confidant with the new characters maruki and kusumi provides some incredibly powerful buffs maroki specifically gives joker the chance to not only instantly cure himself as status ailments even if it's not his turn but also the ability to start off a random encounter with both charge and concentrate i'm not entirely sure what the success rate of these skills are but they activate far more often than they should considering how powerful this buff is kasumi's confidant pretty much makes it impossible for an enemy to ambush you you not only get the ability to straight up just dodge enemies but you also gain access to a skill that allows you to ambush enemies from a much further distance while also starting off the battle with status ailments on enemies but these skills don't even compare to what i consider to be the two most powerful confidant abilities once you reach rank 7 with ryuji you unlock his instant kill ability when you're exploring a palace or mementos by holding l2 you're able to view how powerful the shadows are this is indicated by their colored outline that changes depending on the player's current level if a shadow is outlined in green that means you'll be able to instantly kill it without having to engage in battle however you're still awarded with money and experience points meaning that you can earn some fast cash and quickly make yourself incredibly overpowered while this does make grinding go by much faster the problem is that now the level balance of your characters is going to be completely out of control in the later half of the game you'll be able to instantly kill almost every enemy aside from boss battles the last one i want to bring special mention to is the strength confidant with the velvet twins caroline and justine their confidant functions exactly like margaret's did from persona 4. this means that to rank them up you'll need to fulfill fusion requests their confidante tree focuses on locking new methods of fusion starting you off with only the basic two persona fusion before gradually giving you new tools to play around with such as itemizing a persona into a new piece of equipment or sacrificing one persona to give its experience and a random skill to another in the original persona 5 maxing out this confidant gave you access to the ability to fuse personas that are a higher level than joker at the cost of yen this was a pretty insane skill in the original game but you unlocked it somewhat late into the journey but for some reason that i can't even explain why this was changed to be their rank 5 confidant award with their rank 10 ability being a discount to how much yen you need to pay that is way too early these fusion requests aren't even that hard so it's entirely possible to max out this confidant before you even start the fourth palace that's absolutely insane sure this will cost you a crazy amount of money to do but with ryuji's instant kill hifumi's bonus money mishima's extra experience and the stamp system that momentos functions off of this won't be a problem to do while persona 5 can get ridiculously easy i still think that innocent sin is worse on this regard i never got bored of persona 5's main gameplay because there was always something that i was working towards and i found the core mechanics just far more interesting to play around with you're not just granted these game breaking abilities right out the gate as most of them come from ranking up your confidants in the real world the start of persona 5 royal is actually more brutal than i remember you can very easily get your ass kicked in certain fights at the start of the game if you're not careful but the problem lies is that none of the palaces after kamashitas seem to be designed with the confidant abilities in mind meaning that the game actually gets easier the further you progress through the story because you're gaining so many more options but the game was designed as if you had none of these tools i understand that the developers wanted to make sure the player wouldn't get stuck in a palace due to not having the proper confidant abilities at their disposal the problem is that for players like myself who end up doing all the confidants have nothing left to test our skills not even the infamous okumura boss gave me any troubles it's also just not really that hard guys just putting that out there for this video i ended up playing the game on hard mode and i recommend you all do the same i absolutely do not recommend you play on merciless mode if you're looking for a challenge on paper this should be the hardest difficulty setting as enemies will deal 1.6 times the amount of damage and you'll only deal about half the damage as usual that's only when you're looking at this difficulty on a surface level calling this seti merciless is a bit of a lie and a more appropriate name would be challenge or remix mode well you'll come to realize fairly quickly is that during merciless mode you earn money and experience at the same rate as you would during easy mode not only that but landing critical hits exploiting enemy weaknesses and abusing technical attacks will cause you to do triple the damage that you normally do combine this with baton passing in the previous upgrades that i mentioned then you'll find yourself with what is honestly one of the most forgiving difficulties in the game i appreciate the idea of making merciless mode something more interesting than just damage modifiers but i think that the execution was poor so how do we fix this issue with difficulty i may not be a game designer but i think i have a few ideas that could help provide a better gameplay experience for example the first thing i believe should be introduced are custom difficulty options in persona 4 golden once you beat the game you unlock the ability to modify the game to your liking you can change how much money or experience you earn in battle and how much damage you take and receive from enemies in the steam port of p4g this was unlocked right from the start so you can set the game's difficulty to your preference i think persona 5 royal would have greatly benefited from having this implemented maybe even add a few more options for us to play around with like the ability to toggle on and off the triple damage merciless mode introduces basically what i'm asking for is the opportunity to just play merciless mode without the triple damage and bonus experience i don't find this to be an unreasonable request because they've already done this before when it comes to the confidant abilities most just in a slight tweak to them in order for them to be more balanced i'd rather not waste a lot of time going over every single ability and give fixes so i'll just focus on the two i find the most egregious if i had my way i'd just remove ryuji's instant kill and the special treatment perk but let's just assume that the abilities would have to stay in the game in some form for ryuji's ability i'd greatly tighten the level threshold for this skill to work as well as only allow it to work while in mementos having this ability work in the regular palaces is just too game breaking in my opinion allowing it to only work in the dungeon designed for grinding just makes a lot more sense to me for the special treatment ability i think that the developers could take a page at a persona 2's book in that game you can fuse personas that are a maximum of 5 levels above your characters this on its own is a good idea already so having it act as the strength confident ability would be a good reward you get a good power boost but it's not enough to break the game have the rank 10 ability increase the level cap just a bit more and we're good of course this is all just my opinion for all i know these ideas might not pan out too well but i think that these changes will work out better in the long run i also feel sort of obligated to talk about the dlc personas in this game when it comes to how they affect the difficulty p5 is the first mainline persona game to have specific personas locked behind a small paywall in persona 5 royal all the previous dlc personas are now available for free with brand new ones being introduced in a pack that you can buy for 10 it's safe to say that these personas are pretty overpowered and should be avoided if you want any sort of challenge in a game that touts itself as the definitive persona 5 experience i think introducing more dlc really makes me question atlas's business practices but that's a discussion for another day what i mostly want to focus on is one specific dlc persona you narakami's ultimate persona izanaki no okami was brought back as dlc and is easily the single most powerful persona in the entire game this is entirely because of its unique skill and trait the trait country maker boosts your attack and defense based on how much of the compendium you filled up it's a trait that skills with you throughout the entire game and if you decide to fuse every persona you just naturally become twice as powerful but this doesn't even compare to its unique spell myriad truths is a heavy almighty spell that targets all enemies what makes this spell different from the rest is that it does damage to enemies three times making it easily the most powerful almighty skill in the game combine this with its natural trait and passive skills to increase all mighty damage and you'll have yourself a persona that can easily deal thousands of damage here's me fighting the reaper it's worth clarifying that despite the issues i take with persona 5's difficulty i don't dislike the main gameplay because mechanically speaking it's the strongest set of any persona game i still prefer the press turn combat featured in the mainline smt games because the game's challenge takes advantage of the tools at your disposal persona 5 royals starts off with this mindset but the rest of the game doesn't compensate with the eventual buffs you gain access to this is probably the most disappointing aspect of persona 5 in my opinion i think that this is such a good combat system but it sadly falls off in the latter half of the game because the confidant abilities trivialize encounters i keep falling back on this but i really think that they're the main cause of the difficulty issues present in this game i really like the idea of rewarding the player for doing confidence outside of just fusion bonuses i just think that the developers underestimated how strong you'd become from having all of them unlocked i at the very least hope that this idea is brought back in later installments with some tweaking these abilities could be far more balanced while also feeling like decent upgrades for going the extra mile either that or atlas could make the next game much more challenging to compensate while you can't guarantee that every player will have the same confidant abilities unlocked i think that a less forgiving overall experience would be a welcome change persona 5 handles dungeons in a slightly different way than the previous two games for starters there are two types of dungeons palaces are the main bread and butter when it comes to the dungeon crawling these are handcrafted dungeons that are visually based off the palace ruler's cognition the second type of dungeon is pretty much your grinding and side quest area known as mementos this place functions a lot like tardis from persona 3 where the areas are randomly generated it's pretty much the same deal with the different blocks being locked off until certain in-game days a lot of what i said about tartarus from my persona 3 video can be applied to momentos in persona 5 but there are some differences that make the place feel distinct momentous is primarily used to change the hearts of people who don't have a fully developed palace also known as people whose desires aren't quite as distorted as kamashitas and the others it's a way to get some quick experience and cash while also providing the player with some more content to mess around with persona 5 royal actually adds a few things to mementos to encourage exploration throughout mementos you'll find these flowers scattered around every floor as well as come across these station hosting stamps you could take these stamps and flowers to this kid named jose and exchange them for items and even altering the cognition of mementos you can change the rate you earn money experience and how many items dropped from chests and enemies just like the confidant abilities this is a good reason to be thorough with your play style but it has an effect on the game's overall challenge i don't find the boost of money and experience here to be as unbalanced since it only works in mementos and only serves to cut down on busy work when it comes to the palaces however that's where things start to get a bit more interesting for the first time since eternal punishment the persona series has actual level design and good level design at that it isn't anything too complicated but there are a few puzzles for you to solve and will seeds to collect by finding all three will seeds in a palace you'll gain a special accessory that provides you with a new skill to use each palace has their own unique puzzle or gimmick that you need to deal with okumar's palace for example sees the player listening in on conversations to find the chief director in order to get an id card there's also the airlock mazes near the end of the palace that i really enjoyed i see a lot of people critique the mazes for being too difficult or confusing i never agreed with this statement personally i never had much of an issue of getting lost inside of the palaces but that could be because of my previous experiences with other mega 10 titles even if you've only played p3 and p4 games that are incredibly linear with little to no puzzle solving the palaces here are still pretty beginner friendly however i can understand the complaint that some of these gimmicks overstay their welcome to use a late game example the rat mazes near the end of the game caused a lot of frustration among certain players not because the puzzles were necessarily difficult but because this gimmick was used too many times throughout the palace especially in the original persona 5. i didn't mind the inclusion of these sorts of puzzles because it kept the level design fresh and made the player do more than just rush to the end without a care in the world an aspect about the palaces i find very strange however are the safe rooms in terms of gameplay these functions as checkpoints where you can get your bearings save your game and even fast travel between different safe rooms in a palace this is how you return to the entrance to either go back to the real world or fuse a new persona in terms of story the characters explored palaces to plan out an infiltration route to steal the ruler's treasure in the final game however there's always a safe room just before the treasure's location meaning that once you send the calling card and re-enter the palace you can just warp to the treasure instantly part of me feels as though that you were supposed to originally make your way back to the treasure room manually something that i noticed even on my first playthrough of the game was that kamashita's palace had a lot of shortcuts to get you back to the entrance quickly about halfway through the palace you can open up a window that brings you back to the courtyard morgana even mentions that this is something you should remember for the infiltration near the end of the palace you can jump through this painting here and end up in the main halls of the castle which is very close to the palace entrance i can imagine that you were expected to find these shortcuts so that when you sent the calling card you had an easier way to get back to the treasure i think that this would have been a more interesting idea than just fast traveling to the treasure the way it is right now is fine it's just that i've been thinking about this for years and i haven't seen anyone bring this up yet to summarize if persona 5 was setting out to be a more beginner friendly experience then i think that it accomplishes that and then some mechanically speaking it's easily the game with the most amount of stuff you can play around with and is incredibly user friendly as a self-proclaimed veteran player which is something that i think i can say considering i've played all the mainline games at this point i believe that persona 5 has the best gameplay in the series where it suffers the most is the difficulty balance this is an issue that permeates throughout the entire experience which is why it can't be easily ignored i'm more willing to excuse it here than i am in innocent sin for one major reason you do a lot more on the modern persona games than just dungeon crawling a good majority of your playtime will be dedicated to the social simulator aspect of these games compare that to innocent sin where all the game time is spent dungeon crawling and battling enemies this means that any flaws in the combat system there will stick out far more than in the modern persona games that doesn't mean i'll excuse when and where these games falter but it wouldn't be fair if i were to treat these flaws as equal basically what i'm trying to say here is despite how easy persona 5 royal is i still had plenty of fun playing the game the social aspect of persona 5 much like the previous game is the main appeal for a lot of players by spending time with a character your bond deepens with them you can increase how quickly you rank up a confidant by having a persona of the matching arcana in your arsenal and by answering questions that appeal to the character's ideals the most it's the same as in the other games but what i like this time around is that your reason for spending time with these characters are presented in a different light instead of trying to bond with someone for the sake of becoming friends it's more so for mutual benefit it's a way to contextualize how ranking up a confidant grants joker a new skill to use in the metaverse as the characters grow closer they teach joker new skills relating to the deal that he made with them persona 5 gives you a lot more free time than the previous two games especially royal it's more than possible to max out every confidant without using a guide while having time to spare just be mindful of when you visit palaces and momentos while also abusing certain confidant abilities there are a total of 23 confidants in the game but i'm going to exclude talking about the plot related ones the reworked garuwa ketchi confidant and the confidant with the new party member kasumi yoshizawa this is primarily because those confidants are mostly used to flesh out the characters in the main story and would require a lot of context for them to make sense it would overall just flow better if i discuss their confidence along with their characters when i get to them this leaves us with a total of 18 confidants to talk about this time around in case you're new to this channel i look at two things when evaluating a confidant what is the story that's trying to be told with this character and how well is that story told i'm also going to be structuring the way i look at these not on the order of their arcana number but what i personally believe will be the smoothest transition from each group main party members first students second adults third and finally the new characters introduced in royal along with caroline and justine as a reminder this is all just my personal interpretation of these stories meaning that i don't expect everyone to agree with me i just hope that we can respect each other's perspectives with that out of the way let's get started with number one the chariot ryuji sakamoto ryuji is one of the founding members of the phantom thieves and is one of the first confidants you unlock ryuji's confidant store revolves around the track team that he used to be a part of some time before the start of the game ryuji got into a fight with kamashita after he was talking [ __ ] about his family kamashita made it seem as though it was out of self-defense and ended up forcing the track team to close down out of spite not only did ryuji's light get messed up from this event but the old members of the team now despise him for not enduring kamashita's punishment like the rest of them did and in ryuji's perspective he honestly doesn't blame them as an outsider looking in we see that ryuji made the right decision to stand up against kamashita during that moment but ryuji himself feels the opposite he feels immense guilt for what happened to the team and most of his confidant is dedicated to him trying to right that wrong with the other portion showing off ryuji and ren's training the basic premise of ryuji's confidant is that his old track team is trying to get back together but the team's coach is someone who was a supporter of kamashita ryuji out of fear of history repeating itself sets out to expose this person for the scum that he is we'll learn that this new coach yamauchi is only interested in rebuilding the track team for the sake of garnering fame and attention he wants to be looked at as the sympathetic teacher who helped to re-establish the track team after kamashita was exposed only with the help of ren is ryuji able to gather the necessary information to prove to his old teammates that yamauchi is no good the group is able to bury the hatchet and the track team is able to rehire their old coach before kamashita ryuji is given the opportunity to rejoin the track team but ends up turning down their offer while the track team was once a huge part of his life and he still has a passion for running the way i see it this is supposed to show that ryuji is finally able to move on from his own perceived failures in my opinion ryuji's confidant focuses on the idea of forgiveness not just forgiving your colleagues for wronging you but also learning to forgive yourself for your own mistakes when given the opportunity to get some sort of revenge on a trackmate who fed kamashita information about ryuji's parents instead of indulging in that revenge he instead shows forgiveness the entire reason as to why ryuji went to such lengths to ensure a bright future for the track team was so that he could forgive himself for buckling under kamashita way back when so him turning down the invitation to join the track team in the end is supposed to symbolize his new resolve to move on from those old days i like ryuji's confidant it works very well as a supplement to his main character arc in the story and gives some more insight into the reason as to why ryuji is considered an outcast to the people at shujin i see people bring up the fact that this confident focuses on the track team as a flaw and i can't help but disagree with that notion ryuji's connection to track and field is a very big part of his character it was his main hobby and at one point in his life he wanted to get a scholarship in order to make things easier for his mom but that was all ripped away from him because he couldn't endure what he was put through i think that it's a great idea to focus on how ryuji feels about those events and having a side story dedicated to him moving past that he still is the center focus of the story even though the track team is used as an ongoing backdrop i think that when it comes to pacing this confidant moves at a very brisk pace once the main conflict is introduced it becomes the center focus for the remainder of the confidant overall i'd say that this story is pretty solid but it struggles to leave that much of a lasting impact on me personally this is mostly because his character arc in the main plot certainly overshadows the stuff that's shown here that's not a criticism mind you because it just goes to show how fleshed out ryuji is as a party member but i'm getting a bit ahead of myself here number two the lovers onto kamiki on's confidant if i'm being honest feels rather unfocused much like ryuji on is one of the founding members of the phantom thieves and also has suffered through kamashita's abuse the confidant starts off with on wanting to learn to improve the strength of her heart so she can not only become a better persona user but to also be an inspiration to her best friend shiho at first it seems as though this story is going to be about ahn's relationship with her friend and learning to better herself i find all these scenes very compelling and it does a great job at showcasing ahn's personality outside what's provided in the main story but part way into the confidant on's modeling career is thrown into the mix along with her industry rival mika the idea here is that mika is supposed to be on's ultimate test of her own heart as she represents all the qualities that on admired from the villains she watched on tv things such as self-confidence and the drive to never give up what you value this doesn't end up working too well because the sides of mika that are end up showed to us only portray as a very spiteful individual who is willing to use dirty tactics to get an edge in the industry she's portrayed with only the toxic qualities of the antagonists that on took interest in i get the idea that they were going for but i don't think it's executed all too well maybe on's confident would have been better if her modelling gig was cut from the story and we instead focused on her relationship with shiho in the aftermath of the kamashita incident bits of this idea are shown and i find those parts to be the best aspect of her confidant the reason as to why i like the track team stuff featuring ryuji's confidant was because his relationship with his teammates was a core aspect of his character the same can't really be said about on's modeling because it's far less important to her overall character the decision to include this aspect of her character into this confidant doesn't really do much but deter from the more interesting parts of her story overall i'd say that on's confidant starts strong but loses its focus later on and it makes the conclusion have a lot less impact as it could have i'm not calling it bad per se but it's just a bit disappointing number 3 the emperor yusuke kitagawa yusuke is the ex-people of the famous artist matarame after joining the phantom thieves and exposing his sensei for the scum that he is he falls into a bit of an artist's slump the main plot of his confidant focuses on him regaining his passion while also helping yusuke grow as an artist his first attempt at getting back on the horse ends in nothing but failure for him he ends up submitting a piece of work to an art exhibit that's based on his interpretation of human desires yusuke ends up using momentos and matarame as his interpretations and believes that he managed to capture this twisted corruption in his new painting however despite his technical skills both critics and patrons end up finding this piece very empty and yusuke struggles to swallow this truth but upon closer inspection of the piece yusuke is able to come to the realization of where he went wrong this interpretation of the human heart was nothing more than a surface level inspection of the subject sure desire was what yusuke was intentionally trying to capture but the painting in question lacked any sort of nuance or meaning to it the general idea that yusuke's confidant tackles is him expanding his horizons so we can find a way to fully understand the human heart i find this to be a very solid premise for a story revolving around this character painting and just artwork in general is a core aspect to yusuke even more so than what track and field was for ryuji throughout the confidant yusuke attempts to expand his horizons to get a deeper understanding of the human heart but all this does is give him more questions than answers this search eventually as yusuke admit that deep down he fears that he'd walk down the same path as moderame through the help of ren and the other members of the phantom thieves however yusuke is able to gain a new perspective on the human heart desire isn't inherently as corrupt as he made it seem to be you can profit off of art as long as you're making it with the intent of giving a new experience to someone else where matarami went wrong was that fame and fortune ended up distorting him and that became more important to him than the genuine artistic intent the words of his friends help yusuke finally grasp the human heart and he decides to take another shot at his painting this new piece desire and hope has much more passion behind it than before and it perfectly encapsulates the lessons that yusuke learned the painting itself is supposed to represent the differing aspects of the human heart both the beauty and the grim ugliness that come along with it in the painting itself hope is represented by this blinding colorful light that's keeping the darkness of desire from overtaking the heart in yusuke's own words he won't be stained by desire like his old sensei his hope is personified in his friends and he has faith that they will guide him down the right path chastising him if he begins to falter i really enjoyed yusuke's confidant it has a good pace with each confidant rank being used to develop his new perspective the idea of this confidant fits really well with the character in question and gives us some extra insight into usekay's feelings about moderate that weren't expressed in the main story i honestly don't hear a lot of people discussing the overall message that this story has most discussion surrounding yusuke ultimately falls back on the silly situations that he and ren end up in such as this one scene where they're in the church and yusuke wants ren to pose for him while this helps endear us to his character maybe this stuff could be considered a little too distracting either that or people really just didn't care much about his confidant's message i hope that isn't true because i really like what i experienced with yusuke overall i think that this does a great job with his character and is one of the better ones in the game for me number four the priestess makoto nijima i'm not sure if i'm going to upset anyone when i say this but i find makoto's confidant really disappointing a common criticism is that this confidant doesn't focus enough on makoto as an individual but rather spends too much time on the relationship she has with her new friend while i defended ryuji's confidant i think that the problem is a lot more apparent here the main bulk of this confidant story focuses on this girl named aiko and her relationship with a shady host named sukasa who's infamous for taking advantage of young girls and forcing them to work for illegal businesses the confidant focuses on makoto and ren trying to get to the bottom of these rumors and trying to convince aiko that her new boyfriend is bad news the problem i have with this story is that it's so interested in the ico stuff that makoto doesn't feel like the central focus at all you could very easily tell this exact same story with another character and nothing would change makoto doesn't get enough focus for the story to be justified as her own confidant there are a few ranks where we do learn about makoto but it's very brief the rank 7 confidant event is one of the only examples of this story putting an emphasis on makoto as a character her family has ties to the police and we learned that her father was assassinated when he tried to expose a gang of criminals it's because of this that sai her older sister became a prosecutor to begin with it seems like this where we get a taste into makoto's home life that really make me wish we had more time spent on it that's way more interesting to me than this other girl that only exists in this confidant this suffers a lot from the same problems that ons confidant does but it's even worse here since there was at least some closure with ann and shiho the modeling stuff was at least also an already established part of her character too even though it wasn't a huge aspect of on as a person i would have definitely preferred a story that focused more on makoto as an individual over what we ended up getting maybe tell a story that revolves around her personal beliefs of what justice should be or maybe even focus on her family reputation and the expectations that come along with that when she's introduced in the main story it's mentioned that she has expectations as anijima so maybe the confident could have been about her feelings towards her family name even if i ignore what could have been there's no denying that this confidant suffers greatly from the way it's presented show don't tell is a common rule that atlas surprisingly struggles with a lot when it comes to persona social links in makoto's case there's way too many scenes where instead of showing us new information involving aiko and her boyfriend were instead just told it by makoto there are a few interesting moments such as having to pretend to be makoto's boyfriend and go on a double date to advance the story but stuff like that is pretty rare overall i think that this comment has pretty boring storytelling and is a missed opportunity to flesh out this character not a fan number 5 the hermit futaba sakura futaba is a young girl who shut herself off from the outside world due to her past trauma without giving too much away now the main story focuses on her coping with that trauma and her confidant is the aftermath of those events with the logical next step a good majority of the story focuses on futaba being reintroduced to real world interactions and filling out the promises she made with ren these tasks would involve doing things such as visiting shoojin academy interacting with people her own age and going to a place with lots of people this is honestly what about half of her confidant amounts to we get to spend time with futaba and get a good idea of what her personality is like futaba is someone who for the past few years pretty much lived exclusively on the internet almost all of her social interactions came from online chat rooms and forum posts just by looking at a room and seeing her lifestyle you can tell that she's a shut-in something that bothers me about futaba's confidant is that it doesn't feel as though there was enough content to justify the 10 rank format in rank 6 we're introduced to the idea that futaba had a childhood friend growing up who was abused by their parents when futaba found out about this her friend pushed her away and futaba lied to her mother about what happened still wrapped up with guilt from these events futaba wants to write her wrongs and change the hearts of the girl's parents this is the first confident i'm talking about that brings up the idea of changing someone's heart for the sake of progressing the story there are quite a few confidants that require you to visit mementos and fight a shadow i've heard from people that momentos is a cheap way of solving the character's problems and diminishes character growth i don't really agree with this statement first of all other than one exception the mementos requests appear near the end of the confidant stories the one outlier is also used before you start the confidant with that certain character so i don't even really count that one to begin with by this point the confidant the character in question has already found their resolve and are making strides to better themselves as people in order for these characters to fully make that leap the phantom thieves change the hearts of the people who are keeping them down correct me if i'm wrong but isn't that the entire point of this group to be an inspiration to the people around them and to give a voice to the people who have been unfairly treated by the world i think that it makes perfect sense that momentous is used throughout the confidant as it would be completely against the phantom thieves agenda if they ignored people who are suffering if the complaint people have is that this makes some confidants feel formulaic then i can totally see why someone would think that the social links in the modern persona games are pretty formulaic to an extent but persona 5s is more noticeable as you on multiple occasions are forced to go to mementos for the sake of advancing the story but i don't see how this is any worse than the previous two games where the protagonists are the ones to bring the change in people the difference here is that persona 5 has a more hands-on method than just being the shoulder for someone to brace themselves on until they're ready to be on their own sorry to get a bit off topic but i know if i didn't address this now then someone would bring it up anyways back to futaba the characters and scenario that is introduced in our rank 6 event is completely different from the stuff that came before it leading me to believe that this story was written by multiple people two different writers with conflicting ideas coming to a compromise by including both of these ideas into one story this leads to both of these ideas feeling underdeveloped and also having the effect of the confidant being unfocused at the very least we do get to spend time with futaba as a character which depending on how you feel about her can be a good or a bad thing number six the empress haru okumura haru's confidant much like use case of futaba's focuses on the aftermath of their introduction in the main story in haru's case her story largely surrounds her relationships with the okumar's food company and her role in it after her father's death while also sprinkling in a bit of her gardening hobbity for good measure one of the main topics dealt in harvard's confidant's story is the idea of doing things for yourself rather than blindly following what would be good for others since her dad passed away haru is now the most valuable asset to the company is constantly being pressured into either selling stocks for the company or going through with the arranged marriage proposal what this confidante really focuses on is haru learning to live life and make decisions for herself rather than just being complacent with what others tell her to do this was something that was brought up during the okumara arc in the main story but ends up being the driving point for haru's character development what haru desires the most is to bring the company back to its roots and run it the way her grandfather did but in order to do that she's going to have to learn to speak up for herself and become confident in her decisions these are the things that she ends up picking up from spending time with ren what i really like about this confidant is just how much time we get to spend with haru as a person we learn what she wants and what she fears and even goes through moments where she doubts herself it reminds me of how persona 4 handled party members social links where the main story is used to give us an insight into their issues while the social links were used to help them overcome these flaws i wouldn't say that any of these ranks are wasted and the story idea matches perfectly with the character i actually really did enjoy this one and if you thought that hardwood lacked enough time to shine then this gives us a lot more to bite into it's pretty solid in my eyes number 7 the moon yuki mashima for those of you who follow me on twitter then you may have seen me discuss mashina in the past i regard his character and this confidant very highly not just because i think it's a well told story but because mishima is a far more relatable and realistic character than what people give him credit for dare i say that i think he's pretty underrated for a little introduction mishima is introduced during the kamoshira arc he's one of the members of the volleyball team and was forced to endure the abuse that was running rampant throughout the school mishima discovers rather quickly that ren and ryuji were behind kombushita's sudden change of heart and decides that he wants to support their noble cause he creates the phantom thieves aficionado website so people can vote in polls and even request changes of heart this is how the momentous requests are contextualized in universe as mishima will text wren about certain things going on in tokyo mashima's sort of like your guy in the chair and specializes in giving intel to the phantom thieves mishima's confidant focuses on learning about him as an individual and how his newfound purpose slowly begins to corrupt him since he's the admin of the fan site he's no doubt a valuable asset to the phantom thieves and their cause but where mishima falters that he lets the hype surrounding the phantom thieves and his own involvement get to his ego throat is confident we see mishima slowly become more corrupt doing things such as attempting to misuse donation money and attempting to send phantom fees after people who aren't doing anything wrong mostly using it as a stun to boost the popularity of the group obviously when things start to get out of hand the team takes action and finds mashima shadow in the metaverse this scene gives us a pretty good insight into his mindset while running the fan site in his mind the phantom thief's success only comes from mishima's hard work with public relations his shadow really highlights his grandiose sense of self while acknowledging that he secretly feared the phantom thieves would turn on him but what exactly led mishima down this dark path to begin with is something that's overlooked when discussing his character even though it's presented right in the player's face during the scene before the phantom thieves mishima was an outcast he had nothing special going for him and was the target of both kamashita's abuse as well as frequent bullying in middle school this was something that mishima had to begrudgingly accept about himself that is until he discovered that ren was a member of the phantom thieves after seeing someone who he considered a close friend do these amazing things for the world mishima couldn't help but yearn for the same attention that the group he admired received it's the reason as to why he spent so much time dedicating himself to the phantom thieves in the back of mishima's mind he thought if he were to push his idols further into the spotlight he'd be able to make a name for himself as well though as we see throughout his confidant this desperate desire to be someone special ended up leading mishima down a destructive path without really realizing it he became someone who was willing to abuse their position of power for selfish gain he himself became the bullies that he despised but the thing i like the most about mishima's confidant is that his resolve doesn't come from a forced change of heart instead it involves ren confronting mishima shadow and helps him realize that he's going down the wrong path instead of forcing the change he instead leaves it at the mashima to discover where he went wrong and gives him the chance to better himself which does end up happening near the end of the confidant i really don't understand the hate that this character gets when i look at mishima i don't just see an annoying kid who's obsessed with the phantom thieves i see a victim of abuse who doesn't want to be in that position anymore someone who wants to be recognized but ends up losing his way for a short time only to be steered back onto the right path thanks to a close friend and becomes a better person through those experiences i find this confidant super compelling and it's one of my favorite ones in the game it's so disheartening that mishima is written off so much because he's an annoying character there's so much more to him than just that trait and i hope i managed to bring a new perspective to the conversation number 8 the star hifumi togo hifumi's confidant is a pretty standard one but this comes with the consequence of being somewhat unremarkable and honestly forgettable she's a competitive shogi player and her confidant focuses on her feelings towards the game along with a relationship with her mother hifumi wants to become a great shogi player like her father was but her mother was more focused on hifumi's public image than anything else she constantly sets up photoshoots and interviews for her daughter in order to live life through hifumi indulging in the fame that she desperately desired for herself kifumi's mother even goes as far as suggesting that hifumi should throw her match against a professional in order to boost her popularity the idea here is that hifumi's mom has been so enraptured by the media attention surrounding the family that hifumi is more of a tool for success rather than being a person to her once we learn this information ren and the others take a trip to memento so that they can change ifumi's mother's heart once the change of heart occurs ifumi's mother admits to her daughter that many of the matches she participated in were actually rigged in her favor this briefly causes her to question her own shogi abilities but she ends up getting over this rather quickly despite all of this hifumi does attempt to play against a professional player and gets absolutely destroyed by them but this was a positive experience in her eyes because she was able to face a shogi player in a fair and square match yeah this confidant really didn't do it for me a lot of this story is mostly spent setting up the basics for the character of hifumi but never fully exploring many of the more interesting sides of her we learned that her father was a pro shogi player who ended up retiring due to an illness and that hifumi herself wants to go pro in order to support her family another idea that's brought up is the fact that she doesn't care about the photo shoots or the interviews because her passion lies in the game itself and not so much the idol lifestyle that would come along with that none of this is ever explored past his initial introduction and that's a shame because it would have made hifumi a far more fleshed out character what baffles me is that hifumi has almost no reaction to learning that her past games were rigged all that we get is her affirmation that she's going to give it her all and prove to herself that her shogi skills were more than just a fabrication if this twist was revealed much earlier in the story it could have honestly made the confidant more compelling as of right now hifumi doubting herself is just a single throwaway line in her rank 8 event before she quickly regains her resolve this should have been explored more so that there are more stakes to the confidant outside of this situation involving her mother maybe show a scene where hifumi initially wants to back down from playing her match against the pro before going to her father for guidance he could act as the spark needed for hifumi to rediscover her love for shogi the rank 9 scene can be the same where she loses with pride but now we have a new context behind those events that are a lot more personal i think the biggest problem i have with hifumi's confidant is that not a whole lot really happens in it for me to stay interested we learn different aspects of her character but none of it's used to craft much of a compelling story around it hifumi is a somewhat fleshed out character because we learn what she likes dislikes her hopes her motivation for playing shogi but that's about all we get i see a lot of people discussing how much they like her character online but i don't really see much discussion surrounding the actual confidant story itself which probably goes to show where the priority was when the writers made this story if you're the kind of person who enjoys confidants more so for hanging out with the characters then i can see why you would enjoy this but for someone like myself who enjoys the confidant format more so for telling interesting smaller scale stories then there really isn't much to sink your teeth into i'm hesitant to call it bad but there's a reason as to why i tend to forget many aspects surrounding this confidant number 9 the tower shinya oda shinya is an elementary schooler who spends most of his time at the arcade in akihabara he's an expert at the game called gun about and his skills earned him the nickname of the gamer king shinya's confidant focuses on his relationship with his peers as well as his own mother we learned somewhat early on that the young boy's family situation isn't exactly glamorous his mother and father divorced recently and it's been a very rough time for them his mom has been under a lot of stress because she now has to provide for her son on her own which leads to frequent moments of her snapping at the littlest issues when the kids at shinyu's school find out about the complaints she's been making they begin to bully him for it something that this confidante does really well is highlighting shinya's wart perspective of these events since he's just a kid he doesn't fully understand what's going on with his mother and ends up blaming himself for not only the divorce but for causing his mom's stress too he refers to the bullying he sees as an act of war and that the kids are only doing this to him because he's weak this is the reason as to why shinya spends so much time dedicated to practicing at the arcade in shinya's point of view him being the best at gun about equates to having some sort of strength or authority at least amongst his peers shinyu's perspective spawned from his own mothers since she's been so stressed with raising the boy on her own she ends up developing a very toxic behavior we learn from her shadow that the world doesn't care about single mothers like herself she needs to be strong to support her kid and how everyone else is our enemy we can see this mindset start to rub off on shinya as he himself starts to act more antagonistic towards his peers it's only when he realizes that he's no better than the criminals that the phantom tees go after is when he starts to make changes to himself out of all of the social links involving kid characters in this series i'd probably say that shinya is my least favorite this confidant is a bit messy since he's trying to do too much at once this leads to some ideas not feeling as well developed as others for example there's a few ranks dedicated to a pro player that beats shunya because he cheated at gun about but it doesn't really feel necessary to this story at all it would have flowed much better if this derailment was cut out and instead we fully focus on the idea of shinya solely adopting his mom's toxic behaviors i can't say i'm the biggest fan of shinya's confidant but i wouldn't go as far as saying it's bad there's at least a compelling story that's trying to be told here but it just has a less than stellar execution number 10 the temperance sadayo kawakami kawakami is rent's homeroom teacher at school not too long into the game we discover that she's actually moonlighting as a maid in order to earn money the reason for doing so isn't exactly clear at first and kawakami doesn't give the truth of the situation though after spending enough time with her she eventually does come clean it turns out that kawakami has been making payments to the takase family the reason why she does this is because she feels responsible for the death of their child takasei was a bit of a problem student to the teachers at kawakami's old school and she was assigned to have him transferred away but after meeting a young boy it turns out he wasn't a bad kid apparently takase was an orphan child who was forced to work multiple part-time jobs in order to get by this caused his academic performance to falter as he had no time to study kawakami decided to privately tutor tokase so that his transfer could be avoided eventually she had to distance herself from the boy due to some dark rumors surrounding the two this emotionally crushed him and while on his way home from one of his jobs he ended up getting into a car accident which resulted in his death kawakami was racked in guilt because of these events and takasei's guardians blamed her for what happened they used this opportunity to blackmail her into giving them money so that they wouldn't reveal the truth these demands are the reason as to why she began to moonlight as a maid takasei's guardians demand an insane amount of money from her which is well above her teacher's salary kawakami has to overwork herself to the point of collapse in order to meet their demands what i really like about this reveal is that it not only recontextualizes a lot of the earlier scenes involving her character but it opens up the avenue to explore her character on an emotional level kawakami is someone who was first presented in a pretty negative light she comes off as someone who doesn't care about her students and sees any attempt at connecting with them a bother this is something that's established pretty early on in the game when she describes ren as a problem child in actuality kawakami is the exact opposite as the game made her out to be kawakami genuinely cares about her students and loves her teaching job but in a moment of weakness and fear she ended up going against her morals and backing away from a student in need kawakami's character from here on out is learning to cope with the guilt and eventually realizes that the best way to honor takase would be to become a better teacher extend other people the kindness that she showed him i think that this is a really interesting story for this character but it sadly isn't perfect there were a few ranks in this confidant that feel wasted in a sense that we learned no new information about kawakami or advance her story i understand that these scenes are supposed to establish that she's being overworked by takasei's guardians because she begins to develop a cough and talks about how exhausted she's been feeling but this is stuff that could have easily been implemented during other scenes where the plot is advancing and the pacing would have been improved other than that i actually really did enjoy this confidant story we learned a lot about kawakami and it's satisfying to take down to casey's guardians near the end of it number 11 the sun turonosuke yoshida yoshida is a politician looking to steer the country into a better direction he's an ex-member of the national diet and has become quite infamous due to his failings in the position these are known as no good torah's three strikes and the nickname even persists with him to this very day due to this infamy yoshida has a lot of self-esteem issues he even freezes up in the middle of a political speech because someone reminds him of his past this confidant mostly focuses on improving yoshida's self-esteem and learning more about him on a personal level it's a simple story for a simple character and there isn't much in terms of deep analysis to be had throughout the confidant yoshida slowly gains confidence in himself thanks to ren and actually ends up gaining a decent following from his speeches the name no-good torah eventually stops being a shackle holding yoshida down he instead uses the infamy that name brings in order to illustrate how people are able to change when given a second chance during yoshida's youth he became a politician only for the sake of power and the popularity of the position would provide but after his own failings and having time for them to stick he is able to eventually realize that there is a change that needs to be made to the country something that yoshida is confident really succeeds at is affirming how corrupt the political sphere of this country actually is people selling out their beliefs for the sake of guaranteeing themselves a position of power and eternal blackmailing to keep certain people bound to the least of their superiors this is the main reason as to why yoshida is able to sympathize with the phantom thieves without really knowing much about them he understands the feeling of wanting to make a change to the status quo and even correctly assumes that the group is composed of people who've been unfairly treated by those in power we do eventually learn that the embezzlement scandal that ruined yoshida's credibility was actually a false accusation made by his old mentor and when given the opportunity to get revenge on the one who wronged him yoshida instead declines the offer yoshida is firm it is believed to change the country but he wants to do it through legitimate means i like yoshida's confidant but as i said earlier there isn't much to discuss that isn't already just explained to the player i think that the pacing is solid no rank really feels wasted at all and the story ramps up at a constant rate the reason as to why i don't consider this one great is because there isn't much emotional investment for me personally i think it's a solid story with a good payoff but it doesn't have that emotional kick for me the idea here is to not let your failings define you and to always stick to your beliefs even if they aren't popular and i think it's done well enough here but i don't personally relate to the struggle to begin with i can see why this is considered to be a lot of people's favorite confidant but i just don't share the same perspective number 12 death tie to kemi takemi is a back alley doctor who's stationed at young ganjaya in terms of gameplay this place acts as the store where he approaches hp restoration items in context of the world and thus confidant she sells these items in exchange of using ren as a test subject for her medicine her confidant is one of the better non-party member ones in my opinion it manages to balance multiple ideas that all end up coming together near the end of it we learned that tekemi used to work at a university hospital but was fired after she was accused of a disastrous medical error there was this young girl named mima who was suffering from a very rare medical condition and takemi was trying to create a medicine in order to treat it however this ended up not going as planned as miwa ended up falling into a coma because of said medicine tsukemi ended up taking the blame for this mistake and it's revealed that she's been trying to perfect the medicine in her own free time to make things right that's the general core of takemi's story she wants to regain her credibility while also earning the forgiveness of the girl she failed but there's a lot more supplementary material to be found throughout the confidant the first few ranks do a really good job at establishing to cami's personality while also giving us a taste of her dark past before fully revealing it there aren't any of what i would consider to be wasted ranks since everything is relevant until the end of the story there's a scene about halfway through that shows takami having to take in a sick child because she was turned away from the hospital takemi's going to charge an outrageous price for her services that is until she hears that the person who turned the girl away was her old boss named oyamada after hearing that name she decides that she wouldn't charge the dad for helping them out this naturally leads into takami telling us about who oyamata is and what exactly happened that got her fired oh yamada is even revealed to be takami's antagonist starting with rank 7 along with some dark information involving the clinical trial oyamata ends up being a target for the phantom thieves because he's actively trying to crush to kemi's business and even almost succeeds at that when confronting his shadow we see that he only gotten as far as he has in the medical industry because of nepotism and resents to kemi for her skill he even went as far as lying about meewa's death in order to ruin her credibility and protect his own reputation changing oyamata's heart doesn't discredit to kami's character development since her resolve to help others and even a slight repairment of her reputation came from her own actions and not the phantom thieves just because they ultimately helped to kemi in her time of need that doesn't mean her choices in development up until this happens to suddenly be nullified mementos has just used to give to kimmy one last push and clear up any misconceptions overall i like this confidant a lot as i mentioned earlier there aren't any wasted scenes and i think that our character is well-rounded since this confident is unlocked at the start of the game you get a good first impression of the type of stories you're going to be experiencing number 13 the fortune chihaya mufune this confidant requires a decent amount of effort to initiate and honestly feels like it's mostly being done out of spite chihaya is a fortune teller whose booth is located in the red light district of shinjuku she's selling people these bogus holy stones for an insane amount of money and even ends up tricking ren into buying one the main core of this story is the conversation of whether or not fate is absolute chihaya uses tarot cards in order to predict the future she sees her readings as absolute and that there's no use in fighting against it you'll be better off just being a slave to fate and enduring whatever downfalls it may entail ren and by extension the phantom thieves believe that you can change the course of your life if you have the drive and willpower to stand up against fate or powers greater than your own the first few ranks of the company are dedicated to showing jahaya that there's plenty of merit with standing up against fate as ren attends her fortune readings he offers advice to those struggling in life by giving them a new perspective or words of encouragement chihaya's tarot readings end up changing to a more positive outcome convinced that ren's ability to defy fate is real the course of the confidant then changes to whether or not chihaya can defy her own fate we learn a lot about shahi's past and her current situation in tokyo jihya was originally from a small traditional mountain village she made a name for herself by using her fortune telling skills to predict the future however when she began to predict natural disasters the people of the village turned on her blaming chahaya for those disasters her house was burned down as she was run out of the village jahaya was eventually discovered by a cult calling themselves the assembly of the divine power they ended up manipulating her by saying that she was a real psychic and getting her to sell holy stones to her customers even though that deep down she knew that they didn't work jahia only went along with it because she wanted to be with a group that didn't consider her a monster like her village did it's through spending time with ren and seeing how he's able to make changes in faith that she's able to find the courage to stand up against the cult once we get a hold of the cult leader's name the phantom thieves make it their mission to hunt his shadow down in mementos and have him put a stop to all of his shady businesses the lesson that shahiah learns from all this is that people shouldn't rely strictly on fortune telling or superstitions to dictate the course of their lives thinking for yourself and taking action on your own is the only way to make any sort of meaningful change in a way the lesson here is like a miniature version of the game's overall themes i think that chihaya's confidant is pretty decent overall much like yoshida's there isn't a whole lot for me to really analyze pretty much most of what i said there applies here it's a standard persona socialing story and has a good execution but lacks any sort of personal investment on my end number 14 the hanged man munahisa ey ey is the owner of untouchable airsoft which acts as the game's weapon and armor store early on in the game you assist ey with some shady business involving an incredibly life-like airsoft gun and can even start a confidant with him once your courage is at least rank 4. this confidant revolves around ewi's job and his responsibility of his adoptive son kyoru we learned early on that ey is an ex-yakaza member and the first few ranks of his story are dedicated to ren assisting him in his shady business practices it's around rank 5 when the real conflict is introduced ey is being blackmailed by a man named suda he's using ey's past as a bargaining chip if ey doesn't do what suda says he's going to tell keouru the truth about why iwa took him in along with his ties to the yakuza it turns out that kiyoru's blood mother tried to sell her baby off to ey for some drug money when he refused she ended up abandoning him anyway so ey took the boy in he ended up having to leave his clan in his old life in order to take care of his new son ey doesn't want kyouru to learn the truth and get held back by it ey telling ren all this really shows how much he trusts him ey is probably one of the coolest [ __ ] characters in the game and it's a shame he isn't talked about that much his confidant is not only intriguing but it's also immediately exciting not too long into the story ey is able to relate to ren since both of them know the feeling having a bad reputation forced onto them and how it affects their daily lives we learn a lot about ewi's upbringing and the reason as to why he joined the yakuza in the first place he had a rough childhood his parents were low lives and that family name held him back from achieving anything for himself there wasn't anything else he could do other than joining a clan ey desperately wants to be the parent that he never had growing up and guarantee a good future for his son adopted or not keoru is family to ey and by the end of the confidant even considers ren to be a part of it my favorite scene in the confidence has to be near the end after suda has a change of heart and his excommunicated from the yakuza his lackey masa kidnaps kyouru and holds him at knifepoint ey is forced to tell kiaro the truth in order to protect him kyoru accepts the past for what it is he doesn't care about what happened back then and he won't let this revelation ruin the relationship he has with his dad no matter what that's some powerful [ __ ] and it only works as well as it does because we got plenty of time to spend with these characters i think ey's confidant is pretty great overall his character is really fleshed out and the story he's involved with is super interesting i was pretty invested in this character because he has a strong moral code and just wants to be a good dad so his son can live a good life he's willing to go as far as die for him for that to happen what can i say i'm just a sucker for good dad stories of my persona games speaking of which number 15 the hierophant sojiro sakura sojiro is ren's caretaker while he spends the year attending shujin academy he reminds me a lot of dojima in persona 4. both are of the hierophant arcana and their confidants have a heavy focus on their relationships with their daughters what makes this confidant interesting is that you can't fully complete it until futaba joins the main party you can complete the first few ranks no problem but then you'll need to wait a long ass time until you're able to progress it anymore i don't really think the game does a good enough job at telling you this because you can waste a lot of evenings trying to rank up sojiro this only applies for first time players but it's bothered me since the game came out anyways sojiro's confidant takes until rank 5 for things to really get started we learned that futaba's uncle and sojour are in a constant battle for futaba's custody when futaba's mother passed away she was originally supposed to stay with her uncle as he was the only relative willing to take her in but after witnessing the abuse she went through while living with him sojuro decided that he needed to step in soju and futaba's uncle yuji ishiki come to an agreement that soldier will have custody over futaba as long as he makes payments when asked this has resulted in soju getting extorted out of large sums of money in order to keep futaba safe he can't refuse either as yuji would just sue sojiro for custody and thanks to the corrupt justice system he would end up winning in the end the main use of this confidant is to tie up any loose ends and answer some questions posed in the main story despite sojuro being futaba's caretaker the two have a very strained relationship thanks to futaba's past trauma and her shut-in lifestyle there wasn't any way that soju could easily reach out to her all he ended up doing was making sure she ate and gave her housing in a way he blames himself for her becoming this way an aspect of sojiro's confidant is him battling with the idea of whether or not he's even fit to take care of futaba he genuinely wonders if him taking her away from her blood family was even the correct decision something that he admits to somewhat latent to his confidant is that he's actively trying to avoid any sort of conflict that comes with a genuine relationship he'd rather just take a back seat and let things sort themselves out than actively get involved in them though it's through spending time with ren that he's able to gain a new perspective he always told himself to never step out of line and just deal with the hand you're dealt with in life to guarantee yourself an easy way out of trouble but soju learns that there is always something worth fighting for and even if there is conflict as a result that shouldn't demotivate you into just being idle i like sojiro a lot as a character but a problem i have is just the pacing of this story the first half of the confidant is completely irrelevant to the rest of the story sure it sets up the appearance of yuji and even teases the existence of futaba and wakaba before they're mentioned in the main plot but other than that we don't get anything else out of it if these starting ranks were removed i really don't think the overall confidence would have been affected that much on the opposite end i think the latter ranks go by way too fast the idea is supposed to be that sojiro solely begins to feel more attached to ren throughout the story and this gives him the courage to finally take that first step into rebuilding his relationship with futaba the problem i have is that not enough time is given to this aspect of the story for it to feel natural in the span of a single rank he realizes where he went wrong and clears things up with futaba to the point where there's no issues between the two of them it's almost as if we ran out of space for ranks so the conclusion was quickly rushed in overall it's a fine story that should have had more breathing room how about just lock soju is confident away completely until after futaba's palace then we can have the entire story focused on the relationship rather than just the second half i think this would go a long way in fixing the issues that are presented here number 16 the devil ichiko oh yeah oh yeah is a journalist that the phantom thieves used for intel during the second and third palace of the game once you unlock her confidant you can find her located at the crossroad bar in shinjuku this confidante gets a lot of [ __ ] online and in all honesty it isn't stellar in fact i struggled to call it particularly good overall the main use of this confidant is to foreshadow the influence of the late game antagonist masayoshi shido while also giving us a glimpse of what happens to the people who cross him oh yeah was originally working to expose a scandal involving someone connected to shito oya's partner ko made a big break in the story but not too long after that the investigation was swiftly canned and swept under the rug shido's associate was found dead the following day and ko vanished without a trace oh yeah was also forced off the investigation because of her professional relationship with ko this has caused her to have a more cynical outlook on the world and has been the main feel for her drinking habits in her free time however oh yes slowly begins to investigate the case on her own in order to discover the truth all the while her boss is trying his hardest to flood her with work to keep that from happening this is a very interesting story on paper i really like how it's connected to the main plot but it's still justifiable as its own standalone experience the execution however leaves a lot to be desired show don't tell is a common rule in media and i think oes confidant is crippled because of it it's a very hands-off story where most of it is told to us through oe's own words rather than experiencing any of it ourselves part of the reason why ey has such a great confidant is because we're actively participating in the story and ren's actions are what helps ey gets through his rough patch in life in oya's confidant rena is mostly used as a brick wall for her to spill her problems at a lot of the confinement feels as though it solves itself rather than us the player having much of an impact on it other than changing the heart of oes boss so she can finally pursue the truth we don't really end up supporting her as much as i'd like to i don't really think the confidant is well executed is probably one of my least favorite ones in the game i don't have the same overwhelming hatred towards her as most people do i mean as a character oya is perfectly fine and the story has good intentions but it's the execution of said story that's pretty boring to sit through number 17 the strength caroline and justine just like margaret from persona 4 there's a confidant dedicated to the new velvet room assistants the way you rank up the confidant is also the same as margaret's social link you need to fulfill the fusion requests that are handed out to you and by completing the tasks you're rewarded with another rank while i do find this to be a slight improvement over margaret's confidant a lot of the same issues sadly still apply here nothing of substance happens in this confidant other than foreshadowing the true nature of the twins every scene plays out almost the exact same as well with caroline and justine giving backhanded compliments towards joker while also experiencing some deja vu it gets super repetitive after a while because of this i can't even say we learn anything new about caroline and justine's personalities either since we honestly learn a lot more about them through their menu interactions than anything so we already have a clear idea what these characters are like and this confidant doesn't offer anything new to us story-wise so is this confidant even necessary to the game or was this done because margaret had a social link i have a slight feeling that the answer is the latter persona 5 royal does introduce the ability to hang out with the twins outside of the velvet room and i really do appreciate this inclusion we get to see their wildly different reactions to normal everyday places like a burger joint or the aquarium honestly even though this is mostly just a callback to the elizabeth dates and p3 this stuff would have worked out way better as the compound than what we ended up getting in the vanilla game i really do enjoy caroline and justine's characters they're probably my favorite velvet room characters in the series but i'm super disappointed with this decision it's easily the worst confidant in the game no questions number 18 the counselor takato maruki dr maraki is introduced right after the kamshida incident goes public marooki takes his job very seriously and genuinely wants to help these kids cope with the horrible events he offers running the others the opportunity to visit him when they have the chance to he's a limited time confidant however and needs to be maxed out before he leaves the school in the middle of november if you want to access the third semester while these counseling sessions initially start off with maruki learning about ren his criminal record and what he endured with kamashita the conversation eventually takes a turn marquis reveals that he's been researching cognitive science and wants to better the world with it he's writing a paper on the human heart and asks ren to his system in conducting research really this just means having ren listen to different theories about the subject and see if any of them sparks inspiration this confidant focuses almost entirely on his research while also giving us a look into where his philosophy originated from marquis believes that emotional pain shouldn't exist in the world he wants to find a way to understand the human heart so we can locate someone's emotional pain and treat it in his own words it would be like using an antibiotic to treat a physical wound his motivations actually come from personal experience maruki's fiance at the time roomie experienced a very tragic event that left a deep emotional scar on her a burglar broke into roomies family home and attacked her parents out of desperation the criminal attacked her as well while her physical wounds healed the mental toll that this took on her was intense marookie seeing his lover suffer from post-traumatic episodes left a huge impact on him as well he found that one day that he would find a way to treat these sorts of emotional scars so that no one would have to go through that pain ever again muraki despises the cruel unfairness of reality and wants nothing more than to help people who've been wronged that's what's at the core of his research paper as well as the main topic of the story this confidant honestly surprised me when i first played the game i really enjoyed how thoughtful this confidant was and just how well marooky's character was developed throughout we learn a lot about the guy in the way he thinks while also discovering that he himself isn't immune to emotional pain he's genuinely a really nice guy and wants the best for people i also really like the topics that it brings up such as the idea of people giving something value due to the scarcity of it and how collective human thinking can have an impact on the world it has great pacing a well-developed central character some genuine emotion to it and is super relevant for royals third semester let's just say that i have more to talk about involving marookie later in this video when it comes to the individual confidante discussions that's about all i had to talk about in terms of my overall thoughts on these stories i'd like a good majority of them but there were also quite a few that missed the mark for me in my opinion the highs don't quite reach the same level as some of the ones from p3 and p4 but there's also the fact that the lows aren't nearly as rough as those ones too especially when compared to persona 3 which had a lot of social links i really didn't like i mentioned it earlier but because of the inclusion of mementos requests the confidants feel far more formulaic this time around the social links in previous games all followed a pretty simple guideline we'd meet a new character and after getting to know them for a bit we learned their insecurities or life issues that they're going through and eventually help them overcome said issues because of how generalized and non-specific this formula is a lot of different stories can be told with social links the confidante structure persona 5 puts an inherent limit on what kind of stories can be offered here if you were to strip away the character specifics from the confidants and look at how all of them are structured then you'll notice just how similar the confidants really are almost every confidant revolves around an individual who's been wronged by someone of greater power than them as the protagonist it's your job to not only mend the wounds caused by the injustice but also use your power as a phantom thief to change the hearts of the individual who wronged your confidant a good majority of confidants follow this same structure which leads them to feeling somewhat samey at the end of the day of course there are a few outliers to this formula such as mishima and yoshida but a good majority of confidants are structured like this this makes some of the stories themselves feel a bit more predictable but i wouldn't say that it cripples my enjoyment of what's offered as i said earlier momentous doesn't negate character growth and makes sense in context of who the phantom thieves are as people and fits their motives i would find it completely out of character if ren didn't step in and try to handle the situation since he knows the feeling of being wronged by society and doesn't want anyone else to go through the same the momentous requests pop up near the end of a character's arc when they've already found their new resolve and want to better themselves the phantom thieves just give them the opportunity to finally spread their wings so all in all i like the confidants in this game while the inclusion of mementos can make them feel a bit too formulaic at times it doesn't detract from the overall stories that are trying to be told here anyways with all the gameplay and confidence out of the way it's time to dive into the meat of persona 5's main plot this is a controversial topic to discuss i've seen a lot of people sing this story's praises and just as many hold the opinion that it's disappointing when compared to the other entries in the series i personally lean on the more positive side of this discussion but that doesn't mean i'm going to ignore the areas where this story falls flat even though i like persona 5's plot and i think it gets a little too much [ __ ] that doesn't mean that i think it's perfect before we get started with the characters i believe i should mention my thoughts on the way this story is presented as i said early on in this video persona 5 uses size interrogation of joker as the framing device for this narrative this means that almost everything we experience takes place before he was arrested at the start of the game the flashback plot setup works very well when it comes to hooking players in right away but i honestly think that it ends up doing more harm than good to the way the story is structured every time you establish a confidant start a new story arc and a story arc or even just when the game feels like it you'll be thrusted back to the present for size interrogation i dislike this for a few reasons first of all most of these scenes are used to repeat information that we already learned from playing the game i get the idea of wanting to remind players of relevant story details but that could have easily been solved by checking the game's glossary but the main reason as to why i dislike this is because the game just flat out spoils certain story events for you the palace rulers are all revealed through these interrogation scenes and in my opinion i think that this kind of ruins the idea of player agency when it's psy establishing who rules the palace it doesn't feel like the phantom thieves themselves are the ones making the decisions but instead are just following the game's script for example moderame is the second palace ruler and there's a scene where the phantom deeds discuss whether or not he has a palace they just met the guy and he seems to be a very innocent old man however the game already told me that he has a palace and the phantom thieves exposed him while the characters themselves don't have the knowledge i do at the end of the day i'm still in control of these characters there's no tension for me now since i already know that the mission was a success and the phantom thieves are still going to be operating after this there are a few effective uses of this narrative device however the medjad incident because the media had no idea futaba's palace or her involvement since it never went public the reveal of cytonium as palace works as a great oh [ __ ] moment when she shows you that she herself got a calling card and finally the reveal of goro akechi's betrayal however these three good uses of this narrative structure doesn't make up for the over 20 times i think it's misused i would have preferred it if we had the same story but it's told in a linear fashion while this would have made the yakachi twist weaker i think that the tension of the characters knowing his betrayal is coming would completely recontextualize their actions during that story arc of course this doesn't ruin the story but it's how i've always felt about flashback narratives and i'm not going to make an exception because of the few good uses of it anyways on to the main meat of this discussion i want to talk about the main party members first since i've already discussed their confidants i just want to give a brief overview of their introductions to the story and my overall thoughts on how their characters were executed let's start off with the game's best friend character ryuji sakamoto since ryuji is one of the first party members in the game i already somewhat went over his origins he's the next member of the track and field team who suffered a lot from kamashita's abuse he's a very brash and hot-headed individual who isn't afraid to speak his mind this combined with ryuji's short temper at times lands the group into hot water on more than one occasion though at the end of the day ryuji definitely has a heart of gold and genuinely wants the best for the people around him ryuji is one of the few characters in the game whose main story arc lasts throughout most of the runtime while he takes phantom thieves business very seriously and genuinely wants to make changes to society he can't help but end up getting caught up in the hype of it all in ryuji's own words he wants to change the world with a bang throughout the start of the game we see that ryuji's desire for fame and popularity end up taking priority over his initial goals he actively encourages the rest of the team to try to up themselves when it comes to who they target even somewhat early on he suggested they go after the ceo of a company for the sake of getting attention on more than one occasion ryuji even tosses the idea around of revealing his identity as a phantom thief ryuji's character arc after he's introduced is him losing sight of what's important before rediscovering why the phantom thieves exists to begin with i think that this is a perfectly realistic flaw with his character for the longest time he was considered an outcast because of the kamashita incident and began to distance himself from everyone by acting like a thug so the fact that he's making a difference in the world and receiving praise for it makes him yearn for more this excitement leads him to act carelessly on multiple occasions it's because of ryuju that makoto finds of who the phantompies are his obsession with fame is also one of the main instigators to the momentary breakup during the okumara arc but i'm getting a little bit ahead of myself ryuji gets a lot of flack from players because he can be pretty obnoxious and i can't help but feel as though that group specifically missed the point he's just a teenager at the end of the day so it's totally believable that the notoriety of the phantom thieves would have an effect on him his main character arc is him stumbling a bit before getting back on track and realizing that the popularity wasn't the reason as to why he fights for justice there's also the fact that on multiple occasions he can directly call out ryuji for being full of himself ryuji is one of my favorite members of the phantom thieves because not only does he have a strong arc in the main story but a solid confidant that wraps up any loose ends with his character for me personally ryuji never crossed the line of being endearingly obnoxious to being flat-out infuriating which really shows how much restraint alice had with his character next up the bat is on much like ryuji she's introduced during the kamashita arc ana is a foreigner who doesn't have many friends outside of her best friend shiho on was forced to endure kamashita's advances for the sake of keeping shiho on the volleyball team but ends up joining the phantom thieves when her friend attempts to commit suicide after being sexually assaulted by kamashita on starts off as an incredibly strong and forward character she doesn't take crap from anyone and is one of the most level-handed members of the team on joins the phantom thieves not just out of the desire to help the weak but it's so she can also improve the strength of her own heart as i mentioned earlier that was one of the topics that ons confidant attempted to tackle on makes a great first impression but sadly doesn't have a whole lot else going on for her after she's introduced we get some glimpses here and there as to what her personality is like she isn't exactly academically inclined is a pretty terrible actress but has convinced herself otherwise and has a talent for being able to correctly judge someone's character based on a first impression her confidant is where her real character development lies but as i mentioned earlier i can't quite say that it was flawlessly executed i enjoy ant's character a lot during the more lighthearted slice of life scenes in the game but other than that i think she's pretty underutilized in the main story that doesn't make her character on its own bad but i would have liked to have seen her have a more active role as a member of the team at the very least i can say that on is a well-defined character her introduction along with her confidante and slice of life scenes really do paint a good picture of her as an individual we get to see her likes dislikes and her moments of weakness she's a good character that sadly doesn't have as much time to shine as the others yusuke is the fourth party member that joins the phantom thieves yusuke is an artist and he's introduced his moderame's current pupil the phantom thieves first meet him because he asks on to be his model for a painting there are also some nasty rumors floating around about matarami plagiarizing artists work online so they use the opportunity to confirm the fidility of them with yusuke while at first he denies these accusations it's eventually revealed that yusuke has been creating pieces and letting matarami take credit for them in his own eyes yusuke sees this as a former repayment for matarami being his foster parent yusuke doesn't know the truth behind matarame's schemes so he has a bit of a warped viewpoint of what he's doing it's only when yusuke accidentally enters the metaverse and discovers matarami's palace when his eyes finally open yusuke cares very deeply about art and looked up to matarami because he believed that he was the one responsible for the sayori so discovering that matarami never cared about art on the same level as yusuke originally thought he did shook the young man's world matarama only cared about the fame and fortune that this medium could provide and only saw yusuke and his previous pupils as a means of achieving this what new skate learns from this experience is that just because you care about someone or feel like you owe them something that doesn't mean you should excuse their terrible actions a lot of yusuke's character development after this comes from his confidant which i thought was a pretty great story it questioned yusuke's artistic abilities and had him find a new understanding in the medium i really enjoy yusuke's character but much like on he doesn't really have a whole lot to do in the main story his confidant more than makes up for that however and it really does give yusuke some very strong character development there's a strong balance of use case social unawareness being used for comedic relief while also having some genuine emotional moments in his confidant a lot of what i said about on can be easily applied to yusuke but i find the execution of the ideas more impactful for him than i did for her but there's no denying that both characters aren't really used much in the main plot other than just being more firepower for the phantom thieves makoto nijima is the student council president of shujin academy and the younger sibling of prosecutor sainijima makoto's character highlights the stress that comes from not only living up to the family name but also has a great focus on the stress and isolation she experiences from social expectations makoto at the start of the game is portrayed as a bit of an antagonist as student council president she's given the responsibility to follow with any order the principal gives her she knew about kamashita's abuse but was powerless to put a stop to it as it could put her own future at risk what i like a lot about makoto is that the writers do actually portray her as a pretty sympathetic person even though she's initially at odds with our characters she represents what this society expects out of the youth being obedient until the very end and not questioning any authority this is portrayed in a way that while makota was given a successful future she absolutely hates the position she's in success doesn't necessarily equate to a happy or fulfilling life she can't really relate to the other students her age since she's seen as a stuck up emotionless lapdog makoto's strained relationship with her older sister sai is also a core aspect of her character after the death of their father sai was the one shackled with the responsibility to provide for herself as well as her younger sister this has caused her to become very stressed and she sees makoto as a burden more than his family it's because of this that makoto's self-esteem is very low and her main desires to prove herself to be useful to others but no matter how hard she studies or how well she follows the rules that still can't change the fact that she's an incredibly lonely person makoto's primary motivation for joining the phantom these is rooted in her own experiences of being conditioned to conform to society's expectations ignoring obvious flaws were terrible people out of fear of being reprimanded for stepping out of line she genuinely wants to make a change in the world but at the same time she also wants to prove to herself that she isn't useless outside of her academics makoto acts as the main strategist as well as the voice of reason to the phantom thieves i like makoto's character a lot in the main story but where she falters the most is in her confidant we're front loaded with a lot of interesting information regarding makoto but the confidant doesn't seem to take any advantage of this as i mentioned earlier it's far more focused on her friend than it is on makoto as an individual but that doesn't diminish her worth in the overall narrative a common criticism with makoto is that after her introduction she essentially takes the leadership role of phantom thieves kicking joker out of the spotlight while she is a very prominent member and does have a lot of moments to shine i don't really agree with this the entire point of her character is proving to herself and the others around her that she's a capable person since she's the student council president she already has some leadership abilities so it's only natural that the other characters would rely on her at the end of the day joker still does call most of the shots and it's easily the most viable member thanks to his wild card abilities everyone has their own dedicated role in the team but makoto's just so happens to be a very integral role compared to the rest that's just my opinion on it anyways and it's understandable if you think she does get too much screen time especially if you're not a fan of her character futaba is the team's elite hacker and resident shut in what makes her stand out amongst the rest of the phantom thieves is that she herself has a palace futaba's mother wakaba was a lead researcher in the field of cognitive science she was specifically studying the idea of the existence of a cognitive world and how it can affect people obviously this is supposed to be the metaverse but at the time no one had any idea of its existence one day futaba's mother suffered from a mental shutdown and ended up committing suicide right in front of her young daughter this event traumatized futaba to the point of shutting herself off from the outside world since she never learned the truth of what happened futaba's self-hatred and warped perception of the events around her are the source of her heart's distortion she sees her room as a tomb that she's going to stay trapped in until the day she dies this is reflected really well visually in the metaverse of course is the obvious such as futaba being the pharaoh of said tomb but what i really like is how far away this place is from the rest of the village futaba is so closed off emotionally that she sees anything outside of her room as a massive distance from her tomb futaba reached out to the phantom tee so that she can have her guilt erased and in return she'll deal with the hacker group mejid by the end of the palace however futaba ends up gaining access to the metaverse navigation app and explores her own heart it's in here where she encounters her own shadow and she's finally able to accept the truth by doing so she's able to awaken to her persona and with the help of the phantom thieves she battle against the warped cognitive version of her own mother this boss fight represents futaba finally putting her guilt to rest the remainder of futaba's character after this is dedicated to having her reintegrate herself into society it's the main focus of her confidant along with something that's worked on throughout the main story her main motivation for joining the phantom thieves is so that she can find out who was responsible for stealing wakapa's research and forcing her to have a mental shutdown i find futaba to be a pretty compelling character the way her issues are presented reminds me of the way it was handled in persona 4 where the characters themselves had to face their own shadows and accept the truth that they've been running away from in futaba's case the truth is something that she was inadvertently hiding from herself because of her trauma even when she confronts herself and tames her shadow it doesn't fix her social anxiety it's a major part of her character that's worked on throughout the remainder of the game something that i'm not personally a fan of is some of futaba's dialogue she's very keen on using internet slang and making references to pop culture such as anime manga video games all that other stuff i'm personally not the biggest fan of this type of dialogue because it has the potential of aging terribly but in the context of this character it definitely makes sense she spends an unhealthy amount of time on the internet and isn't exactly familiar with face-to-face social interaction it only makes sense that she would relate unfamiliar social ideas to stuff that she already knows and likes people make references all the time in the real world but in a story i personally feel as though this has the potential of making the dialogue feel dated i don't think that they go too overboard with the references but i would have preferred it if they toned it down just a bit next up is haru akumara she's the daughter of the fifth palace ruler kunikazu okumura and is the next heir of hakumara foods haru was raised to be very obedient and do what's best for the company her relationship with her father slowly began to degrade when his ambitions began to overpower his love for her harder was eventually forced into an arranged marriage agreement with an abusive spouse so that akumra could achieve presidency over an associate while haru wants to avoid her arranged marriage she still can't bring herself to fully stand up against her father this is the main reason as to why she's the only character to not fully awaken to their persona right away there's a part of her that's deluding herself into believing that her father isn't as corrupt as everyone else thinks and that he still cares about her but upon confronting his shadow and learning that a kumara foods and even haru herself are just a means to an end she finds the resolve to finally stand up against his authority and fully awakens to her persona the most common complaint with haru is that she doesn't get enough screen time to make her a compelling character this is something that i fully agree with haru was introduced during a very hectic point in the game's story and sadly ends up being sidelined in favor of focusing on wrapping up the morgana drama what's even more disappointing is that after she's introduced haru takes a complete backseat and is almost entirely relegated to being the team's firepower haru was probably the most disappointing member of the phantom fees because there wasn't enough time for her to shine all this would be a different story if hardwood got the same treatment that nauto did in persona 4. in that game naoto was an active force throughout most of the game until they became a mainstay party member even after they joined the party nauto is easily the most proactive and useful member on the team next to narakami haru would have greatly benefited if her character made more frequent appearances before joining the party the only time this happens is during the school's hawaii trip and even then we don't learn too much about her at that time completing haru's confidant feels almost essential for her character because there just wasn't enough room to include that stuff in the main story as i said in the confidante section i actually really enjoyed my time with it and i think it's one of the better confidants in my opinion haru has always been a pretty entertaining character for me she has a very sweet and gentle personality in the real world but using her in battle is such a contrast to that personality as she talks about the thrill of cutting down shadows but these small glimpses of her personality aren't enough to fulfill my desire for her character to shine the last party member i want to discuss for now is morgana much like teddy from persona 4 morgana is an amnesiac creature that originated from the alternate world he's knowledgeable with how the mechanics of the metaverse work and his primary motivation is discover more about his past his character arc is spread throughout the entire game and is presented as an automatic confidant to say that morgana is a mixed character for players would be a huge understatement a lot of discussions surrounding morgana tend to be on the character's negative aspects rather than what the story is actually about in my opinion morgana has a very interesting character arc that sadly isn't executed with the grace needed for it to stick the landing morgana is one of those characters that was written to be intentionally unlikable at the start of the game the general idea is that throughout the game you're supposed to learn more about them so you can sympathize with their situation so that when the character goes through the redemption it's all the more satisfying in morgana's case we slowly learn more about his insecurities and is longing to find a place where he belongs he wears a metaphorical mask around others so that he can hide his weaknesses from the other members of the phantom thieves he comes off very cocky and abrasive most of the time but deep down he's afraid of what the future holds for himself and he's very reluctant to share his emotions throughout the game we get to see glimpses of morgana's insecurities as more members join the phantom thieves each passing member slowly begins to phase him out of the group makoto takes the role of being the group's strategist and futaba's knowledge and ability to manipulate the cognitive world surpasses morgana in every way so morgana's character is about realizing that even though he can't fully relate to the phantom thieves it may not even be human he still has a place where he belongs at the end of the day they're all friends and that's all that should matter not what you can bring to the table as a member of the team this is a pretty decent idea for this character the problem with morgana however is that the execution of this leaves a lot to be desired much like yukari from persona 3 i think that atlas tried way too hard to make the character unlikable at the start it becomes a lot less about the character using aggression or sarcasm to hide away their true feelings and more so just comes off as the character just being an all-around [ __ ] when people talk about morgana as a character most of the things brought up are his self grandeur selfishness cockiness and all around just his generally toxic behavior the reason as to why this is the first thing people think of is because this is the side of morgana that we see throughout most of the game i understand that morgana doesn't want to be seen as emotionally vulnerable but we get way too much of his abrasiveness combine this with the fact that morgana is almost always with the player then i can definitely see why someone would find him irritating i believe it's time to address one of the most infamous scenes in the game early in september the phantom thieves discovered that kinokazo akumara has greatly risen on the fan site for the most requested target this prompts ryuji to immediately suggest that they go after akumra once they discover that he has a palace while morgana initially agrees with the idea that all changes when he hears ryuji's main motivation for doing so in his own words ryuji suggested they go after akumura because if they didn't it would go against what the general public would want however most of the team is rather mixed on the idea due to not having enough evidence of him being a criminal at this point in the story morgana is at his boiling point and wants to prove himself to be a useful asset to the team so hearing everyone suddenly back down from going after akumara is what causes in the last show and decide to go after the man on his own this is an event that takes a lot of in-game days to resolve and while the idea behind the scene is admirable it just doesn't work out for one major reason this is the first and only time the phantom thieves ever disagree on a target so morgana storming off in a fit makes him look very childish while the intention was that he wanted to prove himself as a useful asset then and there him storming off like this is possibly the worst decision that he could ever make that decision is very inconsistent with the rest of his character where he's previously shown to be someone who doesn't take any unnecessary risks morgana snaps over a simple disagreement and it comes off as an overreaction this would easily be more believable if there were more times where the phantom thieves disagreed with each other or if there was already tension within the group the actual dialogue in this scene in question also elevates far too quickly while the real reason as to why morgana left was due to his insecurities people still misinterpret this part of the game as morgana leaving because of ryuji that definitely wasn't the intention but the fact that so many people believe this shows that there was a bit of a problem with how this was presented i like morgana's character at points when the writers show restraint and portray the character in a more neutral position or even near the end of the game when he finally starts opening up to his team i find myself genuinely caring about him but when his flaws are drilled in so often the only things i can ask myself is when he's going to shut up comparing morgana to teddy also doesn't do him any favors while teddy can be annoying it was more so in the way that you get annoyed with your little brother or close friend at the end of the day he means well and in my opinion he perfectly represents the themes of persona 4. his story does heavily rely on whether or not you enjoy his personality but there still is a very clear and very strong message of identity and not letting your upbringing define who you are i struggle to say the same things about morgana i don't hate this character i want to make that clear there's a lot of good ideas here but it's the execution that i have to call into question i also think that they should have resolved his character struggles later in the story there's a lot going on in the akumara arc and sadly the morgana stuff ends up taking priority over haru's introduction or at the very least this section should have put an equal amount of focus on both characters instead of just sidelining haru overall i like the cast of persona 5. there are some really interesting and well-crafted characters in here and while some don't reach their fullest potential i struggled to call any of them bad or underdeveloped persona 5 handles character development the same way persona 4 does where after the character's introduction it's up to the player to do the confidants to not only wrap up their stories but learn more about them as people however i think that the confidants for the party members are a bit weaker than persona 4's overall there are some really good ones here like ryuji and yusuke but i found myself enjoying the persona 4 social links more a lot of the party member confidants this time around lacked focus which is something that i couldn't say about the investigation team all the social links there were dedicated to wrapping up the character's issues that were brought up in the main story overall quality notwithstanding the idea was much tighter in persona 4. persona 5 only does this with a few select party members while others end up getting confidants that focus on entirely different aspects of themselves this creates a much more broad view of the character as an individual but in terms of a compelling story i find it a bit lacking i think that the cast here is well-rounded and while some don't get as much attention as i would have liked i wouldn't go as far as saying that any of them were underdeveloped haru is probably the weakest character overall but at least she has a good confidant to make up for it i've seen people say that the phantom thieves don't feel like friends and i really don't agree with that they spend a lot of time with each other and have good chemistry morgana's entire character arc is learning to confide in his friends for crying out loud while they don't spend as much time together as the investigation team does they still constantly talk to each other through text messages and make the time to go to events as a group even if there aren't as many in this game as there are in persona 4. depending on who you ask this can be either a good or a bad thing persona 5 is a much darker game than persona 4 but it still does have moments of levity to keep the game from feeling grim and to make moments of tension hit much harder however something that i have to bring up is the use of humor in certain areas don't get me wrong persona 5 is a funny game when it tries to be but there are moments where the attempts at humor either fall flat or causes some tonal whiplash the biggest offender of this has to be one of the final palaces in the game at this point in the story the tension is high the phantom thieves are going after their biggest target yet who poses a threat to the entire country everyone gets their moment to shine and during the escape ryuji is seemingly killed after he secures a life raft when the rest of the thieves come back to reality it's revealed that ryuji actually survived the explosion without any scratches instead of oh i don't know thanking him for saving their lives or being happy that he's safe what happens is that the girls end up kicking the [ __ ] out of him for making them worry i get that this was supposed to be a joke but it undercuts the genuinely fantastic scene that came before it thankfully this is about as bad as the problem gets but stuff like this happens just enough time for it to be worth mentioning alright so i believe it's time for me to discuss the main plot and themes of persona 5. i'm going to be ignoring each individual palace ruler and instead just focus on the story as a whole unlike the other persona games persona 5 is a more traditional villain of the week setup each story arc has their own dedicated antagonist that's meant to highlight the flaws in japanese society while i like most of the palace rulers in this game i struggle to say that any of them are particularly great it feels good to send in the calling card and expose their crimes to the world but as villains on their own there isn't a whole lot for me to really analyze that isn't just shown in the game i think that they serve their job well enough but aren't exactly what i would call the main attraction the more interesting palace rulers end up being futaba because she's a party member in sainichi now because she isn't exactly evil per se but does have a very warped idea of justice that slowly begins to corrupt her the only one that i can't give a whole lot of credit towards is the third palace ruler junia kanashiro he highlights the shady criminal underside that's hiding in plain sight but i struggle to say that he makes any sort of lasting impact on me personally persona 5's antagonists all have at least one thing that make them stand out kamashita was the origin story that deeply affected the founding members matarami was the phantom thieves first big case outside of their debut and focused on a student being mentally and physically abused okumura's palace was the peak of the group's popularity and eventual downfall i struggled to think of what effects this palace had on the main story that wasn't covered by any of the others i also find shito to be a pretty disappointing villain overall he has a lot of build-up throughout the main story as well as a very ambitious plan but we don't really learn much about him or where his mindsets spawned from the reason as to why i'm not as critical towards the previous antagonist is because their purpose was to be stepping stones towards shito he's the main antagonist of the story and the reason why ren has a criminal record in the first place i would have appreciated if we learned more about shido's motivations or backgrounds so that we can get a better idea as to who he is as a person my thoughts on him are the same as strega from persona 3. he's more so just a means to an end rather than being interesting on his own it's a shame because of how involved he is in the world of persona 5 and his relevance to the backstory of characters where the antagonists truly shine around the effect they have on the phantom fees as a group something that persona 5's story tackles is the impact that fame and popularity has on the phantom thieves while ryuji is the obvious example of this the status of the phantom thieves does have an impact on the other members something you'll start to notice is that the people the phantom thieves targets slowly become less about their main goal of inspiring people to stand up against injustice but more so what would increase their popularity it's impossible to doubt that the phantom thieves act for a force of good and have good intentions but they aren't above having their views shaped by public opinion this all culminates in the yokumura arc while he does have a palace and is going down a dark path so they can potentially break into the political world when you think about it he really isn't as despicable as the previous targets the only reason as to why the thieves initially began to look into him was a combination of his name being associated with mental shutdown cases and more importantly because of where he was on the fan site rankings we don't find out until later in the game that the fan site was tampered with by an outside force trying to sabotage the phantom thieves since they were so focused on giving the people what they wanted they ended up being manipulated into targeting okumura so when akumura has a mental shutdown the phantom thieves end up taking the fall for the incident it takes until the group hits their lowest point for them to realize where they went wrong it became less about making a change in the world but improving how many people would support the group i find this stuff really well executed and super engaging i wouldn't call persona 5's plot perfect by any means but i'd like to give credit where credit is due a main plot point throughout most of persona 5's run time is whether or not the phantom thieves are doing the right thing not only do the phantom thieves constantly doubt themselves throughout the entire game but the general public also have some concerns over their activity this is where garu akechi comes into play for most of the story he's supposed to represent the voice of the general public and challenges the phantom thieves view on their own actions while we know what we're doing is morally correct in some way the general public doesn't know that from their perspective the phantom thieves are a group that operates exclusively in the shadows and only choose major targets seemingly at random the question that ends up being proposed is whether or not the phantom thieves should be the ones making the decision of who should or shouldn't be punished for their crimes but let's talk about akechi real quick akechi is by far one of the most interesting characters to talk about he's a young prodigy detective and assistant to saini jima he has a strong sense of what he believes in and his sense of justice makes him constantly at odds with the phantom thieves from what we're shown and told throughout the game akechi is supposed to represent the side of the law that follows the traditional justice system however the problem with the catchy is that there is far too much going on with this character for it to really feel coherent there's a lot more to a catchy than what's first shown to us very early on we're told of a mysterious persona user in a black mask that's using palaces for their own personal gain it's an ongoing mystery throughout and we're even shown that this person is a hitman for powerful or influential figures when akechi temporarily joins the party he says that he only just recently gained access to the metaverse and has gotten a lead on who this person is however since psy is slowly losing her sense of justice and is willing to break the rules to catch the phantom thieves her heart needs to be changed akechi ends up blackmailing their group with incriminating evidence and requests them to change psy's heart with him his only condition is that after they change psy's heart they'll have to disband their team and leave the rest of the investigation up to the police but as it turns out akechi ended up selling out the phantom thieves which leads to joker's capture at the start of the game not only that but he's also revealed to be the black mass killer and was planning on assassinating joker in the interrogation room due to him having a slip up way earlier in the game the thieves anticipated this and used the metaverse to their advantage it's a pretty complicated and long plan it hinged on joker being able to give inside to have a change of heart without stealing her treasure so that her palace would remain i actually really like this because it incorporates an aspect of mishima's confidant and reinforces the idea of the way bonds can affect someone akechi is one of the most polarizing characters in the entire persona community when akechi's facade is finally dropped his personality takes a complete 180. the main problem with akechi is that they stretch his character too thin so that he could fit multiple contradicting ideas the basic of akechi's character is pretty simple we have someone who wears a mask around others and pretends to have a strong sense of justice his true feelings and motivations are the complete opposite with how he presents himself akechi is a very emotionally damaged person who desperately wants to get revenge on his father masayu shishido before kechi was born shido abandoned his mother and left her to raise her son on her own in japanese society having an illegitimate child can ruin your career so akechi's mother ended up being shamed to the point where she committed suicide akechi was passed around child institutions as an orphan he vowed to make shito pay for ruining his life along with his mothers this on its own is a great motivation for akechi to commit his crimes he was wronged in life and he wants revenge that makes total sense he's supposed to be a warped reflection of the phantom thieves an outcast that was wronged by society but instead of using his gift to make a positive change in the world he instead used it for selfish gain he desperately wants shito to pay for his crimes but ends up throwing his own life away in order to achieve that goal i actually really enjoy this but the problem for me stems from the fact that there's no clear line drawn for what akechi's true beliefs are the game acts as though akechi is supposed to be the law representative while joker is the chaos representative however akeji doesn't exactly fit the bill for being a law representative he certainly does in the first half of his character he wants to uphold the status quo and is in support of the current justice system however was that sense of justice just a part of his facade or did he actually believe in it in the original persona 5 we never get to see that dividing line and are only show the extremes of both sides if that one line was removed i honestly think that akechi's character and role in the story would make a lot more sense he already had enough to his character him secretly working for shido so that he could eventually act his revenge is all that he really needed trying to force a connection with joker and how the two sides of the same coin is pretty unnecessary and doesn't really hold up when he reveals himself as the black mask the idea that joker and akechi had some sort of strong bond in the original game falls pretty flat too his confidence was one that automatically ranked up and because of that it felt less like we had a rivalry with a catchy and more so that we were told that we did thankfully persona 5 royal takes strides in fixing these missteps with akechi's brand new confidant instead of being an automatic one this is a confidant that you have to do manually and focuses on learning about akechi as an individual as well as hinting at his true nature i find this to be way better than what we had before not only because the information is presented in a much more natural way than previously but making the player choose to spend time with akechi makes his eventual betrayal all the more effective however the best part of this new confidant has to be his rank 8 event throughout the confidant we see that akechi has a bit of a competitive spirit and is at first shown to be going easy on ren however akechi makes the promise that ifren beats him he won't hold back next time the rank 8 event is the payoff to this build up as akechi takes rent to mementos in order to fight him this alone gives us a good insight into akechi's true nature and his dialogue shows just how envious he is towards him despite how much a catchy hates ren he still very much respects him as a rival they're in a very similar circumstance in life but their bond doesn't come from a place of friendship instead it manifests in how they're able to push each other beyond their limits this new confidant does so much for a catchy that i'm able to feel more sympathy towards him while i would never try to justify akeshi's actions i'm not going to pretend that i didn't feel bad for the way he ended up granted royal doesn't change the fact that he's supposed to represent law and while i still find that a pretty dumb decision because it just doesn't work it doesn't ruin his character for me the last main plot element to address in vanilla persona 5 is the final dungeon as well as the overall themes present there we're going to need a little bit more context for what's going on here after the group steals shito's heart and makes him confess for his crimes the public seemingly doesn't react to this at all not only that but the phantom thieves are being treated as if they never existed morgana believes that something has to be going on inside of mementos that's causing all this and with no better options the group decides that they need to investigate what they find is rather unsettling we discover that the shadows of society are willingly being held inside of these jail cells this includes the shadows of the previous palace rulers they are grateful that their desires were stolen so that they could be sent to the jail where they no longer have to think for themselves the phantom thieves begin to suspect that there's some greater power in charge of containing all the shadows and making them act like this upon reaching the bottom of momentos the thieves come across the treasure of society the holy grail itself every palace in persona 5 is supposed to represent one of the deadly sins of mankind in case of the memento steps palace this one represents the sin of sloth the idea that's supposed to be represented here is that humanity is either too afraid ignorant or lazy to live their lives on their own what humanity yearns for is someone to guide them and make all their life decisions for them this desire is what gave birth to the god of control yaldabout in the persona series gods are linked to the collective unconsciousness for example in persona 3 the goddess of death knicks was created due to mankind's secret yearning for death the same rules apply here humanity desires to be controlled so that they no longer need to think for themselves and yaldaboth is there to fulfill that role when yaldabaoth manifested it created the metaverse along with it yaldaboth secretly had a hand in everything that happened in the story it's because of him that shito rose in popularity and was about to be elected to rule the country yaldabaoth's experiment was to see which side of humanity's desires was stronger the sight of humanity that wanted to rebel against the status quo and reform the world or the desire to remain complacent and keep things the way they were as i mentioned briefly earlier yaldabath chose joker and akechi as the chaos and law representatives respectively to see which side would prevail at the end of the day yada both decided that humanity wouldn't be able to learn from their ignorance and decided that the world would be better off destroyed and recreated from the ground up yaldaboth was actually built up throughout most of the game believe it or not it stated that he forced his way into the velvet room and imprisoned igor while also splitting the true assistant lavenza in half the igor that we've been seeing has actually been yelled about throughout the entire game and as a longtime player of the series i really enjoyed this twist and didn't see it coming when i first heard how deep and menacing igor's voice was in this game i at first took it as atlas wanting to change voice actors igor's purpose in the persona games is to help guide the protagonists through the fool's journey but in persona 5 igor seems very antagonistic this time around the fusion methods are far more brutal and refers to the journey as a rehabilitation igor's very first line in the game gives it away if you're keen enough when he greets the protagonist he usually says welcome to the velvet room however in persona 5 he says this trickster welcome to my velvet room it's a small detail but it's appreciated nonetheless the igor twist might not work as well if you're a new player to the series but as someone who played a lot of these games before persona 5 i was thoroughly surprised this finale is a very strong one in my opinion not just because it pays off the mysteries that were built up throughout the entire game such as morgana's true identity and the stuff surrounding caroline and justine but because it perfectly encapsulates the themes of the game our lives aren't set in stone we can change not only ourselves but also forge a new path to follow if it's one that we believe in we as people have the power to make a difference if we put our minds to it while life can be difficult and there will always be people that try to hold you down you can and should stand up against it this is shown with our party members our confidants and by the end of the game the entire country with the combined hope of everyone we can finally break free from our chains [Music] be gone preposterous [Music] normally this is where persona 5 would end now that yaldabaoth has been destroyed and the metaverse has been erased shido can now be put on trial however sai explains that ren needs to testify in order to prove him guilty because of his association with the phantom thieves as well as his criminal record there's no doubt that he'll end up being sent to juvenile hall with no other options ren accepts the deal however there still is hope for him with the combined effort of the remaining members of the phantom thieves as well as the confidants they're able to get in contact with the woman who was paid off to testify against ren and clear his name with his assault charge now scrubbed from its criminal record ren is finally able to walk free a few months go by and it's finally time for ren to return home but not without going on one last road trip with his close friends but since this is persona 5 royal things end up playing out a bit differently if you've met the right conditions you'll gain access to the game's brand new content and i'm probably not alone in saying this but the third semester of persona 5 is easily the best part of the entire game once the new year rolls around you'll notice that everything seems off this ranges from smaller things such as on hanging out with shiho even though she moved away ryuji being the star runner of a track and field team and even more crazy ideas such as morgana having a human form and wakaba ishiki being alive not only that however goro akechi is also alive and he comes to leblanc to find out what's going on here this leads the two of them and the character kasumi yoshizawa to investigate the palace that's appeared at a construction site upon investigating they discovered that the one behind what's going on is none other than dr maruki himself he somehow obtained the power to manipulate reality however he chooses and has been using this ability to grant the dreams of everyone all over the country alright this is a lot to take in so let's break it down bit by bit throughout the game dr markey has been visited by different members of the phantom thieves for therapy sessions in these conversations they had explained their emotional troubles and struggles that they had to go through when yaldabaoth was defeated after momentos was merged with the real world the phantom thieves ended up taking the place of humanity's saviors however since the phantom thieves confided in monarchy and wished for the reality like the one he suggested they unconsciously handed over the role to him that's a very basic run down of what happened but the game goes into a lot more detail about how his power actually works i won't waste your time and explain that right now i want to give kasumi her time in the spotlight because at the start of the third semester the truth about her is revealed when we were first introduced to kasumi we learned that she's an honor student who received a shoojin academy scholarship for her talents and gymnastics something that should immediately catch your attention about kasumi is that her confidant only has five ranks to it when going through this confidant we learn a little bit about kasumi she's a very cheerful and friendly person but we learned pretty early on that she's going through a bit of a slump and her coach has told her to take a break to think about who she really is she remembers hearing that her best trait was her boldness so she requested to spend more time with ren in order to regain her confidence we learn a little more about kasumi throughout her confidant such as her interest in cooking and her anxiety about failure on its own it's nothing that i'd call particularly special but what makes this interesting is that kusumi has a lot more complications than what she's letting on we learned that somewhat recently her sister sumeri passed away in a car accident it's a rather touchy subject for her so many people respectfully don't bring it up however we're not told the truth of what actually happened until the third semester the girl that we've been seeing in front of us is actually sumira yoshizawa and the girl who died was her twin sister kasumi sumeri's true personality is radically different from the kasumi persona that she immersed herself in sumeria has a deep inferiority complex and was incredibly jealous of her sister kasumi was a prodigy at gymnastics she'd be able to quickly memorize routines and perform them with grace while sumeria would often struggle and like behind her sister kisumi would outperform sumerian almost every way and because of this sumeria developed a very toxic mindset she thought that if she didn't live up to the standards set by her sister that she was a worthless person that wouldn't even be pitied if she died this caused her to spiral down in a suicidal depression and one day after practice tragedy struck in an emotional outburst sumeria ran away from her sister and was almost hit by a car speeding down the road at the last second kasumi pushed her out of the way and ended up dying because of it sumeri became chained down by her survivor's guilt she felt as though she was the one who deserved to die and that she stole kasumi's life away from her she started to see dr maruki in order to help overcome her depression and after hearing her story maroki decided that he needed to take action with the power of his persona he subconsciously made samiri believe that she was kasumi as that was what she said would bring her happiness once you learn this information it completely re-contextualizes everything you knew about this character beforehand sumire has one of the most tragic backstories out of any character in the persona series she's someone racked with so much regret and believes that her life has so little value that she'd rather be someone else than herself when sumeria is reminded of the truth she completely breaks down and ends up joining marauki's side initially she can't accept what happened and doesn't want to live her life with regrets anymore sumeria's main character arc is learning to no longer run away from the truth and gain the strength to stop living a fake life no matter what she does kasumi isn't coming back to life and the best way to honor her memory isn't to become just like her she needs to learn to have faith in her own abilities and to not let her life be ruled by the desire to be someone that she isn't the last five ranks of her confidant are unlocked after she rejoins the party and the focus is on sumeria accepting her true self while she initially struggles to get over her instinct of mimicking kasumi she does eventually realize that she can no longer live in the shadow of her deceased sister the best way to honor kasumi would be to accomplish their shared dream but only if samiri does it in her own way i really like this character which is something i certainly wasn't expecting if you've seen my past videos then you know that i'm not usually a fan of the added content atlas puts in their re-releases the prime example of this would be marie from persona 4. when sumeria was first introduced as kasumi i'll admit i was a bit worried i think atlas did a great job at subverting people's expectations for this character and crafted a compelling story out of it she's a far more interesting and thoughtful character than what i was initially expecting it tackles the idea that persona is known for but it's done in a refreshing way she desperately wanted to become like her older sister because she was everything that sumeria wanted in her life she won the respect fame and talent that her sister had but this obsession was what caused her to spiral down in a pit of depression i find sumerian to be a relatable character to some degree i have in the past struggled with the idea of feeling inferior to my older siblings seeing that they're far more talented and successful in life than i am is really disheartening but something i can remind myself of are my own accomplishments or my own skill i don't have to be like them or compare our successes to find happiness i should be proud of who i am and not try to be someone i'm not so yeah you can probably see as to why i was surprised with the overall quality of samiri's character but in my opinion this is even the best part of the third semester i think it's time that we end this and talk about the complexities of dr markey and the questions his character asks dr markey is easily the best written antagonist in the entire game and i'm fully willing to go a step further and call him my favorite persona antagonist notice how i didn't say the word villain unlike every other antagonist presented in this game maruki is someone who is genuinely trying to make the world a better place for everyone to reference his confidant again he's using cognitive science to locate and eliminate emotional pain when he gains access to his persona as a thoth along with full control over reality itself he puts his plan into motion the way he eliminates emotional pain is by giving everyone what they desperately desire ranging from achieving their dreams bringing back dead family members or even removing traumatizing moments from someone's life sumire is the best demonstration of maruki's viewpoint she is someone who felt inferior she's racked with survivor's guilt and thinks no one cares for her she desperately wants to be someone she isn't marauki grants her wish to become kisumi because that's what would make her happy and as shown throughout the game it really does have a positive effect on her it isn't until she's reminded of how unfair the old reality is when sumeria breaks down so clearly his methods work right sumeria was happy living her lie and he helped remove her emotional pain there's a more obscure example of maruki's actualization that raises an interesting question through a text conversation we learned that one of yusuke's colleagues is no longer painting and instead is participating in archery in this reality it seems as though their painting history never existed so clearly marooky looked into this person's brain and saw that archery was their dream and made it their reality however wasn't it the failure of achieving the archery dream what caused this person to discover a new love in painting is a world where failure doesn't exist something that would benefit everyone the entire point of growing from pain and failures to learn how to deal with those emotions more effectively so would it be better if we never had to deal with those emotions while maruki has good intentions he ultimately ends up being very similar to yaldabaoth when you really think about it with maraki in control of your life you're exchanging your free will for the sake of happiness while it's an easy way to avoid suffering and failure you're ultimately doing nothing but running away from your problems that's the flaw in maruki's reality and the reason why the phantom thieves disagree with it while they were happy getting what they wanted out of marroke's world they can't deny that they've grown and changed into better people thanks to their heartbreak life can't always go your way and that's okay if there's something you really want but couldn't get you can always find happiness elsewhere where the phantom thieves and monarchy fundamentally disagree is their use of the cognitive world the phantom thieves change the hearts of criminals so that they can inspire people to stand up for themselves it gives people the opportunity to be the change that they want to see in the world marquee instead wants people to hide away from their problems and put faith in him he tries to reassure people that everything will be alright as long as they let him help on a side note i just want to bring up how fantastic a catchy is throughout the third semester it finally answers my question of what akechi's true personality is like he comes off as tired and believes that the best solution to a problem would be to just deal with it outright even if that means getting his hands dirty and i greatly appreciate that at no point they try to redeem a catchy as a person he's a bad guy who's done terrible things to the phantom thieves but they have to put aside their differences so that they can stand up against a greater power i really just like how to the point he acts and robbie damon does a great job with the performance the most interesting aspect of a catchy from the third semester is just how disgusted he is with maruki's reality even if it means he might not exist anymore he stands up against the new world because in his mind he would rather be dead than live in a world designed to cater to him he spent his life living under the control of shido and yaldabaoth and he doesn't want to live under the will of maruki even if it means death akechi wants to carve his own path in life because at the very least it was his decision to make that's pretty badass if you ask me marky's palace does a great job at fleshing out his ideals alongside giving us full context into his motivations we learned the full story of what happened to his fiancee rumi when she was traumatized from her family's incident muraki became extremely distressed at the site this caused him to awaken to a fraction of his persona's ability and he used it to change rumi's cognition so that she'd forget about what happened however this came with the consequence of permanently wiping maruki from her memory while he was initially shocked he decided to play along with it for the sake of her happiness he gave up his own dreams so that someone else could achieve theirs this is why marooky is such a compelling antagonist for me he wants to help everyone avoid emotional struggles but at the end of the day all he's doing is projecting his own fears onto everyone else marquis is afraid that if he faces his emotions he won't be able to come back from it it's something that takes until facing the phantom tees room to finally understand marky desperately holds out hope that he can convince the group that their life would be better off in his reality this is shown perfectly in the dialogue as well as the boss theme throw away your mask is without a doubt my favorite song in the entire game the main message of this piece is marookie's attempt to appeal to the phantom fees by telling them that their dreams can finally be achievable as long as they let their guard down and allow him to fix their lives the most powerful scene in the game for me has to be the aftermath of his boss battle despite the phantom thieves overpowering marquee and defeating his ultimate persona adam kadman marky still can't fully grasp where he went wrong with the help of joker maraki is able to finally realize that he's just been using his reality as nothing but an excuse to run away from facing his emotions once marquee reaches his understanding the only thing he requests now is for joker to help him kill his regrets no personas no masks just two people venting their frustrations through a fistfight this is why the third semester is my favorite part of the game dr marky at the end of the day is an incredibly sympathetic and relatable person his character arc is learning that while life can be cruel and unforgiving it'll all work out in the end as long as you don't lose hope failure and emotional pain is okay what makes us grow as people is how we respond to it but most importantly if something doesn't work out there's no harm in starting over and going down a new path in life the third semester is pretty powerful and it's honestly shocking at how well executed it is it asks some genuinely very interesting questions while also having the most fleshed out antagonists and the most emotional impact a consequence that comes from this level of quality is that it really highlights how lackluster the other antagonists are i understand the idea of saving your best for last but i think that no palace ruler comes even close to the depth and complexity as maruki the only real complaint i have is that at this point in the game random encounters are meaningless because you can instantly kill them with ryuji's ability so it's pretty weak on the gameplay side of things you're mostly playing through this for the story and it's a fantastic story but much like the rest of persona 5 i wish the game was designed with the confidant abilities in mind so in conclusion i think that persona 5 royal is a pretty good game overall it's not my favorite in the series but it's definitely up there for me and i think that this game gets an unnecessary amount of hate at points i'm not saying that you're not allowed to dislike persona 5 but i see people out there treating this game as if it's the worst in the series and if you made it this far into the video i think you can safely assume that i don't agree with that statement persona 5 is not a perfect video game the gameplay flaws in royal specifically are a big issue there's a lot of combat and dungeon crawling done in persona 5. so the fact that the gameplay experience offers very little challenge could potentially make the overall experience very boring not every character is used to their fullest potential and some are just poorly executed and the confidants while good are far more formulaic this time around and only a few standout is particularly great however persona 5's heart is in the right place and more often than not i find that the game shines in multiple ways i really like the main cast of characters the game is solid mechanically speaking and has some pretty good level design and i personally get a lot out of the themes that are presented since persona 5's original north american release back in 2017 the game along with the rest of the series has been thrusted into popularity the thing about mainstream success is that it comes with a few consequences i've met a lot of really cool people thanks to persona 5 and i love hearing how this game had a personal impact on them however when there's a massive influx of new fans there will always be a vocal minority of new players that are a bit overzealous with their enjoyment combine this with atlas's tendencies to capitalize on their popular games and you'll notice that persona 5's reception has been shifting over time there's no doubt that there are people who legitimately just don't like persona 5 that much and that's totally fine but i've been noticing that people are taking their frustrations towards that vocal minority of persona 5 fans and letting that influence their opinion towards the game itself there were a surprising amount of people that were expecting me to [ __ ] all over this game and i can't begin to tell you why i always make sure to stay honest with myself and you viewers throughout all of my videos i don't make these videos just to give people the opinions that they want to hear in my point of view persona 5 stands heads and shoulders with the other titles in the series i'll even go as far as to say that it stands above the other games in some areas which is why it's so frustrating to see people overlook the legitimately great aspects of persona 5 and only focus on the dumb small parts of the game that have little effect on the game's overall quality in order to prove that it's a bad game it's good to be critical of the things you like but you shouldn't give out criticism just for the sake of it you also need to acknowledge the positive aspects of a piece of media and in persona 5's case the highs heavily outweigh the lows i just hope that when the dust finally settles we can look back at persona 5 with the same amount of fondness as we do with the previous games and truly appreciate the good times that it brought us [Music] hey everyone thanks for watching i'd like to give a special shout out to all my current channel supporters whose names are on screen now it's thanks to these kind and generous people that i'm able to make these videos at the rate i do currently if you're interested in supporting this long form content please consider either checking out my patreon or if that's not your style then i've also started to offer channel memberships you can find out more about that down below along with a link to my discord server if you're interested at the time of this recording this channel is about to hit 20 000 subscribers and it's incredibly mind-blowing that so many people have stuck around with me for as long as they have in a way this persona 5 video feels like the end of an era i don't have any more mainline persona games to talk about and it's a weird feeling to say the least i'm still going to cover the remaining spin-off titles of course as well as talk about other megaten titles on this channel so i'm not going away anytime soon once again i'd like to thank you all for watching and i hope to see you around next time take care

Channel: Nam’s Compendium

Views: 157,583

Rating: 4.889123 out of 5

Keywords: persona 5, persona 5 analysis, persona 5 analysis brilliant but flawed, persona 5 brilliant but flawed, persona 5 royal, persona 5 royal analysis, persona 5 review, persona 5 royal review, nams compendium persona 5, nams compendium persona 4, nam's compendium, persona 5 critique, persona 5 story explained, Nams compendium smt

Id: wcEWf9m7Q8s

Length: 138min 47sec (8327 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021