Persona 5: The 500 HOUR Journey

completing role-playing games is always a bit risky many are rather light on content and are constructed in ways that alleviate the completion process while others are intimidating the dense requiring hundreds of hours of commitment what's worse the more contents an RPG has the board decisions one has to make about what countless completion criteria and what can be ignored and sometimes that selection process can be even more grueling than completing the game itself hey everyone and welcome back to a very special episode of the completionist or we don't just beat the games we complete them even ones that take hundreds and hundreds of hours of our time guys today is a special episode we are looking at persona 5 the original persona 5 before royal came out more on that in just a little bit but before we start I want to give a big thank you to everyone who supported me during in deal and our charity event persona 5 was the number one chosen game for me to complete for that event in honor of raising $100,000 for charity for research for dementia patients and now we're doing a little mini Indian land if you haven't heard already from last week's video or on our socials tomorrow from noon until probably 10 p.m. 11 p.m. I'm gonna be doing a little mini in deal and charity event over at twitch.tv / the completionist to raise money for Direct Relief we just benefit those hard-working health workers out there right now during all this chaos that we are currently in so join me on this insane journey of playing indie games we're gonna be playing games you know games you love with the devs who made them it's gonna be an awesome time I will see you there now persona 5 is a colossal game one that's been haunting me for years and years and years and it begs the question did I complete it well this is my story of what I did let's begin earth [Music] without a shadow of a doubt persona 5 is unlike any RPG I have ever played which makes sense considering that I've never touched and Mikami tented game as their wife no it's a series with a long and storied history with tons of fans all over the world but it's just never really crossed my desk but eventually the series popularity got to the point where I started seeing its name pop up whenever I asked my fans what they wanted to see me complete next I thought persona 5 would just be another JRPG and I was wrong it's stylish and slick but more than just that the confidence system is also the most elegant marriage of character development and gameplay mechanics I've ever seen persona 5 brilliantly combines its seemingly separate genres into an amazingly cohesive whole that goes down smoothly it's one part turn-based battle one part social simulator and all parts impressive from the opening seconds I was on board player character Joker is escaping some kind of casino with the help of the voices of his code-named friends in his ear but instead of escaping the player character is captured locked into an interrogation room and absolutely tooled up by a bunch of very scary adults I was thrown right into a world of intrigue and style and I liked it but after the initial explosive action I was sent back into what I learned was the main action of the game living the day-to-day life of a disgraced delinquent high school student and all the little victories and defeats that entails learning how fitting in at a new school connects to the trauma of that opening heist makes up the bulk of the game's story and the way that all unfolds is half the fun going into blind I had a concern or two I was very worried about playing persona 5 because the fans that love this franchise really do love it I've been told for years to play a persona 4 golden and it was so overwhelming after I did the research I was immediately put off especially because I like to go in order when it comes to franchises but as I quickly learned persona 5 does not require that you've played prior persona games or any other Shin Megami Tensei game like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest numbered persona titles don't only mean that you have to have played the previous entry to understand what's going on here which was reassuring to say the least to go along with this I don't even know what a persona is even within the context of these games pulling it off of the persona wiki directly a persona is a manifestation of a persona users personality in the persona series referred to as a mask for individuals to use to face hardship these persona are often tied to tarot card alignments such as judgment or Hera font adding a whole other layer to the intricacies of this game often throughout this video you may hear me talk about shadows shadows in this case are technically personas that you can encounter and join you in the battle now some of you might be wondering why I chose to feature this game on the channel now when an updated definitive brand-new version known as persona 5 royal has just hit shelves well the answer is time as in the time I already invested in completing the original version of this game now I've been working on this game for a year since the game came out and while it's been enjoyable it's also been downright harrowing I want to share that experience with you all today so it'd be a shame to abandon all that time and hard work I already put in here ask for the new version who knows maybe one day we end up covering it and that's not that far-fetched considering just how into this game I've already become that's not just due to how much time I've spent with it from the Gecko persona 5 demonstrates why this series is so beloved at first I didn't see what the big deal was but now I think I know why so many people including myself love persona 5 persona 5 is horny for style every single aspect of the design of persona 5 is the most excessive indulgent wonderful explosion of artistic direction I've ever experienced in a videogame it is easily the most stylish RPG I've ever played and this makes the game's world a joy to explore and experience see persona 5 is a calendar RPG very unlike anything else I've ever played before it's essentially a life simulator after some initial tutorial stuff I was given free rein to be a high schooler with a lot more in his mind than some history tests in school clubs this game has two main parts the wife sim where I went to school made friends work two part-time jobs and hobbies and cleaned my room and the other half being a dungeon crawler where I smacked around monsters almost all of us were personas that I could convince to join my team in turn-based battles in the Metaverse hunting for treasure and moving through increasingly long and complicated levels but all the while this game pulls it all off with incredible flair for example most games have slick intro cutscenes but persona 5s is a near-perfect encapsulation of this game style the trippy jazz music and the amazing animation were an insane glimpse of what was to come instead of a linear story out the gate persona fives plot is actually told through flashbacks at first the player character codenamed Joker is being interrogated and everything going on is him telling the story of how he spent his days leading up to his capture it's an awesome choice that I honestly kept forgetting about in my first playthrough but whenever the game flashed forward to the present I was reminded of just how high the stakes were at any given moment and when the game finally caught up to itself I was blown away just thinking about the possibilities of what was to come by framing the story this way the mysteries are kept mysterious and the pace is wonderfully balanced most JRPGs live or die by ambient design decisions such as background music persona 5 could easily have ended up on the ash heap of history if the soundtrack wasn't so freakin amazing it's like j-pop mixed with jazz and even if you're a literal hunt of ours I'm still listening to it and that's just in the day to day stuff when the Battle of vos teams kick in things get even more intense how can you not be excited for a fight with all that music and the animations Jesus let's go the music in this game is some of the most memorable in any RPG and you know I've played a lot of them persona 5 takes place in tokyo japan but persona 5 doesn't just show a couple of cool locations like should we acrossing just once and let me fully explore and delve into the back streets of my little corner of the city everything bustles with activity and it's all stylish as hell even the Attic that joker stays in is amazing like I wish I could live in a studio apartment above a coffee and curry shop to do as I pleased that's rad as hell persona 5 takes every opportunity to add flourishes to what would otherwise be mundane it's as if whenever possible a designer said hey this menu screen is great but can we make it sexier and then they did the evidence is everywhere even pressing pause and navigating the options looks incredible this kind of thing makes even the most minor task feel eventful and kept pulling me in for dozens of hours what makes persona 5 special is that the stuff you do in the real world the life sim directly affects the dungeon-crawling aspect make friends the mysterious doctor and buy some non prescription pills that medicine will heal you in battles against the shadows in the Metaverse getting deep with my classmates unlocked skills to use in battle the stronger our bonds outside of the meta verse the more effective we were in fights against shadows together all these interactions are tracked with the confidante system nearly every side character in the game has a confident meter that must be filled a total for 21 characters to max out these meters and be the most effective I could be in the Metaverse I had to learn every characters in game schedule better than I did in my whole in real life 1 now this sounds like an exaggeration it kind of isn't this system is an incredibly effective way to get you to care about Sai quests and characters more because completing their storylines directly affects the done crawling now the most important thing to keep in mind while playing for some 105 is that almost every interaction with another character in this game takes up in-game time time is the most important resource and it is more precious than anything else in this game this is the realest lesson I have maybe ever learned from a video game time relentlessly moves forward whenever you do almost anything this means that multiple playthroughs of any persona game are a guarantee for completionists who want to see everything at any given moment I risked being completely overwhelmed with information once persona 5 gets rolling it's like FOMO of the game but at every turn I was confronted with a somewhat contradictory reminder take your time nothing in my gaming career prepared me for the absolute magnitude of persona 5 but the game reminded me over and over again take your time everything will eventually come together this level of care is put into every corner of the game this is a JRPG set in a high school and it feels like a 90 percent of this game is going around talking to people I sat through a ton of dialogue while the war of subs versus dubs wages on from anime to videogames I have no horse in this race I ended up loving the voice acting it was great practically every little back-and-forth feels extremely cinematic because of small touches that make these interactions pop when a game is this long artistic choices go really far and persona 5 always felt fresh in fact persona fives entire approach to character development is amazing other games would kill to have even one character art that has the depth of Ryu G's or ons progressing these story arcs isn't usually all that difficult mechanically most just requiring an afternoon or evening of in-game time but they always feel worth it moving confident rankings forward let me experience great writing and visit new locations mostly I loved seeing different sides of all these characters who are somehow both larger-than-life but intensely relatable looking at use of Jiro it's rare when I legitimately care about a game's narrative from start to finish but persona 5 made me care about its characters and what happens to them and within my first playthru simply enjoying the plot while trying to complete this as I went took a staggering 110 hours the way the dungeon-crawling breaks down is so fascinating the first palace in the game is the perfect encapsulation of the over-the-top stylish lengths that persona 5 reaches see within this game the dungeons or palaces as they're called are the physical manifestations of the villains distorted desires within the Metaverse abusive volleyball coach comma sheeta's evil mind palace makes what you're fighting against so clear and in the case of kama sheena he truly believes that he is a king and in turn this palace is a literal palace a castle and his peasants are his male volleyball students that he works to the bone with the female students being his toys the player-character joker and your eventual party members create the phantom themes a public group that explicitly tells the villains that they're going to change their hearts in order to do so the phantom thieves must find the location of the villains most prized possession which manifests within the villains desires their treasure once the thieves have explored the dungeons deep enough they can then send the calling card in the real world to of the villain which then exposes the true location of their treasure in the Metaverse palace the phantom thieves explore these areas in the hopes not just defeating enemies but changing the hearts of those villains from within the stakes are always high the villains are clear and making sure justice is served looks and feels amazing and of course stylish it's kind of amazing that I wasn't caught when exploring palaces because my characters left huge neon splashes of paint everywhere they walked and whenever an enemy is ambushed Joker would backflip over them and yell I'll reveal your true form at the top of his lungs here's the deal I loved these choices they add even more to the superhero atmosphere of the actions that the phantom thieves are undertaking aside from the palaces themselves you can also help change the hearts of everyday people who hurt some of your confidants or people simply through the phantom thieves online forums these side missions take place in a procedurally generated dungeon called mementos where all the darkness and evil of Tokyo reside you'll get requests all the time that involve you hunting down a mini-boss somewhere in these dungeons for as many side quests as there are in this game mementos acts as a great place to grind for levels as one of the biggest gripes I had with persona 5 is resource management was very difficult whether it's having enough items to restore HP SP or even just having enough money to buy items refuse persona together the game definitely struggles to keep it streamlined at times especially while playing on hard mode mementos acts as a great way to counterbalance this issue but I still struggled a lot and my solution for these issues eventually turned into me fusing game-breaking persona to farm for money by the time I was done with persona 5 I could literally fight the Grim Reaper himself by myself as Joker from the very beginning of the game and just powered level 299 within an hour and admittedly that was really fun to do persona 5 luxury eights and tropes with protagonists that are flawed but still wonderfully heartfelt and they all are so fly it's unbelievable yeah I do water you geez no more rules shirt yeah I want futaba's amazing goggles but mainly I just want Joker's incredible outfit that materializes in the Metaverse those red gloves that pocket triangle for real the turn-based battles in persona 5 are unlike anything else I've ever played initiating combat feels like an event for nearly every enemy encounter in a palace I was able to choose how I wanted to approach combat by sneaking up on shadows and ambushing them I gained a turn making me feel like an awesome badass almost every time enemy shadows have different types and hour weeks different spells and attacks and exploiting these weaknesses knocks enemies right on their asses and when often times earn my character's a one more essentially an extra turn sometimes leading to a baton pass letting a party member get some bonus damage in and sometimes I was able to clear out entire groups of enemies with just one character and the supreme satisfaction of knowing enemy weaknesses hits differently than it does in other RPGs and at the very least every character has a gun yes a gun they're all super cool and they somehow make sense in the context of this weird-ass game often times because of a critical hit or respective weakness hits you can hold enemies at gunpoint you can negotiate with them to get an item give you money join your party as a new persona for you to use or you can do what's called an all-out attack which lets every character in your party go to town and when they're defeated there are killer splash screens but I have his desktop backgrounds and at least two of the computers around the office these are just more examples of how persona 5 keeps style at the forefront the Phantom thieves may be a motley crew of dirtbag teens but there are also cool as and completing this game made me feel that way too I have to mention the incredible enemy design every shadow is some kind of mythical or religious figure pulled from the sea of human consciousness yes the game casually tosses out phrases like the sea of human consciousness but the best part is getting these shadows on your own team you do this by holding them at gunpoint and then using your verbal skills to convince them to join your side after this kind of coercion throwing pokeballs just seems quaint once shadows are on your side they're revealed as persona and you can register them in the compendium I loved appreciating these character models because they are flippin amazing the mats adore incredibly badass mother harlot hell yeah Thor and Odin are you kidding me Mara okay well maybe we skip that one I don't want you to take this video down because of a giant dick persona the velvet room where you deal with everything compendium related is like if a Pokemon Center had weird intense after dark vibes instead of trading personas with other players or leaving them at a daycare you sacrifice them on a guillotine or fry them an electrical chair to improve their skills I love this twisted yet innovative system where a hoax nosed creep let his demon children yell at me where I sacrificed angels for monsters or the other way around feels awesome to get swept up and things so strange and intricate it gives off Inception levels of intricacy as Igor and the twins talk to you as if you're a prisoner of their world constantly reminding you that you are an inmate of their environment and Amitha connected to the Metaverse the story dives deep into how it's really all truly connected it almost gives off the vibe there's really three parts to this game the Lifeson part the dungeon crawling hard changing aspect and the caged world of the persona which now that I think about it it would take me all day to list every unique little thing that adds up to make persona 5 incredible we're kind of a cat who was a goddamn dictator when it comes to bedtimes who also transforms into a bus the way Joker rips his own face off when he first confronts his inner demons the tiny flourishes of how characters adjust their gloves or coats when running around look I don't mean to keep repeating myself but damn everything about persona 5 bleens style sometimes it doesn't make any sense to me but holy SH the style this game put me in the shoes of a wayward kid and so much that experience is putting on a show of confidence it deals with themes like entitlement binge allanté justice and who gets to change the world persona 5 is confident in the extreme and the consistently gorgeous art direction made me never want to stop playing at least that's what I thought about until our 253 okay so there's no reason to mince words here completing persona 5 is a full-time job there's really no other way to describe it it's enjoyable entertaining and endless grind is real and though I was made an instant fan when I started playing the game by the time I completed it I was pretty damn sure I didn't need to come back to it any time soon as someone who lives with the moderate amount of anxiety the sheer amount of things to do in this game set off a few alarm bells if you're a completionist with any kind of indecision paralysis this game will crush you the FOMO is real it took me a long time to shake that feeling of missing out on stuff especially during my first playthrough settling is the flow of doing every single thing in this game was a shock because I realized it would take me literal years given my schedule completing most games even ones that take dozens of hours usually takes me a concentrated burst of effort over a short period of time completing persona 5 required a total shift in process and mindset I knew how to complete this game at least twice just to get all the trophies and that didn't even get into a bunch of the side stuff either it's actually possible to max out all the confident ranks in a single playthrough if you're careful and thorough but there is so much more to do besides that joker has social stats in the Lifeson part of this game that affects how he's able to interact with people these are different than combat SATs this is stuff like charm or knowledge all of which determine who you're able to talk to and when maxing out these stats meant that I had to do things like spend in-game time at a library or even tinkering on my desk in my apartment making items this took a while but it was clear that I had to be done so on the list it went I had to pick out and choose who I had to talk to and when and plan out these interactions days and sometimes even weeks ahead if in-game time and wanted to be efficient when I played so I had to make myself a regimen sometimes characters would text me in-game asking if I wanted to hang out get some lunch catch up I'd have to tell them no sorry not today I've got my part-time job or that I've already made plans to someone else or that I was on the date with my teacher you know stuff speaking of cow akame her confidant rack was a lifesaver by progressing her character arc I was able to save a ton of in-game time so I could ask her to do some chores for me here and there but more importantly I could call on her for a massage that would let me go out during the evening of any given day that I went to the Metaverse when you go to the Metaverse you can't do anything during the evening so being able to travel the streets in the evening around this only helped and progressing champion shogi player hip Fumito goes track helped me make battles in the Metaverse way more efficient being able to swap party members in and out of battle like its bond Fantasy 10 is a gigantic game changer finding ways to save a few minutes here in there during every playthrough helped keep me sane in my never-ending quest to complete this game all of this started to bleed over into my real life because I felt I had to play this game in a specific way I sort of having to say no to my actual real life friends and family kind of like how I did in the game like beard Bros for instance would finish streaming and recording instead of going out to grab dinner or something I would say sorry guys I had to stick to my schedule and do a few more hours of persona 5 tonight not to mention filling out the persona compendium which acts as a way to keep track of which of the games many personas you've bonded with while you can't recruit many of them others can only be synthesized by combining two different personas and as you get closer and closer to the end game you'll find yourself expensive leaf using several persona together just to make one I will say though what's fantastic about the compendium is that by simply paying a fee you can summon any persona in the game that's joined your party at least once as you can only carry so many persona at a time so if you make a badass persona and need to sacrifice it to make a brand new one you can quickly reach some it said persona there's guides all over the place that break down this process but I highly recommend looking at them especially at kill Scott kill on game fact so I owe a lot of my thanks to completing persona 5 became like my muse I do streaming editing writing researching and gaming for the completionist and then in my time off I'd spend more time in Tokyo and the Metaverse almost every day for the last couple of years a full-time job has its ups and downs but what that really meant to me is that it became routine I didn't have the drama of trying to rush out an early review of a game that wasn't even out yet I don't have any partnership with Atlas or Sega or anything like that it's just the grind of crossing off every little thing on that checklist because I spent so much time in for some one to five I started to learn the best ways to navigate through the world once you have access to a wide range of persona you can't combine them essentially breeding them into new more powerful creatures after enough time and research I was able to craft a persona that basically made me invincible and I could use that persona to rip through mementos and other palaces but I was only able to learn that because I spent so much damn time in this world now I consider myself a pretty positive person more than that I genuinely loved playing video games I always try and give games a complete rating based on my opinions and not change that rating based on unreasonable criteria but for Sona five made me rethink that stance because for a handful of secret items I nearly risked my sanity and otherwise my boundless love for this game as I worked towards earning the Platinum for persona 5 I realized something that hit me like a punch in the gut out of all the 21 compounds you can max out all of the female confidants are eligible for a romantic relationship as you're finishing their confidant rank I could only romance one character per playthrough to earn a special item from them this item literally is just a one-time heal item that you get every time you clear the game and is named after the confidant you romanced the way I was playing this game I would have to play through this whole thing 10 times to earn every item and see every romance cutscene including the infamous Valentine's Day sequence where all the individual love interests find out that I've been trying to date all of them at the same time the truth of it was there's not really a clear road to what completion means in this aspect and in my heart this is what I thought it meant but those scenes let alone items really meant nothing ultimately in the end the average playthrough of persona 5 is over 85 hours with my very first one tracking on hardmode taking me a hundred and ten hours even with new game+ and skipping over dialogue even with the best personas available and Auto battling turned on I would have to spend conservatively hundreds of additional hours to earn those items as my hour started building up around playthrough 5 I had to take a step back five more times of playing this game and I was starting to realize this episode would never get made and I'd have to spend well over 1,200 hours to do this stupid task that I gave myself this just about broke me now look I love playing persona 5 the style the characters the system's everything clicks for me in a way that I wasn't really expecting going in but realizing I would need to finish so many more playthroughs it was like a candle suddenly being blown out it seems like an absolutely ridiculous ask to beat the same very long JRPG over 10 times just to get one single almost inconsequential new item each time you start so I started to question if it was reasonable to consider it completion criteria when I'm usually faced with hurdles that were clearly never meant to be done all at once I consider omitting them but this was persona 5 this is an extremely high profile game with an extremely devoted fanbase I didn't want to disappoint anyone that's the core of my own insecurities within this I never want to disappoint anyone who watches my videos but at the same time I didn't want to drive myself crazy playing this game even more than I had to so I did something that I usually don't do I gave the decision to someone else namely you guys the fans in my video titled I hate feeling like this I discussed in great lengths of how unhappy I was creating content and a part of that unhappiness stemmed from this episode right here so I went online and posted a poll asking you guys what you think the completion criteria of most games should be going forward and specifically what it means to complete persona 5 out of that pool of people a whopping 90 1.1 percent said that getting the Platinum in persona 5 means the game is completed what's even more interesting is that in the remaining 8.9% that told me true completion is getting all the romance items and being the game 10 goddamn times in almost every response I got the user told me to take care of myself offering extreme words of kindness encouragement and can CERN what's fascinating in this is this well I love reading all the kind words my community has left for me these words are contradictory to the ask it's impossible for me to take care of myself and do the tasks I set out before a video like this comes out considering the amount of content we produce each month between completionists which is 8 videos superbirds which is 30 my self streaming on Twitch four to five times a week running a company doing appearances at conventions selling merchandise I think you guys get the point here where I'm coming from it gave me a lot to think about lots of pause and this is the conclusion that I've landed on so after many months of deliberation and already five playthroughs worth of my time I'm finally putting the controller down up until that point completely the game wasn't all that bad it's a relatively easy platinum trophy to earn all things considered but I beat myself up trying to live up to the reputation in my head that I don't think any reasonable person would expect me to keep to so I stopped I already earned the Platinum had already fought the secret twin boss is the end of the fourth playthrough I was just about to start play through number 6 when I realized know just know you're gonna be done Gerard give yourself a rest and don't let something you love become something you hate besides you'll might have to tackle persona 5 royal eventually so give yourself a break until then [Music] most of the things you unlock in persona 5 come gradually as you play even the things that require multiple playthroughs to earn as far as I know there are no earth-shattering bonuses for committing your life to completing this game over and over and over again but building a great persona getting $2.99 and maxing out confidant rankings became a routine and just like any job there are days when I was more productive than other days I came to appreciate the sound design and art direction more and more since my fifth playthrough I was using the skip dialog button all the way through but in any job there comes a time when it starts to ask too much of you and learning to walk away move on to something else is the most important thing you can do for your own sanity when I finally finally completed persona 5 there were 10 deaths because sometimes the show just kind of drop on you Knox with the whole party leader and sends you back to the safe room 21 confidant rankings completely maxed out several times reflecting the unity between the day-to-day world and the Metaverse 100% as compendium the best one beings into nail and the worst is that horrifying penis chariot monster it's just weird and it's on a chariot five ladies Romain's none of whom compared to my favorite waifu on who is just the sweetest one with the reddest mask 49 trophies unlocked all of which involved various minigames maxing all the confidants and social stats and of course defeating the secret boss the twins and almost 500 hours of total playtime it felt like much longer than that now bring up or sum to five royal actually on second thought maybe not why don't you guys let me know let me know down in the comments below my journey with this game was a roller coaster in every sense of the word the anticipation was there than the ramping up of excitement and then that sudden horrifying drop when I realized that maybe I had bitten off more than I can chew for myself at the end of the day I still love persona 5 yes trying to earn every consumable relationship item by romancing every option in the game wasn't insane burden that I put on myself probably 99% of persona 5 players won't play it that way so why should I the game is absolutely gorgeous and more stylish than I ever thought possible it's fulfilling to play the best way I can describe it is like watching an incredible three hour movie I'm glad I saw it but I don't feel the need to watch it again or in this case complete it again all the way through so with that in mind guys I give this game my completeness rating of finish it [Music] it [Music] think again

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 1,124,934

Keywords: persona 5, persona 5 ost, persona 5 gameplay, persona 5 review, persona 5 ps4, persona 5 switch, persona 5 royal, persona 5 royal review, persona 5 royal gameplay, gameplay, review, game review, game reviews, gaming, completionist, jirard, beneath the mask, makoto niijima, ann takamaki, joker, joker smash bros, futaba sakura, phantom thieves, phantom theif, playstation, ps4, sega, rpg, jrpg, funny, comedy, atlus

Id: VzcmyLzwAbA

Length: 33min 54sec (2034 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/sho1323]

There is a poetic irony in this. Personas tend to come when you face yourself, when you acknowledge your own limitations, when you recognize your own darkness (the shadows of Jung). Persona 5s are specifically about learning to confront those who bind you, who make you miserable. To seek freedom and confront your own destiny, to break the chains that bind you. And in a way, Jirard did that. He saw that in order for him to complete the game as he would normally think about it, he would have to basically become a slave to this game. That he would have to destroy himself to live up to his own unflinching standard. In essence, to beat Persona 5 he would have to ruin the meaning of Persona 5, that life is precious and that change is always possible, that we all have Sartre's absolute freedom, and that while it can be terrifying, it is ultimately our greatest power as people. To choose to be who we want to be, that we are responsible for our decisions, but ultimately we are only responsible to ourselves. And so him saying he won't play this game 11 times is not a defeat. It is his greatest victory. For he confronted his own unrealistic expectation of himself and learned that enough was enough, he took a measure of himself and found that in the end, he could still make that choice. And in doing so he broke the chains that binded him. That is the ultimate victory that Persona 5 can ask.

​

Btw, I've never actually watched Jirard's videos. So I didn't even know about how much he was struggling with this game. I came to this video from youtube knowing I liked Persona 5 and my brain basically shut down at the idea of ever being a completionist at this game. Hearing his story just made me think that while he didn't get all of the ending gifts, he inadvertently realized the greatest victory I can imagine with this game. To confront the ways that it drained him (Persona 3), that it made him consider his identity (Persona 4), and ultimately how it made him clutch freedom from the jaws of the world (Persona 5).

[u/Scukojake]

First of all, huge thanks to our boi Jirard for his constant hard work.

Second, awesome review, man.

My thoughts about tackling P5R:

Do it in the style of The Completionist DLC episode. Don't bother with trophies. Get a guide and do only new stuff that was added between Royal and OG.

Should still take long time, because it would be at least one playthrough, but a perfect way to sum it up. That's, of course, if Jirard wants to do it. And if he never does it - that's totally fine. There are plenty of other awesome games to play.

[u/parkercola13]

YEAHHHH BABY

[u/Kagutsuchi13]

/u/thatonevideogamer

I don't know if you'll see this, Jirard, but when you mentioned talking about eventually tackling Royal, I wanted to let you know that I've heard Royal is an easier platinum than the original was. If platinum is the badge for completing something insane like Persona 5/Royal, then you'd really just need the true ending and the platinum and wouldn't have to throw another 500ish hours at it. I beat Persona 5 once - I also romanced Ann - and started a second playthrough, but could never get myself to go through it again until I started playing Royal. I had already put like...120 hours into the one playthrough of P5 and didn't even get the platinum.

It's definitely important to make sure the grind doesn't kill your love for something. I'm glad you were able to find a place where you felt okay stopping - it's a magnificent game, but no game is worth killing yourself over, you know?

[u/SpicyCrabDumpster]

I’ve put a few hundred hours into a different game, Monster Hunter World (and the Iceborne addition) and the amount of time related to days is mind boggling to me.

500hrs/16 waking hours a day = 31 days.

(I know it was just under 500, and not everyone gets 8 hours of sleep) but still.

I was one of the folks who voted in your poll u/thatonevideogamer and I’m glad you’re easing up on your criteria. This opens up so many games for you to complete past the usual 6 hour Nintendo game romp, and hopefully to some more views + YouTube revenue.

FYI: I still haven’t watched your FF7R video yet but I will once I’m done with the game.

[u/BlakeTheBroken]

500 hour- damn this guy has dedication.

[u/TOOG08]

Are there any major spoilers in this video for Persona 5?