Persona 5

Odin [starter]
Auto-mataru / Auto-masuku / Auto-maraku  / Thermopylae / Insta-Heal / Dekaja / Tetraja / Repel Physical

Yoshitsune [physical attacker, virtually unkillable]
Hassou Tobi / Arms Master / Repel Curse / Insta-Heal / Drain Ice / Drain Wind / Drain Psy / Drain Nuke

Kaguya [magical attacker]
Shining Arrows / Bless Boost / Bless Amp / Magic Ability / Insta-Heal / Repel Physical / Drain Fire / Ali Dance

Thanatos [Almighty coverage]
Black Viper / Door to Hades / Almighty Boost / Almighty Amp / Magic Ability / Insta-Heal / Drain Bless / Spell Master

Kohryu [Fire, Ice, Elec, Wind coverage]
Blazing Hell / Ice Age / Wild Thunder / Vacuum Wave / Magic Ability / Drain Psy / Repel Curse / Spell Master

Arsene [Curse, Psy, Nuke coverage]
Maeigaon / Psycho Blast / Cosmic Flare / Repel Curse / Drain Ice / Drain Bless / Spell Master / Magic Ability

Ongyo-Ki [Guns and criticals, battle ender]
One-shot kill / Riot gun / Snipe / Cripple / Insta-Heal / Firm Stance / Apt Pupil / Victory Cry

Messiah [healer]
Salvation / Oratario / Samarecarm / Heat Riser / Insta-Heal / Drain Physical / Repel Curse / Spell Master

Trumpeter [buffer]
Debilitate / Charge / Concetrate / Insta-Heal / Repel Physical / Drain Psy / Drain Wind / Drain Fire

Ha, fucking called it.  Though to be fair, I completely missed the original pancake reference that Morgana and Joker used as reference to know Akechi was not to be trusted.

Anyway, the end of November was a hell of an exposition dump, but was really, really satisfying all the same.  You might say I Never Saw It Coming.

Ha.

Looking at the few days remaining, I think I'm going to fall just short of maxing all Confidants this run - Haru and Futaba are both too far behind to get done realistically, but all the others are easily achievable.

What carries over to NG+?  Is it all items, gear, money and persona?

maxed Hanged Man (gun dealer) confidant, which is my last one apart from Igor and Morgana, which have both been scripted, so I think it likely I'll have managed to max all Confidants on a first play through, even if I didn't get Iwai's until the 22nd December - talk about cutting it close!

Shido wasn't as tough as I'd feared, though I did have a couple of very powerful persona to call upon thanks to maxing out the Strength arcana that let me call higher level persona for a (frankly, ludicrous) fee - calling Satan cost nearly 300,000 yen!  Oh, and not sure what to make of Akechi either.  I guess they were going for him being the Yin to Joker's Yang, but he still came over like a completely selfish dick, even through the reveal of his own troubled past and his own mental breakdown facing Shido's cognitive image of him.  I'm not sure how much sympathy you're meant to have with him, but I didn't really feel much.

The story seems to be hinting at something happening in Mementos, though it hasn't said as much.  The public still think Shido is the honourable man he puts on the facade of being, despite his hastily-interrupted and covered-up confession, and the group have mentioned a couple of times the public opinion needs to change.  It's a not very subtle bit of foreshadowing for anyone who has been paying attention.

At least, if I'm right.

EDIT; Yep, not ten minutes later, Morgana confirms exactly that, and advances his Confidant to max rank. Just one to go!

As it turns out, I unlocked the rank 10 of the Hanged Man confidant on the very last free day of the game.  Cutting it fine indeed!

Whilst I had surmised that Mementos was going to tie into finishing the story, I didn't expect it to have a palace in its own right, and I certainly didn't see the fake Igor reveal coming, even if I had thought the change of voice actor from P4 to be a really jarring one.  In hindsight, there are clues as you play; he references the Velvet Room as his own, "welcome to my velvet room", rather than just saying "the" velvet room, so I could have caught it earlier, especially with the hints that Justine and Caroline were dropping during their Confidant ranks about something not being right.  Didn't call the Lavenza reveal either.

As always with Persona games the fact you end up fighting a God feels a little out of place given how relatable a lot of the earlier in-game struggles are, but then, lest we forget, Persona is still a Shin Megami Tensei spin-off and they pretty much all feature climactic end battle with Gods of varying descriptions.  

The crowd cheering for the Thieves, and seeing the Phan-site app meter rapidly filling up and moving to the centre of the screen felt a little cliche, but again, Persona games at heart are about strengthening bonds with others so they can pick you up when you're at your lowest ebb, and the Satanael reveal was just completely fucking awesome so I'm really not going to hold that against the game as a whole.

Divine final boss and believe-in-yourself tropes aside, the end of the game was pretty strong.  The final boss was hard as nails, which is just as it should be, it felt like a real war of attrition trying to take him down and resource manage my skills, for example, I'd had Ann forget Maragidyne for Blazing Hell as it hits 20% harder, but as it costs over twice as many SP points I could only cast it three or four times in the longer fights before she was out of SP.  Her damage output is top-tier, but she's neutered if she has no SP to cast with. NG+ I'll just leave her with Maragidyne I think.

I was genuinely sad to see Morgana fade away as well, happy with himself that he'd fulfilled his ultimate purpose.  I don't know why he gets so much hate, I thought his character development over the course of the game was pretty well done and the fact that he just strolls back in the front door two months later like nothing happened and basically admits he didn't come back sooner because he though it would make his goodbye less dramatic was genuinely pretty funny.  He and Ryuji get straight into an argument again, Makoto calls Morgana out on being a slightly aloof drama queen - though not in those words! - and he says he'll stay with Joker when he leaves.  Ultimately, he's a cat, he behaves a lot like a cat (hence being a slightly aloof drama queen) and I freaking love cats.  

In overall terms, I loved my time with the game.

I don't think it does anything drastically new but everything is done with such panache and fluidity and almost everything is polished to a degree that raises the bar for the genre.  Heck, I tried doing a few hours of P4G upon beating P5 - P4G still one of my favourite games of all time, remember - and after spending 100+ hours with P5, Golden felt slow, ugly and dated.  And the dungeons?  Yuck.

I say almost everything because the cover mechanic felt like it was tacked on at the end and very little time was devoted to making it feel on par with the rest of the user interface and game mechanics.  The game seemed to go out of its way to prevent you from targeting an enemy that is two feet away simply because you can't move the camera around quite far enough to do so.  In the latter part of the game I often just ignored it entirely, simply standing and waiting for a red dot on the radar, then running around and ambushing it from behind.  In a game that did everything else so well, this stuck out as an obvious weakness.

Earning perks as you progress through confidants is an excellent touch as well. In P4 the only difference between rank 1 and rank 9 social links is how much exp you earn when fusing persona, and that system feels archaic now. Some of the confidants though are far better than others, not just in terms of benefits to the play, but in terms of story.  As per your advice, Chou, I tried to get Kawakami and Chihaya maxed as soon as possible and without their perks I'd never have gotten all confidants maxed on this run.  Other favourites in terms of perks were Hifumi (switching party members on the fly needs to be a series staple from here on, it's that useful), the Twin Wardens (summon a level 90+ persona? Yes please!) , Mishima (more EXP), and Yoshida (recruit higher level Persona, negotiate for easy money and items).  On the flip side, Ohya's confidant - reducing the value of each alert inside the palaces - not felt totally unnecessary, the story itself was really, really dull.  Compare that to Kawakami's, something that looked like it was going to start out as a bit of a joke, some teenager's wet-dream-fantasy-made-real before evolving her into a really well written and extremely humble and likeable character.  

In terms of party members, they didn't all get off easily either.  Makoto's confidant isn't even about her, it's about a girl who we only ever see or interact with in said confidant who is a complete idiot I couldn't give two shits about.  I know she's just a kid and Makoto is trying to help her see the error of her ways, but there's very little room growth or development for Makoto herself.  Compare that to Haru, who joins the group late but still develops and matures as her story unfolds.  They're worlds apart in terms of quality.  Plus, Makoto loses her cool bike Persona when you max her confidant.  Standing up it just looks like a budget chinese-brand imitation transformer.  

In fact, I'm still fairly confident that the P4 cast will be remembered more fondly than P5s, at least in terms of the core group.  Some of P5's Confidants are better than anything contained in any of P4Gs social links, but the main party perhaps don't feel as beloved to me as their counterparts in P4.  I've already said that I really enjoyed Haru's character and I even liked Morgana, but Yusuke didn't resonate with me at all and Ryuji felt like an awkward cross between Yosuke and Kanji, only without the humility of the former or the badassery of the latter.  Plus - and I may get lynched for this - but Makoto was just boring.  Ann may not have been the smartest girl in the school, but at least she had a personality to speak of, and Futaba's gimmick got old about five seconds after finishing her Palace.  (Quite why so many people seem to want to romance her is baffling, though that may be because she's a socially retarded 14-15 year old with very obvious underlying mental health issues and I'm an old git.)

On a more positive note in terms of the palaces themselves, I touched on it a little earlier, but the move to pre-designed dungeons and away from procedurally generated ones was very clearly the right one.  Even the weakest palaces *coughOkumuracough* were still better than wandering aimlessly in indentikit corridors, and it was genuinely intriguing to see what the designers would come up with for the next one, even if certain gimmicks did outstay their welcome somewhat (Shido's mouse-rooms for instance).  

With all that said, I'm now debating whether I tackle a NG+ immediately, or try another game for a few weeks.  I've still got a few trophies to get (reading all books, batting cages, fishing etc) and my Persona compendium is about 95% complete, though it would seem I missed the latter treasure demons, the strongest I have only being the level 30.  To be fair, I'd imagine endgame personas would make the first few Palaces a complete cakewalk, so I might just dip my toe straight back in again...

SimianWonder wrote:

In hindsight, there are clues as you play; he references the Velvet Room as his own, "welcome to my velvet room", rather than just saying "the" velvet room, so I could have caught it earlier, especially with the hints that Justine and Caroline were dropping during their Confidant ranks about something not being right.  Didn't call the Lavenza reveal either.

There was another hint that I didn't notice until my third playthrough and you may have also missed. If you sit on the bed in the prison cell, you'll hear a message from Lavenza that gets a bit more clear every time you clear a Palace.

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As always with Persona games the fact you end up fighting a God feels a little out of place given how relatable a lot of the earlier in-game struggles are, but then, lest we forget, Persona is still a Shin Megami Tensei spin-off and they pretty much all feature climactic end battle with Gods of varying descriptions.

That was probably my least favorite part of the story. I felt that the game should have ended with Shido and the whole Yalbadaoth thing was extremely unnecessary.
Well, I also didn't like Morgana and Ryuji's quarrel in September and anything Akechi-related after the 6th Palace.

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Divine final boss and believe-in-yourself tropes aside, the end of the game was pretty strong.  The final boss was hard as nails, which is just as it should be, it felt like a real war of attrition trying to take him down and resource manage my skills, for example, I'd had Ann forget Maragidyne for Blazing Hell as it hits 20% harder, but as it costs over twice as many SP points I could only cast it three or four times in the longer fights before she was out of SP.  Her damage output is top-tier, but she's neutered if she has no SP to cast with. NG+ I'll just leave her with Maragidyne I think.

I can tell you didn't listen to me and didn't get Trumpeter with Debilitate.
I'm actually surprised to hear that the final, final boss gave you some trouble. For me, Shido was the toughest boss. I think the team I used to clear the game was Joker with Baal spamming Charge and Ayamur, Ryuji, Haru (her Triple Down with Snipe and Cripple almost matches the damage of Ann's Concetrated Blazing Hell) and Morgana (because I dislike Makoto).

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Plus, Makoto loses her cool bike Persona when you max her confidant.  Standing up it just looks like a budget chinese-brand imitation transformer.  

Brutal.

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In fact, I'm still fairly confident that the P4 cast will be remembered more fondly than P5s, at least in terms of the core group.  Some of P5's Confidants are better than anything contained in any of P4Gs social links, but the main party perhaps don't feel as beloved to me as their counterparts in P4.  I've already said that I really enjoyed Haru's character and I even liked Morgana, but Yusuke didn't resonate with me at all and Ryuji felt like an awkward cross between Yosuke and Kanji, only without the humility of the former or the badassery of the latter.  Plus - and I may get lynched for this - but Makoto was just boring.  Ann may not have been the smartest girl in the school, but at least she had a personality to speak of, and Futaba's gimmick got old about five seconds after finishing her Palace.  (Quite why so many people seem to want to romance her is baffling, though that may be because she's a socially retarded 14-15 year old with very obvious underlying mental health issues and I'm an old git.)

I have to disagree with you. I find P5's core group to be more likeable than P4's. Well, at least Joker, Ryuji, Ann and Morgana. Haru is also a very good addition to the Phantom Thieves too, but she comes a bit too late. Yusuke and Futaba are okay I guess, I didn't like them that much. And in case you haven't figured it yet, I dislike Makoto. I really wish there was an option to get her arrested or at least humiliated when she stalked Joker and the others. Fun fact: if she's stalking you around the school and you head into the toilets she will run away. On the other hand, I like the supporting characters of P4 better: Dojima > Sojiro, Adachi >>> Akechi, Nanako > everyone etc.  

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With all that said, I'm now debating whether I tackle a NG+ immediately, or try another game for a few weeks.  I've still got a few trophies to get (reading all books, batting cages, fishing etc) and my Persona compendium is about 95% complete, though it would seem I missed the latter treasure demons, the strongest I have only being the level 30.  To be fair, I'd imagine endgame personas would make the first few Palaces a complete cakewalk, so I might just dip my toe straight back in again...

95%??? Color me impressed, I wasn't even at 50%.
I'd start NG+ immediately. Now that you've seen the ending and the plot twists, you can play the game with a different perspective and the NG+ boss battle is awesome. The Reaper too, if you haven't already fought him.

Another minor complaint that I have: all those cool looking high-leveled Personas/Gods are actually inferior to the low-leveled ones, like Agathion. Their stats are well-rounded and there is little room for improvement due to the high level. On the other hand, it's easy, but tedious admittedly, to manipulate the stats of a level 20 Persona or so. My Arsene has 99 magic, agility and endurance making it way better than Satanael whose stats are around 60 at level 95. It just doesn't feel right.

Golden Boy wrote:

There was another hint that I didn't notice until my third playthrough and you may have also missed. If you sit on the bed in the prison cell, you'll hear a message from Lavenza that gets a bit more clear every time you clear a Palace.

I hadn't noticed that yet, nice catch.

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That was probably my least favorite part of the story. I felt that the game should have ended with Shido and the whole Yalbadaoth thing was extremely unnecessary.  Well, I also didn't like Morgana and Ryuji's quarrel in September and anything Akechi-related after the 6th Palace.

Yes, it did feel like the story had peaked and then the fake Igor reveal hit and everything after - even though I liked the ultimate conclusion - felt a little tacked on.  Typical SMT though so I was half expecting it, even if the SMT branding is - oddly - missing from P5.

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I can tell you didn't listen to me and didn't get Trumpeter with Debilitate.

I'm actually surprised to hear that the final, final boss gave you some trouble. For me, Shido was the toughest boss. I think the team I used to clear the game was Joker with Baal spamming Charge and Ayamur, Ryuji, Haru (her Triple Down with Snipe and Cripple almost matches the damage of Ann's Concetrated Blazing Hell) and Morgana (because I dislike Makoto).

I had Trumpeter, but only at a lowly level 60-something.  I passed Debilitate onto Abbadon (with innate Drain Physical) and used him in the final battle to debuff the boss, switch to Yoshitsune, use Charge, then Hassou Tobi.  Problem was, Yaldaboath kept hitting Morgana (my healer) with his debuffs, which meant he kept dying and I had to waste turns reviving him, all whilst he was debuffing and killing the other party members, with my preferred party, for the record, being Ryuji (massive physical damage), Ann (massive magical damage) and Haru (for mob smashing/gun crits) or Morgana (healing duty for bosses).

The final fight snowballed pretty quickly, and I only got through it thanks to Yoshi being able to bruteforce it.  I have seen some videos of Shido taking on a low level party and he's using all kinds of status effects that I never saw (largely because Ann was hitting him for 3k+ per spell, so he didn't last more than six turns per form at most) which dragged the fight out considerably longer

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I have to disagree with you. I find P5's core group to be more likeable than P4's. Well, at least Joker, Ryuji, Ann and Morgana. Haru is also a very good addition to the Phantom Thieves too, but she comes a bit too late. Yusuke and Futaba are okay I guess, I didn't like them that much. And in case you haven't figured it yet, I dislike Makoto. I really wish there was an option to get her arrested or at least humiliated when she stalked Joker and the others. Fun fact: if she's stalking you around the school and you head into the toilets she will run away. On the other hand, I like the supporting characters of P4 better: Dojima > Sojiro, Adachi >>> Akechi, Nanako > everyone etc.

I think Persona 5's best were better than the best of P4's, but whilst I liked Joker, Ann, Haru and Morgana, I liked all the cast of P4, I even warmed to Rise and Teddie, who I disliked initially.  I won't disagree that Dojima > Sojiro though, or that Adachi > Akechi.  

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95%??? Color me impressed, I wasn't even at 50%.
I'd start NG+ immediately. Now that you've seen the ending and the plot twists, you can play the game with a different perspective and the NG+ boss battle is awesome. The Reaper too, if you haven't already fought him.

I cheesed the Reaper once on a November Flu day, but am looking forward to beating him legit.  Whose tougher, him or the Twins?

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Another minor complaint that I have: all those cool looking high-leveled Personas/Gods are actually inferior to the low-leveled ones, like Agathion. Their stats are well-rounded and there is little room for improvement due to the high level. On the other hand, it's easy, but tedious admittedly, to manipulate the stats of a level 20 Persona or so. My Arsene has 99 magic, agility and endurance making it way better than Satanael whose stats are around 60 at level 95. It just doesn't feel right.

Well, as you say, only if you can bothered - and can afford - to min/max them.  I did it to Shiki Ouji a little bit to get his luck up to try the Mementos money farming trick, and it was so boring I got his luck to 50 and gave up.  I can't imagine the tedium of getting some of the ultimate min/max persona I've seen on youtube and its not something I'm going to be doing.

Well, not yet at least.  Maybe for the 3rd play through.

Ryuji actually calls Morgana "Mona" before they reach the scene where they discuss nicknames, though Morgana does call him on being too dumb to remember it correctly.  Secondly, I'd forgotten just how good a villain Kamoshida is.  He's only a street-level threat, but he's such an utterly detestable piece-of-shit, you cannot wait to smack in him the mouth.  

Speaking of which, looking online, there was some controversy about some of games themes, criticisms about how the game glossed over his "sexual harrassment", but I'd largely missed it first time around, so I was mindful of paying attention this time.  Warning; this is about to get a little heavier than normal!

Essentially, it boils down to three scenes:

* Firstly, Ann calls you to a cafe for a talk after you eavesdrop on her having an angry conversation with someone, where she finishes "you're supposed to be a teacher?!"  In the cafe she tells you that Kamoshida had invited her to his house, that she knew exactly what that meant, and that if she didn't agree, he would make sure Shiho didn't make the team.  
* Mishima tells Shiho that Kamoshida wants to see her, and both of them are surprised as she hasn't done anything to warranty such a summons.  The next time we see her, she's jumping from the school roof.
* When Ann is captured in Kamoshida's castle and she's restrained, Shadow Kamoshida taunts her by saying, "I forget that chick's name, but it's your fault she jumped, you know," before adding, "You were so reluctant to throw yourself onto me that I had her take your place."

The insinuation being that because he couldn't get in Ann's pants, he took it out of Shiho, calling her to his office and raping her.  It's never explicity stated, merely referred to as sexual harrassment, which could cover a multitude of sins, but I did wonder if the japanese language version was any clearer on the matter and whether this was a case of the localisation team trying to either tone down a really unpleasant crime or if the opposite was true and they changed the dialogue slightly to make it seem like it was a more serious act that described in the japanese version.

On my first play through, I took it that he was coming on to some of the girls rather than forcing himself on them, but that is one possible interpretation of the way that plays out, even if it's not the only one and neither can be definitive.

On a less dour note, one other thing I did catch was that during the animated cutscene where Joker and the crew are running out of the collapsing castle, you can see Ryuji grabbing his leg and looking pained just before he falls over.  This fits nicely with Kamoshida's threats to "break his other leg".  Running on a leg that was broken even vaguely recently is really bloody difficult; I broke my right leg
playing football when I was 14 I was in a cast for eight weeks, my leg atrophied entirely and it took about six months of physio to even walk on it without a limp, let alone run on it.    I digress, yes, but it was an impressive detail I hadn't caught the first time around.

Finally, Sojiro takes many, many phone calls during the opening scenes. Without context, he could be speaking to anyone, but having beaten the game it's clear that he's talking to Futaba and is bringing food and drink home for her. 

Madarame uses his own versions of existing attacks, like Maelstrom being Garula, or Silent Snowscape being Bufula.  He's taking things that already are and trying to make them his own, which is perfectly inkeeping with his theme of plagiarisation.  Also, his Madara-Megido (Ha - I missed that 1st time around) attack is pitifully weak, implying that anything of his own is laughably poor.

I thought those were a couple of very nice touches.

On an unrelated note, I've just started the third place proper, and I think I've come to a conclusion about why I didn't like the way Makoto's character arc played out.  

The game does a good job of initially presenting her as the cliche Student President; overly uptight, intelligent but has no 'life smarts', and is unable to think outside of her own limited box.  She also comes off as extremely condescending, initially unwilling to spend time with Joker socially because he's unable to offer her anything in return for her time, that she will gain nothing from it. She thinks he's beneath her, essentially, that she is his intellectual superior.

Then we see a little bit of that image start to change as she struggles to balance the expectations on her, the fact that Sae sees her as nothing more than a burden, just a drain on her resources, another mouth to feed, the Principal at school passive-aggressively blackmailing her to do his dirty work and refusing to help when she uncovers the organised crime ring threatening students because that's not on his agenda, and then she's powerless to help the Phantom Thieves, Ann telling her she's useless.  So, she does something incredibly rash, and unleashes her Persona under duress in Kaneshiro's palace, saying, and I quote, "I am DONE playing nice!"

Sure, as Queen she then gets to punch things hard in the face, but as Makoto she doesn't change.  Even after awakening her Persona she goes straight back to being exactly the same in normal life as she was before.  She's still somewhat introverted, slightly stuck-up and even her Confidant story doesn't develop or change her at all.  She's almost exactly the same at the start of the game as she is at the end.

It comes off a missed opportunity, and as it is she's just really, really dull.  

He's a filthy leech who suck his marks dry before discarding them as ruined and desperate human beings, and was only thinking of the opportunity it presented him when he could have saved someone dying right in front of him.  I'm still not sure I hated him more than Kamoshida though; as per a previous post, I genuinely loathed the guy and I wanted to see him suffer.  

That both were such good villains only served to show how lacking the follow-up villain, Kaneshiro, was. Though a bigger threat threat to Shibuya as a whole, he was a less personal threat initially, only becoming a problem because Makoto actively chose to provoke him.  Yes, he's a nasty piece of work, threatening Makoto with the prospect of forcing her into prostitution, but I didn't hate him with anything like the same fervour I did the previous two.  He's meant to showcase the Phantom thieves moving on to a grander scale, but sadly I think Kaneshiro's arc is one of the weakest in the game narratively, even the final vault puzzle was pretty neat from a design standpoint.