Is this worth picking up if I have never played a persona game before ?

is this worth picking up if I have never played a persona game before ?

yes.

I'd say it is.
It refines the mechanics of the last several games in such a way that you'll actually use all of them instead of being able to ignore most of them like previous games.

Yea.
Ignore Sup Forums contrarianism.

Yes. It's the best Persona for newcomers and has the best gameplay and the best waifu.

Each game is its own separate thing. They make references to each other but only in small passing ways.

If you have a choice start with 4 Golden but if not this game is totally enjoyable. Just be ready for a really fucking long game.

Do you like JRPGs and shallow relationships?

it's made for people who have never played a persona game

What mechanics are you talking about? (I've played P3 and P4)

Yes, they're almost completely standalone.

It felt more like it was made for fans of the previous games than any other Persona considering the whole thing with Igor and the SMT references here and there.

Each game is standalone, so I guess it's fine, thogh Persona 4 Golden would be a much better choice as it's far more friendly to new players.

I have only played 2-3 hours of persona 5 and i can say makoto is the best girl and morgana is so cuddly

>2-3 hours
>already met and knows Makoto enough to decide that

Nope.
The game literally peaks at the first dungeon. It gets worse and worse after that. The only time it begins going upwards is around sae's dungeon then it starts going down the slope again. They could have cut out 30 hours of fillershit arcs but nope.

You are better off watching the cutscenes on youtube.

Do you like turn based RPGs? If so, then yes.

I’m 28 hours in, does it get worse or better after here?

Not really. It gets better at Sae's arc but then declines again. The 3rd, 5th, 7th and final dungeons are absolute trash.

You might want to play Persona 3 and 4 before 5.

Not that there's any story connections, but P5s gameplay is so much better you'll hardly be able to get into those if you make it your first.

So yeah, it's up to you user.

Not him, but I'd say it's pretty steady in quality throughout, the only significant drop is between the 4th and 5h dungeons which I found to be quite a slog because the Calendar gets completley bloated and there's so many story arcs going on at once that it takes forever to get back into the normal gameplay flow. There's a common opinion on Sup Forums that I don't agree with that the game was either ruined after Kamoshida's dungeon, after Madarame's or after Makoto joins. I'd say just play the game and decide for yourself, the game's too divisive on here to get a consensus opinion on what parts of the game are good and which are bad, for the most part.

How is the PS3 version? I know when it came out everyone was saying the framerate is awful and the game barely worked but I can never tell when you retards are just memeing or not.

No, the last thing we need is more P5 Babbys, P5 is the worst persona game in the series. While it improves on a lot gameplay wise it has the worst story and cast.

It's pretty much the same.

Plot twist: Haru was best girl all along

do it then get the fuck out of Sup Forums before you get spoiled

Midgame is pretty weak compared to the beginning and crazy end. Not that bad tho.

>worst story
P4

>worst cast
P3

Disagreed.

>characters with the most development
>worst cast
Now I truly see.

Makoto's an advanced cuntasaurus at that stage in the game, anyone who's attracted to THAT is a foolish cuck.

>I have only played 2-3 hours of persona 5
You could not have had any significant interaction with Makoto only 2-3 hours into the game

>Worst in the series
>Has best gameplay
Logic much?

Games are games before they are stories. If the underlying game is good, then story being weak doesn't matter as much.

Another argument, if it were true that the story and characters are the worst in the series, leaving aside gameplay entirely, does that mean the game's bad?

No, because even at its worst P5 is quite better than the shlock we JRPG fans usually get.

But it's still no SMT tho

Look up the digitalfoundry video if you want to know the details, but aside from having slightly worse resolution, loading times and a bit of screen tearing, it's basically the same as the ps4 version.

Given that P5 is a 80+ hour game with so much dialogue it needed a decent story at the very least.

Never underestimate a fool's willingness to go wherever his cock may point to.

I do think it's important to take the writing into account in the case of Persona because it's pretty integral to one of the core gameplay components in the game; the S. Links/Confidants. I do think gameplay is the most important thing and I also think P5 is the best Persona, largely because of the gameplay, but I wouldn't be so dismissive of the writing. I also wouldn't say it's strictly worse than SMT because it's a totally different kind of gameplay from what you'd typically get from an SMT game. That said, I do think most SMT games are better than most Persona games.

Absolutely, I picked it up and fell in love with the series, and I've also played a few SMT games which have been very fun as well. Persona and SMT are both great despite what faggots will argue about.

It's also bloated with a bunch of meaningless time wasters that do nothing to further your advancement in the game.

It's an excellent game, but there's so many random things thrown at you to waste your time just for the sake of content. You get more benefits from confidants.

I have to disagree. a game with a good story but bad gameplay is playable due to the characters and wanting to see the stories conclusion. While a game with good gameplay and a bad story is a slog to play though eventually, as seen in Persona 5. As this user stated Persona 5 is over 80 fucking hours long, and after Kamoshidas dungeon you as the player began to feel disconnected from the actions you take in game. This continues to get worse as the game progresses, I think the Space Dungeon is where it reaches the climax of garbage.

Is Joker's mom a MILF?

My first Persona and I loved it, so yeah.

P5's writing is pretty awful, especially with the social links. Ever since P4, character development was completely sidelined into social links. But because those are optional, the main story has to be written in a way so that it makes sense even if you left Ryuji at rank 1. You end up in a situation where even though he's supposed to be a chill bro, he keeps acting like a monkey during the main plot. P3 made the right call by integrating your party members' development into the main story and letting their social links deal with other issues.

And by all means its decent at worst. You may dislike it, but just compare it to the story of something like FFXV or a fucking Tales game. At least, it has mad style which is already more than can be said about those games.

P4 is no work of art either and though P3 is a step above both, it has shit gameplay compared to P5, which just blows the rest out of the water in that department.

If you are talking about a truly kino story, the only game that can even come close is P2, which is 9/10 story and 4/10 gameplay.

Kind of stays the same.

Persona 4's story definitely wasn't better.

Yes, especially if you haven't played one before since it's so identical to the past two you'd get bored otherwise.

Yeah it was, with P4 you as the player have an active motivation to being do the things you do and their are clear consequences and stakes at hand. In P5 your mind hacking the head of a food company because people on the internet told you too.

Yes, it has second best waifu in the entire series.

There are no fucking stakes. You actively toss aside a murder mystery for highschool shenanigans. The only actual "stakes" was the sudden Izanami drop, and that was just fucking bullshit to try to up the urgency close to P3 levels.

The izanami drop was the best part since it was so nicely foreshadowed in the beginning.
P5 on the other hand didn't even try to do anything different.

their motivation was to get noticed and have people believe in them. they also didn't target him because of the polls but for haru.

P5's writing is fine and no matter how many times I see that argument that P3's characters are better because no S. Links I'll keep disagreeing with it. The only character with notably good development in P3 was Junpei, everyone else had completely mediocre development and, similar to 4 and 5's characters, their behavior barely even changed after their "development." There are characters in 4 and 5 who have better development than the characters in 3 even with their S. Links/Confidants, and on top of that the S. Links/Confidants actually allow you to spend time with the main characters of the game who I'd much rather spend time with than some fat asshole or an obnoxious Frenchman. It helps it feel like there's an actual relationship between the protagonist and the party because they spend more time with you than watching a movie with you one time, which is not enough to forge the supposed unbreakable bond you have with these people. If P3's characters were all as well done as Junpei I would gladly subscribe to this idea that they're better than P4 and 5's way, but as is I would much rather have the more ambitious way they do it in P4 and 5 even if the way they translate the progression of the S.Links/Confidants is unacceptably lazy. The only genuine flaws, as in not the subjective things, that I saw in P5's writing was the rushed final act, and the rushed character arcs that came with it, the theme and the gameplay clashing a bit, which I saw efforts to avoid but they didn't completely work and some pretty bad pacing. All of this drops the quality of the writing a good bit, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it awful, it's about as much as I expect from a Persona game and I was satisfied with it.

>makoto is the best girl
Worst fucking taste.

>shoes indoors

This could not get any worse

The same could be said for P3 and P5 as well, when it comes to highschool shenanigans that's just an inherent part of the series now. With 4 you see what happens when people are left in the tv, they end up dying in an extremely brutal way. That and the fact that you actually know the people being thrown in, gives you more then enough of a motivation to save them from ending up on tv poles. P5 on the other hand presents no stakes to the player whatsoever after the Kamoshido dungeon, after that you feel increasingly disconnected from the people you are robbing. And P5's fucking "surprise ending" is even worse then 4's, game should have ended at Shido

Yeah, it's worth it. P5 was my goty last year but I still have never touched 3 or 4.

...

By stakes do you mean Nanako getting an illness, being presumed dead and then magically coming back to life?

Fooby!

They're worth playing but you're not missing out on too much.

Yeah, that's the general impression I've gotten. Feels like I'm way too late to the party on those games at this point.

But none of that development or writing is reflected in the main story.

The biggest difference between P3 and P4/5 is that you guys aren't friends, not from the get go. You're just acquaintances who were brought together to combat some horror. You guys don't really have an interest hanging out with each other. You hang out with the obnoxious Frenchman because you chose to do so over hanging out with the members of SEES. P4 and P5 really play on your power fantasy and wish fulfillment by letting the protag be the focal point of every event and interaction. It's Sue tier writing.

>You guys don't really have an interest hanging out with each other.
I really loved that angle in P3. Not every character liked eachother, most just kinda tolerated eachother and hung out in the same dorm like dorm mates usually do. Gradually they grow close through a shared fear of death.

For me personally I did feel like Kamoshida's arcs were one of the best in the game but I also agree the quality was pretty steady throughout until Okumura's dungeon (50hrs in). At that point I was getting worn out from the game and by the time I got to Shido's dungeon I really wanted it to end, and that's not really a feeling you want when you're playing a game.

I feel like the game could've been cut down in plenty of places. 100+hrs is too much for a main game.

It's worse in P4 in that it's a case that can be pursued without supernatural powers. You don't HAVE to wait for another victim to be kidnapped to catch the suspect, yet that's what the writers chose to follow up on P3's Shadow of the Month story design. And sure P5 was a clusterfuck of an ending, but Mementos had to be addressed in some way, though it was handled really poorly.

Tips from someone that didn't enjoy the game:
>don't play the game when you're on a time crunch
>keep in mind that it's not your usual JRPG where you got your 40-60hr main game and then post game extends it, more like the entire game is stretched to the over 100hr mark and once it's over, you gotta restart (ng+)
>don't go in thinking the game will change your mind about turn based games if you didn't enjoy them very much before
>be prepared for a lot of repetition and shallow/forgettable dialogue

Funnily enough, the length didn't bother me at all and I jumped straight back in for a second playthrough and (attempted) to go for the Platinum.

>But none of that development or writing is reflected in the main story
I'm saying there's characters in 4 and 5 that do have more development reflected in the main story than the characters in 3. Almost every character who goes through their mandatory dungeon comes out of it with more meaningful differences in their behavior and mindset they characters in P3, who just have their monologue, evolve their Persona, and then get some new lines in battle but barely behave differently otherwise. It's a rigid and meaningless way to develop characters and feels more like their just ticking the boxes because everyone needs to "develop" so their Persona can evolve, even if the development barely changes them at all.

>You hang out with the obnoxious Frenchman because you chose to do so over hanging out with the members of SEES
You actually hang out with him because the game won't let you hang out with Junpei. I wouldn't mind this idea that you're just not friends "at first" except you don't even feel like friends at the end. Obviously some of the characters, like Mitsuru and Yukari, develop a relationship, but you, despite supposedly forging unbreakable bonds with these people, barely speak to them except for when you have to and that's how it is at the start of the game and the end of the game. The only ones who breaks the mold are Junpei who reaches out to you, apologizes for his earlier behavior, and has some serious heart-to-hearts with you, Yukari has a little bit more of a development of a relationship with you and then there's Aigis who just lives for you right off the bat. Junpei's the only notably well handled one here, and again, if getting rid of S. Links meant everybody was on par with Junpei I would welcome that, but not everybody in P3's like Junpei.

>P4 and P5 really play on your power fantasy and wish fulfillment by letting the protag be the focal point of every event and interaction
P4 has this issue because you only see it (1/2)

Wow, quite the debate here.

I'm not dismissive of the writing, I just think its overly maligned.

Yes, shoving all character development to social links is one of the worst decissions that were made with the transition from P4 and P5.

Yet here I am hearing about the cast, which, at the end of the day, will appeal more or less to you based on completely subjective reasons (and thus cannot be really stated to be better or worse than the cast of the other games) while most of the actual objective issues with P5's plot are ignored.

Sure the lack of consistency between main story and side stuff is detrimental to the tone of the overall game, but its the byproduct of a series of design choices that, for better or worse, are part of the director's vision. On the other hand we have stuff like the Medjed arch having potential but being executed terribly, the railroading (a flaw that all Persona games share, but that is worst in P3, 4 and 5, since those intend to give you the illusion of choice and fail hard at it), or the fact that December, the month that should have the most tension going on, is almost empty.

Those aren't the result of choice, they are just flaws due to poor execution and hamper the game more than any number of Ryuji chimp-outs.

Do those thigs make the game bad?, No, they are just low points. All things have them.

Nah, see, the Space Dungeon is where things actually start getting interesting. Leaving aside the whole Ryuji vs Morgana shebang (which IS bad), Haru is just great and the greater context is good. The reason why people hate it so much is because the dungeon itself is a slog to go through and has this terrible ost too, which is pretty jarring because up to that point the dungeon themes were incredible.

Big Bang Burger is the low point of the game gameplay-wise, and when the biggest pillar of the game falters, people atribute it to the thing they already didn't like.

I'd recommend Persona 5 to anyone, it's my game of the year for 2017, and I barely even like the other ones

from Yu's perspective outside of a single instance. It's a bit of an issue in P5 too, though to a lesser degree because it does include scenes that show other characters on their own like they had in P3. That's one method of storytelling that was sorely missing from P4 and dragged down the characters a lot, it was good that it returned in P5 but it wasn't as well implemented as it was in 3. Still, I wouldn't go so far as to call it "Sue-tier writing" on P5 or 4's part to let you spend time with the main characters of the game. Anyone can suck your dick in an S. Link to stroke the player's ego, whether they're in your party or not, giving your party members S. Links is just a means to let you explore and interact with the characters the developers will want you to care about to begin with rather than a bunch of nobodies that just leave you wishing you could be spending time with one of the many more interesting characters in the game instead, or at least that's the reaction they got out of me.

Nigga if there's a game that could change someone's opinion on turn-based battles that's P5. Also DDS and SMTIV/A, depending on how strategic you like your turn battles.

It's has by far the most mechanical improvements and the music is top-fucking-notch.

Plot is kind of.... eh. It's clear some of it is translation issues and some of it is poor planning and last minute changes. The game's TWEEST won't mean much to a new player either.

I didn't like the final dungeon's puzzle because it was a huge pace killer, but that place was oozing with atmosphere and intensity.

>the whole Ryuji vs Morgana shebang
I actually liked this, aside from the fact that it was happening amongst too many other story arcs and made the Calendar feel bloated and the game feel especially railroaded. It reminded me of a moment that always bothered me in P4 where Yosuke is making his gay jokes as usual towards Kanji when Kanji leaves because of it because he's upset, Chie tells Yosuke to knock it off because the jokes aren't funny and then Yosuke just shrugs it off and doesn't really care, continuing to make gay jokes. It seemed like it was setting up for some relationship development between the two where Yosuke would learn to not be such a dick just because he thought it was funny, but then it's never mentioned again, and having that dent in their relationship never even be acknowledged again always struck me as strange, especially in this game that creates the image that everyone's all friendly with one another in your group and they all have these deep bonds with one another. I was just glad that when two characters in P5 were bothering each other they actually acknowledged and moved passed it. The execution of it all could have been better, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

Also characters are introduced way too slow, since they are always introducing someone at most points in the story and then for that section the plot focuses mostly on them then there's no room for them to go much farther beyond their introduction because the game is always busy eith someone else.

They should have done like P3 snd introduce most lf its cast at the start of the game. That way there'd be room for way more to make it feel substantial.

>the music is top-fucking-notch.
seconding this

At least play 3 first, everything about it is much better except the gameplay. 5 has such good gameplay that it’ll make 3 seem unplayable. 5 is a pretty good game, but it shits on 3 and the ps2 version of 4. 1 and 2 are their own things entirely and are also great in a comepletely different way.

Sure there's a good amount of character development in P4 and P5, but I'm saying that keeping it only in their SLs was a bad move.

>game won't let you hang out
You could say that was because the protag didn't want to hang out with Junpei and chose Kenji instead. Why anyone would want to hang out with Kenji is beyond me though.

I say wish fulfillment and Sue writing because everything has to revolve around the protag. Nothing can happen without their involvement and no one can make any sort of character progress without protag's intervention. It's just awful writing to me.

Well, to each his own, I found it very forced personally.

Josuke still being a jokester dickhead isn't a terrible thing though. While I'd have liked to see something like that. Specially because character interactions revolve too much around the main character (again, something that P3 did better).

But P4 was, in a big way about how even the most kind-hearted person out there has a dark corner deep somewhere where he is an utter dick, and this does not dissapear because of simply confronting the fact that you aren't as pure inside as you thought you were. It takes a lot of work to truly make a change and I think P4 does a good job of showing this through Social Links, but they definitely dropped the ball there.

It'd have been much better if Yosuke had gone like "Oh my god, what the fuck I'm doing?". Not because we need him to have a well developed relationship with Kanji, but because he was falling into the same trappings than when he still hadn't confronted himself. The development of a deeper friendship with Kanji should have been a byproduct and not the main focal point here.

The Persona series is more of JRPG + visual novel.
The dungeon crawling and boss fights are maybe half of what you do.

I don't have an issue with having some development outside of the S. Links/ Confidants, but they already do that in introducing the characters. Makoto learning she doesn't have to be the way the school or her sister wants her to be and she shouldn't let them goad her into doing what they want by threatening her career is just as meaningful a development as Akihiko learning to move on from the past and stop relying on it for his strength.

>You could say that was because the protag didn't want to hang out with Junpei and chose Kenji instead
This is a problem with P3-5, but I don't consider the main character not wanting to hang out with whoever to be an acceptable reason when the main character barely has a personality. P3-5 all have this issue where it feels like they can't decide whether the protagonist should or should not have a personality, so they just give him a little individuality but not enough to keep you from self-inserting and it doesn't work for me at all. All the P3 MC is to me is a self-insert and given how little agency he has, I don't consider him preferring Kenji to be an acceptable reason for why he as an S. Link instead of a party member. I understand that there needs to be some level of restricting the player's choice in who they can S. Link, but having your party members and other main characters be S. Links should be of higher priority than giving an S. Link to some nobody, because those are the characters that are going to be given the care and attention and most players are going to want to learn more about them than some random art student. I would rather spend time with Funky Student than Yosuke, but I can appreciate why Yosuke would be given an S. Link over Funky Student, I can't say the same for Kenji and Junpei.

Yes, P4 and P5 go way too overboard with that. Again, P3 got it right with better developed relationships between characters that did *not* involve you.

Buuuuut here's the thing, having this strong focus on the MC is a part of trying to make his life feel like your own. Whenever the MC is involved, so are you in a way, and that's very conductive to immersion. Do remember that a lot of people love these games for a reason (a reason not involving waifufagging). Seeing everything from the main character's lense is, to a point, being him.

Do I like it?, No, I prefer my RPGs a bit more classic with a more balanced cast. That's why I like SMT better, because albeit the characters in those games aren't as developed for the most part, they all represent themes and ideas that don't require much other than a clean presentation and in that, the game actually finds a balance Persona lacks.

its 110 hour pokemon with dating

Putting it like that makes it sound like the best shit ever.

then go for it

>Josuke still being a jokester dickhead isn't a terrible thing though
Him a dickhead isn't the issue, it's moreso that they have a scene just to acknowledge that he's being a dickhead but then they do nothing with it. It feels like they're setting up for some development, be it for Yosuke, Kanji, both of them or for their relationship, and then they just do nothing with it. It just bothers me that they would bring the matter up only to completely ignore it. I mostly agree, otherwise.

But by themselves, visual novels are about as much of a game as choose your own adventure books. Maybe they are half of the game, but when it comes to evaluating the title solely as a game, they don't weight as much as the more action / exploration side of stuff.

Plus, its not even half of the game. Its more like a 30% considering a good 20% is pure management of your day to day life. A very important part, managing your life in the game makes it feel like yours, even though you can never be as free as in real life.

Not OP, already played it.

Yeah, as I said Persona 4 drops the ball here and there. For all the flak P5 gets, I think P4 is the sloppiest game in the series on all fronts, not just story.

And it's still quite good, which says a lot about the series. In the end, we should be glad that it didn't jump right off a fucking cliff like so many RPG series and that the games all have such consistent quality.

Whether it's acceptable to you or not, that's what P3's protag chose as his bonds. I don't like it either. Whenever a discussion over characters pop up, some people mention they don't like Junpei. Clearly door-kun didn't either.

With how quickly it was released after P3, I'm certain that P4 was a rushed project just to cash in on P4's popularity and therefore didn't really get much thought put into it.

Will the anime be good?

Will it be as bad as the Danganronpa animes?

2-3 hours is barely out of the tutorial dude

P4 took just as long to develop as P3 did.

If you like JRPGs it's one of the best until the last third drags on way too long

That can't possibly be true. They didn't have to build an engine from scratch or redesign gameplay. It's core gameplay is copypasted from P3 with some QoL changes.

P3 started development after DDS1, which was a 2 year gap, same as P4 was. It's not like P3 was built from scratch since it was still using the same engine as Nocturne and DDS.

Nah, that I don't buy.

What I do buy is that they had two concepts for P3 and when they decided which to use, they thought the other one was also good so they decided to use it for the next installment.

Why do I say this?, because P4 actually has a lot of elements pertaining to P2. It really feels like it was meant to be a sequel to it at some point.

With the creative work done and the games using the same engine and being overall very similar gameplay-wise I can believe than, rather than rushed, it was simply quick to make.

That said, the game could have done some more balancing, so take that as you will.

>beat p5
>realize persona 6 is going to take 10 years to come out