Game Review | PS4 | Persona 5

This game is a JRPG[*] genre in which a protagonist’s party called “The Phantom Thieves of Hearts” infiltrates into a corrupt adults Palace[1] and steals their Treasure[2] and reforms[3] them.

[ Carl Gustav Jung : 1875.7.26. ~ 1961.6.6. ]

Some of the in-game contents of Persona 5 borrowed some terminology from Karl Jung's analytical psychology theory and transformed it very well into contents in-game.

More specifically, the term Persona is expressed in the unique power and costume as self-image of each character's unconscious in the palace of corrupt adult.

And, the term Shadow is an unconscious existence (another persona) created in the palace by external influence, and it is expressed in the enemy.

According to persona theory, it is said that a person has various mask-like appearance by external influences. And, it said that there is a real figure of oneself that can not know themselves. That's why I think the world view is pretty sensible.

The most interesting part of Persona 5 is the gameplay that is blended two game genres very well.

This game has features of roleplaying and social simulation genre in one game.

Both of these gameplay are focused on "growth", and the process and results of social simulation affect roleplaying, so the flow of playing games was very smooth and fun.

The progress of the gameplay is largely divided into "daily life" and "palace attack".

The daily life has mainly social simulation features.
In daily life, you can move around the city and the area where the protagonist lives, and the ability of the protagonist can grow through various social activities.

The interesting part is that the protagonist is a high school student, so he must go to school and study. In other words, you can do various social activities after school, and these social activities were so colorful and fun that I felt like I was living in that world.

During social activities, you can build intimacy with your fellow characters and then you can unlock the new abilities of each character to help combat according to your friend's intimacy level, and you can use it.

Also, you can explore and fight in the dungeon called "Mementos" that is a space of collective unconsciousness, and you can grow the level of the protagonist's party. By the way, In there, you can reform other corrupt people who are not adults of main story.

In addition to this, In the "Velvet Room" where only the protagonist can enter, you can make them more stronger by fusing and strengthening personas.

Like this, the results of all actions in daily life are focused in the "growth" of the protagonist, the party fellow, and the persona.

The palace attack has mainly roleplaying features.

The goal of the palace attack is infiltrates into the corrupt adult palace of the main story, clear the dungeon, battle the boss and then take the treasure and reform them.

The important thing is that results of daily life will affect each characters or personas, and it also affects the palace attack. If you have grown your characters and personas well enough, it will not be difficult to clear the palace attack, but if you have not grown them enough, you have to clear it hard.

And, during the palace attack, you can level up your characters, or you can turn enemy persona into a friendly persona and level up. All of these processes are also focused on "growth" and the density of these gameplay affects on whether or not you can clear the palace attack.

What I was most surprised about was the style and balance of the combat system.

The combat system was a turn-based that everyone knew, but it was stylish and fast.

And the key to victory and defeat in battle was the "attribute" of the persona.

At first, I was worried about many kinds of attributes, but I was able to learn the attributes along the way while clearing the main story, and various kinds of attributes led to the fun of the combat.

Also, the attributes are designed to be closely related to the characteristics of characters, and I had to consider about which characters to include when composing a party, and the balance was designed very well.
I think the combat system itself is very good, and it was not boring to play it repeatedly.

Other than that, sensational graphics and sounds made the eyes and ears pleasant throughout the game, and I also liked the story that deals with social satire with proper weight. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed by the fact that the latter part of the story was so sudden, because I felt that the emotions I had immersed until then were scattering.

Persona 5 was a JRPG genre that I played in a long time, so I was worried that it would fit my taste, but I enjoyed it very much. If this is the next series, I will not hesitate to purchase it.

[1] Palace : Another world created with a distorted desire
[2] Treasure : A visualized key element of distorted desire
[3] Reform : A change that corrects a person’s wrong mind correctly
[*] JRPG : Japanese Role-Playing Game [참고: Wikipedia]