Persona 5 for PS4 and PS3

I’ll play, at most, one major JRPG a year, so it had better be good. I haven’t played any previous Persona games, although I have dabbled in other games in the Shin Megami Tensei series, such as the Devil Survivor strategy spin offs and the Wii U Fire Emblem crossover Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. Many of the things that irritate me in JRPGs are neutralised in Persona 5, although issues with padding and quality of dialogue are annoyingly present.

Persona 5’s young protagonist is walking home when he sees an older man trying to force himself upon a younger woman. When he steps in and protects her, it transpires that the man is a senior politician, which he uses to have our protagonist charged with assault. Excluded from school and placed on probation, our hero is sent to study in Tokyo, staying with a family friend. It isn’t long until he is drawn into a strange world, or Palace, which mirrors the soul of the sadistic gym teacher Kamoshida. The protagonist and some new friends from school discover that they have the ability to change people’s hearts by stealing a treasure at the heart of their Palace, forcing corrupt and evil adults to change their ways. The hero, given the name Joker, forms the Phantom Thieves, a group which will plunder the Palaces of the evil and change their hearts, hopefully to change Japan for the better.

The core conceit of Persona 5 is great, and I loved the opportunity it gives the game to explore some pretty weighty and grounded topics which the genre may usually avoid. Things get weirder and grandiose as they go on, I felt to the game’s detriment. The Palaces reflect locations in the real world and how their creator views them. Kamoshida, the abusive PE teacher, views the school as a castle and himself as a decadent King, wearing a crown and an open bath robe. This Palace feels like a genuine delve into someone’s twisted psyche, even in the enemies, with a particular grotesque miniboss representing his libido. It’s really clever and makes the events feel personal, but unfortunately this element of the story peters out. It’s a decent enough JRPG tale and the writing is better than average, but the latter third of the game in particular feels very flabby, with interminable scenes of the characters just standing around and talking about things we already know. That said, the core party are a likeable bunch. Your first few companions are the loyal and hot headed Ryuji, the kind but stubborn Ann and the sassy talking cat Morgana. Persona 5 is frequently fascinating, but it moves too far from its own premise; a group of teenagers exposing the hypocrisy and manipulation of corrupt adults. It’s story peaks extremely early, which is a shame, because that peak really is very good.

Persona 5 is split into two parts; dungeon crawling and day to day life. The dungeons are the Palaces, although there is also Mementos, a descent through dozens of procedurally generated floors, with progress gated off between the completion of Palaces. The dungeon design is generally pretty good, with some simple but fun puzzles and some clever layout design. Joker is a bit more mobile than your average JRPG protagonist, with the ability to jump between platforms and up buildings. It’s all contextual and doesn’t require any thought, but it’s an extra layer of style in a game brimming with it. There are no random battles, with you instead assaulting shadows in the dungeons which then resolve into turn based battles. There’s a stealth element, which I expected to hate but was in fact simple enough that it wasn’t an issue. When in cover an enemy cannot see you at all, whether it’s facing you or not. You can launch an ambush to be able to have your whole party hit first, but they can also ambush you, leaving you surrounded and with certain moves unavailable. The dungeon design is nothing particularly special, but it doesn’t really have to be, mostly being an excuse to ferry you between the combat encounters.

The combat itself is pretty great. All party members apart from Joker are tied into using one Persona, usually tied to a particular attack type. For example, Ryuji’s Captain Kidd Persona is proficient in electric attacks. Joker is the exception and can switch between a range of Personas, all with different stats and attacks. New personas can either be taken in battle, or made by fusing other, weaker Personas together. I’ve always loved the demon fusing systems from other Shin Megami Tensei games and I enjoyed it here too. As with other games in the Shin Megami Tensei-verse, the battles are based primarily around elemental weaknesses, although some are weak to physical or gun attacks. If a foe is hit with their weakness they are stunned, the user gets another turn, where they can either attack again or pass over the attack to another party member, which in turn boosts their attack power. If every enemy is stunned, your party move into a hold up, where they can either all team up to devastate the enemy team, often killing them outright, demand an item, or negotiate them to join the party and become a new summonable persona for Joker. Standard buffs and debuffs, as well as status effects are also in play, making a combat system which feels fast and fluid, with quick battles that rarely drag. The boss fights can get really tricky and require clever use of buffs and debuffs. The vast majority of moves you can use are useful in some way and the game does a good job of encouraging you to use a range of attacks, rather than just powering through on a few damage heavy moves, as I often find myself doing in other JRPGs.

Outside of dungeon and combat, the other half of the game is found back in the real world and is probably the part I enjoyed the most. Alongside your Phantom Thievery in the cognitive Metaverse, you are also just a normal high school student, with exams, part time jobs and a social life. During each day when not heading into a Palace or Mementos, you have two time slots, after school and the evening, to take on a number of activities. The first, and most important, is building relationships with characters, referred to as Confidants. All of your party members are Confidants, but a number of other supporting characters in the world are too. You boost Confidant rankings by spending time with the characters; for your party members this will give battle advantages when you use them, but it’s the non-party members that can be the most valuable. For example, the ability to swap out party members during a battle is unlocked as you develop a friendship with the shogi player Hifumi. Some allow you to use your precious, and limited, time more effectively, such as a maid who will take on some tasks for you that usually take up a valuable slot for something else. You absolutely will not have time to max out every Confidant in one playthrough, giving these interactions a sense of very real weight. Some of the abilities you unlock are hugely useful and it feels really damn satisfying when you finally get them.

This isn’t the only thing you’ll need to do during your time slots; you also have ‘social stats’, which can gate off progress for boosting your Confidant ranks. These are knowledge, charm, guts, proficiency and kindness, all of which can be boosted in a variety of ways. For example, you can boost knowledge by studying for exams, which then boosts your charm if you pass them. On most days there’s a wonderful sense of possibility; do you head into a Palace/Mementos, do you hang out with your friends, or do you go and better yourself somehow. It captures a very real sense I have as an adult of never quite having enough time to do everything I want to do. There’s a peculiar anxiety permeating the game and it turns out that this sense of urgency may be the kick up the arse that JRPG pacing needs. That said, too many days are consumed by cutscenes and far too often you won’t be allowed to go out at night for reasons that feel arbitrary. Feeling like you never quite have enough time is interesting, feeling like a little kid being sent to bed isn’t.

Persona 5 is dripping with style, with a sense of flamboyant theatrics I loved. The art style is expressive, although animations in conversations are as awkwardly stiff as we expect for the genre. Even the menus and UI look incredible, with easily the best designed turn based battle menu I’ve ever seen. There is the odd anime cutscene, although they’re really not that great and I preferred some lovely ones animated in the actual game’s art style. The voice acting is better than average for a JRPG. I’ve accepted that JRPG voice acting will rarely be truly good, so generally I’m happy with just the right amount of hammy. There are a few awful voices for some minor characters, and one party member, but generally the quality is decent. I loved the music, which is entirely silly. I’ve realised that I prefer a JRPG battle theme to be as goofy as possible, and preferably to have vocals. I’ll have the sweeping orchestras in my western RPGs, my ideal JRPG soundtrack is the crazy one for Xenoblade Chronicles X. Whilst it doesn’t quite reach that level of silliness, it’s still pretty goofy and I loved it.

Persona 5 is a game I liked a lot, but general JRPG irritations held me back from loving it. It’s not quite the bold reinvention of the genre some people seem to have made it out to be; it is just a JRPG, but definitely the most solidly constructed and interesting I’ve played in years. A good 15 hours snipped would have improved the experience, as it’s the sense of flabbiness and bloat that most holds this game back from true greatness. Still, if I’m going to sink 70 hours into a JRPG I’m glad it was this one.

Yakuza 0 for PS4

This has been a hell of a year for AAA games; there are a huge number of predictably brilliant blockbusters like Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn, with plenty more coming soon. This has been backed up with a steady stream of lower profile releases that have unexpectedly blown people away, such as Nier: Automata and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Yakuza 0 was one such game and slipped through the cracks until the summer, when a gap in the release calendar finally gave me some breathing room. Yakuza 0 is deeply bizarre game and kept me entertained largely through its sheer weirdness.

Yakuza 0 follows two protagonists in Japan in the late 1980s. The first is Kazuma Kiryu, an up and coming yakuza within the Dojima Family of the Tojo Clan. Kiryu becomes implicated in the death of a man he had beaten for debt collection, although it is clear that he is simply a patsy for the games of senior members of the Dojima Family. They seek the Empty Lot, an extremely valuable piece of real estate in the bustling red-light district Kamurocho, as securing it for the Tojo Clan will all but guarantee promotion to the high table. Meanwhile, Goro Majima is a disgraced former yakuza in the Sotenbori area of Osaka, now running a highly successful hostess club and hoping to re-enter the criminal world. When he is sent to assassinate a target in exchange for re-entry to the clan, he is pulled into a web of criminal intrigue and forced to examine his own morality and humanity.

Some games dabble in environmental storytelling or believe that game stories should be told through gameplay and mechanics rather than lengthy cutscenes; not Yakuza 0 though! It is not uncommon for cutscenes to run for as long as 15 minutes, with significant portions of the game involving simply walking to a location, watching a cutscene, then walking to the next location, watching another cutscene and so on. I must confess that this bothered me hugely in the first few hours; I haven’t played a game designed like this in years, but, for me, as the story went on it became less and less of an issue for one simple reason; the cutscenes are actually bloody good. The writing is deceptively excellent; it’s very hammy in the way that an awful lot of Japanese media can be, but it also has that emotional honesty of the best modern Japanese stories. Characters screaming their feelings is an anime cliché, but usually I’ll take it over stoic, calm Western protagonists. It’s hard to picture an Assassin’s Creed or Call of Duty protagonist freaking out the way some of the characters do here. It’s over the top, sure, but endearing and at times genuinely moving. The characters are very strong; I liked the stoic and honourable Kiryu, but the ever so slightly unhinged and rougher round the edges Majima appealed to me more. Both have stories about trying to be a good man in an organisation designed to crush compassion out of you. They’re backed by an extensive and engaging supporting cast, such as the mysterious real estate mogul Tachibana and Nishki, Kiryu’s snappily dressed best friend (or bro as they ironically, and adorably, call each other). While it took a while to get its hooks in me, I can’t deny that it really did by the end. This being a prequel, and remakes of the orignal games on the horizon, I can’t wait to see where Kiryu and Majima go next.

So, after waxing lyrical about the story, what about the actual gameplay? First of all, the combat is a lot of fun. It involves switching between three different stances for each character, with some better for taking on large groups of weaker enemies and some better for pummelling bosses, but you can also tailor to your own preference through an extensive skill tree, slightly too extensive for my tastes but if you enjoy tinkering around with these things there’s a lot to…well, tinker around with. The combat is a lot of fun and becomes genuinely quite challenging during some of the boss fights. Between fights you’ll be wandering the streets of Kamurocho as Kiryu or Sotenbori a Kiryu. They’re small, but dense and packed with stuff. Not all of that stuff is good, but an awful lot of it is. As you wander, you’ll encounter a range of side stories, which is where the most bizarre parts of the game take place. Where the main story is still completely over the top, the tale of criminal power struggles is taken seriously in the writing, pulling off the Kojima trick of playing something silly straight and it genuinely working. The side missions allow the weirdness to cut loose, and involve a range of weird and wonderful characters, which usually end up pushing Kiryu or Majima out of their manly comfort zone into something weirder. The series is known for a large number of minigames, but a couple of notable exceptions I’ll get to later, this part of the game didn’t work for me, simply because the majority of them are bad and not fun. I didn’t mind the karaoke or dancing games, but stuff like bowling or baseball bored me to tears.

The most extensive side missions involve running a business, with two separate ones for Kiryu and Majima. They have their own extensive storylines, with many fully voice acted cutscenes as in the main story. Kiryu’s involves real estate, buying up property and raking in profits. It’s quite basic, but I’m a sucker for these real estate games, like in Fable 2 and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. There are some added complications, such as the ability to choose who runs your businesses and manages security, with more competent employees requiring higher wages. New employees are recruited though the side missions. You will sometimes need to defend your properties in the streets and, when you amass enough property in one of the five districts of Kamurocho, fight the previous real estate boss of that area, who are all as flamboyant and bizarre as you would expect. Majima’s business is focused on lifting a small, struggling hostess club into success. This is done partially by making links with local businesses, but most prominently through a fun minigames where you manage the club. You have the send different hostesses to different clients depending on their preferences. The individual hostesses all have stats and experience. A couple are fully fleshed out characters, with little side missions where you give them individual training. The whole thing is silly, fun and very satisfying. Similarly to Kiryu’s side mission, when your club takes enough custom from a rival Sotenbori club, their bizarre manager will challenge you to a fight. I loved this element of the game, but my one issue is that they are introduced way too late in the game. Missions like this are best when spread out between the main story missions, but to complete either storyline you’d need to spend a lot of time grinding that same minigame over and over again for Majima or waiting for payments to come in as Kiryu.

Yakuza 0 was also released on PS3 in Japan, and you can sort of tell. It doesn’t look quite as sharp as most current gen AAA games, but strong art and character design mean that this is never an issue. The dense and bustling locations, as well as the distinctive character designs and strong facial animation help the world of 1980s Japan come alive. The music is generally very good and the voice acting, which is only available in Japanese, is excellent; often hammy, but genuinely impactful when it needs to be.

Yakuza 0 did not make a good first impression, but as it went on I grew to like it more and more. If your tolerance for cutscenes is low, fair enough, but this game won’t be for you. I’m definitely going to pick up the remake of the first game, Yakuza Kiwami, when there’s another gap in the release schedule, although looking at the next few months that won’t be anytime soon.

Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale for Nintendo 3DS

Well, that was an oddly charming little experience. The 3DS eShop has become a bastion for little games like this. I don’t know if I’d even call it a game. Whatever you call it, Attack of the Friday Monsters is a rather lovely little product.

Attack of the Friday Monsters is set in a suburb of Tokyo in the 1970s, which differs from the real world through the tiny detail every Friday evening monsters attack and do battle. It’s also home to a TV station which makes shows about giant monster fights. Hmm. Young Sohta is a transfer student who has moved to the area that day, and the whole game takes place on a Friday in the run up to the monster fight, as he tries to solve the mystery of where the monsters come from.

It’s odd, the nostalgia of others is usually at best baffling, at worst irritating, when it isn’t a nostalgia you share. It’s very clear that this game is a vision of a more rural, peaceful Japan of the 1970s, and the simple imagination and joy of childhood at this time. Since I wasn’t a child in 1970s Tokyo, this obviously isn’t a nostalgia I share, but nonetheless the creator’s fondness for the time period is infectious. Fans of Studio Ghibli will recognise the aesthetic, and there’s something oddly peaceful and charming about this strange little plot.

There isn’t really much of a game to Attack of the Friday Monsters. Most of your time will be spent wandering around the quaint Tokyo suburbs talking to people. In fact, wandering around is the key game play mechanic. There’s a card battle game, with new cards gained by collecting ‘glims’. There’s not a huge amount of strategy involved, in fact little effort is made to disguise it from being rock/paper/scissors. When you beat your in-game friends, they become your ‘servant’ and you can cast a ‘spell’ to make them fall down. It’s oddly satisfying. The card game could perhaps have been expanded more, but by and large I didn’t really mind the lack of gameplay, because it’s more than made up for in its presentation.

Attack of the Friday Monsters has some absolutely gorgeous hand-drawn backgrounds. The world isn’t big, but every little area is wonderful to look at. Much like with Bravely Default, the character models don’t live up to the background, but they do the job. There’s an odd bit of voice acting, only in Japanese, from a narrator of sorts, whose enthusiasm errs on just the right side of energetic. The music is nice too, especially the adorable and very strange song at the beginning (also in Japanese, with subtitles) from a child wondering whether his parents love him. It’s all very odd stuff, but I nonetheless found myself with a wide grin on my face with startling regularity.

Look, if you’re someone who likes a lot of…well, game in their games, Attack of the Friday Monsters isn’t for you. Attack of the Friday Monsters is a slight experience, and I picked it up in a sale and paid a pittance for it, so I didn’t mind. If it’s on sale pick it up; you’ll not play anything else like it!

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor: Overclocked for Nintendo 3DS

That may be one of the most…Japanese game titles I’ve ever seen. The Shin Megami Tensei series and its myriad spin-offs are apparently a big deal to JRPG fans, but this is my first. The original Devil Survivor spin-off was released back on the Nintendo DS, but this 3DS remake is my window into this strange and complex game. Devil Survivor is a deep and difficult game, with an interesting story to wrap it all up.

Devil Survivor takes place in a Tokyo in the grip of a major crisis; the city is in lockdown, and demons are roaming the streets. The protagonist (silent and named by the player) and his friends Atsuro and Yuzu are given COMPs by the enigmatic hacker (and the protagonist’s cousin) Naoya; COMPs are personal computers with a startling resemblance to a 3DS, which have been altered to summon demons and bind them to their will. The protagonist can see timers above everyone’s head counting down the days until they die; no one in Tokyo has more than seven days. Our young team set out to discover what it is that will kill everyone, and avert it.

I wasn’t really expecting to get as drawn into the story as I was, but it’s actually a really complex and multi-layered tale. As you travel around Tokyo you meet loads of supporting characters, who shed new light on the current situation, and the events that led up to it. It’s a well-rounded cast, from the pugilistic street tough Kaido to the troubled indie singer Haru. Many of these characters can, through your choices, join your team, and with one or two exceptions they’re an interesting bunch (the primary exception being the unbelievably irritating cosplay girl Midori). When not battling demons, you can wander Tokyo and meet characters for extra conversations, which can unlock or block paths to the multiple alternate endings this game has on offer. From reading up on the others from the one I got, there’s a huge amount of variety in terms of what can happen, and they all sound interesting in their own ways. The plot keeps plenty of plates spinning, with a lot of characters to keep track of and different groups scheming and feuding, with chapters for individual stories often coming a long time apart. I really liked this approach though, and Devil Survivor does a good job of dodging the irritating clichés which can pervade the JRPG genre.

So, gameplay wise, Devil Survivor is basically a Final Fantasy Tactics-esque turn based strategy RPG, but with combat more in common with a traditional turn based JRPG and a Pokemon-esque collecting mechanic. You have up to four humans in your team, each backed up by two demons. There isn’t really that much room for tactics in the battles themselves, with simple map design making the focus instead on preparation and making sure you have the right demons for the job. Demons can be bought at an auction with Macca, the game’s currency, but the most interesting way of getting new demons is to fuse them. Two demons can be fused together to create a new, more powerful creature, which can take skills from both of its ‘parents.’ Between battles you can choose areas of Tokyo to visit, to pursue side goals or just progress the story. Each ‘event’ that you choose eats up 30 minutes of in game time, sapping away from your seven day time limit, so sometimes you’ll have to choose which characters to see and chat to, which can affect which ending you get. There are also ‘free battles’, which take up no time, and allow you to grind for EXP or Macca.

The demon fusing mechanic is absolutely compelling, and it’s always exciting when you luck out and end up with two spare demons which fuse into your next juggernaut. Although the demons do level up, they become outclassed very quickly and your roster is constantly changing to meet the new challenges. Oh, and there are a lot of challenges. This game is hard. Brutally, punishingly hard. I spent over a week trying to take down the final boss, grinding, fusing new demons and just trying to find what worked. It’s the right kind of difficulty though, and however insurmountable a challenge seems there’s always a way, if you’re smart about it. There were some missions where you need to defend useless NPCs which did feel a bit cheap, but by and large this is a well-balanced game, and a lot of fun.

The actual battles look…well, like a DS game. There’s been no graphical upgrade (or any 3D, but who cares about that?) for the 3DS, and the game does look quite dated, especially next to the other big Japanese 3DS strategy release of this year, Fire Emblem: Awakening. Still, the actual visual design is great. The Demons vary from badass, to cute, and some to downright grotesque. Seriously, the naked asexual man beast riding a giant snake is rather horrible, but it all works in the context of the game itself. Lots of the demons are based in Japanese folklore, and this lends a bit of depth to the design. The voice acting, an addition in the 3DS version, is generally pretty good as well, and definitely of a higher quality than your average English JRPG voice over. The music is a low point, incredibly repetitive and dull, but overall Devil Survivor is a pretty slick package.

The 3DS version has an extra 8^th day chapter not present in the original, but sadly I didn’t get to play it as my ending didn’t have it. This was quite disappointing, and isn’t flagged up in any way in the game. If I’d known this to be the case I would certainly have gone for another ending, so for those who played the DS original and are wondering if the extra day is worth it, I’m afraid I can’t help you.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor: Overclocked is a complex and brutal game, but very addictive and compelling both in its mechanics and its story. If you didn’t play the original, please don’t let this fly under your radar, it’s truly excellent.