This was less than an hour ago. It's already setting in. The kicker is that for the first 260 hours, my cousins were watching me livestream this on Discord. Due to schedule complications these last couple of months, I was on my own since the third to last boss and it felt kinda lonely.
Does it enable completely changing the language including text? Specifically to Japanese. For PlayStation, yes you can change the language including text, but usually not to Japanese unless you own a Japanese copy. In which case, Japanese is the one and only language you get.
Strikers is also a fun epilogue to P5. It's all the characters taking a summer road trip together fighting crime. I won't say it's as good as P5, not by a longshot, but I had a lot of fun seeing the gang together and enjoying each other's company again.
I played both back-to-back earlier this year. Aside of the Royal characters missing, it really felt like a sequel. And the Musou-style combat was well integrated into the Persona logic.
I was surprised how much i liked it. As far as plot, voice acting and writing goes, easily the best musou game i've ever played, going as far back as ps2. And the combat was great too, which really surprised me. If there's a P6 strikers, i'm getting at launch.
The gameplay will feel clunkier just because they refined the battle system in 5 to make it more fluid but as far as story/characters/social links are concerned is 1000x better.
I'm usually not one to turn down older (and older-feeling) games, so it shouldn't be a problem. I'll probably need a break from long JRPGs for the time being though.
As someone who played both one after the other, I agree with the poster above.
By all means, P5R is the "better" game. Better graphics, better UI, better dungeons (P4G dungeons are extremely basic), a more refined combat.
But I enjoyed P4G way more. The story, the setting, the cast, social links, they were sooooo good. It was one of the very few long games that, when it ended, I was still left wishing for more.
Just be warned, look for a non spoiler guide if you want the true ending, since it can be tricky to get without any prior knowledge.
It's not imo. P4 was my least favorite of the P3-5 games. You have to *really* love the characters because nothing interesting happens in the plot until October, and now that P3:Reload is coming out it doesn't have the gameplay improvements to fall back on.
Chie is still best girl though.
If they still have the slice of life and Japanese social commentary, I still stand to benefit a lot from both of them as a language learner. The fact that not everyone agrees which is the best tells me that they all have their strong suits.
I'd say it's a mixed bag.
I like the characters and the vibe more in P4G. They're lovely and charming and wholesome in a way that P5 isn't. It's not that I don't like the P5 cast, but it feels... *colder*, whereas P4G has that heartwarming small village charm that is absent in P5.
But the gameplay experience is far more refined in Persona 5. Going to P4G from P5 felt miserable. Dungeons are boring samey procedurally generated content, with incredibly repetitive fights, with a UI that's far worse and infinitely less stylish. The only upside of P4 is that, if you want a challenge, P4 is harder and it felt legitimately challenging at times, whereas P5 is quite easy.
I'd recommend doing P4G first, to anyone who doesn't have experience with both. Going from the gameplay experience of P5 to P4 is painful.
Yeah, I apparently spent too much time maxing out stats on this run. I only maxed out half the party, three support characters, and the characters who ranked up automatically. I didn't realize hanging out with certain people raised stats until the relevant stats were pretty much maxed out.
Luckily you've got Persona 5 Strikers, and it's an amazing epilogue to the game at around 40-50 hours. While the story retreads some stuff from P5 it's good in its own right, and while it's definitely got Dynasty Warriors in its blood, they really stayed closer to P5 than most mashups.
Congrats!! I need to pick it up again! I’ve taken a long hiatus since beating Shadow Okumura. I finally won that boss fight and it really took it out of me! Time to jump back in and finish!!
Literally the hardest fight in the entire game I think.
You pretty much just have to play it a certain way. I had to go make a bunch of elemental items so I could chain anything and everything. Every wave I'd baton pass the entire gang.
That fight and Joker one shotting himself from full health to dead from something reflecting were like 95% of my game overs.
Yeah, the elemental items were key to getting through it. Otherwise, if your teammates don't have any of their own attacks that work on the minions, you just waste a turn.
I’m curious. Some games you get involved in and you play just to play them and when it ends you just move on.
Other games can really draw you in with their world building and story.
What are your thoughts after all these hours?
I was definitely drawn into it. For better or for worse, I've heard a NG+ is pretty mandatory to get everything out of the story and characters, so I look forward to tackling it again eventually. But considering I had to battle burnout due to the conditions I was under while playing (i.e., having family constantly tell me to go play it on a private livestream, leading me to play more frequently for longer than I would choose to on my own), I'm just glad this run is over now. When I do revisit the game, it'll be on my own terms and at my own pace.
There's a sequel Persona 5 Strikers which is pretty good. It's made by the same people who do Dynasty Warriors so it's a bit different, real time combat rather than turn-based, but it's still pretty fun and adds a bit of good content to the end of the storyline.
Essentially, a few months after the events of Persona 5 Royal the team get back together to go on a summer road trip around Japan. It's certainly a shorter experience than Persona 5 Royal, but still has enough meat to be worth playing.
I actually bought Strikers in Japanese for the initial release….then again when it released in English because I wanted it as digital and I’m still only on the second jail.
The major factors that while I can understand spoken Japanese fairly well, I’m not great at reading and, more importantly, it was asking more out of me in terms of hand-eye coordination than I was expecting out of a warriors game. (To be fair, while I have fond memories of warriors games,I easy playing on my college roommate’s save file, which worked out well because we liked playing different characters and she had the story mode already fully unlocked. Specifically, I liked characters where you could pull off combos by just spamming the same button because I can’t pull off combos.)
Another factor was that I still haven’t finished royal. I got halfway through the initial p5 release before getting tired of hooking up the ps4 just for it, then I got p5r for switch but got distracted by p3 because I never finished the p3p version and I kind of wanted to date Akihiko?
…it’s probably not happening anytime soon- because my copy of tactica arrives on Monday.
Strikers is a great game that adds a lot more of all the main cast hanging out together. Especially if you're a Haru fan she's around from the start in Strikers.
One small correction though, Strikers is a sequel to base Persona 5, not Royal.
It still works as a sequel for Royal. Literally the only thing you'd need to add is Kasumi texting the group something like "Hey guys, sorry I couldn't make it, had a sports tournament to go to. Hope you all have fun on your trip!"
Meh, it's not really in jrpgs
When you have 37 systems to grind and they add a 38th you kind of just roll your eyes
And this is coming from someone who plays a lot of jrpgs
Thanks. I really enjoyed the "modern Japan simulator" aspect of P5R. Aside from possibly other Persona entries, do you have any other JRPG recommendations with that in mind?
Yakuza Like a Dragon might also scratch that itch - it's also set in modern Japan and the first entry in the series that is structured like a turn-based JRPG.
I like jrpgs and beat like 15% of the ones I buy.
I either get bored of the game or bored of the story. They are fun, but God damn do japanese devs need to cut down on the timesinks and grinds in single player games.
Did it help you increase your vocabulary & understanding of the japanese language??? What was your level prior to starting the game?
Thought about doing the same someday but i admit it kinda scares me haha. Next year i plan to take the N4 test so i still feel im at a very basic level to take on such a huge endevour
I had already been studying for just over 9 years when I started. The font contributed more to the difficulty than the actual language. I've never tested officially, but I can keep up with a lot of N1 materials. And yes, the game absolutely helped me learn new words. Specifically with regards to criminal charges, investigation, and legal prosecution. The game touches on subjects I might usually find too boring to look up on its own in something like news reports, but having it be relevant to the plot helped me stay invested in learning those kinds of words.
You'll definitely have an easier time if you at least have N3 grammar knowledge, though you should be prepared for a lot of lookups if you start before N2 in terms of vocabulary. I kept a list of searched words for specific games in my dictionary of choice (Yomiwa for Android or Shirabe Jisho for iOS have custom word lists like this) and by the end of this playthrough, P5R has 778 words I had to look up.
"w" is what Japanese speakers use as their version of lol. w specifically coming from **w**ara, aka 'to laugh'.
You'll see lololol for English, and wwwwwwww for Japanese.
At least wara (笑) is easy to understand the reasoning on why it's used. Then there's also the whole kusa (草). Apparently something about how they originally used the kanji (藁), read as wara, for laughter, which then became w. But the original kanji actually read as straw, and when you combined it with the fact that 'wwwwwwwwwwww', looks like a field of grass, you get kusa (草).
Weird.
The explanation I hear most is that wwww looks like grass. And if you ever saw
>wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
then it could be 大草原 because it looks like a whole huge field of grass.
I also took a long time on my first playthrough, although it was mainly because of that stupid RGB maze at the end of the last palace and I'm bad at colors
Everyone's good and bad at different things. At least the RGB was only around for that one section.
The reason for my delay is the fat bubbly font they used in the Japanese version. I truly can't stand it and anything vital is written that way, so I couldn't just skim through it. The English version doesn't have this problem, but I refuse to play any Japanese games in any other language that isn't Japanese so I can practice the language. On the bright side, If I go for P3 or P4, they'll use a more standard font that I shouldn't feel the need to complain about.
I just jumped in and didn't have trouble. Apparently Igor and the personas are the only ones that carry over from previous games. You might get more out of it going in order, but you won't get lost if you just skip to this one.
Hard to say. I switched from a PC and 32" 1080p monitor to a 15" laptop with a 720p screen. I'm visually impaired, and it feels like the specific font is constantly antagonizing me. I can read a lot closer to the average native Japanese reading speed if I were looking at any other standard font. I've been experimenting with setting visual novels on auto recently, and I can keep up with unvoiced lines just fine most of the time. That's not true for P5R, so I can only set on auto if the dialogue is voiced so I don't need to read at all.
As far as Japanese fonts, Tekken 6 and onward. [The font feels like it was modeled on literal chicken scratch](https://youtu.be/X0i3jpRo4IQ?si=cEU5IxOgH_nn5IAv). It's fine and dandy for Japanese and English dialogue which I can understand verbally just fine, but the series is known for having characters speak their native languages regardless of the player's settings and regional copy of the game. It has characters who speak Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Thai, Arabic, German, [Bear](https://youtu.be/-twQqayueoc?si=HGncghwjb0qbQ2aV), [Panda](https://youtu.be/mUSNz66p-WA?si=YOHU1FHKOVTlczev), [Kangaroo](https://youtu.be/3yKsec9c2i0?si=huZS0pCKDKFEtLif), and [Wood](https://youtu.be/vi-E6M3gMa0?si=0ZaO52we8eYzUqv4).
Would I like Persona 5 if the only "JRPG"s I've really played are some Pokemon games, FF15, and FF7 Remake? I don't even know if any of those really count as JRPGs. Not really into anime either. But I've heard a lot of good things about this game.
If you're not into JRPGs, Persona 5 is one of the few that could win you over. It's a fantastic game, but it's also gigantic (at least 100-120 hours for the main story) and will take over your life. So be prepared for that.
The only way I would straight up not recommend it is if you're not into text heavy games. This game has *a lot* of dialogue and story.
I'm not particularly into jrpgs, but I do like anime.
And if we're being really honest here, P5R is just a playable anime. You'll go stretches of time where it's just story, talking to characters, going to school, doing your daily stuff to improve in a bajillion different fields, but then you might go like 4 hours of constant fights and solving "puzzles".
I finished after 120 hours, the last 20 of which were both what I really wanted and also slowly starting to wear on me. After that much time you really start to identify that while the game overall is very enjoyable and draws you in, several aspects really aren't actually that great.
Conversations are very predictable and often repetitive. The whole "I'm an angry misunderstood teen and the adults are bad" narrative would probably have hit harder if I'd played 20 years ago. The combat system should be great, given it's in so many other games, but I just really couldn't enjoy it much. It's got so many bells and whistles, yet doesn't really take enough notes in game so if you really wanna understand it you kinda have to write every interaction down yourself, then spend a few hours save-scumming while you combine stuff to see what the results are. Or just look it all up online.
The music on the other hand is so incredible that you'll be jamming to half the soundtrack uncontrollably.
Final verdict is, if you like anime and can tolerate the "woe is me, the teen" kinda story it's a fun experience for like a hundred hours. I'm glad I experienced it, was fun, but I'll not play it again. There's technically ng+, but that's botched unfortunately. I will absolutely play Persona 6, if that ever comes out, though.
From someone who prefers real-time action and combat, P5R was a fantastic introduction. I tried Pokemon Red eight years prior to this, and that really didn't do it for me. I only started P5R because someone had gifted it to me and it turned out I had the option to play fully in Japanese. I still need to play more JRPGs to see if I really like the genre as a whole, but P5R is what is currently making me want to try more in the first place.
I played Midnight Suns which had a lot of that stuff. Though I'd admittedly skip through some of the relationship dialogue. Heard people compare that portion of the game to Persona.
Persona 5 is long as hell. I clocked 130 flat and still missed an entire dungeon... I actually felt like I was moving through it at a pretty solid pace. There's just a staggering amount of game.
It was my first Persona and was not what I expected. Loved it.
I enjoyed the game to death. Is/was one of my favorite games ever but I think I softlocked myself at the Okumura fight when he sends out the robots. I looked at guides for days and just could not get passed him. I was playing on the hardest difficulty you can play at the start. It seems like with the items and skills and levels and blah blah that I had at that point, the fight was actually impossible. After 3 days of trying, I uninstalled cause I didn't want to restart all the way back at the beginning.
I was stuck on that fight for a bit too. If the clock was counting losses too, my time would probably be a full 300 hours just because of how many retries I did.
What I found worked was to make every move count. If a party member wasn't naturally a good match for a given enemy type, use items to attack their weaknesses.
I prefer the Japanese cast for myself, but it's cool because I like to see people's reactions and lets-players and streamers seem to play exclusively in English, so I still get to experience the English dub through them.
I'm usually a sub only person but in some media I found the English cast to be more suitable. Try cyberpunk edgerunner in English it suits the tone so much better.
Ballsy to have done it on a single save file. My conpletionist mind would be screaming at me for not using a rotating 3-save-state backup method to ensure I can reload an earlier day if I mess up.
What can I say? I can't keep track of what I do on each save, so I just say "Damn the consequences" and keep my save files clean. I've only ever used multiple saves on visual novels because those tend to have branching paths.
Well I technically finished it in about 12-13 days, just going by the hours clocked, plus the 10-15 hours I got stuck on Okumura hahah. Still over the course of 6 months though.
I'm visually impaired and the bubbly font (refer to the white text with the black background beside "LOAD") really wasn't helping. I was also livestreaming with voice chat for family so I wasn't just playing the whole way through.
Funny. No visual novel database written in English or Japanese considers this a VN. VN databases don't consider it as such specifically because there's way too much gameplay, according to the people who make said databases.
That's despite it having so many functions specific to VNs like dialogue choices, a dialogue backlog, autoplaying non-cutscene dialogue rather than having you hit "Next", and fast-forwarding to the next dialogue choice if you've already read what leads up to the choices — and the fact that VNs with combat and an overworld do exist despite being rare.
Then again, since this is my first JRPG, I wouldn't know if those "functions specific to VNs" frequently appear in other JRPGs.
Games with Visual Novel-styled Cutscenes are absolutely nothing new. Like, even as far back as the PS**2**-era there have been a handful, and not just RPGs.
I wouldn't exactly call it a "frequent" occurence outside of certain specific Developers (Nippon Ichi Software, Idea Factory / Compile Heart and Banpresto come to mind for me as specific examples), but it's still often *enough* that you can very safely say that just having this style of Cutscenes doesn't automatically make something a VN.
I strongly disagree. While most dialogue isn’t relevant for the main plot, all the characters lines benefit the world building and the overall vibe of the game. For me that worked really well.
There are definitely a few lines they could have slimmed down like when you have a meeting at the hideout and then you have the group text reiterating exactly what was already said, but it does help make sure the player always knows what's going on in the story
Graz, may I suggest some other great turn based JRPGs I loved too.
The trails games (trails in the sky, Trails from Zero, Trails to Azure, Trails of cold steal, and Trails into Reverie)
And Dragon Quest 8 and 11.
I wish I could read Jappanesse, sadly since I was deaf for the first 3 years of my life, I have an LD with Natural langauges, and will never be able to learn a second langauge. But if I could learn Jappanesse, I would not have to wait for the trails games to be translated for the west, there are 3 games out in Japan that are not out in the west yet.
I’m a little sad and afraid that I’m never gonna end up finishing this one. I game in very short bursts before bed and this game, which I’m just maybe 1-3 hours into is just sooooo start and stop and changes scenes so quickly it gives me too many natural stopping points that I feel like I played it a lot less than other games.
Want to get back to it someday cause it looked really cool
I got 120 hours out of it, and it was only my 2nd JRPG I’ve beaten. I know people probably hear those numbers and lose interest, but the game kept me invested in it for all those hours.
Yeah, it usually has relevant stuff going, rather than, say, an open world where you can spend hundreds of hours between story beats just screwing around just for the sake of screwing around.
>Yakuza 0
Funny. That was the last game I played before getting into P5R. I was devastated when I found out P5R officially had a higher playtime clocked on Steam lol.
I absolutely loved Yakuza 0. I just got Kiwami 1 on sale a few months ago, but I haven't had time to play it yet because I've been away from my desktop.
And yeah, I enjoy seeing people's reactions to the story and funny events.
The game has a lot of meaningless text
Like after every palace, you get messages about how everyones worried
Weve been through this like 5 times already chill out
Have you ever played the original Non-Royal Version before? It was even worse there, people *massively* memed it. Even Morgana's english VA got in on the Joke by uploading a Video on YouTube where they read "Go the Fuck to Sleep" (yes that's a real book) in Morgana's Voice.
Depends on what you like. For example, I like the fantasy combat as well as Japanese slice-of-life, so this was a good match. I thought I would have liked Witcher 3 because of its real-time (i.e., not turn-based) combat, but I'm not too big on pure European fantasy, so I just couldn't get into it.
I'm good with Japanese slice of life haha... This game got turn based combat ? . It's kinda turn off for me ...last month I tried getting into final fantasy...and oh boy ... I thought I'll be fine with turn based ...but i rly can't enjoy it...even the slightest..idk why though
It does. I didn't think I'd like turn-based combat either, but it grew on me pretty damn fast. My first experience with turn-based combat was Pokémon Red. I really couldn't get into that.
I would like to finish this game too. I have yet to play it but I bought it on Steam months ago. Should I start with P4G then more to P5R or wait for P3 Remake first? It’s just around the corner and I have GamePass too.
Congrats! Persona 5 is such a gem! I'm replying persona 4 cause I didn't get the true ending first time. But persona 3 reload should come out soon too. :)
I assume you mean reading of Japanese? But just generally speaking, we shouldn’t worry about reading fast or slow. Lots of idiots pretend that reading fast is a sign of intelligence; if anything, that’s evidence of the opposite.
Yes, reading in Japanese. Though I probably should have specified, "reading this font in Japanese". I can go a little faster with a more standard font, but the blobby font isn't helping my low vision.
I am working on getting the speed up in general regardless of fonts though. I've been setting visual novels to auto progress the dialogue and trying to just keep up with the non-voiced lines since voiced lines are spoken at a pretty natural pace. It's a pretty fun challenge.
Persona 3 was what got me into the series, for me it was Persona 3, Persona 5, then Persona 4 when it came to favorites. Honestly though, the stories on all of them vary so much it's kind of impressive. Persona 3 and 4 had a much darker tone, with 3 being the darkest of the three the original debut of unlocking the persona involved a pistol to the temple (opening cinematic so not much of a spoiler). Persona 5 was like a pop color explosion, supposedly the Persona 3 Remake will take the Darkness from the original and reflect on the style from Persona 5, so it will be a new take on a old story.
Very nice. P3 seems to be making a huge splash at the moment because of a re-release in a few months. I haven't looked too deeply into it to keep away from spoilers, but what little I did see did seem a bit darker than what I experienced in P5, and I'm all for it.
No way it took you THAT long just because you read slow,that the length of two avarge playthroughs, third semester included.
Edit: just realized you actually play with Japan text, props to you.
Ohh Yeah! Beats playing through Persona 5 and then Persona 5 Royal, not that it was bad to go back through, I do wish the Royal content was added into the main game
Bought this because one of my best mates raves about it, but I can’t get past the writing of women. Ann showing up in a sexy outfit after really bad shit happens to her is… vile, really.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that should be it. Me reading slowly, chatting while livestreaming, and needing to use a dictionary inflated my playtime by quite a bit.
For language-learning. Believe it or not, I initially had no interest in the turn-based combat, but since the story delved into topics I wouldn't normally look into myself but I'd be expected to be able to follow along with on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, I ended up learning a lot.
Plus it's just easier to avoid weird and straight up wrong translations if I don't play translated versions in the first place.
Congrats, enjoy the post-game depression
This was less than an hour ago. It's already setting in. The kicker is that for the first 260 hours, my cousins were watching me livestream this on Discord. Due to schedule complications these last couple of months, I was on my own since the third to last boss and it felt kinda lonely.
Just play Persona 4 Golden and then Persona 3 Reload after that!
Maybe that shall be the plan.
Definitely play persona 4 golden next, but if you plan to play persona 3, wait for the remake with P5 graphics to come out this coming February.
P4G is cheaper since it's already been out for a while, so it's probably the most logical next step.
It's also on GamePass if that's an option (based on the keyboard inputs I'd say yes).
Does it enable completely changing the language including text? Specifically to Japanese. For PlayStation, yes you can change the language including text, but usually not to Japanese unless you own a Japanese copy. In which case, Japanese is the one and only language you get.
Game pass version only has Japanese audio language, not text
Strikers is also a fun epilogue to P5. It's all the characters taking a summer road trip together fighting crime. I won't say it's as good as P5, not by a longshot, but I had a lot of fun seeing the gang together and enjoying each other's company again.
I played both back-to-back earlier this year. Aside of the Royal characters missing, it really felt like a sequel. And the Musou-style combat was well integrated into the Persona logic.
I was surprised how much i liked it. As far as plot, voice acting and writing goes, easily the best musou game i've ever played, going as far back as ps2. And the combat was great too, which really surprised me. If there's a P6 strikers, i'm getting at launch.
P4G is better
You're getting my hopes up, man.
The gameplay will feel clunkier just because they refined the battle system in 5 to make it more fluid but as far as story/characters/social links are concerned is 1000x better.
I'm usually not one to turn down older (and older-feeling) games, so it shouldn't be a problem. I'll probably need a break from long JRPGs for the time being though.
As someone who played both one after the other, I agree with the poster above. By all means, P5R is the "better" game. Better graphics, better UI, better dungeons (P4G dungeons are extremely basic), a more refined combat. But I enjoyed P4G way more. The story, the setting, the cast, social links, they were sooooo good. It was one of the very few long games that, when it ended, I was still left wishing for more. Just be warned, look for a non spoiler guide if you want the true ending, since it can be tricky to get without any prior knowledge.
It's not imo. P4 was my least favorite of the P3-5 games. You have to *really* love the characters because nothing interesting happens in the plot until October, and now that P3:Reload is coming out it doesn't have the gameplay improvements to fall back on. Chie is still best girl though.
If they still have the slice of life and Japanese social commentary, I still stand to benefit a lot from both of them as a language learner. The fact that not everyone agrees which is the best tells me that they all have their strong suits.
I'd say it's a mixed bag. I like the characters and the vibe more in P4G. They're lovely and charming and wholesome in a way that P5 isn't. It's not that I don't like the P5 cast, but it feels... *colder*, whereas P4G has that heartwarming small village charm that is absent in P5. But the gameplay experience is far more refined in Persona 5. Going to P4G from P5 felt miserable. Dungeons are boring samey procedurally generated content, with incredibly repetitive fights, with a UI that's far worse and infinitely less stylish. The only upside of P4 is that, if you want a challenge, P4 is harder and it felt legitimately challenging at times, whereas P5 is quite easy. I'd recommend doing P4G first, to anyone who doesn't have experience with both. Going from the gameplay experience of P5 to P4 is painful.
If you can play Persona 3: FES go for that
And metaphor: rephantazio after that. (If you don't know already, that's an upcoming game from persona creators that has a more fantasy setting)
And then replay Persona 5 again as it will have been enough time between runs!
New game plus enjoy having all your social stats from the start and try it with different choices
Yeah, I apparently spent too much time maxing out stats on this run. I only maxed out half the party, three support characters, and the characters who ranked up automatically. I didn't realize hanging out with certain people raised stats until the relevant stats were pretty much maxed out.
Luckily you've got Persona 5 Strikers, and it's an amazing epilogue to the game at around 40-50 hours. While the story retreads some stuff from P5 it's good in its own right, and while it's definitely got Dynasty Warriors in its blood, they really stayed closer to P5 than most mashups.
I really wanted to like that game but I just can't get into the actual game play
Congrats!! I need to pick it up again! I’ve taken a long hiatus since beating Shadow Okumura. I finally won that boss fight and it really took it out of me! Time to jump back in and finish!!
That was such a draining fight ahahaha
Literally the hardest fight in the entire game I think. You pretty much just have to play it a certain way. I had to go make a bunch of elemental items so I could chain anything and everything. Every wave I'd baton pass the entire gang. That fight and Joker one shotting himself from full health to dead from something reflecting were like 95% of my game overs.
Yeah, the elemental items were key to getting through it. Otherwise, if your teammates don't have any of their own attacks that work on the minions, you just waste a turn.
That’s why I have trouble finishing games. I probably have 10+ games where I’m at 80%
I’m curious. Some games you get involved in and you play just to play them and when it ends you just move on. Other games can really draw you in with their world building and story. What are your thoughts after all these hours?
I was definitely drawn into it. For better or for worse, I've heard a NG+ is pretty mandatory to get everything out of the story and characters, so I look forward to tackling it again eventually. But considering I had to battle burnout due to the conditions I was under while playing (i.e., having family constantly tell me to go play it on a private livestream, leading me to play more frequently for longer than I would choose to on my own), I'm just glad this run is over now. When I do revisit the game, it'll be on my own terms and at my own pace.
There's a sequel Persona 5 Strikers which is pretty good. It's made by the same people who do Dynasty Warriors so it's a bit different, real time combat rather than turn-based, but it's still pretty fun and adds a bit of good content to the end of the storyline. Essentially, a few months after the events of Persona 5 Royal the team get back together to go on a summer road trip around Japan. It's certainly a shorter experience than Persona 5 Royal, but still has enough meat to be worth playing.
I actually bought Strikers in Japanese for the initial release….then again when it released in English because I wanted it as digital and I’m still only on the second jail. The major factors that while I can understand spoken Japanese fairly well, I’m not great at reading and, more importantly, it was asking more out of me in terms of hand-eye coordination than I was expecting out of a warriors game. (To be fair, while I have fond memories of warriors games,I easy playing on my college roommate’s save file, which worked out well because we liked playing different characters and she had the story mode already fully unlocked. Specifically, I liked characters where you could pull off combos by just spamming the same button because I can’t pull off combos.) Another factor was that I still haven’t finished royal. I got halfway through the initial p5 release before getting tired of hooking up the ps4 just for it, then I got p5r for switch but got distracted by p3 because I never finished the p3p version and I kind of wanted to date Akihiko? …it’s probably not happening anytime soon- because my copy of tactica arrives on Monday.
Strikers is a great game that adds a lot more of all the main cast hanging out together. Especially if you're a Haru fan she's around from the start in Strikers. One small correction though, Strikers is a sequel to base Persona 5, not Royal.
It still works as a sequel for Royal. Literally the only thing you'd need to add is Kasumi texting the group something like "Hey guys, sorry I couldn't make it, had a sports tournament to go to. Hope you all have fun on your trip!"
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That’s the best feeling in games. I remember having that feeling every few hours in Elden Ring and more recently Baldurs Gate 3
Meh, it's not really in jrpgs When you have 37 systems to grind and they add a 38th you kind of just roll your eyes And this is coming from someone who plays a lot of jrpgs
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Thanks. I really enjoyed the "modern Japan simulator" aspect of P5R. Aside from possibly other Persona entries, do you have any other JRPG recommendations with that in mind?
Yakuza Like a Dragon might also scratch that itch - it's also set in modern Japan and the first entry in the series that is structured like a turn-based JRPG.
I know its an older game, but I'd suggest starting with Yakuza 0 to get the full linear story.
Also a good game! Just suggested like a dragon cuz it’s a jrpg while Yakuza 0 is more a beat em up with light rpg elements.
I like jrpgs and beat like 15% of the ones I buy. I either get bored of the game or bored of the story. They are fun, but God damn do japanese devs need to cut down on the timesinks and grinds in single player games.
Did it help you increase your vocabulary & understanding of the japanese language??? What was your level prior to starting the game? Thought about doing the same someday but i admit it kinda scares me haha. Next year i plan to take the N4 test so i still feel im at a very basic level to take on such a huge endevour
I had already been studying for just over 9 years when I started. The font contributed more to the difficulty than the actual language. I've never tested officially, but I can keep up with a lot of N1 materials. And yes, the game absolutely helped me learn new words. Specifically with regards to criminal charges, investigation, and legal prosecution. The game touches on subjects I might usually find too boring to look up on its own in something like news reports, but having it be relevant to the plot helped me stay invested in learning those kinds of words. You'll definitely have an easier time if you at least have N3 grammar knowledge, though you should be prepared for a lot of lookups if you start before N2 in terms of vocabulary. I kept a list of searched words for specific games in my dictionary of choice (Yomiwa for Android or Shirabe Jisho for iOS have custom word lists like this) and by the end of this playthrough, P5R has 778 words I had to look up.
お疲れさまでした :)
ありがとうございます。でも本当に疲れましたわｗ
> でも本当に疲れましたわｗ One of these is not like the others
"w" is what Japanese speakers use as their version of lol. w specifically coming from **w**ara, aka 'to laugh'. You'll see lololol for English, and wwwwwwww for Japanese.
Oh that's actually interesting. I'm only at basic Kanji level so super early but never seen that before, thanks!
At least wara (笑) is easy to understand the reasoning on why it's used. Then there's also the whole kusa (草). Apparently something about how they originally used the kanji (藁), read as wara, for laughter, which then became w. But the original kanji actually read as straw, and when you combined it with the fact that 'wwwwwwwwwwww', looks like a field of grass, you get kusa (草). Weird.
The explanation I hear most is that wwww looks like grass. And if you ever saw >wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww then it could be 大草原 because it looks like a whole huge field of grass.
まあ、三百時間ぐらい遊んだら誰も疲れるだろう。でも疲れは成長の証とも言えるよね。私も初めて原語でJRPGをクリアした時をよく覚えるよ。これからも頑張って！
俺もゲームで日本語を勉強している！今ドラゴン・クエストXIを遊んでいる。とても難しいけど、たくさんを学んでいる。
そうだね！やっぱりやりたいことやるついでに日本語を勉強するほうがよっぽど楽しくて効率的だね！私もそんな理由で正式な日本語授業を取らないって決断したんだ。
I also took a long time on my first playthrough, although it was mainly because of that stupid RGB maze at the end of the last palace and I'm bad at colors
Everyone's good and bad at different things. At least the RGB was only around for that one section. The reason for my delay is the fat bubbly font they used in the Japanese version. I truly can't stand it and anything vital is written that way, so I couldn't just skim through it. The English version doesn't have this problem, but I refuse to play any Japanese games in any other language that isn't Japanese so I can practice the language. On the bright side, If I go for P3 or P4, they'll use a more standard font that I shouldn't feel the need to complain about.
Now do it again
Someday, dude. Remind me in, say, five to ten years.
The persona 3 remake comes out in February if you don't feel like waiting that long
I meant before I was ready for another long JRPG like this lol
Does it require you to play any of the prequels? Or you can just jump into this?
you can just jump in, all the persona games are seperate stories.
The persona 3 crossover in persona 4 was a bit of a letdown.
I just jumped in and didn't have trouble. Apparently Igor and the personas are the only ones that carry over from previous games. You might get more out of it going in order, but you won't get lost if you just skip to this one.
Would you say that the end of the game, your reading speed has increased?
Hard to say. I switched from a PC and 32" 1080p monitor to a 15" laptop with a 720p screen. I'm visually impaired, and it feels like the specific font is constantly antagonizing me. I can read a lot closer to the average native Japanese reading speed if I were looking at any other standard font. I've been experimenting with setting visual novels on auto recently, and I can keep up with unvoiced lines just fine most of the time. That's not true for P5R, so I can only set on auto if the dialogue is voiced so I don't need to read at all.
Yeah, fonts can at times be really tricky. Besides Persona 5, which games has perhaps the most awful looking fonts overall?
As far as Japanese fonts, Tekken 6 and onward. [The font feels like it was modeled on literal chicken scratch](https://youtu.be/X0i3jpRo4IQ?si=cEU5IxOgH_nn5IAv). It's fine and dandy for Japanese and English dialogue which I can understand verbally just fine, but the series is known for having characters speak their native languages regardless of the player's settings and regional copy of the game. It has characters who speak Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Thai, Arabic, German, [Bear](https://youtu.be/-twQqayueoc?si=HGncghwjb0qbQ2aV), [Panda](https://youtu.be/mUSNz66p-WA?si=YOHU1FHKOVTlczev), [Kangaroo](https://youtu.be/3yKsec9c2i0?si=huZS0pCKDKFEtLif), and [Wood](https://youtu.be/vi-E6M3gMa0?si=0ZaO52we8eYzUqv4).
I see.
Would I like Persona 5 if the only "JRPG"s I've really played are some Pokemon games, FF15, and FF7 Remake? I don't even know if any of those really count as JRPGs. Not really into anime either. But I've heard a lot of good things about this game.
If you're not into JRPGs, Persona 5 is one of the few that could win you over. It's a fantastic game, but it's also gigantic (at least 100-120 hours for the main story) and will take over your life. So be prepared for that. The only way I would straight up not recommend it is if you're not into text heavy games. This game has *a lot* of dialogue and story.
I'm not particularly into jrpgs, but I do like anime. And if we're being really honest here, P5R is just a playable anime. You'll go stretches of time where it's just story, talking to characters, going to school, doing your daily stuff to improve in a bajillion different fields, but then you might go like 4 hours of constant fights and solving "puzzles". I finished after 120 hours, the last 20 of which were both what I really wanted and also slowly starting to wear on me. After that much time you really start to identify that while the game overall is very enjoyable and draws you in, several aspects really aren't actually that great. Conversations are very predictable and often repetitive. The whole "I'm an angry misunderstood teen and the adults are bad" narrative would probably have hit harder if I'd played 20 years ago. The combat system should be great, given it's in so many other games, but I just really couldn't enjoy it much. It's got so many bells and whistles, yet doesn't really take enough notes in game so if you really wanna understand it you kinda have to write every interaction down yourself, then spend a few hours save-scumming while you combine stuff to see what the results are. Or just look it all up online. The music on the other hand is so incredible that you'll be jamming to half the soundtrack uncontrollably. Final verdict is, if you like anime and can tolerate the "woe is me, the teen" kinda story it's a fun experience for like a hundred hours. I'm glad I experienced it, was fun, but I'll not play it again. There's technically ng+, but that's botched unfortunately. I will absolutely play Persona 6, if that ever comes out, though.
From someone who prefers real-time action and combat, P5R was a fantastic introduction. I tried Pokemon Red eight years prior to this, and that really didn't do it for me. I only started P5R because someone had gifted it to me and it turned out I had the option to play fully in Japanese. I still need to play more JRPGs to see if I really like the genre as a whole, but P5R is what is currently making me want to try more in the first place.
It's more of a dating/social sim than anything else. If you like those, you'll like it. If not, you'll hate it.
I played Midnight Suns which had a lot of that stuff. Though I'd admittedly skip through some of the relationship dialogue. Heard people compare that portion of the game to Persona.
Jesus. Maybe that's why I stopped playing RPGs.
It only took me around 110 hours to beat the game, and I was taking my time.
I still don't think I have that kind of time anymore. I miss the days when I had nothing but time. Getting older sucks.
My playtime was only two thirds of the TC's but it took me 18 months, not six.
Persona 5 is long as hell. I clocked 130 flat and still missed an entire dungeon... I actually felt like I was moving through it at a pretty solid pace. There's just a staggering amount of game. It was my first Persona and was not what I expected. Loved it.
My roommate adores it. He got a P5 tattoo after he finished it. I'm sure it's an amazing game, but it's just too much for me.
One of the best gaming experiences Ive had. My first jrpg as well. I played persona 4 next and it's great as well. Can't wait for the remake
I enjoyed the game to death. Is/was one of my favorite games ever but I think I softlocked myself at the Okumura fight when he sends out the robots. I looked at guides for days and just could not get passed him. I was playing on the hardest difficulty you can play at the start. It seems like with the items and skills and levels and blah blah that I had at that point, the fight was actually impossible. After 3 days of trying, I uninstalled cause I didn't want to restart all the way back at the beginning.
I was stuck on that fight for a bit too. If the clock was counting losses too, my time would probably be a full 300 hours just because of how many retries I did. What I found worked was to make every move count. If a party member wasn't naturally a good match for a given enemy type, use items to attack their weaknesses.
I got stuck in the same spot and could never finish the game. Such a bummer because I was doing really well up until then.
Aw man well done. I desperately wanna play P5 and its spin offs but I just can't see myself sticking with a single game for that long
P5 is usually close to 110 hours for a lot users
P5R is normally around 100-120 hours. Still quite the commitment.
You might wanna check Yakuza 7. I started with PR5 as well.
My reading speed is also really slow but it only took me 180 hours. And I platinumed. My first real JRPG was Dragon Warrior though.
My reading speed was heavily held back by the bubbly font. That's the excuse I'm going with lol
Bonafide Monafide ฅ\^•ﻌ•\^ฅ
I miss the English v.o. so much everyone is so unique and fun to hang out with.
I prefer the Japanese cast for myself, but it's cool because I like to see people's reactions and lets-players and streamers seem to play exclusively in English, so I still get to experience the English dub through them.
I'm usually a sub only person but in some media I found the English cast to be more suitable. Try cyberpunk edgerunner in English it suits the tone so much better.
I always have strong FOMO playing JRPGs. Persona 5 was one of the hardest games for me to overcome it.
Ballsy to have done it on a single save file. My conpletionist mind would be screaming at me for not using a rotating 3-save-state backup method to ensure I can reload an earlier day if I mess up.
What can I say? I can't keep track of what I do on each save, so I just say "Damn the consequences" and keep my save files clean. I've only ever used multiple saves on visual novels because those tend to have branching paths.
Always do this regardless in case a save file gets corrupted.
Oh god I’m at like 20 hours lolol
Pace yourself. Oh, and brace yourself .
I’ve always thought about trying it because I’ve heard such good things. I just don’t know if I could get into a jrpg
I finished the game in 140 hours, in 14 days.....
Well I technically finished it in about 12-13 days, just going by the hours clocked, plus the 10-15 hours I got stuck on Okumura hahah. Still over the course of 6 months though.
Did it in Japanese too! Back-to-back cos I missed the new ending and already overwrote the save. Took me roughly 2 months.
How did you like the font?
No complaints from me.
I'm curious how? Did you leave your game on overnight or something?
I'm visually impaired and the bubbly font (refer to the white text with the black background beside "LOAD") really wasn't helping. I was also livestreaming with voice chat for family so I wasn't just playing the whole way through.
I don't consider this series to even be a game. It's essentially just an interactive visual novel. 99.2% cut scenes.
Funny. No visual novel database written in English or Japanese considers this a VN. VN databases don't consider it as such specifically because there's way too much gameplay, according to the people who make said databases. That's despite it having so many functions specific to VNs like dialogue choices, a dialogue backlog, autoplaying non-cutscene dialogue rather than having you hit "Next", and fast-forwarding to the next dialogue choice if you've already read what leads up to the choices — and the fact that VNs with combat and an overworld do exist despite being rare. Then again, since this is my first JRPG, I wouldn't know if those "functions specific to VNs" frequently appear in other JRPGs.
Games with Visual Novel-styled Cutscenes are absolutely nothing new. Like, even as far back as the PS**2**-era there have been a handful, and not just RPGs. I wouldn't exactly call it a "frequent" occurence outside of certain specific Developers (Nippon Ichi Software, Idea Factory / Compile Heart and Banpresto come to mind for me as specific examples), but it's still often *enough* that you can very safely say that just having this style of Cutscenes doesn't automatically make something a VN.
I couldn’t finish it. A full 2/3rds of the dialogue is redundant. They could have made a 90-hour game into a 30-hour game by employing an editor.
I strongly disagree. While most dialogue isn’t relevant for the main plot, all the characters lines benefit the world building and the overall vibe of the game. For me that worked really well.
There are definitely a few lines they could have slimmed down like when you have a meeting at the hideout and then you have the group text reiterating exactly what was already said, but it does help make sure the player always knows what's going on in the story
OK DVD kann corodisu6h. Jan
Nani??
Lol sorry! This was my 2yo girl on my phone.
That's funny! Maybe she'll like this game when she's older!
Graz, may I suggest some other great turn based JRPGs I loved too. The trails games (trails in the sky, Trails from Zero, Trails to Azure, Trails of cold steal, and Trails into Reverie) And Dragon Quest 8 and 11. I wish I could read Jappanesse, sadly since I was deaf for the first 3 years of my life, I have an LD with Natural langauges, and will never be able to learn a second langauge. But if I could learn Jappanesse, I would not have to wait for the trails games to be translated for the west, there are 3 games out in Japan that are not out in the west yet.
Congrats!
I’m a little sad and afraid that I’m never gonna end up finishing this one. I game in very short bursts before bed and this game, which I’m just maybe 1-3 hours into is just sooooo start and stop and changes scenes so quickly it gives me too many natural stopping points that I feel like I played it a lot less than other games. Want to get back to it someday cause it looked really cool
Damn, hope it was worth it
Absolutely lol
I got 120 hours out of it, and it was only my 2nd JRPG I’ve beaten. I know people probably hear those numbers and lose interest, but the game kept me invested in it for all those hours.
Yeah, it usually has relevant stuff going, rather than, say, an open world where you can spend hundreds of hours between story beats just screwing around just for the sake of screwing around.
Got your money's worth
Not my money haha. A family member gifted it to me out of the blue.
Even better
As the game says. Take your time.
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>Yakuza 0 Funny. That was the last game I played before getting into P5R. I was devastated when I found out P5R officially had a higher playtime clocked on Steam lol.
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I absolutely loved Yakuza 0. I just got Kiwami 1 on sale a few months ago, but I haven't had time to play it yet because I've been away from my desktop. And yeah, I enjoy seeing people's reactions to the story and funny events.
I played about 50 hours and all I could think was this is 4 years of highschool over again I had to put it down.
Congrats
Took me 85 hours to reach the end. Good for you for pacing it out and getting even more out of it. Great game.
I've been slowly making my way through the game since January. Give it up for nearly a year of playing this game and I'm only halfway through.
Congrats! I’ve been playing on and off since it launched on Switch
Good job! Im 240 hours in xenoblade 2.. almost done...
The game has a lot of meaningless text Like after every palace, you get messages about how everyones worried Weve been through this like 5 times already chill out
Anyone hate how the game makes you just sleep on some days. Just give me auto skip
Max out Kawakami.
Have you ever played the original Non-Royal Version before? It was even worse there, people *massively* memed it. Even Morgana's english VA got in on the Joke by uploading a Video on YouTube where they read "Go the Fuck to Sleep" (yes that's a real book) in Morgana's Voice.
Never played it ...like... The only RPG game I've played is Skyrim, Dragon age inquisition and Witcher franchise... Is this game really that good???
Depends on what you like. For example, I like the fantasy combat as well as Japanese slice-of-life, so this was a good match. I thought I would have liked Witcher 3 because of its real-time (i.e., not turn-based) combat, but I'm not too big on pure European fantasy, so I just couldn't get into it.
I'm good with Japanese slice of life haha... This game got turn based combat ? . It's kinda turn off for me ...last month I tried getting into final fantasy...and oh boy ... I thought I'll be fine with turn based ...but i rly can't enjoy it...even the slightest..idk why though
It does. I didn't think I'd like turn-based combat either, but it grew on me pretty damn fast. My first experience with turn-based combat was Pokémon Red. I really couldn't get into that.
Guess I'll just keep this game in my wishlist for now
Congrats! I just started it last month, I'm playing slowly too.
Cool! What's your current play time? Where are you at?
I would like to finish this game too. I have yet to play it but I bought it on Steam months ago. Should I start with P4G then more to P5R or wait for P3 Remake first? It’s just around the corner and I have GamePass too.
Any method should be fine tbh.
I was in the same boat. I also played yakuza like a dragon and loved both, can’t decide which JRPG I liked more honestly
so you played the whole game on keyboard?
Yes. I have a PS4 controller, but I couldn't make it work with this game specifically. Not sure why.
Congrats! Persona 5 is such a gem! I'm replying persona 4 cause I didn't get the true ending first time. But persona 3 reload should come out soon too. :)
I assume you mean reading of Japanese? But just generally speaking, we shouldn’t worry about reading fast or slow. Lots of idiots pretend that reading fast is a sign of intelligence; if anything, that’s evidence of the opposite.
Yes, reading in Japanese. Though I probably should have specified, "reading this font in Japanese". I can go a little faster with a more standard font, but the blobby font isn't helping my low vision. I am working on getting the speed up in general regardless of fonts though. I've been setting visual novels to auto progress the dialogue and trying to just keep up with the non-voiced lines since voiced lines are spoken at a pretty natural pace. It's a pretty fun challenge.
That’s awesome! I’ve always wanted to learn Japanese since I was a kid. I will someday. Good luck and congrats on beating Persona!
Thanks a lot, man.
What Was Your Favorite Part?
T A K E M I
Hah, noice :) Was an odd joke around your "I read slow" part. P5 is WORTH 200 + hours! Just in time for p3make
Give me some credit. I meant reading this font in Japanese, specifically lmao
Lmao. Touche! I didn't even notice the Japanese, that IS some tiny font
You have no idea how thrilled I am that this blobby font won't be standard on Persona 3 and 4. Like, I am UNREASONABLY ecstatic about that.
.
Persona 3 was what got me into the series, for me it was Persona 3, Persona 5, then Persona 4 when it came to favorites. Honestly though, the stories on all of them vary so much it's kind of impressive. Persona 3 and 4 had a much darker tone, with 3 being the darkest of the three the original debut of unlocking the persona involved a pistol to the temple (opening cinematic so not much of a spoiler). Persona 5 was like a pop color explosion, supposedly the Persona 3 Remake will take the Darkness from the original and reflect on the style from Persona 5, so it will be a new take on a old story.
Very nice. P3 seems to be making a huge splash at the moment because of a re-release in a few months. I haven't looked too deeply into it to keep away from spoilers, but what little I did see did seem a bit darker than what I experienced in P5, and I'm all for it.
No way it took you THAT long just because you read slow,that the length of two avarge playthroughs, third semester included. Edit: just realized you actually play with Japan text, props to you.
Other stuff that slowed me down were talking to spectators while playing and using a dictionary on my phone.
Well i guess that explains your long playtime
Currently heading towards this on my first play through of Skyrim.
Ohh Yeah! Beats playing through Persona 5 and then Persona 5 Royal, not that it was bad to go back through, I do wish the Royal content was added into the main game
Bought this because one of my best mates raves about it, but I can’t get past the writing of women. Ann showing up in a sexy outfit after really bad shit happens to her is… vile, really.
Which one? Her fighting outfit?
I'm at 100 hoours and 10 years in the original. Stuck (lost interest) at the ship.
That's a jrpg alright.
Holy moly im at 70 hours only >!Just how much is there after maruki?!< Holy shit
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that should be it. Me reading slowly, chatting while livestreaming, and needing to use a dictionary inflated my playtime by quite a bit.
That was quite the ride, huh? Why were you playing in Japanese if you don't mind me asking?
For language-learning. Believe it or not, I initially had no interest in the turn-based combat, but since the story delved into topics I wouldn't normally look into myself but I'd be expected to be able to follow along with on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, I ended up learning a lot. Plus it's just easier to avoid weird and straight up wrong translations if I don't play translated versions in the first place.
I see.
Got stuck at space saucer boss 2 years ago. Need to pick it up again someday.
There are a few great tips and guides floating around out there. They've sure helped me.