Since my last post, I’ve been steadily plugging away at Persona 5 Royal and really enjoying the whole “actual game with a beginning and an end” thing. Unless the ending is dreadful, I’ll be quite sorry to see it go. In fact I’ve already added Persona 5 Strikers to my Nintendo wishlist, just waiting for a good sale.

I wanted to write more thoughts earlier, but didn’t get the time. It’s just as well I didn’t and waited a little longer for the Niijima Palace arc to play out, because the Phantom Thieves turned out to be smarter than I’d given them credit for. When the whole thing with Goro Akechi blackmailing/persuading them to let him join and then take on Niijima’s Palace was going on, I was really worried that their stupidity had gone too far. Like guys, guys! Don’t do it! This guy is fishier than the Atlantic Ocean, he’s obviously up to no good! Guuuys!

It was really getting my goat to see the Phantom Thieves adding him to their chat group, inviting him to their meetings and being all buddy-buddy with him like they didn’t suspect a thing. I was like “Really? Really, guys?!” If nothing else, when he insisted that the date of stealing the treasure had to be the 18th of November, I was like okay, you guys haaaave to smell a rat here or I’m done.

And to their credit, they more than smelled a rat but actually set up a clever mousetrap that allowed the Phantom Thieves to go off the radar and continue their activities in the shadows. They showed that they were suspicious of Akechi from the school festival (they even picked up on the “pancakes” comment that was eating me alive!), shared those suspicions with each other, and took concrete measures against him while acting dumb and playing nice with Akechi the whole time. I can’t help feeling that they would have avoided a lot of trouble by showing that level of smarts right from the start of the game, but then again they didn’t have Futaba and Makoto on the team back then.

I’m not 100% clear on how the whole fake-out, fake death deal worked, but I got the general idea. Basically, since Niijima’s Palace was largely identical to the real world, they used Joker’s smartphone + Niijima + Akechi’s proximity to pull Akechi into a Palace that spoofed the interrogation room. There he met a fake Joker (who would be there because Niijima thinks he’s there and it’s her palace) and “killed” him… But somehow the body of the shadow did not disappear upon death… maybe because Niijima knew that Akechi would kill “Joker” and so a “dead” Joker was within her expectations? And somehow, nobody was responsible for transporting the body to the morgue, nobody ever checked the morgue or contacted Joker’s guardian, family or school about his death, or made arrangements for the burial etc. etc… Well, it all fits with the idea of Akechi and Shido being smug but not as smart as they think they are, so I’ll let it slide.

And now, having shaken off the stigma of being Phantom Thieves, at least temporarily, we have conveniently identified the big bad by tapping Akechi’s phone (he knows they have a hacker, but seriously didn’t expect a wiretap?) and now we’re going to take him down. I’m more excited by the prospect of getting a dungeon to explore than by anything else, since there has been a LOT of talking recently.

I was a little worried that all the drama and having to pretend to be dead would cause my social links to close, but I’d finished quite a number before November 20th, plus most of them meet outside school or at night anyway. The only one I’m concerned about is Haru, since I want to save her from the clutches of Sugiura (and also score those sweet, sweet vegetables) but if it’s over, then it’s over. I can always play P5R again in the distant future if I’m really interested in… in fact, no, I can just watch the other routes on YouTube.

Which brings me to the main thing annoying me about confidant routes: Mementos! It’s always about “so and so is bothering me, what can I doooo?” But instead of finding practical, real world solutions (like consulting the police if a couple is blackmailing you), we go into Mementos and change the bad guys’ hearts, basically just magicking the problem away, and then presto! Problem boringly solved.

I mean yeah, I’m not playing a magical phantom thief game for the realism, and yeah it would be nice if all problems could disappear that easily, but I don’t like such simplistic resolutions because they make the confidant routes boring and predictable.

Hifumi’s having problems with her mom = I’m going to change her mom’s heart, aren’t I? Same with the Tower kid and his mom, same with Iwai and his yakuza ex-buddy, and I’ve already been asked by Futaba to go change her uncle’s heart. I get that Atlus wanted Mementos to be more than an afterthought, but then they could have integrated it better with the rest of the game, for example by giving better rewards and more interesting layouts so players want to get in there and explore. Ruining confidant routes is not the way.

Another thing kiiinda bothering me but not really is how little presence the personas have in the game. I say it’s “kinda” bothering me because I came to Persona 5 Royal from Shin Megami Tensei V where your demons are your party members and they’re all over the map, giving quests, fighting each other, making comments, being heavily involved with the story, etc. In P5R they’re largely interchangeable with each other in terms of roles, personalities and combat abilities. You can easily give them all kinds of skills without worrying about elemental affinity, so there’s no need to stick to any one shadow and try to level it up to get all of its skills. They’re personas without personalities, if I may be clever for a moment. As someone who enjoys the Pokemon aspect of Persona/SMT games, having them be so bland is a bit saddening but well, it is what it is.

I have a few other things on my mind about P5R, mostly positive, but since I’m close to the end of the story (I think?) I might as well finish and save all my comments for then. See ya!