Massive Spoilers, naturally.

I cannot BELIEVE that there’s never an exchange with Maruki where you actually discuss anything with him, or address the hypocrisy of the Phantom Thieves, or any number of things. “Futaba, Makoto, and Haru’s parents (and also Kasumi) could all just be alive? Ha, actually, it’s better that they died because it made them stronger. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to my home planet with my talking cat who gets to live because I don’t suffer consequences.”

It’s just such a massive missed opportunity for interesting writing, instead resulting in the blandest and stupidest defenders of the status quo I may ever have seen.

  • The main person pushing you to side against Maruki is Akechi, who is a serial killer. I think Haru mentions this like once and everyone else tells her to just forget about him murdering her dad.
  • The MC is going to go to jail, where by all means Shido’s co-conspirators should just have him killed. Or at least that’s what should happen, but you avoid that by using your powers to mind control people into getting you out. Convenient that you’re allowed to use your powers to solve the problems of yourself and your friends but nobody else can solve broader societal problems. Curious.
  • Maruki is messed up due to his own trauma, but instead of overcoming it and healing people’s pain in a healthier way I guess he has to become a taxi driver lol.
  • The MC really has no idea how personas or the metaverse actually work. If Maruki can create his own palace consciously, someone ELSE (like, say, Shido’s co-conspirators?) are eventually going to figure out cognitive psience (they have Wakaba’s notes, after all), and then what?

I’ve never played vanilla P5 but man, P5R is fucked gameplay wise. Camera Strap accessory gives everyone infinite SP, and you can just summon some of the past game bonus personas and win the game.

As a final aside, it is ridiculous to me that the MC can’t just stay at Shujin for their last year of high school.

  • grandepequeno [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    I’m with you 100%, I loved the 3rd semester but I think Maruki was done dirty. The guy is trying to bring the christian notion of heaven/paradise into the world and the problem is that he’s not powerfull enough to do it yet, hence the flaws in the system, and the only thing standing between him and getting enough magic power in order to make everyone’s lives better is you and your buddies, a few of which really should have more qualms about abandoning the “not real” reality. At least that’s how I interpreted it

    If it were a western rpg you’d probably get a long talk with maruki where you can let him win you over or something but it’s not that type of game so you only get a weird “yes I side with you” option, you don’t get to delve into what the world will REALLY become like afterwards.

    Throw your mask away is a completely goated song though I had that on repeat for weeks.

    And yeah there are a lot of things that make the game way easier, not that it’s a hard game in the first place on Normal difficulty, the only real challenge was the Okumura boss battle where they made it a gimmick fight in royal.