They are a good deal of fun if you like anime high school tropes. The battle system in smt games is fantastic. I would say start with p3 FES or P3R if you like rpg combat and want to get a feel for how the calandar system and social links work. P5R is a masterpiece. P4G is quite good but IMO it is weaker than 3 and 5 being sort of between them in regards to systems. 1 and 2 are a different beast all togeter, 2 is worth playing for sure but it barely resembles the games that come after. 1 was a nightmare to play if i’m honest.
They are a good deal of fun if you like anime high school tropes.
That’s fair but for the record I’m old and very much not an anime watcher of any kind, and playing Persona 5 for the first time absolutely hooked me despite it’s occasional anime-ness. I’ve played 3 & 4 now and I think they’re a bit more tropey maybe (I’m not expert, going on vibes)? I felt like the classic good-hearted teenage rebellion in an uptight country that dismisses it’s young people themes in 5 were enough for it to break out of what I expected it to be a bit more and get it’s hooks in me narratively.
you are absolutely correct, i didn’t mean to be dismissive in my tone, though I did think Metaphor re Fantazio was perfect for me in how it used the mechanics of persona but in a whole new setting, though i do wish some of the iconic demons were there.
I didn’t mean to imply you did so apologies if that’s how it came off. I just thought it was worth saying for other non-anime people that I was exactly not the target audience and yet I didn’t find it alienating at all.
P3R > P5
any of the 5 games is fine as an introduction to the series but I think if you’re gonna play any, you’ll probably have a better time with P3R (newest remake of what is arguably the only Good game in the series) or 5 (most recent non-remake). I’d recommend if you do play 5 that you get the Royal edition but there’s nothing wrong with just playing the base game (you just miss the DLC addition to the story). Same goes for P3R. You don’t need Episode Aigis to enjoy the story as a whole, but it is nice.
anyways I’ll be the one to say play a real Shin Megami Tensei Game and play SMT V available on the Nintendo Switch, Steam Storefront, and easily pirated. And join me online on my favorite MMO Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine (rip i miss you wholeheartedly they should make another SMT mmo where I can get a Cerberus)
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Hey, good recs here, but I think you deserve a warning: These games are a rabbit hole and they’re long as fuck. If you get really into them like I did, you might be tempted to play all the spinoffs, too. This is dangerous. There’s a Persona gatcha now.
If you already know you like the jrpg genre you’ll almost assuredly like the games. They’re wildly popular for a reason. The aesthetics and mechanics are pretty satisfying and well fleshed out, respectively. All the games are structured in a way that’s split between downtime and dungeon diving. During your downtime you build relationships(kind of a friendship simulator) with the story characters that affects your combat and gives you bonuses. The player has full agency to determine who they want to build relationships with. And if you didn’t know, the games are long and you can easily hit a 100+ hour playthrough.
The story and themes can be a little cringey, idealistic, and juvenile, but all the games do have high schoolers as their main protagonists so take it as you will. They touch on some adult themes(sexual assault, suicide, general societal assholishness, etc.) but don’t usually portray it in a satisfying way or explore them in a way beyond ‘this happened and I’m mad/sad about it’. It’s still good story for a major studio release, but some people do take issue with the way it’s done. If you want more overall adult themes you can look into the mainline SMT series which is where the Persona games are a spinoff of and are very similar in quality and gameplay.
In terms of where to start: The Persona series as everyone knows it starts with #3. There’s like a decade between each games release so there are massive quality of life and graphics improvements between them. I’d say start with 4 or 5 personally, but they’re all good in their own way and have a remaster/remake at this point. If you only plan to ever play one of them, go with Persona 5: Royal.
As a side note, Atlus always releases an updated version of each game a year or two after its initial release that features an expanded story, easier gameplay, and updated qol. Persona 5: Royal is the updated release version.
The only JRPGs I remember playing is one sonic flash fan game on some old website and that one Ubisoft offshoot game “Child of Light” back when they weren’t just milking Assassin’s Creed IP, so I’m somewhat familiar with the gameplay. I’ll follow your advice and start with 5 and get into older ones if I like 5. The thing that made me want to try out the games is seeing screenshots of 5 and thinking “this UI and overall art style looks cool as fuck” and then hearing good music in YouTube videos/memes and finding out that it’s from Persona
“this UI and overall art style looks cool as fuck” and then hearing good music
The level of polish on the games is really what makes it shine. For me, I have a tough time finishing jrpg’s in general because they get pretty tedious after pkaying a while, but the music alone made me want to continue to play. It’s just so good.
If you really like P5R and want to try the others, a remake of 3 was recently released, called Persona 3 Reloaded, and another one for 4 is coming out in the next year or two. That helps make it not feel like you’re missing out on quality of life improvements if you want to go backwards in the series. Except for common themes, all the games have distinct story’s so you don’t need to worry about missing out on plot on anything.
Hope you like it!
And to be clear
1 and 2 don’t have anything to do with the story of the later parts, other than some minor references like the MMO in 3’s Hermit social link being called Innocent Sin.
All three are worth playing, and I don’t think one is significantly better as an introduction than the others. They all have their strong points and some very obvious weaknesses.
3 has the best character writing and is the most thematically coherent. The dungeons and bosses are a little bad, and the social sim mechanics aren’t as refined as in the others. Reload is probably the best version, but Portable has some good stuff in it too.
4 has the best vibes and tells a competent overarching story. The little comedy bits it does to give you a break are not funny and are often pretty mean, and it has some pretty hard-to-ignore problematic elements, and good lord do the investigation parts suck. Golden is a pretty good version, but there is a new one coming out next year.
5 has amazing-feeling combat and the best dungeon design, and the social sim stuff is mechanically great. Most of the characters have no personality, which is not great in a game like this. Royal is technically the superior version that you should play (though it is strangely worse in some ways I won’t get into here.)
Narrative wise, I recommend Persona 4: Imagine weebish Scooby-Doo. Still, it does have some caveats:
-
As others have said, it’s LONG. Like the first hour or two is just the game in visual novel mode pretty much.
-
Kanji is closeted LGBT, and his “Shadow” (the enemies in the game.) is literally a hodgepodge of homophobic stereotypes. I get that’s what internalized homophobia feels like but it can be triggering. Yosuke also gives Kanji shit for it.
-
If you like it, I recommend a New Game+ as its very hard, if not impossible to do everything in a single run.
-
Don’t feel guilty about looking up school questions or ingredients for lunches. The game is from a Japanese POV so there will be some questions alluding to Japanese history, and some “challenging” questions will be total gimmies for us westoids.
-
