I recently completed my playthroughs of Persona 5 Royal and its shrine. It took me an eternity, partly because of the game’s many long cutscenes. They really overdid those.
Anyway, I did a comparison between Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden, so I’m going to redo that with Persona 5 Royal mixed in. Again, I’m not going to include game mechanics or subjective elements. With that…here’s the spoiler warning and let’s begin with some meta stuff… Plot I gave this category to Persona 4 the last time. Persona 5 Royal does not have a bad plot…until the third trimester, where the game sets up a deep, interesting character (Maruki) with a very valid dilemma and then writes a simplistic plot that shafts him ten ways to Sunday. Is that…is that a saying? I kind of feel like it is, but maybe I just made it up or something? Anyway. I ranted about this in my shrine, so I won’t belabor it here. I also want to reiterate how idiotic the fake Igor plot was, since Yaldabaoth should have gotten Megidolaon’d ten ways to high hell the second he attacked a Velvet Room assistant. There wasn’t really any need for him to hijack the Velvet Room anyway – the plot would’ve flowed just fine without that. Persona 4 still wins this category. NPC protagonists This category went to Persona 4 before; I said SEES felt like a group of coworkers whereas the Investigation Team felt like a group of tight-knit best friends. Persona 5’s cast feels closer compared to SEES, but not as close compared to the IT. For whatever reason, the writers decreased the amount of slice-of-life scenes that illustrated the characters bonding and becoming friends. And then, of course, there’s Sumire, a character who only interacts with the Phantom Thieves once (at Christmas) before she joins the team a whopping ~2 weeks before the game ends. Persona 4 and its new Golden character, Marie, does all of this much better. Persona 4 still wins this category. Villains I said that Adachi and Mitsuo were more effective villains compared to Strega and Chair Man. In Persona 5, the equivalent villains would be Masayoshi Shithole and Akechi, since the “main” villain is Yaldabaoth. I’m…going to ignore Maruki here because I don’t consider him a villain. Shithole has around the same intelligence compared to Adachi (which is not good). He achieves much more, except all of his accomplishments rely completely on Akechi, so in actuality, he didn’t achieve jack. I also can’t shake off my first impression of Shithole, which is a drunk thug pathetically falling on his face. My first impression of Adachi was a rookie horrified at a murder victim, except he was acting, meaning my first impression of Adachi was him being a very talented actor. Akechi, on the other hand, is a very well-written character. Like I said, I sympathize with his backstory while also condemning his actions. And for all my anger toward Royal, Akechi’s characterization in Royal is absolutely top-notch. His voice actor did a phenomenal job. So here, I’ll declare a tie between Persona 4 and Persona 5. Social Links Persona 5’s Confidant system is superior to the Social Link system in its predecessor games because Confidants give you much better perks, such as Ryuji’s Insta-kill or Hifumi’s party member switch. That said, we’re not talking about mechanics in this, so that’s not going to factor into my ranking. Instead, let’s discuss the Confidants themselves. They’re…about on-par with the other two games, though I will say Kawakami’s whole maid thing made me pretty uncomfortable. She’s your teacher that you hire as a maid. It just seems wrong. I don’t think it’s enough to bring the ranking down, though. I’ll declare a three-way tie. Next, let’s look at in-universe things. School I awarded this category to Yasogami High School over Gekkoukan High School because the faculty in the former is actually competent. I put Shujin Academy DEAD LAST. Shujin’s faculty is…honestly quite competent. But, they make up for it by putting students in constant danger. Principal Fisk just wants a good reputation and he’ll cover for a fucking rapist PE teacher just because he once won an Olympic medal in volleyball. To go even further, the school routinely holds rallies in which the teachers play volleyball against the students because this former Olympic medalist wants to stroke his ego by beating high school kids, meaning he literally spikes a ball into a kid’s face and sends him to the nurse’s office. The teachers all high-five him after that. Beyond this, the Social Studies teacher routinely throws chalk at students he believes aren’t paying attention. Hilarious, right? Yeah, what if that chalk flies into someone’s eye? I don’t know what the exact fuck is wrong with these people. Yasogami High still wins this category. Setting I wrote that Tatsumi Port Island is safer compared to Inaba, what with the latter’s roving delinquents, biker gangs, and obscenely inept police. Tokyo in Persona 5 is not much better, given there’s a strong mob presence and the police are largely corrupt and under the control of Masayoshi Shithole. I’d still feel safer in Tatsumi Port Island compared to either of Persona 4’s or Persona 5’s settings. Persona 3 retains its victory in this category. Power Since I declared that SEES would win against the Investigation Team before, here we’re asking the question of who would win in a fight between SEES and the Phantom Thieves. I’m keeping my rules from before and also not including Akechi, even though he is present in the final fight of Royal. So we have: SEES: Mitsuru, Akihiko, Yukari, Junpei, Fuuka, Ken, Koromaru, Aigis Phantom Thieves: Morgana, Ryuji, Ann, Yusuke, Makoto, Futaba, Haru, Sumire This is actually a bit more difficult to answer than it first appears. First off, Persona 5 adds a slew of new mechanics that drastically change the way battles go. Just the presence of Baton Pass makes battles far easier, and there’s no in-universe reason SEES or the IT can’t use Baton Pass. In the same way, in-universe, SEES and the IT should have access to Persona Traits. Saying the PT would win against SEES simply because they got new mechanics in real life doesn’t really seem fair. Secondly, Persona 5 for whatever reason went out of its way to isolate the PT’s abilities. The members of SEES can summon their Personas wherever they want in the real world provided they have their Evokers. Even beyond this, the game establishes that each member has combat ability. Akihiko boxes, Yukari’s on the archery team, Mitsuru knows how to fence, etc. The PT, on the other hand, only has abilities in the Metaverse, a place wholly shaped by cognition. They think of themselves as badass thieves, so they can pull off cool grappling hook stunts or jump to the ground from a few stories up and land unscathed. Their enemies assume they’re going to enter battle with real weaponry and loaded guns, so they can attack with (essentially) toys and inflict damage. This means that outside the Metaverse, the PT are literally just regular kids and SEES would easily destroy them. Within the Metaverse, the PT has all their abilities, but logic says the members of SEES would have enhanced abilities too. How overpowered would Mitsuru Kirijo, a woman everyone with any level of intelligence fears as a terrifying executioner, become in the Metaverse? So if I were to simulate a fight between SEES and the PT, I’d have to come up with various different scenarios, such as in the real world, in the Metaverse, in some sort of hybrid environment where the PT has abilities but SEES doesn’t for some reason, etc. Rather than go through all that, I’m just going to declare a tie. The PT would likely fare better than the IT did given they don’t have a numerical disadvantage, but all the complications muddle the waters. Final score: We’re going to give a game a point for winning a category. For ties, all games within the tie gain one point. From here… Persona 3: Social Links, Setting, Power = 3 points Persona 4: Plot, NPC protagonists, Villains, Social Links, School = 5 points Persona 5: Villains, Confidants, Power = 3 points Persona 4 wins again! Now please don’t release Persona 6. Do you have any idea how exhausting this series is? |
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