Persona 5 Sunset Review

Ah yes. What a lovely sunset we have today, Margret. What’s that? You’re not Margret? THEN WHO HAVE I BEEN CALLING MARGRET THIS WHOLE TIME?!?!?

The Reality

Alright. So. Yes. I finally got to the end of Persona 5, and as such I thought I’d write this post about how I feel and stuff. However, there is an important thing to know about this “sunset review”: I have not actually finished the story. I got to the end, but didn’t finish, and I’ll explain why.

Simply put: the game was no longer fun.

Yes, I know, harsh words. But hear me out (although you’ve probably already left and disliked and unsubscribed and de-notified and all that jizz-jazz; to which I say: good on you for knowing when to burn the bridges, it’s a good skill in the engineering industry I hear). I used to play games when I was younger because I pretty much had nothing else to do. They were fun, and I had no responsibilities and I wasn’t “wasting time” because I had none to waste. I assume most of you were the same as well. Fast-forward a few years and we arrive to nowtime. Because of work and other depressing things, my time is now limited, thus making it more precious than that of mini-kenizl86 who could literally paint his room with it. Because of that I’ve found my relationship to video games changing quite a lot actually. What was once a fun thing to do because “why not?” is now an escape I can partake in and enjoy, even though I could be (or should be) doing something else. While this sounds virtually the same as mini-kenizl86’s point of view, there is a key difference: enjoyment.

When I was younger I would play games because I had time. I had the time to throw at annoying little things in games or spend hours tackling a boss fight or whatever. Now though, my time is limited. And because it is, I would rather spend my time doing things that bring me joy; or if I can’t, something that I need to do because of, you know, responsibilities. Things like playing Dark Souls or spending hours in Pokemon Emerald grinding levels is NOT FUN. It actively kills my enjoyment of the game. “You mean to tell me I’m going to die 48 times before I even begin to comprehend how to defeat this boss who can just one-shot me from 40 leagues away (that’s 240ft for you land-lubbers out there)?” No thanks. I’d rather spend 15 min folding clothes and then wash dishes because, you know, responsibilities.

Sorry, angsty rant about the ephemeral nature of mortality aside, this is what began to happen with Persona 5. I shall give you one word: MEMENTOS.

NOTE: Before I continue, please note there are some minor spoilers ahead for this next section. Don’t worry, it’s only a little tiny bit. But if you don’t like any spoilers at all, just skip to the next header.

The Slog

Backing up to my previous post, I ended with me being close to the tail-end of the “normal” part of the game. I got back in when it was getting fun again. Sure there was still some little bits here and there that weren’t that fun, but it wasn’t all too bad.

And then, it got even better! Things were speeding up, the story was throwing jabs, hooks and straights all about and it was GLORIOUS. It even told you partway in “hold on to your butt because we’re about to blast off at escape velocity." HECK YEAH. This is what I’m talking about! Gimme the meat and potatoes!

This was honestly the best part of the game. Everything you’d been so painstakingly working towards was all finally coming to a head. Your confidants were cheering you on, things were getting risky, everything was going to pay off, I even fought the big bad guy like 4 times in the span of like 2 hours just so I could beat him. Victory was mine! I had done it!

And then…………..

The game continued. In fact, not only did it continue, but it continued with arguably the worst part of the game: MEMENTOS.

You see, Mementos is like the fetch-quest part of every MMO. It’s just a place you go to for little missions, filler stuff you know? It’s made to be long and dull because the game needed a bit of filler throughout the story. However, if you hadn’t been working through Mementos for the entire game every so often, you can just kiss your butt goodbye because joke’s on you: you now have to go to the very end of the desert. Because reasons. Oh, and it doesn’t stop there. Not only do you have to go through the dessert, but then there’s a smaller desert at the end of the bigger desert WITH NO SAVES BECAUSE THE DEVS HATE FUN.

This is where I threw in the towel. At this point I had had it up to my earlobes with freaking Mementos and now you’re telling me I have to fight all these OP little stupid minions that all of a sudden for some reason can take TWO ACTIONS A TURN and just slapp my cheeks and call me Sally and send me back to the beginning again for the hell of it? No. Nope. THIS IS NOT FUN.

What frustrated me most about this is that I had technically beat the big baddy, and now there’s this ephemeral “thing” that I need to go defeat in the literal worst place of the game because it solely exists to waste my time? AND there’s no saves? AND the baddies ratchet in power for literally no reason? WHY?!?!

The Result

Sigh……..

So anyway. After trying my best to finish it, I just couldn’t, I threw in the towel and decided all of this frustration was not worth the last little bit of story at the end of it all. I had worked for 115 hours on this game just to get my cheeks slapped to hell and back over what can be described as the last chapter of a 50 chapter saga. It felt like I’d been betrayed. I poured 115 hours of my valuable time into playing this game and my reward is not even being allowed to finish it because they thought another 10 hours of getting slapped around would be fun. Fun fact, 115 hours is about $2,600 of earning potential at my current employment rate. Yay.

Look, I know I’m complaining about something that may seem trivial to most of you, but I’m simply trying to impress on you my personal experience and viewpoint on the game. Everyone views things differently, and for me Dark Souls-ing a game is not fun for me in the slightest. Heck, Monster Hunter was more enjoyable than Dark Souls because I could actually play that game and beat up monsters, even if I did have to try many times. That’s a whole other story though…

Anywho. So what’s the result of all this? Well, I dropped the game Sunday, and today I had confirmed in my heart of hearts that I have shelved the game and don’t ever plan on playing it again. So I looked up the rest of the story and read the summary for the end. It was certainly interesting, but not worth all that suffering for.

All-in-all, this is a good game. Yes I complained about it a bunch today, but at the end of all of this I can say this game definitely had an effect on me. I’ll probably remember it for a while to come. No, I won’t ever play it again, but I may watch someone else experience it. My rating from the previous post remains the same, but I definitely give the last section of the game a 1/5. Not worth it. Just slap that bad boy into easy mode at the end. That’s what I should have done.

kenizl86 out!