Persona 5 News

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from and it definitely helps put P3 in a more positive light. Honestly, there wasn't a huge amount of school in Persona 3 as opposed to, like, saving the world etc., which made P3 feel more like any other old jRPG as opposed to P4...so while you could argue P3 achieved everything that would be possible with an older cast, one could counter with the idea that a high school cast wasn't needed in P3. It depends on how you look at the issue, I guess.

Well it pioneered the concept of the social link system and the formula so its really hard to say if it needed it or not, personally I just feel a high school setting makes everything very convenient in regards to explaining how your characters meet and giving the player lots of options for outside activites, we are talking the age group that games harder than others because they have way more free time than most people but also because they are not expected to be dealing with responsibility like an adult would.

I think it'd just make a nice change, personally. I don't really know much about how Japanese colleges operate, myself, but I'm guessing a large proportion of the western audience wouldn't and as such would be interested in comparing their own college lifestyles to the Japanese versions. Something to consider IMO

It's a valid point but I would also point out that we never really see anime college stories either so I'm of the opinion its not as interesting or just more of the same with less stress and need for activities. My issue is that beyond curiosity I still don't feel it would add a new layer to the narrative that can't already be achieved with the current formula.

Wow, you're certainly not helping me look forward to starting full-time work proper next week lol. I agree with you to an extent, but not ALL adults' lives are that, well, boring...

It's not that its boring it has more to do with a different mindset. Teenagers are for the most part encouraged to be selfish and self-absorbed because it's really the only time of your life you can do it unless your adulthood throws you into an outlier demographic of societal norms. Adults tend to just be more responsible. I mean in college I had no issue staying up all night or bar hopping with friends but now I've got too much stuff on my plate to be like that anymore. I'm usually one of the first of my friends who will refuse a last minute invitation to a friendly get together if I know I have work the next morning and I don't really blow my money on frivolous activities when I have rent and bills to account for. Not saying I couldn't choose to be a bum and act like I did ten years ago but I prefer being stable than living paycheck to paycheck. It's why Vincent from Catherine is an interesting case because despite being a man near his 30s he acts more like Junpei or Yosuke than he does say Mitsuru or Dojima. His whole story arc is choosing whether he wants to be a responsible adult or flutter his life away like he has been by acting like he's still a student.

Seriously, most of my friends who have real 9 to 5 jobs never have time to hang out except every blue moon. My friends who started families dropped out of my life due to being too busy with the new family and also because hanging out with them was usually awkward because all they talk about is their family while I only have stupid trout to talk about. Our interest and focus changed and while they are all cool people I ended up drifting away from them because our responsibilities took us in different directions. My point is that adults would have bigger issues skipping out on school to stop shadows as opposed to adults skipping out on work, bills and family. It will catch up to them though I guess the game could implement a system where you have to earn enough to pay your living expensive and then use the rest to buy equipment and summon personas for fusion but I don't know how well that would go over. Again, I don't feel it couldn't be done, I'm just saying an adult main cast would seriously alter a lot of dynamics of the formula that would risk losing the audience but since this thread I have been brainstorming what an adult Persona game might be like and it intrigues me even if I don't feel it would do well with its target audience.

I think Baofu and indeed, Ulala from Eternal Punishment are pretty good examples of such justification. Katsuya to a certain extent as well

They are all fantastic characters but not great material for the social link system, Ulala would spend hers whining about not getting a boyfriend, Baofu would spend his time boring you to death about baseball, and Katsuya would spend his time divulging his insecurity about whether Tatsuya likes him and that one was actually done in P4 with the Temperance S.L.

When I speak about adult characters I'm thinking in terms of what they could bring to the S.L. side of things I mean these three characters are great but their major drawing power as story figures is front line stuff, their social link side is kind of dull because so much of their personal quirks are directly tied to plot moving events that it would be hard to come up with a compelling SL for them.

I'd picture something more along the lines of some mid-20's something person renting a house with 4 other people, having an active social/dating life. Some non-boring job that might add to the dynamic of the game. Not to pull too much from P4 but a detective or something would probably work great.

You really should play Persona 2: Eternal Punishment if you haven't already, because it almost has exactly what you're looking for - even a detective!

I agree, especially since it sounds to me like the social/dating aspect of the game does not appeal to you, P2 is a pretty traditional JRPG in comparison to the games that came after and its a better game than the first one.

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I think one of the reasons why I don't quite want to move away from the formula is because I feel there is still room to grow. The High School angle has not been fully tapped just yet as much as players just having ADHD about wanting meaningless change in the hopes it will bring a fresh perspective but I would rather watch the S.L. system evolve into areas it hasn't touched yet like dealing with cheating partners, your friends S.L. with other characters (which can be used to build better teamwork among friends) actually play up being a poor student in the school as opposed to some genius star athlete, using the clubs to customize your characters and delving how gender roles play in a high school setting. Seriously the whole thing is far from being tapped out and I don't believe the P-Team is beating a dead horse just yet in concept... their blatant fan pandering to the P3/P4 fans on the other hand...

[Vyk]

I'd picture something more along the lines of some mid-20's something person renting a house with 4 other people, having an active social/dating life. Some non-boring job that might add to the dynamic of the game. Not to pull too much from P4 but a detective or something would probably work great.

You really should play Persona 2: Eternal Punishment if you haven't already, because it almost has exactly what you're looking for - even a detective!

I agree, especially since it sounds to me like the social/dating aspect of the game does not appeal to you, P2 is a pretty traditional JRPG in comparison to the games that came after and its a better game than the first one

Upon that suggestion I pretty much immediately looked into it. And the P2 we got for the PS1 (which I guess was the second scenario?) seemed extremely awesome. But unfortunately I can't get it to run very well on my PSP. There's an incredible amount of slowdown during dialog and menu management. Which makes me very sad, because I was loving the set-up. And adult, female, with a job. The sprite work and blocky environments reminded me a lot of Xenogears game engine (which I love for some reason). and a good ol' Persona plot which I haven't been able to fully enjoy just yet no matter how much I want to. The only down side I've heard is that you have to grind for personas and experience separately. But other than that it's supposed to be really good. The fan-translation of the second one works great on my PSP. But you're back as a male protagonist in high school again. Though I doubt it's very much like P3. So I may still enjoy it, as it seems to be the only option. Especially since that's the one they remade and localized in America specifically for the PSP (which I may yet buy). I saw there was fanwork on Eternal Punishment's PSP Japan-only release. But they're only just now getting underway so it'll be a while

Seriously debating on buying it on PSN and seeing if it plays better officially from Sony, rather than a CD rip. Otherwise I may just have to play it on my computer. Not really a big deal. I'd just rather not. But either way, great suggestion on that one. Thank you. Maybe if once I finally get through a real Persona game I can start to enjoy the rest of the series on the merits rather than getting needlessly fixed up on superficial elements like character age

[Wolf Kanno]

If you end up liking Eternal Punishment, definitely check out Innocent Sin because the games are directly connected in a deeper way than most direct sequels.

Persona levels are not much of an issue in this game as they only go up to level 8 and as long as you have them equipped on characters who have great comparability its not much of an issue to power level them quickly. Personas level by just using fusion spells which is what the game wants you to do anyway since they make battles much easier. Its only trying to bother with mutations that can get tedious but if you don't care about any of that nonsense then you can breeze through the game fairly easy. The story gained Greek Set Ultimate Personas are more than enough to beat the game.

Eternal Punishment's plot is pretty dark compared to other entries, I think only P3 comes close to meeting it. Innocent Sin is a bit goofy with some dark undertones until the final act when the game gets pretty dark which then leads into Eternal Punishment.

[Vyk]

It's weird that we got the second one first here, kinda? Though I was told they're just alternate timelines. So I didn't figure playing them in their actual order was that big a deal. Other than Joker talking about them like he knew them, and people having Deja Vu with each other. Which would have intrigued me even more had I gone in blind. I love stories like that, throwing stuff at you like you're supposed to know, and then actually explaining it later. Builds a mystery, Memento-style