tl;dr - my contrarian opinion here might be that Persona 5 does the Phantom Thieves story great but the game should be even longer to fully deliver on what theyāre setting up.
To be fair, I think Persona 5 enfolds the critique of what the Phantom Thieves are doing into the latter part of the game. What the Phantom Thieves are doing is shown by the latter half to be not good and in fact may be exacerbating the issues they are seeing. (The best-case outcomes are when the thieves do not steal the heart, as with Futaba and Sae. Also, as shown in the December 24th dungeon, stealing hearts may make villains like Kamoshida apathetic rather than truly remorseful [i.e., they say they did something wrong but donāt do anything substantive after issuing a humiliating apology to make up for it] and thus isnāt an effective form of rehabilitation. And one of the late game turns is the Phantom Thieves realizing the harm stealing hearts does and deciding not to steal hearts anymore.)
Endgame (base game) spoilers: indeed, when they try to steal the heart at the base of Mementos, they fail at it. The mechanism of stealing hearts would only enthrall people to Yaldabaoth, ceding their agency and control over their actions. It is only when the Phantom Thieves rally others behind them - of their own volition - that the Phantom Thieves can finally defeat Yaldabaoth.
The weak point for me is not the premise of the Phantom Thieves but the magical thinking in the last bits of the game. We have what could be an interesting turn from using a tool that feels expedient to realizing itās bad and setting it aside, but rather than see that through past the Yaldabaoth episode, the base game basically says, āYep, the adults are going to try to make sure the world works better from now on, so be kids for a while longer,ā whereas Royal pursues this sort of side question of perceived reality versus actual reality.
Why have I written three paragraphs on this? I see the Phantom Thieves and the ways theyāre interpreted as parallels to Arthurian knights in something like Le Morte Darthur. Both texts hold up the protagonists of quests as the exemplars of a certain kind of virtue, but by the latter part of both narratives, it is clear that the system of virtue is no longer working and - if we read what happened before sufficiently critically - wasnāt working all that well back then either. So the text itself supports a more nuanced and critical view of the heroes than even most fans seem willing to acknowledge, because acknowledging that runs against the style and mood of how the heroes are presented. And if Persona 5 really committed to a subversion similar to what Le Morte Darthur is doing, there would be more death and thwarted desire (with the glimmer of hope) at the end. But that probably wouldnāt be popular.
games do not have to be fun to be good
RIP the old shout thread, which was where I posted most of my thoughts on this game.
Itās been 6-7 years but I played P5 up to the space burger restaurant palace and dropped it during the second airlock puzzle.
P5 opens with the main character interrupting a rape and getting slapped with a criminal record because he crossed someone of a higher station. Weāre set up for a game that deals with serious Mature themes of like teenage disillusionment in the face of a corrupt society run by selfish adults and I donāt think it does anything meaningful with those themes.
I think it treats its player cast poorly and gives way too much screentime to its most grating characters. I touched on this a little in a post here
It also has that sequence on your first visit to Shinjuku, where Ryuji gets dragged off screaming by gay male predators. This follows in the footsteps of Yosukeās gay panic at sharing a tent with Kanji in P4 (plus that gameās complete fumbling of Naoto as an X-gender character), and the clocked trans woman in the summer vacation section of P3. For a game dealing with outsiders, this looks bad. Itās hypocritical and oblivious and really tells on the narrow lived experience of Team Personaās writers.
For an 80+ hour game it is so presumptuous of Atlus to expect me to play through more than once or grind and grind to max the stats I need to see Tae Takemiās social link through to the end. That should have been completable in one go-around without a guide if Iād just focused on her, which I very much did. There are other characters in this game I really likedāthe airsoft guy is another oneāand I just wonāt explore their stories fully because Iām expected to be totally devoted to sinking days of my life into a repetitive and disappointing main plot.
It does have a pretty good soundtrack and I am one who really likes Atlusās GUI design. I hope they never stop pushing the envelope graphically. The battles are fast-paced and Iāve always enjoyed them since P3, but I enjoy them more when Iām invested in the stakes.
Sometimes (if itās done well and with purpose), the lack of fun can even make a game better
aka BOTW 
I like it a lot! And I like the presentation overall a great deal, I just donāt like engaging with the story all that much, and thatās kind of the point. I even like the dungeon crawling a decent amount too.
This sort of circles back to the āI love SA2 and itās badā thing. Thereās so much I really adore about sonic and SA2 specifically: music, art, character design, etc. this list goes on.
But do I want to play SA2? No, no I do not. I like everything about it other than the actual game part, so thatās why I say itās a bad game.
I loved Persona 5 (disclaimer: it was my first Persona game) but I definitely agree with this, especially in your old post where you say it was too mean to Ryuji and Ann. Thereās one part in that game that makes me laugh still on this subject, which is when
Morgana leaves the group because he feels worthless. Everyone gets mad at Ryuji for this even though what happened was he finally defended himself against the asshole cat who calls him stupid 10 times a day. I donāt have the exact scene but as I recall he basically goes ācan you shut up? what do you even do all day?ā and then somehow heās the villain as Morgana is rewarded for moping for like 2 full in game weeks lol
BotW is fun but not good
ok i donāt even agree with that one lol
Totally agree with this. The gameās a wish-fulfillment fantasy run completely amok. āWhat if you could force abusive people to change and regret their actions?ā is a wonderful question to ask that the game doesnāt give thoughtful answers to, and betrays a worldview I canāt get behind in the process.
A thing it bafflingly plays for laughs!
I think Persona 5 is a marvel of ui, pacing, systems, character design, art, musicā¦basically everything but writing. But the writing really is bad enough to sour the whole big ass bowl of speghetti.
See also Fallout 4
I donāt enjoy BOTW for a lot of reasons that itās āgoodā game design. The breaking weapons (makes all the ones you pick up usable but I find it annoying). The crafting (always annoying to me but instead of being something thatās ignorable itās made important with the stamina/health/weapon stuff). The empty open world with samey shrines (āsense of explorationā or something idk). Iām sure thereās more but I havenāt tried it in 5 years and it was a bore for me.
Persona 4>3>5 I havenāt played 2 or 1
This here is my exact issue. If the game is going to reward me with a characterās inherent ability - one that is basically their entire personality and one that the entire character was built around - only when I am good at the game, then itās not the right character for the game being made.
Imagine if we had no idea who Mario was and he was put into Dark Souls. Weāre told/shown that Mario can jump! And run fast! And use powerups! Now imagine none of that is given to the player until they have beaten the game once. That means the character Mario doesnāt belong in Dark Souls.
Sonic and his games do not mesh together. Also the best Sonic game Iāve seen recently isnāt even Sonic, but does what Sonic wishes he could do in his games. (Haste)
I agree. I was hating on BotW up the thread. It has incredible environment design but the systems it layers on top are mostly annoyances. Fighting is samey and dumb because you can munch on steaks continuously. And this all leads to the beautiful environments feeling empty.
That said the Plateau is an incredible piece of design that the game spends the following 100 hours trying to replicate.
There are moments where the systems do work together (lightning strikes lighting grass on fire during a horse battle) but they are far between
Why would I argue with the facts?
Btw jeez this thread moves fast. Need to still think about a post to elaborate my dumb takes lol
Perhaps the way I originally worded it will be more clear.
Focusing on the American reception of JRPGs circa 2004-2012 is to anti-racism, what āCop Unionā is to worker solidarity.
If you just go fast with no consequences then where is the game?
Racing games also have obstacles, and the point is to go fast, nvm that the point of sonic is not to go fast.
Haste does look pretty cool btw.
okay no āyou have to unlock permission to do thisā and āyou have to personally develop the ability to pull this offā are not the same thing at all. iām not even gonna give that an imo qualifier theyāre completely different
unlock systems do ruin action games though (platformers are action games) youāre right about that part
its been a decade and iām still mad about doom 2016 going hog wild with em