Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Peculiar Persona 5 Royal - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Video Games Hosts Paul, Ryan and Josh are back and we’re bringing you the full break down of Persona 5 Royal. Paul was forced to play this legendary video game by legendary supporter AceofShame and now it’s time to see if the gamble paid off. Paul played for over 70hrs and we FINALLY get to hear his thoughts. Will this beloved JRPG video game land, or is this one just too far out there for Paul? Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: YayaArizona, Disratory, Cykasniber and Ole Jake Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am thou, thou art I, thou hast acquired a new vow. Hello fellow gamers, welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. Today is a very special deep dive as we will be talking about Persona 5, a game that is widely regarded as one of the best of all time. Also, one of the longest games ever made. We have so much to talk about today. I am your host, Paul. And joining me, it's not weird or creepy.

He just wants to commission a nude painting of a high school student. It's Josh. I don't like this introduction at all i protest i aren't though i'll protest this intro oh you deny the charges yeah i sure do it wasn't me so oh it would be weird or creepy yeah high school students okay all right all right i i got some thoughts this is this is a little bit of a weird game, guys. All right. And then joining Josh and me, he's paying his homeroom teacher to clean his room. She's calling a master and asking him if there are any other services he would like. It's Ryan. Whoa, whoa.

You guys didn't tell me it was this kind of game. Wait a minute. How can Ryan get the- At least Ryan's an adult. Why does Ryan get the totally normal intro and I get the weird one? I don't know that that's totally normal. Oh my goodness, guys. Japanese games, Vander.

Thanks, Ace. Yeah, thank you, Ace. The Japanese are not afraid to get weird with this series. That's all I know. All right, before we jump into our deep dive content, Josh, I think you've got a show review to read. I do. This one comes in from Pastor Pasta and it's titled Quickly Has Become My Fave. And it reads, I recently found this podcast and it has become one of my top two gamer podcasts along with IGN GameScoop. What sets this apart though,

is it's done by three normal gamers and not by people working in the industry. Their analysis is great as they are true fans. I also very much appreciate the fact that they keep the conversation appropriate and don't devolve into a bunch of F-bombs like so many other gamer podcasts. Also, as a gaming dad,

I love that they are all dads as well. This is a must listen every week. All right. Oh, thank you, Pastor Pasta. What a nice review. A little ironic, talking about how clean we are, given today's intro. Hey, maybe this was not the episode to read that one, but it's not us. It's the game.

So that's true. Very true. Yeah. All right. Persona five. Josh, why don't you tell the people why we're covering this game today? Well, we are covering this game because one of our great friends that we have met through this podcast, Ace of Shame. He's been around for a very long time.

We love Ace. Decided, you know what? I want to have Paul put his money where his mouth is. Uh, Paul has claimed that story and character development and things like that are his favorite parts of gaming and make for the most memorable games. Uh, and so ACE said, Paul, I'm putting you to the test. He said, I want to see if an incredible story will carry a game for you that maybe isn't your type of game under other circumstances. If you want to hear all about that, we did the pre-dive

episode on that, why Ace picked Paul and kind of Paul's initial thoughts before he started playing Persona 5. But because of Ace going legendary and picking this game for paul that is why we are here talking about it yeah so we owe a huge thank you to ace of shame he also commissioned a local artist to make one of the coolest things i've ever seen i think it's awesome this did not make any sense to me when we first opened the envelopes because i knew nothing about persona 5 and ace actually sent me a calling card which works into uh how the game functions and this is so cool now in hindsight at the time i was like why did they send me like a ransom letter because that's just you know what it looks like yeah like do i need to call the police uh no but yeah how how incredibly clever and we are very thankful for you, Ace. We also owe shout outs to some other Patreon supporters.

We actually had three people sign up within like a two-day window. So we want to say thank you so much to Clint Brazer, Susanna Cook, and an apple named Jack. All three of them signed up with rare status. So we want to say a huge thank you to them as well. Yeah, thank you. Yes, thank you to them as well. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for supporting the show.

If you're listening, if you've been listening for a while and you love what we do, think about just saying thanks with some support. You can do that over at MultiplayerSquad.com. It really does mean the world to us. It helps this podcast be the best that it can be. We absolutely love games. We love the community that we have with everybody that's been listening to the show. We're continuing to grow and do

incredible things. I mean, it's really been an awesome journey. But if you feel inclined to say, hey, I want to be a part of that or help out, head on over to MultiplayerSquad.com and we give you a lot of perks back. Bonus episodes, early access, ad free, all that good stuff too. It's just a way of saying thanks. I don't know if you guys do or not either but when the emails pop up and we i see a new supporter come on through patreon i don't even look at the amount or anything i always just get so excited and then i think man i hope because a lot of times they'll they'll after that they hop into the discord and i just i love seeing it grow and it always just makes my day that much better right off the bat you know seeing that come through and then they hop in and we can all say welcome.

So everyone, if you're out there too, hop in the Discord. Awesome community. Everybody gets, you know, especially lately, we've all been hopping into the voice channels and playing games together. So really cool and it's growing. Same thing as the pod, family friendly. So yeah, hop in. Yeah, it's a fantastic Discord server.

We'd love to have you all in there. All right. So let's go ahead and start talking about persona 5 royal we'll start out by reading a description of the game on steam as we always do don the mask and join the phantom thieves of hearts as they stage grand heists infiltrate the minds of the corrupt and make them change their ways all right so ace decided that i would be the one to play this. We actually recorded our pre-dive a very long time ago because we knew how long this game was. Ryan, you were off the hook. You did not have to play this game at all. Josh decided to jump in and play a little bit actually before I even knew what game was selected.

Josh put in about a dozen hours ahead of time uh but ryan i know at the same time you wanted to know a little bit about this game so what did you end up doing in prep for this episode uh so i watched a good bit of um just kind of story explanation videos can it kind of get a gist of it with a game that's you know clocking 100 150 hours i figured i might want to get a little bit of an overview and not deer in headlights the whole way so i watched a good bit of that some gameplay uh how the combat system works and all that and honestly we ended up me and my son you know and on the good parts you know we watched uh for quite a while almost as if it was like an

anime so um i definitely kind of got a good overview of the overall story, and it is wild. It is a little wild. Josh, you gave it the good old college try, and I know this is going to sound very weird, but despite you playing 12 hours, it really does barely scratch the surface of this game. Yeah, it's really weird because I was really proud of myself

for those 12 hours. I surprised you guys by saying, hey, I've been playing this. I am a huge fan of anime. My daughter and I both really enjoy anime. We watch it together. So I enjoy that just by itself. I also generally really love turn-based combat, which this game has as well. I like RPGs. So there was a lot that this game kind of had on offer for me in the beginning. I will say that I played the 12 hours and like I always do, I kind of put this game down for other things. I had every intention of the world of coming back to it for a little while and then I just never did. And then my brain went, yeah yeah we're done with that and so i didn't play any more than 12 hours but it at least

gave me a pretty good idea of like the mechanics of the game the characters in the game kind of the setup and then i found out that 12 hours is basically the tutorial for the game and then the game really takes off after that and so there's a part of me that went, dang it, did I miss like the really good stuff? I guess we're going to find out, Paul, because you're going to kind of tell us. Yeah, exactly. And I will say this too. Ryan and I have had many a conversation lately about like, do you think Paul likes it? I don't know, man. I think he might not like it. Like there's like, this game's not Paul's type of game. And then it's like, I don't know, man, he really put in a lot of time on it. Maybe he does like it, you know?

So Ryan and I have no idea what Paul thinks about this game. So all the listeners are going to find out right along with us, kind of how this landed. Um, I know ACE is probably also a little bit nervous cause it's like, he really wants you to like this game, but he also understood that this was a big gamble making Paul play this. So I think I'm as excited as the listeners, honestly, to find out at this point. Well, and I did say that I tend to not like Eastern Asian video games very much.

Japanese RPGs tend to not click with me and I'm not huge on turn-based combat. So that was kind of like what's going to win out with this game. Now my save file is that 70 hours. Okay. I, I put in literally as much time as I possibly could on this game to where my wife,

Nikki said multiple times, you're still playing that game. Like how much of that game have you played? She just kept calling it the weird game. Cause I would only tell her, yeah, I would only tell her about the weird stuff, you know, but oh my goodness. Yeah. What a game. So Josh, based on the 12 hours that you played, which was all the way through the first palace, kind of like, how would you describe overall? What is persona five Royal for someone who has never even heard of the series? It is a Japanese RPG that is anime-based. If I had to boil it down to its most basic component, that's how I would describe the game. It's got a lot of cut scenes and character conversations

and things that are all very anime-based. If you're a fan of that, you'll pick that up right away. That was one of the first things that stood out to me. The art style in this game is honestly pretty incredible. Whether the game lands for you or not, I think the art style in this game definitely sets it apart from just about everything else out there. And then, you know, it is classically a JRPG. You have turn-based combat. You have these really kind of fantastical creatures and characters and abilities. JRPGs tend to be very complex in a lot of mechanics and combat situations, and they kind of just build on things over time. that stood out in my 12 hours was the time based. And I saw somebody, I saw somebody mentioned this and they said, somebody was asking questions about persona and trying to wrap their head

around it. And somebody said, is this the first time you've ever played a time based JRPG or a, like a date? I forget exactly how they said it, but like the days of the week and the time that passes in this game apparently matters a lot because you can only do certain things during certain days of the week. And if you miss that opportunity, it's gone now. And again, Paul will probably be able to explain

this a little bit better, but I remember just thinking like, this is weird, but my initial impressions were super cool art style, very JRPG, very anime very anime yeah that's definitely all spot on anything you would add on top of that ryan based on what you saw um i i will i will say uh from everything i've watched like i said i kind of watched it as an anime um just watching a playthrough i was gonna cosplay as drake for the fan fusion we're going to. I may just wear a robe and underwear now. Oh, oh, it's Kamoshida.

In the first, in the first palace dude in a crown. Also, we might get kicked out. So yeah, we probably will get kicked out, but the wide open robe highlighting the chest. I'm not the hairiest man.

So I may have to get some fake hair to put on my chest. But, um, no, it was, yeah, every, pretty much everything josh said

was was pretty spot on with that it's just and i'm like you paul usually turn-based kind of japanese style rpgs aren't my on my style but watching it the way i did i you know i thought it was pretty cool so far yeah what i would add on top of that is that persona 5 is kind of a mash-up of multiple games Whenever you're doing the combat, whether that's in the castles or in mementos, that's a little more traditional Japanese RPG. You also have these entire long chunks of time where it's basically a high school simulator. And so you're running around managing your relationships with the different teachers and the different students. So there's a lot of that involved, which I did not expect. And there's almost a little dash of Pokemon in

there in how you deal with the actual personas. And we'll talk a little bit about what that means later, but you are capturing and collecting and upgrading personas, different personas. You put on a different mask. They let you do different abilities, hence the name of the game. So there's a lot to talk about here. So I think whenever you're a game that ends up being 100 plus hours and they're throwing such a weird, crazy mashup at you, there's a lot to like, but there's also a lot to possibly criticize. So I think for every individual player, your mileage may vary where you could very well love half this game and absolutely hate the other

half. And I think a lot of people are going to fall down on different sides of that coin. The only other thing I'll add where you were talking about the art style and everything, Josh, this game packs more style per square minute than any game I've ever seen. Every little thing in this game is maxed out with style. Even just hitting pause, or even when you're in certain menus, like if you're talking to the doctor, to Kemi, and you're switching between buying medicine or buying accessories, like it'll switch where she'll, you see a silhouette of her in the background. And when you switch over, she like uncrosses her legs and then faces the other direction. And you get these sound effects. Even every time you just travel anywhere, it'll cut to where people are walking in the streets

and then you're on the subway. Like every little thing you do in this game just oozes style. And I think that some of that stuff is absolutely incredible because of how good the art is. And I'll even talk about some specific situations where that comes up. You can tell the production of this game is second to none. Whether it really resonates with you, not everybody likes anime. I get that, right? It like, you know, not everybody likes super flashy things. And honestly,

when, before I started playing this game, I remember looking at it and I remember thinking like, I'm not sure this is really my like style of, you know, the way I would go on something. It's, you know, it's very red and flashy and the, even the fonts in the game are really kind of out there. And, you know, I, I get that that could the, even the fonts in the game are really kind of out there. And, you know, I, I get that that could be a little bit off-putting to somebody to just kind of say, oh, that's really cool, but it's not my style, but you can't deny the production value of this game and how much attention to detail that went into this, you know, as far as that goes, like maybe it doesn't, it's not your thing,

but you know, Ryan wearing sleeveless muscle shirts, isn't really my thing, you know, but it works for Ryan, you know? So it's kind of like the, like, it works for you, man. It would not work for me in that case, but there is something just kind of special about how they present this game to the world that you have to appreciate. Even if it doesn't land for you, you can't look at it and go, eh, that's not that good. It's fantastic. Yeah. Even the video I was watching, it goes through and the guy pops up the menu and he starts scrolling. He goes, oh, do you hear that?

You hear that noise? He's like, sounds like a crisp pen click. and i was like that that is kind of nice i'm like man that you know even just the scrolling noise from you know the menu was good so i definitely get what you're saying with that it was it looked really sharp yeah from the music to the sound effects to the visual effects this game is highly unforgettable in that regard. All right. Now the story itself, I would say it kind of takes a while to explain the whole story of this game. I was kind of curious to hear this from your take, Josh, and even yours, Ryan, in watching early footage. It has been so long since I played the opening chapters

that I pulled up a video of a full 100% playthrough. I totally forgot about huge chunks in the early game, but it's up to you guys, whoever kind of wants to talk about it. But just tell me a little bit, like, what do you remember about like the structure of the story? And what would you say this game is actually about? Dude, initially I'm like, oh, cool. Anime. I'm down. I like it. The characters are over the top. And, you know, okay, yeah, it's kids going to school. You know, oh, this one kid, people don't like him. This other guy is getting picked on. I mean, we've all been in high school. I remember, man, like my family moved all the time. So I actually had to go to like three different high schools. And I remember trying to like make friends the first day and things like

that. And there's this weird awkwardness of high school. And I was like, they kind of nailed this part of it, to be honest. And then this game just gets dark, man. Like it gets dark pretty quick. Like you're playing a kid that nobody likes, has a history. And so everybody's kind of judging you for that right off the top. You are sent to go live with your uncle. Is it your uncle? I don't know. Some guy that owns a cafe. He doesn't want you there, but he's at least willing to let you live there.

Provided- With a lot of threats. Yeah, with a lot of threats, right? You definitely don't feel welcome. And I kind of feel bad for the main character right away. And then, like I said, there's the struggles of meeting people and the friends that you make and hey you better have good friends not these bad guys you know don't fall in with the wrong crowd and that kind of stuff and then the game just gets dark i mean

it instantly starts diving into some pretty difficult subject matter with like this Kama Shida guy who is the PE teacher and he starts acting really awkward to some of the students and you befriend one of the students. And it just, that's when I was kind of like, yo, like what's going on here, man? This is not just your average happy-go-lucky go kill the bad sorcerer guy off in the castle type game. Yeah, no, this dives right into teachers, physically abusing, sexually abusing students. There's a suicide attempt by a student within the opening hours. I mean, this game is not afraid to hold back. That's for sure. What's interesting is that the game actually starts in the middle of the story where you kind of get like your initial tutorial. You're playing as a dude named Joker. You've got a whole bunch

of people talking to you through the comms and they're kind of like walking you through this big heist at a casino. But then once you finally make your way outside, you're ambushed and there's a ton of people waiting for you. You get captured. They tell you someone has sold you out. And then you basically get brought to an interrogation room. And then here's where you're being interrogated by a prosecutor. And then the game rewinds and goes back to the beginning of the story where you're starting out at your new high school, staying with your new mentor because you've been kicked out of your old school. Turns out that all of it is unfounded. As the story goes on, you end up learning that you didn't do anything wrong, but someone in a place of power falsely has you accused of being violent. So you get evicted from your school. Now you're starting fresh. Everyone knows that

this happens. So all the adults in this game treat you pretty terribly from the beginning on i would say as a whole no game has ever had meaner adults toward children than this game and then basically you end up kind of like sort of waking up in the middle of the night you're in a weird place called the Velvet Room. There's this dude named Igor, who I guess is in the other Persona games. He starts talking to you about how you're going to go through rehabilitation, and he's got quests for you, and you're going to do all this stuff. He says that you're in this place that's halfway between the real world and the dreaming world. And you get an app put on your

phone, which I don't know that it necessarily makes a whole lot of sense. But basically, if you activate this app and a certain person, and by having certain keywords, it will allow you to enter the metaverse where you are basically almost like the movie Inception. You can go inside that person's cognition, and you can go through, and you can find what they care about, and then you can change that, and in effect, you are, quote, stealing their heart and changing the way they feel about something. And so basically, as time goes on, you realize that you can do this, you start recruiting more people to your ranks, and you are known as the Phantom Thieves. So kind of the whole point of this game is, over time, changing the hearts of crooked adults

and trying to bring about revolution, essentially, is, I would say, overall what the game is. All right, let's go ahead and take our short break, and then we'll come back and talk a little bit more about story. All right, there is one last thing I should mention about story is that at the same time your character, Joker, arrives in the city, which is supposed to be Tokyo, I believe, there have been a lot of instances of people who have been like mentally checking out and then causing major accidents. So there's like a guy who's driving a subway train. He basically more or less loses consciousness, crashes, and like a hundred plus people die or get hurt. And there's a lot of instances of this happening. At the same time,

you're figuring out how you can interact in the metaverse and change people's hearts. And let's just say, I don't think this is a major spoiler, but these storylines are connected. And so over time, these are going to shed light as you play through more and more of the game. And I thought it was a really clever idea for a game. It was certainly unlike the story of any other game I've ever played. Um, like, what do you guys think?

Do you guys think this is like a clever idea for a story or does it not really jive with you? I think it is. I think, um, I, I do tend to these kind of, uh,

cartoons or movies where just kids come in and somehow save the day. Always kind of make me roll my eyes you know we were just my son we're watching avatar um the airbender for like the fifth time through but a bunch of 12 year olds running around that can beat all these grown-ups that have been airbending or firebending or whatever forever so that always kind of makes me just uh but i mean with the way they have it set up where they're going after adults it kind of fits and it works i think they have they set it up and kind of made the whole premise. I did appreciate how they did that.

So I do think it kind of works. I just remember like hating Kamoshida. I said this in the pre-dive too when I kind of gave, you know, some of a little peak of what I had seen so far. And I was communicating with Ace because he wanted to know what I thought for my little bit of play time on it. And I was communicating with Ace because he wanted to know what I thought for my little bit of playtime on it. And I just remember saying,

this game does a really good job of making you care about the characters or hate the characters. And any game that can do that is going to draw you into its story. Because how many times have we looked at an actor in a movie and gone, I hate that guy. Oh, yeah. That's a good actor. That's a good story at that point. You know, and it's like if they can make you feel that way about the character that they're playing or the story that's being told, that's gripping. That is like a positive to that. And so I think this game does a very good job of roping you into

the situations, roping you into the characters. And from what I have heard, because again, I stopped after the first castle and dealing with Kamoshida and stuff. I remember talking to Ace and he went, if you hate that guy, dude, you are going to really have your socks blown off with how this game progresses in the story and the other characters that you come across. And I just went, I mean, I don't know, man, I really hated that guy. I can't imagine like feeling stronger than that. But apparently they, they nail that with the story and the plot of this game and kind of how it progresses forward. Yeah. There's a lot of scumbags that need their hearts changed in this game. Let's just say that. All right, let's move on and talk a little bit about combat. And I will say that kind of

shockingly, there's a lot to talk about here. The combat system is actually quite deep. So I kind of mentioned this before. There's two main areas you fight. It's inside the castles where you are actively changing one person's heart. And there is also time that you are fighting down in mementos, which is kind of like a castle for the heart of the public or the people at large. Sometimes you're down there and you can change individual people's hearts. But these are the two places that you're fighting. And the way it works is you start running around these areas as a group of phantom thieves running through. And you basically navigate the area. You have a little mini map. You can kind of see the layout. You're running your way around. Sometimes it's like a maze. Sometimes there are mini puzzles that you have to solve to get into the next area. like a maze. Sometimes there are mini puzzles that you have to solve to get into the next area. And throughout these areas, there are enemies patrolling. And so you can choose to try to stealth or sneak your way past enemies. You can also ambush them where you get a leg up in the combat, or they can find you and they'll start chasing after you. And

if they get too close, then it goes into combat mode like you would expect from any turn-based combat game. Once combat does start, you have your group of four. So you have yourself, Joker, who can change personas and has a wide array of abilities. And then you have three teammates and you can swap them out in between fights. And actually, even later in the game, you can swap them during fights, but you have to earn that ability. And then the enemy will... So you see only one person on the screen while you're running around the map. And when combat starts, then you might fight anywhere from like one to five enemies. And it is basically you and

your personas against the enemy's persona. So he might pop out into three different enemy types, and maybe there's two of this, one of this, two of the other, and then you basically start fighting them. Now, your characters have your HP meter, which is very standard, and you have your SP meter, which allows you to perform different spells. And there are some abilities at the cost of HP. And so you've got stuff that you might expect, like you've got one character named Yusuke, and he's got ice abilities. You've got Morgana, who is a cat, or is he? It's kind of a running joke throughout the game where he constantly yells, I'm not a cat and like he will cast healing abilities or wind abilities but what's really interesting is that a lot of these things your enemies will

either be uh resistant to certain types of abilities they will completely block other kinds sometimes they deflect certain types of damage back on you there are times that i killed myself because i would cast a super mega you know ability against the enemy it gets deflected and now i'm dead you know so they do work together in ways like that but what makes persona 5 so different because if it was just that i would say that's like a pretty standard rpg combat they've also got debuffs with things like putting an enemy to sleep or making them confused or dizzy. You know, there's all that kind of stuff that you would expect. What makes Persona 5's combat different is that if you hit an enemy to something that they're weak to, they will get knocked down. And anytime you knock down

an enemy, it pops up giving you one more turn. Now you can just choose to now do another attack, or you can baton pass where you now are passing that extra turn to a teammate, but now it gives them a bunch of power-ups because you are using teamwork. And so next thing you know, you're knocking down one enemy, pass the baton to a teammate, they knock down an enemy, they baton pass again, and you can start to chain these abilities together once you figure out what enemies are weak to what. But then taking things even further, if you knock down all the enemies and they're all down at once, your team will rush up on and start talking to those enemies. And you can choose to negotiate and let them retreat where you get money or you get an item, or you can do what's called an all-out attack,

which is my favorite. You select that. It cuts to a little animated cut scene where they're going super Saiyan on the enemy. And then if they all die, it to a really cool like end of combat card that has like a kill bill style animation where all the enemies have like over the top like blood spurting out and you'll have like morgana smoking a cigar and it'll say mission accomplished or something like that and that's just like a little example of all the style that is in the game. And I just thought that that was really clever and really neat. I've never really seen a game rely on knocking enemies over and then finishing them off that way, which I thought was actually quite clever. Yeah. I remember kind of hopping into this and I generally like turn-based combat. I like the strategic aspect

that it gives you to kind of plan out your turn. Oh man, my, you know, this guy's almost dead. I've got to have my healer heal him or the, you know, this enemy's almost dead. Do I just have everybody attack and hope that I can take him out before, you know, he hits me or something like that? Um, so I generally really enjoy the tactical nature of turn-based combat. And I, again, all of this is coming from somebody that's only played 12 hours in a hundred hour game, you know, but I remember in the beginning thinking like this combat kind of sucks. It seemed very simplistic. I, you know, I, I get the whole like persona thing, but it was really weird because it's like, as Joker is the main character, you can switch your persona on the fly, like in combat, but then the other people have their kind of locked in personas.

And I just remember thinking like, everybody had like three abilities. I could cast a very weak wind spell, a very weak lightning spell or a debuff to bring down the attack power of an enemy but like in the beginning everything was so easy that i was just buzzsawing through everything and i was like well what's the point of having all these skills and these different things like why would i want to debuff something if i'm just going to kill it in two turns anyway and then they start introducing

the baton pass and the high fives and the and you know all these layers that they're kind of putting on there and i just remember going like what's the point like this is neat i like the fact that instead of just taking that extra swing i can pass that to the guy down the line but i wasn't far enough in the game for that to matter you know and i remember thinking is this game to get hard at some point? Am I going to have to rely on this strategy to beat a fight? And in the first castle, you do come across more powerful characters. Your characters warn you like, watch out! That guy's really strong. And it's like, oh, okay, well, here's a challenge. But then it wasn't really.

But then I remember fighting the boss, Kamoshida, and I got my butt whooped the first time. And then I was like, ooh, like, okay. Okay. Yeah, but it's just weird to me to have all these systems. And again, I was a newbie to this. So, Paul, maybe you can answer this question. It's neat to have all these systems and these handoffs and these group attacks. If you can knock everybody down.

I thought the negotiation part was really cool because you can say, hey, join me. And if you can convince them, you get that enemy as a persona at that point. And then you can level them up and you get their skills and that kind of thing. And I thought that was really neat. But I just kind of went, does any of this matter? Like, does combat actually get to that point? So Paul, I'm asking you, like, does it get hard enough that you need to actually use all this or is it just flavor if you want to go down that route? A lot of it is flavor. Now I will say, as you level up all those characters, instead of having

only three abilities, you end up having like a good eight and you have a lot of choice over that. So as personas level up, it'll say you've unlocked this ability. Do you want to delete one of the others and add it? Or do you just want to delete this new one? And then you end up having tons of options. Now, difficulty wise, this game is kind of all over the place. I'm assuming in your 12 hours, Josh, you never died other than maybe to the Kamoshida boss. Yeah, I don't think I ever got party wiped by anything other than Kamoshida. And you guys know, again, this is my personal preference. You guys know I like challenging and difficult combat. If I feel like I'm just steamrolling through everything, it almost gets to the point where it's like, I just want to fast forward, which you can do in Persona 5,

which I was like, oh, kudos to you guys, man. This is great. But it just kind of takes away that aspect that I really enjoy. And so on the one hand, I recognize, hey, this was just basically a very drawn out tutorial. But to be fair, this was 12 hours of game time where I only ever died when I fought the main boss of the first 12 hours. So it was a little bit of like, this is a little disappointing, but I can also see that later on this game will probably get a lot more complex and you'll need to know this stuff. So early on in the game, you're mostly just, okay, I've never fought this enemy. Let me just test different abilities until I find what it's weak to. And that's basically all you're doing, rinse and repeat. You really are at no risk of dying early on. And then every time you finish a castle, there's a major boss to fight. And those bosses

are 20 times harder than anything else you fight in this game. So it's very common to just kind of steamroll stuff. Now they do start adding new elements. So like, for example, when you do the first castle, all the enemies that are patrolling the area are very slow. They're kind of dumb. They're easy to run around. But then you start doing, I think it was the third castle where there's a mob boss that's extorting children. And then it adds in guard dogs. So now patrolling, you have dogs that are more likely to see you and they're faster and they're more alert. And so it kind of raises the difficulty slightly, but still, for the most part, the combat is incredibly easy on normal difficulty, but some of the bosses are

really hard. For the bosses, it's mostly, okay, now I have figured out what they do. Now I understand when they get to this part of the fight, they go into phase two and they're going to do this. And there are times that you have to have everyone guard. Otherwise they'll die because you're going to take so much damage. But I will say that the difficulty is very odd because this game is pretty much almost always a one out of 10 on difficulty. And then on occasion, you'll fight mini bosses that are like a seven out of 10. And then some of the bosses will be like an eight and a half out of 10. But once you crack the code, usually you can get through it pretty easily.

Is there ways to change the difficulty? Like was, would you guys play it on normal or yeah, in the beginning, I think they give you like four choices and mine was the second hardest. I didn't put it on hard right away. Cause I was like, this game's already a hundred plus hours.

So I really want to like add a bunch of death, but do kind of wish i played on on the hardest difficulty i think that's the one knock you often see is that the game's just too easy does that tend to like when you're going through there kind of lull you to sleep with those easy kind of guys and then you get to the main guy okay a little bit for sure yeah what's wild is there's still so much more about combat that we could talk about i mean we're not going to get into all the nitty-gritty but every character has a gun which is one of my favorite things so you can always just resort back to just swinging with a physical weapon or using your gun now you only get one clip for every time you go into combat so you can only use it once but every character has like a different type of gun. So like Ryuji's got a shotgun and it's got four shots. And then on has

like SMGs that has, I don't know, like 12 bullets and you have to keep pressing space bar to activate it. And it's really satisfying because you can switch targets in between, uh, unless it's the SMG, that one will just like randomly uh attack someone and you just keep clicking through using all those abilities there's also a ton of combos so like for example if you light an enemy on fire you can then hit that enemy with wind and it's going to detonate and spread to the other enemies there's stuff like that. That's very cool. You start fighting shadow enemies. So shadow enemies are stronger. And if you fight and kill a shadow enemy, it'll give you an item and then it explodes causing AOE damage to the rest of the party. So that starts coming into play as well.

Who am I going to attack and kill first? And then the last thing I have to mention, this is my absolute favorite part of persona 5 i had to send you guys a video as soon as i unlocked it dude the showtime combos in this game are out of this world uh you don't even unlock the mechanic until i think about 20 25 hours into the game but do you guys remember when i linked that video in our discord and said you guys have to watch this oh yeah yeah it's over the top dude it's crazy super over the top like it's almost reminiscent of like the final fantasy summons where you know it's just this crazy cut scene animation over the top thing. Like, I mean, I think a lot of JRPGs like this,

but the closest thing is probably like a Final Fantasy summons where it's just this, it's over the top. That's the best way to put it. Yeah. And I love over the top action. Like one of my favorite movies is shoot them up with Clive Owen. I don't know if you guys have ever seen that movie. One of my favorite scenes is where he unbuckles his seatbelt, intentionally rams head on with another cargo van. And as he's in the air, he shoots out their windshield, flies into their car, turns around and shoots everyone and says so much for wearing your seatbelt.

Just like really cheesy action like that. That's like what these Showtime combos are like. So as you're playing the game, at one point, Morgana, who is the cat, who's got a huge crush on Ann, even though it's Ann, they pronounce it Ann. This game pronounces all names weird. Jose is pronounced Jose. Stuff like that is all throughout this game. So Morgana has a huge crush on Ann, and they tell you at one point that they've been working on this idea for a combo.

And so the first time you unlock it, at least on PC, you press Z and it activates their Showtime. And it cuts to like an entire cut scene where Morgana is like, here, these are for you, and holds out a bouquet of roses. Ann is like, oh, thank you so you so much sticks her hands into the bouquet

pulls out two submachine guns starts spinning in a circle at 100 miles an hour then they jump 100 feet in the air morgana pulls out a bomb and then chucks it at the enemy and then they hit the ground you get a whole bunch of jiggle physics from on because, I mean, why not? And then it causes massive damage to the enemy. And the first time I saw it, I was like, this is the funniest thing I have ever seen in a video game. And I could not wait to go into combat again so I could activate another Showtime. And then as you play the game more and more, you unlock more and more of these combos. I mean, another one that's hysterical is where Yusuke and Ryuji team up for a showtime.

And it cuts to where Yusuke is cooking a beef bowl. And he's like, I pour my soul into this bowl. And then Ryuji starts eating it. And he's like, this is fantastic. And then they're in a restaurant. And then the door opens and you see the enemy and ryuji's like get out of here dumb a and then throws a grenade and then yusuke shoots it with a gun and they explode and i'm just like oh my gosh and then the game even pokes fun at it because the first time i ever did that morgana is like this is ridiculous so like they'll even say that

in the game poking fun at how ridiculous the Showtime combos are but what a delight man the Showtime abilities are just chef's kiss it is the perfect stylization to add on to this already massive Sunday of combat that Persona 5 gives you it's this goes into the production the over the topness the art style i mean all this stuff's bananas dude i just actually watched the video of the of them eating in the cafe and the enemy busting through the door like it's so great this is fantastic man like how can you watch this and not just be like okay this is one of the greatest things in a game this is an attack this is you're fighting guys you know it's like so i'd love that they inject this bit of like crazy humor this over the top anime type stuff that's why i said like if you

are a fan of anime it's kind of hard to not appreciate the heck out of what persona does uh because they do it so well i mean you can tell this is the root of this game i like the fact that they take these real world dark issues and inflect those because so that you care i mean these are you know things that people face in life and things like that but to mix all this stuff together really just puts it together in this kind of perfect package you know with in in regards to like presentation of the game yeah all right well let's go ahead and take a short break and then we'll come back and talk about some of the other weird things in persona 5 all right so one thing that I want to talk a little bit about is the Velvet Room. So this is like the room I mentioned earlier, that's kind of like in between the real world and the dreaming

world. What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? You go and visit Igor, and it gives you a whole bunch of options for things you can do with your personas. And again, these are things that... This game is so long. Like, in the beginning, you only have access to one type of execution of your personas,

which is the guillotine. And so, I don't know how they came up with this system. It's part of like the darkness of persona it's very creepy and weird but in the velvet room you can use a guillotine on two of your personas and it's going to kill them both but then their essences will fuse together and create a new persona that's like more powerful and of a different type. And so you can actually go into the guillotine menu. You can choose to just add two things and see what comes out, or you can sort by result and it'll show you, okay, I can create this kind of persona. It's going to use this persona and the other one.

Do I want to actually now fuse these together or not? And then after, I don't know, a couple dozen hours, you get to unlock the next thing, which is, I believe, the electric chair. And so you can actually kill off one of your personas and it'll give you a powerful item. And then I think I just unlocked it after like 55 hours of gameplay. I unlocked the gallows And the gallows is where you can just straight up strengthen one persona by killing off another. So instead of it being fuse, where you get a new type like the guillotine, you're going to keep a type, sacrifice another persona to make it more powerful. And then on top of all this, kind of randomly over the course of time, because every day your calendar changes and there are all kinds of things that come into effect. If it's raining, or if it's a heat wave,

that changes the enemy strength and mementos, things like that. Every once in a while, it'll set off alarms in the Velvet Room, where you get especially powerful fusions and power-ups with your personas. But if you try to do too many, then it'll backfire. And so the fact that they worked all of this into the game is pretty remarkable. I mean, a lot of the game is like balancing your personas because you want to make sure you have at least one of every attack type. Because if I face an enemy that's weak to nuclear power, I want to make sure I at least have one character that can do nuclear power. So that was always my goal with Joker, having a wide range of personas. That way,

I could do every single attack type at least once. I think moving on, we should probably talk about the castles a little bit more. So we talked a little bit about this first castle but let's talk a little bit more about like kamishida as a character and kind of like the aesthetics of the castle like what's going on like ryan if you only watch cut scenes i'm kind of curious to hear how this like came across but like how would you describe what you saw of what's going on with Kamoshida? If you saw much, which maybe you didn't. Not a ton because it didn't show a lot of like the before stuff. But I mean, even the battle when they're in the castle with the knights and everything, you know, he's just he's got those big yellow eyes and just crazy wild uh just kind of one of those crazy wild enemies that is is wild and boisterous and and wild so it was um definitely came off i i immediately like the

way he acted in the way very pompous and and just he because he ruled it there he ruled the school or whatever so yeah i immediately started to get those vibes of like i just want to i want to kill this guy. I wasn't playing it, but I wanted to be like, I wish I was kind of playing now so I could just kill this guy. So yeah, it definitely just gives those creep crazy vibes that you instantly want to just take them out. I will say, number one, I hate Kamoshida. But number two, when you're introduced to him in the school and he's the PE teacher, I mean, this dude's fit, he's tall, he's handsome. He's an Olympic winner. Yeah, he's an Olympic winner. And so he's kind of got it going on. This is the way that they present him is here's a guy that's kind of got it going on. He's got things together and you kind of want to be like him almost.

But then the game starts to kind of show you his true nature and where this, and I don't think we've talked about this, but what the game does, and I don't, again, I don't know if this carries through, I'm going to assume it does, but you see his real world persona, right? And then you get to see like how he views himself. and that's kind of the neat thing about this game is when we talk about going into kamishita's castle it's like you're almost going into his personal psyche um and the way that like he looks at himself and what his like personal desires are and things like that i'm gonna be going to be honest with you. They ain't good. Yeah. You know, in that regard. But the game does a good job of presenting those in a way that makes you kind of like, not just cringe the whole time, if that makes sense. Like the game presents it and says, listen, this is how he looks at himself and how he looks at other people,

unfortunately. And it does it to where it's gross, but you're not completely grossed out to where you're like, I don't play this game anymore. And so I have to give them props for that as well. But that's where you start to see his inner workings and how he views people in the world. And that's where you start to just go like, dude, I hate this guy. And so I love that dichotomy because that's everybody in the world, right? We all have a way that we present ourselves to people. And then we have that inner voice inside of us that says whatever it says. Oh, that wasn't funny. I'm not cool. These things, these things. Or, haha, I'm the best person ever. You know?

And so I like that the game kind of addresses that and how they address it. And with Kamoshida particularly, it just makes you hate this guy. Yeah. You get that view behind the curtain and you get to see warts and all. And yeah, in the case of Kamoshida, his castle is like the castle of lust because of how he views his female students. The first time you see him, he's hitting on Anne or on and on even mentions at certain times that like he's telling her to come over and you know what that means. Like you never see anything terribly graphic, but you always hear about it.

And so you can kind of tell like, oh, this has been going on a long time. He's been exerting that power over on and she feels trapped and stuff has happened. And so you see in Kamoshida's castle where he is dressed like a king, like Ryan mentioned, he's got the robe with his,

you know, bursting chest sticking out. He's got the robe with his you know bursting chest sticking out he's got the red heart underwear which is like very cartoony yeah he has a a cognition of of on who's basically wearing nothing she's like his trophy girl inside the castle and he's ordering all the students around so even though they're not real students it's just in his mind he is torturing students and like working them really hard so they're actually real students. It's just in his mind. He is torturing students and working them really hard. So they're actually being abused. And then at the end of the castle, he's kind of turned into like a sloppy wino ordering students to come out and kick soccer balls at you, which is kind of

funny. So he's not even going to fight you himself he's like bringing in the students along with it it's actually very uh interesting to see and something that's very clever is that the the original seven castles are all based on the seven deadly sins so kamishidas is lust but then the other castles they reflect something like greed pride wrath gluttony which i thought was actually a really clever structure to the castles and then since i played royal they added some additional ones as well oh i should also mention that inside each of the castles if you roam around enough you'll find three will seeds that are hidden and if you find all three will seeds they actually combine to make an item and then if you go down to mementos and find jose he will take that item and upgrade it further so you have this like synergy of all your gear getting better as you bounce back and forth

between all these different systems all right man this is such a big game i know we're kind of quickly running out of time all right so we've kind of talked about story we've talked about combat i haven't talked a whole lot about like the relationship building in this game and this is this is also i think a very special part of the game long story short you have all these different relationships with people that are called confidants there are a a total of 19 of them in Royal, and some of them will actually join you and be fellow Phantom Thieves. Others are maybe trustworthy adults that you end up having close relationships with over the course of the game. You can go out on activities with them, and that'll improve your relationship with them.

Every character has 10 ranks. And as you hit certain ranks, you unlock upgrades either in combat or in the world. Some are very simple. They just give you like a bigger health pool. Others will give you access to new accessories that you can buy, or new guns, things like that. And then you also have five skills in the game. So you have knowledge, kindness, guts, proficiency, and charm. And so when you go out on activities with your confidants, you level up your confidant rank. And oftentimes you're also upgrading one of those skills. Now you can also go out and do specific activities that'll raise those skills. Sometimes it's very funny. Like, for example, to increase your guts, you can go to the burger restaurant and attempt their

challenge to eat a massive burger within 30 minutes. And if you try it, you'll fail in the beginning because you don't have high enough skills, but it gives you guts. And so similarly, you can go, you develop this whole relationship with this disgraced doctor who thinks that she killed a patient, and now she's making homemade medication, and she's testing them out on you, a high school minor. And so that'll give you guts because you're willing to do these medical tests. So I think that's very funny. Sometimes you'll just watch a movie or play a video game and it'll tell you like, oh, that zombie game was really intense.

That increased your guts. And so over time, if you get enough, it'll pop up to the next skill ranking. And sometimes in order to do certain things, you have to get a rank to a certain skill. So for example, maybe a certain character is really sad and it'll say, oh, that person needs help. Maybe if my charm was rank three, I'd be able to help them out. And so then, you know, okay, I'll go work on my charm,

which you can increase by bathing, which is kind of funny. They're like, hey, look at you. You're taking care of yourself. You earned some charm. Now, some of the confidants in this game are very interesting. All right. We got to talk a little bit about Miss Kawakama, who I mentioned in the opening with Ryan's intro. She is your homeroom teacher. All right. Now, in the beginning of this game, pretty early on, you and two of your buddies decide, hey, let's call this like sexy maid service where they come and they'll clean your house in scantily clad outfits. And so the three of you work up the nerve to call in for the service. You place the order. Then as the doorbell rings, your two friends chicken out and they run off and they leave you alone. And so sure enough, it's your homeroom teacher. This is kind of similar to like Varsity Blues,

if you've ever seen that movie. All right. Miss Kawakami starts talking to you. Now, she can't see you because you've got your back to her and you're in the corner and she's calling you master. And she's like, now, you know, I provide a lot of additional services. Just tell me whatever you want. And then they realize that they know each other. And you would think this would put an end to things. It does not. You just keep calling her and she just shows up in the same outfit over and over. And she calls you master and cleans for you and you can profess your love for her. And you can keep working on that relationship with your homeroom teacher and she'll let you start skipping class. And if you get it high enough, she cares about you so much that she'll actually call you out of class while you're with other teachers, which then gives you more time to go work on your skills or go fight in

mementos or things like that, uh, during the day. So I would say it's a somewhat nebulous relationship with your homeroom teacher. Uh, I don't know that it's the most appropriate to be honest. I don't see anything. I don't see anything wrong with this.

Yeah. Nothing wrong with it. Being an academic is important. You know, focusing on your grades is important. Talk about bringing your schoolwork home. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Miss Kawakami. Interesting. Interesting choices. A transaction was made. He paid. He's going to get that house clean.

Yeah. I'll tell you what. This game is not ashamed to put adults with children and act like it's fine. Like at one point you're hanging out with a reporter and she runs into her boss and the boss is like, wait, is this your source for what you've been writing about? She's like,

no, this is my boyfriend. I just haven't talked about him because he's a minor. And I thought it might be a little weird. And then you're like, yeah, I'm, I i'm her boyfriend and i'm like going along with this lie and i'm like is this really like better than the truth in this game maybe things are a little different in japan i don't know i thought this was very strange but at the same time it always kept me on my toes i never i never knew what to expect in this game with each new scene.

All right, couple last things. You do have to take exams at school. So when you're sitting in class, they will give you lessons. You'll learn about all kinds of things about history and art. And then at the end of the semester, guess what? You are taking your exam. And based on your answers, it'll change how well you do on the test. I thought that was very funny. So there's a lot to talk about. I think

that's kind of a good stopping place as far as various mechanics. At this point, I thought it would kind of help if I just sort of summarized what I thought worked really well and what I thought was really lacking. And then you guys can feel free to jump in based on what you saw, Josh. First and foremost, the style of the game is incredible. I know we mentioned it a few times. You can't hit pause or do anything

without this game just hitting you with some kind of cool style. Hard to explain. Just watch some footage and I think you'll see exactly what we mean. The flair in the combat with the baton passes, the showtime abilities, absolutely incredible. The music of Persona 5 is among the best I've seen in gaming. There are common themes that will always play at the same time. So every day when you wake up in the morning,

it'll play the same song. Every day when I am in class, it plays the same song. And it adds an actually really cool atmospheric structure to the game. There is just a ton of different music, and I think all of it for the most part is fantastic. The story I thought was very interesting. it definitely can get dark at times but it's also like overly cartoony sometimes at the same time the villains in this game there's no there's no like gray morality in anything like the villains are very villainous they could not be more evil so it definitely makes you dislike them very easily. But generally speaking, it's a little one-dimensional, if that makes sense. So the

story, I think, in some ways works very good. Other times, it's a little confusing or it's a little bit all over the place. And it can just be really funny at times. I remember laughing out loud when I was playing a mission where people have been posting on the Phantom Thieves forum. They're like, there's a weird dude walking around the planetarium. He's creeping everyone out. He talks to himself. Someone should come check it out because I think this guy is dangerous. And so you go down to the planetarium with two of your buddies and you're like, all right, let's be on the lookout. Let's figure out if we can find this weirdo. Well, Yusuke, one of your party members is there, and he's walking around, and you're like,

Yusuke, what are you doing here? And he's like, oh, I love coming to the planetarium. I get completely lost in myself that sometimes I'll be talking, and I don't even realize that there's people around me. And Yusuke is definitely on the spectrum, all right? And so Joker kind of looks at like your other teammates and then Yusuke's like well I'll help you guys out let's go find this weirdo and Joker's like I think we just figured it out like don't worry Yusuke I think we'll be all right you know so the game can also be very funny at times. As far as what doesn't work well, difficulty is just not consistent.

It's too easy and then it's fine and then it's too easy and then it's fine. And quite honestly, as a 40-year-old gamer, I kind of hinted at this in the pre-dive. I said, am I going to feel like a creep while playing this game? Yes, yes, I did. There were definite times I felt like a creep.

The whole character of on is she's just entirely sexualized from beginning to end in this game. Most of the time she's wearing latex or next to nothing. There is way too much jiggle physics for a high school student. If you ask me, there are entire scenes of characters pretending to fondle her and, uh, like camera angles, staring down her shirt as they talk about it, things like that.

And I'm like, look, if it were an adult, it would still maybe be slightly weird. The fact that it's children is like, this is weird, man. And I don't think this is where like they go to school until

they're 20. Like these are like 16 year old kids. So, you know, when I have children the same age as, as like on in this game, it did make me feel a bit weird at times. I'll just say that. Yeah. That was one thing where, you know, it's, I don't know if this is a cultural thing or if the game is intended to make you feel awkward. If this is just geared towards younger people. I don't know. You know what I mean in that regard? But like even in Kamoshida's castle, you know, where An is present and you're trying to like help her or not. It's not An.

It's her. Wait, no, it is An. It's his vision of like what on is to him and it's i mean i won't say it's indecent but it's close enough that it's kind of like you know you do feel a little awkward you know you're kind of like why is she on the screen wearing a skimpy bikini if she's like 16 you know and it's just weird man and i don't know if that's intentional if it like to make you feel uncomfortable if it's just a cultural thing where they don't think there's anything wrong with i don't know man i don't know but i'm with you on that even from like the 12 hours i played is

you're just kind of like i'm not sure sure I'm like, this is odd, man. Now, did it, obviously, you know, setting up the story with, what's his name, Kamoshido and stuff, it makes sense in that vein, but after you defeat him,

does it continue on throughout the game where they still kind of lean into it? Because then it's like, okay, well, hold on. If you're setting it up in the beginning with this pedo kind of perv guy, you know, it lines up. But if you just continue on afterwards, then it's like okay well hold on if you're setting it up in the beginning with this pedo kind of perv guy it you know it lines up but if you just continue on afterwards then it's you know like you said why are they doing i think part of it is legitimately the anime roots yeah you know i mean anime is kind of known for having over the top figures you know for females and in outfits and

things like that it doesn't always cross a line but it always hints at that line you know for females and in outfits and things like that it doesn't always cross a line but it always hints at that line you know yeah in a lot of anime at least so i think that's just part of like the like the genre the culture of of anime um so you know it is one of those things where i at least for me it never completely crossed a line to where it's like yo this you shouldn't be playing this but it it skirts that line enough that like paul said for a 40 year old dad it probably feels pretty weird to have like somebody walk in the room at the wrong time well yeah i mean you ever thousand percent you ever go to this is top of the list games i don't want someone to walk in on me at the wrong moment.

This is number one. Yeah. 100%. It was like we were playing GTA 5 and your parents would walk or the GTA loading screens and everybody jokes about your parents walking in at the wrong time. You know, it's. Oh, yeah. But I was gonna say you're in those like those card shops or, you know, they got the figures

and you walk by and it's one of those kind of cases with all the different anime style figurines. You're just like, oh, let's go to this side, buddy, with your kids. You're like, let's go over here because that's what every single one of them is like. So yeah, that's definitely not one you want to have your mom walk in on. Yeah, the game seems almost a little confused

over some of the sexual politics because on the one hand, Kamoshida is definitely crossing the line and he is abusing these students and taking advantage of them. At the same time, one of your own teammates is threatening on that he will call the police because he has stuff against her if she will not pose nude for him for a painting, which is now certainly behavior that crosses the line. But then at the same time, she's also a model and they kind of talk about how there's nothing wrong with using your body this way. But then like when other characters do,

it's obviously wrong. And I think it's just a little confusing at times. I think what the game was trying to get at is that it's up to her, how sexualized she wants to be. And that's fine. I get it. But again, playing as a 40 year old, a little bit different. Let's go ahead and move on to the leaderboard segment of the show.

Dude, this is the part. Wait, wait. Okay. So, all right, Ryan, I want Ryan and I to guess before you tell us, Paul, because I just want to see how well

we know Paul. Okay. You know, and Ryan and I, like I said, we were chatting a little bit and I'm going to break it down. Like, I know, I think we think similarly, but I'll just speak for myself. If you didn't really like this game, you would have stopped 30 hours ago, is my thinking. I think that it's not perfect for you, but you seem to be talking about this game in an excited tone. I think based on the story and stuff like that i mean persona so i'm actually scrolling

through paul's leaderboard right now i think this is a top 15 game for paul top 15 top 15 that means you're talking about valheim satisfactory resident evil, like all time, all time greats. I mean, Persona 5 is known as one. I mean, go look at the ratings, dude. I mean, Metacritic Steam, it's like it's ridiculously well received and reviewed. And for somebody that played 70 hours, I think at this game,

I think you would have quit a long time ago. And so I'm going to say Top 50. I know, that's what, yeah, exactly. this game i think you would have quit a long time ago and so he already installed helldivers i know that's what yeah exactly for persona 5 and he's got helldivers at 16 so and that was uninstalled like immediately so you say top 15 so i'm 15 i'm in the same vein i think he's he was very the way he's talked about it i haven't really seen paul talk about a game like this you know for this long long in a while. And so I'm in the same thing, top 15. I actually think for me it's between whether or not he really likes it

and he really likes it. So I kind of got a range of it's either going to be around 12, I think. That's a number that I liked. Or 7. So it's like if he really, really likes it or likes it, I think it's probably going to be type level. I think probably around where satisfactory is. I think a 12.

All right. Well, let's see if we're completely off base or if we nailed it. You guys are definitely a bit high. Okay. I'll say that now for our listeners. If they're not aware, you can go to video gamers pod.com you can mouse over leaderboards and go to our deep dive leaderboard anytime we do a deep dive we rank it against every other deep dive game that we have played josh i'm guessing you're not

putting it on yours because you only played the tutorial it wouldn't be fair to rate the game if there's so much more beyond it for me. So I mean, I will say I'm super glad I played the 12 hours. It is unlike any other game that I've ever played. I can say based off of that 12 hours that I would absolutely recommend this game to somebody that even remotely thinks they like the JRPG genre. And if you a fan of jrpgs and you haven't played persona you should very very much pick this game up and give it a shot um there really wasn't much that threw me off other than the daunting nature of knowing that it's a hundred hour game and hell divers like legitimately so fair enough yeah so for me looking at my leaderboard okay here here's the thing i hated this game so much for the for the first like 18 hours okay i was like, Ace, dude, come on. Anyone who knows me knows this is not my kind of game.

Here's the problem. Stockholm Syndrome is real. Because the next thing I knew, I was like, you know what? I'm kind of into this game. I'm like, you know what? This game is super weird. But I'm into weird. I like watching movies that show me something I've never seen before.

I like playing games that let me play things I've never played before. And next thing I knew, I just kept getting sucked more and more into the game. The first 15 hours really are tutorial. I would say this game probably peaks around, around the 50 to 55 hour mark. All right. Now, when you put all this together,

like what am I supposed to do with the leaderboard? Like when this game is clicking on all cylinders and I'm getting super fun boss combat, which is challenging, very creative. Like there's a whole fight with paintings that I won't get into. I thought it was brilliant, incredibly fun. And I'm getting

these cool anime sequences, which I'm not even an anime fan, but sometimes you'll get like a full five minute scene that you're watching in the game. That's beautifully drawn. And I'm getting these really fun side characters and it's an engaging storyline at its peak. Maybe it would reach something like in the top 15 or somewhere around number seven. Now, how do I rank that against the fact that like, I kind of hated the first 18 hours, then it was fine. Then it was amazing. Now I'm at a place where I want to play it more, but I can't because we have to move on with no rest for the wicked. We have a couple other legendary games coming up, so I can't stay here i would i

will say if we didn't have the pod i 100 would finish this game i would still play it i mean that's praise right there yeah it is high praise uh i still think the game's like a masterpiece but it's like one of those flawed masterpieces there is no way i'm ranking it above anything like Valheim, Outriders, GTA Online, Helldivers 2, RimWorld, Hearthstone, or God of War Ragnarok. But you know what? I'm going to put it at number 20. Oh, okay. I am putting it above Resident Evil Village and Hogwarts Legacy, Weird West, and Elden Ring. And those are all fantastic games so the fact that i don't like

japanese rpgs and i'm ranking the game that high really does speak volumes i don't think there's any world where i would ever rank in a japanese rpg higher than number 20 on my leader yeah that's insanely like oh i that's why i think ace was spot on with like i i would assume he would have been stoked if anything in the probably top 30 top 40 or something like that so to have it at 20 i think you know the story really just kind of won won you over and then everything else that was over the top is it the is it boil it down to one singular thing paul is it the art is it the story like if you had to say why it got you so i mean 20 for you is huge dude like huge that's high and ace approached this from the perspective of only the story you know and so i think he thought this like so boil it down don't give

me two three things give me the one thing that rates it so high for you. And I know that's hard to do because you're like, Hey, it's a combination. But if you had to just say one thing, what would it be? And, and anyone who's played the game is going to know exactly what I mean.

If you've never played it, it's going to sound weird. It's just this game. And I can't think of a better phrase for it. It just oozes style. Okay. All of it. It's the animation style, but it's not just oozes style. Okay. All of it. It's the animation style,

but it's not just the animation style. It's just the pure attitude of the art. If that makes any sense, like those combat end of combat cards that you get where it's like Joker in his hand near his face or, you know, Morgana with the cigar or, you know,

any, any of those cards are just so well done. It puts you in the right mindset that the game is looking for. Every little touch of this game, all the little details are just full of flourish. And it's just so well done in that regard. I mean, even just the opening of the game, you get this anime sequence that you can watch. Then it cuts to where you get this really artistic silhouette of Joker, where he turns full red and then is walking into the screen. And then you press start, and then you get this amazing music, and you see Ann in her red latex as Fox, which is like her code name in the

metaverse. I mean, just every little thing like that in this game, even to where, like Ryan mentioned, where you hear like the pen click in the menus, all of that stuff is so well done. And that obviously cannot make a game, but that is taking this game from like an 8.5 and making it something that I've just never quite experienced before and just kicking it up to like a 9.5 out of 10 for me. If you just like watch some footage, I think people will understand, but it's very hard to describe. Nice. All right.

So, yeah, there you go. Ace. I, uh, I'm not an actor, but I was going to try to like replicate Matarame's apology where he's like crying. And he's like, how could anyone forgive me for having evil? When you said you hated it, I was like, Oh my goodness,

we were super wrong, right? That's what I was impressed. And then you were like, and then you were like for the first 18 hours and i was like oh here it is that's a funny statement too yeah for the first 18 hours i hated it but you know the right the next 60 was good and that's like that's a big thing for me though is where i say why should i have to work through a bunch of crap to get to the good stuff now in this case i

had never played a persona game i didn't really know what to expect. The high school stuff, I had no clue that was really in here. I did not expect the school simulator aspect of things and some of the high school drama. So that really threw me for a loop. I had to kind of like reacclimate to it all. And then once I understood it, I appreciated it an awful lot more um but yeah you know uh japanese rpgs if this is the best they have to offer this is fantastic i don't know that i'm necessarily swayed to go pick up any jrpg but i'll tell you what i'll absolutely check out the next persona game absolutely there's a million people screaming pick up persona three reloaded because it just, I know that was really beloved.

People are like, they're going to be like, Paul, you got to play persona three. I got another 40 hours to play a persona five. I got to finish this one first. And I don't know that it's going to happen to be honest. The fact that I got 70 hours on a deep dive play through,

that's pretty wild. This is the most i've played any game other than something like rust where we had hundreds of hours before we started the pod since starting the pod brand new games this is the one i've played the most i have more time in it than hell divers yeah and honestly a lot of the hell divers too was time after we recorded the pod so getting 70 hours in prior to recording is, is pretty wild. Yeah.

I could not do it. Paul. So he's the right guy too. Yeah. I don't think many, many would. All right. Well,

we want to say thank you once again to ace of shame. Thank you so much for going legendary for all of our listeners. If you want to go sign up on Patreon, you can do that once again at multiplayer squad.com and um also our listeners can rate us five stars you can also follow us on socials everywhere at video gamers pod all those things help visibility of the show which we would greatly appreciate thank you so much to everyone out there for listening and subscribing to the feed until next time happy gaming see ya all right see everybody