dudacles

This is cool, just like the other two! I've missed out on those thus far because my Hunter Rank has not been high enough (currently sitting at 9), so I'm glad they'll rotate the others back in as well.

What Hunter Rank do you guys think I would need to get to be able to get these weapons/costumes/whatever? Was it a lot higher than 9 for the other two?

The Return of the King is a fantastic game. Definitely should be one of the 44!

I agree one thousand percent with every single one of your comments. I'm really glad this game came out a week before I have to get on a 16-hour flight, because for me, the Switch was a Zelda machine until now. Zelda is a fantastic game, but I play it lying on my bed at night, not while sitting next to random people or while on the road--that just keeps me from "feeling the magic" of the world, or whatever you want to call it. It's not the type of thing that I can play for 15 minutes, or the type of thing that I can sink into when people are staring over my shoulder.

But Mario + Rabids does allow for that short burst of distraction. And it's just a really good, fun, light game.

However, my overarching problem with the Switch is something that I don't think Nintendo can fix, unless they keep on selling tons of them; it makes me feel snobbish and pretentious somehow. The Gameboys and DSs looked like toys, and didn't feel like they attracted attention, at least to me. But the Switch totally does: it's a big, high-quality screen on which I'm playing something like Zelda, and I can see people staring at me for it. The Switch just looks too much like something that's a very expensive toy, and it's so bulky that you can't hide it from anyone when you're playing it. I had the same problem to a lesser extent with the Vita. Hopefully I can get over it for my flight, as I kind of bought a Switch specifically for those long travel sessions. I dunno, does anyone else feel self-conscious when they pull out their Switch?

I really hope this comes to consoles as well, I really enjoyed the first one on PS4 and would love to play the new one. But I suspect it would take quite a while for them to get around to porting it.

I voted Nioh because that seems like a game that would last you better over the span of a summer. The combat, artistic design of the environments, and loot aspects of the game are amazing, though the story didn't do anything for me. Also, because it so clearly is a Souls-type game, the very disconnected nature of the levels is something that I didn't really like when compared to the original Dark Souls. But then again, that game just did it so well that all games that came after it have failed to live up to its impossibly high standard in world design.

The biggest downside to Nioh, for me, is that ultimately it has too little enemy variety, which does get bothersome in the second half of the game, especially if you're like me and do every single submission and Twilight mission as well. But the combat remains thrilling, and is such a welcome change of pace after 5 Souls games. Nioh really does scratch that same itch, while also feeling quite fresh.

@fitzgerald: It's still early to say, but it's incredibly good, no doubt about it. And as with all Persona games, it does get even more interesting the further in you get.

So I just beat the game (I've been playing the Japanese version since September, I case you haven't read the rest of the thread) and I'm really satisfied with it. I think the game has a very strong ending and is just fantastic in general. I actively disliked two of the party member characters (spoilers for their names: Futaba and Haru) for a while, because I thought of them as whiny, but I came around on them by the end and now love the cast almost as much as the P4 one. P4 had Nanako and Kanji though, so it's almost an unfair fight in that regard.

Anyway, Atlus knocked it out of the park with P5 as far as I am concerned. I've seen quite a few people saying they don't like the dark tone the game takes in the opening hours, and I can definitely agree that at first it seems as though the game tackles darker themes than the previous game, but this sort of changes as the game progresses. As in, P4 also had dark themes, in a sense, with heinous murders and sexual predator Morooka and all that, but it had a very light touch about these things as opposed to being heavy-handed about them. I think P5 is very much the same as P4 in this regard, though it takes a few hours for this to become apparent.

Also, (extremely big end-game spoilers) hearing the real Igor's voice after 99 hours of having had the deep, "evil god Igor" voice was a moment that genuinely tugged at my heartstrings for some reason. I had not made a conscious note of the fact that Igor's voice was different, even though it sounded weirdly off somewhere in the back of my mind throughout the game. To then hear real Igor's "Welcome to the Velvet Room" come out again after the revelation of the real villain was special. It just goes to show how much the Persona games are getting ingrained into me.

So yes, I loved it, and I expect you will too. Vinny mentioned that he isn't sure about the direction the story is taking on the Beastcast, but I can assure you that the story congeals really well after a while. I got really invested in it. I hope Vinny keeps on playing, and I hope you give this game a shot if you're interested in it.

If there are any questions you would like to direct at someone who has beaten the game, feel free to do so here!

@sackmanjones: I am currently sitting at 88 hours and 40 minutes played. Assuming the next dungeon is the last one, I'm looking at finishing somewhere between 90 and a 100 hours. I played some of the side missions (and all of the "side dungeon"). I was not in a particular hurry to play through, but also didn't agonize over not being able to do everything and find every social link opportunity, etc. So I'd say most people's final time will be somewhere between 80 and 110 hours, depending on their rhythm (you could save quite a bit of time by not letting the voice acting play out before skipping, for instance.) So it's a good length.

As for the game itself, it's been fantastic. I think P3 was very good, and that P4 is one of the best games I have ever played. I'd say in terms of story and characters, this game is nearly on par with P4. I'd place it only slightly below it. I never got attached to any one character in P5 the way I did to Nanako in P4, but I love most of the cast here all the same.

The game is also insanely stylish. Seriously, whoever did the UI design and the environment design, they aer geniuses. It has fantastic music too, that remains imprinted onto your brain in the same way P4's did.

The game's single biggest improvement over P4 is its dungeon design. All of the dungeons are very interesting to look at, and require new mechanics to navigate, which makes them feel more fresh. It's always exciting to see what the concept for a new dungeon is, which wasn't the case for me in P4, because all those dungeons basically were bland corridors with a different colour palette attached to them every single time. On the other hand, the "extra dungeon" that focuses on a side plot does suffer from repetitive environments, but that's something I can easily look past.

The combat is deeper than it has been before (more magic types, some extra mechanics around the ability to talk to shadows and negotiate with them) but it is still very much the same thing. If you loved the combat in the previous Persona games, you'll love it again here. For me personally, however, the combat has always been something to endure through in order to get to the juicy, voice-acted storyline meat.

Finally: there's quite a few very good-looking animated cutscenes. Or at least, it feels like there were far more than in Persona 4. And I really like those.

So my verdict in a nutshell: it's pretty goddamn great. If you liked P4, I can't imagine you'll dislike P5.

I reckon I'll be able to finish the game this week (am on the last dungeon, I think) and intend to write a spoiler-free (non-professional) review of it. Maybe that will be of some assistance to you and other people who are on the fence about this game.

@matatat: It depends. I suppose you would not necessarily need to know all that much Japanese to understand the big themes in the story, but there are no furigana (which tell you the reading of kanji) so your kanji knowledge would have to be at least decent. Then there's the fact that plenty of the characters speak in contracted Japanese (because it sounds more natural) and your understanding of the language has to be pretty deep to be able to follow that easily. You'd first need to learn the rules of the language, and then learn about the ways Japanese people (and anime characters) break those same rules.

However, a great deal of the quality of these games also comes from the very well-written conversations and the interesting characters, and the Persona 3 and 4 localisations have been so good that they manage to deliver on this aspect in spades. I prefer playing the Japanese version because a localisation, no matter how good, can only ever be a shadow of the original work, but in the case of these games, you're not missing all that much when you play the English version. If you want to play these games purely for your own enjoyment, you're probably better off playing the game in English and enjoying it fully, as opposed to struggling through the Japanese, getting frustrated and missing many the impact of the well-oneliners and the fantastic conversations. That said, I do think the Persona games can be a fantastic tool to learn Japanese, provided your proficiency is already high enough to make it a non-frustrating experience to play the games. The characters speak, but you have to manually skip to the next line, and everything is subtitled (in Japanese) so working your way through one of these games can do wonders for your vocabulary, kanji and so on.

To your point of learning Japanese before the English version comes out; if you're starting from zero, I think it would be virtually impossible to attain the fluency needed before spring 2017, unless you have incredible drive, have enormous amounts of free time and/or live in Japan. But if you'd like to study Japanese, it's never too late (or too early) to start, of course!

@probablytuna: At first I didn't realise what you were talking about, but then I find out I misspelled Yosuke as Ryosuke, haha. Ryosuke is a pretty common name in Japan, so it must've just slipped out while I was typing. My mistake, I apologise. :p