Take My Heart

The game that introduced me to the SMT series as a whole. Although my heart belongs to SMT, I gotta give thanks to Persona 5 and look back at how the game changed me.


Prior to P5, I wasn't somebody who played a lot of JRPGs (I guess besides Pokemon and one Final Fantasy game) and "anime games". Not that I was against them; they weren't on my radar at the time. I was somebody who played mostly "triple-A" or blockbuster titles like Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed.

Then Persona 5 was released and people would not shut up about the game. "You have to play this game! Oh my God, this game is soooo good! Please play this game AAAA!!!"

One day, grandma and I were shopping at Target and I saw a copy of the game. I picked it up and my grandma asked me, "Do you want it?" I said yes. She bought it for me as a gift. Thank you, grandma! ♥

Phantom Thieves

I feel like the world already knows about P5 even if you're not a JRPG fan. Kinda like how the world probably knows about a certain Sonic game even if you're not a Sonic the Hedgehog fan.

There was so much excitement, advertising, and many "Last Surprise" memes that Persona 5 had sparked a cultural movement for a while.

Enter the Phantom Theives: A group of stylish high school students about to shake up the corruption in their society. They were all gifted the ability of the Persona and with that, the power to "change people's hearts" or manipulate a person's desires at their core.

Is this dangerous? What happens if you remove a person's inner "desire"? If you had the power to change someone's will, would you?

But really, we ask ourselves: Why does nobody want change? Why are people seemingly content with the state of society as it is?

Displays of the Phantom Theieves and their calling cards took the world by storm! ...Well, the massive advertising campaign was only in a few select locations.

But that's okay because the hype was very real and in the end, SO FUCKING WORTH IT.



Trouble in Palaces

But let's get the cat out of the bag. The story and the characters are… I don't know. Not bad or anything. But I failed to build any sort of meaningful connection with anybody in the game. Not sure if that's a "hot take" but that's how I felt.

The game was solid on all levels except for the characters or storyline which I felt wasn't... as well thought-out or put together as I would've hoped. The dialogue didn't really "do it" for me and the game's message fell rather short.

Apparently, there were a lot of localization issues in P5's dialogue. Like… A LOT. A fan has dedicated an entire website discussing the problem: https://www.personaproblems.com/

But you know what? The sheer amount of time, effort, and love that was put into P5 is palpable. Despite my opinion, I will never be able to take away the talent behind this game and that's not what I'm here to do. It's a truly amazing and stylistic game. Go play it if you haven't already.

Life Will Change

A friend of mine watched me play this game and my "achievement" (I guess... lol) was just beating Yaldabaoth (the true final boss) on the first try. Thank god I didn't have to beat him a second time lol that boss fight took like... 20 minutes or something. It felt long lol.

After that, my friend told me that I was good at JRPGs (Maybe... lol) and well, I decided to focus my gaming library on these games. A new interest was born and Atlus gained a new fan. I've found my niche.

The Royal Treatment

Persona 5 Royal would later release on October 31, 2019 as an improvement or addition to the original game. Basically, Persona games worked kinda like Pokemon where there will be additional versions or improved re-releases not long after the initial release.

To be honest, I never got around to completing this game and the collector's edition that my same friend bought for me just sits on top of my dresser. Despite my initial hype for this game, I wasn't ready to relive the entire storyline again lol. There is a new ending and social link with Akechi but yeah.

There were also gameplay fixes and QoL changes but the thing is that I didn't have any problem with the way the original game played either so... -shrug- I know Royal is amazing but my brain's not in a rush about this one right now.

Royal, and other re-releases in the Persona franchise, have become a bit of a meme in some parts of the fanbase. Just wait a couple of years after the initial release and there will be a new version with many improvements that will be superior to the original version (and a new waifu, apparently). The fanbase calls it, "double-dipping" and the practice has been criticised for being "anti-consumer", "greedy", or "out-dated".

Still, many fans regard Royal as the highest point in P5.

Persona 5 Strikers is the sequel to P5 and was released on February 20, 2020 (just two days before my birthday). The game was developed by P-Studio in collaboration with Omega Force, the team behind the Dynasty Warriors series (a popular hack and slash series). Well, I never played any of the Dynasty Warriors games before so this was going to be my first introduction.

I love Strikers but I also suffer from the problem of "not finishing all of the games that I buy." Unless they're games that my brain happens to really fixate on, I guess. I don't remember much about the story. I just know that I really enjoyed this game. It's probably one of the best P5 games for me. Plus, the soundtrack is fire. I might replay this one... who knows.

I do not own Persona 5 Tactica.

Last Surprise

At this point, it was clear just how much P5 affected gamers from around the world. Now it's been one P5 related thing after another, like the ghost of JRPG's past. The Phantom Thieves are here to stay. They have taken all of our hearts and stolen all of our treasure. Then again, several Persona fans question P5's influence. Some believe that style has been priotized over everything else.

This was the case for Persona 3 Reload, a remake of the original Persona 3 game. The UI and general design of the game is directly inspired by Persona 5 which rubbed some of the older P3 fans the wrong way. Of course, these are just aesthetic changes (along with gameplay improvements) and it has no weight on the storyline. These are just some of the opinions I've seen online. Other fans accuse Atlus of milking Persona 5, but that's something a lot of gaming companies do when their release is a success.

Even if P5 isn't how you prefer to make your coffee, I think it's safe to say that without Persona 5, Atlus wouldn't be the developers that they are now. The series might have stayed within niche spaces of the JRPG community and a lot of us would've never known about Persona, Shin Megami Tensei, and Atlus.

Perhaps Atlus is riding the success of P5, but it was that same success that has put them on the map.

So with that... from the bottom of my stolen heart, thank you Atlus and thank you Persona 5. ☆

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