By that I’m referring to Yaldabaoth or whatever he calls himself. The god of control that gave us the chance to recite the obligatory “mankind needs no gods” spiel before shooting him in the face with a bigger, badder god of our own. If I’ve learned anything from JRPGs, it’s that anything and everything is permissible as long as we’re the ones doing it. BTW, what IS it with Persona 5 Royal and shooting people in the face?

Anyway, I beat him and waited and waited for the credits to roll, but it turns out the game segues straight into the extra content added for Persona 5 Royal (versus vanilla Persona 5, which no one should buy), so I haven’t fully finished the game yet. That’s why I added “not really” in the title, because if Persona 3 FES is anything to go by, I still have another 15-20 hours and more tough dungeons and bosses to fight. The save file reads 82 hours IIRC. Where did the time go…

Notes on sort-of finishing the game but not really

The last boss fight

I changed the settings to Easy, paid a lot of money to fuse powerful personae and wiped him out in a few turns. Before shooting him in the face, of course. Highly recommended strategy, 10/10. I think this is going to be my preferred way of finishing games from now on. I’ve paid my dues.

Ending spoilers

As is traditional here, I will try to spoil the little sense I could make of the ending. It turns out that the Igor we know from the Velvet Room had actually been kidnapped/locked away by Yaldabaoth the god of control all along, and the twins Caroline and Justine were originally one entity that he split into two annoying little twerps. Yaldabaoth was running a game pitting Joker against Akechi for reasons and through means that I didn’t fully understand. However the game was rigged so that, regardless of who won, he would take over the world by merging it with Mementos by taking advantage of the human desire to relinquish control of one’s life to another. It kind of makes sense in context, kind of doesn’t, but it’s aight, I got the general picture. Shoot bad god in face, got it.

Morgana’s identity

Ah, BTW, Morgana’s true identity is… some kind of creature born from the remnants of human hope? that Igor cobbled together right before being kidnapped. His job was to help the Trickster/Joker win the game. In the end he pulls off a grand disappearance and then comes back as an ordinary (?) talking cat. AFAIK he wasn’t human to begin with but looked up to humanity because he was born from their desires. Being a cat is better, Mona, trust me on this one.

Akechi. Ugh.

Lessee, what else… Oh yeah, Akechi isn’t really dead because of Rule of Cool. I hate that so much, I really wanted him dead. I’ve been wanting him dead since he showed up in Shido’s Palace and the Phantom Thieves tried to talk-no-jutsu him back onto the straight and narrow. Naaah man, HE SHOT ME IN THE FACE! That’s a relationship dealbreaker if there ever was one.

But anyway, he shows up smug as ever and confesses to his crimes and nobody has any idea how they’re going to get the charges to stick when the Metaverse doesn’t even exist any more anyway. Luckily Shido has done plenty of other provable bad stuff—like framing Joker—so they’ll be able to put him away for something. It just galls me that Akechi is gonna get off scott free. Mona, if you have to be a human being, make sure it’s a smooth-talking prettyboy.

Relationships and other strange animals

I managed to finish most of the confidant routes I was interested in, except Hermit (Futaba). Hers is also the only one I feel would have made my game even easier if I had finished it, because her random skill that casts Concentrate/Charge on my party is seriously awesome, and I really wonder what else she had up her sleeve. Apart from her, I also finished Haru and Yusuke in my party, Sojiro, the doctor, the reporter lady, the fortune-teller, the gamer kid… Oh, and I got Hifumi Togo as a girlfriend.

Actually I initially wanted to make Haru Joker’s girlfriend (no, she gets no say in the matter) because who wouldn’t want a filthy rich girlfriend who grows steroids on a rooftop? Ultimately, though, I decided to keep work and romance separate (don’t 💩 where you eat, as they say). It would be too messy to start dating within the Phantom Thieves unless I could make all the ladies my harem, plus I like having a girlfriend none of those nosey parkers know about (“You wouldn’t know her. She goes to another school.”) The other ladies were kind of crazy to even want to date a high school boy (looking at you, Kawakami), and I kind of liked Hifumi, so that’s how she ended up dating Joker.

Unfortunately I wasn’t impressed by romance in this game. Maybe it’s because I’ve played so many otome games in the past, but I like to see a little bit of reciprocity in video game relationships. Joker’s facial expressions and physical actions were way too stiff and stoic to make dating life sweet. Hifumi would be blushing and saying all these mushy things and Joker would be like 😐😐😐. Even when he supposedly returns the sentiment and says stuff like “I’m happy I met you too,” his face in the game and his portrait on the side are still like 😐. 😐😐😐😐. Come on, guy. Smile! Blush! Let us feel the love tonight!

Localization

I should say a few words about the localization too, which I thought was very good. Even with the honorifics left intact, there were very few places where I could feel the original Japanese text peeking through. It’s hard to explain what I mean, but you’ll know it when you see it: text that makes you go “Yeaaah… it’s not ungrammatical, but no one would actually talk like that in English.” At the same time, they didn’t go so far in localization that the Japanese voices were saying the complete opposite of what I was reading.

I read comments online that said P5‘s translation was bad, but either Atlus fixed a lot of the errors for Persona 5 Royal or I’m more forgiving when it comes to localization than I’d thought. I think it’s both, because I didn’t recognize any of the lines and screenshots those posts mentioned. My only problem was the untranslated videos and onscreen images like TV screens etc. They could have done much better with those, though I understand how it would be difficult.

Plus it’s definitely true that I’m soft on localized games. I almost never play the same game in both Japanese and English, and certainly not simultaneously, so I can’t compare JP to EN. That’s why it’s an issue I almost never blog about unless it’s noticeably bad or error-ridden. Have I played a game like that recently? Hmm, can’t remember…

Combat

What else… I haven’t talked about combat much, have I? Even after 88 hours, I’m still not sure I like the changes from the previous games. The bigger issue is the annoying gimmicky bosses, especially Okumura. Also the dungeon puzzles and gimmicks, rrghh. Especially Okumura’s! But I’ll save those comments for when the game is finally over and done with, or I won’t have anything left to write about.

See you guys for a final round up when I finally, finally beat the final, final, final boss!