#persona.

Students are meant to WANT TO research: its what school is truly supposed to be about. Unfortunately in America, getting the young to look away from a screen and read a book is near impossible.

No but seriously, if you think that you can’t use “screens” and have to “read books” to research, you haven’t done research in ages.

Wikipedia is generally written in accessible languages with easy-to-follow links to to other accessible articles to clear up the things you don’t know. As someone who’s grown up doing research during the transition from print to electronics, electronic research is easily more preferable. You can use ctrl + F to find things faster rather than having to skim through everything. You don’t have to waste as much time on sources that aren’t relevant.

Electronic research aids like Wikipedia, like JSTOR, like school-hosted databases, are a fucking godsend.

And I’ve read a ton of books for pleasure over the past year. A series of over fifty books from my childhood. Quite a few Anne Rice books. The entire Harry Potter series. Some Star Wars books. Do you know where I found them and how I read them? Online.

@phandomphightclub Is it too late for persona or no. Too bad it's over when i say its over as i haven't had time to sit down and do this. It's sucky as my phone doesn't like ibis paint X and i don't have a computer. If your wondering the vore blog i mentioned i run is @ninjagovore-morelikelythenuthink

So, after having had a few days to reflect on it, here is my overall thoughts on Persona 5

Here are my overall thoughts.

In terms of gameplay, this is easily the best Persona game. The combat is greatly improved both in presentation and in options, with the expanded types of attacks and ways abilities can interact (say, hitting someone who is frozen with a nuclear attack for extra damage) combat is just more dynamic. You can be a lot more tactical with how you build your Personas, with there being some interesting builds you can go for. The dungeons too were overall amazing, with rather than having the randomized setups, the dungeons were purposefully designed and save for two of them being kinda dull, were overall a massive step up. All in all the gameplay was great in that regard.

When it comes to Social Links (I am just going to call Confidants that, deal with it) they are really a mixed bag. In terms of non-party member social links, I think P5 has the best ones on average. All but two of them were really good, with only Devil and Tower being just alright in the grand scheme of things. I liked that they even gave the Velvet Room attendant social link more with there being some interaction between fusion quests.

However, that said, I think the party member social links were by far the weakest. Save for Futaba's and Yusuke's social links, they were just boring. Worse, everyone else' social links just rehashed the same character development the character gets in the main game, making it feel redundant and doesn't take them anywhere new. Like, I couldn't for the life of me describe how Ryuji, Ann, or Makoto grew in their social links that was not also conveyed and shown BETTER in the main story. And Haru's social link was basically the most cookie cutter social link in the game. Futaba and Yusuke get a pass due to their social links actually giving them more growth than what the main story gives them.

Speaking on characters, oh my god I hate Morgana so, so, so very much. And its not just because of the whole "go to sleep" thing. Oh no, that's only a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. No, its the fact that Morgana never shuts up! For 90% of the game, Morgana is with you, commenting on every thing you do. Non stop. And not just comment, but blatantly repeat information I just heard five seconds ago. Morgana is the vehicle for the game to treat the player like they're a moron. And it never fucking ends. Like, look, in terms of the level of annoyance, in any given moment, Teddie was probably more annoying than Morgana. But I don't hate Teddie, because he doesn't follow you around for the entire game and never shuts up! The sheer volume of annoyance is what makes me want to see Morgana dead.

Also if I have to hear Morgana screech "oooooh, looking cool Joker" one more time, I may snap.

However, my biggest problem with P5 and what in the end prevents what on paper is  the overall best Persona game from being my favorite is its overall pacing. Persona 5 is the longest of the three game's in the series I've played, with it having clocked in about 30 hours longer than my P4G playthrough and 40 hours longer than my P3:FES playthrough. Yet despite that, the game felt like it had less content than the others. So often it just felt like the game was actively wasting my time, with long drawn out sessions where player control was taken away, with entire weeks where you do nothing but sit through dialog with only the occasional moment to actually say something. October and November were the worst, with both months having more days with no player control than those you could actually do stuff.

And that really annoyed me. Since my favorite parts of the Persona games are the life sim parts where you go around and do social links. Yet every time I got into it, the game would drag me away and force me to sit through a cycle of loading screens, dialog, loading screen, dialog, loading screen, Morgana telling me to go to bed for no reason, loading screen, and repeat 10 more times. It made the game feel like a slog, where too often I didn't feel like I was playing a damn game.

Finally, I feel the execution of the story left a lot to be desired. P5 seems to have tried to do more with the story than P4 did (which was more character focused), but really fell flat from the more subtle stuff that made P3's story so good. It felt very... heavy handed, with the game beating you across the head with its themes and message to the point where I started to get annoyed and wanted to scream "Okay, I get it! Just please stop making the same damn point about how oppressive and ignorant society can be that you've make 30 times already!"

Also, I thought the ending was super rushed, having even less foreshadowing a build up than Izanami did in the original version of Persona 4. But I’ve already ranted about that before.

In the end, despite most of the above being negative, I did enjoy Persona 5. As a whole it is a really good game. The issue is there isn't much for me to say about what it did well, because the things it did well were things Persona 3 and/or Persona 4 did well. If I were to describe the game it would be really run, except someone stands behind you and lightly pokes you in the back of the head every five minutes. A bunch of things just annoyed me all throughout or took me out of the experience. That is why despite all the things Persona 5 does right, Persona 4 is still easily my favorite game in the series.