Click Here for Update 1
https://youtu.be/bghZ83tavMc
: Time to start the show. Like Persona 4 Golden, both Persona 5 and Royal offer an online mode which lets you see the choices other people made on each day in-game. We won’t be needing this. I’ve already got the schedule, and in fact ordered a fancy day planner for it so I could scan it in, only to find out my day planner was for the wrong year.
: Persona 5 and Royal were both heavily inspired by the Lupin III anime, specifically Shin Lupin III (also known as “Red Jacket”). Red Jacket aired from October 3, 1977 to October 6, 1980. If I was playing with Patch 1.02 (I’m not) then we’d have the option to change to the Japanese voices upon starting a new game. This is the only thing that patch changes in the English version.
: MUCH better. Both the original game and Royal use the same five VAs that every anime uses these days and fuck that shit it hurts my ears.
: I have a series of cleared Persona 5 files on my PS4, which I can use to show off a glitch that I don’t know if the other LP did. Said glitch broke the game in two and was patched out of Royal.
: Well yeah, kinda figured that out after Innocent Sin. The real world is only half that incoherent on a given day.
: The reason they say this by the way is that there’s a character late in the game who can be taken as a shot at a certain American president. In reality, he’s a ripoff of the villain from Eternal Punishment, but Atlus expects that you believe that Persona 3 FES was the first game in the series.
: By the way, this dialog is voiced by (at least I’m pretty sure) the voice for Igor. One thing I never mentioned is that Igor’s voiceactor going all the way back to Persona 1 (where he only had a few brief lines during fusion) died during production of the base game. This means Igor probably won’t be in Persona 6.
: Well yeah, I mean, the world only got destroyed in Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment hasn’t been translated yet.
: Or you know, by their names - Jihei, Tatsuya, Maya, Makoto, Yu. I suppose you could toss Tamaki in there as well.
: I missed a couple of screenshots of the Lupin III style intro, which very heavily takes after the last one that was done for the end of Red Jacket. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like anyone’s ever uploaded that to Youtube due to how Lupin III was localized - I’ll do a side update immediately following this one entirely about Lupin. You can have this one instead, which I think is the second-to-last OP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en4nEUIaAKo
: This has the entire opening sequence in it. I stumble around a little bit because trying to play the game and click my screenshot button at the same time is kinda weird.
: A lot of the shots in this cutscene are reminiscent of the start of Castle of Cagliostro, the.. I think it’s the fifth but I might be wrong on that.. Lupin III movie. It’s considered one of the best anime films ever made and was produced by Hayao Miyazaki.
: By the way, the music for this opening is a song called Colors Flying High, which is new to P5 Royal. Atlus re-did a good chunk of the OST for this game, even though I honestly liked the old theme better. This is in contrast to the older games where you were lucky to get more than one or two vocal songs, if any.
: One thing that’s kind of jarring about doing a modern game after Persona 1 and Innocent Sin is that I’m not used to 60FPS anime cutscenes. I miss the blurry sprites already.
: Meet our protagonist. We’ll need a name for him after this update. Most characters will refer to him simply as “Joker”, which was a brilliant naming move by Atlus after having two different characters by the same name in the Persona 2 duology. (Edit: It’s actually three, there’s a dog named Joker in Ronde.) Again, Atlus is expecting that you believe Persona started with 3 (the “FES” stands for “First Ever, Stupid”).
: Clearly this isn’t Eternal Punishment’s Joker (who only has one eye) so Jun’s clearly been working out. I wonder if his mother’s wish to be young forever also applied to him and that’s why he’s a teenager in both 1999 and 2016. Oh, right. This game takes place in 2016 - they say “20XX” but all the dates line up with 2016.
: Meet uh, mystery cat. He’s the worst part of this game. I hate him with every fiber of my being.
: And this mysterious character who exists for one reason and one reason only and that is to be in every single yaoi doujin that exists of this game.
: And uh, this one too. Her title should probably read “Best Girl” by virtue of being the only one I don’t hate.
: Oh, and this one, who a lot of people I’ve talked to about this game don’t like.
: Meet the bane of the screenshot LPer’s existence. The game will sometimes have random codec calls that happen during gameplay. Also, there’s an action button in P5. In the video, I stop on this platform because I thought the thing on the screen said “Innocent Sin” and I was almost floored by the fact that Atlus acknowledged its existence.
: Another mysterious character, this one basically the equivalent of Jun in the original game in that we won’t be seeing her until way after the game should stop introducing characters.
: Oh no, we’ve stolen all their hopes and dreams and now they’re shadowmen.
: Ripping masks off things is going to be an ongoing motif.
: The game doesn’t immediately identify demons when we fight them. This is Moloch, in his appearance from Shin Megami Tensei NINE, an Xbox-exclusive SMT game that did about as well as you’d expect that to. It was never localized and probably never will be, because it was meant to be the lead up to SMT Imagine, the ill-fated SMT MMO.
: We don’t know who Joker’s Persona is, but he has Eigaon and Brave Blade.. which would make him this game’s Reiji.
: I use a physical attack, which crits and thus knocks the enemy down. Just like Persona 3 and Persona 4, critting an enemy or using a spell they’re weak to will knock them down and give you an extra turn.
: Instead of using our Persona, I opt to play this like Persona 1 and gun everything down. In my playthrough of the original game, I never used guns even once. The reason for this is that you got a single magazine of ammo for the ENTIRE DUNGEON. That means that yes, Joker would have eight bullets to last him an entire dungeon unless you found or crafted ammo boxes that allowed you to reload. Royal changes this by refilling your gun after every encounter which is a huge goddamn improvement.
: Joker’s gun allows him to get eight attacks in before he runs out of ammo. This is actually better than Persona 1’s guns because now every gun can perform multiple attacks in one turn.
: I really like the “VICTORY” sign in the back, makes for a nice shot. This game does everything well but the plot.
: Note that as soon as we’re off the main casino floor, it stops looking like a real place.
: And this would be the Mark or Eikichi of this game, only not as good as Mark or Eikichi.
: This is where the game introduces the stealth mechanic, which is necessary to do a max confidants run. The reason is that dungeons in Persona 5 are meant to be endurance runs with SP as a limiting mechanic. Stealth allows you to get first strikes on enemies, which reduces the amount of SP you’re going to use on healing.
: This is where one of the differences in Royal comes into play.
: In the base game, you wind up fighting that guy at the end of the hallway. Royal gives Joker a grappling hook, which lets you access hidden areas in dungeons.
: Here’s another difference.
: Meet a character we’re not going to see much of again until the epilogue. People have compared her to Elly from Persona 1 and there’s definitely a resemblance.
: I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how you use a rapier.
: Just like Elly, she also uses rifles as her gun of choice. This is why they need to remake Persona 1 because I want to see Elly go full-on Cutscene Dante and like, ride missiles into Kandori.
: Anyway, she goes full on Max Payne and kills all the shadows in bullet time. With a lever-action.
: Joker’s response is pretty much how I’d respond had I seen someone throw a goddamn rapier.
: We enter a fight against Ose (the leopard) and Jatayu. Jatayu opens with Garula.. only to have Not-Elly stylishly dodge out of it.
: Joker then guns down Jatayu in one go.
: Not-Elly follows up with Vorpal Blade, which knocks down all the enemies. The reason she lost HP is that like Persona 3 and 4, physical damage skills cost HP rather than SP to cast.
: Normally, knocking down all enemies gives you a “Hold Up”, which is how you negotiate with demons in this game. However, because this is a tutorial fight and we don’t control Not-Elly…
: The game switches to her using a finisher on them. I forget what the exact conditions are for this to happen, but each character has a finisher screen like this. Joker’s is the one you’ll usually see the most because I know this is tied to knockdowns, and Joker is the only person who can switch Personas. It’s a decision I don’t like that was made way back in Persona 3, ostensibly to stop you from accidentally making a party with a gaping weak spot.
: “Please go. I’m going to make it harder for them to track you down. You still have something you need to do as a phantom thief, right?”
: “Then I won’t stop you. Since I’m not a member of the Phantom Thieves, I’m in no position to interfere.”
: This seems a little off for reasons I can’t explain without spoiling the entire game.
: This is Japan. Where the fuck are these corp-sec types getting guns?
: This scene, by the way, is where I pretty much stopped being invested in the plot. As you can probably tell, like most movies in its era, Persona 5 is one of those “Yeah, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here” kind of stories.
: This shot? This is taken straight from one of the Lupin III Red Jacket OPs. I’ll have to see if I can rip one of my DVDs.
: The mass of cops? This is also taken from Lupin III. In fact, that guy with the radio could practically be Zenigata.
: Oh MAN, this shot did not age well.
: I’m not sure if the numbers on the board mean anything, apart from the P5.
: This guy looks a lot like Nametame’s shadow in Persona 4. In its human form, not the giant head thing.
: By the way, have I mentioned Persona 5 is the only one to take place in real-world Japan?
: So yes, Persona 5 is one of those in media res stories and I hate it.
: That guy in the glasses almost looks like Katsuya Suou, only the real Katsuya would probably have killed this guy already.
: We will be playing on Normal, even though this game is really easy. As far as I know, the only difference is that on Hard/Merciless enemies have higher stats. I’m going to take the very important lesson I learned from Ni no Kuni 2 and not play this on extreme.
: Now, if this were a game written by Satomi Tadashi, chances are we’d spend the rest of the game scalping cops like we did the nazis in Innocent Sin. Unfortunately, this is Modern Atlus and we can’t have that. At least the plot is… slightly more coherent than Innocent Sin’s was.
: And that’ll do it for this update. What’s this guy’s name?
: Joker has two canon names - one from the novelization (Akira Kurusu) and one from P5 Dancing (Ren Amamiya), in case you want to know those. Or we could go for the Innocent Sin/Eternal Punishment reference and name him Jun Kurosu (IS) or Tatsuya Sudou (EP)
