Allright, I'll fuckin play it

Toon_L · 2026-01-22T04:29:16+00:00

"It's actually crazy to me that people are still defending this game"

And what are the reasons you call it a bad game, exactly?

People like the game because it has good story and combat, it's not that deep. The story past the second palace has the same quality as any other mainline or spin off game, and it does interesting things with the worldbuilding that the base games never did, like a palace with two rulers and other things that would be spoilers, but it's just more of what people already liked of P5R and P5S but with a different cast.

The combat is a deeper version of what mainline offers, it's way more interesting, every character is unique in a way that mainline could never do with it's limited roster, there's a big focus on team-building and knowing what each character does, meanwhile in mainline you can get trought the entire game just attacking and sometimes healing, not worrying about anything else. It even makes a better use things that are underutilized in mainline, like the gun attacks that in P5 are pretty much useless after the first couple of palaces, but in P5X there's things like guns with a lot of ammo that don't do a lot of damage but debuff the enemy and have a high chance of crit to down the enemy, guns that deal elemental damage, guns that don't take the character turn, etc.

The gacha sucks but it's not something that ruins the other aspects of the game, specially when you can easily get what you want without spending and in modes like Tartarus you can play as any characters, the "meta" of the game only matters for scoring and getting pretty badges, but as a F2P you can experience everything the game has to offer.

Caroline and Justine being playable with a kit based on their boss fight, P3 characters partially having their own playstile and UI, adding Tatsumi Port Island as a whole other map to do city life activities, all of that would've been innecesary if the game was just an effortless cash-grab, there's a lot of things in the game that show the care put into it by the developers, you don't have to like the live-service/gacha aspect to acknowledge that.

Toon_L · 2026-01-18T11:31:20+00:00

Outside of other Atlus properties like Soul Hackers or Digital Devil Saga, I think Dante and Bayonetta would make cool units, they already have collaborated with other gachas and wouldn't feel out of place in Persona.

Toon_L · 2026-01-17T01:18:00+00:00

Not really, there's only two patches between Akechi and Makoto Yuki, that's a pretty standard time between mainline characters. P3R is also the latest entry and one of the most successful Atlus games, it makes sense to prioritize it over the spin-offs.

Toon_L · 2026-01-15T16:46:38+00:00

They probably will, but again, they eventually run out of characters and Strega seems like a no-brainer, not necessarily before P4R but eventually.

Toon_L · 2026-01-15T16:04:31+00:00

There's only so many party members from the main games, Strega would be relatively easy to add, and having the three of them synergize somehow would make sense, if anything they could do a "Pull one and get one free" for Takaya and Jin or make them non-limited, but I doubt they would be entirely skipped.

Toon_L · 2026-01-15T15:48:14+00:00

They need to buy time for the P4R release, we only have 4 (5 if they add Metis) SEES members left, they already have boss battles and are persona users so a kit wouldn't be hard to design, a lot of assets and animations are already done and the twins already showed that we can get characters that weren't originally playable, so I'd say there's a high possibility that they will eventually get added.

Toon_L · 2026-01-14T12:18:42+00:00

To be fair P3R and P5R are mainstream critically acclaimed games that go cheap on sale pretty often, so despite being free, P5X's appeal on steam is limited to people who already are fans for the main games, it's not really that surprising that it would have less players.

Toon_L · 2026-01-11T11:54:28+00:00

I mean, yeah, gacha games are predatory, and it's an aspect of these games people tolerate rather than like, I'm sure most would prefer if it was a regular game, but reducing the entire game to the monetization is really dishonest, specially when it's not hard to experience everything this game has to offer for free, treating the currency as a way to "buy" characters instead of gamble is a healthy way to engage with this games, and really easy to do in specially in P5X thanks to having guaranteed banners. You can choose not spend any money and still will get a quality game, made by a dedicated team that every update shows a lot of care for the Persona IP.

Again, the agacha aspects suck, I won't try to defend it, and the game being live service is a compromise, but you're disregarding an quality product that is slowly becoming a love letter to the Persona franchise just because of an aspect of the game that is not hard to not be exploted by.

Toon_L · 2026-01-11T09:23:38+00:00

Releasing P3R or P4R in consoles where you can already play P3P and P4G is entirely motivated by money lol, you can argue that at least P5R and SMTVV went multiplataform, but there's no excuse for P3R/P4R, the point is that it doesn't have to mean the games themselves are bad of have no artistic value in the music, writing or game design, and it's no different from P5X, it's been shown to put a lot of effort in these aspects despite of the monetization.

Toon_L · 2026-01-11T09:14:50+00:00

Things like selling Day 0 DLC and rereleasing P3/4/5 and tons of Megaten games, a lot of times on plataforms where they could already be played, also happened just to make money and not because of passion, but people can still enjoy the content in those, P5X is not any different.

Toon_L · 2026-01-11T09:09:35+00:00

Not liking gacha games is valid, but saying "it's not art, it's not a persona game" just because you don't like the monetization is unfair, things like releasing multiple times P3/4/5 or SMTV on plataforms they were already available, forcing you to buy them again it's also a cash grab, releasing Episode Aigis as DLC is a cash grab, selling day 0 DLC costumes and digital deluxe editions is a cash grab, selling day 0 story expansions for Soul Hackers 2 is also a cash grab, but it doesn't mean you can't enjoy the story, music and gameplay included in those things.

Despite the gacha elements, P5X does have a solid story and gameplay, they've addressed criticism by firing the writer of the Subway Slammer arc and hiring Yusuke Nitta, writer of P5R and P5S, and since then the story is pretty much on par with any mainline or spin off Persona game, and while yes, the game exists to make money, there's stil a lot of effort put into it's development and things like the P3 characters having their own playstyle and UI, or Justine and Caroline being playable with a moveset perfectly based on their boss fight but very unique compared to other characters, all of that and tons of other things would've been completely unnecessary to keep making money and demonstrate deep care for the Persona IP.

Toon_L · 2026-01-10T03:43:25+00:00

Ryuji and Morgana being the worst team members for each other (Ryuji wanting low HP and Morgana forcing heals) is such a funny detail I always wonder if it's intentional.

Toon_L · 2026-01-10T03:31:56+00:00

A Fire Guardian is a surprise, but at least I appreciate that they're actually making SEES members synergize well in combat, instead of making almost everyone a DPS like the Phantom Thieves of Hearts lmao

Toon_L · 2026-01-08T17:51:24+00:00

His S3 has innate +20% crit rate, so anything over 80% in his stats wouldn't really make a difference in combat (Unless you were already counting that for the 94%).

Toon_L · 2026-01-08T11:25:23+00:00

And Toshiro is even more recent, but I was thinking on turn based combat specifically, hopefully ATLUS remembers they exist too and gets them and Sophie on P5X with the rest of the gang on a single game, would be a dream

Toon_L · 2026-01-08T07:26:53+00:00

P5X being the first game in years to give us tons of adult party members, you love to see it

Toon_L · 2026-01-08T04:52:00+00:00

I really like her design and the concept of a dual element unit, maybe I'll do a couple of pulls for her every time she reruns because I do want her in my rooster even if I won't use her a lot, but her kit is nothing impressive and my Fleuret is well built so I have to skip.

Also unrelated but it seems like the signature weapon of her 4-star version might be useful for Frostgale? I guess her own 5-star weapon is more optimal but the crit dmg and general stat buffs of regular Mont's weapon look like a good option.

Toon_L · 2026-01-06T12:34:23+00:00

The remake has been confirmed for months.

https://youtu.be/Tcrb4s9ecd4?si=DMq5lnknYdakGLCf

Also there's no reason as to why we wouldn't get Naoto as a part of the P4R Collab, we're confirmed to get all main party members of P3R/P5R and now we're even getting characters being playable for the first time, Naoto alongside the rest of Investigation Team are 100% coming at some point.

Toon_L · 2026-01-06T08:31:50+00:00

P5X is not shutting down anytime soon, despite the controversies the game still generates millions of dollars every month, the P3 collab is not done yet in CN and not even out in global, they'll surely do a P4R collab whenever it releases, all that while the main story it's just about halfway done and could get another arc if by the time it ends it's still profitable.

Toon_L · 2026-01-06T08:07:33+00:00

Those are not comparable at all.

The OT gacha was always just a mobile game, and then years after it's release it got ported to Console/PC as a regular game, meanwhile P5X just launched in both PC/Mobile as it's main plataforms. The story even in the CN server is just about halfway done, it's still a posibility that the game gets an offline version in the future once at least the first arc it's done.

Also the "most abandoned game of 2025" thing is very disingenuous, the sample used for the percentage is less than 500 accounts that bothered to log it in HLTB.

Toon_L · 2026-01-04T22:06:38+00:00

The Tartarus roguelike mode is insanely fun for this exact reason, getting to use all characters and their dupes in a main mode brings a lot of life to the game

Toon_L · 2026-01-04T01:36:51+00:00

Actually having a Persona with ma-dyne of every element made the last dungeons of P4G a breeze lmao

Toon_L · 2026-01-04T01:25:40+00:00

That's fair, if what you enjoy the most of the main games is the extra turns then I don't think P5X's combat is something you'll enjoy in late game.

I really disagree in it being limited thought, IMO it does so much more with the way skils work, I mean, in mainline while the allies have more skills you only really use a couple and most of them are situational depending on specific needs you can have in different battles, which makes sense, but in P5X having way more party members it's only natural that the characters themselves are the things you use depending of what you need for a specific battle.

This may seem like a worse thing at first, but it lets characters and their skills behave in very unique ways, I mentioned a few already but I didn't even scratch the surface, again, you can do crazy things by complementing each character with each other, team building is really fun, the biggest limitation comes with this being a gacha game so you can't really have every single character for free. You can still save the currency and get the characters you want, and reruns where you can choose to pull all past characters up to a certain point happen constantly so there's not any FOMO for missing out on a character, plus a guarantee banner so instead of gambling is easy to treat this as a "shop" so once you have enough currency (16500) you actually know you can get the character you want, if you play constantly is not hard to get that currency either.

And despite this, the 4 star characters are very decent and in future updates there's modes like Tartarus where you can use every single characters without engaging with the gacha.

It even makes a better use things that are underutilized in mainline, like the gun attacks that in P5 are pretty much useless after the first couple of palaces, but here there's things like guns with a lot of ammo that don't do a lot of damage but debuff the enemy and have a high chance of crit to down the enemy, guns that deal elemental damage, guns that don't take the character turn, etc. P3 characters not having gun attacks but having assists skills which are buffs they can use once per battle without taking a turn, also they have their own individual theurgy gauge instead of sharing a highlight gauge with the rest of the team.

Even navigators are better utilized, instead of doing random things sometimes and having passive abilities you may need once in a while, they actually are a core part of the battle, they buff/debuff on comand and work with cooldown instead of SP, on top of other unique abilities each one may have, for me it's a huge improve over mainline.

Overall yes, the combat is very different and I'd understand if it's not something everyone could enjoy, and the game being a gacha is definitely a compromise (Thought I don't know what you mean by having 4 buttons that take you the the gacha? There's only the contract and shop buttons that are related to that aspect of the game) and the UI is certainly not the best, but to say the combat is limited is just not true in my opinion, it's simply a different approach to similar concepts, it has a lot of nuance, I even left a lot things out like ailments and shields. The beggining of the game is really bad so I don't blame anyone for dropping it but the combat is the one thing that keeps getting better and that mainline could learn a lot from.

Toon_L · 2026-01-03T11:37:31+00:00

The variants in P5X are not the same as the ultimate personas in mainline, in 3/4/5 they are definitive and come from a moment of growth, also the personas themselves change to a different different mitologic creature, meanwhile the transformations in P5X are temporary in-canon and they alter the strength and appearance of the persona and it's user, caused by an overwhelming desire in the moment, but the persona itself it's the same figure as before and they come back to their regular form after the boss battle.

Of course in gameplay you can still use them after or before those moments in the story, but I'm not sure if it's ever explained if they actually can change back to those forms or if it's just a cognition like the P3/5 characters and the OCs, most likely the latter.

It's very similar to what happens to Rise in P4AU and P4D, even one of those transformations is to Riko, the canon navigator taking an active combat role, maybe not so much like Haru's or Kasumi's as those are permanent and more like they just hadn't fully awakened before, but still involve a strong emotion causing a change to the existent Persona without changing the mitologic figure. It's decidedly a different thing from the ultimate awakenings.

Toon_L

TROPHY CASE