Persona is probably the second game series that made me buy a gaming console, initially being brainwashed by the “P5 is the best” meme for a year. Later, I watched Lex’s P4 recommendation video and couldn’t resist buying a PS Vita. If not for P4G later landing on PC, leaving a legacy for Persona across platforms (it did land on PC last year), I might have bought a second-hand PS4 for P5 at some point in the future…
Last year when I got P5, I also wanted to finish it within the same year, spending my life savings. However… the content is really extensive… By the end of the third semester, I had already spent nearly 80 hours and still haven’t finished it (not because I went off to play Splatoon 3!…)
Although I didn’t finish it, I can feel that most people have the same feeling: P5 excels in terms of system design, while P4 resonates more with my heart. It’s not that I don’t like the additional storylines in the Royal Edition compared to the Golden Edition; rather, I find the themes or intentions of P5 less appealing.
Perhaps because I’m already a jaded adult… I can’t fully immerse myself in the protagonists’ perspectives. The protagonists’ abilities awaken from their will to resist oppression, definition, and constraints by society, yearning to express their true selves. However, one of the bigger issues is that the antagonists in P5 are written as extremely stereotypical and polarized figures. A group of corrupt adults resort to any means necessary for their desires, solving problems in a very cool but unrealistic way: directly distorting the minds and thoughts of others. This method, when thought about, isn’t much different from traditional RPGs where power is used to persuade, essentially similar to using violence to achieve justice. Therefore, I think that when Akechi initially expressed his opinion on TV wasn’t wrong (although this character has many problems), the Phantom Thieves can indeed be very dangerous. I feel that this ability is essentially similar to how Death Note was obtained by Ryuk, and if the holder isn’t sufficiently enlightened, they will inevitably be used for evil purposes. Of course, some of these issues are also mentioned in the plot (e.g., Mishima, and Ryuji).
P4 handles these aspects much better because its theme is acceptance and growth. The protagonists’ abilities awaken from accepting their true selves, while enemies come from characters denying or rejecting themselves (although there are people’s biases). Every time a Shadow is defeated, it deepens the protagonist’s understanding of themselves, as well as the bonds between companions, naturally strengthening their relationships rather than achieving justice through power, as in P5. The protagonists don’t actually grow (growth comes solely from cooperative play).
However, this is unavoidable. A good story has already been used by P4… It can’t be done again; we can only hope that future works will balance both aspects better.
