The Radical Child

A Box-Office Disappointment

When I first played through Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, I expected top quality, being a crossover between Atlus’s Persona and Etrian Odyssey series, both of which I liked, but for some reason, the results were very mixed and disappointing to the point where I sold my sealed special edition of the game’s first and only sequel, Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth. I would ultimately download the second entry prior to the closure of Nintendo’s eShops to see if my instincts had been correct. At first, it does seem to show promise as a vastly improved follow-up, but does it remain that way towards the end?

Unlike the first Persona Q, the second, when one starts a new game, doesn’t allow players to focus on casts from any of the Persona games from the third one onward, but rather starts exclusively focused on that of the fifth game, which eventually meets the prior games’ characters in a unique movie theater setting. Here, they must advance through labyrinths paying homage to movies such as the Superman series, Jurassic Park franchise, and so on, to collect keys to leave the mysterious locked theater. The story has its moments and occasional humor, though most of the dialogue winds down to small talk about whatever environments the characters traverse, there are many tried tropes such as amnesia, the M rating doesn’t feel justified, the pacing is incredibly glacial, and quantity is put far more above quality.

As it was a late Nintendo 3DS release, the translators left the voice dub in Japanese, which is probably for the better given the first game’s atrocious voiced dialogue, and the game text itself is certainly legible, but regardless, many issues abound. One is that akin to the first game, the localization team left the Japanese honorifics in the dialogue, making it both feel horribly unnatural especially when used with full names and nonsensical to mainstream gamers not versed in the language. Another is the occasional Engrish, such as the option of “Succeed/Don’t Succeed” when sacrificing Personas in the Velvet Room. There are also no subtitles for most of the battle voices, with some Japanese floating about occasionally in the text as well. Generally, the localization was at a low at the time for Atlus.

Expect to spend a lot of time in the lobby.

Akin to the first game, the sequel features a methodical gameplay structure, with most business in between labyrinth exploration conducted in the movie theater lobby, where players can utilize the Velvet Room to fuse Personas, shop for equipment and items, get tickets to “Special Screenings” (which are, to say, sidequests), change the party formation, record progress, or go to one of the theaters to enter a movie’s respective labyrinth. Unlike many open-world RPGs, getting stuck and wondering where to go next is no issue whatsoever, even in the sidequests that take place in limited areas of each maze. The cartography system, for better or worse, imitates that of the Etrian Odyssey games, with each labyrinth having special icons to indicate unique obstacles.

Like in the Etrian games as well, the player can form a party of up to five characters divided between front and back rows, each with three spaces, with every Persona user having better effect on the frontline, backline, or either. One irritation is that though there exists the space, there is absolutely no way to fill in the sixth open slot as there is in many of the Etrian Odyssey titles, which would have been nice given the massive playable cast. Players can also outfit characters with one weapon, one piece of armor, and one accessory, alongside a Persona for each active character and one for whomever they decide to be battle and navigation, which can be one or two support Persona users among the three from the mainline games from three to five.

Combat follows the same overall structure, with an indicator showing how close the player is to encountering Shadows, in theme with the movie theater setting counting down from three to one before a fight triggers. The player has several combat options for each character from which to choose, such as attacking with an equipped weapon, using an HP-consuming physical or SP-consuming magical ability, defending to reduce damage, or using a consumable item. Alternatively, the player can attempt to escape from the enemy, and while this doesn’t always work, each character will attempt to do so, so there are five times for it to effect or not.

Abandon playtime, all ye who enter.

Another option that players have prior to inputting abilities each round is one or both Navis’ support skills, which require a certain amount of star levels from a special gauge and can accomplish things such as extending the length of status enhancements cast on the party, granting partial HP recover at the end of each round, and so on. Back to general battle structure, most who have experienced turn-based Japanese RPGs of yore will likely be familiar with the formula where characters and the enemy take their turns depending upon speed, and things like wasting healing on characters that die before it takes effect can occur. As a bonus, many FOEs and bosses sometimes execute multiple commands in a round, and not always consistently or right after one another, with no telling when they’ll do so.

The various quirks of the first Persona Q return, including the exploitation of an enemy’s weakness or landing a critical attack putting a character into “Boost” mode, where the next round, all their abilities will be free of cost the next round unless they receive any kind of damage. Knocking down all Shadows through weakness exploitation or critical attacks lets the player execute an All-Out Attack that deals all foes massive damage and is usually key to quicker combat victory. Outside of this, however, the pace of battle can be glacial, even on the highest adjustable speed setting in the game menus, in some cases with as many as several seconds between a skill affecting one Shadow and then another.

Another issue, moreover, is that HP-consuming skills, elemental or not, have an astronomically high miss rate, even when characters are at high levels, and in many cases it’s not worth the risk to use said skills as opposed to SP-consuming magical abilities. Regardless of however the player manages to triumph over an encounter with Shadows, all characters still alive gain experience for occasional level-ups, in which case at certain levels they may learn new skills for their base or equipped Persona, although either has a limit of six skills, with incredibly tough choices the player has to make at times given that there are a fair number of useful skills that in some cases work well in conjunction.

Gold Shadows can be rewarding yet annoying.

Death of all active characters, however, results in a Game Over and trip through the opening logos and eventually the title screen, unless one is playing on Safety difficulty, in which case they receive the opportunity to revive all characters with full HP and SP, whichever battle defeated them continuing normally, which can be an absolute godsend as many encounters can be downright brutal and cheap at times. When defeating special golden Shadows, players may also gain free Personas, the number they can have at one time increasable through side missions.

Much akin to its precursor, Q2 features powerful visible nemeses known as FOEs wandering throughout each labyrinth, with the in-game advice to avoid them initially very much advisable, and luckily, the sequel gives significantly more room for error when it comes to averting them. Their color on the in-game maps further shows how powerful they are compared to the player’s party and taking them on when the party is more powerful is always a good option, yielding free Personas as well in addition to materials they can sell at the concession stand (standard Shadows dropping them too).

While any successful enemy encounter yields money, the player gains ever more by selling them at said concession stand, which makes more powerful weapons, armor, and equipment available for purchase. However, the developers didn’t consider the game’s massive playable cast when settling upon the prices of everything, with players pretty much needing to equip a special accessory that increases monetary gains from combat. A system from the Etrian games further bequeathed is gathering points within each labyrinth, where players can either gather cautiously for low-level materials or risk enemy ambushes for high-level components.

Given the excess characters, being able to fill that sixth space would have been *really* nice.

Further compounding the financial difficulties players will face throughout Q2 is the Velvet Room where players can initially fuse two Personas to make new ones, and eventually three, with the rare risk of fusion accidents, though these tend to favor the player often, these features mercifully being free. Players can also access Persona sacrifices where they can grant another Persona or a character experience, with the forfeit of a specific one initially free before monetary charges occur. Blank Cards and Wild Cards respectively allow another Persona or a character to learn a skill from a sacrifice, which can be handy for diversifying one’s skillset, buts begs difficult decisions of which to keep or delete.

Moreover, the player can register Personas in the Velvet Room Compendium to resummon later for a price, and to do so frequently whenever leveling one is advisable so that certain skills become accessible for Blank or Wild Card usage. Equippable Personas also increase a character’s base HP and SP by a certain amount that increases with leveling, another feature being that at certain points throughout the game, specific allies become “motivated”, in which case they gain a bonus for equipping one. A new feature to Q2 is Unison Attacks acquirable from Ticket quests that randomly execute after a round of combat among certain characters to dish out supplemental damage.

All in all, while the second game’s mechanics have a lot of nifty features, they don’t always function effectively, given the lopsided nature of combat and inconsistent difficulty, with a forgiving curve in the beginning, a descent into gameplay hell in the middle, and a bit of a breeze towards the end, especially if the player does the Ticket quests and doesn’t rush through. That the avoidance of FOEs is easier is a definite plus, along with the various means by which to empower character Personas, although the in-game financial burden is very heavy, given the excessive number of characters, with Q2 all in all bequeathing the negative portions of the Etrian and Persona mechanics more so than the positives.

Doing something educational would be time better spent than playing Q2.

Given the deluge of playable characters, maintenance in the theater lobby will easily consume a sizeable fraction of the sequel’s lengthy playtime, given the flashy but clunky menus, alongside minor things such as the herculean task of seeing if a particular character is more effective in the front row, back, or either, alongside the forced startup screens of every company involved in the game’s production when the player gets back into the game or gets a Game Over, a fairly irksome JRPG habit. While there is a suspend save within the labyrinths, furthermore, the potential for lost playtime due to enemy cheapness is great on difficulties above Safety, although given the game’s linear structure, finding out where to go next is nonproblematic. Still, Q2 could have been better in the interaction department.

Mercifully, the aural department is more bearable than in the first game given the wise decision to leave the voicework in Japanese, although the seiyuu struggling as always with English words is an offense to the Anglophone world, but the voices are luckily mutable. There are a fair number of catchy vocal pieces in the soundtrack, such as the lobby theme, with catchy lyrics like “Say, darling, hey, maybe!”, musical numbers abounding in the labyrinth based on The Wizard of Oz also. The non-vocal tracks are pleasant as well, so the sequel overall is easy on the ears.

Q2 fares somewhat decently visually as well, akin to its predecessor using chibi versions of the various characters from the third, fourth, and fifth mainline Persona titles, and a cutscene style where the background fuzzes out so that the character models can communicate, showing wide ranges of emotions and gestures. Occasional anime cutscenes come as well, with the colors being bright and beautiful, the environments especially appearing pretty despite some pixilated and blurry textures. As in the Etrian titles, labyrinth exploration and combat occur in the first person, though occasional breaks do occur in either. The battle graphics look nice as well despite telekinetic attacking on part of the Shadows and the asinine dodge animation native to Megami Tensei titles where foes move to one side and back in place without lifting an appendage. Regardless, the graphics are more than passable.

Finally, the first and only Persona Q sequel can be very long, at least sixty hours to finish if the player attempts a straightforward playthrough, although with sidequests and time spent in a New Game+, it can be far longer, and given that the game overstays its welcome, odds are most won’t want to invest any more of their precious gaming time into it.

Overall, while Persona Q2 does have several gameplay improvements compared to its predecessor, the crossover of the Etrian Odyssey and Persona series continued to not work out as well as one would expect, since countless other elements make it a middling experience, such as the high amount of time spent in the theater lobby maintaining characters, the overindulgent small talk within the dungeons that doesn’t contribute much to the central storyline, the rushed translation, and so one. The audiovisual presentation, especially the soundtrack, do shine in many areas, although those can’t mask a largely lackluster experience, and mainstream video gamers would best spend their precious gaming time elsewhere, preferably either the Etrian or mainline Persona games.

This review is based on a single playthrough to the standard ending with all known sidequests completed on a digital copy of the game downloaded to the reviewer's Nintendo 3DS.

The Blackboard Metaverse

Atlus's Persona videogame franchise began as a spinoff of their Megami Tensei series, the first few games of the subseries bearing the Shin Megami Tensei name and being mechanically different from mainline entries of the franchise. The first three games, the inaugural installment and both halves of the second entry, one of which wouldn't see an official English release until Sony released their PlayStation Portable system, first appeared on the PlayStation before transitioning to the PlayStation 2 with the third and fourth games, which bore much mechanical dissonance from its precursors, although in my opinion, said deviation was for the better. The fifth game, its latest incarnation titled Persona 5 Royal, builds upon its predecessors but brings a few old ideas back into the fray.

The latest Persona begins in the middle of its narrative, with the protagonist, leader of the Phantom Thieves and with the alias Joker, caught by Japanese authorities and interrogated, the action moving back to when he intervened in a situation earning him an assault charge and probation as he started life anew at a high school with other students assisting in his rehabilitation. Throughout the game are wrongdoers with metaversal Palaces where they play out their fantasies, the Phantom Thieves seeking to steal their symbolic Treasures along with the Hearts of the wrongdoers, in which case they confess their misdeeds.

Fans of the Kingdom Hearts series might roll their eyes at the similar concept of stealing hearts in the narrative, along with fans of the animanga Death Note who might or might not notice the supernatural methods of supernaturally reforming society by targeting certain deviants. However, Persona 5 delves into contemporary issues and themes that are somewhat relatable, such as abuse by teachers in school and the politics of Japan, with confidants Joker encounters and with whom he builds relationships having stories of their own, such as a washed-up ex-member of the Japanese Diet. However, the pacing is glacial and drawn-out, with the Royal version a bigger offender in that regard since its events go well beyond those of the initial release.

As with contemporary Persona localizations, the translation team opted to translate the dialogue with aspects unfriendly towards non-Japanophiles, with Japanese honorifics retained and accompanied by character names, which often breaks the naturality of the English localization, yet is still mercifully legible so long as players Google the internet to find out what they mean. However, like most English versions of Japanese RPGs, the writing is worst in combat, with the retained decision to have someone narrate everything that occurs in battle, and characters often shout "Persona!" when reaching their turns. Though generally a polished effort, the translation comes across as a middle-tier effort.

Like in the third and fourth Personas, alongside their various rereleases, Persona 5 features a methodical gameplay structure focused around the attendance of school by Joker and fellow students that eventually become his allies in combat. He has five social stats that increase with various activities like answering questions in school correctly, participating in diversions such as a batting cage and a bathhouse, and so forth, some of which need to be at certain levels for him to establish relationships with certain confidants that chiefly dictate how much bonus experience the player receives from fusing Personas of certain Arcanas, but there can be other effects such as the ability to score instant victories against enemy parties without needing to battle them.

Key to advancing the central storyline is the mentioned Palaces whose respective Treasures the player needs to steal to change the Hearts of the wretched individuals the Phantom Thieves target, enemies traversing these dungeons, players able to get preemptive strikes against them, but foes can do the same in return. Advancing one Arcana enough allows players to win instantly against enemy parties, with experience and money earned for living party members and a new Persona so long as Joker has the capacity for at least one more. Joker himself is the only character who can wield multiple Personas, his allies each having one with abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.

The general structure of combat is similar to the third and fourth mainline Personas, the player's party of four characters, headed by Joker, taking turns dependent upon agility, commands executed instantly upon input. During a turn, the player can get an indication of which unit will go next, but unlike Final Fantasy X, subsequent character/enemy order is indeterminate, yet mercifully doesn't break the game. Commands include attacking with an equipped melee weapon or firearm, using an SP-consuming ability from a Persona, guarding until their next turn, using an item, or attempting to escape, which may or may not work all the time.

As in the mentioned Personas and Megami Tensei series from which it branched, the ability of players and enemies to exploit one another's strengths and weaknesses adds strategy, the exploitation of one's weak point earning the exploiter another action. One difference from the third and fourth games, and a feature prevalent in the initial entry and both parts of the second, is the need to negotiate with downed enemies; luckily, the system isn't as open-ended as in the earlier Personas or up to random chance like in the mainline Megami Tensei games, demon personalities key to which answers to questions are correct.

Players can earn money, an item, or the alliance of one of the downed demons from a successful negotiation. The Velvet Room returns, where the player can fuse Personas to create more powerful (in some cases, weaker) ones, the facility indicating if they have had a demon before, and in my experience, I found it advantageous to fuse for new ones, since in whatever battles the player encounters said enemies in, they can outright skip negotiation when downing an enemy party. Consequentially, I only had to endure it less than a handful of times in the game's generous length. Players can also sacrifice Personas to obtain an item, including powerful equipment.

Victory nets players experience for occasional level-ups and money, a system paralleling the core mechanics being the Mementos dungeon, deeper levels opening depending on how popular the Phantom Thieves are with the Japanese public, and is similar to the Temple of the Ocean King from The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, minus the need to redo puzzles (luckily absent in the metaversal region) and floors completely, with targets for occasional requests without the metaverse often found in certain levels. Aside from the minor issue with determining player and enemy turn order, the gameplay systems work well, and different difficulty levels accommodate players of varying skill levels.

Control is decent, the linear structure ensuring the player never becomes lost as to the current gameplay objective. However, while the Palaces have maps, the game doesn’t indicate which exits from floors lead where, which can lead to confusion. Most cutscenes are skippable along with the ability to cut spoken dialogue short if players wish to read instead of waiting for the performers to finish speaking, and the player can pause the action by bringing up a review of the latest text, similar to Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. Fast travel also exists among points of interest in the real-life Japanese setting, saving significant time in a game that’s already long. There are some issues regarding the spacing of save opportunities, not to mention maybe a few annoying late-game puzzles, but otherwise, Persona 5 generally interfaces well with players.

Shoji Meguro provides the game music, which is generally enjoyable and features plenty of tracks that rarely get old, although there are occasional silent scenes. The sound effects are what one would expect from a contemporary RPG, and the voice acting is decent; there are, however, plenty of overlapping voice clips in battle and unnecessary narration of trivial things that occur then.

The art direction is generally superb, with a style one could describe as trippy, given the effective use of reddish colors, transitional sequences when one fast-travels between points of interest, enemy designs with no reskins, fluid animation, flashy combat effects, and nice cel-shading. However, the visuals contain some jaggies, along with textures that appear blurry and pixilated when seen close-up, and the view distance of NPCs can be poor.

Finally, Persona 5 Royal is incredibly long for a rigidly-linear game, a little over a hundred hours, around a dozen or so longer than the original release, and while there is some lasting appeal in the form of things such as Trophies, the length and limited potential for variation somewhat drag it down, most players likely wishing to move on to other games after completion.

Overall, Persona 5 Royal is a great rerelease of a game that was already good, given its superb gameplay mechanics and control, endearing narrative and characters, and solid audiovisual presentation. Granted, it often puts quantity above quality, and I found myself fast-forwarding through late-game dialogue given the game's unwillingness to end; there are also other issues like the translation's unfriendliness towards non-Japanophiles and mainstream gaming audiences in general. Regardless, those who haven't experienced the initial release will get a bang for their gaming buck with Royal, still superior to earlier games in the Persona series and the Megami Tensei franchise from which the subseries spun off.