The most obvious criticism to make is towards the story, is blatantly dumbed down vs previous games. I will ignore that and judge it simply on its own merits. A quick disclaimer here though is that since I hate turn based combat, my bf was actually the one playing and I was just watching and talking about it.
However, I can’t talk about bad things P5R does without discussing this first…
The game actively continues the dangerous notion that it’s okay for adult women to prey on teen boys and it’s disgusting. There is no justification for why they are constantly sexualizing the teacher in front of the kid and allowing you to date her. This genuinely needs the least amount of explanation, it’s just gross.
Now onto the main issue I have.
The game is extremely inaccessible with its design and gives me and my bf massive headaches to look at for too long.
Before I delve deep into this it’s worth noting that P5R did fix a lot of these issues actually. However, P5R is also an extremely overpriced DLC which is an entirely different matter.
The game has an extreme over reliance on movement in its UI making everything extremely hard to read or focus on. When you select a dialogue option, the background behind the text is moving. Characters names are obscured like a captcha in dialogue boxes (which move). When standing still in the overworld every icon on the screen is moving (most notably the weather icon is moving the most) Even when the game is paused the background is constantly moving. The worst offender for this is the dungeons which have a terrible warping effect on the side of the screen that cause really bad tunnel vision.
I spend a lot of my time when I do UX/UI design (I’m a front end developer) making sure my design is as accessible as possible. I am a big believer that video games can be art and are fantastic at it… but P5 felt like it was constantly fighting against having anyone play it by being the single most headache-inducing game I’ve ever experienced.
Anyway that’s my big rant about how perpetuating harmful notions about allowing boys to be r*ped is bad and also a giant wall of text on how the UI is terrible and actively harms a portion of it’s player base.
Anyway, I don’t hate persona at all, just this one entry. I plan to watch the bf play P3R when it comes out cuz Persona 3 was fantastic and the remake looks like it’s going to be good.
Conversely I really liked how dynamic the UI was and that was one of the things that made it stand out. I didn’t even think about that it could be a problem for some people but feels like the kind of thing that could be turned off in an accessibility menu in the next one hopefully.
Thanks for your reply! Those are all really good points and I range from agreeing completely or understanding wholeheartedly why you feel the way you do about the issue.
Japan’s approach to romance tropes, especially with school age people, is problematic at best. Maybe as a teen I would have fallen head over heels for it and loved most of it (except Kawakami’s plot, yuck), but I definitely had to mentally distance myself from it because it felt weird to even interact with as an adult. At least most of them progress as friends and only turn into relationships at the end (most… bleh). I don’t even remember which romance I might have picked for the final companion step, maybe I skipped the commitment altogether. A part of me fully expects P6 to do something similar and I’m less enthusiastic about that part of the game as a result.
I never thought of the UI being difficult to read and concentrate with, but I totally get it now that you’ve mentioned it. There were definitely times I had a harder time navigating menus because of how much the background moved during transitions. The design itself was committed in every aspect, but the devs could have done more to normalize some of the text or add options to tweak the animations to be less dizzying while still being visually diverse.
I need to try P3 and P4 still, they are in my backlog and I never feel the initiative to start one of them. Your remark about P5 dumbing down some of the features of those games is a little inspiring because I did like the combat and options from P5. If it’s even better in past games, I may like those even more.
Persona 1 is notoriously incredibly stupid difficult so watch a let’s play instead for that one.
As for P4 it’s on Game Pass right now and P3 is getting a remaster that’s coming out really soon and looks really good. So now would be a fantastic time to play through P4 before P3R comes out.
The most obvious criticism to make is towards the story, is blatantly dumbed down vs previous games. I will ignore that and judge it simply on its own merits. A quick disclaimer here though is that since I hate turn based combat, my bf was actually the one playing and I was just watching and talking about it.
However, I can’t talk about bad things P5R does without discussing this first…
The game actively continues the dangerous notion that it’s okay for adult women to prey on teen boys and it’s disgusting. There is no justification for why they are constantly sexualizing the teacher in front of the kid and allowing you to date her. This genuinely needs the least amount of explanation, it’s just gross.
Now onto the main issue I have.
The game is extremely inaccessible with its design and gives me and my bf massive headaches to look at for too long.
Before I delve deep into this it’s worth noting that P5R did fix a lot of these issues actually. However, P5R is also an extremely overpriced DLC which is an entirely different matter.
The game has an extreme over reliance on movement in its UI making everything extremely hard to read or focus on. When you select a dialogue option, the background behind the text is moving. Characters names are obscured like a captcha in dialogue boxes (which move). When standing still in the overworld every icon on the screen is moving (most notably the weather icon is moving the most) Even when the game is paused the background is constantly moving. The worst offender for this is the dungeons which have a terrible warping effect on the side of the screen that cause really bad tunnel vision.
I spend a lot of my time when I do UX/UI design (I’m a front end developer) making sure my design is as accessible as possible. I am a big believer that video games can be art and are fantastic at it… but P5 felt like it was constantly fighting against having anyone play it by being the single most headache-inducing game I’ve ever experienced.
Anyway that’s my big rant about how perpetuating harmful notions about allowing boys to be r*ped is bad and also a giant wall of text on how the UI is terrible and actively harms a portion of it’s player base.
Anyway, I don’t hate persona at all, just this one entry. I plan to watch the bf play P3R when it comes out cuz Persona 3 was fantastic and the remake looks like it’s going to be good.
Conversely I really liked how dynamic the UI was and that was one of the things that made it stand out. I didn’t even think about that it could be a problem for some people but feels like the kind of thing that could be turned off in an accessibility menu in the next one hopefully.
Thanks for your reply! Those are all really good points and I range from agreeing completely or understanding wholeheartedly why you feel the way you do about the issue.
Japan’s approach to romance tropes, especially with school age people, is problematic at best. Maybe as a teen I would have fallen head over heels for it and loved most of it (except Kawakami’s plot, yuck), but I definitely had to mentally distance myself from it because it felt weird to even interact with as an adult. At least most of them progress as friends and only turn into relationships at the end (most… bleh). I don’t even remember which romance I might have picked for the final companion step, maybe I skipped the commitment altogether. A part of me fully expects P6 to do something similar and I’m less enthusiastic about that part of the game as a result.
I never thought of the UI being difficult to read and concentrate with, but I totally get it now that you’ve mentioned it. There were definitely times I had a harder time navigating menus because of how much the background moved during transitions. The design itself was committed in every aspect, but the devs could have done more to normalize some of the text or add options to tweak the animations to be less dizzying while still being visually diverse.
I need to try P3 and P4 still, they are in my backlog and I never feel the initiative to start one of them. Your remark about P5 dumbing down some of the features of those games is a little inspiring because I did like the combat and options from P5. If it’s even better in past games, I may like those even more.
Persona 1 is notoriously incredibly stupid difficult so watch a let’s play instead for that one.
As for P4 it’s on Game Pass right now and P3 is getting a remaster that’s coming out really soon and looks really good. So now would be a fantastic time to play through P4 before P3R comes out.