Creating A Paradise | Persona 5 Royal Review Series

After a year and a half, we're finally at the end. Does P5R end off on its best note or does it fumble the landing?
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[@joaocisne556]

will you play strikers?

[@Mystic-Aidan]

I think the biggest issue with the idea of separating “the actualization” into its own mode is single handedly the fact this is an SMT game with a compendium and fusion. You could hypothetically start from scratch like in The Answer, but then Maruki’s palace would need to be WAY longer. Having it be at the end of the main game completely skips needing that flat restart, and your other party members are already set up. You could pull a P5T and make it so it’s ONLY Akechi and Yoshizawa, but I think the “ultimate challenge” stuff with the complete party is much more interesting from a gameplay standpoint. From even a narrative standpoint, I also doubt that’d work, since Maruki being there as the thieve’s therapist for the whole game was extremely essential for the more reason of him assuming control. That slow buildup is incredibly important for why this happens in canon at all. Even if you somehow made the day by day structure work for a single month with imported save, I believe he wouldn’t have stuck the landing at all. I completely get where the criticisms come from, but I greatly disagree with your proposed solution. It’s not really as simple as just staple it into the end. You’d probably have to rewrite the entire Royal arc to make it work that way.

[@Noahs_Chair]

32:35 Time to "Uh, actually". You only need Maruki, Sumire and Akechi only unlock their extra scenes in the ending.

[@hammieli1875]

The whole last 7 minutes of this video is a bozo take anyways.

[@ClickPointXX]

Ok, before I get into what I’m about to say I just wanna make one thing clear. I’m a huge fan of your content and really enjoyed this series, so nothing I’m about to say is a personal attack of you or your content, I’m just simply giving my opinion. Now that that’s out of the way: I strongly disagree with a lot of your takes on the third semester. I know you said you really enjoy it and I’m glad you do, but there’s a lot of stuff I feel like you’re kinda blowing out of proportion here. Let’s start with the week where you have to talk to all the PTs. While I do think that this section is super tedious and repetitive, I feel like that was kinda the point. It’s obviously not gonna be fun to have to tell all your friends that their perfectly happy life is all a lie, and I feel like that section handles that perfectly. Though I do agree that the characters should have had slightly more varied reactions. E.G: Some get angry, some get sad, etc. I also disagree with your take on the Maruki controlling Sumire thing but I’m not gonna dwell on that since you acknowledge pretty much any argument that I could make in the video already, so I don’t see the point in arguing it any further. One of the biggest things I disagree with you on is just Sumire in general. For one your argument about her continuing to use the pony tail is actually kinda disingenuous since you never mentioned that the only reason she uses it outside the palace is if you finish her social link, when she decides to do it as a tribute to Kasumi (Though lets be real the real reason is because Atlus knew a lot of people deemed her best girl the minute they saw her and they wanted those people to still like her without having to adjust to the design change… then again I kinda am one of those people so I should probably shut up…). I also disagree with your take on her thief outfit. In this case I really don’t see why it would change since it’s based on two things she really likes: Gymnastics and Joker (lol). And in terms of the pony tail here, I’m fine with it for 2 reasons. 1. It fits with the gymnastics theme of her outfit. And 2. It’s kinda implied in her second awakening scene that Cendrillon is an ancestor persona (Think Nanjo’s Yamaoka Persona from P1 & 2) and that Cendrillon is supposed to represent Kasumi, so in a way Sumire draws her strength from Kasumi, that’s also kinda touched upon in her showtime with Ren. I also think your a little too hard on the final boss. The actual fight is in the first 2 phases, everything else after that is just there for spectacle, kinda like the True Nyx fight in P3. And in terms of the ending, I also didn’t really like it when I first played the game, and while I will say the ending cutscene itself does have a bit less impact than in vanilla, I think what the ending represents over all is MUCH better in Royal. Vanilla’s ending didn’t really seem all that different from P4’s, it was basically just “Aw no there’ll be one less of us now”. Where as in Royal everyone is going their separate ways after Maruki made them realise that they didn’t just wanna give up on their dreams. And I feel like that’s a much more interesting ending than what Vanilla had. In terms of your idea of how they “should have done Royal”, yeah I’m sorry that sounds like a horrible idea to me. I like the whole people who already own the original should get a discount thing (though ideally I think they should just sell it at a lower retail price in general), and I also like the ability to choose between vanilla and Royal in game (really glad SMTVV is actually doing that). But your idea to handle the third semester like the answer in P3 I just think doesn’t work. I think part of what makes Maruki and Sumire work so well as characters is that you get to know them throughout the course of the game, only to have the way you view them completely flipped on it’s head once you reach that point. I understand your frustration with having to replay another 100 hours of gameplay again, but I think that just shows why Atlus needs to rethink how they handle this whole re-release thing. Anyway, I hope I didn’t come off as an asshole here, obviously I respect everyone’s opinion, I just wanted to say my piece too. Also sorry for how long this was, I kinda have a problem…

[@shinji2898]

I kind of felt that he has a good point that it being a separate campaign would’ve been nice, because I can see how someone returning from the base release would basically have to play it on FWD aside from those moments with new content. But at the same time, it didn’t bother me and (if I can guess) others who’s first experience with p5 is through royal. Because for most of us, this was basically our first experience with the base game.

[@ClickPointXX]

@@shinji2898 Oh no I get why he’s saying it, I just don’t agree with him. I feel like he’s looking at it more from the perspective of “Could they have done this” and less from the perspective of “should they have done this”, cause if the third semester was handled the way he suggested it would’ve been sacrificing depth for the sake of convenience. I would also like to add that my first experience with P5 was through vanilla, and I personally had no problem playing threw Royal the whole way, hell I actually played them back to back since I played it for the first time in 2021. I think it entirely depends on how much you like P5, like I say I understand his frustration with having to play the full 100 hours again but I don’t think it’s worth compromising the third semester for the sake of convenience, especially with how much confusion and discourse the whole “this is an alternate take on the ending” thing would’ve caused, I can hear the canon debates from here… Plus I think Royal adds just enough throughout the main game to make it feel fresh enough. I don’t think it “feels like a whole new game” or anything but I felt it was different enough.

[@ArshadZahid_nohandleideas]

Finally, a civilized manner of expressing disagreement Haven't seen one of those in a while

[@Blastercannon]

Good video came out very well However even if theres a few things i disagree with, there is one thing i want to talk about and thats the scene about maruki forcing control over sumire, while you may hate it i love it because it shows off how easily corruptable people can be even with good intentions showing how easily maruki could be corrupted by his own ideals, maruki aint a a special being, he's human and easily falls victim to the same thing others humans do, which is shown off by this scene and the deadline bad ending where if you dont make it in time maruki puts ren to eternal sleep because he believes thats better that having ren live being unsure in his reality. His messiah complex of trying to save anyone makes him such an interesting villian for the series, he isnt some pure evil being, but he isnt some pure saint, hes just a man who suffered and does what he believes is right, even if it means removing all free will from others

[@smashpanda033]

Man these videos are so well made

[@demi-fiendoftime3825]

I get your criticisms with the 3rd semester but I still love it isolated on its own I think its as great a story a P2 even with its flaws and shortcomings and made Akechi a charter I used to hate one of my favorite characters as now that I fully understood him I related to him. I am an outcast who's had very few friends and can be very abrasive and aggressive yet I still appreciate the company of those that understand me and highly value my freedom to the point that if in his situation I would be willing to die to then be controlled by Maruki's fantasy. Also Sumi is tied with Ann as my favorite girl in P5.

[@certifiedtrash3152]

Honestly my biggest problem with the 3rd semester is that it's just too short for what they wanted to do, a lot of ideas such as everyone getting what they wanted isn't fleshed out as much as they could have

[@TheobaldLeonhart]

Shit. I saw this, and got excited

[@juniperglades8932]

I’m grateful that I played this on Switch. Forced for Royal to be the only P5 (spinoffs not withstanding) game. Maruki’s an interesting character, and is my motivation for changing jobs.

[@Glowpikminfan]

LETS GO!!!!!🎉🎉🎉

[@MildPinguino]

So Happy World was my top 3rd most listened song in my Spotify Wrapped. It's so cool!!!

[@hgmd3284]

Definitely one of the more criticism centric reviews of the maruki palice

[@ShinZenkiX]

i also played the original p5 just to buy royal and play through it again and i enjoyed both playthroughs BUT i will absolutely NEVER tell someone to play p5 over royal nor will i tell someone who has only played vanilla that they should replay all of it for the royal content. though i cant say the same for reload. if someone has played any other version of P3 i'll still say to play reload, and they're rereleasing the answer as well and presenting it the same as they did originally, as a separate campaign. how you described how rereleases work sounds like it should always be that way imo

[@raulrojas9253]

No one hates Maruki, that much is true. I am also glad someone saw the Bullshit of P5 royal, I double dipped only to feel scammed I am going SMT V vengeance with sever Skepticism, specially with day one DLC. So If you could get SMT V Vengeance sooner and make a review talking about that, that would be great. And yeah A semester is not 3 weeks.

[@SharpestSniper99]

I have had plenty of parts throughout this whole retrospective that I disagree with (with this part undoubtedly having the most seeing as it is my favorite part of the game, especially regarding the final boss fight)…but with all said and done. This was still a nice retrospective. Take your break Macca. You earned it. Also since we reached the finale….rest in peace Billy Kametz, Maruki was a fantastic character and your performance is a large reason why he’s so beloved. We all miss you. And may God bless your kind soul.

[@jojomicheldu59]

25:40 Media literacy on its deathbed rn

[@marioperez910]

?

[@DarkSeraph]

Huh?

[@rcole7274]

0:19 ?

[@LunarDoor]

i love (not rlly) you macca keep uploading!

[@PresidentEgg16]

No Jack Frost gameplay so 0/10 vid /j

[@ShioSatou]

I really don't get what you mean by P3R's theurgia mechanic feeling like an "evolution" of P5R's showtimes. They are essentially the exact same thing, especially given how they all pierce resistances anyways so there's no real strategising to be down with the offensive ones, and they feel balanced a lot worse than P5R's showtimes given how they deal much more damage and the physical ones are always better than the magic ones since they deal more flat damage and have crits built in. Both of these mechanics are undercooked and terrible in all honesty, but I find Theurgia much more insulting because they could've at least tried to do anything remotely interesting with them but made them all generic instead for no reason at all.

[@chiangkai-shrek1575]

I kinda see where you're coming from, Theurgies pretty much break the game but it's not like there's absolutely zero strategy to them. Like during my playthrough, one of the Tartarus gatekeepers was weak to garu skills. However, I only had access to level 2 garu which barely hit for any damage, so I tried doing as much neutral damage as possible and made Yukari exclusively heal so that I could actually do decent damage with her Theurgy. (Which did wind damage) So yeah you can in fact strategize around them (Do keep in mind P3R is my first Persona game) *Edit:* Also the introduction of Theurgy gives Yukari a nice moment strengthening her resolve, unlike Showtime which barely has any story purpose

[@ShioSatou]

@@chiangkai-shrek1575 I don't really think that hitting weaknesses counts much as strategy considering every skill does this besides almighty, and you aren't even punished for attacking a resistance, null, repel or drain with Theurgia like you are with normal attacks. Plus like with Theurgia, the physical ones are always strongest anyways, and they are always able to crit, which provides even less strategy and incentivises just doing brute-force one shots

[@chiangkai-shrek1575]

@@ShioSatou Hitting weaknesses is still strategic because it knocks enemies down. Also, it helps catch otherwise underleveled characters up to speed and actually be useful in battle. With the fight I mentioned, if I hadn't built up the theurgy I would easily have lost. *Edit:* I forgot to add this, but at least you can build up and save Theurgies unlike showtimes which are essentially random Again I'm not a huge theurgy guy, but I think that saying theurgies are just random attacks that do high damage is misleading. (They're still unbalanced af, I'll give you that) Also, theurgies aren't even exclusively damaging moves, Cadenza, Oracle, Koromaru and Ken's second Theurgies are buffing moves (well Ken's is a heal and reflect but my point still stands). They really help if you're out of SP or wanna conserve it. I hope Persona 6 expands on this mechanic and makes this a bit more balanced.

[@isaiahjolin7178]

Hello Macca my name is Isaiah and I have something important to say to you. God loves you and like any father he wants to help you and keep you safe especially from the devil. But I am not just speaking to you about this I am also talking to your fans about this. God loves you all and especially in the times we our living in we are in need of him more than ever. But the choice is ultimately yours have a nice day Shalom Shalom.

[@MaleTears]

SHUT UP, PLAY DIGITAL DEVIL SAGA

[@poopityscoop6398]

I don’t get his criticism abt maruki’s final "fight" since it’s the same thing as nyx’s fight where it’s more of a cutscene told thru the form of a jrpg battle

[@dave9515]

They did it better with Maruki too. The way you have to tank adam kadmon and heal up like every turn really added extra tension compared to just spamming auto attack on the core with makoto. P5R is hands down Atlus's best mainline modern persona game still to this day.

[@demi-fiendoftime3825]

@dave9515 Exactly his persona's first form is the final boss the evolved form is just a spectical interactive cutsene

[@sicklytensei]

Persona 5 es muy buen juego, pero muchas cosas no tienen sentido, y es triste. Como fan, amo las cosas por lo que son, no por lo que quiero que sean, por eso acepto que la trama a pesar de ser mala, es interesante, pero mal explorada, el final se siente vacio, te venden a sumire como personaje principal, y si bien te va, solo la usas un mes. Y cual era la necesidad de copiarle la historia a BLEACH, el maruki hasta tiene el mismo cambio de cabello.