Just finished my 2nd run on the Merciless mode today - on PS5.
My first DW type experience, even though I don't really think this is one. It's more of Persona5 with different style of battle than anything else.
Total hour spent - 154 hours. Ran thru the 1st run on normal + English voice acting, and 2nd run was on merciless + Japanese voice acting.
My play style is exceptionally slow, compared to others - I tend to buy everything, collect everything and do all the side quests. I heard normal playthru time is about 20-30 hours... but not sure how people do that. lol...
I was able to get the platinum trophy around the time I got to the Sapporo stage on my 2nd run - little bit over 120 hours or so.
The biggest challenge being the "bond" skill maxing to 99 for the trophy, which isn't really feasible on normal play thru. However after getting it done, I just decided
I had protagonist level up to 99 on my 1st run thru - as I tend to op my characters at all times... but rest of the party members were around 90-95 ish.
In the end, I ended up defeating the Reaper on merciless mode. It wasn't much of an issue as I had plenty of SP recoveries, and maxed out everyone's stats to max. (999 HP, 999 SP, all stats to 99) - only took like 10 minutes to do so. This game is all about having more SP, or preserving it. Physical attacks are not really that useful nor effective - it's better to use your persona (stops time and lets you choose your skills) & defeat them / all-in-attack to quickly get done with each encounter. In that sense, it felt very much like non-action game, which is not a bad news for me, as I suck at action games.
But at the same time, the battle flow itself became rather gimped/unbalanced due to the protagonist's own wild card ability to possess so many different personas. Once you reach certain amount of SP or customized good amount of personas to your needs - it's rarely needed to change the character in the 2nd run thru. Basically I wiped most enemies, even semi-bosses with Alice's "Die for me!" skill - all the way to the end game. Wish the game would somehow enforced using other characters in more meaningful way.
GFX. On PS5 - I hear it's 4K (looks like 4K) with solid 60fps - but the aliasing is quite noticeable. Even simple anti-aliasing on Haru's skirt lines would have been nice. Some character models look rather strange - especially the legs for male characters being so thin and skinny, it looks rather strange in some scenes where they are sitting or whatnot. Loading was about 3-5 seconds going in and out of dungeons/velvet room - and you do that a lot - so I kinda feel bad for the Switch owners for that... although it would have been more convenient to "grind" as Switch can be portable.
Story wise, I guess it is somewhat predictable... more so than the original. I would give 7 out of 10 for the story. At least it was pleasantly written, and still shows that ambiguity in between good vs evil like Maruki arc in Royal. The charm of each characters are still well presented - After all, it's about summer road trip with friends - and I think it achieved that theme very well. Glad that Haru got some more of earlier exposure, and I really liked new characters - Zenkichi & Sophie. Actually I liked them more than the new characters added for Royal (Kasumi) or P4 Golden (Marie) - since their stories are basically over-reaching the entire story arc, not confined with one extended arc.
English Zenkichi also made me chuckle several times - and the Japanese dialogue between Sophie and Ichinose also was quite moving, that I teared up a bit - although I didn't feel that emotional like that when I was playing in English mode in same scene. Actually English VA is really good in this one in my opinion, just like the original P5/P5R. Translation was done quite well, but It was also interesting to note the differences in VA though - most of them were dead on to one another - but I preferred English actors in most cases except English Makoto who rather sound a bit old lady like.. and in the end, Sophia. In Sophia's case - English one is more feminine & cuter/high-pitch that actually matches what she looks like - but JP one feels much more direct & machine like in a way - that fits her identity better. It took me a while to warm up, but the later scenes really made up for Japanese Sophie voice. Both of new characters awakening scenes were the best part of the story too. While it's cliche'd but it was well executed.
But how they all speak out in the boss battles and all with bunch of info-bombing - I felt like it's little too much for me - as the battle themselves are visual chaos all over the screen - listening to them during battles while I'm trying to focus on battle itself was rather confusing. It's like every Japanese anime where you hear the whole life's story during a battle... and got little tiresome in the end.
Most of side characters don't really make appearances except Sae and Sojiro - would have loved to see others, at least a bit though. Some are mentioned (Tae, Iwai) - but most are not even mentioned either.... I didn't even see Igor in this game... wonder what happened to him? Would have loved to see what happened to them, or etc.
Anyhow, I do think this was a worthy followup. Glad that I played, and hope I can see this group of characters in future somehow. It was good seeing that they were going strong in their own path and grew stronger from the whole ordeal... even though I am more interested what Persona 6 will be like, which I am pretty certain will have all new characters. Even so - I would love to see more references on previous games characters. Say, protagonist (Ren) could be a chef/cafe owner in the new game, or maybe be able to visit Amagi Ryokan, or return of Naoto Shirogane in certain sections or whatnot.
This year being 25th anniversary, I know they are announcing bunch of stuff, including one in September. Very much looking forward (with reserved expectation though...) for what the future holds.
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