Watch today's Zero Punctuation episode on Google Stadia. www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/stadia-zero-punctuation/ OR watch it early on RUclips via RUclips Memberships!
Your on-site video player lacks the ability to double-click to minimize/maximize - Which is a pretty standard feature of video players these days (And video players of 10 years ago) I could go on, but I think you do so far better. Maybe a "The Escapist Video Player (Zero Punctuation)" video? :p
Fun fact for anybody who watches this late: Yahtzee eventually finished the game, loves it, and then started playing it on loop. He now uses it as a time eater, like Stardew Valley.
@@Toasty158 - I believe one of the post-release streams, he mentioned he beat the game. The part that came to mind as I wrote it was the "Stop bragging about your game's length" Extra Punctuation.
Fyi, from the bugsnax review and the podcast with Jack, here's an update on his progress and thoughts on the game: - He went back and beat the game twice (he probably went back after reading FAQs about how to get the true Golden endings) - He came to like the game a lot more than he initially thought (this review) - He claimed that he still likes P5 more as an overall package but likes P4's character dynamics and interactions more
Honestly, tbh, it's so weird to me he like had this opinion and yet it changed so much. Doesn't happen often with him. Thanks for the easy update! But, as someone who played 5 royal recently and is playing through golden. I'm not sure I like golden as much. I like some characters more. But overall the bad or less interesting characters, more proper rpg tropes with only party members getting exp and like the rare enemies that drop larger sums of exp and money.... I'm not liking it so far...
@@fdawer116 Persona 4, in spite of the Golden remastering, is still a mid-developer RPG of it's time. It comes from that time before games were "figured out" as well as they are today, so the baseline of quality is just kinda all over the place. Mechanically speaking, P4 is not a very good game. However, much like any PS2 RPG worth it's weight, it places it's stakes on it's narrative and I think that's where it has one over Persona 5. That could be just me, as I learn to have a distaste for P5's story the more time goes by. Even then, the story of Persona 4 takes a little time to get going properly.
@@AlluMan96 honestly I think 4's story is even less fleshed out. The God complex thing feels rushed (golden helps it feel less rushed but still), the first 3 characters you meet Yukiko, yosuke and chie have Suoer weak arcs and the true killer has the weakest motive. And still a lotta minor things aren't explained by how the story works. Like i still think teddie being a shadow makes no god damn sense. Having finished the game now though. It's not bad for sure. But it's do much weaker. Like I wouldn't mind if half of the hangouts weren't sexual in a really not comfy way. Like sexual comedy works but twddie ruins a of the hang out scenes after he's introduced except for the ski lodge specific to golden which makes me think they toned it back on purpose. Because thats the best hang out part by far. I think it comes down to everyone just assuming they couldn't top 4 and it having been the most recent one for such a while and the older one that people think it's cooler.
@@fdawer116 I wouldn't say it's just seniority that gives P4 it's staying power. But then again, it's strengths lie in what we disagree with, the characters and story. I think P4's cast is very well realised, both as characters that feel like they have a realistic dynamic between each other and tying into the themes of the story. Chie sucks, that's about the only one I don't like, but the rest are strong. Even Teddie. He's a nuisance and I hate him, but that's what makes it funny. The killer having a weak motive I feel is kinda the point. There isn't anything grandiose or deep about him, he's just a scumbag, kinda like a real killer. He's also a good counterpoint to the rest of the story. Whereas everyone's story is mostly about being becoming more honest with yourself and accepting the reality around you, the killer acts in stark contrast to that as a person that never managed to become that. I dunno, I always felt like P5 got a bit overhyped, where people talk about it with the least amount of scrutiny possible. I always found the game a bit aimless and confused. It wants to be a very good vs bad story, but in that light paints literally brainwashing people by stripping their free will and forcing them into suicidal guilt as "the reasonable solution" without a shred of introspection or self-awareness. It wants to tackle topics like abuse, suicide, depression and all that dark shit, but makes it so cookie-cutter and simplistic that it makes it quite distasteful imo. The characters tend to start off strong, but only get anything resembling development in the arc they are relevant for until becoming one-note tropes. I don't hate P5, but I feel like it sorta got a bloated reputation riding on mostly it's slick and cool style. Like, I sometimes ponder how people would receive it's story if the game was as clunky and unflattering as P4 is.
Yeah persona 4 and 5's music both go for entirely different styles.I dont think it's fair to directly compare them and say ones objectivly better or worse.
This is hilarious because I feel the exact same way about the intro. I don't know what it is, but when that cheerful harmonica starts playing there is no physical way to skip the intro.
at first, nostalgia kept me from enjoying in since the original was so great (mostly the song) but it really grew on me after maybe 4 or 5 times and now I love it.
for me P4G worse than P5R intro, and that is a feat. its one of those musics that it feels like someone decided to throw on meguru lap while he was occupied masturbating, so he just wrote whatever with his cum and gave it back for people to make a music. while the original game intro is where the fucker had fun and was probably what he was thinking about when masturbating.
"Feels like Persona is the same game every time." Obligatory mention that Persona 1 & 2 are very different from modern Persona. 3 was about as hard as a soft reboot can get.
I REALLY want a remake of those but idk how I even would want the remake to be. A big charme of them is specifically that they DON'T work like the newer games, so maybe just a massive graphics overhaul? 🙃 Then again it would be super interesting to see how their stories would work in a more modern-style mechanics version too though...😣
@Shadow Hunt Considering his prior criticisms, he'd loathe Tartarus and no controllable party members (aside from P3P). Additionally, the fatigue mechanic really doesn't hold up in 2020, especially if you've already played 4 and 5. Overall, P3 is the one (modern) Persona game I could actually suggest watching in RUclips. The game itself is great, but those little outdated mechanics build up (especially in comparison to the newer games), and for someone as critical as Yahtzee, it would _really_ be a major grievance against the game.
@@sleepysera To be entirely fair P1 and 2 technically did get remakes. They're just relegated to the long forgotten realms of the PSP catalogue. I wouldn't say they hold up but since anything can emulate a psp nowadays it's pretty simple to play them.
i'm still waiting him to slander our naughty boi demifiend before he gets put on that list. or raidou, or serph or flynn or the four horsemen, or pretty much anyone from SJ.. wait, he has the right to criticize a few of them, and a few more if he's playing the redux but nevertheless
it's a stereotypical opinion by itself. anyone can like both and still be sane and respected. and don't be fooled, daddy atlus (who i am though getting put off by it's underhanded shit lately) still keeps it's alpha baby smt close at hand. Either they'll go big or go home..... the latter for now. .....yeah i know the comment was likely intended with heavy sarcasm, but really tho
This is why Yahtzee is my favorite reviewer while he complains about the jrpg segments of the game he also recognizes that it need to be there for the pacing of the game.
this is usually why fans will always recommend starting with 3 or 4 first, both are very well worth playing, but since the games keep improving so much on each other, you cant help but get spoiled by whatever the most recent entry is
@@ThisAdamGuy Technically best approach but its the hardest one. Persona 3 is still the hardest out of all of them just because they don't have direct control yet unless you play the Portable version. Finishing P3's second part "The Answer" is a feat of its own because of its difficulty and patience required.
I always wondered why people would start a series form it's fifth installment and always thought that this is so stupid you don't start with devil may cry 5 you play 1, 2 and 3 etc, if you start form half the series or the last part of it you wouldn't understand shit and you wouldn't appreciate the start even when the game is old and the control are not as fluid but you will appreciate the improvements in the newer games but if you Start with 5 of course you will be annoyed by a ton of things and it will cloud your judgment of the game
Nah. Do P5R. I finished P5 and completely forgot about the ending a within a week. P5R's 3rd Semester ending though, finished it 2 months ago, it still makes me sad now.
@@JaelinBezel If there's one thing Persona 5 kinda does bad compared to previous game, is that the tutorial took abit way too long. Persona 4 is quicker in that regard and the world introduction and mechanic introduction is mostly finished by the end of first dungeon.
@@ArchusKanzaki that's because P5 is trying to go back to bread and butter persona style and P4 was trying to expand the audience, anyone who played P1 and/or P2 didn't really need a tutorial for P5 where P4 was massively upgraded P3 controls
No one tell Yahtzee about how the final boss of one of the earlier Persona games is the characters' fathers combined Voltron-style into a daddy-issues monster.
The problem is he started with 5 so he can't hear amazing 4 which I prefer but honestly that's the whole review. He played new game old game look bad, sound bad, play bad.
I mean, how can you not have that music burn into your brain, when they try to squeeze too many syllables every sunny day. "Tuuuuurning miiserrry, into meaningfulll eh- neeeeeees"
Personally I love persona 4 a lot. I think the light, down to earth tone works well, especially after persona 3’s really heavy tone. That being said, I admit that some aspects of the game haven’t aged well. (particularly the dungeons and graphics)
I feel like most of Persona 3's dark shit didn't work for me... Spoilers for that. For example, that whole "you cannot possibly win against Nyx" thing is completely undercut by the fact that the game is an absurdly long RPG; everyone who has ever played one will know that yes, you will somehow win, the world will not end, and this has only been made worse now that there are several sequels to it. I think it's supposed to feel hopeless, except it never does, it just invokes thoughts of "I wonder how we'll actually win then". It being followed up with a cliche friendship winning thing for your victory is just kind of terrible; I already saw a less stupid version of it in Final Fantasy IV (which came out in 1991) and I'd seen it a billion times before, so I was just unable to take it seriously. I also think the memory loss is not explained adequately, they never explain why or why anyone knows about it.
Hooded Man That’s interesting, I thought Nyx was pretty well done story wise.(Gameplay wise I over leveled unlocking messiah and steamrolled him.) While I didn’t like the cliche of the main character sacrificing themselves, I thought Nyx was a good conclusion considering the themes of the game. Because death cannot be defeated, the main character sacrifices himself to seal off Nyx’s connection to humanity, thus eliminating it’s reason for unleashing the fall. I agree that the memory loss aspect was kind of stupid. It’s explained as them forgetting everything that had to do with the darkhour after eliminating it, but then they immediately just “power of friendship it away”.
@Hooded Man TBH persona is pretty much the only series where power of friendship doesn't bother me, i mean the main way you boost your power is by becoming friends with people, and you gain strength from others throughout the whole game. Plus I felt like with the whole nyx thing, though it is not as effective from the players point of view (though the music change and the party members dealing with this certainly help), i think they did a great job from the other characters perspectives and them trying to deal with this, after learning from the loss of those around them, making them begin to look to the future, and carry on their will, yet they are then told that all their growth and dreams for the future are now going to be meaningless, as death is coming.
I'm really glad with how you described P4GOLDEN, as a persona fan who experienced all the persona games. People will often say that the later games are just reskins of previous game. When in reality it is more like the past games are like the Bones and Muscles, that would shape what the next one would become.
Yeah, I can definitely see that. Haven’t gotten around to P5 yet (kind of holding off on P5R until the PS5 is out cause I skipped PS3 and PS4), but it's also the same way I felt about P4 coming from P3. I loved P3 when I played it, but putting P3FES and P4 (and especially P4G) side by side there are a ton of QoL improvements there. Atlus is clearly thinking very seriously about how to improve the series, with some obvious (SL’s should have more of a role in the combat sections) and less obvious (Envy is a bad mechanic and should be scrapped, all SL’s should have a non-romance version) lessons learned on the way.
When I played Persona 5, my biggest impression is how much improvement there is compared to Persona 4 Golden. I can barely find something in Persona 4 that Persona 5 does not do better. Comparing improvement between Persona 3 to 4 and 4 to 5 is almost day and night. My impression can be summed up in "well, those 10+ years of development and multiple delays is worth it", which is really not something alot of games can say in retrospect (Duke Nukem Forever, Anthem, etc). Royal basically irons out all the kinks Yahtzee points out and add even more toppings to the point that I kinda want Yahtzee to play even though its technically re-release that kinda goes further.
its hard to say, they get better in some aspects, but worse in others. P4 probably has the best party member S-links, even though they are not exactly the most interesting characters of the franchise, it also has a lot more mechanics and stuff to do, but everything else is worse than P3 (dungeons, story, story events, etc). while P5 is miles better than both games in every aspect (save for story, because its hard to beat the amaziness of P3), but is probably has the worst S-links from party members, I only think its fine because every other S-link is fucking amazing, so the party members S-links being uninteresting doesn't bother me.
"While all your female party members flusteredly refuse to admit whose it is." ... How would they know? Unless they're... oh. Oooh. The harem would be going well, in that case.
Nah, Shadow Realm. One of the teammates created a reality where they're represented as a big horny vagina as they wanna bang team leader, but all of the girls are walking crotch waterfalls that none of them know who created the realm, so are too flustered to say anything.
@@WolfyFancyLads replay value: depending on which waifu you favor during the normal game will alter the fight slightly to reflect the 'true waifu' for multiple endings! Can you beat the Nightmare Bush Version? It's totally scary! Edit: I know, it's anime, so they'd all be hairless, but it's just a joke.
@@TheAdarkerglow It's kind of ironic, given that being hairless is associated with being pre-pubescent, that showing pubes was actually illegal in japan for quite some time. XD
My main problem with Persona 5 was with the lack of personal growth of the cast compared to Persona 4. Specifically how we brainwash the bad guys into confession, and how in almost every Confidant instead of them taking action to solve their own struggles, a "bad guy" always shows up that is basically the personification of all their problems and then we beat them to a pulp cause, they don't need to make decisions, we're just gonna make everything better.
That’s why I like Yoshida’s confidant the most in 5. While you do provide moral support, he makes the decisions himself and is able to overcome his situation without you having to do any Mementos bullshit.
That’s actually something I liked about the social links of P5. It plays into one of the themes that I took away from the game, when you see something wrong, you can’t just ignore it, you have to get out and do something about it. Having the confidants play into not only the themes of the game but the gameplay was a great move in my opinion. Everyone has their opinions on the quality of the confidants characters, but overall they were all pretty good imo
I think the point of Persona 5 was that in the end they realized that society doesn't need the Phantom Thieves, society as a whole has to stand up against injustice on their own, in conventional ways, and that's why I think that they were aware of the fact that brainwashing bad people into confessing was a bad thing to do.
Lemon and the thieves also know that society needs help to realize this, hence their final mission in mementos. Each of the confidants is a microcosm of the larger story as a whole, where the thieves intervention gives the characters/the public the strength to walk on their own
Yuniel Pérez Maybe it's just me, but I always felt that the difference tied into the narrative and themes of P5. While I haven't played 4 yet, I know that 5 deals with a lot of societal issues, one of which is that anyone, even people who try their best to help others, can get beaten down by society and fall into a place where they cannot improve without outside help. Take Kawakami: she was a teacher who used to love what she was doing, but after being (arguably) partially responsible for the death of one of her student that guilt combined with making reparations to the family led to her joining an industry she wants no part of. Kawakami has already grown by the time Joker arrives, but Joker allows that growth to actually shine through by doing the thing that got him into trouble in the first place: being willing to help. I'd argue that the rest of the confidants follow a similar approach.
Kinda sad to hear Yahtzee ended at the video game dungeon but it's understandable for such a big jrpg, I feel every point was fair besides the story complaints. P4's story REALLY picks up in the lategame, tbh P5 is my favorite game ever and I still feel that towards the end P4 manages to surpass it a few times in terms of story or at least match it.
@@ketrub I wouldn't say that, you can get through most of the game in under a week. Don't get me wrong, the rest of the game isn't bad, the story opens up introducing characters using the "getting thrown into the TV" thing, however that doesn't mean that nothings going on during that time, the plot is still there, the social links are still there, and most of them are pretty solid. Does the plot get massively better AFTER N's dungeon? (full name left out due to spoilers) yeah it does, but the stuff before that point is NOT dead content.
@@jimdabarbarian Not really. Unless you solely play games for plot and not for what Persona is really about (becoming accustomed to the life you have in your hometown) you will argue that there's no point. I realized this playing p5 as my first persona game and not being a huge JRPG fan on top of that: the plots of Persona are very anime so to expect brilliant writing isn't gonna happen. The genius of Persona is how everything comes together to make the game get better as it progresses. If you take a Persona game apart on its individual components (including p5) barring music and visuals, they have anime/average stories in terms of writing, their characters are solid and few exceptions like Kanji and Kawakami slip through the cracks but they are nothing REALLY special that you couldn't just archetype into a category in any other medium, the gameplay is very standard turn based RPG and even with p5 is just okay, hanging out with companions just feels like a visual novel that just has token dialogue choice to make bonding slightly easier or harder based on your responses. Essentially Persona is just slice of life anime the video game on its individual parts with lite David Lynch Twin Peaks-esque surrealist elements that is akin to the jungian psyche the spin off is named after. Taken as a whole though it makes something greater than the sum of it's parts: the way you bond with friends over the course of the game, become more involved in the plot, the location and people you feel like you have truly went on a journey that in a weird way feels relative to your own life. Obviously the anime nonsense and Persona Shadow stuff aside, it's a game that does "a day in the life of" and cycles between the story, sim stuff and combat to keep the game feeling fresh and entirely by your own decision. The genius to persona 3-5 is they feel like you have truly went on a journey but grounded enough in its world (hence the double life those characters all live) that gives you a escapist quality. There's a surrealism style to it all that people find that fascinating. Each game just revolves around a greater message that represents completely different takes of how you see the game unfold over time: 3 is about death and nihilism, 4 is about truth behind something and how the media portrays it, 5 is about rebellion and being your own person regardless of what society thinks of you. It's when you combine all the elements together is WHY people love the series and just make preference on which one they like. That said, they do have their frustrating moments and can break the need to play it, but it's essentially you have to give the benefit of doubt and try to roll with what it does because by the end everything builds up to make it the experience greater than the sun of it's parts (which is what ultimately to me games should strive for).
His logic makes sense, and it fits Yahtzee. He's used the same defense on the side quests and mini-games having to be on Yakuza, otherwise it wouldn't be a Yakuza game at all. Funny comparison really, considering the reason why it's on Steam now is because of Sega.
I substantially preferred persona 4 over 5, mainly because the character interactions were a lot stronger and there was a general sense of happy atmosphere.
It had to be happier. P3 got flack for the whole "gun to the head" thing, plus was all about death and accepting it (plus P3P let you date a 12 year old so...). P5 is when they started getting edgier again.
Same, I think in p5 the interactions between the characters was shit, and it felt so off the way Characters with palaces and their respective party members basically threw themselves at joker so the plot could move forward
I have to agree in the respect of characters that they were better in Persona 4. You come to care more about small towns and the protagonist's friends, but Persona 5 had a better set of villains, music, artistic stylization, combat, and story line (at least until Royal kinda muddled its own plot at the end). It really depends on which you give more weight to. Though really they are the same game with the real hero being Yoshitsune and we are all his servants.
@@RanockIronfist Yeah, P4 plot is mediocre, to be honest. There's some point that the story didn't progress at all for 2 months, so the pacing is kinda all over the place. Also in defense of P5 character interactions, if you compare to it other JRPG, P5 still did a really good job. It just that P4 set the bar really high.
I love the stupid detail that Yahtzee is getting better as a programmer so he wrote "P4 = P5--;" After that, I like that he enjoyed the game, even if he enjoyed it less than P5.
Except in programming terms this would mean that Persona 4 is the same as Persona 5 was previously, and after Persona 4 started to exist Persona 5 became less. **edit because apparently this is too hard for people to figure out** there is no combination of ++,-- either as post- or prefix that can turn this into a sensible statement. Try it yourself.
@@hannessteffenhagen61 It would depend on so many things... it was only a joke. If P5 were a parameter passed as value, then no, P5 would still be the same, and only in the scope of the comparison, P4 is a lesser P5. But again. A joke.
I just tested that code in C++ and when having a=10 and b=a--, the result is "b=10; a=9". Meaning at least in C++, this code does the exact opposite of what he meant to say...
@@hipolitoalanis443 It doesn't depend on anything actually, certainly not on whether or not this was a parameter. In pretty much all languages that support this syntax the behaviour is as I described above, at least by default. Of course in C++ you can overload postfix -- to mean whatever you want to, but that doesn’t seem like a good faith argument to me either. And I know it’s a joke. I’m not posting a long critique on how this channel is total garbage because a throwaway programming reference doesn’t make sense or anything, but it’s still something that doesn’t make any sense so I’m going to be point it out when I see this (it’s literally part of my job to spot mistakes like this).
I think he mean's the new P4G intro. It was different from the original P4 intro on PS2. Personally I like the original better, but I do agree the the Golden intro is pretty good too.
@@EmeraldLance I love the original intro and I never played that version. Everytime I booted up golden I would play the original intro. It's in the bonus features section or whatever its called
@@eddyeldridge7427 to be fair, I think P4G op is more akin to what you actually get when you play the game... the original intro still has that P3 tone, but more "teen"
@@danilooliveira6580 I'll grant you that, but that's kinda the problem. The first several hours of the game are bogged down by you coming to this backwater town, it's overcast, everything is still new to you, and immediately people start dying and are strung up and you get thrown into this (at first) super creepy dangerous alternate dimension. Yes, there are a few moments of levity in the beginning, and the tone gradually gets very sunny and fun over the following couple months, and stays there for most of the game. So, yes, the 2nd OP is pretty indicative of the overall tone for most of the game, but it's some tonal whiplash, since the OP is supposed to be your intro to the game you're about to play, and the first few hours are super dark. Contrast with the first, which also gives a good tone for the whole game, and particularly the first few hours.
@@Tomasin19 Frankly, I would much rather listen to any other Persona battle them than that one; the incomprehensible rapping was not particularly endearing to me.
I'd be interested in seeing them combine P3 and P3P. I mean, P1, 2 and 5R is just a matter of transferring them to those consoles, but P3P was a visual novel style game as it was on handheld. But I dunno if they wanna remember P3P... You could date Ken (Shota danger!!).
P3 is probably most requested but understand that its pretty difficult to straight-up port P3. What people wanted is almagation of P3FES's second part and 3D exploration, and P3P's female protags and battle system. At that point, you should just remake the game properly since there is abit of balance issue also on P3P due to updated system (enemy become a bit too easy because of direct control).
@@ThisAdamGuy Its Atlus. I think they picked platform choice by throwing darts or spin-a-wheel. Nintendo owners want Persona games since forever while Sony owners want SMT too since forever. And Atlus is not even bound by exclusivity agreement technically, despite having Playstation Best accolade too.
We're in the same boat for once, with me trying P4G on PC after loving the hell out of P5. The tight interplay between the two halves of the game is what makes it a unique experience even if I prefer the dungeon aspects over social sim. The series is definitely getting better with each iteration but I hope they don't get too attached to formula; if I see another cop character in P6 whose name begins with A and ends with chi I'll be suspecting them of evil motives the entire time. Likewise, Bollox Fester (Yahtzee's name for him on the stream) comes across as much more Gary Sue-ish than Joker ever did. I know that feeling is inevitable when it has to be possible for you to become close friends with 21 different people and help solve their issues over the course of 1 year while also killing a God summoned by collective repressed human desires but you should at least have to put in some kind of effort in to have the young ladies constantly falling over themselves to get with 'Bollox-Senpai'.
I’m so happy to see that Yahtzee gave P4G a shot and liked it! Personally, I still like the story and characters of P4G better than P5, but I can understand his reason for liking P5 more! They’re both definitely great games that take rather generic game types (JRPG and Dating sim) and transform it into something new. Great review as usual, Yahtzee!
I mean if you like persona 4 and 5 you probably will like jrpgs and dating sims more than you realize. There's more depth to than you'd think. I mean firstly it's less specifically dating Sim and more just visual novel. Which I promise you theres lots of good ones. Steins;gate was originally a visual novel, and so was the Fate anime series. And for rpgs, not all combat is the stupid as people make it. If anything I say persona has more lame combat systems than others I've played.
Yeah, P3 is the one where teenage children shot themselves in the face, in school, after hour, with the intended goal of bringing forward their inner selves :|
When Yahtzee finally plays persona 2 and gets to fight Eldritch monsters, the Belphegor boss fight, rumor system, and dual conversations. Gah so many fun moments in both games, but I don't know if he will get much out of the retro combat system as a more experienced player would. It's why I usually recommend people read persona 1 manga instead.
that ascendency really is true. each game in the series makes genuine improvements to the structure that makes them more enjoyable (I saw this as someone who's only played P3-5). it's honestly why I want them to take the improvements they've made and apply then to P3 in a remake, the story is held back back some painful design decisions
My main confusion is when the series lost features between the old and new trilogies; my biggest beef is fuse-by-result. It's incredibly useful in Persona 1 even with its much more limited options, then it isn't in 2 because it doesn't have Persona fusion, but there's no reason that it shouldn't have been in 3 or 4.
P4's aesthetic was totally Yokooism (as in, Tanadori Yokoo). He's basically known as the Japanese Andy Worhol (and he sold out his prints at the same events that Worhol attended/also sold at).
It's always a fun surprise when Yahtzee has nice things to say about a game. I wonder if he'd have the patience to if not review then at least investigate some of the funny spinoffs that change the genre for no reason but still act like they are canon.
I was kind of expecting that if he ever review P4G that he wouldn't enjoy it. The fact he pretty much just said "it's P5 but not as good because, y'know, it's a decade older" was surprising. Maybe he actually will like P3FES (my favourite game in the series).
"shows up on school on day one and immediately befriends the three nearest named characters, most of whom immediately imply they want to bone him" _YoSuKe YoU'rE gAy FoR yU, aDmIt It AlReAdY_ ell, actually EVERY SINGLE PARTY MEMBER WANTS TO BONE YU
Tae and Anne are better than any of the P4 interests. Rise comes close, but not quite. Although if you're more into androgynous types I can see how P5 doesn't give you any option like Naoto
Persona 4's narrative is more slight by design. It contrasts wonderfully with P3's much more _significant_ narrative. Playing things out of order removes that effect.
@@Bumra P3 Best cast, Best story, Best protag, P4....??? best anime?, P5 tie with P3 for music: Best bosses and dungeons. Edit Oh Yea P4 best intro hands fking down.
Only played Golden and the Arena games so far but the community consensus seems to be in line with X-Potato, 3 has the best story, 4 best cast, 5 best everything else: presentation, music, gameplay, (it even brought back demon negotiation yay!) Persona 1 and the Persona 2 Duo of games are considered to pretty much be an entirely different series, different team, different aesthetic, different musical style, different tone, different gameplay structure etc. etc.
I don't think that the overall story is better in P4, but the character writing might be a little stronger. I feel like P4 spends a really long time just meandering with the main characters being completely in the dark and not actually figuring anything out, and the stories with all of the party members get super repetitive, moreso than the villains in P5 do. The climax of P4 ties with P5 for me, but everything before the last couple months, 5 wins. 3 has a substantially better plot *AND* characters than both games, however.
@Emperor I don't think the pacing matters that much in Persona games, because there's so much in the way of character development going on in the social link stories; I've never really understood the criticisms that Persona 3's plot doesn't take off until halfway through, because neither does Persona 4's? There's the bit with the murders at the very beginning, but then it's just "go save the kidnapped person" over and over with little plot progress being made until the Heaven dungeon. The problem I have with Persona 4's story is how many scenes involve the characters sitting around and talking in circles without actually getting anything done. It feels super pointless to me. I thought Persona 3's story related scenes at least all had value, even if there weren't many of them for the first half of the game.
@@Spenfen p3 was the first of its structure, so it gave quite a bit of time to get into the groove of the calendar style, and to create a "Normal" for the game, and then it throws you off from the normal, causing the plot events to be alot more shocking and effective than any other game IMO. for me P3 does its best at creating immersion through a mix of game-play and story (lack of party control, teammates not always available, Not instantly becoming close friends and having alot of inter-team conflicts. ETC) That all being said, if you have already played a neo persona game it does feel a lot less effective. (i took a big enough break between my first play through of p5 and p3 that it didn't bug me, plus i started school when i started 3 which created a sense of schedule and normalcy while playing the game )
P5 had the anime writing that I really like and would like to see more of in anime today. Just because you're dark and edgy doesn't mean you're proving a point *Stares at Tokyo Ghoul*
Eh, P4 is more emotional than 5 but also far more predictable imo (apart from the killer). And the whole endgame god thing is much more of an asspull in 4 than it is in 5, too
Yahtzee, continuing to amaze me at his imaginative lexicons and posh persona (pun not intended I swear), introduces me to my new favorite word. Thanks Yahtz!
5:27 I see you have chosen Sally from Sonic the Hedgehog as an example of waifu, quite a man of culture you are my friend. I thought I couldn't respect you more,lol!
"feels like persona's the same game every time just with all the character names changed and slightly closer to the complete vision" that's because that's exactly what the series from p3 onwards is. i started calling all characters by the names of their counterparts from my first persona game and it's easier to keep track of them that way.
I feel like this review also applies to The Elder Scrolls series. I played Morrowind(3) and then Skyrim(5) so when I got to Oblivion(4) I thought "Well this isn't as good looking or memorable as 5, but it's also not as complex and satisfying as 3 so I don;t feel like playing it." When a game series gets better over time but has basically the same template it can be hard to go back to other installments.
I love that note about the interplay. Its part of what makes the person series so interesting. The feeling you get from it can only be in video game form.
I played Persona 4 for the first time because I not only loved Persona 5 but also because of this Steam release and I loved everything about it. I admit it was kinda hard to get into at first when I first saw how old the game is but once I played up to the end of the first dungeon I was hooked and it’s age ceased to bother me in any way. If anything it became more charming. The game is amazing and should be played. I hope Atlus sees how successful it is and releases more Persona games on Steam.
Gotta agree on this one. I started with 4 and, despite being very impressed with it as a PS2 game, I struggled to play it. The procedurally generated dungeons were a big sticking point, because they're literally just a boring maze of identical corridors which go on for far too long. I gave the series one last chance with 5 and loved it. It's amazing how few developers realise that actual game design trumps randomness 99 times out of 100.
Personally I liked p3 and 5 plot more than 4. The mystery is great and all, but by the time you enter the 2/3 dungeon you can clearly know how the kidnapper is sending people to the other side and from there you can guess who’s been doing it. It started to pick up ( for me) in the 4 dungeon, where something different happened but after than you do the same thing again, and they find who did it when it got personal for the MC. And one boss comes out of nowhere
5:02 that’s a bug. First. You shouldn’t decrement P5, that just doesn’t make sense. Use P4 = P5 - 1; If you do want to, you need to use the prefix decrement operator (P4 = -P5;) or else it’ll return the original value.
I don't think anything will beat the part where the game asks you who the killer is and brings up a list of every named character in the entire game because you should be able to figure it out by then.
I KINDA feel like the persona games, to an extent, have the same syndrome that the final fantasy games do; the first one you play is going to be your favourite. This isn't necessarily true 100% of the time, but I get that vibe from myself and others. Having said that, I genuinely prefer Persona 4 to the others. I like the smaller scale, the humbler town, etc. It feels like more time is taken getting to know the town and its people, before you're thrown head first into the magic fantasy aspect of it. It is prevalent throughout the beginning, but not truly experienced, so there is more of a buildup. As others have said, it's a shame that Yatz was unable to play more of the game, to experience how the story concludes, and everything new that golden offers in comparison to the original. However, I completely understand that it if you're not enjoying it as much as other entries in the series then it is a beast to slog through, especially if you can't skip anything.
i feel like he needs to play persona 3 or some of the REALLY early games before saying they're all the same.... 4 and 5 are basically the same, though. (he should totally play strange journey, but he doesn't seem like he likes the combat system, which is fair, because the game doesn't really ever tell you that buffs and debuffs are god.)
@Dunn123 It spirals downward from the first palace, then shoots back up for only Futaba's palace then nosedives until you reach Mementos then it steadily climbs
This is the beautiful “first SMT”. SMT stories are strangely compelling, but depending on your starting SMT, your expectation might meet a wall. Case in point, Persona 1-2, 3, 4, 5 were made in different era. Persona 3 was still developed under the influence of SMT, which made the story a little more hardcore than the later stuffs. Death, trauma, grief etc... on the other hand, the tone is much more lighthearted and calm in comparison to its root. It was a bold new direction for the series. This led to Persona 4, extremely lighthearted, did away with all the heavy emotion of the previous entry and had the shortest development time. Persona 5 had more of the SMT gameplay back and followed the P4 lighthearted adventure style. To me, who started with SMT3 instead of Persona, I prefer 3 of course. Though, to me, the main issue with the other 2 is the incompleteness. I can forgive 4 for lacking in variety due to the 2 years development time, but 5 needed a major patch called Royal, which they shamelessly sold as a new game. P4 new routes actually complete the narrative of the game, as well as the new, more frequent events breaking the monotonous tasks. Persona 4 on PS2 was only fun for those who have yet to experience Persona 3 equally limited option, but at least we can accept that due to it being the first in the basically a reboot. To me, however, despite enjoying the game, it was too tedious to replay. Persona 5 is even more egregious. Royal fixed so many of the little annoyance that we forgave for the fun stuffs like cool menu, more variety of activities, locations, new gameplay mechanics. If you are a long time fan, you probably wouldn’t need to play royal to realise all the little things that P5 should have done on release. At least, story wise, the addition of the new characters is not completing the story like P4. They know how to make a good DLC. The P3 Portable is such a masterpiece of new content that it hurts to see P3 portable being stuck on PSP without the epilogue chapter from the console. They just do a small flip and the context of the emotion in the story just switch around. Too bad, Atlus became lazy. Imagine if instead of a new character in Royal, you get to play as her instead, with new Social Link and options.
"moderately well known on the internet for making up naughty words", I still think 'spunkgargleweewee' was more innovative than 'glorious pc gaming master race', but the internet is what it is, an unpredictable sea of poor decision making and porn.
Much as I love P4G, I'm glad I'm not the only one who preferred 5 overall. There's much of a satisfactory reason why people want to be your pal in P4G, it makes more sense in 5 that they're initially suspicious and end up coming around to you.
"Persona 4 is Persona 5 minus one" ...Yeah, that's fair. Seems obvious on the face of it, but having seen so many sequels make awful missteps it's actually higher praise for the series (and P5 in particular) than it first seems.
Been off and on again with persona 5 and everytime I'm away for more than a few months the moment even a small amount of traction starts to pick up I find myself sucked right back into the swing of things.
Personally, 3 and 5 are my favorites. 4 just feels a bit too...cheery? I don't know if that's the right word for a game where you're trying to stop people from being murdered by fog, but that's what I feel. Like the comparison to Scooby-Doo many fans give it is EXTREMELY accurate which is basically why I don't like it. 3 took things a lot more seriously IMO and 5 just had better characters and got rid of those annoying randomly generated dungeons from 4. 4 is still great, but I had my one playthrough of Golden and that's good enough for me.
It's not that Persona 4 doesn't treat things seriously, because it does, but that it's considerably less nihilistic in theme and mood. When things get serious, they do. When the characters just want to enjoy the life they have, they do (unless they're the boys at the school campout).
Persona 4 Golden kind of change the tone of the story a little bit, even the colour palate. Even the OG opening has a different tone. The music is different, especially the battle music that Yahtzee mentioned, the dialogues are changed in occasions to make things more clear, the new social links also give a different tone whenever you enter the fusion room. Golden were frank about its intention, welcoming veterans back into its world. Allowing players more activities is good gameplay wise, but change the tone quite a bit. The entire point of the villain is that he's alone and isolate in the countryside, and so were the player. I think reduce interaction with him and the player create the restrictive feeling much better. Allowing the player to visit location outside of the town and go out freely at night with the new features throws that restrictiveness feeling of the countryside out of the window, where you can only occasionally visit cities due to distance and can't go out at night because it's dark and dangerous. A good motivation to discover the true killer and the eeriness of it all is the isolation with limited option of what to do and the fact that the town is small, everybody knows each other yet there's a killer out there lurking amongst them. That being said, I do think Persona 5 has much better gameplay, but not necessary in term of characters and motivations. Similar to the P5, P4 protagonist was unable to find friends due to his circumstances previously and only by being put in a peculiar situation that they were able to establish real bond with others. I also prefer the much more sinister "true self" thing they went with P4, showing the negative, fatalistic and rather cruel thoughts of your own social links, instead of the villains like P5. I admit if I had to replay one of them, P5 is much preferable. Unfortunately.
It actually makes me happy when he said that every part of P5 was just better than P4, because that's part of what I love about the series. P4 was such a substantial improvement from P3 in almost every way (you might like the story and mood of 3 more, but it's all preference in the end) and then P5 was just an improvement from P4. I love it when companies can make a sequel that takes steps FORWARD instead of several steps BACK or just stay in place.
DarkwolfX37 I spent 3 hours making a team of under level 20 demons that reflected every element for strange journeys final boss, and from what I have seen I spent a small amount of time in that game, if you don’t want to grind and do fusion chains don’t play any non persona Shin Megami Tensei game, that’s half of the game lol.
Playjng megaten games is basically me sitting there 20% playing, 80% looking at my phone to go through fusion spreadsheets, keep track of my alignment status on a notepad, cry to friends on a messenger app about how unfair situation X was and so on 😂 Persona games are easier but the spreadsheet comes out anyways, because I always lose myself in the pursuit of creating the ultimate persona that doesn't require me to ever switch between them in battle ever...🙃
The thing is, you gotta remember that 4 was kinda an over-correction to 3. Serial Killer aside, it's the most light hearted of the series. 3 got a lot of flack cos, you know, teenagers blowing their brains out to summon demons (plus, in P3P, the PSP version, you could date a 12 year old boy, sooooooo....), so 4 was the "happy sunshine time!" response to all the parents claiming their depressed suicidal teenager only killed themselves because of the game and not because they were perpetually beating and/or molesting them every night. Where 3 was literally "Face your mortality, save world", 4 was "stop serial killer, save world" and 5 was "rebel against corrupt society, save world". So, in short: Die, be a local hero, be a global hero, in that order. They were finding their feet with 3, as the first and second personas were pretty linear. 4 was basically 3 but PG instead of PG13. Simply put, it can be forgive for not being entirely great yet because they were more likely trying to creating a lawsuit-free game instead of trying to update and innovate. But, like with NAMCO and Soul Calibur 6, once they got the all clear from the press and fans, their next game would be the crack cocaine fans wanted. Persona 4 suffered cos of moral outrage, with 5 being a result of the freedom they gained by having less dead teenagers. 4 is still a good game, despite not being brilliant. It's the product of a weird time where game developers were able to experiment and have shocking themes, but still had people clutching their pearls in hysterics. It's aged fairly well, and that's all you can hope from an old game. TL;DR: P4 is a good enough game. Maybe too happy at times, but it's the best they could do given P3's emofest was blamed for non-related teen suicide.
@Firion Al'Hade I do agree that Futaba's arc did turn a little P4 out of the blue (plus heavy handed "she was the treasure" part). Who knows, maybe they planned the end before the beginning and it feels odd cos of that. However, you can't fault the "power of friendship" part, purely because it's staple for Japanese media to do. It's basically like the hero surviving a fatal injury to save the day, it's just a common trope now.
It's a pity that Yahtzee never got into the Vita, some it was very closer to being his platonic ideal for handhelds in many ways, despite Sony shitting the bed when it came to supporting and advertising it. Hell, its Monster Hunter clones even give much more motivation for hunting monsters (with Soul Sacrifice/Soul Sacrifice Delta having a gorgeously macabre Dark Souls-like aesthetics and lore - as both were inspired by Berserk - coupled with amazing music, some of the best writing of the generation and a surprisingly nuanced karma system that the game is centered around), and one of Uncharted Golden Abyss' two main villains is American and hires an American mercenary unit (and is probably my favorite villain in the series; it also uses its collectibles to give tons of additional world building and background on characters). It also has console quality ports of a bunch of Indie and AAA games that Yahtzee loved (Undertake, Salt & Sanctuary, Hotline Miami, Axiom Verge, Guacamelee!, Rayman Origins, etc...) and 2-7 Persona 4/5 tier Legend of Heroes games, depending on whether or not he can understand Japanese or hacks his Vita so that he can install the English fan patches for the Evolution versions of the Trails in the Sky trilogy (also available on Steam, with the PSP versions first two games available for the Vita vis the US PSN) and the Crossbell Duology.
To be fair to Yahtzee, he only gets a week to play these games before he has to review them and Persona games typically take awhile to finish even if you're being quick about it. If he didn't have any other obligations he might be able to finish it if he no life'd it but as far as I know he's quite the busy bee.
4’s normal battle theme absolutely does get upstaged by 3’s tho, so this still works xD But I’ll Face Myself is an absolute tear-jerker and I adore it.
I'd like to see his take on Persona 3. As someone who played all 3 in sequence I think they all hold up because they all hold special places in my heart because their stories all touched me in some way, so I'd like to see the retrospective of someone for whom P3 wasn't their first game. Sadly it isn't likely to be moved off the playstation unless it already has been and I just missed it.
A lot of quality of life came in p5 but I’m playing p4 right now and find myself liking the characters a bit more, main plot I’ll give you p5 better but I think it’s stronger character writing in p4g
@@FreshTillDeath56 honestly, the beginning of p4 does drag a lot and the plots are mostly slice of life style so someone like yahtzee wouldn't really stuck to it until the game reaches October. Considering he stops playing at around Mitsuo/Naoto's dungeon, he definitely didn't get to the true meat of the plot. Otherwise, he would have said otherwise when compared to P5
@@nalvious 4 was really good though. It wasn't as dark as previous ones, but still had a good atmosphere, good plot and good characters. The heavy censoring is quite sad though, there are hints that emperror and wheel of fortune were actual LGBTQ+ characters and magician was datetable
Watch today's Zero Punctuation episode on Google Stadia. www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/stadia-zero-punctuation/ OR watch it early on RUclips via RUclips Memberships!
oh boi
Is it a review or post-mortem?
Your on-site video player lacks the ability to double-click to minimize/maximize - Which is a pretty standard feature of video players these days (And video players of 10 years ago)
I could go on, but I think you do so far better. Maybe a "The Escapist Video Player (Zero Punctuation)" video? :p
Wow dude you're telling me that 5-1 is 4???? Wowowowowowowo
>> "Watch today's Zero Punctuation episode on Google Stadia"
And then I nearly died laughing.
Fun fact for anybody who watches this late: Yahtzee eventually finished the game, loves it, and then started playing it on loop. He now uses it as a time eater, like Stardew Valley.
@kirant He said this on a podcast, right? Which one was that?
@@Toasty158 - I believe one of the post-release streams, he mentioned he beat the game. The part that came to mind as I wrote it was the "Stop bragging about your game's length" Extra Punctuation.
@@kirant Cool, thanks man!
Fyi, from the bugsnax review and the podcast with Jack, here's an update on his progress and thoughts on the game:
- He went back and beat the game twice (he probably went back after reading FAQs about how to get the true Golden endings)
- He came to like the game a lot more than he initially thought (this review)
- He claimed that he still likes P5 more as an overall package but likes P4's character dynamics and interactions more
Which podcast episode is this? I cannot find this anywhere and it’s getting on my nerves haha
Honestly, tbh, it's so weird to me he like had this opinion and yet it changed so much. Doesn't happen often with him. Thanks for the easy update! But, as someone who played 5 royal recently and is playing through golden. I'm not sure I like golden as much. I like some characters more. But overall the bad or less interesting characters, more proper rpg tropes with only party members getting exp and like the rare enemies that drop larger sums of exp and money.... I'm not liking it so far...
@@fdawer116
Persona 4, in spite of the Golden remastering, is still a mid-developer RPG of it's time. It comes from that time before games were "figured out" as well as they are today, so the baseline of quality is just kinda all over the place. Mechanically speaking, P4 is not a very good game. However, much like any PS2 RPG worth it's weight, it places it's stakes on it's narrative and I think that's where it has one over Persona 5. That could be just me, as I learn to have a distaste for P5's story the more time goes by. Even then, the story of Persona 4 takes a little time to get going properly.
@@AlluMan96 honestly I think 4's story is even less fleshed out. The God complex thing feels rushed (golden helps it feel less rushed but still), the first 3 characters you meet Yukiko, yosuke and chie have Suoer weak arcs and the true killer has the weakest motive. And still a lotta minor things aren't explained by how the story works. Like i still think teddie being a shadow makes no god damn sense.
Having finished the game now though. It's not bad for sure. But it's do much weaker. Like I wouldn't mind if half of the hangouts weren't sexual in a really not comfy way. Like sexual comedy works but twddie ruins a of the hang out scenes after he's introduced except for the ski lodge specific to golden which makes me think they toned it back on purpose. Because thats the best hang out part by far.
I think it comes down to everyone just assuming they couldn't top 4 and it having been the most recent one for such a while and the older one that people think it's cooler.
@@fdawer116
I wouldn't say it's just seniority that gives P4 it's staying power. But then again, it's strengths lie in what we disagree with, the characters and story. I think P4's cast is very well realised, both as characters that feel like they have a realistic dynamic between each other and tying into the themes of the story. Chie sucks, that's about the only one I don't like, but the rest are strong. Even Teddie. He's a nuisance and I hate him, but that's what makes it funny.
The killer having a weak motive I feel is kinda the point. There isn't anything grandiose or deep about him, he's just a scumbag, kinda like a real killer. He's also a good counterpoint to the rest of the story. Whereas everyone's story is mostly about being becoming more honest with yourself and accepting the reality around you, the killer acts in stark contrast to that as a person that never managed to become that.
I dunno, I always felt like P5 got a bit overhyped, where people talk about it with the least amount of scrutiny possible. I always found the game a bit aimless and confused. It wants to be a very good vs bad story, but in that light paints literally brainwashing people by stripping their free will and forcing them into suicidal guilt as "the reasonable solution" without a shred of introspection or self-awareness. It wants to tackle topics like abuse, suicide, depression and all that dark shit, but makes it so cookie-cutter and simplistic that it makes it quite distasteful imo. The characters tend to start off strong, but only get anything resembling development in the arc they are relevant for until becoming one-note tropes. I don't hate P5, but I feel like it sorta got a bloated reputation riding on mostly it's slick and cool style. Like, I sometimes ponder how people would receive it's story if the game was as clunky and unflattering as P4 is.
To be fair the music from P4 is based on the style that was high in 2008 so that's why the more J-pop/rock-y OST. Quite a great one for that time.
Yeah persona 4 and 5's music both go for entirely different styles.I dont think it's fair to directly compare them and say ones objectivly better or worse.
Its ok bevause p3s soundtrack beats em both
This is hilarious because I feel the exact same way about the intro. I don't know what it is, but when that cheerful harmonica starts playing there is no physical way to skip the intro.
unless it's laging as all hell
I know right?
at first, nostalgia kept me from enjoying in since the original was so great (mostly the song) but it really grew on me after maybe 4 or 5 times and now I love it.
for me P4G worse than P5R intro, and that is a feat. its one of those musics that it feels like someone decided to throw on meguru lap while he was occupied masturbating, so he just wrote whatever with his cum and gave it back for people to make a music. while the original game intro is where the fucker had fun and was probably what he was thinking about when masturbating.
Same thing when I hear that guitar + keyboard chords, I never skipped Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There, and I have like 300+ hours on that game.
"Feels like Persona is the same game every time."
Obligatory mention that Persona 1 & 2 are very different from modern Persona. 3 was about as hard as a soft reboot can get.
Plus more linear and, in 2, GAY romance. I.e. the thing the fans all rabidly want cos, you know, horny little bastards love BL. XD
P & P2 were really just Megaten spinoffs anyways; it wasn't until P3 that they really go their own identity separate from SMT.
I REALLY want a remake of those but idk how I even would want the remake to be.
A big charme of them is specifically that they DON'T work like the newer games, so maybe just a massive graphics overhaul? 🙃
Then again it would be super interesting to see how their stories would work in a more modern-style mechanics version too though...😣
@Shadow Hunt Considering his prior criticisms, he'd loathe Tartarus and no controllable party members (aside from P3P). Additionally, the fatigue mechanic really doesn't hold up in 2020, especially if you've already played 4 and 5. Overall, P3 is the one (modern) Persona game I could actually suggest watching in RUclips. The game itself is great, but those little outdated mechanics build up (especially in comparison to the newer games), and for someone as critical as Yahtzee, it would _really_ be a major grievance against the game.
@@sleepysera To be entirely fair P1 and 2 technically did get remakes. They're just relegated to the long forgotten realms of the PSP catalogue.
I wouldn't say they hold up but since anything can emulate a psp nowadays it's pretty simple to play them.
SMT fans are currently putting you on a very naughty list.
No, we still like Yahtzee. He doesn't get put on the list till he talks shit about mainline.
all his points are incredibly valid, dunno why would we do that
i'm still waiting him to slander our naughty boi demifiend before he gets put on that list. or raidou, or serph or flynn or the four horsemen, or pretty much anyone from SJ.. wait, he has the right to criticize a few of them, and a few more if he's playing the redux but nevertheless
No SMT fans stereotypical hate Persona. Its like the annoying loud little brother that gets all the attention to them.
it's a stereotypical opinion by itself. anyone can like both and still be sane and respected. and don't be fooled, daddy atlus (who i am though getting put off by it's underhanded shit lately) still keeps it's alpha baby smt close at hand. Either they'll go big or go home..... the latter for now.
.....yeah i know the comment was likely intended with heavy sarcasm, but really tho
This is why Yahtzee is my favorite reviewer while he complains about the jrpg segments of the game he also recognizes that it need to be there for the pacing of the game.
this is usually why fans will always recommend starting with 3 or 4 first, both are very well worth playing, but since the games keep improving so much on each other, you cant help but get spoiled by whatever the most recent entry is
tell that to the madden or fifa or nba 2k series
HolyDraconus yeah, i wish, atlus is extremely good at identifying their weaknesses, im sure a lot of that blame is shared by good critics
@@ThisAdamGuy You are a brave soul. This is the correct approach.
@@ThisAdamGuy Technically best approach but its the hardest one. Persona 3 is still the hardest out of all of them just because they don't have direct control yet unless you play the Portable version. Finishing P3's second part "The Answer" is a feat of its own because of its difficulty and patience required.
I always wondered why people would start a series form it's fifth installment and always thought that this is so stupid you don't start with devil may cry 5 you play 1, 2 and 3 etc, if you start form half the series or the last part of it you wouldn't understand shit and you wouldn't appreciate the start even when the game is old and the control are not as fluid but you will appreciate the improvements in the newer games but if you Start with 5 of course you will be annoyed by a ton of things and it will cloud your judgment of the game
"They all play the same."
Man, imagine how Yahtzee would react to 1 and the 2 duology.
Trilogy*
@@handlesarestupid154 its duology. There are two persona 2 games (innocent sin and eternal punishment)
@@handlesarestupid154no, duology
He should look at Persona 2, that has Hitler in it
I wonder if yahtzee knew that there was a giant vagina as a boss in p1.
@@liammccbyrne4184 That's why I laughed at his last line in this vid.
dont forget steven seagal, who in game is one of the main characters dad.
I thought they got in trouble for that, and removed Hitler for that guy with the Sun Glasses--who looks helluva rad as fuck
Hitler with Sunglasses and also the Spear of Destiny + an Elder God Persona.
I personally prefer the smaller scale atmosphere and the characters of P4. That's really it.
Yeah. Kind of like another part 4 I know...
All right, you have convinced me to give Persona 5 another try.
Nah. Do P5R. I finished P5 and completely forgot about the ending a within a week. P5R's 3rd Semester ending though, finished it 2 months ago, it still makes me sad now.
P5R payout is far more rewarding, honestly
Do P5R!!
@@JaelinBezel If there's one thing Persona 5 kinda does bad compared to previous game, is that the tutorial took abit way too long. Persona 4 is quicker in that regard and the world introduction and mechanic introduction is mostly finished by the end of first dungeon.
@@ArchusKanzaki that's because P5 is trying to go back to bread and butter persona style and P4 was trying to expand the audience, anyone who played P1 and/or P2 didn't really need a tutorial for P5 where P4 was massively upgraded P3 controls
No one tell Yahtzee about how the final boss of one of the earlier Persona games is the characters' fathers combined Voltron-style into a daddy-issues monster.
"Call me Papa..."
And he disguises himself as Hitler
1:22 I'm actually the opposite, persona 4 music is just insanely memorable for me
the battle music is... eh. Only I'll Face Myself was memorable to me.
the day to day music is pretty great tho
The problem is he started with 5 so he can't hear amazing 4 which I prefer but honestly that's the whole review. He played new game old game look bad, sound bad, play bad.
I mean, how can you not have that music burn into your brain, when they try to squeeze too many syllables every sunny day.
"Tuuuuurning miiserrry, into meaningfulll eh- neeeeeees"
Personally I love persona 4 a lot. I think the light, down to earth tone works well, especially after persona 3’s really heavy tone. That being said, I admit that some aspects of the game haven’t aged well. (particularly the dungeons and graphics)
And the repressed homosexual tendencies.
Yeah, playing P4G in my big monitor now, and the 3D model's eyes scares me.... They're so big and flat and almost no curves
I feel like most of Persona 3's dark shit didn't work for me... Spoilers for that.
For example, that whole "you cannot possibly win against Nyx" thing is completely undercut by the fact that the game is an absurdly long RPG; everyone who has ever played one will know that yes, you will somehow win, the world will not end, and this has only been made worse now that there are several sequels to it. I think it's supposed to feel hopeless, except it never does, it just invokes thoughts of "I wonder how we'll actually win then". It being followed up with a cliche friendship winning thing for your victory is just kind of terrible; I already saw a less stupid version of it in Final Fantasy IV (which came out in 1991) and I'd seen it a billion times before, so I was just unable to take it seriously.
I also think the memory loss is not explained adequately, they never explain why or why anyone knows about it.
Hooded Man That’s interesting, I thought Nyx was pretty well done story wise.(Gameplay wise I over leveled unlocking messiah and steamrolled him.) While I didn’t like the cliche of the main character sacrificing themselves, I thought Nyx was a good conclusion considering the themes of the game. Because death cannot be defeated, the main character sacrifices himself to seal off Nyx’s connection to humanity, thus eliminating it’s reason for unleashing the fall. I agree that the memory loss aspect was kind of stupid. It’s explained as them forgetting everything that had to do with the darkhour after eliminating it, but then they immediately just “power of friendship it away”.
@Hooded Man TBH persona is pretty much the only series where power of friendship doesn't bother me, i mean the main way you boost your power is by becoming friends with people, and you gain strength from others throughout the whole game. Plus I felt like with the whole nyx thing, though it is not as effective from the players point of view (though the music change and the party members dealing with this certainly help), i think they did a great job from the other characters perspectives and them trying to deal with this, after learning from the loss of those around them, making them begin to look to the future, and carry on their will, yet they are then told that all their growth and dreams for the future are now going to be meaningless, as death is coming.
I'm really glad with how you described P4GOLDEN, as a persona fan who experienced all the persona games. People will often say that the later games are just reskins of previous game. When in reality it is more like the past games are like the Bones and Muscles, that would shape what the next one would become.
Yeah, I can definitely see that. Haven’t gotten around to P5 yet (kind of holding off on P5R until the PS5 is out cause I skipped PS3 and PS4), but it's also the same way I felt about P4 coming from P3. I loved P3 when I played it, but putting P3FES and P4 (and especially P4G) side by side there are a ton of QoL improvements there. Atlus is clearly thinking very seriously about how to improve the series, with some obvious (SL’s should have more of a role in the combat sections) and less obvious (Envy is a bad mechanic and should be scrapped, all SL’s should have a non-romance version) lessons learned on the way.
When I played Persona 5, my biggest impression is how much improvement there is compared to Persona 4 Golden. I can barely find something in Persona 4 that Persona 5 does not do better. Comparing improvement between Persona 3 to 4 and 4 to 5 is almost day and night. My impression can be summed up in "well, those 10+ years of development and multiple delays is worth it", which is really not something alot of games can say in retrospect (Duke Nukem Forever, Anthem, etc). Royal basically irons out all the kinks Yahtzee points out and add even more toppings to the point that I kinda want Yahtzee to play even though its technically re-release that kinda goes further.
@@hannessteffenhagen61 you skipped the PS4??? Bro.. do you know how many playstation 4 exclusives have been in game of the year lists?
@@titus17 like 2?
its hard to say, they get better in some aspects, but worse in others. P4 probably has the best party member S-links, even though they are not exactly the most interesting characters of the franchise, it also has a lot more mechanics and stuff to do, but everything else is worse than P3 (dungeons, story, story events, etc). while P5 is miles better than both games in every aspect (save for story, because its hard to beat the amaziness of P3), but is probably has the worst S-links from party members, I only think its fine because every other S-link is fucking amazing, so the party members S-links being uninteresting doesn't bother me.
I wish Yahtzee finished the game, I would've liked to see what he thought of the true killer
would've KILLED?
IT WAS YOU ALL ALONG!!!
Which one?
Society?
@@calvinjluther society bad
Same, to this day I can't believe Nanako turned out to be the killer all along
"While all your female party members flusteredly refuse to admit whose it is."
...
How would they know? Unless they're... oh. Oooh. The harem would be going well, in that case.
turns out it was actually a party member you thought was a husbando but turns out to be a waifu!
Nah, Shadow Realm. One of the teammates created a reality where they're represented as a big horny vagina as they wanna bang team leader, but all of the girls are walking crotch waterfalls that none of them know who created the realm, so are too flustered to say anything.
@@WolfyFancyLads replay value: depending on which waifu you favor during the normal game will alter the fight slightly to reflect the 'true waifu' for multiple endings! Can you beat the Nightmare Bush Version? It's totally scary! Edit: I know, it's anime, so they'd all be hairless, but it's just a joke.
Considering some of the bosses in the Persona series, including Pandora from the first and Mara'a head in P5, this is weirdly accurate XD
@@TheAdarkerglow It's kind of ironic, given that being hairless is associated with being pre-pubescent, that showing pubes was actually illegal in japan for quite some time. XD
“...and to GRINNNNNNNNND... A lot more than I’m inCLINNNNNNNNNNNNED... to.”
That one section was perfect.
My main problem with Persona 5 was with the lack of personal growth of the cast compared to Persona 4. Specifically how we brainwash the bad guys into confession, and how in almost every Confidant instead of them taking action to solve their own struggles, a "bad guy" always shows up that is basically the personification of all their problems and then we beat them to a pulp cause, they don't need to make decisions, we're just gonna make everything better.
That’s why I like Yoshida’s confidant the most in 5. While you do provide moral support, he makes the decisions himself and is able to overcome his situation without you having to do any Mementos bullshit.
That’s actually something I liked about the social links of P5. It plays into one of the themes that I took away from the game, when you see something wrong, you can’t just ignore it, you have to get out and do something about it. Having the confidants play into not only the themes of the game but the gameplay was a great move in my opinion. Everyone has their opinions on the quality of the confidants characters, but overall they were all pretty good imo
I think the point of Persona 5 was that in the end they realized that society doesn't need the Phantom Thieves, society as a whole has to stand up against injustice on their own, in conventional ways, and that's why I think that they were aware of the fact that brainwashing bad people into confessing was a bad thing to do.
Lemon and the thieves also know that society needs help to realize this, hence their final mission in mementos. Each of the confidants is a microcosm of the larger story as a whole, where the thieves intervention gives the characters/the public the strength to walk on their own
Yuniel Pérez Maybe it's just me, but I always felt that the difference tied into the narrative and themes of P5. While I haven't played 4 yet, I know that 5 deals with a lot of societal issues, one of which is that anyone, even people who try their best to help others, can get beaten down by society and fall into a place where they cannot improve without outside help. Take Kawakami: she was a teacher who used to love what she was doing, but after being (arguably) partially responsible for the death of one of her student that guilt combined with making reparations to the family led to her joining an industry she wants no part of. Kawakami has already grown by the time Joker arrives, but Joker allows that growth to actually shine through by doing the thing that got him into trouble in the first place: being willing to help. I'd argue that the rest of the confidants follow a similar approach.
Kinda sad to hear Yahtzee ended at the video game dungeon but it's understandable for such a big jrpg, I feel every point was fair besides the story complaints. P4's story REALLY picks up in the lategame, tbh P5 is my favorite game ever and I still feel that towards the end P4 manages to surpass it a few times in terms of story or at least match it.
But playing that far into a JRPG before the story gets good feels like a massive waste of everyone's time.
@@jimdabarbarian it isn't that the story is bad before that, it's just like everything else, it climaxes near the end, not the beginning.
@@kyro8581 it still takes like 9 years to get there, though
@@ketrub I wouldn't say that, you can get through most of the game in under a week. Don't get me wrong, the rest of the game isn't bad, the story opens up introducing characters using the "getting thrown into the TV" thing, however that doesn't mean that nothings going on during that time, the plot is still there, the social links are still there, and most of them are pretty solid. Does the plot get massively better AFTER N's dungeon? (full name left out due to spoilers) yeah it does, but the stuff before that point is NOT dead content.
@@jimdabarbarian Not really. Unless you solely play games for plot and not for what Persona is really about (becoming accustomed to the life you have in your hometown) you will argue that there's no point. I realized this playing p5 as my first persona game and not being a huge JRPG fan on top of that: the plots of Persona are very anime so to expect brilliant writing isn't gonna happen. The genius of Persona is how everything comes together to make the game get better as it progresses. If you take a Persona game apart on its individual components (including p5) barring music and visuals, they have anime/average stories in terms of writing, their characters are solid and few exceptions like Kanji and Kawakami slip through the cracks but they are nothing REALLY special that you couldn't just archetype into a category in any other medium, the gameplay is very standard turn based RPG and even with p5 is just okay, hanging out with companions just feels like a visual novel that just has token dialogue choice to make bonding slightly easier or harder based on your responses.
Essentially Persona is just slice of life anime the video game on its individual parts with lite David Lynch Twin Peaks-esque surrealist elements that is akin to the jungian psyche the spin off is named after. Taken as a whole though it makes something greater than the sum of it's parts: the way you bond with friends over the course of the game, become more involved in the plot, the location and people you feel like you have truly went on a journey that in a weird way feels relative to your own life. Obviously the anime nonsense and Persona Shadow stuff aside, it's a game that does "a day in the life of" and cycles between the story, sim stuff and combat to keep the game feeling fresh and entirely by your own decision. The genius to persona 3-5 is they feel like you have truly went on a journey but grounded enough in its world (hence the double life those characters all live) that gives you a escapist quality. There's a surrealism style to it all that people find that fascinating.
Each game just revolves around a greater message that represents completely different takes of how you see the game unfold over time: 3 is about death and nihilism, 4 is about truth behind something and how the media portrays it, 5 is about rebellion and being your own person regardless of what society thinks of you. It's when you combine all the elements together is WHY people love the series and just make preference on which one they like. That said, they do have their frustrating moments and can break the need to play it, but it's essentially you have to give the benefit of doubt and try to roll with what it does because by the end everything builds up to make it the experience greater than the sun of it's parts (which is what ultimately to me games should strive for).
His logic makes sense, and it fits Yahtzee. He's used the same defense on the side quests and mini-games having to be on Yakuza, otherwise it wouldn't be a Yakuza game at all.
Funny comparison really, considering the reason why it's on Steam now is because of Sega.
Great game! Glad Yahtzee liked it somewhat. This does make me appreciate that I got to experience these games in ascending order of quality.
Almost. I started with the 2s, but the jump from 1 to 2 was luckily not grave enough to be too jarring when I went back to 1 🤭
I substantially preferred persona 4 over 5, mainly because the character interactions were a lot stronger and there was a general sense of happy atmosphere.
It had to be happier. P3 got flack for the whole "gun to the head" thing, plus was all about death and accepting it (plus P3P let you date a 12 year old so...). P5 is when they started getting edgier again.
Same, I think in p5 the interactions between the characters was shit, and it felt so off the way Characters with palaces and their respective party members basically threw themselves at joker so the plot could move forward
I have to agree in the respect of characters that they were better in Persona 4. You come to care more about small towns and the protagonist's friends, but Persona 5 had a better set of villains, music, artistic stylization, combat, and story line (at least until Royal kinda muddled its own plot at the end). It really depends on which you give more weight to.
Though really they are the same game with the real hero being Yoshitsune and we are all his servants.
@@RanockIronfist Yeah, P4 plot is mediocre, to be honest. There's some point that the story didn't progress at all for 2 months, so the pacing is kinda all over the place. Also in defense of P5 character interactions, if you compare to it other JRPG, P5 still did a really good job. It just that P4 set the bar really high.
Chad P3 has the best of all, except the core thing - combat and dungeon.
I love the stupid detail that Yahtzee is getting better as a programmer so he wrote "P4 = P5--;"
After that, I like that he enjoyed the game, even if he enjoyed it less than P5.
Except in programming terms this would mean that Persona 4 is the same as Persona 5 was previously, and after Persona 4 started to exist Persona 5 became less.
**edit because apparently this is too hard for people to figure out** there is no combination of ++,-- either as post- or prefix that can turn this into a sensible statement. Try it yourself.
@@hannessteffenhagen61 It would depend on so many things... it was only a joke. If P5 were a parameter passed as value, then no, P5 would still be the same, and only in the scope of the comparison, P4 is a lesser P5.
But again. A joke.
I just tested that code in C++ and when having a=10 and b=a--, the result is "b=10; a=9".
Meaning at least in C++, this code does the exact opposite of what he meant to say...
@@hipolitoalanis443 It doesn't depend on anything actually, certainly not on whether or not this was a parameter. In pretty much all languages that support this syntax the behaviour is as I described above, at least by default. Of course in C++ you can overload postfix -- to mean whatever you want to, but that doesn’t seem like a good faith argument to me either.
And I know it’s a joke. I’m not posting a long critique on how this channel is total garbage because a throwaway programming reference doesn’t make sense or anything, but it’s still something that doesn’t make any sense so I’m going to be point it out when I see this (it’s literally part of my job to spot mistakes like this).
@@hannessteffenhagen61 So it shouldve been P4 -= P5 then?
Hell yea. P4's OP was a fucking 10/10. Pretty much sold me to the game way back.
I think he mean's the new P4G intro. It was different from the original P4 intro on PS2. Personally I like the original better, but I do agree the the Golden intro is pretty good too.
@@EmeraldLance I love the original intro and I never played that version. Everytime I booted up golden I would play the original intro. It's in the bonus features section or whatever its called
@@EmeraldLance
Aside from being a better song, the original OP did a MUCH better job on setting the tone.
@@eddyeldridge7427 to be fair, I think P4G op is more akin to what you actually get when you play the game... the original intro still has that P3 tone, but more "teen"
@@danilooliveira6580
I'll grant you that, but that's kinda the problem.
The first several hours of the game are bogged down by you coming to this backwater town, it's overcast, everything is still new to you, and immediately people start dying and are strung up and you get thrown into this (at first) super creepy dangerous alternate dimension.
Yes, there are a few moments of levity in the beginning, and the tone gradually gets very sunny and fun over the following couple months, and stays there for most of the game.
So, yes, the 2nd OP is pretty indicative of the overall tone for most of the game, but it's some tonal whiplash, since the OP is supposed to be your intro to the game you're about to play, and the first few hours are super dark.
Contrast with the first, which also gives a good tone for the whole game, and particularly the first few hours.
"Lives on the internet" Ha! I knew Yahtzee was just a sentient mass of vector shapes in the shape of a man!
His life will be the basis of Persona 6!
P4G also has 2 main battle themes, not just one. That may also be why Last Suprise is so ingrained in your memory; you heard it more.
Aren't there three though?
Reach out to the Truth- player advantage
Normal battle music- no advantage
Time to make History- enemy advantage
AZR900 Nope. Only two songs:
-Reach out for the Truth, for player advantage
-Time to make History, for the rest.
@@Tomasin19 Frankly, I would much rather listen to any other Persona battle them than that one; the incomprehensible rapping was not particularly endearing to me.
@@hoodedman6579
I find the rapping charming and the song its self pretty catchy.
P4 awakening:
Persona: hehehe I am youuuuuu
Characters: NOOOOOOOO
P5 awakening:
Persona: hey wanna kick this guys ass?
Mc: yes
P3 awakening: *points gun at head* BAM Persona!
Reddit
Hrm, I wish the other Persona games were available on modern consoles now.
A full-scale remake of 2 that combines both Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment in the current style would be AMAZING.
The Vita is a modern handheld console system. It's just dead.
I'd be interested in seeing them combine P3 and P3P. I mean, P1, 2 and 5R is just a matter of transferring them to those consoles, but P3P was a visual novel style game as it was on handheld. But I dunno if they wanna remember P3P... You could date Ken (Shota danger!!).
P3 is probably most requested but understand that its pretty difficult to straight-up port P3. What people wanted is almagation of P3FES's second part and 3D exploration, and P3P's female protags and battle system. At that point, you should just remake the game properly since there is abit of balance issue also on P3P due to updated system (enemy become a bit too easy because of direct control).
@@ThisAdamGuy Its Atlus. I think they picked platform choice by throwing darts or spin-a-wheel. Nintendo owners want Persona games since forever while Sony owners want SMT too since forever. And Atlus is not even bound by exclusivity agreement technically, despite having Playstation Best accolade too.
We're in the same boat for once, with me trying P4G on PC after loving the hell out of P5. The tight interplay between the two halves of the game is what makes it a unique experience even if I prefer the dungeon aspects over social sim. The series is definitely getting better with each iteration but I hope they don't get too attached to formula; if I see another cop character in P6 whose name begins with A and ends with chi I'll be suspecting them of evil motives the entire time.
Likewise, Bollox Fester (Yahtzee's name for him on the stream) comes across as much more Gary Sue-ish than Joker ever did. I know that feeling is inevitable when it has to be possible for you to become close friends with 21 different people and help solve their issues over the course of 1 year while also killing a God summoned by collective repressed human desires but you should at least have to put in some kind of effort in to have the young ladies constantly falling over themselves to get with 'Bollox-Senpai'.
honestly P4 the anime actually gives Yu a pretty amazing character and makes him far less Gary Stu
"Higher stakes than a dead cow on a flag pole." I had to pause the video for that one.
I’m so happy to see that Yahtzee gave P4G a shot and liked it! Personally, I still like the story and characters of P4G better than P5, but I can understand his reason for liking P5 more! They’re both definitely great games that take rather generic game types (JRPG and Dating sim) and transform it into something new. Great review as usual, Yahtzee!
Update: Yahtzee is now a fan of the Persona Series thanks to P5 and P4G. He is playing through P4G in his off hours now.
Do you remember what podcast he talks about replaying it
I mean if you like persona 4 and 5 you probably will like jrpgs and dating sims more than you realize. There's more depth to than you'd think. I mean firstly it's less specifically dating Sim and more just visual novel. Which I promise you theres lots of good ones. Steins;gate was originally a visual novel, and so was the Fate anime series.
And for rpgs, not all combat is the stupid as people make it. If anything I say persona has more lame combat systems than others I've played.
Oh, and i was sure Persona 4 was the one where you shot yourself in the face with a gun to go to the shadow world...
Sorry, bud. That's persona 3.
@@billybob9495 Damn, i'm old... I was sure that was the previous Persona game
@@billybob9495 Is 3 the one inspired by Dark City?
Yeah, P3 is the one where teenage children shot themselves in the face, in school, after hour, with the intended goal of bringing forward their inner selves :|
When Yahtzee finally plays persona 2 and gets to fight Eldritch monsters, the Belphegor boss fight, rumor system, and dual conversations. Gah so many fun moments in both games, but I don't know if he will get much out of the retro combat system as a more experienced player would. It's why I usually recommend people read persona 1 manga instead.
Don't forget Hitler
that ascendency really is true. each game in the series makes genuine improvements to the structure that makes them more enjoyable (I saw this as someone who's only played P3-5). it's honestly why I want them to take the improvements they've made and apply then to P3 in a remake, the story is held back back some painful design decisions
My main confusion is when the series lost features between the old and new trilogies; my biggest beef is fuse-by-result. It's incredibly useful in Persona 1 even with its much more limited options, then it isn't in 2 because it doesn't have Persona fusion, but there's no reason that it shouldn't have been in 3 or 4.
P4's aesthetic was totally Yokooism (as in, Tanadori Yokoo). He's basically known as the Japanese Andy Worhol (and he sold out his prints at the same events that Worhol attended/also sold at).
Absolutely not.
@@majinbros9971 except... it was. Did you even know what Yokooism looks like or are you just argumentative?
@@eloraandkhan3288 The only Yokooism i see in it's aesthetics is 1 shot in the Persona 4 Golden opening.
@@majinbros9971 yea I'm pretty sure you're not into art design but ok
@@eloraandkhan3288 I litteraly graduated graphic design in the top school in my region stop assuming Holy shit.
I loved that Simpsons joke lol
The wink to the audience is what slays me
It's always a fun surprise when Yahtzee has nice things to say about a game. I wonder if he'd have the patience to if not review then at least investigate some of the funny spinoffs that change the genre for no reason but still act like they are canon.
"act like they are canon"
but they *are* 😉
@@sleepysera what's the point of something being canon if by the end of the day the characters end up forgetting that it ever happened?
I’m pretty sure the only spin offs that they forget the events of are the q games and persona 3 and 5 dancing
Bro like half of his reviews are positive reviews there's a giant curator list on steam on games he recommends
@@MilkyNep because Femc is canon now
I was kind of expecting that if he ever review P4G that he wouldn't enjoy it. The fact he pretty much just said "it's P5 but not as good because, y'know, it's a decade older" was surprising. Maybe he actually will like P3FES (my favourite game in the series).
If it's ever ported and he does play it, he might hate the gameplay and overall grind, but might enjoy the characters and theming.
I get the feeling he'd say it’s a slog until October.
"shows up on school on day one and immediately befriends the three nearest named characters, most of whom immediately imply they want to bone him"
_YoSuKe YoU'rE gAy FoR yU, aDmIt It AlReAdY_ ell, actually EVERY SINGLE PARTY MEMBER WANTS TO BONE YU
Saying p4 has worse story, alright, subjective
Saying p4 has worse music, I’m mad, but again, opinion
Saying p4 has worse waifus? Imma murder
How can you compare a games story when you didnt finish it? He said he quit at the videogame dungeon, there's at least 3 more big bads
no he's right in every way :)
@@Nix_Abyss No your wrong objectively.
Tae and Anne are better than any of the P4 interests. Rise comes close, but not quite.
Although if you're more into androgynous types I can see how P5 doesn't give you any option like Naoto
@@MooseCastle bruh the music in p5 is much better. Meguro owned the Acid Jazz style with grace
Persona 4's narrative is more slight by design. It contrasts wonderfully with P3's much more _significant_ narrative. Playing things out of order removes that effect.
The visual novel remark brought to mind How To Date A Magical Girl.
Funny enough, P3P technically was a visual novel...
me: sees ending
me: thinks about catherine which basically does that kinda
3:30- New reminder. Never being in the same store as yahtzee
Half agree with this. Gameplay is better in Persona 5 but the writing, both characters and story is generally stronger in Persona 4.
@@Bumra P3 Best cast, Best story, Best protag, P4....??? best anime?, P5 tie with P3 for music: Best bosses and dungeons. Edit Oh Yea P4 best intro hands fking down.
Only played Golden and the Arena games so far but the community consensus seems to be in line with X-Potato, 3 has the best story, 4 best cast, 5 best everything else: presentation, music, gameplay, (it even brought back demon negotiation yay!) Persona 1 and the Persona 2 Duo of games are considered to pretty much be an entirely different series, different team, different aesthetic, different musical style, different tone, different gameplay structure etc. etc.
I don't think that the overall story is better in P4, but the character writing might be a little stronger. I feel like P4 spends a really long time just meandering with the main characters being completely in the dark and not actually figuring anything out, and the stories with all of the party members get super repetitive, moreso than the villains in P5 do. The climax of P4 ties with P5 for me, but everything before the last couple months, 5 wins.
3 has a substantially better plot *AND* characters than both games, however.
@Emperor I don't think the pacing matters that much in Persona games, because there's so much in the way of character development going on in the social link stories; I've never really understood the criticisms that Persona 3's plot doesn't take off until halfway through, because neither does Persona 4's? There's the bit with the murders at the very beginning, but then it's just "go save the kidnapped person" over and over with little plot progress being made until the Heaven dungeon.
The problem I have with Persona 4's story is how many scenes involve the characters sitting around and talking in circles without actually getting anything done. It feels super pointless to me. I thought Persona 3's story related scenes at least all had value, even if there weren't many of them for the first half of the game.
@@Spenfen p3 was the first of its structure, so it gave quite a bit of time to get into the groove of the calendar style, and to create a "Normal" for the game, and then it throws you off from the normal, causing the plot events to be alot more shocking and effective than any other game IMO. for me P3 does its best at creating immersion through a mix of game-play and story (lack of party control, teammates not always available, Not instantly becoming close friends and having alot of inter-team conflicts. ETC) That all being said, if you have already played a neo persona game it does feel a lot less effective. (i took a big enough break between my first play through of p5 and p3 that it didn't bug me, plus i started school when i started 3 which created a sense of schedule and normalcy while playing the game )
I thought persona 4 had a more engaging story/premise than persona 5; however, everything else about persona 5 was superior.
It's no surprising considering Yahtzee starts with Persona 5.
P5 had the anime writing that I really like and would like to see more of in anime today. Just because you're dark and edgy doesn't mean you're proving a point *Stares at Tokyo Ghoul*
Eh, P4 is more emotional than 5 but also far more predictable imo (apart from the killer). And the whole endgame god thing is much more of an asspull in 4 than it is in 5, too
"mathematically calculate"
*shows graph of organic compounds*
Exactly
Yahtzee, continuing to amaze me at his imaginative lexicons and posh persona (pun not intended I swear), introduces me to my new favorite word. Thanks Yahtz!
5:27 I see you have chosen Sally from Sonic the Hedgehog as an example of waifu, quite a man of culture you are my friend. I thought I couldn't respect you more,lol!
"feels like persona's the same game every time just with all the character names changed and slightly closer to the complete vision" that's because that's exactly what the series from p3 onwards is. i started calling all characters by the names of their counterparts from my first persona game and it's easier to keep track of them that way.
I mean thats usually what a Arcana Archetype is,Lovers will face decisions,Chariot will have its will tested and etc
"GRIND! MORE THAN U INCLINED!" is my new fav after rlm's "just consume product, get excited for the new product"
"...and just have a boss fight against a giant v*****" Ah, you'll want Persona 1, then!
I feel like this review also applies to The Elder Scrolls series. I played Morrowind(3) and then Skyrim(5) so when I got to Oblivion(4) I thought "Well this isn't as good looking or memorable as 5, but it's also not as complex and satisfying as 3 so I don;t feel like playing it." When a game series gets better over time but has basically the same template it can be hard to go back to other installments.
"Persona 5 is better"
AhmmghGhmmmmmmahhhhhweeeethat's fair.
I love that note about the interplay. Its part of what makes the person series so interesting. The feeling you get from it can only be in video game form.
To switch the difficulty level of this video to “impossible,” turn your volume all the way down and switch on subtitles. 😦
I played Persona 4 for the first time because I not only loved Persona 5 but also because of this Steam release and I loved everything about it. I admit it was kinda hard to get into at first when I first saw how old the game is but once I played up to the end of the first dungeon I was hooked and it’s age ceased to bother me in any way. If anything it became more charming. The game is amazing and should be played. I hope Atlus sees how successful it is and releases more Persona games on Steam.
We all know Mass Destruction in 3 is the real best battle music.
BABYBABYBABABY
Gotta agree on this one. I started with 4 and, despite being very impressed with it as a PS2 game, I struggled to play it. The procedurally generated dungeons were a big sticking point, because they're literally just a boring maze of identical corridors which go on for far too long. I gave the series one last chance with 5 and loved it. It's amazing how few developers realise that actual game design trumps randomness 99 times out of 100.
Personally I liked p3 and 5 plot more than 4. The mystery is great and all, but by the time you enter the 2/3 dungeon you can clearly know how the kidnapper is sending people to the other side and from there you can guess who’s been doing it. It started to pick up ( for me) in the 4 dungeon, where something different happened but after than you do the same thing again, and they find who did it when it got personal for the MC. And one boss comes out of nowhere
You guys at the time I’m recording this are currently talking about persona waifus on the wild breaker podcast how the mighty have fallen
"Plonk-Fondle" he has spoken.
5:02 that’s a bug.
First. You shouldn’t decrement P5, that just doesn’t make sense. Use P4 = P5 - 1;
If you do want to, you need to use the prefix decrement operator (P4 = -P5;) or else it’ll return the original value.
This the only way I know it's Wednesday.
Mood
This video had the unexpected effect of making me want to look into Persona 5.
Didn't see that coming.
Same thing happened to me. I then played the whole game, watched the anime, and read the manga in two weeks. Life is strange sometimes.
I don't think anything will beat the part where the game asks you who the killer is and brings up a list of every named character in the entire game because you should be able to figure it out by then.
Even Yahtzee sees that Kawakami is the best pairing with Joker.
@@naransolongoboldbayer8030 What're you on about?
Glad I'm not the only one who took note of which waifu he ended up with.
It was clearly the maid-outfit, it always is.
@@PhoenixBlazer39 A retarded meme; just ignore them.
Luiz Alex Phoenix Obviously fucking the sister-like character is canon
I'm indecisive
I just tried to remember the persona 4 battle music and persona 3s started playing instead 😭
Babybabybaybabyahhhhhh~
I try to remember 4's but then P5 Royal's incredibly catchy Take over theme plays.
babeh babeh babeh b-babeh babeh babeh
"Time to Make History" absolutely slaps.
Now I face out, I hold out--
I KINDA feel like the persona games, to an extent, have the same syndrome that the final fantasy games do; the first one you play is going to be your favourite. This isn't necessarily true 100% of the time, but I get that vibe from myself and others.
Having said that, I genuinely prefer Persona 4 to the others. I like the smaller scale, the humbler town, etc. It feels like more time is taken getting to know the town and its people, before you're thrown head first into the magic fantasy aspect of it. It is prevalent throughout the beginning, but not truly experienced, so there is more of a buildup.
As others have said, it's a shame that Yatz was unable to play more of the game, to experience how the story concludes, and everything new that golden offers in comparison to the original. However, I completely understand that it if you're not enjoying it as much as other entries in the series then it is a beast to slog through, especially if you can't skip anything.
i feel like he needs to play persona 3 or some of the REALLY early games before saying they're all the same.... 4 and 5 are basically the same, though. (he should totally play strange journey, but he doesn't seem like he likes the combat system, which is fair, because the game doesn't really ever tell you that buffs and debuffs are god.)
"(This game requires me) to grind a lot more than I am inclined to."
This makes me *much* more likely to try Starduck Valley when it comes out.
In the pc version you can just change the ammount of xp you get from battles, making grinding last as long as you want it to.
This one is tricky when you have to only compare the "start" of each story...
Underrated comment.
@Dunn123 It takes a nosedive at Okumura's palace
@Dunn123 It spirals downward from the first palace, then shoots back up for only Futaba's palace then nosedives until you reach Mementos then it steadily climbs
This is the beautiful “first SMT”. SMT stories are strangely compelling, but depending on your starting SMT, your expectation might meet a wall. Case in point, Persona 1-2, 3, 4, 5 were made in different era. Persona 3 was still developed under the influence of SMT, which made the story a little more hardcore than the later stuffs. Death, trauma, grief etc... on the other hand, the tone is much more lighthearted and calm in comparison to its root. It was a bold new direction for the series. This led to Persona 4, extremely lighthearted, did away with all the heavy emotion of the previous entry and had the shortest development time. Persona 5 had more of the SMT gameplay back and followed the P4 lighthearted adventure style. To me, who started with SMT3 instead of Persona, I prefer 3 of course. Though, to me, the main issue with the other 2 is the incompleteness. I can forgive 4 for lacking in variety due to the 2 years development time, but 5 needed a major patch called Royal, which they shamelessly sold as a new game. P4 new routes actually complete the narrative of the game, as well as the new, more frequent events breaking the monotonous tasks. Persona 4 on PS2 was only fun for those who have yet to experience Persona 3 equally limited option, but at least we can accept that due to it being the first in the basically a reboot. To me, however, despite enjoying the game, it was too tedious to replay. Persona 5 is even more egregious. Royal fixed so many of the little annoyance that we forgave for the fun stuffs like cool menu, more variety of activities, locations, new gameplay mechanics. If you are a long time fan, you probably wouldn’t need to play royal to realise all the little things that P5 should have done on release. At least, story wise, the addition of the new characters is not completing the story like P4. They know how to make a good DLC. The P3 Portable is such a masterpiece of new content that it hurts to see P3 portable being stuck on PSP without the epilogue chapter from the console. They just do a small flip and the context of the emotion in the story just switch around. Too bad, Atlus became lazy. Imagine if instead of a new character in Royal, you get to play as her instead, with new Social Link and options.
"moderately well known on the internet for making up naughty words", I still think 'spunkgargleweewee' was more innovative than 'glorious pc gaming master race', but the internet is what it is, an unpredictable sea of poor decision making and porn.
Much as I love P4G, I'm glad I'm not the only one who preferred 5 overall. There's much of a satisfactory reason why people want to be your pal in P4G, it makes more sense in 5 that they're initially suspicious and end up coming around to you.
"Persona 4 is Persona 5 minus one"
...Yeah, that's fair. Seems obvious on the face of it, but having seen so many sequels make awful missteps it's actually higher praise for the series (and P5 in particular) than it first seems.
"a digital clock built into a walking cane for the blind" holy shit I'm dying
Went to check for new episode on the escapist website but I guess I was a little too quick. Someone let me know when it's been uploaded 😁
Now
Been off and on again with persona 5 and everytime I'm away for more than a few months the moment even a small amount of traction starts to pick up I find myself sucked right back into the swing of things.
I think that was one of his most hilarious reviews ever. I genuinely and wholeheartedly laughed!
Personally, 3 and 5 are my favorites. 4 just feels a bit too...cheery? I don't know if that's the right word for a game where you're trying to stop people from being murdered by fog, but that's what I feel. Like the comparison to Scooby-Doo many fans give it is EXTREMELY accurate which is basically why I don't like it. 3 took things a lot more seriously IMO and 5 just had better characters and got rid of those annoying randomly generated dungeons from 4. 4 is still great, but I had my one playthrough of Golden and that's good enough for me.
It's not that Persona 4 doesn't treat things seriously, because it does, but that it's considerably less nihilistic in theme and mood.
When things get serious, they do. When the characters just want to enjoy the life they have, they do (unless they're the boys at the school campout).
Persona 4 Golden kind of change the tone of the story a little bit, even the colour palate. Even the OG opening has a different tone. The music is different, especially the battle music that Yahtzee mentioned, the dialogues are changed in occasions to make things more clear, the new social links also give a different tone whenever you enter the fusion room. Golden were frank about its intention, welcoming veterans back into its world. Allowing players more activities is good gameplay wise, but change the tone quite a bit. The entire point of the villain is that he's alone and isolate in the countryside, and so were the player. I think reduce interaction with him and the player create the restrictive feeling much better. Allowing the player to visit location outside of the town and go out freely at night with the new features throws that restrictiveness feeling of the countryside out of the window, where you can only occasionally visit cities due to distance and can't go out at night because it's dark and dangerous. A good motivation to discover the true killer and the eeriness of it all is the isolation with limited option of what to do and the fact that the town is small, everybody knows each other yet there's a killer out there lurking amongst them. That being said, I do think Persona 5 has much better gameplay, but not necessary in term of characters and motivations. Similar to the P5, P4 protagonist was unable to find friends due to his circumstances previously and only by being put in a peculiar situation that they were able to establish real bond with others. I also prefer the much more sinister "true self" thing they went with P4, showing the negative, fatalistic and rather cruel thoughts of your own social links, instead of the villains like P5. I admit if I had to replay one of them, P5 is much preferable. Unfortunately.
BABYBABYBABYBABYBABYEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHH is the only memorable persona battle music
Mass Destruction and Last Surprise just bully P4's combat theme. Even Willpower comes for the beatings as well
It actually makes me happy when he said that every part of P5 was just better than P4, because that's part of what I love about the series. P4 was such a substantial improvement from P3 in almost every way (you might like the story and mood of 3 more, but it's all preference in the end) and then P5 was just an improvement from P4. I love it when companies can make a sequel that takes steps FORWARD instead of several steps BACK or just stay in place.
2:30
That is EXACTLY what Shin Megami Tensei games (including Persona) wants the player to do, yes.
DarkwolfX37 I spent 3 hours making a team of under level 20 demons that reflected every element for strange journeys final boss, and from what I have seen I spent a small amount of time in that game, if you don’t want to grind and do fusion chains don’t play any non persona Shin Megami Tensei game, that’s half of the game lol.
Playjng megaten games is basically me sitting there 20% playing, 80% looking at my phone to go through fusion spreadsheets, keep track of my alignment status on a notepad, cry to friends on a messenger app about how unfair situation X was and so on 😂
Persona games are easier but the spreadsheet comes out anyways, because I always lose myself in the pursuit of creating the ultimate persona that doesn't require me to ever switch between them in battle ever...🙃
This. He skipped the unique and fun part of the gameplay and called it boring.
The thing is, you gotta remember that 4 was kinda an over-correction to 3. Serial Killer aside, it's the most light hearted of the series. 3 got a lot of flack cos, you know, teenagers blowing their brains out to summon demons (plus, in P3P, the PSP version, you could date a 12 year old boy, sooooooo....), so 4 was the "happy sunshine time!" response to all the parents claiming their depressed suicidal teenager only killed themselves because of the game and not because they were perpetually beating and/or molesting them every night. Where 3 was literally "Face your mortality, save world", 4 was "stop serial killer, save world" and 5 was "rebel against corrupt society, save world". So, in short: Die, be a local hero, be a global hero, in that order.
They were finding their feet with 3, as the first and second personas were pretty linear. 4 was basically 3 but PG instead of PG13. Simply put, it can be forgive for not being entirely great yet because they were more likely trying to creating a lawsuit-free game instead of trying to update and innovate. But, like with NAMCO and Soul Calibur 6, once they got the all clear from the press and fans, their next game would be the crack cocaine fans wanted.
Persona 4 suffered cos of moral outrage, with 5 being a result of the freedom they gained by having less dead teenagers. 4 is still a good game, despite not being brilliant. It's the product of a weird time where game developers were able to experiment and have shocking themes, but still had people clutching their pearls in hysterics. It's aged fairly well, and that's all you can hope from an old game.
TL;DR: P4 is a good enough game. Maybe too happy at times, but it's the best they could do given P3's emofest was blamed for non-related teen suicide.
@Firion Al'Hade I do agree that Futaba's arc did turn a little P4 out of the blue (plus heavy handed "she was the treasure" part). Who knows, maybe they planned the end before the beginning and it feels odd cos of that. However, you can't fault the "power of friendship" part, purely because it's staple for Japanese media to do. It's basically like the hero surviving a fatal injury to save the day, it's just a common trope now.
Can't wait for Persona 3 to inevitably come to pc too to see him shit on p4 on the review
It's a pity that Yahtzee never got into the Vita, some it was very closer to being his platonic ideal for handhelds in many ways, despite Sony shitting the bed when it came to supporting and advertising it.
Hell, its Monster Hunter clones even give much more motivation for hunting monsters (with Soul Sacrifice/Soul Sacrifice Delta having a gorgeously macabre Dark Souls-like aesthetics and lore - as both were inspired by Berserk - coupled with amazing music, some of the best writing of the generation and a surprisingly nuanced karma system that the game is centered around), and one of Uncharted Golden Abyss' two main villains is American and hires an American mercenary unit (and is probably my favorite villain in the series; it also uses its collectibles to give tons of additional world building and background on characters). It also has console quality ports of a bunch of Indie and AAA games that Yahtzee loved (Undertake, Salt & Sanctuary, Hotline Miami, Axiom Verge, Guacamelee!, Rayman Origins, etc...) and 2-7 Persona 4/5 tier Legend of Heroes games, depending on whether or not he can understand Japanese or hacks his Vita so that he can install the English fan patches for the Evolution versions of the Trails in the Sky trilogy (also available on Steam, with the PSP versions first two games available for the Vita vis the US PSN) and the Crossbell Duology.
Considering how important end game is to persona 4, I wish Yahtzee had finished the game before reviewing it.
To be fair to Yahtzee, he only gets a week to play these games before he has to review them and Persona games typically take awhile to finish even if you're being quick about it. If he didn't have any other obligations he might be able to finish it if he no life'd it but as far as I know he's quite the busy bee.
tbf I doubt he would've liked Izanami, but he probably would've liked Adachi and the whole fogged out Inaba
"The Persona 4 protagonist befriends the three nearest students, most of whom implicitly want to bone him."
"Even Yosuke?"
"ESPECIALLY YOSUKE"
P4 music >>>> P5 music
I thought this was obvious that's why the dancing games are fun
5:23 Funny, because they actually have one of those in the shadow catalogue (Arioch, in case you were wondering)
"Everytime I hear the Persona 4 music, I hear the--"
*BABY, BABY, BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY*
I might be mistaken, but isn't that the Persona 3 battle theme? Persona 4's was Reach Out to the Truth, right?
4’s normal battle theme absolutely does get upstaged by 3’s tho, so this still works xD
But I’ll Face Myself is an absolute tear-jerker and I adore it.
Once a year Yahtzee releases a video capturing everything incredible about zero punctuation. Brilliant watch thanks for the video Yatz
Does Yahtzee have a thing for Sally Acorn or something? That’s my takeaway from this review. 🤨
I'd like to see his take on Persona 3. As someone who played all 3 in sequence I think they all hold up because they all hold special places in my heart because their stories all touched me in some way, so I'd like to see the retrospective of someone for whom P3 wasn't their first game. Sadly it isn't likely to be moved off the playstation unless it already has been and I just missed it.
Soo.... he likes it? Nice! I wanna play it, but as he said, i'd rather play 5, so i'm hoping for a steam release of that.
It'd be better to play 4 now, if you're like him, since after 5 you won't be able to due to the difference in "quality"
i'd say you'd get more out of persona 5 if you've played persona 4 for a reason i cant say due to spoilers.
A lot of quality of life came in p5 but I’m playing p4 right now and find myself liking the characters a bit more, main plot I’ll give you p5 better but I think it’s stronger character writing in p4g
@@FreshTillDeath56 honestly, the beginning of p4 does drag a lot and the plots are mostly slice of life style so someone like yahtzee wouldn't really stuck to it until the game reaches October. Considering he stops playing at around Mitsuo/Naoto's dungeon, he definitely didn't get to the true meat of the plot. Otherwise, he would have said otherwise when compared to P5
@@nalvious 4 was really good though. It wasn't as dark as previous ones, but still had a good atmosphere, good plot and good characters. The heavy censoring is quite sad though, there are hints that emperror and wheel of fortune were actual LGBTQ+ characters and magician was datetable