Persona 5 (2016)

October 26, 2019October 26, 2019 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

I struggle to explain Persona 5 in a way that gives the game justice. While being incredibly stylish, engaging, and addictive, Persona 5 can easily be perceived as boring through simple explanations. The core of the game is that you are a high-schooler in Tokyo, doing normal teenager things, while also secretly reforming society. By magically entering people’s consciences, you and your band of misfits change the hearts of criminals. But ultimately, that is just one aspect of the game, the real genius of Persona 5 is how every component is woven together.

Persona 5 is part life-simulator and part turn-based RPG. The structure of the game is simple, you attend school, hangout with friends, explore the city, interspersed with moments of taking down a ring of dangerous criminals. The game is split into individual days, each with an afternoon and evening period to devote to different activities. You are given deadlines to take down any target, but any extra time is free time to explore Tokyo. The incredible breadth of the player’s options is staggering. You can study, visit cafes, go fishing, do batting practice, go to a sauna, work a job, go shopping, watch a movie, work out, hangout with friends, and much more. All of these options provide some sort of benefit to the player. Some of these activities involve a mini-game, but many of them are just a resource to spend your free time on.

The life-sim aspect Persona 5 is incredibly addicting. Since every activity provides some sort of benefit, I was inclined to constantly check new locations to see what they would do for me. Things like working a job gives you money, which you can use to buy items for combat purposes. Spending time to work out increases your health for battles. Most activities increased one of your social stats: knowledge, guts, charm, proficiency, and kindness. These stats are crucial to meeting new people and deepening your relationship with them.

Most of my free time in Persona 5 was spent with the different characters, which the game calls confidants. As you spend time with confidants, you will learn more about their personality and backstory, while simultaneous improving your relationship with them. As you spend more time with them, they reward you with unique bonuses. Some of these boons are combat related, for example: giving you a chance to brush off any status ailment, survive a lethal blow, or instantly kill an enemy. Many of the confidant bonuses are helpful in the life-sim aspect of the game. Each one is tailored toward its character, the teacher lets you skip class, the doctor provides a discount on healing items, and the politician gives a bonus during negotiations.

The confidant conversations can be quite entertaining and are a reward in and of themselves. As you get closer to each character, you learn more about their life and personality. You are given a few dialogue options during the conversations, and deducing the correct responses is critical to maximizing the confidant relationships. You also can go to special locations or give gifts to boost your relationships, so paying attention to what the characters enjoy is of great importance. Many of the characters require high social stats to even interact with, for example: the black-market gun dealer requires a high guts stat.

The life-sim aspect of Persona 5 may sound fairly dull and mundane, but trust me, it is addicting. It scratches that itch of strategically maximizing your resources. Free time is limited, so you must pick and choose what you want to do on any given day. Balancing your social stats and various confidant relationships is a fun time management problem. Additionally, the sheer variety of things kept me from getting bored. I always wanted to learn more about the characters and find out what bonuses they would provide. Free time is sprinkled throughout the different sections of the game. Between story-heavy sections and the dungeon-crawling RPG aspect, I always was excited to get some time to explore Tokyo.

The core structure of Persona 5 is that you infiltrate the hearts of wrongdoers and reform their behavior. You lead a band of miscreants known as the Phantom Thieves into the cognitive worlds of criminals. The mind of each target forms a “palace” which is essentially a themed dungeon. Each felon has been corrupted by some cardinal sin, and the Phantom Thieves must search each palace for the source of the deadly desire to steal away their distorted hearts. As thieves, you stealthily navigate through corridors and hallways, taking cover to avoid any unnecessary confrontations. Sneaking up behind enemies and ambushing them gives the player the opportunity to unleash a flurry of attacks before the enemy can even respond, so stealth is always in your best interest. Every palace is a fairly long endeavor and will require multiple treks to make it to the treasure. Making it as far as possible in each attempt will prove crucial to opening up more free time to be used elsewhere.

The actual combat of the game is a straightforward turn-based RPG, but with some interesting twists. Unsurprisingly, the main character recruits a few allies battle alongside him in a 4v4 format, which is similar to every other RPG in existence. What is interesting is the use of “personas”. Each character has a persona within them that can unleash magical abilities. The main character can capture and store personas, switching between them at will. This gave me the vibe of a grown-up version of Pokémon. As you journey through palaces, you will encounter demonic enemies which you can either stealthily avoid or engage head-on. When confronting the demons, some circumstances will lead you to be able to negotiate with them, and if you choose the correct dialogue options, recruit them to your pool of personas.

Every persona has strengths and weaknesses, and with a plethora of elemental abilities, choosing the right persona for the right circumstances is critical. This is mostly because utilizing super-effective elements are extremely powerful. Hitting an enemy with an attack that they are weak to will do bonus damage, give you an additional move, and knockdown the foe. If all enemies are knocked down, you can either preform an all-out-attack, which does massive damage, or you can enter negotiation. Collecting new and powerful personas is a core aspect of the game, which I quite like. In Pokémon, once you decide on your core party, you stick with them until the end of the game. In persona, you are forced to constantly test new and powerful personas. There is an additional layer of experimentation since you can fuse personas together to create new ones. I absolutely loved the variety and experimentation aspect of Persona 5, and it is the highlight of the combat.

On the more negative side, I felt like the combat lacked tactical depth in the vast majority of encounters. Most battles played something like this: ambush enemy, hit them with a super-effective ability to knock them down, perform an all-out-attack to finish the fight. The only deviation to this formula was in boss fights or when fighting opponents that I did not know the weakness of. In the latter case, I was essentially required to just guess what would be effective until I guessed correctly. Bosses were by far the most interesting implementation of combat in the game. With giant health pools, no weaknesses, and special status effects, each boss required a different approach that wasn’t all out aggression. Utilizing party buffs and healing skills is more interesting than just picking the correct elemental attack.

While I felt like most battles were straightforward, there is something to be said for the resource management aspect. Since I wanted to make it through the palaces in as few attempts as possible to conserve free time, I wanted to minimize the resources used in each battle. Magic abilities use SP, a resource which is not easily regenerated. As such, getting through each battle without wasting unnecessary SP became an interesting challenge.

Stylistically, Persona 5 is unbelievably crisp. Sleek menu design, fluid animations, vibrant character design, phenomenal music, and distinguishable aesthetics make Persona 5 and absolute masterclass in presentation. The graphic-novel style makes visuals pop, especially since each placard is detailed and distinct. Many of the personas and monsters are amalgamations of mythological beasts, but plenty seem to be new creations entirely. The jazzy soundtrack is simultaneously great background music as well as tunes that you could listen to outside of the game. As you continue through the game, some of the prevailing tracks will “evolve”, adding more lyrics as you progress. Seriously, every developer should take notes on the style and presentation of Persona 5.

Outside of game mechanics and style, Persona 5 does falter a bit. The overall narrative of Persona 5 is decent, but is paced poorly. There were parts of the story where I was completely engrossed, but there were instances where I just wanted to move onto the next bit. In essence, the beginning and end of the game I found to be excellent as the villains had a direct impact on the main character. The middle chunk of the game however was filled with villains who just didn’t have the requisite gravitas to make me care about them. The story is essentially carried by its memorable cast of characters. Outside of a few interesting twists in the main story, I was far more engaged with the episodic stories of each confidant.

One of the biggest issues I had with the story was its over dependence on its central theme. Look, central ideas and motifs are great, but they don’t need to be bashed over the player’s head. God of War for instance leaned on the core theme of familial strife, nearly every character, quest, and storyline tied back to that issue. But the game was bit more subtle with its presentation of these ideas. Persona 5 on the other hand will relentlessly remind the player of its motif. The central theme of Persona 5 is that people in positions of power will take advantage of those below them. Every single side-quest, main story beat, confidant, and conversation will allude to this theme. It gets obnoxious after the 100^th time that the protagonists tell the villains “Stop abusing people who can’t fight back”.

By far the biggest problem with Persona 5 is its length. While I enjoyed the game, it is a nearly 100-hour experience. This is a massive undertaking, especially since so much of the game feels superfluous. Conversations in particular are constantly repeated, and it feels like the game does not trust the player to remember any information. If an event happens in game you can count on the fact that you are going to have that event recapped to you in 10 different conversations: through cutscenes, dialogue with confidants, and through text messages. Additionally, palaces could probably be shortened a bit without losing anything. Side-quests are particularly egregious, as they force you to delve into Mementos, a randomly generated dungeon which holds monsters that you have previously fought. This is a ridiculous waste of time and provides nothing new. Mementos needs to exist for story reasons and to let players capture personas that they have otherwise missed, but it could have been significantly shortened.

Most of the game’s issues stem from its length. The overused theme wouldn’t be so obnoxious if the game was shorter. The story would be more interesting if it was sped up. The repetitive battles wouldn’t grow annoying if there weren’t so many of them. Even some of the games strong points started to wane after 80 hours. I love the animations, but after watching them thousands of times I just wanted to move on. The music is great, but there are so few tracks in general. Truthfully, a game has to do something very special to reach 100 hours without growing stale. While Persona 5 is great, I think it could’ve easily been cut down to 60-70 hours without losing anything of value.

Overall, Persona 5 is a masterful display of aesthetics, style, and presentation. There is an addictive life-sim component that I could just chill and let time fly by as I explored Tokyo. It’s the perfect game for just relaxing for a few hours and to take your time to take in everything the game has to offer. The dungeon crawling and battle system was serviceable, and its encouragement to experiment made it incredibly enjoyable. It’s unfortunate that the game drags on for too long, as even the best components lost their luster after dozens of hours. It is for these reasons I give Persona 5 a 9/10. Even if you aren’t a fan of traditional JRPGs, give Persona 5 a shot. As someone who doesn’t typically enjoy these kinds of games, it made me into convert.

Enter the Gungeon (2016)

October 8, 2019October 8, 2019 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

I very rarely contemplate quitting a game before beating it. But occasionally some games just do not click for me, and Enter the Gungeon was one of those games. After a few hours I grew frustrated with my lack of progress and how relentlessly punishing this game was. Luckily, I gave it a couple more hours before retiring completely. Over time I grew to enjoy the charming challenge of Enter the Gungeon. I am glad that I kept playing despite my early struggles.

Admittedly, Enter the Gungeon falls firmly out of my typical preferences as a bullet hell roguelike. I’m not particularly fond of bullet hell games or roguelikes, but I was drawn in by the insane variety that Enter the Gungeon boasts. Typically, a “run” will consist of the player descending through five floors. Each floor is randomly generated and contains enemies, shops, treasures, and a boss to cap it off. What is unique about Enter the Gungeon is how everything is cleverly tied to the central theme of guns. The floors are called chambers, the enemies are bullets, the bosses have witty names such as “Ammoconda” or “Dragun”, and the weapons themselves are often references to famous guns in pop culture. Enter the Gungeon isn’t too obnoxious with its references, but it very clearly is in love with referential humor.

Despite its cutesy appearance, Enter the Gungeon is brutally difficult for newcomers. The sprites and goofy humor can be a much-needed reprieve from the unrelenting challenge that is conquering the Gungeon. Dodging and weaving through waves of bullets requires proper knowledge, foresight, and reflexes. Furthermore, consumable items such as health, armor, keys, and ammo are fairly uncommon. As such, wasting resources such as health is heavily punished. Beating the main five floors is a fairly daunting challenge at first, but it does get substantially easier once the player learns the enemies and bosses. There are many optional challenges past the main floors such as secret floors, story-driven boss fights, additional characters, special game modes, and unlockable items. These extra challenges provide for tons of replayability for veterans.

As the player progresses through the run, they will collect a variety of guns, active items, and passive items to be used during that run. The unparalleled insanity of some of the guns and combinations is what makes Enter the Gungeon so much fun. Every run is a question of what sort of crazy combo you will get to play with. Every item has built in synergies with other items, these synergies modify how the items behave. By the end of a run, the player will usually have amassed 10-15 different guns and items. The sheer number of combinations and synergies kept me coming back to see what I would get next. Starting a run with a mere pistol and then 30 minutes later wielding a rapid-fire rocket launcher that homes onto enemies and also shoots lasers is quite the satisfying progression.

Since there is overwhelming variance in items and guns, you will never know what to expect when starting up a new run. This comes with a price, however. With such a staggering number of weapons and items, a new player can and will be completely overwhelmed. It can be incredibly hard to get into a rhythm of playing the game, since you will constantly have to readjust to fit what loadout you have. New players are going to be dying constantly, trying to learn how the game works, how to play, the enemies, the bosses, the floors, and constantly readjusting to new weapons which can off-putting. Ultimately, you will get better at it. Once Enter the Gungeon clicked for me, I couldn’t put it down.

Despite me eventually learning to love the game, I do think that more could’ve been done to prevent the brick wall for newcomers. I’m not suggesting to strip away the challenge or make the game substantially easier, but I think some brief item descriptions would go a long way for Enter the Gungeon. Simple descriptors like damage, fire rate, and accuracy would have severely limited my early game woes. Early on, it’s an absolute nightmare to pick up a new weapon and try to test it out against enemies and feel out if its any good or not. When I’m struggling to clear a room, the least of my worries is if the gun I just picked up is worthwhile. I almost never use outside resources to help me with games, but eventually I started looking up unfamiliar items on the wiki.

It says a lot that after 40 hours and a dozen completed runs, I still frequently had to check the wiki. Sure, it can be fun to experiment with a completely unknown item, but doing that ten times per run is just unnecessarily exhausting. I just want to know how much damage my gun does. The worst offender of this is synergies, which are a core component of the game. When certain guns and items are in your inventory, they will have special bonuses. The player is given no idea what the bonus is, and testing to figure out what it can be is a struggle. I don’t think adding just a brief idea of the guns stats and synergies would take away any of the fun of experimenting. Players still would test out if they like weapons and items, but it would at least give you a general idea of the strength of a weapon.

It should be noted that Enter the Gungeon is a very random game. Sometimes, you will collect an arsenal of insane weaponry. Other times, the pathetic pistol that you start with is your most viable option. This is just an inherent aspect of the games design; it is essentially unavoidable. In order for those moments of feeling like the terminator to exist, there must be times where you are weak and vulnerable. Ultimately, you are going to have lucky and unlucky runs in Enter the Gungeon, and it’s just something that you have to deal with.

Overall, I’m glad I stuck with this game. The first few hours were rough, but once I was rolling, I had a blast. That satisfying feeling of making it a little bit farther in each run is indescribable. There is so much that kept me coming back to play more. Different modes that drastically change how the game plays, secret floors and bosses, or just the pure excitement of getting a new combo of weapons that puts Rambo to shame. It is for these reasons that I give Enter the Gungeon an 8/10. If you want an adrenaline pumping bullet hell with incredible variety, then you should definitely try Enter the Gungeon.

XCOM 2 (2016)

October 4, 2019October 4, 2019 / stephensopinions / Leave a comment

“That’s XCOM baby” has become the moniker for the dreaded moment where your soldier whiffs a point-blank shot and your whole strategy comes tumbling down. Everybody playing will have these moments as XCOM 2 is an unpredictable and immensely punishing beast. As a sequel, XCOM 2 obviously acknowledges many of the shortcomings of its predecessor, but its solutions for these issues seem to only exacerbate the problems. The game has plenty of merit as a tactical experience, but its absurdly punishing, forces the player into awkward positions, and lacks proper informative tools.

The basis for XCOM 2 is that aliens have invaded Earth and defeated the conventional forces of the world. You are the leader of an elite squad of soldiers, managing Earth’s last group of resistance. As such, XCOM 2 has 2 primary forms of gameplay: battles and base management. During battles, you command a group of 4-6 soldiers to complete some overarching objective. The base management aspect has you recruiting soldiers, doling out promotions, building facilities, researching new technologies, and choosing what battles to participate in. The base management can be fairly overwhelming at first, as the game constantly bombards the player with notifications.

My biggest issue with XCOM: Enemy Unknown was how slowly the battles were played. The fog of war obscured enemy units, so the player would slowly creep along the map a few tiles at a time so they wouldn’t have to engage with a ton of enemies. This exceedingly careful strategy was easy to pull off and effective, but it was extremely boring as most turns you would just move forward a few spaces. To fix this issue, XCOM 2 has implemented a strict time-limit on the vast majority of missions. This is nothing but a band-aid to the original issue, as it does not address the reason that players preferred to play carefully, but instead it just forces the players to speed up.

The core reason for why players do a slow crawl through the map is because of fog of war and how enemy “pod” activation works. Enemies are in a pod a 3-4 aliens, and once you reveal them, they immediately move to cover and the battle begins. So, if you reveal an enemy pod at the end of your turn, the aliens get to move to cover and then their turn begins before you can act. Optimally, you reveal the enemy pod with your first move of the turn, that way every soldier can get perform their actions to wipe out the enemy before they can retaliate. This is why players had to slowly creep forward as to not reveal an enemy pod prematurely. The introduction of a turn limit just forces the player to move forward quickly, sometimes putting the player in a position where they have to make poor decisions or risk not finishing the mission in time.

Admittedly, the randomness of the XCOM series is a core feature. Missing high-percentage shots is just an expected outcome when delving into the war to save humanity. I completely understand that the player is supposed to occasionally feel helpless and frustrated, a few dozen soldiers should obviously struggle against world-conquering aliens. Despite this, I strongly believe that using 2 random numbers instead of 1 creates a far better experience for the player. Without going to into depth, humans are really bad at estimating odds, and using 2 random numbers feels substantially better. In essence, using 2 random numbers creates a sigmoid effect: high-percentages become even higher, low-percentages get lower, and middle-ground chances stay more or less the same. The reason that I love this system is that it rewards the high-percentage plays by increasing their odds, but the low-percentage plays get punished. Taking a 95% chance is the correct move the vast majority of the time, so it really feels awful when you whiff. With 2 random numbers, high-percentage plays are more reliable, making the game a better tactical experience. Fire Emblem adopted using 2 random numbers for years, and I wish XCOM would follow suit.

While I could ramble about the benefits of 2 random numbers for a while, the bigger issue the unpredictability of XCOM 2 is related to how punishing the game is. A single shot from an enemy can have rippling repercussions that hinder your campaign. Getting hit once: does damage, has a chance to be a critical hit and kill your soldier, can send your soldiers into a panicked state, apply various debilitating debuffs, and can injure your soldier so they will not be available for a few weeks. This all stems from 1 attack from an enemy. In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a soldier’s armor would make it so low-damage attacks wouldn’t injure them. This is no longer the case in XCOM 2. As such, having one of your elite soldiers get scratched and knocking them out of commission for weeks is a common outcome. Hopefully it’s apparent why this mixture of extreme randomness and overwhelming punishment can get frustrating.

Another gripe with XCOM 2 is how awful it is at conveying critical information, especially for new players. XCOM is all about getting proper angles on enemies, effectively negating their cover. The player can never rely on hitting an enemy who is behind cover, so the proper tactic often revolves around flanking or destroying the cover. The huge issue I have is how it is not always obvious what positions will yield good hit-percentages. The absolute worst feeling is when I would move a soldier into what I thought would be a prime position to hit an enemy, but instead I am surprised by a pitiful 40% chance to hit. Additionally, many times you could move into a position which may just be slightly out of range, or you lose the angle to hit the shot altogether. I wish the game had an interface that would display hit-percentages when you hover over where you want to place your soldiers. This would alleviate the issue entirely.

My other complaint about the lack of information mostly has to tie in with how punishing the game is. Every time you encounter a new enemy, there is an exceedingly high chance that you will just get screwed by whatever new mechanic they will use. I had a few instances where I was cruising through a mission, then a new enemy would appear that would absolutely destroy me since I didn’t have the proper equipment to beat it. My prime example of this are Sectopods. These giant robotic enemies have a ludicrous amount of health, can attack multiple times in a turn, basically ignore cover, and can easily one-shot-kill your soldiers. The only reasonable way to deal with these enemies is to use anti-robot rounds, EMP grenades, or to hack them. The thing is that there isn’t a good reason to equip these items until you encounter a Sectopod in the first place, so you are forced to just kind of lose the first time you meet one. Of course, Sectopods aren’t the only instance that this happens, plenty of enemies are introduced and proceed to do something completely unexpected to annihilate the player.

This issue creates a sort of reverse difficulty curve. The game is much, much harder at the beginning of the game than it is at the end. Using weak soldiers who die in a single shot, frequently facing new opposition, not having any useful equipment, not having any perks, not having any facilities, and long-lasting injuries make the first few hours of XCOM 2 absolutely brutal. In comparison, the end of the game can be a breeze since you have trained a group of super-soldiers sporting powerful equipment. Usually, games should steadily get more challenging as the player improves, but XCOM 2 overloads its difficulty at the very beginning of the game.

As a miscellaneous complaint, there a few strange mechanics in the game that really had me scratching my had as to why they exist. Dodge for example is one of the most bizarre inclusions that I have seen in a turn-based strategy game. Apparently, a few enemies have a set chance to dodge any shot, and the bullet will consequently deal reduced damage. This mechanic is not even explained anywhere in the game, the game doesn’t tell you what enemies have dodge, and it doesn’t convey what the odds of it happening are. You could have a 100% chance to hit a shot, but then you just get screwed because of dodge. The other strange mechanic is teleportation. Some enemies randomly teleport when you hit them. Both dodge and teleport seem to exist just to add more random chance to the game, and neither are negatable. You just have to deal with the chance that the enemy will occasionally dodge bullets or teleport to a position where you can no longer hit them.

Despite all of my ranting, XCOM 2 is still an alright game. Training up a few dozen super-soldiers to perform covert operations and destroy the alien threat can be immensely satisfying. Most of my missions went smoothly, and when that happened, I felt like a genius commander. Intelligently positioning soldiers to execute strings of actions which wipe out the enemy before they can retaliate is just viscerally entertaining. Blowing up a wall with your grenadier, following up with a few sniper shots, then rushing in with your assault unit is a standard example of the ebb and flow of battle. Effectively utilizing the various classes, perks, and equipment to build a deadly squad really is an enjoyable aspect of the game.

There is an abundance of customization options to build your perfect squad. There are four different classes, and each class has two branches of perks. As your soldiers get promoted, choosing what path of perks to choose can be a crucial choice depending on your playstyle. Furthermore, choosing what equipment to bring on missions can drastically shift how you tackle a mission. Choosing what types of grenades to bring, how many medical kits, what type of ammo, what weapon upgrades, and what classes will be useful is a central part to planning any mission.

Truthfully, XCOM just may not be the strategy series for me. I have a strong aversion to getting wrecked by random chance. When I take very high-percentage shots, I want them to hit. I want to make decisions based off of information available to me, not get completely run over by a new enemy type that does something that I could not possibly have anticipated. Undoubtably, these factors are central to the XCOM experience. Veterans of the series will say these factors are what makes the series so unique and enjoyable. The player is intended to feel helpless, and unexpected obstacles add tension. Still, XCOM 2 has significant flaws even if you accept its unpredictability. The way that fog of war and pods work force the player to slowly creep through the map, yet turn-timers are prevalent. Dodge, teleportation, and lack of a good tactical user-interface often make me question whether my carefully planned strategy will even work.

I wish I liked XCOM 2 more than I did. The tactical components, the team building, and the various choices in combat could make for a phenomenal strategy game. Unfortunately, I felt that the game was severely hampered by the non-stop unpredictability and punishment. You could build a great squad, position correctly, and then get absolutely dismantled by a couple of missed shots. Overall, I don’t feel like XCOM 2 improved upon its predecessors. In fact, XCOM 2 has regressed in a number of ways. Mainly, enforcing strict turn-timers instead of alleviating the reason why players choose to play slowly has caused more issues than it has solved. It is for these reasons that I give XCOM 2 a 5.5/10. Your mileage may vary with this game. Do you like being hopeless against enormous unpredictability? Then XCOM 2 just may be for you. It’s not my cup of tea, but I can understand the appeal.