Note: This analysis will contain pictures of what was originally a presentation of the analysis. That should explain the snippets of pictures and bullet points.
Persona 5: It’s Unique
Persona 5 is a JRPG and sort of high school life simulator. The player is, by day, a transfer student at a new school, and by evening, a leader of a group called the Phantom Thieves who “steal hearts.” Well, they don’t literally steal hearts, but instead change hearts of corrupt people in the world. They do this by entering a mysterious world, and infiltrating palaces, which are a big locations based on the desires of corrupt people. For example, there’s the gym teacher Kamoshida, who is a gold medal winner that abuses the volleyball team and keeps the school under his grip. In the other world, his desires take form as a king of a literal castle, that's his palace.
While the palaces are the main focus of the game's plot, the element I’ll be focusing on is a system known as Social Links. But before talking about this, I need to cover the game’s main form of progression.
An RPG, with Highschool-Life Sim mechanics? How does that work?
While typical RPGs of this genre have the player moving in a linear path, from dungeon to dungeon until they finish the game, Persona 5 moves to a different beat. In Persona, you play the game literally day by day with an in-game calendar. What you’re able to do is based on the kind of day it is. There are times like “morning” and “late evening,” the times that you watch a small cutscene with exhibition or when your cat companion tells you to go to sleep (don't worry, it makes sense if you play the game). Otherwise, the times you have the freedom to do what you want are usually the daytime and after school times where a lot of normal shops and activities are open. These times are special too, since these are the only times when you can choose infiltrate the palace. But besides that, the evening is when a lot more adult characters are up and about.
During blocks of time, you have to commit to something to move on. This might be reading a book, going to batting cages, going to infiltrate a palace, or….
Social Links!!
A social link is a relationship, plain and simple. But something so ordinary, in Persona, is turned into an critical game system. The more you spend time with confidants, the people whom you form social links with, you rank up the social link (which goes up to 10). Every rank you get, the more you understand about the them and learn about their struggles. On a mechanical side, higher ranks will give you new abilities and powers to use in various parts of the game.
An example of a social link is one with someone named Hifumi Togo, a high school shogi-master who is feeling a little lonely because of her age compared to other shogi players. The player can befriend her by meeting her in the church and accepting a match of shogi. In sessions of being with her, you learn she has a problem when playing shogi, where she sometimes starts getting a little too into it, and ends up roleplaying and calling out to her opponent. By ranking up this social link, the player gets to learn tactical moves that help out in the RPG battles while Hifumi gets is to train a pupil and talk to someone about her issues. This sort of quid pro quo defines social links and makes these activities fun by letting the player engage with their favorite characters.
The audience for Social Links
The audience for social links more definitely correlates with players more interested in the small stories involved with these side characters. I think the different character archetypes leave something for any kind of person to connect with.
A secondary audience for player who are all about achieving. Maxing out a social link (by getting it to rank 10) rewards the player with a strong ability as well as a special Persona. So for players who want to 100% the game or to players who need closure in anything they start, these social links serve as vehicles for that satisfaction.
My Stray Thoughts
Fitting genre mutation of the side quest
Being completely voluntary and having rewards for spending time: this system is essentially the side quests built to fit with the high school setting. The similarities sort of stop there, since there is very little to lose from choosing to hangout (there’s always something to gain by choosing to hang out with someone). The real challenge that player’s have with this system is one about strategizing and organizing who you hang out with, since certain characters are free on certain days. This is very different than traditional side-quests, which are very open-ended and are available to the player at any time they wish to pursue it.
Perfectly balances the palace fights with confidant character dialogue
Infiltrating Palaces feel satisfying in the way that an action or heist movie does: there’s a lot of infiltration puzzles and enemy battles to keep the player in that sort of mood. However, there is little character interaction, as the main characters of the party are usually talking about what the current objective is, or hinting at what the player should do next.
Social Links, on the other hand, compliment this very nicely. Hanging out for a social link is not at all about tense action, since it is are about high-schoolers hanging out after class. Or about helping a politician regain his pride, helping a fortune teller learn where she belongs in the world. It’s the perfect narrative opposite of what happens in the palaces and helps put the game on a rhythm where after doing a palace, the player is ready for social links to wind down. When the player does a few social links, they are ready for some action.
Bonus Content: Persona 5’s Lackluster Translation…?
I do not personally have much to say on this, but according to the out cry of many many translators who work in games: this game has a very okay localization. I first found this by looking at the Polygon article Persona 5 deserved better: a translator’s take on a subpar script, by Molly Lee. At first, I was appalled. I thought, “No way! This game is so fun, and the voice actors are incredible, there’s no way this game has bad writing!” But upon reflection, the lines mentioned in this article such as “It means they’re holding nothing back and are serious to kill us” felt a lot more noticeable in gameplay. Fortunately, a majority of the game is not unplayable by any means, but it’s hard to believe that I played 100 hours of this game and never realized this. For more details on this, check out www.personaproblems.com
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