Persona 5 Royal is a turn based JRPG initially released on PS4 in 2019-2020 and soon to be released on all other consoles/Steam October 31st of this year. It was developed and produced by Atlus and falls under their Shin Megami Tensei franchise. Royal is an expanded edition of Persona 5, which released in 2016-2017. It includes a third semester with new characters and a new final boss.
P5R follows the story of the Phantom Thieves, a group who use the Metaverse (not that one) to change the hearts of people. The game opens with the protagonist being put on probation and sent to live with a family friend in Tokyo, after defending someone being assaulted. He transfers to Shujin Academy, begins meeting others with similar power, and they form the Phantom Thieves to challenge corruption in the world.
The gameplay is half exploring dungeons and fighting demons and half social simulator. The dungeons, known as Palaces, are unique to each major villain with guards, puzzles, and items that match their overall aesthetic. The social simulator aspect involves going to school, spending time with people, working part jobs, and going to many unique locations. There's also a side dungeon called Mementos where you can do side quests, which has a more traditional, procedurally generated layout.
The music is more jazz influenced than past Persona games, but still maintains rock, rap, and electronic influences too. Some of the now series-iconic songs have come from this game, Beneath the Mask (rainy day version) being one of my favorites.
What I appreciate the most about this game are the overarching themes that drive the story. The main cast have different traumas in their lives that ultimately brought them together, but one by one they work through that pain. It made me so much more invested seeing characters work through things that many of my friends and I have struggled with too. Watching the cast slowly grow their confidence and look to the future gave me many emotional moments and made this game feel worthy of a mega.
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:reeducation: new mega
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lmao the bank made a bunch of errors in our finalized loan application - my name was listed with a hundred variations on my wife's alternative names (my last name has a space in it so people get really confused), her social security number was wrong, but the absolute funniest is that they slapped on unmarried addendums to the loan because obviously we're just friends (THEY WERE SUCH GOOD FRIENDS).
we absolutely disclosed that we're married and referred to each other during the negotiations as "my wife". and yet, Sappho and Her Friends strikes again. the funniest part? they're only technically wrong. we only got married for insurance reasons. we're not sexual partners - though we are definitely, really partners in other senses of the term.
WE'RE SUCH GOOD FRIENDS
Persona 5 is a 2016 role-playing video game. It takes place in modern-day Tokyo and follows a high school student known as Joker who transfers to a new school after being falsely accused of assault and put on probation. Over the course of a school year, he and other students awaken to a special power, becoming a group of secret vigilantes known as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. They explore the Metaverse, a supernatural realm born from humanity's subconscious desires, to steal malevolent intent from the hearts of adults. As with previous games in the series, the party battles enemies known as Shadows using physical manifestations of their psyche known as their Personas.
Bobby, what in the hell are you playing in here? :Bwaaa:
Talked to some PSL folks at the grocery store, they seemed okay. When I walked up they were explaining to an old lady that they don't like Brandon either and she seemed receptive to that, so that was funny. Might go to their meeting later this week and see if they're doing anything of consequence.
We’ve somehow managed to keep a locally sourced and produced mom-and-pop candy store in business around here and it’s so amazing. Mass produced “chocolate-flavored candy” is shit
stumbled onto a vid essay talking about Come and See and this guy was talking about like how the atrocities in the movie was based on real atrocities but this guy just had to point out that the soviets did loads of war crimes too
:cringe:
Dave Chappelle's extra-transphobic special was nominated for an Emmy. What the fuck, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
ripley: i got you you son of a bitch
me watching, knowing that there's 15 minutes left :yikes-1::yikes-3:
I can't stop drinking. Everything is shit at every scale. Except that the U.S. is probably collapsing. That is cool and good but it sucks to be in it as it happens. Alienation has ruined me. So I keep binging. I know I should stop drinking and find an org but what can I say, I'm a doomer. It is no t going to get better only worse. It is true of the world and of me.
"bimbo" is the vocative singular form of the Polish word for tram/streetcar
so yes i support bimbofication
Persona 5 is the closest you'll get to a revolutionary game in the western mainstream. The game's main colours are literally Red and Black, The Intro song, Wake up, Get up, Get out there lyrics are basically baby's first Class war. You're in the game forming an underground revolutionary cell of a bunch of kids that - and you can tell they skipped out on reading theory because they - target influential members of the cultural superstructure and eventually members of the societal base when those losers start trying to coopt them into their system to commodify and profit off of their movement.
Yes but they put to many hot anime girls into the game which divided the fanbase and as a result they could not form a revolutionary mass.
This guy knows what's up. Also the heist song life can change is a huge jam. Also the whole game feels very bloomer: change is possible if you are willing to fight and kill god.
In summary
:reeducation: :rommunism:
And that god is Capital. The beast that imprisons all of humanity and turns us all into demons
Yep. That's the final leap that's implicit in the game too, with Haru's dad and almost every other villain basically being motivated by money or capitalist motives on some level (Kaneshiro, Shido).
:joker-gaming:
(I like P5 and have nothing against you)
Gonna disagree, and in fact I would argue it's incredibly counter revolutionary. The police are framed as corrupt and surveilling innocent people, it does have anti-hierarchical elements, but it frames these faults as individual failings that are encouraged by the actual demiurge (Yabadabadoo) instead of the man made demiurge (the market). There is no collective answer to the issues that the protagonists and supporting cast face other than individual or small scale revolts. Even the Sun arcana is just spews vague social democratic platitudes to get elected instead of representing some sort of workers vanguard, and I get that atlus isn't going to show Yoshida's office getting raided by the cops because he held a rally to get burgers out of Okinawa but come the fuck on. That's not to say anything about how the Persona series has totally regressed in their representation of queer people, or the romantic plotlines between a high school and grown ass women. We created hell, not from some collective unconsciousness shit but through the incentives and systems that keep the world running. Mother 3 got it right, P5 didn't.
Not that it's surprising, seeing as this is one of the "bad" endings of DeSu2. And to get really pedantic I don't think any single player game is "revolutionary". Consumption of an isolating product, even if it has shit I really like in it, is still alienating consumption. To me, Pokemon Go is a game with revolutionary potential, something that attempts to recreate a social body through video games, even if the business model is predatory. I don't think it necessarily needs to be a game that gets you out of the house to fit this criteria, there is value is being taught how to develop a skill (especially if it is coupled with tools that would help you develop a healthy lifestyle and recreate a social space explicitly hostile to reactionaries), but until we have a vanguard party that's willing to create the Guilty Gear/Quake 3/Wii Fit dream game, we're shit out of luck.
I want to bounce off the suggestion of a game teaching healthy lifestyle and creation of social space with my personal experience:
I am a Melee player. It is extremely difficult to compete in Melee. One may expect a toxic, selfish and alienating environment created by the competitiveness, but the opposite happened. Development of skills became a collaborative effort. I'd credit this to Melee's infinite depth.
When a new technique is brought into the metagame it cannot be horded. By nature of competing publicly that technology is submitted to the metagame. Attempts to horde the tech hurt the player by setting them behind, being unprepared for counters developed by others. Players who openly share their tech are able to develop counters faster than horders.
What this created is a community focused on not just self-improvement, but collective-improvement. My experience with Melee taught me many transferable skills that have dramatically improved my life and that of those around me.
EXACTLY
20XX/UnclePunch doesn't happen unless there is some fundamental understanding that the growth of the individual player is tied to the growth of the playerbase at large. I think that Melee has a lot of specific issues such as top players ducking new blood, the NFT shit, etc but even with all of those faults, Melee has had a much more positive impact than something like, Night in the Woods (a game I really like). You meet people who are willing to give you rides and spot you some help if you fall on hard times and you recreate that social body through getting falco spiked over and over. It feels rewarding to cultivate, it's fantastic!
Plus, if you wanna get consistent, you're gonna have to learn how to be healthy. You need to get decent sleep, you need to give your hands proper rest, gotta pick up some cardio, eat right, or you're going to drop shit and lose games you should have won because you can't physically keep up. If you're doing things right, FGs leave you better off than when you came in.
There are two reasons I got in shape as a teen: Melee and God Hand. Constancy and lucidity demanded that I have a healthy body. I wouldn't be the antifa super soldier I am now if it weren't for those games.
A moment that hit me was arriving at someone's house to play Melee and see all these shredded players talking about good eating habits, not drinking soda, meditating, etc.
I'm not going to wash away Melee's problems. The sexism is rough, but oddly the community is supportive of trans people. I suspect that comes from the same place a successful communist society would need strong foundation in intersectionality: You need every participant you can get. The larger problems seem to fester in top players, ironically a byproduct of the game's competitiveness.
Sure you could learn healthy habits to compete better, but consider this: Mang0
Mango was pretty shredded back when I met him. His skill has hit a cap in recent years. Outside of his Losers Boost passive, he's outclassed by newer players.
I loved everything about 5 but my heart belongs to 4 still. I just thrive off those friendly country vibes with a dash of modern pop. And honestly speaking I feel like all the characters (I'm talking everyone here, side characters, villains, even that one granny one of the scenes telling a certain someone she mistakes as her grandson if he wants some fresh nimono for dinner) you meet in there - outside of the cringe tropes the Japanese just gotta put in to make it a successful product - feel more alive with their mundane yet human issues. Shit like watching Kanji working through his own toxic masculinity of his youth due his father dying young, watching his mother struggle to keep a roof over their heads and being judged by society for his passion for his family business of textiles'n'knitting'n'shit as he grows to accept both himself and the world he lives in and striving to mature as a man of kindness and patience. I guess I just vibed with the overall message of P4 over P3 and P5. Fuckin' love them all though.
