Persona 5 - Meeting New People
After not getting a chance to play for almost the whole week, I finally got to turn my PS4 again. No story cinematics, no dungeons, it was time to level up my confidants. Although I did have to do a trip to Mementos, but quickly ran through three requests and got back to hanging out.
Since I’m fast forwarding though the story beats, there isn’t much new information I’ve learned. Maybe I should at least read the dialogue for all the confidants I’m levelling up. Kaneshiro had a change of heart and confessed to his crimes in front of the police. The police are really not happy about it. They are angry that they got upstaged by vigilantes. It makes the police look a bit useless. I guess law enforcement is the same everywhere. They do not do their jobs and then get angry when someone does their work and hands it over to them.
I talked to the fortune teller and initiated the confidant event with her. The disgraced politician who gives speeches near the train stations, and the airsoft weapons dealer are the other two people I met and talked to. I did not know they had confidant options last time I played. The teacher and the shogi player are also available now.
As much as I like the sound design of Persona 5, it has now become my podcast listening game now. I have already “heard” the game, so I don’t feel like I’m missing much when I play it. Most of the new game “sheen” is gone for me. As much as I like the game, I don’t think I will do much more than finishing through the NG+ for now. This is exactly why I can never care enough to get platinum on any game. I will only play something until I’m having fun. And trophy hunting is just not fun for me. I don’t get any sense of achievement from trophies.
Fishing minigame is now available as well. Another mechanic I did not engage in last time. There is more depth to fishing in Persona when compared to Animal Crossing, but it just is not as much fun. It also serves no purpose other than completing it for the fishing trophy. I don’t think I can sell the fish and they aren’t useful as weapon or health item.
To fish you point to where the fish are and cast. The different types of bait allow the player to catch different types of fish. The goal is to ultimately catch the Guardian of the Lake. It nets the player another achievement but not much else. There are prizes that can be gotten from points earned from catching better fish. But I did not see anything that catches the eye. I would rank the Animal Crossing fishing above Persona 5 fishing.
The back-alley doctor (Takemi) confidant is maxed out. All the confiandts are short stories that are only tangentially related to the main story. Takemi used to work at a hospital and was a very competent doctor. She became the target of envy of one of the senior doctors. He set her up to hurt one of the patients and lied about the patient dying. She lost her job and came here to work. The Hero finds out the patient is alive and forces a change of heart in the senior doctor. He confesses to his sins and Takemi’s name as well as the job is restored. She figures out the Hero is a phantom thief who has helped her out.
Ann has her confidant almost maxed out too. It is related to her guilt over not saving her friend from Kamoshida. Last time I went with the romance option for her, but this time it is going to be strictly platonic.
In the meantime, a hacker group called Medjed has also figured out who the Phantom Thieves are. The person or group of people are now blackmailing the Hero and his friends. They want to cause a change of heart in someone, but they don’t really understand how the process works. They vow to out the Thieves if the demands are not met. This feud has gone very public with The Phantom Thieves losing popularity because of the negative publicity coming with it.
It turns out Futaba is the original Medjed, a name that has been co-opted by other hackers. Futaba is Sojiro’s daughter, who as you might remember, is the guardian for the Hero while he is in Tokyo. She seems to have been suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after having seen her mother getting run over by a car. She stays inside her room and seems to have very stunted emotionally. She wants to cause a change of heart in herself to become a more adjusted person. Her palace will be a pyramid. It symbolizes her sense of being trapped. She feels trapped inside her room because that is the only place where se feels safe. At the same time she resents her room and feels it is a tomb in which she has been buried alive.
I have been enjoying Persona 5 less and less, but I don’t think it is because I’m bored of the game. I have a feeling it has more to do having stressful workdays and running out of energy to enjoy things I would love normally. I have wondered many times before how much our enjoyment of media is a function of our general mood and how much of it is due to the innate “goodness” of the work.
I’ll be tomb raiding next time, but not the Lara Croft kind.
5/13/2020
