Persona 5

[Sharecrow]

I went to buy it and then one of the prongs off my PS3 power cord broke.

It may be awhile until I get a chance to play it. I'm trying to get a new one.

There's tons on eBay. $3-$4

[Jordan]

I got everything working now and have been playing the game.

Haven't gotten particularly far but I do have the gist of it. I'm liking the characters and style. Battles feel very smooth and fast. It's nice that they got rid of menus and you can just make simple button presses to do what you want. I'm not sure how to feel about the stealth aspects. On one hand, it seems fun and it adds an extra gameplay element to the map. On the other hand, I tend to dread stealth in video games.

[Jelly]

The stealth segments made me hesitant, I do not enjoy sneaking in video games. I suspect it might simply be a mechanic to add to the backstab the enemy for an ambush attack from the previous games.

Anyway, the game is gorgeous. It has the same melancholic vibe I loved in Persona 4.

I've tried remote playing it on the PSVita, I suspect it's fully enjoyable being played that way, but the crisp anime graphics aren't done any justice when they get blurry in the lower resolution.

[Jordan]

I'm at the desert stage right now. The game has been an absolute blast. I'm about 50 hours in. The stealth is done fairly well in this game. It's pretty lenient, but you still have to watch the enemies and stage layout to make the best use of your abilities.

I would definitely recommend exploring the non-party social links in this game. The nurse one is helpful in particular. At level 5 she sells sp regenerating accessories for 100,000 yen. While that may sound steep, by rotating a single accessory around your party, you can sustain your SP better while you're in a palace. This makes it much more feasible to finish a palace in a single day. In fact, that's exactly what I did with the third palace barring forced story purpose entries. Also there are some other good ones which I think are worth considering:

-the teacher social link gives you a personal slave to help you out with making curry and lockpicks or doing laundry. This saves you a lot of time. It costs 5,000 a pop to do it but it's generally worth saving your time.

-the sun social link gives you the ability to negotiate for more money from demons. This makes everything in the game easier since practically everything in Persona 5 revolves around money. With more money you can get the best equipment, plentiful restorative items, gifts, books, plant fertilizer and access to some of the things I described above.

-I've also heard that the fortune arcana is quite decent as well, giving you ample bonuses which don't take time to proc. However, it costs 100,000 to start out with and you need to visit mementos and finish a quest to get it going as well.

[Jordan]

I'm at the "present" now, so I'm quite far along. I think I'm almost finished. The game has been absolutely hype. Aside from some meaningless exposition (characters standing around and talking about their motives and entire histories for no real reason), the plot and writing has been mostly good too. I am not going to be able to max out all the social links on my first playthrough, but I think I did pretty good. By the end of November I have the following maxed:

Spoiler

Priestess (Makoto)
Hierophant (Sojiro)
Lovers (Ann)
Chariot (Ryuji)
Hermit (Futaba) [dating]
Fortune (Chihaya)
Temperance (Kawakami)
Moon (Mishima)
Sun (Yoshida Toranosuke)
Judgment (---)

By the end of the game I think I can max out Death and Star for sure. I might be able to max out one other one or get close too. I didn't use a guide, but I did learn through spoilers that certain social links were good early on. I prioritized those and it helped me a lot.

[Jordan]

I finished the game the other day, maxing out every confidant except for about 3.

IMO, this is one of the best RPGs I've ever played. It's easily much better than Persona 4. I'd recommend it to anybody who likes these kinds of games.