I hope Persona 5 is the Dark Souls of JRPGs
Aug. 7, 2015I hope Persona 5 is the Dark Souls of JRPGs
I‘m going to unpack that statement now, because it has nothing to do with gameplay:
For those unfamiliar with the series, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona is a series of off beat, turn based JRPGs that play like demonic Pokemon meets your standard dungeon crawl meets The Sims with a story heavily influenced by Japanese mythology and Jungian psychology, with an emphasis on deconstructing variants of common JRPG and character tropes to explore the darker aspects of the psyche of fairly regular and relateable people. If that sounds awesome, it’s because it is, if it doesn’t make any sense Giant Bomb has a(mostly spoiler free) explanation.The upcoming PS3 and PS4 release being Persona 5.
I want it to grab the mainstream by it’s throat and beat the idea that turn based RPGs and JRPGs are alive and well into it’s collective consciousness. I want it to sell 4 or 5 times what the competition does in the west and prove to both ignorant gamers and devs/publishers that the market is fine and that there are millions of content starved console gamers just waiting for games to play and that JRPGs, turn based and otherwise, are a good place to invest your time and money.
Let’s face facts, Square Enix lost it’s edge and has been increasingly chasing the action crowd for a decade. While they could theoretically push turn based JRPGs back, I don’t see it happening. Know who is, as far as I know, the only company currently poised to fill the gap in the market Square Enix has left and potentially save the genre 10 more years of struggle and obscurity? ATLUS. ATLUS and it’s pair of in house studios make the best JRPGs in the business bar none, uniting most of them under the banner Shin Megami Tensei (or simply Megami Tensei in Japan.) The Persona series is the most popular branch of the Shin Megami Tensei tree and it puts ATLUS in a unique position to potentially fill a the big hole Square Enix has left unfilled in the west for 10 years. None of it’s games have sold very well but proper budgets and minimal marketing have let ATLUS continue to profit by catering to it’s (extremely loyal) fanbase for the last 3 decades.
Then Persona 4 Golden happened. An enhanced Vita port of Persona 4 for the PS2, as if by magic (and by magic I mean multiple successful movies, a manga, a radio drama and a pair of TV shows based on Personas 3 and 4 getting attention) Persona 4 Golden’s release was accompanied by a Vita sales jump of 150%, more than double it’s usually weekly sales, and Persona 4 Goldensold almost a million copies,more than doubling thesales of the originaldespite being on a system with an estimated 95% smaller user base, selling only 1.9 million units in theUSand approximately 4 million inJapan.
It’s been a slow build to Persona 5 from Persona 4, but given the content starved JRPG crowd and the recent surge in popularity of Persona 4 despite the painfully small userbase of the Vita, I think ATLUS is uniquely primed to follow the footsteps of Fromsoft and indeed Bethesda, to take their already successful series and see an explosion of popularity that reminds everyone that turn based JRPGs are here to stay.
Square Enix claims to get it now, and maybe they do, but they’ve lost my trust over the last decade and don’t have anything ready for a year or more anyways. So if you have a Vita or a PSP or a PS3 or a PS2, like JRPGs and you haven’t played the Persona series, do so. They are cheap on the PSN and whatever game you’re playing now isn’t as good. If you can’t, hit YouTube, watch Let’s Plays of Persona 3 and/or 4.
This is where the article becomes a call to arms. If you are one of the 1 to 2 million people who have played Persona 3 or 4: tell everyone. Everyone needs to know how awesome the series is, everyone needs to be excited for Persona 5, everyone must know the name. It needs to be a name like Dark Souls. When it’s name is mentioned everybody must have an idea of what it is and what that means, why they might like it. ATLUS has apparently been doing some clever marketing, but they can’t shell out 20 million dollars to market their game large scale. If we can’t be convinced to shut up about how great it is, how good it looks, how deep the combat is, how well the series handles it’s numerous mature themes, how well written the characters are, they don’t have to. Make noise on Facebook, use a # on twitter, take over Reddit, repeatedly express your excitement to anyone who will listen. We can do what was already done for Dark Souls and be the mouthpiece that uses their current momentum to turn a cult classic to a world wide phenomenon.
More gaming articleshere.
Check ourFextralife Wiki Hubfor more RPGs.
Forum Pirate
20 something years old, living in the western United States. I enjoy wrestling, jujitsu, snowboarding, manga, anime, movies, card games, board games, video games D&D, ect. Also food.
Well they’re all PS1/PSP and PS2 games, so emulation is easy and possible but something I struggle with, respectively.
Persona 3 and 4 are very different from Persona 1, 2 and 2-2 as those had yet to really establish their identity as part of a new series instead of just being SMT spinoffs, Persona 3 and 4 are also (in all likelyhood) more important to play to see if you’ll like the series going forward.
They’re all in english on 3 platforms though (some combination of PS2, PSP, PS3 and PSVita,) you really should just buy them.
I am extremely interested in playing the Persona series. I have read and heard nothing but GOOD about the series and have come to the conclusion that I must play this game.
My question to you all is, is there anyway I can obtain the older Persona title/titles on PC or a emulator of some sort?
Thank you in advance!
I pretty much feel the same way. Atlus has done real well with the series’ continuity, and they really manage to bring that special spark to the genre that’s been in short supply these recent years. The only nitpick I have is that I wish they’d steer the theme towards a melting-pot of mythology like they did with P3, more or less.
Aigis is supposed to be weird, she’s a robot.
When you’re a group of students fighting for your lives in a demon infested tower, you take what help you get. Japan also has different ideas of the level of responsibility that is OK for people under 18. He’s young, but it’s a safe bet he’s not seen as young as America sees him (America being notoriously overprotective for the last 20 years.)
I didn’t start gaming until a few years ago so I have no nostalgia-based fondness for the old games. I’ve never played any Final Fantasy and the concept of turn-based seems stupid, unnatural and illogical. At least it did until I played Persona 4 Golden on my Vita. Hands down, the best game on that platform. The combat is so fun and fluid that I didn’t even realize it was turn-based for awhile. On paper it sounds complicated and tedious, what with the swapping of Yu’s Personas at every turn and the strategy involved, yet after the first few minutes it became second-nature.
I also played P3P, but didn’t like as much because the robot was a little weird and having the 12 yr old was just creepy. I have faith Atlus will make a great game and I’m just hoping for a Special Edition P5 PS4.
your point is definately valid and kind of sad at the same time in that some of the things you point out are a roadblock to many, not so much on the insultingly patronizing but then again the games do sort of assume you know at least a little about shintoism, budhism, coupled with the surprisingly frequent references to christianity and judaism(hope i came close to spelling those right) and that they don’t really hold your hand either, all in all i would say what binds them together the most is the same sort of enemy types as well as the same sort of combat, kind of like the souls series actually in that if you have played one of the titles you have a general idea of how the other games will play. i gotta say though i am stoked to find other people who have a love for atlus and the kinds of games they release
Technically, Dark Souls is halfway between a JRPG and a WRPG. It’s designed in a western style, but carries a bunch of themes and ideas that you usually only see in Japanese games (dragons being weak to lightning, giant trees/world trees and other ‘natural world being bigger than human world’ stuff, use of christian iconography purely as a coolness factor, extreme mashup of foreign mythologies in general).
But that’s just nitpicking. I’ve been kind of miffed at Persona and how easy it’s gotten lately, and the less said about Q the better. A return to their classic insanity wouldn’t be unwelcome.
Except they all struggle to sell 300k copies. I like the SMT series, but it’s about as niche as they come, with Persona being the sole exception (that only got that way recently.)
They’re even further buried in japanese culture and mythology and unlike the Persona series they lack a fimilar theme to help bridge the gap. If I tried playing SMT: Nocturne 8 years ago, before I understood the concept of japanese spirits and demons and views on the afterlife (that took years to understand, and I’m sure I don’t understand well,) I couldn’t have gotten into it. A Persona on the other hand is a psychology term easily explained in game to people who don’t already know (Jungs work is world famous after all, Persona isn’t such an uncommon term) that serves as a major theme. They can get away with all the cultural stuff because even if someone doesn’t understand it the major theme of the game still makes sense and helps frame the other stuff so it’s easier to get.
Basically, Personas success in the west is that major themes and setting (psychology, high school, coping with loss) are common in the wests culture, so the audience that hasn’t spent years gaining the knowledge to understand the cultural stuff has a point of reference to figure it out. SMT games in general don’t do that.
I like SMT games, but I wouldn’t recommend them to most JRPG fans. Persona I would, they’re far and away the most accessible, without being insultingly patronizing if you already have a handle on the cultural stuff.
/yay first forum post! now onto business, what you should also mention are the many other games from ATLUS that still hold water very well, nocturne, digital devil saga 1&2, devil summoner 1&2, as well as the older persona games that may seem dated BUT they still have the same familiar game play and general themes and concepts you mentioned in the article. my favorite in particular is the digital devil saga series, those 2 games captured my imagination if you will and held me to the point where even now i still have a memory card with the game saves on them.
I really agree with you here Forum. As an ardent devourer of Jung’s works, this series has been the perfect convergence of two passions. I’m forever recommending this to people and would love to see a revolution ignited by the next series. There is a nuance to turn based mechanics that makes the JRPG genre so special, it just needs that big crossover title.
crosses fingers
