They casted a damn fine lineup of talented voice actors, and while they may not be able to elevate the material, I still love them anyway. If there’s one positive to the story’s presentation, it’s the English voice acting. I can tell some effort was put into this… it’s just not good. You need to remember the care, nuance, and attention to detail needed in crafting every element of design. You can’t just give a bunch of high schoolers magic heart powers and a Fluffy Mascot Character™️, have them take on a rogue’s gallery of tragic villains, and call it there. Even though Persona IS formulaic, it never feels that way, thanks to variety present in the experience. The series knows how to tell a joke, how to inject as much life, style, and personality into a scene as possible. Said series often paces itself for the first couple hours with cutscenes, setting up the conflict, characters, and rules of the world, rather than just giving the protagonist his powers within the first 15 minutes. For one, Persona knows how to tell a story a damn good story, as a matter of fact. They clearly wanted to present a story like Persona, but missed the fundamentals of what makes that series good. These characters drone on, and on, and on, and on, and on for so mercilessly long, with minutes upon minutes of banal, homogeneous dialogue. The only problem is that I just don’t care. Vanitas speaks in rhyme and alliteration, which you can tell they put a lot of effort into. Monark has a few clever pieces of dialogue here and there in fact, it sometimes feels like it’s trying a little too hard. Okay, the overly verbose student made me laugh. These hallways don’t have enemies, just light environmental puzzles that will take only a little more time to solve than the time actually put into creating them. You’ll be combing up and down the most repetitive, sterile school hallways, less interesting than wherever you went to school in real life. You’ll meet ally Pactbearers along the way, team up with them to take down that chapter’s big bad Pactbearer, rinse and repeat. Your goal becomes to meet and defeat Pactbearers around the school, who are plaguing the hallways with mist. From that point forward, the story becomes as rote and formulaic as humanly possible I’m actually convinced it’s impossible to write a more by-the-numbers JRPG. After making a pact with him (becoming a Pactbearer), you awaken to your Imagigear, magic heart powers that allow you to fight enemies in the Otherworld. There, you encounter several enemy Daemons and a Fluffy Mascot Character™️ named Vanitas, a creature known as a Monark. After answering an unknown phone call, you and a few friends get transported into the Otherworld. You play as a faceless protagonist, waking up with amnesia at Shin Mikado Academy, a school surrounded by a mysterious barrier, with hallways filled by a strange mist that turns the students mad. Here’s my results.įirst, let’s discuss the story. When the game begins, you’re prompted with questions that determine your Ego points, represented by the seven deadly sins. However, when the game ITSELF draws these comparisons, baiting players with a marketing campaign that boils down to “developed by ex- Shin Megami Tensei devs,” I believe this to be fair game. I know what you’re probably thinking: “Oh, it’s not fair to compare this game to those ones it should just be judged on its own merits!” I hear you loud and clear, strawman. I’ll attempt to ascertain why this is, and to do so, I will need to draw comparisons to two other series: Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. Bored to tears to such an extent, I often had to pull my eyes away from the screen to stare at the white wall in my bedroom, for just a moment’s respite. I’m a big fan of urban JRPGs with a high school backdrop, and although this game functions well on a technical level, with a decent, minimalistic aesthetic, and… serviceable combat, I was miserable during my time with it. Many years ago, fellow gaming website Rock Paper Shotgun coined the term “Minecraftbut” for titles that emulated said game, as their descriptions would often begin with “It’s Minecraft, but…” Well, I’m going to co-opt that concept and coin my own term, “Personabut,” as in “ Monark is Persona, but bad.” Platforms: PS4, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch (reviewed)
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