Can your heart be stolen? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
I recently finally finished Persona 5 Royal. Technically, I had to go through the first part twice seeing as I got a bad ending the first time. Why? I didn’t focus enough on relationships. That has to be done to make sure you get a good ending. Quite counter-intuitive for a JRPG.
The Persona series is made by a company called Atlus. This is my first step into the game. Why start here? This is the one I had heard the most about and when a friend gave me a gift card, this is the one that was on sale at the time. Fortunately, it’s like Final Fantasy in that all the games are stand-alone. You don’t need to have played the others.
The story starts with you being a teenage boy on probation for a crime that you were wrongfully accused of and having a kind coffeeshop owner take you in and give you an attic room. You go to school and see a guy who you learn is the volleyball coach being quite nasty with some of the students. You also meet a friend who tells you about the coach.
Not too much later, it’s still your first day and you suddenly find yourself in this dark castle with your new friend. The coach is there and he’s not just a coach, but he’s a king, and you and your friend are hostages. It is in this situation that you find that you awake to your persona, which is where the mask comes off in the game and you see who you really are. That is where you enter into combat and through another friend you meet in the metaverse, a humanoid type cat, you learn more about this world.
The goal of the game then becomes finding people who are criminals and have highly distorted desires. Their view of themselves becomes so distorted that it becomes a palace. Your goal is make a route to the treasure at the heart of the palace, but before it can be stolen from them, you have to send them a calling card in the real world. After that, the final battle with that person’s shadow begins and when an appointed time has past, they have a change of heart and confess their sins and accept what comes their way.
Put all of this on hold.
So first off, the music I find in it to be simply incredible. I can easily put the main battle theme on extended and just keep listening. It is that catchy. A player really gets jazzed up with excitement when a battle starts.
Overall also, it’s not much of a challenge, though granted I was playing on normal difficulty. The mechanics aren’t too over the top to learn. It’s gentle in how it guides you.
As someone on the spectrum, the way relationships work I find incredible. As you build relationships with characters, including party members, you start to form bonds and you get abilities that can be used to help you on your quest. Answer the way the person prefers and you build up your bond better with them. As someone on the spectrum, I found this engaging. For instance, I learned when I talk to a female in the game, focus on how she feels when I choose a response before giving “advice” to help her. It was a joy to me to see the indication I had given the correct response and now in the real world, I often think about how I interact with people I know and can picture my own relationship with them improving.
Speaking of the characters, they are all really fleshed-out. You see a close-up of their face when you communicate with them and you get to know them and their stories. Finishing the game can be like wrapping up an adventure with some friends. I also liked interacting with the therapist figure. In some ways, it would be like my own counseling sessions.
There is a lot of psychology and philosophy and even theology in this game. Jungian thought plays a big role and the personas come from pop culture and religion. There are even Christian figures. If that is a problem to you, i understand. I just came to understand this is how some people see things and I want to understand their view.
Now to go back and get to the best part of all, the story. The more I played, I was in the mood of “I want to see what happens next.” There were so many flashbacks that too place that I thought “I can’t believe I didn’t notice that then.” The story is by far the biggest draw. I even used a skill from building up bonds to have battles finish automatically for me just so I could get more of the story. It’s that good.
Yet now I am wondering “Why can’t Christians make games like this?” We have a story to tell as well. We need Christian game developers to rise up and tell that story in a way that the world can enjoy. We need a new C.S. Lewis who has a heart for games.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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