If you already know you like the jrpg genre you’ll almost assuredly like the games. They’re wildly popular for a reason. The aesthetics and mechanics are pretty satisfying and well fleshed out, respectively. All the games are structured in a way that’s split between downtime and dungeon diving. During your downtime you build relationships(kind of a friendship simulator) with the story characters that affects your combat and gives you bonuses. The player has full agency to determine who they want to build relationships with. And if you didn’t know, the games are long and you can easily hit a 100+ hour playthrough.
The story and themes can be a little cringey, idealistic, and juvenile, but all the games do have high schoolers as their main protagonists so take it as you will. They touch on some adult themes(sexual assault, suicide, general societal assholishness, etc.) but don’t usually portray it in a satisfying way or explore them in a way beyond ‘this happened and I’m mad/sad about it’. It’s still good story for a major studio release, but some people do take issue with the way it’s done. If you want more overall adult themes you can look into the mainline SMT series which is where the Persona games are a spinoff of and are very similar in quality and gameplay.
In terms of where to start:
The Persona series as everyone knows it starts with #3. There’s like a decade between each games release so there are massive quality of life and graphics improvements between them. I’d say start with 4 or 5 personally, but they’re all good in their own way and have a remaster/remake at this point. If you only plan to ever play one of them, go with Persona 5: Royal.
As a side note, Atlus always releases an updated version of each game a year or two after its initial release that features an expanded story, easier gameplay, and updated qol. Persona 5: Royal is the updated release version.
The only JRPGs I remember playing is one sonic flash fan game on some old website and that one Ubisoft offshoot game “Child of Light” back when they weren’t just milking Assassin’s Creed IP, so I’m somewhat familiar with the gameplay. I’ll follow your advice and start with 5 and get into older ones if I like 5.
The thing that made me want to try out the games is seeing screenshots of 5 and thinking “this UI and overall art style looks cool as fuck” and then hearing good music in YouTube videos/memes and finding out that it’s from Persona
“this UI and overall art style looks cool as fuck” and then hearing good music
The level of polish on the games is really what makes it shine. For me, I have a tough time finishing jrpg’s in general because they get pretty tedious after pkaying a while, but the music alone made me want to continue to play. It’s just so good.
If you really like P5R and want to try the others, a remake of 3 was recently released, called Persona 3 Reloaded, and another one for 4 is coming out in the next year or two. That helps make it not feel like you’re missing out on quality of life improvements if you want to go backwards in the series. Except for common themes, all the games have distinct story’s so you don’t need to worry about missing out on plot on anything.
And to be clear 1 and 2 don’t have anything to do with the story of the later parts, other than some minor references like the MMO in 3’s Hermit social link being called Innocent Sin.
If you already know you like the jrpg genre you’ll almost assuredly like the games. They’re wildly popular for a reason. The aesthetics and mechanics are pretty satisfying and well fleshed out, respectively. All the games are structured in a way that’s split between downtime and dungeon diving. During your downtime you build relationships(kind of a friendship simulator) with the story characters that affects your combat and gives you bonuses. The player has full agency to determine who they want to build relationships with. And if you didn’t know, the games are long and you can easily hit a 100+ hour playthrough.
The story and themes can be a little cringey, idealistic, and juvenile, but all the games do have high schoolers as their main protagonists so take it as you will. They touch on some adult themes(sexual assault, suicide, general societal assholishness, etc.) but don’t usually portray it in a satisfying way or explore them in a way beyond ‘this happened and I’m mad/sad about it’. It’s still good story for a major studio release, but some people do take issue with the way it’s done. If you want more overall adult themes you can look into the mainline SMT series which is where the Persona games are a spinoff of and are very similar in quality and gameplay.
In terms of where to start: The Persona series as everyone knows it starts with #3. There’s like a decade between each games release so there are massive quality of life and graphics improvements between them. I’d say start with 4 or 5 personally, but they’re all good in their own way and have a remaster/remake at this point. If you only plan to ever play one of them, go with Persona 5: Royal.
As a side note, Atlus always releases an updated version of each game a year or two after its initial release that features an expanded story, easier gameplay, and updated qol. Persona 5: Royal is the updated release version.
The only JRPGs I remember playing is one sonic flash fan game on some old website and that one Ubisoft offshoot game “Child of Light” back when they weren’t just milking Assassin’s Creed IP, so I’m somewhat familiar with the gameplay. I’ll follow your advice and start with 5 and get into older ones if I like 5. The thing that made me want to try out the games is seeing screenshots of 5 and thinking “this UI and overall art style looks cool as fuck” and then hearing good music in YouTube videos/memes and finding out that it’s from Persona
The level of polish on the games is really what makes it shine. For me, I have a tough time finishing jrpg’s in general because they get pretty tedious after pkaying a while, but the music alone made me want to continue to play. It’s just so good.
If you really like P5R and want to try the others, a remake of 3 was recently released, called Persona 3 Reloaded, and another one for 4 is coming out in the next year or two. That helps make it not feel like you’re missing out on quality of life improvements if you want to go backwards in the series. Except for common themes, all the games have distinct story’s so you don’t need to worry about missing out on plot on anything.
Hope you like it!
And to be clear
1 and 2 don’t have anything to do with the story of the later parts, other than some minor references like the MMO in 3’s Hermit social link being called Innocent Sin.