It’s officially August again!
This means that exactly one year ago, I put the disc of Persona 5 Royal into my PlayStation 4 and embarked on a journey I’ve attempted many times before. I’d play for several hours a day for upwards of twenty days, up until the most unfortunate of circumstances happened to me…
This is my story with the fifth installment of the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series made by Atlus.
The year had to be around 2016 or 2017. My guild group-chat, The Last Brotherhood, full of several hardcore gamer friends of mine, were all talking about this PS4 JRPG called Persona 5.
I’d heard of it. But I hadn’t touched a JRPG before — not even Final Fantasy at the time.
Still, though, my friends and my brother were bursting through their first play-throughs.
The talk of demons and ‘waifu’ tier lists rummaged through many-a-paragraph that year, to which I had absolutely no idea what the hell they were saying…
Who is Makoto?
Futaba best girl?
Does that monster look like a…penis?
Clearly, I was missing out. This eventually led to a bit of wonder and curiosity.
What was Persona 5 and why was it so important to my group?
Finally, I caved. It was time.
I borrowed the steelbook edition from my friend, installed it that night, and sat down to play. I watched the opening cutscene; it was like an anime I had never seen before. It was finally time to control my character and immediately I realized I had no idea what I was doing.
I got bored immediately and uninstalled.
Persona 5 wasn’t for me. Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time.
It wouldn’t be until late 2018, early 2019 or so before I grabbed a copy of my own.
This time for sure, my second attempt, I’ll beat it.
Wrong.
I made it to Madarame’s palace, the second palace in the game where you get to use the artistically charming swordsman Yusuke.
My save file got corrupted. At least, I’m pretty sure it did this attempt. I remember my cousin and I attempted the game together, and I lost my save file and never caught back up.
It was time to play something else.
My third attempt came in the form of Persona 5 Royal in 2020, and this is honestly where the real unfortunate events unfold.
It was August 2020, and I was on a personal best record pace, playing for several hours a night, every night, until I finally made it around 75 hours in.
If you don’t know about a certain boss in Persona 5 Royal, just know that on the 5th palace, you face an annoying boss who — is still in the first game — but has become significantly harder to beat in Royal.
The idea is to fuse special persona that is specifically meant to beat him, change the difficulty to maximum so the critical hit rate increases, use the Baton Pass feature to boost your characters’ stats each turn, go to the gas station and buy a scratch off ticket because you’ll have better luck winning $500, and pray you’ll get to his last wave before the timer drops to zero.
He’s a fundamentally flawed character design, and this is an honest mistake they made in the Royal version. I wasn’t using a guide at the time so I was completely unprepared.
(I actually always use guides now BECAUSE of this fight)
Anyone who has beaten him has told me that he was definitely a pain in the ass, if anything.
That would be an understatement.
I attempted this single boss fight every night after work for about five or six days straight. It felt like weeks, honestly. I tried so many times to beat him. The guides didn’t help me, I couldn’t afford the persona fusions, I couldn’t leave the palace after sending the calling card, changing the difficulty did nothing for me, level grinding wouldn’t help because of the flawed system…
When I say I was stuck. It was honestly more sad than anything. It was like trying to punch through a brick wall and the only marks I would leave were on my knuckles, not the wall itself.
I was getting tired of attempting. I think my Siberian husky caught wind of my frustration, because as I had made it to the 6th wave of the fight for the first time, my dog got a little too rowdy and pulled my PS4 and TV off its shelf. Down came the hours I put in. Down came the console I’ve had since graduation.
It wouldn’t turn back on, and neither would the TV.
I wasn’t furious. I couldn’t get upset at a dog, especially my daughter who didn’t know any better.
In a way, it was kind of a relief. I didn’t have to worry about retrying that boss anymore. But I also never beat him, and that stung a lot, too — especially after so many attempts.
A month passed. I was borrowing my father’s PS4 Pro — to which I kept in the other bedroom where I currently play my games and use as my office setup for gaming… far, far away from my dog.
I had decided that, while he was letting me hold onto the PS4 Pro for a bit, I’d download the original base version of Persona 5, since I wouldn’t dare retry Royal again after countless hours of maxing Kasumi, Akechi, and almost Maruki, just to get stuck on a flawed boss fight again…
I used the skip and fast forward features to make it all the way to Futaba’s Palace, 65.5 hours into base Persona 5, and that’s when I got the message my dad wanted his PS4 Pro returned.
Another attempt at beating this damn JRPG came and gone just like that.
I decided after I gave the console back to my dad that I’d no longer bother with Persona 5 at that time. I had tried so many times and failed so many more.
I really thought I’d never get to finish the game.
That’s when, around the end of October, I bought a PlayStation 3 copy of Persona 5. I’ll beat the original version, I thought. But without getting into too many details, the PS3 version of the game kept extending the display on my TVs and it would cut off a lot of the screen. I googled fixes, and messed with my PS3’s settings, but it was honestly a common problem that people had to put up with back in the day.
After learning that the PS4 version of the game was the superior version, I decided to wait it out.
Persona 5 is a long game, and I’ve put so much more time into it than one should have to.
It’s been several months to a year since I last played Persona 5, and after all those attempts and putting it off, I’ve finally decided to, once again, sit down and knock this game off my bucket list.
When the game tells you to take your time…well, I certainly have, but I’m hoping this will be the final time I have to try.
It’s eluded me for so long.
Maybe if I keep going, though —
Life will change.
