Why I Quit Persona 5

Why am I bringing this up? Because it's a great way to direct you towards Film Critic Hulk's essay on Red Dead Redemption 2. It's a pretty deep dive into one very particular issue: why is that game so insistent on preventing you from enjoying it? What choices are being made that put up so many barriers to the player?

Which leads me to Persona 5, which I was nearly done with. On the trail to the last boss, the final twists and turns all exposed, my party leveled into the 60s...and then I quit. Months I spent playing this game were deleted by me; I burnt the bridge so I wouldn't even consider going back.

I quit after spending 48 hours trying to make it through from the starting point of the final dungeon to the next save room.

Because Persona 5 does some things that I haven't experienced before. First; the game ends if the player-protagonist dies in combat. Typically, these games end when your entire party goes down but not here. This makes sense narratively, but it is awful from a gameplay standpoint in an RPG. Everything now hinges on that one character-which means nobody else is worth protecting. They only have value insofar as they can protect the player-protagonist, or defeat enemies faster.

Second, the game has a time limit. I found my party and my character specifically going from level 65 to 68 within minutes during this final dungeon. That's bad: it means that I haven't had the opportunity to level my characters up sufficiently to prepare for this battle.

I didn't squander my time playing the game-and in every loading screen there is a helpful "Take Your Time" message. So...OK, let's proceed at the pace I want to proceed. That's the constant message.

Except you can't. There is a deadline and if you aren't ready when it comes, the gameplay experience suddenly becomes very, very frustrating. Multiple times, I had my entire party frozen, or worse, run away and there was nothing I could do about it.

Third, the game teaches you that every Persona you fight has an elemental weakness.

Except the boss characters. So all the time one might spend building up goes to waste. This isn't that unusual, given how RPGs play out, but what is weird is how infrequent status effects are, until the final dungeon, and how infrequent magic point replenishments are, ever. The game is outright stingy with magic refreshers.

So now I'm under leveled, under supplied, I have no way to grind my characters up and I can't find more supplies. Why is this the case? Why can't I find out where to get or how to make more items that I need, forward storylines I want to (and thus level up), grind for Personas or develop traits to help me? Why is this information being hidden or worse, presented in a contradictory manner?

Why am I putting myself through this again? Which brings me back to the essay I linked to at the beginning.

So I quit. And that never feels good, but neither does wasting my life on something I'm supposed to enjoy and currently hating. And unlike Film Critic Hulk, nobody's paying me to go through something I am not enjoying and write about it.