PERSONA 5's Biggest Issue
Playing Persona 5 was a fantastic experience. In terms of visual style, it has pushed the envelope for games. It deserves all the praise it received. But almost 6 years after its release, I don’t see many complaints.
Did anyone else feel that the conversations would go around in circles and drag on for too long?
With that question in mind, I decided to analyze the narrative-to-gameplay ratio in Persona 5 when compared to other JRPGs.
Playtime
Looking at the last three entries in the series, we can see that there is a significant increase in playtime and narrative.
Note that when I use the term narrative I’m referring to long dialogs as well as cutscenes.
More impressively the ratio between gameplay and narrative has increased dramatically. The amount has doubled with each new entry.
Almost 50% of the time in Persona 5 is spent on narrative.
That’s quite a big change from previous games. Of course, games have changed a lot in the last 15 years. So how about other JRPG series?
For Dragon Quest, we can see that the average playtime remained somewhat the same. We can see a similar increase in narrative time as well.
Looking at the playtime to narrative ratio, we already see some differences. For DQ XI and FF7, the ratio sits around 35%. Let's look at more specifics.
The First Hour
The first hour of any game is usually the slowest one. The game tends to introduce the story and the basic gameplay before allowing the player to be on his own.
In the first hour of Persona 5, there is a total of 41m26s on narrative. While Dragon Quest XI spends a total of 25m43s, which is 15 minutes less than Persona 5. Same for FF7 Remake where the narrative takes 24m02s.
Interruptions
I’m considering one interruption when the game takes control away from you. Either a cutscene starts, or a long dialog starts. Persona 5 tends to follow a cutscene with a dialog and vice-versa. DQ and FF7 will either do a cutscene or dialog, but usually will not follow one with the other.
We can see that P5 has half the interruptions that FF7 has but each interruption is 4 times longer. So while FF7 interrupts gameplay twice more often, the interruptions are on average one minute long. So not only P5 interrupts you quite a few times, but the interruptions are also longer.
Persona Series
You could argue that this is how the Persona series has always been. To be fair you would be right.
It is quite impressive how consistent these three games are in terms of structure. Remember that Persona 3 was released in 2006 and Persona 5 in 2016.
We can see that Persona 5 has improved over its predecessors. Even though the number of interruptions has grown a bit in the first hour, the total interruption time is 24% shorter than in previous games. Also, the average interruption time has dropped from 9 minutes in Persona 3 to 4 minutes in Persona 5.
When looking at combat, we see a massive improvement. The first battle in P5 happens within the first 3 minutes of the game. While P4 takes 20 minutes and P3 takes a whopping 40 minutes to get there. Looking back further, P2 takes 49 minutes to get to the first battle. We have a steady decrease from P2 onwards, with P1 being an outlier taking 36 minutes.
Conclusion
Even with a small sample size, we can see that Persona 5 takes control away from the player far too many times and for too long. Looking at the series, we can see that the Persona Team is aware of this. Persona 5 has improved dramatically when compared to previous entries in the series. But when looking at other JRPGs, that also have plenty of interruptions, the Persona series could take some hints from them.
I’d argue that in the first hours it’s okay to interrupt multiple times. Just keep it short and make sure the player does something interesting in between. As the game progresses, interruptions should be less frequent. Long interruptions should happen on important plot points. Players should have the option for side content with lengthy conversations.
Persona 5 is a great game. There is no denying it. It will be interesting to see the decisions the Persona Team takes moving forward.
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