Another terrible Persona formula retread with incredibly distracting visual effects and word bubbles in 35 different fonts constantly popping up on screen, a fairy sidekick infinitely more condescending and insufferable than Navi, and dialog that reads like a smug-shit Redditor arguing with his sock accounts - all snappy, fast-talking one-liners stuffed with clichés and cutesy turns of phrase and snarky quips and grandiose comic book villain monologues, and it gets obnoxious to read and listen to really fucking fast. Whenever it's not doing that it's treating you like a toddler - the game shows you something, then explains it to you in simple words, then another character (or two, or three) has to tell it to you again five seconds later. Seriously every other scene goes exactly like this:
Game shows the player a map
DIPSHIT FAIRY: This is a map! Boy it's a well made map! You know what a map is, right Main Character?
OTHER GUY: This map will show us to our destination!
YET ANOTHER GUY: Our destination is here! Click the location on the map to lead us there, Main Character!
This is an M-rated game not Dora the fucking Explorer. Actually I take that back, I'd rather watch Dora the Explorer; at least the characters in that talk like real people and not charismaless Beetlejuices.
There's also a lovely plot point about the 'real' world being a paradise comprised of "one united tribe" and the game world you play in is just some Machiavellian power fantasy/instruction manual for people to pretend they're righteous and empathetic by 'standing up' against one-dimensional strawmen to sell themselves as a hero all those naïve minorities just so they can build paradise on their backs instead; so now Atlus is sanitizing ethnocracy and white man's burden bullshit in the same way P5 was a lovely coat of whitewash for the 8chan and Kiwi Farms culture crusades. Hey, if you're gonna make big-budget power fantasies that cater to the worst dregs of society in pursuit of easy sales, might as well make one for closeted white supremacists too, right? As long as they're not confirmably contributing to the problems they put on airs of caring so deeply about, they can ride that plausible deniability to personal gain and a private army to sic on anyone they don't like or who just doesn't kiss their ass hard enough, and you're perfectly happy to give them permission to do it because you're getting more sales. Did I mention this game and its bullshit moralizing conveniently released just in time for the 2024 election, too? Yeah... good one Atlus and Sega, you unbelievably vile fucks.
Screenshot removed because of spurious copyright claims
Developer: Atlus Studio Zero
Publisher: Sega
Released: 2024
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, XBox Series