About a month further into Persona 5 Royal (end of October, though I include spoilers for even later in the game below):
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I have to say, it is interesting playing through the game a second time and, knowing what's to come, understanding certain things that the characters didn't begin to grasp until this late in the game. The SIU Director's cryptic statements actually made sense, allowing me to see that they were starting to set us up as early as the Medjed incident right away; and in retrospect you can see all of the moments where Aketchi is manipulating both Sae and your group. Definitely good to play through the game again even if it was only to experience that - they did a good job seeding the whole series of twists that occur in October and November.
But... yeah, those little feelings of discontent continue. While the story leading from Okumura's death into Sae's Palace is well handled, goddamn does it take forever. More than half of the month of October is lost to days where you just have story events (plus the exams at school, but that's only four days); surely that could have been compressed a bit. Some of those days where the group was talking amongst themselves about their uncertainties in the wake of Okumura's death could have not prevented you from spending time on other things, or the events with Aketchi could've not been spread out over so many days; something, anything to not lock me out doing things for so long. I'm fine with some days being lost to story events, and I'm even fine with as many of them as there are in the beginning since they're introducing so many things to you there, but at this point you shouldn't be losing half a month like that. This is the first time I've not been able to go to Mementos in between Palaces, since I only had a couple of days where that was even possible, and on those days Haru would've been absent due to dealing with her father's funeral, and the group won't discuss new targets for Changes of Heart without everyone present.
And speaking of Palaces... Sae's. As a stage in a game, it's nice; thematically for her as a character, I don't get it. She's hyper competitive and a ladder-climber, so she sees the courthouse... as a casino? I mean, I knew that since I've played the game before, but it still seems awfully odd. Also, I'm not entirely clear on what's wrong with her per se - Aketchi claims she'd be willing to fabricate evidence to ensure the Phantom Thieves were punished if she catches you, but we've only got his word on that (which isn't worth much), and that doesn't really tie in with the whole casino thing either. Maybe it's deliberately supposed to be sketchy and unclear, considering the whole situation is Aketchi manipulating you into his trap, but still, I just can't figure out what they're going for with Sae's distortion.
And... yeah, Aketchi. Not looking forward to getting to his big moments again, that was kind of where I felt the game most dropped the ball the first time I played it. But I guess I'll save that for when I get there.
Will say at least, so far, I'm fairly pleased with how they integrated the new characters, Kasumi and Maruki, into the story. They are not just shoehorned into their own social links, there's new events with each of them all throughout the whole game. I've seen Kasumi's Awakening now too, which was decent - though I don't get why it included a Sailor Moon-style transformation sequence for her new outfit, when no other Awakening did anything like that. Also, I'm betting that Palace she accidentally ended up in for it was Doctor Maruki's, and is going to be the Palace (or one of the Palaces?) we deal with during the new semester. Hopefully that turns out to be a good addition. I am a bit disappointed that she doesn't join up after her Awakening, but I guess I'm not surprised - they'd need to rework literally every Phantom Thieves group scene in the game after that point to include her if they did that, and while her Awakening is in the last third or so of the game, that's still a lot of scenes to rework, on top of the new ones they're already adding to work her in.
Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale
