any games similar to SMT in terms of themes ?

[qw90700]

the philosophy of making the self by who you communicate with and your social status is an interesting one. I didn't caught this when I played persona 3. so correct me if I'm wrong but what I get so far is that the game mechanics is entangled strongly with whom you'll choose to make stronger boundaries with. I guess with this in mind I can get along better with all those "deciding to who to hang out with" options and care more about the social decisions, thanks for the explanation.

Simply put Persona games uses "personality development" system to make you able to use stronger "creators you can use in battles" because these creators are a product of human mind so your "mind" has to get strong to use your "mind" to battle, which simply put these creatures are manifestation of your "mind".

In that context Persona 3 introduced the social stat system. It's simply has the logic of to make X character make you even care about your existence in their personal life you gotta develop your "Knowledge" stat by studying and reading books. Naturally an ignorant person cannot talk with knowledgeable person, they can only listen instead lol. So by developing social stats you can form relationship with people in later Persona games as friend or lovers, it depends on you, however what matters is max relationship level so you can unlock stronger "creatures" we call Persona as they are "social mask" and the creatures you fight against are "shadows" as in "rejected part of true self of people". After all it using Carl Jung's theories, and this is why SMT games have connection to mythology.

To make it simple and quick to explain, one of the Carl Jung's theory is mythologists, despite time and culture difference, they all have particular human elements. This is because humans are humans so they do human things. That's why humans comes up with human types as stereotypes like "wise man" and "caring mother" types. Because of this human aspect, every people belong to a "type of personality". For example a "hermit" is a person type that society wrongly calls them "introvert", and a "trickster" is a person type that most popular example is Bugs Bunny and Loki. Where things get complex is what the Persona games are about. So when people accept their true self, they realize, for example they are a "trickster" so thus they can "function as a healthy person" because they know what kind of person a trickster is so they live their life by it. But when a trickster rejects their trickster self, they will become a delusional person who is an empty "social mask" instead and thus their trickster self "turns into a shadow" by being the most negative and crazy aspect of a "trickster type". So in the game people become aware about this stuff and thus they gain the ability of Persona that's a healthy manifestation of a social mask and thus they awaken a mythological being that fits into their person type like a trickster type so the creature they can use is a "trickster type" in this context so the mytological being a trickster may initially start to use could be Loki or Hermes. It depends on whichever mythological being the person feels close to themselves for whatever reasons they have. According to Carl Jung's theories whatever personality you have, there are a mythological beings that you can feel close to yourself the most. Then that being would be your Persona!!! lol. Well Carl Jung would say your interest in mythology is not a random hobby but an awareness you have about who you actually are. It means you are beyond the limitation of this physical world, you are very connected to humanity itself... but it would be up to you to think what that would mean!!! lol

about the Persona 5 being a spin-off of spin-off of spin-off I think I get it. I had a Persona-fan friend who loved the games, he always said that "the third one has more gloomy vibes and the forth one is happy" but when it came to the fifth one even though he played it more than those two he always would say "well, this one is a different deal, but I'm not sure how to put it in words. it just has really cool characters" and the way you said they wanted to expand the high-school sim/dating sim aspects of the game makes it clear for me why my friend couldn't just explain the identity of the fifth game like the other two, and mostly talked about how cool the characters are instead.

Well IMO Persona 5 is broken version of a mix of Persona 3 and Persona 4 as in it maintains a serious tone yet it's not so serious as much as Persona 1 and Persona 3 and then it also try to be a "bleak not sincere happy" that's not like Persona 4, not even Persona 2. Persona 5 feels more like they took some "happy" stuff from Persona 4 and reused the same idea with bad execution. As a result the game manages to not be "happy" despite tries hard to be like that and its seriousness more close to be like Persona 3.

Well whole theme of the Persona 5 is "being cool" and that's all about it which is why the game was so successful. The game is really cool and stylish. Peak visual and musical art IMO lol.

I guess you are right about it, I'm just kind of more used to the SMT at this point and I need to kinda go looking at persona as a much different concept in some ways to understand it and connect with it, again maybe paying from the first ones helps soothing the transition and also I can see it your way how the game changes into these sub-branches and spin-offs.

Well starting from Persona 1 would be better for sure because as the series goes on it lacks features and the features that remains changes so gotta relearn. It would be a hard time to play Persona games from 5th to 1st for example lolol.

Relatively Persona 1 has more features for battles but less overall features for gameplay. The game is simple and simpler for SMT gamers so it's a great starting point.

But then Persona 2 is so different due to anime elements translated into the context of a video game.

However after Persona 1 and 2 playing Persona 3 feels like "dude I'm playing a different game" when I imagine when you had start playing Persona 1 you will feel at home. Persona 3 was a weird game because they changed Persona game style and they had no idea what they doing but testing the water. And then whatever you disliked in Persona 3 is "fixed" in Persona 4. And then Persona 5 is more like "weird opposite reflection of Persona 4". As the Persona game gets newer the more it gets complex, however Persona 5 got more easier on obtaining the creatures we call Persona.

In the end every Persona game has its own uses due to the themes they have:

Persona 1 offers high replayability for a good spoiler reasons.

Persona 2 is for those wanna play a game that's like an anime.

Persona 3 is for those who is an emo still living in early 2000s depression and edgy life style lol.

Persona 4 is for those wanna experience meaningful friendship and heartwarming situations as playing the game kinda feels like taking a nice vacation with friends despite murder mystery and supernatural stuff.

Persona 5 is for those they always wanted Kaitou Kid game or they just wanna play something cool in thievery theme lol.

So choose your Persona wisely and find the Persona fits your face the most!!! lolol

 

[Cantarella]

I remember playing the first one and it was very hard but also pretty fun, sadly I didn't paid attention to the story and trace of any mythologies back then but I'll revisit it and play the second game thanks !

Could just jump straight to 2. It'll spoil some stuff from 1, but if you really want to go deep into the mythology stuff immediately, just playing 2 is probably your best bet.