Persona 5 tactica, Jungian Pokemon, the loop

 I got into a weird place with Gaiden-- more on that latter-- and then Persona 5 Tactica came out and I got into that, and then, rather than take on the last battle-- which looks to be a pain in the ass-- I fired up Persona 4 (which I’d never played) and, while Persona 4 is, at the risk of stating the obvious, no Persona 5 it sure is a hell of a sharper hit of the ol’ Persona 5 juice, and really put into focus this idea that I had been sort of ruminating on throughout my Persona 5 Tactica experience, which is that Atlus is a bunch of assholes who can get fucked. 

What Tactica makes painfully obvious is that, since Persona 5 came out, Atlus has done enough (of certain kinds of) work – between Strikers, Dancing in the Starlight, and all the whistles and bells in Royal-- to have put out another actual damn game (weather it would follow Joker + the gang (Persona 5.5) or just do it with different folks (Persona 6)) but didn’t, not even because they figured out there was more money in selling three games for about fifty bucks each than one game for eighty; rather it’s a result of the capitalistic fuckery that makes “$X” today worth MORE than“$X00” in the future. Atlus wanted their grubby mitts on whatever they could get for Strikers in the near future rather than wait for more money from a more ambitious game in the more distant future, and sold us a bunch of crapy games to pay their bills. Do Phantom Thieves take on gutless game designers? If so those assholes should be worried. 

Anyway, Tactica was a breaking point because it broke the ‘loop’ that bound together, not only the Persona games, but also the larger ‘shin megemi tensi’ media universe, which I won’t even to pretend to understand. I’ve played a (small) handful of ‘shin megemi tensi’ affiliated games and the only thing they ALL have in common with each other is this system of what I like to call ‘Jungian Pokemons’ to the point that I wonder if ‘shin megemi tensi’ (which I have never heard a translation for) actually means ‘Jungian Pokemon’ in Japanese-- until I realize that both ‘Jungian’ and ‘Pokemon’ are barely words in English, and I am asking very strange questions to an audience of either Jungian Pokemons or no one. 

I’m not willing to claim a coinage for this use of ‘Pokemon’ OR say that it’s widely accepted, but it seems to me that ‘Pokemon,’ at this point, can refer to the relevant monsters or creatures, in any video-game mechanic in which monsters are collected, leveled up, and curated for the purposes of battle. The word Pokemon originally refers to the creatures in the “Pokemon” cartoons and games and is, as far as I know, a combination of the English words “pocket” and “monster” originating in Japan. 

‘Jungian,’ as used here, (again somewhere between a personal coinage and the O.E.D. entry) refers not so much to the works and thoughts of early psychoanalyst CG Jung, but to a mostly aggravating kind of hippy-dippy interest in a collective unconscious with which Jung is associated. Through no one’s fault but his own: serious people stick with Freud, that was as true then as it is now [claiming Freud as the analyst of serious people, btw, is an ENTIRELY different position from taking Freud entirely seriously.]

Anyway, I don’t play Pokemon and I don’t respect Jung but the Shin Megemi Tensis are emphatically Jungian Pokemon and they rule. You collect things like “archangle” “mothman” “pixie” “Oberon” “Moloch” and “Jack Frost” which all have abilities and then you can merge them into each other and get ones with different abilities. Beyond sort of basic maintenance, you don’t have to do this a lot for gameplay reasons but you can also do it FOREVER because it is deeply relaxing, some of them you’ve heard of (feel smart), some are new (learn something), and some look cool or trippy or metal or hot; and you can just kind of noddle around in this quasi real, quasi familiar space, sort of getting your character better at stuff, but mostly just messing around with Jungian Pokemons until you get tired of it (soon, but not too soon). It’s a solid bit of meaningless gameplay. 

In the best parts of the relevant games it is a really good instance of ‘the loop’-- a video game feature where doing ‘A’ will give you things that are useful for ‘B’ which in tun gives you something you need for ‘A’ or ‘C’ or whatever, and you alternate between them potentially indefinitely. In the Shin Megimi Tenis games you fight creatures to collect Jungian Pokemons and gain experience, fuse them into new Pokemons, then use these Pokemons to fight more creatures, collect more pokemons and more expedience, fuse them into your old fusions, and continue indefinably. A good gameplay ‘loop’ is at the heart of a lot of good games, and is, because it can extend through time in ways that art generally does not, a distinct feature of gaming. 

And Tactica just took it all away. Not the Jungian Pokemons (this would actually have been better) but the things that made them relaxing and unique. Without getting too far into the weeds of a bad game mechanic, the Tactica Pokemons confer fewer abilities on more characters, making the stakes both higher and more confusing, while robbing you of a lot of the connection to your unique Jungian Pokemoms. The key was that earlier games provided you a space without time in the narrative in which you could mess around with Jungian Pokemons while looking for other rewards as long as you wanted; here the narrative just pushed you forward and you are stuck with the Jungian Pokemons you end up with; there are ways to go back and get more, but the process of acquiring them is opaque, presenting the possibility of re-playing levels for the wrong Pokemons. 

So it’s essentially a bad game, not without good elements, and mostly with connections to a great game that SEEM like good elements. 

On some level Atlus is a little screwed-- or they are in a position that is not easy. 

I’ve might have said that the best motivator in video games is collecting weapons. I was wrong. Collecting weapons is a GREAT motivator-- the BEST is collecting people. 

This tracks, incidentally, with my take on the collective unconscious. If it was some type of pre-civilization scene with, like, a caveman vibe, or the zombie apocalypse, or some such, and you had to rely exclusively on your wits and your physical surroundings a weapon would be a GOOD thing to have; but it would be nowhere as good as a friend. 

On the most basic level, you can be armed to the teeth, twist an ankle and be essentially done-- able to fuck up anything that bothers you at least for a while, but immobile and in pain, neither of which are elements of longterm survival. A second person who is willing to help you because they want to makes what can be a life altering problem, essentially a non issue. In situations in which society is stripped away (and actually also the other situations) a person you can rely on is worth more than any object. 

Thus, new party members are an AMAZING incentive to keep playing a video game and Persona 5 gave you half a dozen all time great party members-- about as good as there have ever been. So, in anything set after Persona 5, if you wanted to move forward you would have to either break up the Phantom Thieves and then have Joker reunite them (it seems SO sad, but for this reason they should do it) or come up with at least three new, good party members who were necessary on both a gameplay and story level-- and this seems hard. [I would do a hybrid where everyone is noticeably more adult and some of them will rejoin the Thieves and some won’t and this gets POIGNANT but the ones who flake (or die) get replaced by really good characters. Never said it was easy.]

Instead, in Strikers, Tactica, and Royale, Altus just lets you hang out with the old Phantom Thieves in a new game and they throw in ONE new character to keep it a little fresh. It’s always nice to reunite with the Phantom Theives, but overall it’s a crap approach. 

Gaiden, on the other hand, has me in a people-collecting loop that I might never break out of. I’m not sure I want to.

An underground Coliseum-- essentially it let’s Kriyu be a character in a mini game that is sort of like Street Fighter-- has been in a LOT of RGG games. And in some of them you’ve been able to recruit people to fight with you. But in this one you can fight AS the other fighters and level them up. If you gave RGG the extra $20 before the game, as I did, one of these people is Goro Majima. Damn right that Colleseum just got destroyed by an insanely overpowered Goro. 

You have a bunch of different guys with different move-sets and abilities and you can get in brawls as ALL of them and level them up to 20-- at which point they are all pretty dang powerful. There is, actually, almost a game reason to do it, but I kinda just want to recruit EVERYONE into my clan and get them all up to 20 just cause. Some of them are great guys from just delightful cornors of the Yakuza-verse. (the Chicken and Sheep men from Kasuraga’s staying awake in the movies game, Sodachi, and the baby-play Yakuza boss, are some favorites of mine). It is a wonderful loop: you fight, earn money and get your guys beat up, then spend money patching up your dudes and hiring more guys, and then go back to fighting, ect….It is, essentially, everything Persona 5 Tactica is not.

I might not finish either game: Tactica because I just don’t care anymore, and Gaiden because I refuse to let my coliseum loop end. 

Persona 5.5: Fate of the Phantoms (everyone is, like, out of college)

Yuske: inciting incident is he dies of what LOOKS LIKE a heroin overdose but Joker knows he was killed in the metaverse. [he had been battling heroin addiction in real life]

Mona: killed investigating Youske’s death in the metaverse before gameplay really starts. Comes back at a climactic moment at the very end, possibly able to use a Yuske-ghost as a Persona.

Ryuji and Ann: I mean, they are both silly characters, totally killable, but also it’s the CORE. I think, initially they are burned out by their struggles both in the metaverse and w Yuske’s heroin addiction that they want nothing to do with it, but then Mona’s disappearance brings them back. Yuske kept on selling Ryuji’s shit for drug money, and crashing parties with Ann’s modeling friends while disturbingly high. Time has not been kind to these two, but they don’t have to think long to get Joker’s back. 

Mokato: Has become a cop (or something) and looks like she is going to ditch the Thieves, but at a totally predicable and pretty soon moment she shows up on the SWEET MOTORCYCLE, bails everyone out, and goes rouge. HELL YEAH. 

Haru: ditches the Thieves bc she has taken over the family business and become a corporate bad person. I’ll be honest, I don’t like her much as a character. [cool grenade launcher, tho]

Futaba: Idk. Coin toss, kinda, cause you don’t play as her, and her role in the story is extremely hit and miss. 

NEW:

-different goofy spirit guide

-artist friend of Youske’s, different take on comic, eccentric artist. 

-a Yakuza? (might be some pro yakuza bias showing) 

-someone w a strong connection to science or magic