We all need an escape from real life. Life is stressful and exhausting sometimes, so we turn to entertainment to get away from it all. This is commonly referred to as “Escapism”, and it’s a concept I find essential to life. Movies, TV shows, Music and Books all provide outlets of escapism for people to lose themselves in. However, I’ve always found that Gaming provides a new dimension to escapism in the form of choice and control. Even in the most linear of games, it’s rare to find two identical playthroughs. Sure everyone saves Princess Peach, but some did it without ever letting go of the run button and others took meticulous jumps to ensure their safety. The differences can be small, but everyone has their own way of playing a game.

Enter, the Persona series. Persona 4 has been my favorite game of all time ever since I first completed its long journey. Persona 5, the much anticipated next-gen follow up, just released and it is the primary reason for my gap between articles lately. I’ve always known I wanted to write something about Persona 5, however I was having trouble nailing down just what type of piece I wanted to write. I could write a review explaining how this game refines the series and narrowly edges out its predecessor to become my favorite game of all time. I could write a piece about how I applauded Atlus for preventing streaming of the game, as I know that the mystery and shock of the game’s narrative are best left to be experienced by the player and not simply watched or potentially spoiled. But Persona 5 is something far more special, and as such, I believe it deserved a piece to reflect just how important it is to gaming as a whole. The Persona series may be the most overlooked series in gaming, and I wish to do the series justice.

In order to understand what makes Persona 5 exceptional, its best to understand why the Persona series in general is a masterclass in escapism. The most recent games in the series tended to share the same premise on a very broad scale. You play a relatively silent protagonist that has moved to a new area for one reason or another. The move requires the protagonist to stay with someone outside of your immediate family where he will go to school as any normal teen would. The series’ namesake comes into play as odd occurrences lead to an other worldly deal allowing the protagonist to summon beings created based off of the nature of their true self known as Persona, which will be used to fight in some form of strange realm inhabited by “shadows”, which are born from the negativity in the hearts of mankind. Sounds like pretty standard J-RPG fare, right?

So why does this game master escapism as compared to any other video game providing total immersion? The answer is surprisingly simple. Persona doesn’t thrust you into a fantasy world, but instead turns everyday life into fantasy. In Persona, you will play almost EVERY DAY in a calendar year. You will start your journey attending school in Spring, and end your journey leaving the following Spring. A typical day consists of your character attending school in the morning and then having the afternoon and evening free to choose from an incredibly long list of activities for you to spend your time. Perform one action after school, it will become evening. Perform an action in the evening, it will then be tomorrow morning and so on. Here’s where the meat of Persona kicks in. Every action you can take in the real world will end up benefiting your team in combat once you enter whatever world you enter to fight shadows.

Social Links are the core of Persona. These are interactions with characters you will meet throughout the game, playable and non-playable, where talking with them will further strengthen your relationship resulting in upgrades in battle and towards Personas that match the “Arcana” each social link represents. Every Social Link has an incredibly rich backstory that highlights Persona’s consistently incredible casts (more on this later) and furthering your relationship relies on several variables. The biggest of these comes in the form of answering questions and choosing the most fitting response in order to appeal to the character the most. Furthermore, social skills help foster relationships as well, as you can do tasks like working a part-time job to improve your charm which will allow you to approach an ordinarily unapproachable girl, or improve your guts to confront a shady figure. Put it this way, if a game manages to get you excited about studying for an exam or working at a fast food restaurant, it’s probably something special.

All of this takes escapism to a whole new level. Persona manages to blur the lines between fantasy and reality by giving all of your nostalgic awkward high school decisions an immense amount of gravity. Each decision you make has an outcome and the choices can really hit home and allow you to shape the story in whatever way you want. If you want to know the Priestess social link but she’s a straight A student and only wants to interact with other smart guys, then you’ll skip going to the batting cages or arcade and hit the books. If you want to beat the livin’ hell out of Shadows all day then you can head straight to the other world after school and train non-stop to boost HP and other stats. If you want to be a massive player and date every single female social link in Tokyo at the same time behind their backs, you can! (But the game is gonna go out of it’s way to make you feel like as much of a dick as possible come Valentine’s Day so either ride solo or prepare to feel like a terrible person.)

What makes this so special is that while you know at its core, all of these activities are aimed at boosting combat skills like most RPGs, you don’t feel like you’re grinding. You feel like you’re trying to save a kid from being bullied or you feel like you’re helping your friend cope with their insecurities, with the stats being gravy. With all of that said, it’s time to finally say what makes Persona 5 in particular so exceptional when it comes to escapism.

All of Persona’s worlds are immersive, but Persona 5’s learns from its predecessors and refines the formula to create a world that is truly massive, yet incredibly manageable at the same time. However, it wouldn’t be Persona without an incredible cast of characters and Persona 5 has the strongest crew BY FAR. I don’t want to spoil a single thing but there is one character in particular (The Hermit Social Link) that has never made me feel so many emotions at once.

Along with all of its characters, Persona 5 tackles several incredibly hard hitting topics including rape, sexual harassment, body image, plagiarism, government corruption, suicide and murder. All of these are wrapped into the game’s overarching theme of “Justice” or rather “What is truly just?”. The main cast of characters constantly face scrutiny and backlash for their actions they deem as “social reform” in which they change the hearts of criminals and lowlifes around Tokyo as their “justice” could be seen as toying with fate or free will. The question of what is “just” is constantly asked and in todays society these themes are all too relevant. Is the moral decision always the right decision? Do the ends justify means? All of these and more add to the beauty of gaming and escapism.

But why is escapism important? And how does Persona 5 play into that? Well, forgive the cynicism, but there’s a lot of times that life’s not great. Whether it’s a personal problem or stress from society, we all wish we lived a different life from time to time. Persona 5, in a way, has an important lesson regarding this. Everyone has a dark side and everyone has their own problems. Life isn’t meant to be fair because there will always be people who don’t play by the rules. Instances like these come up in everyday life and they make you feel powerless . Persona 5 takes the cheating and corruption we know, but instead asks “what if you weren’t powerless?”

In a way, Persona 5 is every bit as much of a life simulator as it is an RPG. It’s a fine line between fantasy and reality the game walks, which truly redefines the power of escapism in gaming.

That’s about all I can say without going too much into spoilers but I can say fairly confidently that Persona 5 is now my favorite game of all time. Let me know your thoughts and if you have played, who your favorite characters were.