Decided to take one more swing at it after seeing lots of people saying that playing on Merciliess is the answer.

It's definitely part of the answer: I got past the green guys.

But then I got one-shotted by the next wave.

At that point, it really seems to come down to RNG. If you have time to prepare for the big attack, you are golden. But if you were just randomly debuffed three times and have to deal with that and prepare for the big attack, you will die.

Playing the same fight over and over again hoping to get a better RNG is not fun and I will stand by that. Atlus decided to add a not-fun gate to their game where you have to beat your head against a wall for a while until they randomly let you through back into the fun.

So it's really Atlus's fault that I'm quitting and not mine at all.

I watched a video essay thing about how broken and terrible this fight is and, while I lack the SMT street-cred this YouTuber brings to the table, I completely agree. It's badly designed and should've been fixed in a patch or something.

Anyway, life is short. I'm moving on. For real this time.

Given the timer countdown to prevent grinding and the fact that I can't go back to previous palaces to pick up Personas I may have missed, I suspect that the Okumura fight is just a solid wall that I won't get past on this playthrough.

With the resources I have available, it's just not possible for me to defeat the green guys in two turns.

Perhaps one day, I will start from scratch and try to 100% everything so I stand a chance. But I think for now I'm going to move this game to the "Did Not Finish" column.

I do not think that I am the sort of person to finish an Atlus game. I thought playing on easy would be enough but...it just wasn't.

Still, it was a fun 70 hours. So, though the moment is bittersweet at best, I abandon this game with a light heart.

Been over a couple months since I've picked up Persona 5. Decided to try to get back into it today to finish Okumura's palace.

But his boss fight is such garbage, I'm not sure if I even want to bother with trying to get past it. It's just tedious. I don't need extra tedious in my life.

Might be another couple of months before I try again.

Got completely stuck in Okumura’s airlock puzzle to the point that I started feeling claustrophobic and all of my muscles were tensing up like I was physically in a small box.

So I watched a video walkthrough and got to the next safe room and now I don't think I need to play this again for at least a few days.

Definitely need a break.

Okumura's Palace seems to just go on forever.

Look, it's a good game. A great game even.

But perhaps we should entertain the possibility that a game can just be too long.

Last weekend, I tried playing some Persona. After just a few minutes into Okumura's Palace, I realized I wasn't really having fun and found a safe room and bailed.

This weekend, I feel like I should go play some Persona...and just don't want to.

I really hope I'm not getting burned out on this game. I've been loving it so much.

I'm gonna let it cool down for another week or two before I start to panic, but there's a bit of a concern. If I don't even finish the game, how will I ever do my New Game+ which I've been looking forward to? What about P4G?

I'm sure it'll be fine. I just need a little break.

I was inspired to go do some stuff in Final Fantasy 14 instead of Persona 5 today.

And I kind of feel bad about it?

There are all these people wanting to hang out with me and I'm off doing something else.

I'm stopping Ryuji from going to the beach! I'm being a bad friend.

I guess that's the mark of a good game.

Played a little bit today to move the story along, but the game crashed after a long sequence of not being able to save (or forgetting).

So I guess I get to do some stuff over! At least it's fun!

I didn't play all day today (I had to do taxes :( ) but still spent several hours in and around Yongen-Jaya.

I'm still in between Palaces and just working on building up my confidants. This boy has such an expansive social calendar. When I was his age, I had four friends and we all just hung out together. There were very few choices to have to make.

I've found that this game has a real Civ effect on me; but instead of "One more turn..." it's always "Just one more day and then I'll save and quit..."

But one more day can quickly turn into a week.

Spent all day today on this. I unlocked and completed Futaba's Palace.

That storyline was just incredible -- and Futaba's crowning moment of awesome at the end was just ::chefs kiss::

The boss fight at the end of the Palace was long and drawn-out and I'm very glad I'm playing on easy. The SP management was bad enough as-is. I fear what it would be like on normal.

This is a pretty good game, it turns out.

That was a full day of Persona-ing.

Finished Kenshiro's Palace, did several Mementos requests, and unlocked a couple more Confidants.

It turns out that the Royal edition I bought on Steam came with some SP-restoring items I wasn't using. Between those and easy mode, it's suddenly become very easy.

Which I quite like.

Great game as long as you don't try to play it too seriously. =)

Made it fairly far (I think) into Kaneshiro's Palace today.

I increasingly realize that it's not just the dungeon maps that I don't care for but the whole dungeon experience.

I am immensely enjoying figuring out how to spend my time each day, getting to know my friends and acquaintances, and learning about the story.

But the actual dungeon crawling and combat and Persona management? It's really not my cup of tea -- even on easy mode, the resource management around SP is becoming a bit stressful.

I'll stick with it because everything else about this game is an absolute masterpiece. But I think what I really want is an expertly-crafted slice-of-life visual novel dating sim without the JRPG parts.

I'm not sure that exists. Even leaving aside the differences in taste of what "expertly-crafted" means, I'm not sure the non-combat portions would have as much impact if you weren't trying to optimize social links and things to benefit it.

It's an interesting problem and one I'll have to start hunting around for.

I completely fail to understand the fast travel rules in Mementos.

Sometimes I can go up, sometimes I can go down, sometimes I can go anywhere.

It's inscrutable to me.

I still do not care for the dungeon maps.

I picked this back up today to finish the second palace and I had the hardest time figuring out how to get to where I needed to be after sending the calling card. It had been a little too long since I found it the first time...

The boss fight itself was fun, but it definitely made me glad to be playing on easy! The mechanics and turn economy are a little too challenging, imo.

Now that the palace is done, I feel like I have some breathing room to socialize. That'll be nice.

I do not care for the dungeon maps.

Individual maps aren't labeled (just the general area they're in) and there's no indication which exit leads to which map.

For someone with no real spatial reasoning skills, no real ability to visualize things mentally, and no sense of direction at all...it makes navigating quite the chore.

I think I might have to have a policy of not trying to avoid spoilers.

It's hard to say anything about progress through a narrative-heavy game like this if you don't want to give anything away (see my previous update which is a little tortured).

Gonna give that some thought.

I've been enjoying the game, mostly because of the style and music and combat and animations. The story has been so-so.

But I just got midway through the second Palace where a new character joins the team and spends some time walking through the Palace figuring some life stuff out and...

It was a really beautiful moment. The writing, the music, the pacing, the visuals...they all combined to really be something.

I think I understand the love for this game now. Looking forward to keep playing.

Made it to the second palace.

Still loving easy mode, but I think the virtual novel parts are where the game shines. If there was a mode to just do the dungeons in story mode, I'd flip it on in a heart beat.

Related: I don't really like Mementos. Procedurally-generated dungeons are really not my bag. Oh well, it's probably manageable.

Took a bit of a break but finally finished the first Palace today.

Figured I should get back to it while I still remember literally anything about it; and I am on vacation this month, so it makes sense.

But deciding to play this game just feels like such a commitment. It's a super long game, of course, but even just individual play sessions ask a lot: especially if you play a Palace and find yourself between save points.

I definitely prefer an experience where I can hop in and hop out.

Yet, nevertheless, when I do finally center myself and decide to play...it's really good and lots of fun.

Here's hoping that continues for the next 98 hours spread over 2 years.

I started playing P5R a couple weekends ago; but I've got a history of bouncing off of Persona games so I held off talking about it until I knew if it would stick or not.

For this play-through, I've got two advantages that are keeping me from quitting as I have so often before:

1. I am playing on Easy mode
2. The game came with a ton of DLC items and money that's really making it easy to ease in

My biggest issue with Persona games up until now has mostly been the clock: I'm not very good at games and I usually grind to make up for it, but it's hard to do that when there's a ticking clock hanging over your head.

Plus consumables and items have always been scarce so even if I make the time to grind, I don't necessarily have the resources to do so.

But Easy mode is solving the "need to grind" issue and the DLC is, so far, giving me many many many resources.

I'm still in the first Palace, so I don't know if I'll actually stick with it long-term.

But, for once, I have hopes that maybe I'll actually see the end of a Persona game.