It should come as no surprise that the Podquisition gang has plenty to say about Tracer’s recent queer revelations (good stuff, obviously).
Outside of that, Gavin tries to infiltrate the show with sly music talk, the Nintendo Switch got some new patent details, and one of us doesn’t think Super Mario Run is very good.
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
Is there an audience for animal penis talk? We find out as the hard questions get asked!
In a reflective episode, the crew talk about 2016, looking back on the games they liked and naming the podcast’s collective ultimate game of the year!
Also, playing games with vaginal clenching. What a laugh!
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
It’s the first Podquisition of 2017, and that means… there’s not much news to talk about.
Nevertheless, your intrepid crew managed to talk a load of bollocks for an hour, so that’s good!
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
Sexy espionage is on the loose, Mario does a poo for McDonald’s, and Pornhub has an interesting offer for a certain special boy.
Elsewhere, we talk some more about the Nintendo Switch, we discuss the true adult fear, and we actually SAY the words Star Citizen.
The Nintendo Switch is the big news of the week, so we chat about that for the most part.
Also, Yakuza 0 is great and the Assassin’s Creed movie is rubbish.
[Note: Soundcloud is being fucking useless again, so here’s a direct link since the embed’s fucked]
On a jovial episode, we celebrate Resident Evil 7 being really quite nice, and wonder exactly what the deal is with Life of Black Tiger.
Elsewhere, Kojima and Del Toro live together in a one-bedroom flat, and the crew talks about bad interviews.
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
Nioh‘s review embargo lifted by some of us were too busy playing Nioh to notice. Enjoy some first thoughts about Nioh, everybody!
As well as that, we discuss the Nintendo Switch’s apparent online price, chat about Resident Evil 7‘s early DLC, and say some other shit.
Also it’s just Jim n’ Gav this week. It’s quite the laid back little chat.
(Find out more about Bandcamp’s ACLU donation program, discussed on the show)
The Podquisition crew seeks Easy D in a new episode that features Nioh discussion, Fire Emblem Heroes, and Conan‘s intimate regions.
Also, Wii Us aren’t being made anymore, E3 is open to the public, and Brazzers gives Metal Gear Solid some Easy D!
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
https://soundcloud.com/jimquisition/podquisition-episode-118-skeleton-warnings
(Yep, Soundcloud embeds are proper fucked on the site now. Just click the link)
The nature of skeletons, rabbit sex antics, and the highness of the woman in the song about a woman being high. What more could you want?
Videogame talk? We got that as well. Thoughts on For Honor, reactions to the Breath of the Wild season pass, and more Nioh bollocks.
You want more? We have AT LEAST SOME OTHER THINGS!
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
We got singing! We got Horizon: Zero Dawn impressions! We got immediate reactions to the lawsuit dismissal (this was recorded that very day).
Suffice to say we got a damn show, kids!
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
Unsurprisingly, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the Nintendo Switch are the big topics of discussion.
Also, rubber fish helmets!
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
Things get interesting in this one, holy moly!
Let’s talk about Nier: Automata, Horizon‘s music, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and then let’s get really weird!
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
Podquisition is up a day early because Jim will be cleaning up some dirty in Seattle.
Settle in for the usual slop. Game talk, interruptions, Andromeda. Oh, and some… “preview” words of warning regarding Yooka-Laylee.
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
What a bunch o’ jokers…
Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Atlus
Format: PS3, PS4 (reviewed)
Released: April 4, 2017
Copy provided by publisher
It’s not often I sink 120 hours into a game in just two weeks, and usually doing so feels like an absolute chore pushed through solely for work purposes. Honestly, I really didn’t mind spending almost all day, every day, for multiple weeks being a magic Japanese school boy. Persona 5 made trading any semblance I had of a social life for a fake one full of talking cats and jock punks seem like a worthwhile and valuable use of my time.
God It feels weird to have finished something that consumed my life so fully.
Persona 5 is an RPG where you play as a japanese teen who, after preventing a powerful politician from sexually assaulting a woman, finds that same politician framing him for the assault. As a result he’s kicked out of school and sent from his small town to Tokyo, and a big city school that’s better equipped to deal with “problem students”.
He meets an eclectic group of archetypical classmates, then bumps into a talking magical cat and realises that he’s going to have to split the next year between managing a standard life as well as fixing some otherworldly bullshit. In that regard, it’s pretty standard Persona series fare.
If you’ve ever played a Persona game before, the core flow of the game here is largely unchanged. You have to split your time between managing your social bonds, attending school, practicing for tests, earning money at a part time job, reading books to beef up stats and tackling the occasional long form story dungeon.
There are only so many days available in the game, with certain events locked to set date ranges, so it’s highly likely on a first playthrough you’ll in some ways fail to utilise your time perfectly, and I certainly feel some room in P5 to come back a few months down the line and try refocusing my time in certain parts of a repeat playthrough.
If you’ve not played a Persona game before, don’t stress about the 5 in the name, it’s a completely stand alone title.
The most notable way Persona 5 differs from past entries in the series is the vastly improved approach the game has to dungeon design. While Persona 3 and 4 featured randomly generated labyrinth style dungeons that largely gated progression through sheer forced grinding and did little to clarify intended paths of progression, Persona 5’s dungeons are unique crafted spaces.
This shift from randomly generated content to actual designed levels helps a lot with the overall quality of the design, taking areas from grind fests to spaces that felt like I as a player could actually plan paths of least resistance and work towards a known goal.
The shift away from randomly generated labyrinths also allows for areas to be a lot more visually and thematically tied to the unfolding story, acting as mirrors of areas from the game twisted in interesting ways. This really helps the dungeons to feel more tied into what’s happening in the rest of the game.
The combat flow inside of dungeons is also considerably altered in P5 with a focus placed on successful stealth before engaging in combat.
Here’s the short version – If you fight an enemy without sneaking up on them, or are caught mid-sneak, a bar within that dungeon fills by 15% and if you defeat a set of enemies it drops by 5%. If the bar hits 100% then you are booted out of the dungeon for that night, meaning that you’ll need to spend an additional in-game day attempting to complete the dungeon rather than making any other uses of your time.
The stealth system on the game is simple and stylish with easy options to hop behind cover and lunge at enemies that will likely pose no mechanical interest veteran stealth game players. Someone like me, who sucks at stealth mechanics, gets to feel consistently cool and in control. So long as I took a few seconds to think about where I was heading and my route there, I was able to avoid the vast majority of non stealth encounters with relative ease.
The use of lost time as a punishment for failed stealth feels like a brilliant level of punishment because of how keenly aware I was at all times of the feeling I was already missing content passing me by in game.
However, if you are a fan of those randomly generated dungeons or just want to grind out levels in an environment that isn’t a fixed story environment, Persona 5 does include an optional way to experience that content in the form of Mementos.
Mementos are endless randomly generated dungeons that remove the stealth elements from dungeon traversal, allow level grinding without having to revisit old environments, and allow the story dungeons to be made more story tied and tight while not closing off the old style dungeons as an option for players. I really feel like in that regard Persona 5 fit in the best of both worlds.
The combat in Persona 5 is still largely the same turn based combat system from earlier Persona games with a few minor tweaks that I think largely benefit the overall flow of the game.
The biggest of these combat changes is an increased focus on elemental attacks. If you successfully work out an enemy or enemy type’s elemental weakness and attack them with it you’ll knock that enemy down allowing for an out of order followup attack. If you can successfully knock all enemies in a fight down simultaneously you can either finish them off with a cool team wide finishing move or talk to them.
Previously employed in the Shin Megami Tensei series but not in the last couple of Persona games, talking to a group of downed enemies will allow you to attempt to recruit them as Pokemon style summons for the protagonist, as well as asking them for money or items. This is done via a slightly wonky dialogue tree that requires some guesswork to ascertain what sort of response will get the enemies to co-operate rather than run, but it does feel cool to occasionally add a badass creature to your toolset mid dungeon.
I do however wish working out what to say to enemies was a bit more clear and less convoluted.
Outside of the mechanical stuff which all either is as it was in Persona 4 or improved, the overall presentation in Persona 5 is pretty stellar. While it’s not a technical powerhouse in terms of pushing the PS4 to its limits, the bright crisp over the top art style really gives P5 a solid unique identity. It’s the kind of game I could be hard pressed not to recognise from any given screenshot. The music is also some of the best the series has seen, mixing jazz, classical, orchestral rock and J-Pop beats into a catchy blend I’ve been listening to on loop while writing my review.
The writing is up to the Persona series usual high standards. It’s a slow burn of a game, the kind of game you need to be willing to sit down and focus on to experience properly rather than just rushing through dialogue.
While some are going to be annoyed by the sometimes glacial pacing, I personally loved the day to day flow the same reason I tend to enjoy my first few weeks with an Animal Crossing game. I got quickly invested in the game’s wider cast, the ways their day to day lives evolved, and I was more than happy to sink countless hours into delving into building relationships with a fascinating group of people.
Honestly, I only have one major gripe with Persona 5, and it’s a gripe that I’m not sure is unfair or not. A big part of my ability to invest as much time as I did into Persona 4 Golden was due to it being playable on the Vita, a portable system, and Persona 5 being locked to home consoles (PS3 and PS4) does somewhat hamper my ability to integrate it into my life. While I usually want to be playing the game’s big sprawling dungeons on a TV, the slow intricate social life management sections of Persona are honestly perfect fodder for playing on the sofa while watching TV or on a quick bus ride to pass the time.
As someone who has spent a lot of time with the Switch recently, and who loved the hell out of the Vita during that year or two it was getting regular games released on it, I really did find myself at times wishing this game had some kind of portable version. It just felt like the social life aspects of the game might have been more at home when I experienced them on the Vita in P4G.
Still, the fact that’s my biggest complaint in 120 hours of JRPG says a lot. I was damn impressed by Persona 5, and will certainly be returning to it once I’ve had a few months to decompress from this super concise playthrough. I played 120 hours in just a couple of weeks and damn it was a lot of fun.
8.5/10
Great
It’s easy as one, two, six!
This week, Buster Keaton faces the ultimate challenge, Pathfinder Ryder needs a damn cellphone, and Bayonetta is on PC now.
Also, the Scorpio is still a thing, The Sexy Brutale is brilliant, and Peter Moore is so naughty!
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
Gavin upsets canon and has to be taken to one side, while we lament a generation that won’t watch Beverly Hills Cop III.
Elsewhere, the SNES Classic might be a thing, there’s more Switch bollocks, and Namco Bandai prepares to dine.
So they’re rereleasing Night Trap. That’s a thing that is happening.
Also, we talk about Outlast 2 and Flinthook, Platinum Games is making waves on PC, and Gavin’s still playing Zelda.
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel!
We talk about the “cheeky” DLC coming to Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe‘s majesty, Little Nightmares, and probably other games too!
Elsewhere, Laura’s gonna do a wee, and Gavin’s joined the ranks of the beggarati.
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel and new Patreon page!
Gav joins Iron Maiden and a scary ghost haunts the Podquisition.
Elsewhere, we chat about Prey, Bethesda’s putting its trademark foot down again, and something something Vanquish.
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel and new Patreon page!
The Podquisition crew gain reality-warping powers and use them irresponsibly.
Elsewhere, more Prey talk, discussions about The Surge, and Ubisoft gets its E3 games out early.
You can listen/download directly here and get the RSS feed here.
Also, check out Laura Kate’s Patreon page and Let’s Play Videogames!
Also also, check out Miracle of Sound’s channel and Patreon page!
