Persona 5 might not be for you—maybe you've no love for the anime aesthetic, or maybe the notion of an 80-hour game with no open world isn't your bag. Maybe you don't like JRPGs! But maybe, if you're anything like me, you'll spend eighty-three hours with this game over the course of a month and sit there as the credits roll with an empty feeling in your chest, turning your year in Tokyo over and over in your head, thinking of the friends you spent time with and the struggles you endured together.
Alola has been a restorative psychic retreat for someone in need of such a virtual vacation, though. A part of me has donned a lei and swim trunks, sipped a Pinap Juice on the beach, and stroked the soft fur of a tiny, purring machine of violence as I flipped through my Pokédex and thought with some satisfaction at its relative completeness. Even for someone who didn’t know a Snorlax from a Smeargle, it has been a much-needed balm.
If you’re like me, a thirty-something long-time Final Fantasy fan looking to recapture some of the magic you once felt around pretty teens and saving the world, there’s a game coming out for you next month, and it’s called Final Fantasy XV. Fingers crossed.
If you can get past all of these artifacts of 2001-era game design, however, there's an enormous amount of virtue within both games.
For all its physical beauty, it can be an ugly game—remember that family-murder, remember that awkward, stilted script. How well can you look past this ugliness to find the redeeming qualities within?