Recently, the mobile game "Persona: Phantom of the Night" has attracted a lot of attention, which is an adaptation of the mobile game that Perfect World has obtained the original license of the famous Japanese console game "Persona 5".
When it comes to "Persona 5", it has been hotly debated since its release in 2016, and this game has profoundly affected our era, and has had a huge impact on the entire game industry, especially in the aspect of urbanization RPG (mainly refers to modern cities) has made outstanding efforts and explorations, so that many latecomers have a model to refer to, which can be said to be a great contribution.
So what exactly are the game's major impacts, and how did it happen?
How successful is the game?
How successful Persona 5 really is, the popularity of the game can be seen from the large number of spin-offs.
After its release in 2016, the game received a high reputation and high sales, and since then three spin-offs have been launched, namely the enhanced version of "Persona 5: Royal Edition", the unparalleled genre "Persona 5 Brawl: Phantom Attacker", and the sound game gameplay "Persona 5: Starry Night Dance".
These spin-offs have also received a lot of praise, especially "Persona 5: Royal Edition" actually received a 10-point evaluation from IGN and Gamespot, knowing that these two media often have different opinions and rarely give a game 10 points together, so this also caused a lot of discussion that year.
In terms of sales, according to data released by development company ATLUS in December last year, the total sales of the Persona series reached 16.8 million units at that time, while "Persona 5" and the three derivative works combined reached 8.3 million sets, of which the original "Persona 5" sales were 3.2 million, the royal version was 3.3 million, and the sales of "Persona 5 Brawl: Phantom Attacker" were 1.3 million.
This result is actually not easy, especially for ATLUS, almost never a game can sell to 3 million levels before, and there are very few breakthroughs, and even after "Persona 5" became popular, the company's other ace series of the latest work "True Goddess Rebirth 5" as a Switch exclusive global sales of 1 million, even if it will be ported to other platforms in the future, due to the difficulty of hardcore, I am afraid that the final sales will be difficult to approach "Persona 5" level.
And ATLUS is fully aware of the business opportunity, not only launched a number of derivatives of "Persona 5", but also recently licensed Perfect World to launch a game adaptation mobile game, and in the past two years, the "Persona 4: Gold Edition" and "Persona 3: Pocket Edition" many years ago have been upgraded to the resolution and ported to contemporary consoles and PCs, and a remake of "Persona 3" may be launched in the future.
In addition, the success of "Persona 5" also made later games such as "Dragon 7: Where Light and Darkness Go", "The Trail of Li", "Lost City of Dreams", "Thirteen Machine Defense Circle" and other games more or less influenced by the design style of its urban RPG, and some domestic urban-style mobile games have also learned from it.
The conundrum of urbanization RPGs
Looking at RPG games around the world, it is not difficult to find a problem, that is, this genre is mainly based on Western European fantasy styles, such as Japan's most famous Final Fantasy series and Dragon Quest series, and the famous Diablo series, Baldur's Gate series, and God series are also the same.
This situation is also very understandable, after all, there are many classic literary works of Western European fantasy, such as "The Lord of the Rings" has profoundly affected the film and game industry, and for example, the board game classic "Dungeons and Dragons" that appeared in 1974 also had a profound impact on the RPG genre in the later game field, and the early RPG originators such as the witchcraft series and "Genesis" are Western European fantasy.
Of course, it is logical that RPGs in Europe and the United States like to use this style, after all, the culture is homologous. Japanese RPGs also like to use this style, mainly because the original ancestor of the genre "Dragon Quest" evolved from the witchcraft series, and the subsequent Final Fantasy series also followed this path for many years, and even the latest work in the series "Final Fantasy 16" returned to a thorough Western European fantasy style, which is obviously different from the previous "Final Fantasy 13" and "Final Fantasy 15" incorporating sci-fi elements.
So in the field of RPG, there are not many options other than Western European fantasy, science fiction has a mass effect series to choose from, and the wasteland style has a radiation series and a heavy armored force series.
Only the field of urban RPG has always been a big problem, although there is no lack of some game companies to try in this regard, but most of them are not successful. It was not until the emergence of "Persona 5" that it can be said that the genre of urban RPGs has really matured, and the work mainly made such a few major breakthroughs.
The first is a turn-based RPG that shows a real-life modern metropolis.
In the past ten years, with the continuous rise of 3A masterpieces, we have seen modern cities in many games, such as Chicago, San Francisco, London, etc. in the watchdog series, and cities in the GTA series refer to cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Miami.
But in a turn-based RPG that uses a lot of street views to show a modern city, Persona 5 may be the first to do so.
Before that, the 3rd generation of this series took place in a virtual school city, the story of the 4th generation took place in a country town, and in the 5th generation, the stage was finally moved to the metropolis of Tokyo, which can be described as a military strategy.
A view of Tokyo in reality
In fact, games about Tokyo are not uncommon, but most of them are the wasteland style of Tokyo after destruction, such as "True Goddess Reincarnation 3" is about Tokyo after the collapse, "The Seventh Dragon God 2020" is to show Tokyo that is devastated by the dragon, and "Tokyo Lost City" This game is designed a virtual Tokyo suburb of Tonomiya City, although the city has Tokyo style, but the street scene is small.
Only Persona 5 showcases many of Tokyo's street scenes and famous cultural attractions, making it possible for many players who have not been to the city to take a virtual tour.
The game's designers have made reference to a large number of real-life Tokyo scenery, and these places have been highly restored, allowing players to go to familiar places such as Shibuya and Ginza, as well as Akihabara and Shinjuku, and even the Shigenchaya where the protagonist lives is also on fire, which is actually called Sangenchaya in reality, and before the game's launch, this area was far less well-known than popular Tokyo attractions such as Akihabara.
Tokyo street view in Persona 5
In addition, the clearance process of "Persona 5" is very long, generally takes about 80 hours to clear the level, in this process players go to these places in Tokyo after knowing it well, and even some players have the idea of traveling to Tokyo after playing the game, so many people are quite a few, many countries around the world have cleared "Persona 5" players go to Tokyo to travel to take photos to compare the real scenes and the scenes in the game, from this point of view, This game is simply the best promotional game in Tokyo.
Persona: Phantom of the Night is a mobile game that also recreates the street scene of Tokyo
For example, the Dragon series used to revolve around a place like Kamurocho in Tokyo, which was too small, but the 2020 release of Dragon 7: Where Light and Darkness Goes not only changed from an action to a turn-based RPG like Persona 5, but also finally expanded the city, this time adding two major areas of Osaka Sotenbori and Yokohama Isesaki Ijincho to the previous Kamurocho.
The trajectory series "Trajectory of Li" also changed the previous practice of cities not being small towns and villages to make up, showing a number of virtual modern metropolis appearances in "Trajectory of Li", the richness of street scenes and the density of high-rise buildings are much higher than any previous work in the series.
The urban city of Salbad in "The Trail of Dawn"
Among the metropolises in Asia, Tokyo in "Persona 5" and Hong Kong in "Blood Scoundrels" have been thoroughly shown in the game so far, and it is an interesting topic whether there will be other Asian metropolises that are highly displayed in the game in the future.
The second is the fashion pop element.
Modern metropolises often represent fashion and popularity, and "Persona 5" has achieved a fashion and popular extreme in UI design and music in order to fit this metropolitan atmosphere.
The art style of "Persona 5" is "gorgeous" in two words. Both the graphics and the UI of the game reflect the designer's creativity and expressiveness. While many game designers are working to cut down the UI and simplify it, Persona 5 does the opposite. Exaggerated fonts. The UI font is like a "teaser" in the game, using the method of newspaper splicing, showing an extremely ostentatious and presumptuous style, although gorgeous but not complicated at a glance, reflecting a strong street punk atmosphere everywhere.
And the game boldly uses the two elements of red and black, creating a particularly cool feeling.
The use of red and black elements is extremely impressive
The level of UI is unparalleled. Unlike most games, jump from one interface to another. Players can get smooth and surprising feedback on every operation in Persona 5, which can be said to be absolutely gorgeous.
In addition, the music is also the embodiment of the fashion and popularity of this work, the music of this game combines hard rock, pop, rap, jazz and other mixed styles, and the most interesting thing is that the lyrics of all songs are sung in English, in fact, the previous 3rd and 4th generations of this series have a lot of popular elements in music, which is also a clear feature that distinguishes the series from most other turn-based RPGs like to use classical orchestral style, but 5th generation has played this style to the extreme, So much so that there are many songs in the work that are very brainwashing.
Players who clear the level will immediately recall the soundtrack when exploring the city when they see this picture
This fashionable and popular style is one of the reasons for the popularity of "Persona 5" in Europe and the United States, and it is an important factor, according to a survey released last year by Sega, the parent company of game developer ATLUS, "Persona 5" and related spin-offs do not account for a high proportion of sales in Japan, and more than 77% of sales of these games are contributed by the Western market.
In addition, some players recently counted the top ten game soundtracks on Youtube in the past decade, among which the theme song of "Persona 5" "Life Will Change" ranked ninth with 25.15 million views, which also shows the popularity of the game in the West.
"Life Will Change" was recreated at the 2017 Persona 5 concert
The third is the perfect combination of campus and urbanization.
"Persona 5" is a good blend of campus and urbanization, which is not only a breakthrough in the field of games, but also a huge progress for this series.
In fact, the Persona series is a spin-off derived from the true goddess reincarnation series, but now the fame and sales of this gaiden series are much higher than the main story.
The True Goddess Reincarnation series was born in 1992, although the story takes place in Tokyo, but limited by the technology of the times, the game cannot show the street scene of Tokyo, in essence, it is actually similar to the witchcraft series of first-person RPGs that constantly brush the maze, and the theme is to interpret the tone of mythology, religion and fatalism in the context of the new era, because the themes discussed are often more philosophical and obscure, so this series has not been as popular as the Final Fantasy series.
"True Goddess Rebirth 3"
"True Goddess Reincarnation If", which appeared on the SFC platform in 1994, is the predecessor and origin of the Persona series, which first adopted a school-based design approach, which later led to the birth of the Persona series.
The first and second generations of the series have added many mysterious elements such as school strange stories and urban legends to the plot, and profound stories with the theme of human psychology are very popular, and elements of personality masks also appear in the first generation.
The third generation is the beginning of the overall transformation of the series and a watershed for the series. This game adds the concept of time, and the experimental monthly progression system makes players more tense and the pace of the game more light. In addition, the interpersonal relationship system increases the proportion of cultivation gameplay, making the daily life part of the college more interesting. The graphic style and UI design changed from tough to stylish, and the use of color tension is full of tension, and the magnificent blue is still out of date today. All of this made the production of the sequel smoother, and later the 4th and 5th generations also continued this element.
The biggest change in the 3rd generation is to dig deeper into the campus gameplay, and the overall style has become easy and fashionable, which is refreshing.
"Persona 3"
The 5th generation is because it is a metropolitan background, so those campus gameplay and the city of Tokyo are combined, resulting in a variety of wonderful chemical reactions, in the game players can go to many places in Tokyo to do different things every day, such as going to the game store to borrow game cards to take home to play, or going to the burger shop to participate in the big stomach king challenge, but also go to different stores to work, and you can also go to different places in Tokyo with various NPCs to do interesting things, such as helping a politician give a street speech, Or play games in arcade halls with a schoolboy game master, which can improve the player's five-dimensional personality attributes.
These activities vividly show the various faces of Tokyo, we can feel the busyness and vitality of the city, we can also understand the light and chaos of the city by acting with NPCs, and feel the prosperity of Tokyo and the troubles of modern people in the metropolis.
Big stomach king challenge, urban life is endless
"Traces of Dawn" is the most imitation of "Persona 5" in this regard, especially the work shows some of the unknown side of the Kalvard Republic, which is the most similar to "Persona 5".
epilogue
Perhaps because "Persona 5" is too successful, the recent test of "Persona: Phantom of the Night" is a continuation of the style of "Persona 5" in all aspects.
As a branch of the role-playing genre, urban RPG has indeed affected many games after "Persona 5" became popular, but in general, urban RPG is not a very popular genre now, and there is actually a lot to explore in the future. But the charm of the game is also here, because the front is full of all kinds of unknowns, so it is worth looking forward to and looking forward to the future, so in a few years, maybe there will be a major innovative urban RPG new work, so will this be "Persona 6" or some other game?