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The story
A thread on 5ch’s Hardware & Industry (Geha) board picked up on new players of “Persona 5” following a walkthrough site’s schedule from the very start of the game. The Persona series runs on a calendar system, and since it’s easy to miss out on fully maxing your Confidants (Co-op relationships) in a single playthrough, some pointed out that prioritizing efficiency naturally leads players to mirror a walkthrough’s exact schedule. Opinions split between defenders (“if the player’s having fun, who cares,” “even From Software games have tons of people watching video guides”) and critics (“it’s annoying being forced into do-overs just to satisfy the developers’ own perfectionism,” “if you can’t even follow the story without a guide, that’s a design flaw”) — the discussion never settled into one clear direction.
What people said
There are way too many garbage threads here that basically amount to "go tweet that on X instead."
Nobody's got time to leisurely replay a game that long multiple times.
Same as how mobile gacha gamers these days are always chasing the one optimal solution.
Time-limited events really are the villain here.
Chasing efficiency from the very first week to begin with… is that even fun?
That's not it — it's just annoying being forced to redo things over and over for the developers' own self-satisfaction.
Calling that "soft" is basically the same as siding with the just-watch-a-video crowd.
Replaying a game that easily tops 100 hours, multiple times? No way.
But this time around, replaying is a hassle, so it's better to just finish it in one go.
That way of having fun is great too.
What do you think strategy guides and walkthrough sites are even for?
Don't go nitpicking how other people choose to play.
This, plus games where you can't see the true ending unless you're above Normal difficulty — that was genuinely toxic design.
Though I doubt any game still does that now.
so just referencing that is pretty much all you need — it's actually a pretty player-friendly design that lets you collect almost everything.
If you're aiming for a perfect run on your first try, you'll naturally end up on the exact same schedule as a walkthrough.
Back in the day, the biggest value was in spending time and finally seeing the ending — but that's not the case anymore.
Items and events were just means to clear the game, not goals in themselves.
Precisely because anyone can clear it easily now, people end up obsessing over post-clear extras and completion instead.
Same goes for 'Banshi Senkou.'
There's no point in them playing games at all.
That's exactly why sales have dropped, and games that've adapted to the times in that regard are the ones that get loved.
There's no way you get 90% of the Confidants done playing it casually.
And to also nail that remaining 10%, you'd have to build a rock-solid, min-maxed schedule — there's no way around it.
On social media it's common to see people hit triple-digit playtime hours on their first run, so of course newcomers get anxious.
The moment you can't even follow the story without checking a walkthrough, the design's already a failure.
That's only because every other JRPG out there is an even worse game than this.
P5 has negotiation, and the Shadows' insides are the usual demons, so forget the story — the fusion system was actually really good.
If you're trying to make it on your first playthrough, a walkthrough site is pretty much mandatory.
Who cares if you don't complete everything? Is the universe going to have some kind of problem if you don't 100% it?
What I don't get is you trying to make people understand something you yourself say you can't understand at all.
It's someone else's business, so who cares.
However other people choose to play, it's not like it causes a problem for the universe either.
Background and key points of this discussion
The Persona series runs on a calendar system that mimics school life, and many of its Confidant relationships and hidden content are designed to be time-limited. Because of this, trying to collect everything in a single playthrough tends to converge on a similar schedule no matter who’s playing, which is where the thread’s point — “of course it ends up matching a walkthrough site” — comes from. The disagreement boiled down to a difference in values: whether this counts as rational play (saving time) or as something that undermines the experience of the work itself, and the thread never reached a conclusion. Other titles such as “Banshi Senkou” were also brought up, but their specific mechanics weren’t detailed in the thread, so this article doesn’t go further into them either. The claim that a single playthrough runs around 100 hours is worth reading simply as a rough indicator of how long this game is.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware & Industry/Geha) thread “A newcomer who just started Persona 5 immediately peeked at the answers and ended up following a walkthrough site’s schedule”.
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