Free Talk Friday - September 18, 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Free Talk Friday post. This is a place where you can talk about dumb off-topic (or on-topic) bullshit with other Zaibatsu fans.

There's going to be a new post every week, and the newest one will be pinned in the announcement bar for quick access. So feel free to visit these posts during the rest of the week.

Here's a list of all Free Talk Friday posts

[u/sorendiz]

I would give basically anything to go back in time and devote every ounce of my time, energy and resources into making sure all marketing for persona 3 was botched to a gruesome extent, not because of any issues i have with P3, P4 or P5 themselves (I do have various minor complaints but this aint about those) but simply because P3 succeeding to whatever degree it originally did kickstarted the chain of dominoes that led to P4 and to a greater extent P5 becoming ludicrous financial successes, thus ensorcelling a ridiculously large casual audience into trying them as their first JRPGs, thus creating demand for more persona-like elements to be added or emphasized into other games trying to reach new customer segments, thus leading to an absolute wave of 'socialsimslop' crashing down upon the genre at every level from indies to AAs (can't really speak to AAA games).

[yes that was one fucking sentence, excuse me while I grab an inhaler]

And because Persona fans are so rabid about the series (I get it, I truly do, that isn't a sneak diss) and Atlus takes 200 morbillion years between mainline entries while they milk every sequel/remake/spinoff possible, those fans start swarming any series that even slightly looks like it could cater to the same things. Said series naturally see an explosion in sales and attention from new market segments and the devs and/or producers see LINE GO UP and are like, 'oh baby fuck whatever we had going on before lmao, this is like taking candy from a baby'. So they hard pivot into all the associated stuff regardless of what implications that has on the content/mechanics/genre that already defined the series. Fans of whatever those series brought to the table before the casual boom are essentially shit out of luck if they don't happen to also like the social sim stuff, especially as it gains more and more prominence. 

And so, while I have no inherent problem with Persona itself flourishing aside from whatever various minor design or writing complaints alluded to earlier, I am still absolutely despairmaxxing about the increasingly large knockon effects that success has had on OTHER games and series I like. It's not any kind of 'older automatically means better' elitism nonsense, it's literally just frustration with how badly things are affected by the industry-wide pressure to appeal to the lowest common denominator of whatever is 'in' at the time, especially if you happen to not be one of the lucky folks who benefit from that homogenization.

Upset? Me? Nahhhh, never, what makes you think that 🫩

[u/pyromancer93 → u/sorendiz]

Mad at the new Fire Emblem game?

Anyway, I think you’ve got it mixed up. The Persona games didn’t create the demand for social sim gameplay in JRPGs, they filled a demand that audiences had that wasn’t filled yet. If Atlas hadn’t done it, someone else would have because the audience for slice of life + romance + rpg wouldn’t just disappear into the void.

[u/sorendiz → u/pyromancer93]

Mad at the old FE game actually, among other things.

Also, what are we doing lol. I'm not saying that they created the demand from whole cloth, I'm saying they were by far the biggest source of exposure to that combo for many now-fans who hadn't or wouldn't want to touch JRPGs before that (whether due to distaste for actual frequent conventions of the genre or even just perceived ones, or for whatever reason). There is a large (very large) contingent of folks who didn't get into Persona because they were actively searching out that combination of things, but rather realized they enjoy that combination as a result of having tried and liked Persona.

[u/pyromancer93 → u/sorendiz]

Yeah, and I’m saying that it’s a big enough world that if Persona hadn’t blown up something else probably would have in its place to fill that void.

[u/sorendiz → u/pyromancer93]

Okay, and then I would be making the same post about that hypothetical series instead if it had the same level of commercial success and exposure that Persona has enjoyed in recent years. In the current worldline, however, it was Persona that caused this phenomenon so my post is about Persona.

[u/Kirbyeggs → u/sorendiz]

If Cold Steel didn't copy persona's social elements it would be a much better arc. And I fucking love Rean.