Title screens are sometimes things players can forget how important they can be. I mean they're not the essential part of the game; a bad or boring one won't hinder anyone's experience, but a good one sticks with a player. Title screens are the first thing a player sees when booting up a game aside from the slides of the game's publisher, developer, and sometimes the engine, so it can set up the mood for the game. The first piece of music you hear may also let you know what kind of experience you're getting into. So let's dive into this list of my personal top five title screen songs in gaming.
5. Nate's Theme
First up is Nate's Theme from Uncharted 2:
Among Thieves. Nate's Theme sounds like the theme of an epic action
movie franchise like Indiana Jones. It evokes that you're about to
embark on an epic journey. This is also one of the few western game
songs that I like.
4. Main Theme - Super Smash Bros. Brawl
The number four spot goes to the "Main Theme" of Super Smash Bros.
Brawl. I was pretty surprised when I found out that Nobuo Uematsu
composed this piece, but after thinking about it I can see it. His use
of a choir is has precedence in the Final Fantasy games with tracks like
"One Winged Angel" "Hymn of the Fayth" and "Liberi Fetali". It is an
epic piece and personally the Smash Bros. theme song for me. I haven't
played any Smash Bros. since Brawl, but if it's not the title screen
song of Ultimate, this will be playing in my head instead.
3. Dearly Beloved
OMG such a nostalgia trip every
time I hear this track. This is the most calming title screen music I've
ever heard and the title screen itself is artistically composed. The
character contrasting with the white background adds a pop and it exudes
some of the childlike nature of the Kingdom hearts series.
2. Title Screen - Ocarina of Time
Arguably the best
title screen in gaming, but it's just quite not number one for me.
Ocarina of Time's title screen is so great because how serene the song
is accompanied by the visual of Link riding Epona through Hyrule field
during the rising sun. The title screen gives way that there is a whole
world out there for you to explore or just relaxing run through. The
song is so damn chill.
Honorable Mention
In less than a year Persona 5 has become one of my
all-time favorite games and thus I have an attachment to hearing the
menu theme whenever I take a break from the game. This is the menu theme
from the original and not Royal. Both are pretty chill, but "Phantom" I
feel is just slightly better. The Menu screen in Royal looks cooler
with it being a dynamic shot in Shibuya, but the original fits slightly
more with it being set in Mementos. It's still quite a stylish title screen however with the high contrast silhouettes.
1. The Place I'll Return to Someday
At the number one spot is "The Place I'll Return to Someday" from Final Fantasy IX. This one is entirely attached to a specific moment in my life and its impact, but "The Place I'll Return to Someday" is genuinely a good song. The title screen itself is simple, but you also get the character slides with the quotes to accompany it that gives you a bit of insight into each character's personality. Nobuo Uematsu has said on record that Final Fantasy IX's soundtrack is his Magnum Opus and he did a solid job with the first piece of music that the player hears. They'll be for a treat once the actual adventure begings.
So I've finally finished playing Persona 5 Royal. With a completion time of one hundred sixty hours and seven minutes I feel a bit exhausted. However, the journey was well enjoyed. Due to the state of the situation we're in right now I received my copy of Persona 5 Royal a day early on March 30th. To say that I was overjoyed was an understatement. If you've watched one of my two reviews of the base game you would know how much I love Persona 5. I even cosplayed as Ryuji twice earlier this year so I was hype for Royal.
For those who don't know Persona 5 Royal is an expanded version of Persona 5 that released in 2017. It comes with new characters, story segments, and a bunch of other minor and major changes. It is very well worth revisiting if you have played the base game. I won't reveal quite yet what those changes are in case you haven't played it yet because I feel like it is best to experience this without knowing anything at all. Well, I will tell you that the game has received a graphical boost. I'm not a tech nerd on this shit, so I can't describe exactly what was done, but I did notice that the clothes on the main characters look better and the character portraits have a nice sheen to them. What I can tell you right now is that Royal is even better than the original. When I played Persona 5 for the first time last year it pulled me in like no other game has since... shit I don't know maybe Little Big Planet back in 2009 and Persona 5 took its place among my favorite games of all-time. To not give much away for newcomers Persona 5 is a turned-based RPG where you play as a transfer student in a high school where you alternate between school life and fighting monsters in an alternate dimension. Now there's more to it than that, but I want you to be completely surprised by it like I was, but the gist and flow of the game is balancing your life as a high schooler while also dealing with this supernatural element. You can build relationships with people which will make you stronger for the dungeon crawling events.
The combat is turned based and has an emphasis of exploiting weakness of your enemies sort of like Pokemon, but not really at the same time as in Pokemon type weaknesses are way more essential and usually means you can steamroll a single trainer or gym leader with just one pokemon given you have the type they're weak against. In Persona hitting an enemy's weakness doesn't automatically guarantee victory especially in the later portions of the game. Hitting a weakness knocks the enemy down allows you to get another turn and you can do this until all enemies are knocked down. The same applies to you however so you need to be mindful of the weakness of your party.
As for the story. The story of persona 5 is one of the best in gaming. It is surprising and disappointing that there aren't many RPGs that take place in our world. While Persona 5 deals with things that are fantastical it also feels grounded by being rooted in our world. People deal with issues that can be found in our cities, neighborhoods, and schools which makes you feel connected to the story and the characters. That's all I can say in regards to Royal without getting into spoiler territory. Given that this is a hundred sixty hour game it is hard for me to go in-depth with this game without going into spoilers so from here on out this will be spoiler territory, but first I would like to say to those who are not sure about picking this up or the original version I would say start with the original version.
There are enough changes between the two to make it worth playing both. There is so much new stuff in Royal in fact, that I feel like it would be overwhelming to start with Royal first and the two games have different endings as well that I think should be experienced.
Now let's get in to those spoilers. There are so many changes in Persona 5 Royal it's insane. One of the first things I heard about in the marketing for Royal was a new grappling hook and you're introduced to this in the opening sequence with the escape from the casino and just after that you get you're first glimpse of Kasumi. My first impression was neutral. As you know it was just a quick battle sequence and then we moved on. Nothing I could say at this point. Once I got to the school and got into the plot with Kamoshida I started seeing a little bit more of the minor changes. You actually see Haru at the school unlike in the original we don't even get to see a glimpse of her until the fireworks festival. Haru shows up actually a couple more times throughout, but unfortunately it does not fix how bad or awkward her introductory arc in the story was.
Going back to Kamoshida I felt that I shouldn't have replayed the base game last year as the emotional moments in this arc didn't hit like it did when I played this the first time. I know I will never be able to experience Persona 5 again for the first time, but if I had taken a longer break from the game and from watching a few reactions to these events online it probably would have hit me a little different in this playthrough. The first big change we get to combat this time around is bullets replenishing after every battle. In the original you had a set number of bullets for each character that you would have to use for the duration of your time in the dungeon and they would only refill when you exit and come back to the dungeon. In the base game it lead to conserve ammo for enemies weak to gunshots or for bosses. In Royal the change encourages you to use bullets as often as possible and to balance it out some you are given less bullets overall. At the beginning segments of the game this seems overpowered, but as you progress it will become a vital tool for taking down harder enemies.
Also in Royal you immediately get access to Baton Pass for each character which I'm so glad they did. It used to be linked to a confidant's Rank 1 ability so now the rank 1 slot isn't used for something so basic and in the original correct me if I'm wrong when you meet a new party member you can't hang out with them until you finish the palace because they'll say something like I'd rather concentrate on stealing the target's heart right now so basically throughout the whole course of a dungeon you'll always have one person who you cannot pass the baton to. It wasn't a huge deal, but I'm glad that it's no longer an issue now and speaking of baton passes so they got a buff like a lot of things this time around.
Baton Passes can now restore health and SP and if you get to a fourth baton pass the last character will be able to use a skill without consuming HP or SP. Baton Passes can also be powered up by playing darts with a friend in the new Kichijoji area. You can also play pool in this bar and doing so will increase the damage you deal with technical attacks. Speaking of technical attacks this version of the game seems to make status ailments more important. In the original version I didn't bother with using status ailments that much and dealing technical hits, but in Royal I do it whenever I can. There's so many changes in this version that I'm not exactly sure what was new sometimes, but I think technical attacks before never resulted in knocking an enemy down. Only hitting weaknesses and critical attacks did that. In this playthrough I tried to hold on to my party member's status inflicting moves as long as I could while as before I got rid of them ASAP. You can also increase technical damage by playing billiards.
There's also a new glowing enemy type in the game called disaster shadows. Every once in a while there will be an enemy that glows. Attacking it will cause you to be countered, but killing it will cause an explosion damaging all nearby enemies. I'm sort of mixed with this inclusion. It does add for enemy variety, but it also makes fights easier. They're basically the red barrels in a shooter; just there to damage nearby enemies. There's a kinda new Insta-kill mechanic in which you can instantly defeat weaker enemies without entering a battle screen. This was only regulated to Mementos in the original and it was activated by ambushing a shadow. In Royal you activate it by dashing an enemy in Mementos or palaces. I didn't realize this could be done in palaces until the very last portion of the game.
Each palace boss has been changed slightly too. Each one has a new phase to their battles to switch things up. Kamoshida now has Mishima and Shiho throwing his volleyball during the fight.So I played most of the bosses on Merciless difficulty and that made this fight actually a challenge this time around. Once it was time to send Morgana off to steal the crown the fight became a struggle. You have to constantly attack Kamoshida to distract him from realizing that Morgana's gone, but since he's also dealing a lot of damage on this difficulty I have to make sure my party stays alive so I actually got caught trying to steal the treasure for the entirety of the battle and defeated him just from direct attacks. it was long and hard, but fun. I just wish I had took a longer break in between playing this and the og because I felt like I would've gotten a fraction of what I felt the first time I took him down.
In between this event and Madarame's palace we're introduced to Maruki the guidance counselor. His inclusion was one of the few things I knew about this game going in and he flows well into the game and it makes sense. After the deal with Kamoshida the school should offer counseling or therapy for students who want it.I'll go back to Maruki later. So for the changes to the bosses I liked all of them except for Okumura's. It's some ol' bullshit is what I got to say. It works relatively the same as the original, but without the ability to use All-Out Attacks and the final wave of robots running off it becomes annoying. The robots have a massive amount of health that it is extremely hard to get rid of them within the 2 or 3 turn limit. I got lucky in beating it and barely managed to beat it with only two minutes left on the clock. It felt good when I beat it though. On repeat playthroughs I'm switching to Merciless to make things easier. Yo when the solo fight came up with Shido came up I was like awww shit, but I fucked his ass up!
Oh, and I forgot to mention the Thieves Den. So there's a separate mode where you're in a hub area and able to look at artwork, listen to music, watch cutscenes, etc. My two favorite things to do in the den are use the model changer to switch to another character. It's just very disappointing that you can't do anything, but walk around as them and listen to conversations among the decorations in your den. If you attempt to do anything else, anything at all, it will change right back to Joker's winter school uniform. It's actually weird to me that you can't even use Joker's alt outfits to do these things. I've also grew addicted to the card mini game, Tycoon. It reminds me of a real card game that I can't think the name of. I love it so much that I want to play it irl and it's also the first pure gameplay video on my YouTube channel.
There are so many little changes hear that it will take a crazy amount of time for me to cover them and I doubt I even discovered them all as I was looking at someone else's playthrough the other day and found something I never encountered in my playthrough. I will talk about how we get a bit more time for activities in this version. It was annoying how often Morgana would force us to go to sleep after trips to the Metaverse or during story events. They still occur, but less often. You still won't be able to leave Leblanc after a trip to the Metaverse, but now you can still do things in Leblanc like clean, make infiltration tools, train. The extra time is appreciated especially since we have 3 extra confidants to worry about.
For the new characters I say I liked them once Royal concluded. Kasumi just seemed okay, but was cute and Maruki seemed like a bit of a goof, but when he did that salt bae meme during the school trip I wiled. His confidant arc was interesting. We get to see each Phantom Thief talk to him even Yusuke who goes to another school and then once the third semester of the game kicks in shit gets wild. I wish I didn't learn last year that there was going to be a human Morgana and that Wakaba was going to be alive because it killed the twist of third semester. Also when I first heard about it last year it sort of turned me off of the game. Wakaba being dead was an integral part of Futaba's story and I thought it was cheap keeping her alive or so I thought when I heard the news because from what I read it made me believe that they were changing the main story so that Wakaba never died, but once I got to the third semester and saw her I was like WTF but I wasn't too surprised since I heard about it back then, but it was out of context. I immediately thought I was in some kind of dream world until it was revealed that Maruki altered reality.
Seeing Wakaba and human Morgana was still kind of a shocker, but I feel bad that I missed out on an experience I could have had if I never knew they were going to be in the game. I do give Atlus some credit for not completely spoiling it because on the website I heard that from nobody expected it to be a result from a therapist changing reality. So I'm sitting here trying to figure all of this out. We discover that all of our friends got everything they wished for: haru had her dad and he's loving, Makoto gets along well with her sister and I can't remember if their dad was brought back to life too. It took me a while to make this video, but I'd imagine he was brought back too as I know both Makoto and Sae had to miss him, Futaba has her mother back, Morgana's a human like he desired, but he's still not with Ann as he shouldn't be, Yusuke became recognized as an artist, and then Ryuji's running track with the team again. That one is very interesting to me because in his confidant arc he says he's okay with not rejoining the team after it was brought back after the Kamoshida incident. That says to me that deep down he actually did want to, but likely felt guilty for punching Kamoshida and breaking up the team and all his former teammates hating him. I do also remember a question choice asking if he regretted hitting Kamoshida and I think Ryuji's reply was "kinda".
Maruki's palace here is definitely my favorite now. The aesthetics and the level design were superb. I was just annoyed with the second light puzzle at the end. You also get Akechi again as a party member and this time in his black mask outfit. He's not as OP as I thought he was going to be, but if he was that would just make the game too easy. It was also interesting seeing him as the navigator, but his yells were a little bit annoying. This was the time we finally got Kasumi as a permanent party member. Throughout my entire playthrough I was wondering when she was actually going to join, but it was at the very last minute. Her arc was fucking incredible too. So it turns out she's an identical twin and her older twin sister died trying to save her when she was crossing the street and wasn't paying attention. The girl we thought was Kasumi was actually Sumire and after her Kasumi's death she felt so responsible for her sister's death that she wanted to become her. She killed Sumire and became Kasumi.
It's tragic and I can sympathize with her. Because she was reckless when crossing the street she felt Kasumi's death was on her and she knew how talented Kasumi was and that she had dreams and aspirations of her own that she felt she robbed her of the life she could've had so she actually desired to become Kasumi so those dreams could become true. Now that makes things interesting in retrospect like how Kasumi was struggling with her gymnastics. It was said that Kasumi was actually better at it so that explains why Sumire was struggling and the faculty member saying you need to think about who you are. Maruki is interesting as well. he is not necessarily a villain at all unlike most of the people's hearts we had to change throughout the game. He genuinely wants to make everyone happy and bring peace.
Of course similar to that episode of Batman The Animated Series where Bruce Wayne was under a dream from the Mad Hatter, The Phantom Thieves had an issue of living with something they knew was a lie. It's a totally grey area because no one is being harmed by his reality and in actually I wasn't sure if he needed to be stopped myself. I got the early ending for this on my first go around because I genuinely thought that what he was doing wasn't wrong. With his god-like powers he has the ability to rid the world of famine, poverty, crime, and war.
This is entirely different from the well I'm just going to call him the Holy Grail, the Holy Grail's reality where he makes The Phantom Thieves famous again with more crime happening and people solely relying on them. That was more of a selfish wish. Maruki could have literally made a utopia, but the game didn't want you to do that so I had to reload my file and choose the correct answer. But let me rewind to that alternate ending I got. I think it was very interesting. I don't remember much because it's been a little while since then, but it felt bittersweet and you even got an entirely different set of end credit scenes. I recommend seeing both.
With Maruki I found him interesting though I still feel like I never got an explanation on his entire deal with his powers and his palace. Upon entering the palace and seeing Maruki it raises questions. I'm looking dead hard here to see if he's a shadow, but the name doesn't say Shadow Maruki despite him being in those clothes, nor are his eyes glowing yellow, nor does he have that weird voice that shadows have.
His power comes from his persona, but as Morgana told us in the beginning you can't have a palace and a persona at the same time since people with personas have full control over their emotions they can't have a distorted heart to produce a palace. These two things conflict on a logical level and I think Lavenza just gave us a non-answer for that when Morgana brought it up. Not to mention how could he have one when Mementos was erased and I didn't get how that happened either. I'm trying to fill my own blanks in my head that I know is wrong, but in his research he might've found out that the metaverse exists as an energy source and so he somehow used that energy to make a back up copy of Mementos which he released later so he could use it to change the public's cognition. That's not what was explained to me, but I have to fill something in for myself to make sense of this.
I think I missed out on the couple chances I go to find out why Akechi was still alive from the dialogue choices, but I think it was because Maruki used his powers to bring him back to life to grant the only wish Joker had which was not to go to prison so in order to do that somebody else had to and that person had to be Akechi. I also really liked the question portion of this palace. It made you think beyond the game itself and even made me look at my life choices. The finale of this palace was insane. It got me adrenaline pumping when the new steal the treasure song came up and that first boss fight was so fucking hard, but not bullshit like the new Okumura boss fight. I died on that a good number times, but I had fun each time. I was so shocked when there was another phase to the boss fight. I should've seen that coming though because in almost every JRPG, especially in Final Fantasy, there are multiple phases on the final boss battle. I was going to get real mad if I lost and I had to go back to the first stage but unfortunately the game didn't do that.
This fight went on for a little too long and I could have definitely gone without that MGS4 fist fight at the end. That shit was just off-putting. I want to say corny, but that doesn't quite describe the feeling I had when that part came up. All you need to know is that I didn't like it. it was a hell of a finale though and when Maruki's Persona had its second awakening and everyone held the fist up to give you some time hit his weakness that shit was crazy, but I was also thinking shouldn't they only be able to do that with their Personas? I was also expecting Satanael to come back out. I don't see a reason why Joker couldn't summon him again after his 2nd awakening in the last final boss battle, but whatever fun fight anyway.
The epilogue had a few changes too, so instead of just Joker leaving, Ann, Ryuji, Makoto, and Haru are leaving too. Having everybody leave it just felt cliche. It left a bad taste in my mouth. The ending cutscene was changed a bit too so instead of Makoto driving Joker home with everyone else they decide to split up when the police is following them and Joker takes the train home instead oh and he gets into Maruki's car who now has had a change of heart and then you see Kasumi at the train station but the screen goes black before any words are exchanged.
In conclusion, Persona 5 Royal is excellent from beginning to end. It like the original solidifies itself among my favorite games of all time and that is why I am bestowing it with a 10/10 score.
