The first part of my coverage of Persona 5 monsters. Or, well, personas and shadows and... well, all the 'fightable' and 'summonable' personas, anyway. It's a bit weird! Persona 5 is a very highly recommended game, and ever since I've seen the artstyle of the game (honestly, particularly the UI for the minimap, settings and whatnot) and heard the absolute banger of a soundtrack. The story's amazing, too, from what little I saw -- basically around all the way to the Makoto arc -- on a let's play before I decided I will wait until they ported it to a console I own -- either the PC or the Switch, both of which happened in 2022. As someone who doesn't want to buy a PS4 and don't want to own a lot of consoles... it is definitely a pretty nice experience for me to play this on the Switch!
For those who aren't familiar with the Persona franchise, each game in the franchise tells a standalone story, and the game is kinda-sorta a spinoff of the Megami Tensei mega-franchise. While what I've seen from the Shin Megami Tensei tended to be Devilman-style apocalyptic fights between man, gods and devils, Persona takes place in a contemporary modern setting, has a lot of inspiration from tarot cards and Jungian psychology, and generally features a group of youths who are able to see a world others can see, and eventually 'awaken' the Personas, which are spiritual beings able to fight the monstrous Shadows born out of trauma. Think Bleach meets JoJo's Bizarre Adventure meets a whole heap of psychology.
Our hero -- and later his allies -- would discover that they are able to essentially weaponize their own emotions, striking 'contracts' with their inner selves and awaken their powers as the aforementioned 'Persona'. And these awakenings are badass, accompanied with one hell of a badass soundtrack.
They would then go around seeking out targets and more allies as the 'Phantom Thieves', not aware that they find themselves in the crosshairs of not just the law, but also villainous entities. The mystical, powerful forces that grant them power might also have an agenda of their own...
And I could literally go on and on about the awesome storytelling, and the topics tackled by the game about society, corruption, mental health, rebellion, and all that is delivered under this very punk-stylish packaging of classy phantom thieves summoning the spirits of fictional characters that beat the hell out of demons representing the vices of authoritative figures, scored by jazz music and with a very intricate series of cutscenes, dating sims, creature collecting and item management tossed in. But we're not here to talk about Persona 5 the game, but the monsters themselves!
Other than the personal Personas (heh) and the Palace bosses, each monster design will initially be encountered in the Palaces as a generic monster that hides in the form of 'Shadows' -- usually masked humanoid guises that wander the overworld, and are dressed up in designs that match the theme of the palace. So casino guards in suits, or steel-armoured knights in a castle, the likes of that. These basically allow the game to have a stealth and ambush mechanic without programming like 300 different models to move around. Then after you fight and 'recruit' some of these demonic shadows, they become available to be summoned by your main character as Personas, usually gaining a different name. So for example, the enemies you meet in the overworld are called 'Bedside Brute', but the version you can summon becomes 'Incubus', which, as I gather, is the enemy archetype from the greater Megami Tensei franchise that the Persona franchise itself is a spin-off of.
Also, yes, slight disclaimer -- I know nearly nothing about the Shin Megami Tensei games beyond the fact that the monster designs and archetypes are shared between the Megami Tensei games and the Persona games. For all intents and purposes, I'll only be talking exclusively about the Persona 5 monsters.
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Arsène
"Thou who art willing to perform all sacrilegious acts for thine own justice! Call upon my name, and release thy rage! Show the strength of thy will to ascertain all on thine own, though thou be chained to Hell itself!"
- Arcana: Fool
So I guess I'll talk about the Personas themselves. Where I am in the game, it's still treated as a bit of a mystery about the true nature of this 'Metaverse' and the strange, physics-defying powers and creatures that dwell within. But one thing that's important is that the main protagonists -- all rebels and outcasts of society of some sort -- all have the potential to awaken their 'Personas'. The true self slumbering within their souls, after the Persona awakens and makes a contract with them, framed as a contract with the devil (except the devil is your 'true self') with the franchise-spanning iconic line, "I am thou, thou art I". Our protagonist, codenamed 'Joker', is probably the only one that I can really talk about without delving too deep into spoilers or information that I simply don't have since I'm barely scratching the first arc of the game, but after spending an extended prologue basically being shit on by a society that brands him a pariah for a mistake he did in the past (which he's not even in the wrong!) Joker finally snaps when he sees a villain about to kill his friend, and awakens to his inner Persona.
The Personas as a concept is drawn from Jungian psychology, which I won't get too much into here since we're already talking way too much about the game and the franchise and the premise instead of the 'monsters' themselves. And, well, the 'initial' Personas usually manifest as humanoid beings based on deities or figures in public domain, which is a bit of a holdover from the parent Shin Megami Tensei franchise. Whereas the protagonists of the previous Persona games used deities (Greek and Japanese ones, I believe?) the protagonists of Persona 5 awaken various rebels and thieves -- fitting with their own Phantom Thief aesthetic.
Lastly, each Persona and creature in the game has its own associated major arcana from tarot, which basically acts as a way to classify them for certain mechanics in the game. Are we really feeling the JoJo here? I sure am! Arsène is of the Fool arcana, which relates more to Joker, the human that awakens to him than Arsène himself. I could talk a bit more about the mechanics of the game, but we'd be here all day.
And I've been talking this long without talking about Arsène, and Arsène is, obviously, based on Arsène Lupin -- a fictional gentleman thief from France that targets criminals that are much worse than himself, and extremely popular in Japan thanks to the anime Lupin III. And, of course, 'Pillager of Twilight' Arsène himself is a pretty cool demon-man in a suit. Just put any man in a suit and he looks badass, especially one with such long arms like Arsène. He's got your expected edgy fallen-angel wings and grinning face made up of glowing flames that's a bit harder to see in this still image... and he's got a top hat, which just completes the look. Also shown in certain cutscenes are the dangling chains that are attached to his body, which, of course, you've gotta have chains! They went and took all the obvious 'cool' tropes from an edgy gentleman anti-hero, and... it works. The idea of a lot of these Personas really revolve around cognition and perception, and while normally I would roll my eyes at such an 'obvious' design, it actually makes sense in the setting. And... Arsène is just a cool design all around!
Zorro
- Arcana: Magician
We don't actually get to see if Zorro's wielder, the sentient cat (?) person (?) Morgana, awakens, unlike the other members of our starting cast, but Morgana's Persona takes the form based on Don Diego de la Vega, or 'Zorro' the fox -- another fictional anti-hero from American pulp fiction, who characterizes Zorro as, you guessed it, a noble thief and outlaw that defends the weak from tyrannical and corrupt governments. Zorro is probably the most familiar fictional thief in this page that I know of, and I actually do appreciate that Persona 5's Zorro doesn't actually go the obvious route and give him the obvious looks associated with Zorro. I'm not even sure if the real Zorro fences instead of just using a regular sword!
And since these Personas reflect the idealized souls of their users, and even this early on, we could see that Morgana is really compensating for his own lack of strength, being a maybe-a-cat-or-a-person-cursed-into-a-cat. Which is why Zorro's proportions are extremely... interesting? Being a silver, almost-robotic being that wields a fence, I am reminded of JoJo's Silver Chariot, but where Silver Chariot is a slender robotic being, Zorro is... extremely buff. Even comically so, thanks to the fact that his legs are insanely slim. This Zorro skips leg day, apparently! But I really do like that in addition to the exaggerated heroic build of the torso and upper arms, Zorro's lower arms are insanely massive.
It's a bit hard to see, again, in these pictures, but any close-ups to Zorro's face shows that he actually does have the signature upper-face-mask of the real fictional Zorro, with the black part wrapping around a blue skin that... that I can only describe as looking a lot like One Piece's Whitebeard's chin, except instead of a weird horizontal walrus-mustache, Zorro has two tapering blade-like mustaches. He's also got a fancy wrestler champion belt, because why not?
Again, I don't expect to be able to talk this much about the more humanoid Personas, and I'm sorry, other than the huge arms, Zorro might be the most mundane of the initial four starting characters. Also, holy shit, thanks to One Piece, I mis-typed Zorro as 'Zoro' so many times while writing this.
Captain Kidd
"Since your name has been disgraced already, why not hoist the flag and wreak havoc?" ..."The skull of rebellion is your flag henceforth!"
- Arcana: Chariot
I normally don't really care for a character like Sakamoto Ryuji, codename 'Skull', representing the Chariot arcana. He's a generic thug-with-a-good-heart. But, god damn, without going too much into dissecting the characters in the game, they really do a great job at presenting Ryuji initially as a pretty simple character archetype you see a lot in these animes and mangas, and then actually developing his backstory to show how we got to that point. Anyway, Ryuji doesn't awaken his Persona until our second or third delve into the Metaverse, but after that he's arguably suffered through a lot more helplessness and frustration that Joker did.
And Ryuji's Persona is the first that deviates from the humanoid ones we saw with Arsène and Zorro. Don't get me wrong, Eustass Captain Kidd is still humanoid. He's basically just a stylized cyborg pirate with chains and extremely X-TREEM 90's body proportions. Giant cross-blades on his chest, an eyepatch with a skull on it, a cannon for an arm... a bit much, but that's almost expected, isn't it? But here's the thing. He is always surfing on a ghost ship with a grinning cartoon shark face drawn on it. That single accessory just kind of really makes Captain Kidd go from just another humanoid Stand into something that looks genuinely unique. And just being a 'weird humanoid' is what made me not review JoJo Stands in one of these articles, since I really couldn't find much to talk about there beyond going into a deep delve dive into the specifics of the JoJo powers.
Back to Captain Kidd. I do love that he's got everything you'd expect a stereotypical pirate to have. Amputated arm? Chains? Bicorn hat? Skull face? My favourite feature, other than the obvious ghost ship surfboard, are the chains ending in little anchors that dangle down his chest. In-game, Captain Kidd specializes in electricity-type attacks, which... makes about sense as anything? (Zorro does wind and Arsène does Curse skills, if you're curious)
The real Captain William Kidd is a Scottish privateer in the 17th century, and alternated from being a privateer (a legal pirate), a pirate hunter, and an outlaw, and was ultimately executed by the British government. Kidd's reputation and the exaggerations around the treasure he supposedly left buried somewhere in the world. (No, not like One Piece's Gol D. Roger -- he was based on Olivier Levasseur, who actually left a cryptogram when he was being executed). Obviously the recordings in the 17th century are extremely incomplete, subjective and probably altered many times, but hey, that's a pretty cool real-world rebel to draw on, especially with a lot of allegations on how William Kidd's first brand of piracy was caused by his crew, without his knowledge, plundering a neutral ship.
Carmen
"Who is going to avenge her if you don't? Forgiving him was never the option... Such is the scream of the other you that dwells within!"
- Arcana: Lovers
The fourth Persona belongs to Takamaki Ann, or "Panther". Where Joker has an obvious Lupin/Kaito Kid Phantom Thief motif, and Ryuji looks like something that's a cross between Kamen Rider and Ghost Rider, Ann's Phantom Thief guise is definitely based on the idea of a cat burglar, or specifically characters like Catwoman and Black Cat, with all the fanserviceness that it entails. Of course she represents the Lovers arcana, too. And her Persona, Carmen, the first time you see it... well, uh.. it sure is another humanoid, a woman with a huge dress. Sure, the head is slightly unconventional with the weird 'drill' hairs that is an exaggeration of Ann's own hair forming sort of a mask around this ballroom dancer. And like Captain Kidd, Carmen has some accessories that makes her much more than 'just some person'... namely, two tiny men with giant hearts for heads and eyes that are tied up by the main Carmen with rose thorns. In fact, that's the whole motif, with Carmen's own dress looking like thorns.
And... taking it at face value, it's so easy to brush this as a generic BDSM 'step on me mommy' fetish design. And there's no denying that it definitely ticks all the right boxes. But without spoiling too much, Ann's story and her initial inability to seek help thanks to a man in a position of authority that basically wants to blackmail or pressure her into sleeping with her -- and all the unfair rumours about her as a bit of a slut just because she works as a model... again, it makes sense that when Ann awakens her persona, this 'idealized' version of her literally manifests as a bombshell of a woman stepping on a bunch of lovestruck men -- with her taking the position of power as a femme fatale.
...which is where Carmen is from. Based on a French novella and its opera adaptation, Carmen is a classic 'femme fatale' trope that uses her beauty and wiles to make men fall for her, and she just keeps going from one lover to the next as she gets bored. Even when faced with death at the hands of a particularly jilted ex-lover, Carmen would rather die than allow herself to be bound to the will of another. In the story, again, without spoiling too much, Ann rebels against a twisted form of attraction framed as 'love', and actually says a line along those lines in the battle that happens right after her awakening.
Anyway, Carmen's not my favourite Persona design, but I definitely can appreciate the story reasons behind why she looks like this!
Jack O' Lantern
- Monster Name: Crypt-Dwelling Pyromaniac
- Arcana: Magician
And now we go to the Personas that aren't tied to a specific character. In fact, all of these form the actual 'monsters' of the game, or the Shadows, that patrol the Palaces of the villains. Thanks to something about cognition worlds, or, well, probably because they reused assets from Shin Megami Tensei, all these monsters take the form of familiar mythological and religious figures, or, like Jack O' Lantern here, figures ingrained in the collective minds of pop culture. Or something. All the monsters are initially encountered under different names, like Jack O' Lantern here being called 'Crypt-Dwelling Pyromaniac', until our characters manage to recruit them to their cause. Turns out that being the protagonist, Joker is able to hold a large amount of Personas within himself, and in battles, we can basically do a Pokemon-esque minigame where we try to negotiate a contract to free these Personas and unlock their 'true' self. Or, alternatively, do some fusion mechanic to get them. Interestingly, once you unlock one of these Personas, every other representative of the species you meet are named by their 'true' name.
Anyway, Jack O' Lantern is a pretty basic looking enemy, but such a stylish one. The imagery of a pumpkin jack o' lantern with a glowing head is always going to appeal to me, and Persona 5's Jack O' Lantern goes all in with the Halloween vibes, giving him a witch's hat, a cape with no body underneath (though the shading of his cape did kinda confuse me a bit, giving the impression of legs that disappear and reappear -- it's just shading!), and a cute little glove holding a lantern. Very cute, very classic-looking, and it does look like a pretty simple early-game demonic monster.
Also, since Persona 5 takes all its monsters from real-life myths, this gives me a fair bit to talk about! As the brief blurb notes, the story of Jack O' Lantern is an Irish myth, where a farmer called Stingy Jack either tricked or sweet-talked Satan to not take him to hell. However, this deal barred him from entering heaven, causing him to wander the earth eternally, lighting his way with a lump of glowing coal stuck inside of a turnip (his favourite food, later adapted into pumpkins). This is the explanation in those myths for the will-o'-wisp phenomenon. And it's probably due to this association with the will-o'-wisps and candles that the Jack O' Lantern focus almost exclusively on fire spells!
Incubus
- Monster Name: Bedside Brute
- Arcana: Devil
Any self-respecting game with demonic enemies needs to have one of these creatures, right? Call them imps, call them gremlins, call them whatever you want, but be it Warcraft or Diablo or Witcher or Oblivion, any game set in a setting with demons and whatnot needs to have these thin, stringy little demon-men with horns and tails and wings, and for Persona 5, these weak demons are the Incubus. And... the Incubus would be really not much to talk about if not for the GIGANTIC STRAP-ON DILDO. For a while, I thought it's just a dagger weapon until I 'caught' an Incubus and realized that it's not a dagger, no. I don't think even a game like this can get away with showing an actual dick, and it's shaped like a blade (which is even more unfortunate than a phallus) at that, but the thing is definitely attached to the Incubus's underwear. Okay? Yuck!
The real-world myths of the Incubus and its female counterpart, the Succubus, are demons that lie with sleeping humans of the opposite gender to have sexual intercourse with them and draining their vitality, and depending on the legend, are either demons, vampires, or shapeshifters (the succubus would take sperm from the human male, then shapeshift into an incubus to impregnate the human female). The medieval magician Merlin, as well as witches, are supposed to be the child of an incubus/human union. In practice, the medieval-era churches like to use the incubi and succubi to explain sexual functions like wet dreams and masturbation, or to pass off incidents of rape or infidelity. That explains the big ding-donger that the Incubus has!
Pixie
- Monster Name: Beguiling Girl
- Arcana: Lovers
The Pixie has the dubious honour of being the first 'wild' Persona to be caught/tamed/recruited by Joker, and, uh... she's just a lady in a leotard with butterfly wings. I do find the first interaction funny, where our heroes are actually trying to rob the Pixie of money (as part of a tutorial), then the Pixie having forgotten to bring money that day, Morgana casually advocating murder, and then Joker trying a bit too hard to sound cool ("I'll send you... on a road to hell!"). Otherwise, she sure is a Pixie, and unlike the Incubus there's nothing that makes this Pixie particularly different from any other generic Tinker-Bell-esque fairy design found in so many other RPG's.
Not much to say about Pixie, she sure is a very typical European fairy. The legends about Pixies have kind of been conflated so much with other kind of Fair Folk over the years, though obviously the Persona 5 flavour text decided to pick a particularly morbid Laz folktale about how Pixies are supposed to be the souls of dead, unbaptized children. Creepy!
Mandrake
- Monster Name: Gallows Flower
- Arcana: Death
Ah, yes, the Mandrake. Based on the real-life mandrake plants (of the genus Mandragora), which sometimes can contort to resemble a human-shaped figure, medieval lore has the mandrakes be involved in a lot of superstitions revolving around witchcraft, probably helped by the fact that these plant roots are actually hallucinogenic, narcotic and actually extremely poisonous if not handled well. Superstitions around the mandrake plant revolve around the human-shaped plant screaming so loudly that it killed anyone who heard it, or others saying that the mandrake will damn anyone that pulls it to hell, which is why in the past apparently people tied these plants with ropes to animals as a loophole to get the plants out without 'harming' people.
Persona 5's Mandrake is an interesting design. It still keeps the idea of a 'human-shaped' plant root, with a flower for a head and a little collar made out of leaves, but I do like that its body still ends with root-like extensions, and the face isn't a screaming banshee or a plant-person like so many other fictional Mandrakes, but rather an extremely creepy human face that just looks... normal. Normal, but dead-eyed, and I feel this makes the Mandrake feel so, so much creepier than if they gave it a plant-monster face like Palmon from Digimon or something. Actually easily one of the creepier monsters design-wise thanks to that plain doll-face.
On a side-note, I like that the Mandrake is given the Arcana of 'death'. It fits the whole 'screaming root causes death' legend!
Bicorn
- Monster Name: Dirty Two-Horned Beast
- Arcana: Hermit
Technically serving as our first 'miniboss', the Bicorn is apparently the evil counterpart to the Unicorn, and is described in more satirical works of the Middle Ages. Bicorns are apparently part-panther, part-cow, with a human face, and devours faithful husbands, making it plump and well-fed. The joke is that its counterpart, the Chichevache, devours faithful wives, but it's thin because ha ha ha women are unfaithful ha ha unfunny joke. This legend has been ignored in favour of making the Bicorn just an evil counterpart of the Unicorn, and making it feeding on disloyal husbands instead. Persona 5 also conflates the Bicorn with 'Re'em' from the Bible, an unspecified horned beast in the Bible that is translated as 'unicorn' in the King James Version, and some variant of ox or bull in later translations.
Anyway, the Bicorn is sure an angry hell-horse. Hell-horses are cool, I guess, and it sure does have two horns... it's neat to be a more mundane RPG monster a bit earlier in the story, I suppose, but it does look rather mundane. Not really much to say here, it ceases being intimidating pretty quickly too, though it is a well-drawn demon horse.
Eligor
- Monster Name: War-Hungry Horseman
- Arcana: Emperor
The names of the demons from the Ars Goetia or the Lesser Key of Solomon have been used in many different fictional works, and of course they're going to be enemies in the Persona 5 universe! I imagine the Shin Megami Tensei games would treat these Goetic demons as being far more faithful to their original source material, whereas they're just cool-named enemies in Persona 5.
Eligor is actually rather boring, though certainly intimidating as another miniboss (specifically the one Ryuji awakens and defeats) as a red horned knight riding a horse. Eligor's depiction is actually surprisingly faithful to the original source material -- a "goodly knight carrying a lance, an ensign and a serpent". No snake here, but he sure is a knight with a spear-thing. Not a whole ton to mention other than the whole connection to demonology, honestly. It sure is a cool-looking knight demon, but I feel that it's a bit forgettable compared to...
Belphegor
- Monster Name: Ambassador of Filth
- Arcana: Tower
...yeah. Belphegor is just a generic purple demon guy with horns, a big nose, fangs, claws, a beard and all that jazz. Kind of boring, especially knowing that the Persona 5 cast will feature a whole lot of horned devils down the line... but Belphegor takes the cake of being a very memorable design by being on the shitter. No, his attack animations literally has him straining as if he's about to unleash the mother of all turds, and the shockwave from the base of his toilet slams onto the entire party. I've seen monsters based on poop before, but having a demon on a modern-day toilet, just looking bored as he's shitting? It's bizarrely unexpected.
Belphegor isn't just any run-of-the-mill demon either, actually. Taking its name from Ba'al Pe'or, a Syrian/Moabite god of abundant crops, he's assigned as the chief demon representing the sin of sloth, and apparently tempts humans by giving them ideas for inventions without effort that are self-destructive, making them easily rich and eventually greedy and selfish. And, surprisingly, Belphegor's Persona/MegaTen portrayal of him being bored on the crapper is actually based on 1800's-era artwork of him as a bearded demon man lounging lazily on a wooden toilet -- itself based on a misinterpretation of Ba'al Pe'or (literally Lord of the Gap) leading to some people before interpreting Belphegor as a demon that likes the gap (our butthole) and accepts sacrifices of feces or must be worshipped in the toilet. Either way, it's basically originally an attempt by ancient Christians to demonize the gods of their rivals, turned into various different groups trying to interpret demonic legends which gets even more and more ridiculous, culminating in a Japanese video game company franchise deciding to put a modern toilet and have this demon literally use the shockwaves of his epic dookies to damage his enemies. Okay!
Slight spoilers for the rest of the game, but while the other seven demons that traditionally represent the Seven Deadly Sins would appear as the names of major bosses, lazy-ass Belphegor is content for being a generic spawn found as early as the first dungeon in the game. I guess he can't be bothered to be relevant to the plot, damn slothful demon!
Agathion
- Monster Name: Apprentice in a Jug
- Arcana: Chariot
Okay, this one is a bit more interesting. The 'Agathion' isn't a particularly well-known being, and most of the references I could find online only have like one-line descriptions of it, and the rest are video game or RPG monsters. It's some sort of familiar from Judeo-Christian mythology which are associated with inhabiting or sealed up in talismans, bottles or magic ring. Persona's Agathion takes the form of an adorable little blue demon-thing with eyes that kind of remind me of one of those classic 'Gray' aliens, and it's just peeking out so adorably from that urn with a six-pointed star carved into it. It's honestly quite an adorable design, and while it does feel a bit out of place compared to most of the other monsters in Kamoshida's Palace, which tended to be humanoid or utterly monstrous, I do find this guy pretty charming.
I guess it's about the point where I'll talk about the associated Arcana. People far more capable and knowledgable about tarot reading have done massive analyses about how the characters in the Persona games represent the facets of human psychology associated with their specific Arcana, but the Shadows/Personas associated with the Arcana is a bit more interesting. From what I understand, it's a bit of a holdover from the Megami Tensei games where the various monsters are classified into different kinds of mythological being classification, but there's a bit of a logic to it which... Agathion does not necessarily follow in this game. The Chariot persona is a symbol of self-confidence and self-assertion, but also victory, war and commanding. Very appropriate to Ryuji Sakamoto, and even a pirate captain like William Kidd, and briefly glancing through the wiki for other Chariot Personas, I can see war deities like Thor, Ares and Susano'o all classified as Chariot Personas. And Agathion is just... some random lesser familiar demon in a jar? Hmm. Maybe as I progress through the game and read more about the Arcana in general, I'll see the bigger picture in the themes relating to them.
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There is also a segment in the beginning with a couple of monsters we get to see, but that's an in medias res segment of one of the later-game dungeons, and we'll get to see those high-level Personas/Shadows later on, so I'm saving the bull guy and the stripper cheetah guy for later.
In addition, I know that the Royal version of the game makes a lot of originally-DLC super-powerful Personas from previous entries (like Orpheus and Izanagi) available to 'fuse' immediately (we'll talk about fusion later) but I do think that I'll go through my playthrough using as little of these DLC Personas as possible. They cost nothing and are extremely powerful to break the game, and I think they're really only going to be used if I really get into trouble, or if I need to speed through the game in a replay. I'll probably talk about them either much later or in a part of the game where there isn't a lot of new monsters.
I'm going to really enjoy this feature. Looking forward to more demon reviews!
ReplyDeleteThis has been a game that I've really been looking forward to playing, and it's been fun! The reviews will be a bit more sporadic since me encountering these demons does really depend on how much I 'fuse' and explore around.
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