The changes to dungeons from Persona 4 to 5 may have already been seen in Tokyo Mirage Sessions. While there is a change in pace to the dungeons because of stealth and dialogue in battle, its strength remains in the social simulator and side activities.
"A creeping subtext about the importance of a stable family life [...] is less succesful, making a stuffily old-fashioned point about the nuclear family that seems at odds with the game's attempt to celebrate rather than demean."
Well frankly I disagree with just about all of this. TMS's dungeons have nothing on P5's, and they are absolutely worth being called one of the game's strengths and not treating as a second fiddle to the social sim elements. In the case of P4, the dungeons drag the game's quality down significantly, whereas here they only elevate it. For them to give P4G a 9 when it makes the same mistakes as P3 and P4, but to give P5 an 8 when it improves upon them and far more is frustrating, assuming they're the same reviewer.
The comment they make about the importance of a stable family life particularly irks me; the game handles this area very delicately, and the implication that a stable family life is a better environment for a child (
especially in Japan) is hardly an unreasonable commentary, and thematically it could not fit the game better. I'll wait for the full review to be posted online to pass judgement, but I'm not agreeing with what I'm hearing here at all.
