Persona 5

Persona 4 Golden was my game of the year in 2013, even though it came out in 2012 and the original was from 2008. I don’t know if you’re supposed to fall in love with something you haven’t played yet, but that’s what happened. Then I played it, and every second of it confirmed what I already suspected.

The Persona 5 trailers meant nothing if you didn’t already know the series. Anime kids in costumes tearing through Tokyo, monsters, explosions, bright neon noise. If you’d never played one, you’d watch and move on. If you had, you were already counting days.

But the trailers didn’t matter anyway. They showed surface stuff—the fights, the colors, the anime weirdness. That’s not what Persona is. It’s a mirror. The choices I make, what I care about, who I let in. I meet these people and something shifts. They get under my skin in a way that matters. The story cracks something open—reveals who I am underneath, alone with myself.

When you feel that way about something, you don’t wait. You live in the space between now and then, and that’s the best feeling there is.

When Persona 5 finally came out, it was what I wanted. Same alchemy. Different people, different city, but the same thing inside—that way it has of getting under your skin and making you feel like it sees you.