glad to see people are enjoying the video. in addition to my patreon, i've also just enabled channel memberships as well (patreon's prolly better so not all my eggs are in one basket, but y'know, more options). 🖤 www.patreon.com/bubbletea_

Finally someone recognizes P5 didn't start the stylish and eccentric UI for the Persona series.

While smt v's ui isnt super flashy or interesting it is for me the easiest to navigate. Everything is laid out perfectly. And there is a reason for all the circles and the weird look of the press turn icons to do with a spoiler, but it sort of hints at themes in the game just like how p3 and 4 implemented gun and tv elements. I also love the choice of gold as the main colour in V (IV started the trend with its black and white, then green in apocalypse). I really like the sort of ethereal feel of gold and the wispy sort of nature. And the thing that makes V's menu my favourite is its music. Its so good and gives a feeling of your only time to relax is when pausing the game.

Two things, first SMT 1's UI kinda looks like a DOS menu, an old computer thing. Second, TMS' Menus are amazing, you should definitely give em a look.

Going over things like this within Megaten really is where you hit your stride in my opinion. I adored the video you did on the manuals before, and this is in that same ball park. Excellent, high quality, and enjoyable content.

9:38 - to add Persona 4/Persona 4 Golden music is so superb.. i can still remember some of the jazzy music that somehow feels heaven to my ears 😁

8:58 That bit you mentioned in text form about the main character's portrait in the choice boxes, I agree and it would actually be brought back in Persona 5, Royal, as well as the two sequel dancing games with the P3 protagonist's character dialogue portrait being better than in Portable. Also, that bit about the command menu in Persona 3 based on the barrel from a revolver, it doesn't really look like it in FES, it looks more like a loading screen icon, but Portable updated it to make it clear that it is a revolver's barrel, another update to the UI and presentation Portable makes. Also, the colorful stripes in Persona 4 I think are actually based on the colorful lines that come out in your vision if you were to squint at a TV displaying bright images like I used to do, which I think it's cool and it would explain why the colorful lines tend to move around in the menus. Either that, or they're based on the TV error screens which often comes out as these colorful lines

As much as I love P5s UI, I won't deny the other games have great UIs too. Catherine also has a really stylish UI, which was probably the stepping stone to P5.

DDS 1&2 deserve a remake. They're both really good.

Amazing job on the video! Keep it up mate Also, 04:12 killed me LMFAO

Catherine and Tokyo Mirage Sessions are another two that don't get enough love.

Great video dude! You mentioned stuff I never really noticed until now lol

I haven't played SMT5 yet, but something I immediately noticed of it in action is that the battle UI is eerily similar to the one from Tokyo Mirage Sessions, which uh... I'm not sure how to feel about, but I do think that it feels rather sterile. I think that SMT5 was going for a lot of circular shapes and water (mainly calm flowing currents, and droplets very infrequently) themes as seen in some key locations (particularly the summit and the ending credits come to mind), but I feel like there is something missing to it. The textbox in particular fascinates me to no end, but not for the right reasons. It feels like it goes for some sort of murky water surface, but I'm not sure if it's the color choice, font choice or the subtler effects, but it just doesn't come together. However, I do really like the subtle flowing "leaf" particles that begin at the end of the text.

SMT5's battle HUD is really good. The HP bars are on the side so the focus on the battle itself isn't taken away from. You're probably looking more at the enemies or character doing idle animations than their HP half the time, which is optimal for enjoyment. Even if battles are largely the same at endgame, the animations are enjoyable to watch, if you don't skip them.

Personally I think video like this that are informative and bring light to under appreciated part of megaten are great you should keep on doing them

Very interesting vid! I'd love to start doing video essays on game design myself, seeing other content creators out there pushing forward just inspires the hell outta me. You earned a sub from me!

As a graphic designer, I use polygons too much when designing. Persona 3 has to be one of the Biggest influences on my art, not because I liked playing the game, but I spent most of my time looking at the pause screen, cuz it’s so good, it’s so cool to see the silhouettes move around. When creating a hud, sometimes it may get too cramped, which is the case for SMTV, I have been playing it for a few months now. And I still get lost navigating it. It’s so, simple. Back in December of 2021, I made some wallpapers for the Persona Users from P4G (including Adachi) I based the design off of the opening, using the colored lines, and wire poles, with each wallpaper using the sprites from the all out attacks. The main team has theirs all similar, But with different colors, based off the All out Attack silhouettes. Something iconic for people to look at while on their phones. While I made Adachi’s opposite from everyones. A custome background, the whole thing is flipped, and I made it the Red and Black Shadow Portals that you see in the entrances to the dungeons. Making his silhouette opposite from the Protagonist. Ying and Yang. Ha. But I loved watching this video, I loved seeing all the different UI’s and HUD’s changed from all the different games. The way how they work and how they are stylized. This video was very interesting and educational for me personally! Keep up the amazing work!

thank you for making this

Video ends at 4:20 and begins again at 12:31 Retaliation

Nice Video Bubble, Also the DDS 1 Ost is Godlike and One of my favorites

My guy, the menu in Devil Survivor is literally the in-universe COMP interface, your 3DS temporarily becomes the COMP

looking forward for your next uploads, you got a sub

When I played P4G on steam for the first time I immediately thought “Wow, people think 5 invented style when this existed many years prior?”

Wow, not many views or comments in such a good video You definitely deserve more attention

i adore desu1's ui. the textboxes are so satisfying to look at

I love this video ^^

How did I play P3 twice and never notice the gun stuff in the UI?

Stop worrying so much about speaking for too long man! We click on this video to hear your thoughts, so don’t worry about it!

Thanks for the video

One of the most underrated facets of a game. Great video that deserves more views.

Talking about the persona 3 revolver command menu made me think of a really cool mechanic that could have been in the game for when you're tired. Maybe your character could have a chance at any action they take failing 1/6 of the time... like russian roulette. Idk I thought of it and it seemed like a real cool idea it might be dumb

very nice video, i played p5 recently ish and then p4g on pc and i loved both of the UI's, for some reason i had some trouble starting out on p5 but that's probably cuz it was my first smt game ever... p4g was easier to use but the functionalities it didnt have compared to p5 were very striking, i think that it is mostly p5's that getds the praise cuz they jsut make for smoother gameplay, which then ties with the animations and such, it just flows better hope this vid gets the attention it deserves tho, godspeed

Finally! Someone praises p4's UI!

10:48 with how circular alot of menus are I'd say it's almost more of a general 50s aesthetic if anything. Idk why but it's just the vibe I get

4:14 aint no fuckin way someone did this unironically ☠☠ great video tho

Last Bible III UI is very clean and nice

Can't wait for the analysis of Tokyo Mirage Session's UI (no sarcasm)

Ya know why SMT V UI looks basic? because it was built from the TMS#FE engine and they took the design language there (Which was pretty alright in the original) and tried to fit SMT designs which didn't work.

i noticed the target marker for p3 looked pretty similar to the gekkoukan high symbol but flipped which i found pretty cool also while i get the dialogue box for fes may look boring for some people i've always really liked it, i like the simple colors and how it like bulges out and isnt a plain rectangle, it kinda reminds me of a monitor screen for some reason idk. i like how p3 reload's dialogue box seems to take after it more than the p3p dialogue box

Oh my God, did someone actually timestamp the Persona section of the video? That's kinda funny lol

PEAK

Finally says somehing about this, SMT uis are always pretty

Good taste witht he Digital Devil Saga bit 😘. It's my favorite Megaten as well

12:47 sums up playing Digital Devil Saga perfectly

The P3 cursor isn't a crosshair, it's the school's emblem.

4:06 Yeah I agree the mido isn't the most convenient. I only noticed that you search with the compendium at the end of the game.

Digital Devil Saga duology is so underrated it is almost criminal. Why Atlus doesn't want to remaster these games? Persona fans sure will like them for their character-centric plot.

I blame the Persona franchise for my absurdly high standards when it comes to UI design 😂 sick of Triple A games with the basic font, basic black box approach

Currently playing through SMT4 rn, glad im not the only one noticing the "Flynn looking down at his gauntlet" thing. Realising that made me feel like a detective lol I love small details like this

I've never really given thought to how great the UI design was throughout the entirety of the Megaten series, but it's hard *not* to appreciate how well crafted they are once you actually notice Also, I wish you got into SMT IV's UI a bit more, as I feel there is a lot more to the presentation then was covered. But that's probably just my biases speaking, as IV is one of my favorite games ever, and probably tied with LISA for my favorite RPG ever

I agree with most of what you said, SMT 5 tho has an extremely well organized UI especially for battle. Imo I think its one of the easiest to navigate in most SMT games, although I haven’t played every game obviously. It is fairly generic, but its nice to look at. Nice to navigate. Isn’t sharp or has any awkward shapes or font choices. So Atlus is still good at making UIs and they didn’t “disappoint”. I do agree it doesn’t have much personality, which is a shame.

Video starts at 0:00

They always make the game even better and stand out for sure

10:55 this is actually something they did just for P3, because you don't directly control your party. Its extra info sometimes required for you to plan ahead and swap tactics. With that said I still wish they kept the ability to see the full turn order in later games

P4 has my favorite menu sounds, but no other game comes close to P5 when it comes to what an interface can be

If youve played TMS#FE you can definetly see the UI similarities in SMT5

All I know is the red on persona 5 hurts my eyes and especially the all out attacks fucks with me so hard I kind of messes with my sensitivity to light and hurts my head. I only saw you could dim the screen which didn’t really work and my eyes were still assaulted.

5:18 resembles gekkokan high logo as well

digital devil saga was hella smooth.

Devil survivor was my favorite DS game for like a year

"It hasn't been that long since 2017..." Just 5 years :D

P4 ui reminds me of an old flip phone i had

Nice video, though I do wonder, what are Persona 5's aesthetics? I think it's like a manga or comic? But why? Does it have to do with the fact phantom thieves are like manga type stuff?

I love how simple and sleek SMTV's UI is. It's elegant. Sure it's not very daring and out there, but I've always felt that mainline SMT was more reserved visually, so I find SMTV's designs to be very fitting. I especially like the font choice. It's very legible at larger distances, which is great when playing on a TV.

About smtv: the theme there is Mandala, so there are lots of spirals and shit in everything, also they opted to a more clean and sober interface, which I really appreciate, there is no room for flashy transitions and colors in SMT, the Card interface for the demons in battle are SO functional, SMTV UI works for those who played it, It's amazing, and that's genius, to make something that looks meh but feels belonging and amazing.

I never noticed until now they added the revolver UI in portable 9:06

the video ends at 4:15

Ayyy

2:07 shout outs to the Inu Yasha fan that made this footage.

Ngl, i wanted to play P5 is just for the UI. Like damn, that flows in style.

Great video but you should've definitely talked about the Raidou games

One thing I loved about smt4 was how every single attack made the screen shake and those sound effects told you how much damage you were actually dealing. Smt5 is just a bit too plain, I don’t feel as strong as I should feel.

To be honest I didn’t really care for persona 5’s UI. Although it was definitely vibrant and sleek. Sometimes it was hard to read or the flashy animations got in the way.

I played through the entirety of P3 and never knew about L1 and R1.

7:13 from personal observations I think that's just Japanese game devs obsession of using serif fonts in their games especially when it comes to RPGs

Based video

dds is amazing.

Another franchise with cool UI is Falcom's Trails series

I do think SMT V's UI doesn't look hugely stylish but I do think it is nice functionally. It's the Tokyo Mirage Sessions UI but a little more personalized for SMT, and includes a lot of things that relate it back to Nocturne. I actually like the Press Turn icons- while SMT 3 used rounded dragon-like symbols, SMT IV switched to showing press turns as the pixel art demon icon used historically throughout the SMT series. I think SMT V does something cool by making the Player's side use Press Turn icons that are reminiscent of Nocturne, but making the Enemy's side use the pixel art demon Press Turn icons.

P4 arena og is one of the greates main menues of all time next lost planet. Shit is so majestic i stare at for minutes on end.

Video starts at 4:21

I ain't gonna lie. I REALLY hate P4 because the UI. The color yellow is EXTREMELY agressive to my eyes for some reasons and it just is EVERYWHERE. While the RED of P5 while heavyly dominant is always tainted with black that help create a constrat.

Video video starts at 16:15

I mean Persona 3 on the PS2 was meant to be played on a CRT. The text boxes were not blurry until people played it on HD LCDs

Normally I’d agree with the critique on SMTV and the genericness about it, but I honestly didn’t mind the UI choices. It was simplified and easy to navigate, plus it didn’t clash with the art direction. There’s so many games I’ve seen use Times New Roman as a font or Arial from Microsoft word and it literally made me not want to play the game

Tbh I think the combat menus in smt iv, nocturne and digital devil saga are faster than p5

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax it's definitely my favourite UI I mean just look at it, it oozes coolness

Parsona 3 soundtrack had some banger soundtrack but most of them grew on me while playing whereas persona 4 has amazing list of soundtracks

The style for p5 is godly

Am i only one who thinks that SMT V somewhat reuses UI from Tokyo Mirage Sessions?

Here's one thing about this you seemed to have forgotten is the way the 3 games are represented in the Mementos battle stage in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. I'm sure you are aware of Joker being in Smash and the battle stage he comes with and how the look of the stage changes depending on which track from the Persona series you choose to have in the background. Can you spot the amount of details of all 3 versions? With the Persona 3 version, I do like the clocks, which I wish they would use clocks as one of Persona 3's main UIs like how Persona 4 uses TVs as it's main signature UI, since it doesn't just tie in with the Dark Hour, clocks are actually an association with death, so it would fit the game's theme, though the big center clock has cogs which remind me of Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, and a few of the details feel like it was taken from Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight. Also, one major common thing you saw of the female route in Persona 3 Portable is the main UI color has been switched from blue to pink. You may think it's a traditional boy and girl thing that blue is for boys and pink is for girls. That's the mainstream tradition, but there's actually a lot more meaning behind the color pink as well as blue. Persona 3's blue represents calmness, dreams and peace, as well as ice cold and sadness. The color pink commonly represents femineity, but it also represents passion, friendship, love and acceptance. More importantly, in Japan, the color pink is often associated with cherry blossoms, which cherry blossoms represents birth, life, mortality, death and rebirth. Cherry blossoms are commonly seen in Persona 3, not as much as elements from the Dark Hour and gun elements, but they're there, like the ending of FES when spring arrives, we see cherry blossom petals flying in the wind and in Portable, the New Game+ save file features cherry blossoms to show that it's a New Game+ save file.

honestly p3 fes kinda has some of the worst UI design I've ever seen, and when I say that I'm not talking about the look but the functionality. It's the only game I can think of where you can open a skill menu outside of battle and not even be able to check what the skills can actually do, not to mention needing to talk to your party members to equip them and also pull up the same nearly useless skill menu. id probably be even more upset with it if it weren't for the fact that I knew what most skills did already from other smt games but jesus how do they fuck up a skill menu, the core aspect of battle in an RPG then release fes and still not fix it. I'd take a cluttered mess over a clean UI not doing its job anyday.

did you on purpose "start the video" at 4:20?....

Video ends at 4:12 when he stops talking about mainline.

funny you upload this in the middle of me recording footage for a school video critiquing persona 4 ui. Sure, it looks pretty nice, but it has some minor usability issues. For example, the skill menu was clearly ported directly over from persona 3, but it has almost no point now since you can actually check skill descriptions while viewing a persona's stats. The other use this menu has is healing outside of battle, but even this isn't perfect either because skills like recarm are still prioritized to the top of the list, despite being unusable outside of battle. Furthermore, even skills like mind charge are bafflingly at the top of the list as well despite obviously not being usable outside of battle. Additionally, the item menu is just one simple list of everything you own. Even though you will probably end up with tons of extra quest items, gimmicky useless consumables, books, key items, etc in this menu. At least they give different icons and let you skip through different categories, but things like healing items and quest items are weirdly grouped together, and the skip section button is really unsatisfying and odd to use. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's just not good. They should have just made it so that items are actually sorted into separate menus and you could press left or right to navigate through them. There are some other minor complaints I have with persona 4 ui, but i think it's clear that they are pretty much just nitpicks. Also worth noting, every issue I have with persona 4 ui was completely fixed in persona 5, which is awesome.

Ayo nitrorad?

uuugghh bubbletea you are so based when you arent talking about innocent sin

Why does digital devil saga look like FFX?

"it looks plain and boring" True aaaaaaaaaaaand... Yeah, that's pretty true. That's true and- yeah that's true. That's true. That's true- That's pretty true. That's pretty true, I mean- inhales ... That's true. Yeah. That's true. Uhm- That's true. That's fuckin' true. Uhm... That's how it is dude.

cr tv lol A lot of persona 4 visual are based around like fuzzy effects which translate horrible to video, unlike persona 5 visuals. Also it's menu's are really slow. Btw i like the look of the original a lot more, than goldens, but that looks even worse on video, with more static elements. Also playing persona 4 on a crt is just really a way better experience with the whole theming, also the whole you can reach into it comes across way more on a tube tv, as it has some depth to it. Part of why i praise p5 so much isn't just it's visuals, but it's usage it's one of a only a few rpg's that make good use of all the buttons on the controller, it allows for early inputs, in things like all out attacks, shop menus, etc. Those things the gameplay parts are what i adore persona 5's ui for. Style you can find in many rpgs, but style combined with good menu driving gameplay is a rarity. The worst part is, quite a few snes turn based rpgs made use of at least the 4 face buttons. Combine that with how persona 3 forces you to learn to use tactics and its's asigne all button, p3 feels somehow more fluid to play. And ofc awesome style doesn't help a way to easy game, such as p4, especially p4g, like if the combat is boring all the style doesn't matter, espically if it's slow and boring, persona 3 while very slow was at least interesting and one had to be way more on their guard. (Especially in the orignal ps2 release (which is the only version i own cause fes costs like 130 bugs)) Btw also im biased against p4, as it was the second smt game i've ever played and it turned me away for a good 6 years till some friends forced me to play p5.