 Recently, we finally caught up with gaming in the futuristic year of 2013, and finally got a PlayStation 4. There's something for all of us on this console. Baby Gamer has been enjoying a game called Beyond Eyes, in which a little girl wanders through a watercolour world in search of a cat. It's bright and calm and it has a cat in it, so what's not to like? We're not quite sure she's ready for Monster Hunter World just yet, but if that game was all Chef Cats, she'd love it. I've been playing Firewatch, which in practice means constantly getting stuck in bushes and bumping into trees, all the while feeling like I might jump out of my skin every time atmospheric music starts playing. For a walking simulator, this game is pretty tense. Meanwhile, Kotor's been playing Persona 5, and completing our trio's experiences of playing very casual, mundane games, he's been having a blast doing his homework and studying for exams. He's just a big nerd. Persona 5 is a weird mishmash of two different gameplay styles. Part of the time, there's a lot of dungeon-crawling, monster-hunting RPG fun that makes the game feel like Pokemon for teenagers. The rest of the time, though, the game is a fairly accurate simulation of life as a student in a big metropolitan city. When we first started dating, Kotor was living in Hong Kong, where he was a student at university. This is a big part of the reason why wandering around in the game appealed to him so much. So how does Persona 5 make cramming for exams just as much fun, if not more entertaining, than monster-hunting? The game actually employs a few sneaky tricks to get you to really care about progressing through the mundane aspects of its gameplay. The game actually employs a few sneaky tricks to get you to really care about progressing through the mundane aspects of its gameplay. The most important element of this, at least at first, is the fact that the game rewards you with immediate experience points for doing anything. Whether you're reading a book on the subway, doing a crossword puzzle, or watching a DVD in your bedroom, you're always gaining points. There's something intrinsically satisfying about seeing numbers slowly rise within a video game. We all enjoy seeing our numbers increase, so when we sit down in a virtual scenario to revise for an exam, and at the end, we're told that our knowledge has risen, we feel good about our use of time. Many games teach players by praising our effort rather than our success. We're repeatedly rewarded for experience points, items, or the satisfaction of completing a level, not just for winning, but for pushing through a hard challenge and learning to solve the puzzle. This is how Persona 5 tricks the player into enjoying something as simple as watching their character read a book. We know that because we've put in some effort to improve ourselves, the game will reward us in ways that are immediately obvious through a boost in personal character stats. Of course, it helps that the game doesn't spend too long on any single activity. Players go by in mere seconds of real time, and a short cutscene of the player studiously scratching away in an exercise book is a lot more tolerable than actually having to manually sit through the specifics of doing homework. This leads to the second smart way that Persona 5 convinces its players to get engaged with mundane activities. The passage of time is carefully regulated. It's made very clear throughout the game that the player has very little free time. All takes up a lot of the day, and while this is generally skipped past entirely, save for a scene or two of students in class, there's only two time slots available per day for activities. Despite this limitation, the game gives the player the choice of how they'll spend their time. There are too many different activities that need doing, the player to be able to do everything, so the player is forced to choose for themselves what they're going to prioritise. Are you going to spend time with your friends, or go work your part time job? Will you spend an evening forcing your way through a burger eating challenge, or are you better off prepping for your next exam? This is the meat of the game. The challenge comes not from actually achieving any of the tasks, but rather managing your time so that you're as productive as possible. If you make the decision to study yourself, you feel a sense of satisfaction at having demonstrated autonomy. The game has given you limited options, but as you pick the one you think is best, even if it means spending an evening reading school books instead of having fun, there's a satisfaction to knowing that you've made a wise decision. Or perhaps, this all just appeals to the part of Kotor's personality that would see him spend his evenings revising, when other, more well-rounded students, are busy jumping into the ocean on a dare. Overall, the really compelling part of Persona 5 is the fact that, with so many parts of student life simulated in short vignettes, the player can truly role-play in a way that's not often possible in more fantastical role-playing games. As much fun as RPGs might be, there's always a certain amount of disconnect between the player's own personality and that of their character. Very few of us have experience of waving around the wand of gamelon to defeat Agent Evil. And so, when fantasy games try to get you to invest in the game's protagonist, there's going to be a bit of disconnect, or is that just me? Even in story-rich games that let you choose your path, like Mass Effect, you're still just playing a predefined character, rather than being able to feel like you truly are the hero of the story. This is why so many game protagonists are silent. It gives players the opportunity to project their own emotions onto their character. Like Shell from Portal, woohoo! Persona 5 goes one step further by giving the player the opportunity to choose from real world options when they're not swinging magic swords, or calling up their off-brand Pokémon to help steal treasure within enemy mind palaces. When Kotal stops playing the game and describes his actions, they don't sound like stories from a computer game. My friends and I went to a fancy rich buffet and we ate until we puked, he'll say. I got a job working at the Beef Bowl restaurant and I had to do my whole first shift without any other employees on hand. I managed to get a seat on the train, so I read a book about Zoro, or Kotal's personal favourite experience. I finally got permission from my guardian to go out at night, so I hopped on the subway, got off in the big city, and wandered around amid the neon lights and the crowds, listening to music, and soaking in the atmosphere. It was just like back when we were first dating, Kotal says, and while I was waiting for you to be free to Skype, I'd head out into Mong Kok and just breathe in the city. It's hard to escape the beauty of that nostalgia. Maybe that's the real reason why Kotal is having so much fun with this game. It reminds him of life in the big city, of the first flushes of romance, and of spending time with friends while studying exciting, interesting subjects at university. Sure, Persona 5 isn't perfect. Its dialogue options feel like making random choices and hoping for the best, and there's so much going on that it takes ten hours to get through the tutorial. Somewhere in here though is one of the richest, most believable role-playing experiences that's possible in video games. What's more, it focuses on the mundane triviality of everyday student life without the game feeling like a chore, and that, in and of itself, is worth celebrating.