Song of the Week! 12 April 2025

 

Often times, version-exclusives might be looking cool!

Last Surprise Persona 5
       「ペルソナ５」より

Game	Genre
DF		★3 68	★4 116	★5 206	★8 354	-

123
p5last (Persona 5 Last Surprise)


Atlus's Persona series managed to get a second Taiko no Tatsujin outing across the year since the launch of Donderful/Rhythm Festival... as another launch song, for the rerelease of the exact same title! More specifically, here we have one of the three exclusives for the later-released PC/PS5/xBox Series X version optimized for 120FPS play, and one of two overall-debuts for the series alongside the Monster Hunter World Medley.

Featured in the original game as the normal battle theme for all regular encounters, Last Surprise was brought us by the same ensemble behind the previously-on-Taiko Life Will Change: Shoji Meguro (目黒将司) as the composer, Lyn Inaizumi (稲泉りん) as the singer and kite-flyer-during-storms-professional the nicknamed Benjamin Franklin as the lyricist. In the enhanced rerelease Persona 5 Royal, the song has been replaced by player-launched ambush battles by the song Take Over, while the original track itself isn't shy of appearing in other Atlus works, even outside the Persona/Megami Tensei series like with last year's Metaohor: ReFantazio. Even retroactively being added to earlier main-number entries (via a DLC scenario for Persona 3 Reload) isn't a task too daunting for it! Remixes of Last Surprise in P5 spinoff works don't lack either, from a 'Scramble' version in Persona 5 Scramble to a couple of remixes from the rhythm game entry Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight -respectively from Taku Takahashi and Jazztronik- to even "New Year's" and "spring"-styled remixes, hailing instead from Persona 5: The Phantom X, ... its gacha entry. (See? The game doesn't only kill gachas, it's also able to chrn them out itself!)

Save for Muzukashii, Last Surprise's star ratings for all modes perfectly match the ones of the formerly-released Life Will Change, with the former's Oni difficulty degree tilting towards the easier side of the 8* spectrum due to more stanza repetitions and its shorter length by comparison.