Persona 5 Royal (2019)

I enjoyed this game a lot. However, by the trailing end of the main campaign, I was exhausted. It took some willpower to finish the palace of the final boss (the one that is a ship). I enjoyed all the last-minute twists and turns, but for the most part, I think I just felt relief that it was over.

Which is why, when I found out that it was /not/ over, I took a long break. Unfortunately, during this long break I spoiled myself about the plot points of the Royal campaign, and so now I have no willpower whatsoever to finish the game.

Not because of any flaw of the game but because for the most part I play for the story. If I know the story, it is very rare that I will play simply for the gameplay.

So, yeah. I mean, this was my first Persona game, so I am not sure how it compares negatively or positively to the others. I enjoyed very much the social links idea, and the ability to get to know some of the side-characters/the characters in your party more and more as time went on, until all of them were more or less fully realized. The combat itself always tethered somewhere between the trifecta of Challenging, Fun, and Annoying. Most of the time it was probably a chore, but thats just because of the random encounters, which ultimately always squeeze the fun out of any battle system.

Persona 5 is often praised as a landmark JRPG, but for me, it ultimately felt overwhelming rather than impressive. These large-scale Japanese RPGs tend to rely heavily on repetition and extended grinding. That design philosophy has its audience, but it requires a tolerance for long stretches of similar actions and menu-driven progression.

What differentiates Persona 5 is its structure: you play as a high school student balancing everyday teenage life with supernatural conflicts. That framing is distinctive, but it is also something players should be aware of beforehand. I came in expecting a more traditional RPG experience and instead found myself immersed in school routines and adolescent storylines. That tonal shift did not resonate with me.

The scope of the game is undeniably vast. The number of activities, systems, and social interactions available is impressive. However, breadth does not automatically translate into depth. Many of the gameplay loops feel iterative rather than transformative. Even the combat system includes an auto-battle option, which underlines how routine encounters can become.

I played through the first few major story arcs, and while they were solid, they did not deliver the level of narrative revelation that the game’s reputation had led me to expect. I understand why it appeals to many players, but for me, it feels overrated relative to its acclaim.

Played it on PC. I love the dungeons. The social system is nice. Discovering enemy weaknesses is satisfying and the bosses are creative.

So why is it repetitive? Simply because of the dialogue and the actions you do being handed to you. There is some sense of freedom in choosing how to spend the days where I have agency.

However, there is nearly no agency on many of the days with the palaces. I can't go through the randomly generated dungeon because I can. I have to exit partway in to the dungeon. I have to place a calling card before facing the Palace boss. I have to rest before some of the "big days". Much of the same dialogue doesn't help matters.

If you can put up with that, since the former is part of why the game is 100 hours, it's worth the experience. If you can't, feel free to skip this one.

I have conflicted feelings over this game. Truth be told if I played the original release of this game, without the added content, I would have rated this higher. I don't think the added content is bad on it's own. In fact, it does do some interesting things that I do like. It's more it's implication and attenuation of the base game. And the length... man... I really am not a fan of a game that is over one hundred hours... I clocked in at 120ish hours and I engaged with side content very minimally... sure I tried to maximize each "in-game" day, by interacting with characters ect. but even Mementos is technically a mandatory part of the game (not all the requests mind you, but if you already have to go in there you might as well progress character quests and get some rewards). In a lot of ways I see this full package as one big step forward and two small steps back in comparison to Persona 4.

The game is at it's best with it's style. The aesthetics I really don't have much of a criticism over aside from the typical blasé and problematic portrayal of the high school Waifu. Not to forget the portrayal of inappropriate relationships between adults and minors, but that's sadly par for the course with most Japanese media. So I won't focus on that given it's ubiquity within the culture.

The game is vibrant, colorful and expressive. Making looking at the in game menus engaging. There is nothing that feels sterile nor utilitarian. It's bombastic in it's characters, aesthetics, menus and sound. Each palace in game has it's own unique theme, both in terms of its messaging but also in terms of its aesthetics which keep things varied. In fact, the inclusion of the Palaces is one of the biggest improvements from Persona 4. I found these excursion to be way more enjoyable and engaging especially when they basically included the Persona 4 dungeons as Mementos. Which further reinforced to me why I really didn't like that aspect from 4. Procedural generation of content just can't really shine beyond being technically different every time. But so what? It's still boring whether different or not. Fortunately, by having you drive around in a car, it at least speeds up traversal. And if you level up your social link with Ryuji you can eventually instantly kill enemies and not have to bother with random encounters!

I don't personally view each Palace as a masterpiece though. In fact, I felt like they were kind of a mess. Not in terms of design or gameplay but in terms of themes and messaging. First off, most of the Palace bosses are just cartoonishly evil. Making their "redemption" never truly earned. They do shake this up with 3 Palaces (Futaba, Niijima and Maruki. Which honestly are among the better Palaces anyways). I don't mind making the villain unambiguously evil especially with how eccentric they typically make them. It's still highly stylized and fun. Though I do think they started with the most evil character first (the sexually abusing PE teacher) and the remaining baddies are certainly evil but it's hard to feel more evil when starting where they do. Of course some of the Palaces are intentionally not meant to be evil which I think was a good call to shake up the formula. My main issue with the Palaces was how poorly the deadly sins lined up with the character design and metaphor of each Palace. It honestly feels like they designed the Palaces first and then forced the seven deadly sins onto each one.

For example, Greed (Okumura) representation could have easily been the same thing as the Gluttony (Kaneshiro) who was also obsessed with money. The main difference here though is it would make more sense for someone running a restaurant (Okumura), not a mafia, to be labeled with gluttony given it is through consumption and consumerism he has gained power... I also didn't think the metaphor of a fly worked for the crime boss villain. Just didn't mesh with either the gluttony nor the money aspects. A pig would have worked or some other animal that represents greed or gluttony. I suppose there is the piggy mech which was a fun detail but I think that would have been better on the villain.

Some other issues I had was how sloth feels like an extreme stretch for Futuaba. Sure she never leaves her room and lives in a cyber world but she is far from lazy... she taught herself a plethora of hard science subjects making her essentially a genius polymath. Far from someone you would associate with sloth... The casino metaphor also doesn't really support Envy (Niijima's Palace) either. So yeah the metaphor and themes of each Palace really don't make a lot of sense and feel like big stretches. I still liked their design and aesthetics even if they felt more surface level.

Another area this game kind of struggles in is with slow pacing. It takes roughly 10ish hours to complete the tutorial of the game (first palace complete). Part of this is certainly by design. The game is intentionally split between the mundanity and the supernatural. Where you play both a life simulator and a typical high fantasy JRPG. Both aspects of the gameplay don't stand up on their own (in my opinion) but as a whole creates this extremely compelling experience that would be unique if not for the existence of Persona 3 and 4.

With the pacing in mind, I still found this game to be very nostalgic. Not because I had main character energy in high school and was extremely busy all the time with very clingy friends... but still the quotidian aspects of the game made me recall a simpler time of my life. It's simple yet very effective. How you have so many choices thrown at you and only 2 time slots each day. Creating this constant sense of gaining and losing. Do I try to increase a social stat so I can further increase my social link with a character? Or do I just hang out with another available character to progress their link? Or maybe complete some requests in Mementos? O but I'm kinda strapped for cash! Maybe I should work at the flower shop to make some money and gain some kindness XP! It can get overwhelming especially with the constant ticking clock. The game always gives you plenty of time, but the use of time is nonetheless extremely effective and honestly brilliant. It's what acts as the ballast for the entire experience. Sure it's silly. How your character is quite terrible at time management if they can only really manage to do 2 things any given day and how you refuse to hang out with more than 1 friend at a time except in extremely rare cases where you can't improve your social link anyways! To be fair, I have known people like that in real life, but I always find that silly to compartmentalize friend groups. I guess I just don't have enough main character energy to understand!

Side note: Even this game throws shade at salt bae with Muruki (psychologist) at the clean up.

Like most JRPGs, there are plenty of repetitive motifs, beyond the intentional mundane aspects of the game play loop. The worst, in my opinion, is the interrogation that frames the game. The agent mentions she doesn't have a lot of time, then ensues a JRPG that's over 100 hours... I guess time is relative? The pacing and beats for which we cut back to this interrogation is also all over the place. In the first 10 hours of gameplay we will see that detective look with disdain at us while spouting exposition at us... "there's no way you could have got that far without a medical professional! O yeah? What evidence do you have of this?" At first I didn't mind this motif, but after the 10th time for the next new social link I formed I was pretty over it... then, for better or for worse (probably better), this motif becomes extremely sparse as the number of new social links begins to dwindle and slowly get fed to you. It makes these interrogation scenes feel all the more jarring. Not to mention the copy and pasted narrated text for EVERY new social link... the only thing changing being the name of the persona element... it's also kind of a shame how often the game relies on telling you information rather than showing you. For example, hanging out with your friends in the fashion square is only explained to you that you have a good time. Would have been better to show a few snippets of how you bonded with your friends over the day.

The story overall is engaging but it has it's silly moments. Such as the twist that you were completely falsely accused... Truth be told, maybe it's my cultural values, I didn't really hold any disdain for the main character for punching a dude for harassing a woman. Sure it's not legal but defending someone in need is forgivable in my mind. Says a lot about the cultural values loathing someone who defended another person. I don't think assault or violence is ever the right answer, but I did like the moral grayness of it before the plot twist. Doing something technically wrong but for a noble reason makes for an interesting character. But no, your character is unambiguously righteous. Not a surprise since that's also par for the course with this type of story. Just would have been more interesting to have a more complex main character.

My main issue with the plot is the ending with Royal... I actually really liked the ending pre-final Palace. Sure it's your inevitable fight against God, but it was still really well done. And I thought the art direction of the Holy Grail and God of control fight were awesome. It was pretty fucking rad to see a giant trickster demon pull out a massive gun and shoot God in the head. The problem with this type of story is that you really can't out do killing literally God... yet that never stops follow-up stories from trying... the whole point of the ending was to end the metaverse and give a finality to the story... but wait there's more! Turns out you really didn't stop the metaverse and failed! Now here's the new, somehow more powerful foe for you to face! I liked Maruki as a villain and the design of his Palace was a satisfying challenge, but narrative it just kind of sucks given you literally killed God a month before... they really should have changed the order of events. Making Maruki's Palace happen before the fight against God. That way the stakes would have continued to escalate and I think it would have resulted in a more satisfying ending. For me at least. Maybe also cut out half the filler so it's only 60 hours?

The plot has several other silly moments such as:

Makoto is called "the brains" yet her plan to find out the location of the mob boss was the exact opposite of smart. One of the dumbest and most reckless things she could possibly do. If that was Tony Soprano, they 100% would never have left that club and the game would have ended there.

It comes off as a bit silly how Joker refuses to talk about his Prison and the Velvet room. It's really not weirder than the stuff that's happening in the metaverse. I mean a cat turns into a fucking car... I don't think his Prison would be a stretch or jarring for the team. Seems weird to be cagey about this big detail and how it serves as his main impetus for what he's doing.

Game isn't clever with details. For example, in Okumura's Palace there is a robotic arm you need to interact with, yet it's tinkering with literally nothing. Just an endless pit below it instead of a conveyor belt with items it needs to press, ect.

Kind of contrived when they all leave Okumura as the spaceship is self destructing. Only time of all past palaces where they walk away before the shadow disappears. They do it this way so he can die still and cause a major plot development since they want Akechi to do it without them knowing, just a shame they couldn't write it in a way that didn't feel forced or out of character.

Another contradiction is how Makoto knows her sister has a palace yet somehow doesn't know the keywords? How did she find out then?

While I understand why they want to repeat the explanation of the metaverse everytime a new party member joins, I feel like they should have just done this off camera more often... like I don't need to hear the explanation 10 times.

Those negatives out of the way, the character moments were mostly the strength of the game and it's story. Some of my favorite moments would be Yusuke's first art exhibit where his work is heavily criticized and he needs to motivate himself to keep going. Or Sayuri being left in Leblanc is a great moment of reflection that continues until the end of the game. Which helps Yusuke realize he needs to live among people to understand them. I also like how they handled the lighting with the sunlight reflecting off the painting making it glow more after it is hung on the wall.

In general, early characters are well realized and complex with engaging character arcs. Later characters often feel tacked on and half-baked. I honestly found Haru to be lowkey terrifying. I think her eyes and demeanor are meant to convey an innocence from her sheltered upbringing as a daughter of a CEO, but it instead read to me as someone who would stab you remorselessly. Her emotionless droning was just so unsettlingly for me. Sure she's over the top with how nice she is, but that further makes her feel disturbing. Yoshizawa likewise feels halfbaked with her overly emphatic use of senpai! She just doesn't have an interesting personality. To be fair, the changes she goes through with Maruki do elevate her character quite a bit and do explain a lot of the weirdness of her personality. And Maruki I thought made for an interesting antagonist, it's just a shame that I felt his Palace and arc undermine the original ending of the game. So I feel conflicted about his inclusion... kind of wish his Palace happened before the ending of the game.

I realize I didn't really talk about combat. That's because it's your typical turn based JRPG combat. I like the design and art direction of characters and monsters. Those certainly stand out in a great way. But combat isn't anything exceptional. Also the music is good, but man is there not enough of it given the game is 120 hours! You will hear the same few tracks over and over and over and over again. Sure they are good but I would never listen to the same song on repeat for 100 hours. Let alone 1 hour.

I don't regret my time with this game but I wouldn't recommend it to someone given it's absurd length. If it was half the runtime I would have rated this game higher and it would be an easy recommend. 120ish hours is just such a painfully long commitment. I'd rather watch 30 different movies (even if I didn't like half of them). The game is certainly a bargain and if I was back in high school with limited money I would have appreciated having a game that I could spend half a year beating in my free time. Back then time was certainly on my side.

This game is just so freakin' good. So so freakin' good. It's probably going to overtake Chrono Trigger as my favorite JRPG of all time, and I never thought that would happen.

The music in the casino palace, that I'm in right now, is perhaps the best video game music I've ever heard anywhere, and I thought video game music hit it's peak with the Super Nintendo and all the awesome music from games on that console.

Every night, I grab my Switch and my wife looks at me like I'm nuts. I seriously haven't paid much attention to any of the TV shows we watch at night, as I'm enthralled with this world.

I sit here at my desk at work, counting down the hours until I can play again.

What a game.

Some additional thoughts on this game so far:

• I enjoy the story mode a lot. Some of the characters have excellent writing, and all have unique personalities.

• There is so much you can do in this game, but there is a linearity to it that I appreciate.

• GET SP ITEMS. You'll need them.

• The dungeon/battle mode has grown on me. At first I didn't like it much, probably because I got my ass kicked numerous times, haha, but now that I've figured out how to fight, it's a lot better. Still very challenging. One of the harder JRPGs I've probably ever played.

• Two annoyances. Sometimes there are long elements of story mode that you have to go through before you can save. The other thing is some of the anime stereotypes are prominent in some of the writing, that are a little eye roll inducing.

Overall, still a very, very fun game.

game sux 2/10 cant romance yusuke, akechi or sojiro

Okay for real though...this was my very first Persona game. I am now a new fan.

Since Persona 5 Royal is awesome in general I want to focus on the minor complaints I have about this game since I only have three.

The first one is movement: the movement feels off when you try to walk at an angle. I'm not sure if I can explain this properly but movement beyond up, down, left and right was sometimes awkward to pull off. Thankfully movement isn't a huge deal in this game and it never truly hindered my playthrough. I also did not like how changing to certain outfits would also change the battle music whether you wanted it or not. I feel like we should've been able to choose if we wanted to switch themes.

Now the final complaint...before saying what it is I want to make clear I had very little knowledge about the game before playing it. I knew about Joker's awakening and that's about it. The third complaint I have, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that in order to unlock the third semester you must fulfill a certain requirement and the game does not specifically tell you what it is. It does start to recommend you do a certain activity, but I feel like a new player like me is more likely to miss the hint compared to someone who has played the vanilla version in the past, and that's exactly what happened to me. I had no idea that the Councillor and Faith confidants are Royal-exclusive characters, and that maxing Councillor is a must. What's more, maxing Faith and Justice confidants are also required to unlock even more content, not to mention that it's easy to mess up Justice since certain responses must be answered in a specific way. My first playthrough ended in December so I had to play it again to be able to experience the whole game.

And those are all my complaints. Everything else about this game is fantastic. I'm glad this game finally got its Switch port, and I'm glad it was well-received.

I've played the regular persona 5 a little over a year ago and loved it. I got this as a christmas gift and started it in January. Got busy because of moving but finally finished it now!

Narrative

This game is about you, the main character, or Joker. He is from a small town where he got arrested and placed on probation. He has to sit this out in tokyo with a local cafe owner called Sojiro. Soon Joker awakens to his Persona and now with the help of "mascotte" Morgana and friends he finds along the way they want to reform society as the phantom thieves by stealing the hearts of the corruped and criminal.

Gameplay

This is a turn-based combat game/high school simulator. Honestly my favourite part is the high school stuff. You go to school and after you can hang out with friends you made and level up their social link. You have a group of friends that are phantom thieves, and some other support characters you can hang out with. All these support characters give you benefits somehow in battle or otherwise if you befriend them. Leveling up your teammates makes them stronger and gives them several abilities to use in combat. For me this is the fun part, hanging out with them getting to know their stories.

Besides this you find targets to change their hearts. For instance, gross pervert school teachers. These criminals have a "Palace". A cognitive place they rule, which is the physical form of their corruption. You can go there as phantom thieves and use your persona (your inner rebel) to fight enemies there. The goal is to get through this dungeon and steal the palace rulers desires. That way, in real life they change their ways.

The combat is turn based. Not much to say about it. I liked it, but as I said not my favourite part of the game.

Setting

The game takes place in Tokyo. You live in a neighborhood above Sojiro's cafe. During the school time you can hang out in places around Tokyo. The place feels very big, there is lots of places to go. I really liked the look of it as well. Character art is also sturnning. Not much else to say, I love it.

Other

The music. Oh god it's so good. It's one of my favourite game scores ever. I listen to it on spotify all the time, I love it so much.

Conclusion

As you can tell I love this game. It's really hard to explain everything about it because it's so much, and also spoilers. If you like high school simulator/visual novel stuff, getting to know people and getting cool stories. If you also like turn-based combat, you should play this. Even if you don't love turn-based combat you can just put it on super easy and enjoy the story anyway. And the music is so so so good.

The Persona series is one close to my heart, but my relationship with Persona 5 did not start well. I played the original version shortly after its release in 2017, but the game didn’t hook me and I stopped about twenty hours in. I told myself I wanted to get back to it, but I never did, until recently. With the release of Persona 5 Royal, an enhanced and expanded edition of the original game, I decided to give it another go and I’m so glad I did. I think Atlus has done an amazing job evolving the formula in every conceivable way to deliver what I believe to be the best Persona game to date, and one of my favourite turn based JRPGs of all time.

Story

The strength of Persona games has always resided with the story, and this is true of Persona 5 as well (though it’s not Persona 5’s only strength). You play as a high school kid, who is transferred to a new school following a run in with the law. A mysterious encounter with series staple Igor starts the player off on a journey of justice. As part of “The Phantom Thieves” you and your team strive to change the world by inflicting a “change of heart” on adults who misuse their power to control, intimidate, extort, abuse or even kill those who are helpless to defend themselves. The plot is engaging, but is perhaps a little bit of a slow starter and with the trademark Persona undulated pacing. For those who have played Persona games previously, the plot may be a little predictable, but there were still plenty of twists and turns to keep me hooked right to the very end. It’s well written, with engaging villains, emotional highlights and a conclusion that ties it all together perfectly.

The best examples of the writing can be found with the “confidants” - side characters that you meet along your journey. I will start with a caveat, the first few confidants did not interest me - contributing to my abandonment of the game those years ago. I don’t think they’re bad in the context of this game, but they follow the traditional Persona formula that feels a little too familiar. The rest of the confidants are excellent, with my favourites being: Makoto, Futaba, Yusuke, Sojiro, Akechi and the new characters: Yoshizawa and Maruki. The confidant’s stories develop as you spend your time with them, revealing more about their past, feelings regarding other characters and their hopes for the future. The writing is excellent with meaningful character progression, funny dialogue and emotional resonance. As you develop these bonds the story greatly thickens as individual themes are intertwined with the main story themes.

On the topic of themes, it has always been my favourite part of the Persona series, and I feel Persona 5 only improves on this. Whilst the main story has strong themes of anti-corruption, anti-establishment and anti-escapism the underlying tone of the story is really about being true to yourself. Being true to yourself is not a lonely journey however, we are all connected with those around us, and society more broadly and it’s through these connections that we can further our courage to live true to our own values and ideals. Whilst this is not a new concept in the Persona series, the way that the plot interacts with these themes is unique, particularly regarding the societal element. Persona 5 delivers on these themes in a way that will stick with me for a long time.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Persona is split between two main parts: the social sim day to day life and the turn-based dungeon crawling.

The social sim is where you play mini games, hone your social stats, go to school, work part time jobs and traverse the massive setting of Tokyo. Most importantly it is where you develop relationships with your confidants. By spending time and talking with confidants your relationship rank progresses, giving you perks and boosts as well as enriching the story. Social links work a little bit differently here, the introduction of perks you unlock along the way is a great addition and furthers the usefulness and uniqueness of each confidant. Another change is the confidant xp system (?), where selecting ‘correct’ answers/questions quickens your ability to rank up the confidant. I’m torn on this as it encourages you to only select the ‘best’ option rather than you responding to the character as you wish, however it does also encourage you to think more deeply about each character and what response they want to hear according to their personality and context. Overall the social-sim aspect of Persona 5 is excellent, and exceeds the already high bar set by previous games.

On the topic of exceeding bars, Persona 5 absolutely obliterates the bar when it comes to the turn-based dungeon crawling. Typically this part of Persona games serves as a roadblock to the much more interesting social sim aspect - this is not the case here. Persona 5 features unique and individually designed dungeons and enemies, that keeps each dungeon engaging and fun. I loved exploring each dungeon looking for treasures and secrets. Stealth is expanded upon here with hiding spots and alert levels, which takes a bit of getting used to. Whilst the final bosses of each dungeon are great, I would’ve liked to see more unique mini bosses along the way. Dungeons are also fairly short, which is a positive as no dungeon out stays its welcome. There is also ‘Mementos’, which is a seemingly endless dungeon that persists through the whole game, and is more similar to previous games.

Regarding the combat there are a lot of changes here, more than I can properly discuss. This was another aspect that put me off the game initially, as it’s so different to previous games. There are many more elements to exploit here, including the introduction of the gun system. Confidant perks, baton pass and technicals are also a very welcome addition, providing fun and unique boosts to combat abilities and furthering the overlap between the social sim and combat parts of the game. I’m not sold on the ability to talk to shadows, and found this quite frustrating at times. I’m very fond of the ability to automatically defeat lower level enemies without having to enter combat - this helps a lot in ‘Mementos’ and protects against the combat feeling like a chore. Overall combat is a lot more varied and engaging here, and never gets too tedious or repetitive, a common problem in previous games.

Presentation

Seemingly the most talked about aspect of Persona 5 is the style, and for good reason. The game features a stylish red and black noir-like theme throughout the environments and interface. Regarding the interface I will say this game is better suited to larger displays, as on smaller displays the stylised menus and fonts can feel cluttered and confusing (another reason I stopped playing originally). The game has very slick (and fast) loading transitions making it a joy to traverse the city and dungeons.

Characters are fairly well designed, though limited facial animations does stand out here. The enemies and personas have excellent and unique styles, which is impressive given how many there are. I love the design and detail of Tokyo, which feels like a sprawling and bustling city with lots of NPCs populating the streets. Dungeons are also uniquely designed with their own aesthetics. The cutscenes are fairly well done, with a mix of in-game cinematics and animated FMVs.

Perhaps the best part of Persona 5’s aesthetic is the music. Persona 5 forgoes the hip-hop influenced sounds of Persona 4 with a classy and smooth jazz/lounge inspired soundtrack whilst the dungeons feature the series’ usual dramatic tracks and incredible boss music. The Persona 5 OST is amazing, but I wish Atlus would release a more curated album rather than the 100+ track behemoth - in the meantime there are amazing mixes on YouTube which I have been listening to a lot whilst “Beneath the Mask” has earned a place as one of my most beloved background tracks. Choice of Japanese and English VO here, I chose English this time and was mostly impressed with the performances.

I finally got to play my first Persona game and I'm so glad I got to do it by taking my time with it. This game is fantastic! At this point, there is not much I need say to praise it, since it has been beloved enough ever since its vanilla release, back in 2016, but I'll say a few things.

This is probably the most stylish game I've ever played. From the menus, to story presentation, characters, personas and the entire combat system - Everything oozes style! It seems complicated at first, but you'll easily fall in love with how the game looks, sounds and plays with ease as you move forward. Although this is a traditional turn-based RPG, I just love how it tries its best to make EVERYTHING different! Battles are fast-paced and energetic, bosses are epic, story is heavy but light to absorb, the way you handle traditional mechanics on a JRPG (like HP, MP, items and etc) are completely different here and that's all due to the INCREDIBLE amount of depth that the system has. Fusing and hunting Personas always gives you something new and also a sense of progression that pays off when you battle (or outside of battles too). It's an incredible system that blends very well with the rest of the overall tone. Outside from palaces, fights and personas, there's an entire "real life simulation" that works very well. Nothing feels like a chore here and every side or main character tells an interesting story. It all just matters in the end! When the game says "Take your time" during load screens, they actually mean it, because managing it and experiencing the perks you get from it, is more than half of the game. Also, the soundtrack is superb. Every single song. Haven't felt like that with a soundtrack since Zelda BOTW.

My complaints that prevents this game from getting a perfect 10 lies in how overwhelmingly huge it can be - and unnecessarily so! TOO many tutorials, TOO many systems, conversations, mechanics, things to remember, things to do, Personas to acquire, confidants, statuses, items... It's all TOO MUCH! You will NOT experience all you can from only one playthrough, but playing 145 hours of it AGAIN won't come cheap and won't come soon. I love the amount of content and uniqueness in Royal, but it can feel very bloated, at times. Specially with so many missable things going on. Despite loving the story and characters, sometimes I felt that the writing and pacing was inconsistent and a tad repetitive. Nothing that broke my immersion from it, but it bothered me a little. Bosses were good, but not all of them. There were some great ones, but most felt very gimmicky. And what's up with Futaba?? She's a GREAT character, but seldom useful in fights! Why not just make her a regular character???

Persona 5 is one of the most special and modern JRPGs ever. It packs an impactful story, with a meaningful and beautiful message, boxed inside a myriad of addictive gameplay mechanics and systems. It feels like a glorified visual novel and RPG hybrid. It works perfectly and it deserves your attention. And well, even if you don't have the time to play this behemoth, just give the OST a try, ok?

Take your time.