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Jul 17, 2018 · Do you agree with Persona's 4-star rating? Check out what 9,688 people have written so far, and share your own experience.
- The past and future king of JRPGs steals our hearts again.
- Original Persona 5 Verdict
- Have You Played Persona 5?
- Who Is Your Favorite Phantom Thief?
- Every Modern IGN 10/10 and Where to Play Them
- Who in Your Life Would You Most Like to See Receive a Change of Heart From The Phantom Thieves?
- Verdict
By Leana Hafer
Updated: Feb 8, 2022 12:07 am
Posted: Mar 31, 2020 9:57 pm
Persona 5 Royal is a living master class in how to take an already amazing game and amp it up to the next level. It’s not just a standard “game of the year” edition with some extra content thrown in on the side. Just about everything in Atlus’ 2016 (2017 in the US) JRPG magnum opus has been honed, polished, and expanded in some meaningful and positive way. Across more than 130 hours of adventuring through urban Tokyo and the surreal realms of the human mind, the amount of love and attention to detail hiding around each old and new twist in the story left me in awe.
Persona 5 is a massive, gorgeous JRPG with well over 100 hours of gameplay for completionists. With more to do than ever and the series’ strongest story to date, it stands out as an extraordinary, memorable experience and easily one of the deepest JRPGs of the last decade. Its sprawling dungeon design and stylish, fully realized world are an absolu...
Yes, and I beat it!
I've played it but haven't finished
No
As someone who’s played through the original version of Persona 5 twice, the most immediately noticeable and impactful of Royal’s changes come in the realm of combat. It’s hard to keep old-school, four-person, turn-based battles interesting in this day and age, but nobody in the business does it better than Atlus. In addition to some spot-on rebalancing of abilities and enemies across the board, the role guns play in your arsenal has been totally reimagined. Bullets now refresh after each battle instead of only at the beginning of an infiltration, with the trade-off of being able to hold less ammo overall. This feels almost game-breakingly powerful in earlier areas, but as time goes on it allows guns to settle in as a much more versatile and dependable tool rather than something you hoard only for really tough enemies.
The combination of all of these new battle and progression options can make certain areas feel a lot easier than they were in the original version, at least if you’re a Persona 5 veteran. But rest assured, the new and enhanced boss fights still offer a significant challenge even on Normal difficulty. And you may remember our old friend The Reaper, the semi-secret enemy who is supposed to be Joker’s ultimate challenge? In Royal, he’s immune to the Despair debuff, so you can’t kill him the cheesy way by fighting him on specific days. This means taking him down is truly the toughest task available to undertake, and it felt absolutely amazing once I finally pulled it off.
Taking down The Reaper is truly the toughest task available to undertake, and it felt absolutely amazing.The fantastic story has been majorly expanded with a third semester featuring one new palace, a new area in the Mementos mega-dungeon, and a new heart to steal. It’s a bit longer overall than the previous palace story arcs, but not by a lot. And there’s not a whole lot else I can say about the new storyline without risking major spoilers, other than that it pits our team of Phantom Thieves against a really fascinating new antagonist with very, very different goals, motives, and ideals from anyone they’ve faced before. Persona’s deep, thematic exploration of human society and the perils of the psyche continues to ask challenging and relevant questions about justice and suffering that left me rethinking my own convictions – and it’s when a game isn’t afraid to go to those places that it really becomes a work of higher art. It all culminates in an epic, action-drenched, multi-phase boss fight that will put all of your skills to the test and serve as an appropriately climactic capstone to everything that brought you this far.
The third semester is only one part of the expanded story, though. The main campaign has also been significantly beefed up with two new confidants joining the already rich cast: bubbly, aspiring gymnast Kasumi Yoshizawa and calming but dorky school counselor Takuto Maruki. Each has a dauntingly deep, tragic backstory filled with its own impactful twists and turns that were both painful and compelling to uncover. And one of the returning confidants from the original Persona 5 has had their role in the story significantly tweaked and expanded – but I won’t spoil who.
To balance out the extra time it will take to max out your relationships with these new characters, Royal has quite a few new ways to spend your free time optimally, like a random chance to have a dream that gives stat or relationship points every night that you go to bed without doing anything else in the evening. And focusing on fresh faces is really rewarding in palaces, not just outside of them. Kasumi and Maruki can permanently increase your HP and SP, respectively. Kasumi can also give you a new way to use your grappling hook to ambush enemies from a distance and inflict them with harmful status effects, which is pretty game-changing against some tougher groups. One of my only disappointments is that Kasumi can’t join you as a permanent party member until the third semester, but you’ll see quite a lot of her and get to test out her skills a couple of times before then.
The fact that Atlus has made Mementos feel so much more alive is a massive improvement by itself.Aside from the new area that opens up in semester three, the whole of Mementos has been brilliantly fleshed out with new collectibles and unlockables courtesy of the mysterious Jose. He can sell you powerful items in exchange for flowers that spawn in the depths, and unlock perks like increased experience points once you find enough hidden stars. Mementos often felt like a slog in the original version – it was definitely my least favorite part of the adventure. The fact that Atlus has made it feel so much more alive, adding new rewards for exploration and a healthy dose of personality, is a massive improvement by itself considering how much time you spend there. It’s also implemented a mercy-kill rule where you can run straight over monsters that are several levels below you instead of having to fight out a foregone conclusion – but you still get experience, money, and item drops. The amount this cuts down on the feeling of endless grinding is nothing less than a godsend, and I spent much more of the 130 hours of this playthrough doing interesting and engaging things instead.
I could practically fill a TV documentary with the long list of other small and medium-sized improvements found in Persona 5 Royal, but here are a few of my favorites: The Thieves’ Den is a new hangout area that will follow you across multiple playthroughs. Here, you can decorate with statues of personas you’ve unlocked, listen to the absolutely superb new and returning music, and rewatch any cutscene. Those new tracks are just as awesome as the classics, adding variety and fitting in perfectly with the energetic acid jazz that is such a huge and memorable part of Persona 5’s identity. If you were finally getting tired of the catchy “Last Surprise” – and let’s face it, after two playthroughs of the original version it’s hard not to be a little bit over it – there’s even a great new battle theme that plays during ambush encounters. Which is to say, you’ll be hearing it during most battles if you’re playing optimally, relegating Last Surprise to being a welcome, every-once-in-a-while nostalgic treat.
Persona 5 was already a strong front-runner for being the best JRPG ever made, and Royal really gets me wondering what else could even compete. The excellent story and its lovable, multidimensional characters along with the challenging, tactical combat are all refined and back for another round with new surprises and new friends in tow. There are n...
Jan 30, 2024 · With a stellar visual overhaul and countless small but impactful changes, Persona 3 Reload tells a timeless story of tragedy and hope with sharp emotional sincerity. Reviewed on PC. This ...
- Michael Higham
Mar 30, 2020 · Personal 5 Royal, out today on Xbox via Game Pass, Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, and PS5, updates a legendary JRPG with more story, extra characters, and more sensitivity around some of the ...
Mar 29, 2017 · Verdict. Persona 5 is a massive, gorgeous JRPG with well over 100 hours of gameplay for completionists. With more to do than ever and the series’ strongest story to date, it stands out as an ...
Mar 29, 2017 · Teenagers saving the world is a well-worn trope of JRPGs, but the Persona series has always put a unique twist on it by blending fantastical dungeon crawling with mundane real-world obligations.
Jan 17, 2023 · Persona 4 Golden will be released on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Game Pass on Jan. 19. Its setting is a breath of fresh air after Persona 5’s Tokyo.
