Persona 5 Royal Review (PS5)

Persona 5 received so many awards that this alone is asking for a playthrough if JRPG is among your favorite gaming genres. Persona 5 Royal just makes the recommendation to play the game an absolute must. For those who played and finished Personal 5, or even got the platinum, Persona 5 Royal is still a fun ride thanks to the additions implemented by Atlus.

First off, there’s a new character, Kasumi, which you can recruit as a party member. More importantly, Atlus added a new school semester, expanding the story alongside a new Palace. Also, a bunch of new events (characters scenes, holidays), new Personas, new enemies, new weapons, accessories and armor have been added too.

But the most important thing is that you’ll now be getting two new story endings, depending on the choices you made throughout the game and whether or not you managed to befriend specific characters by the time the “point of no return” date arrives.

For those unfamiliar, Persona 5 Royal is the story of a group of high school students who manage to harness Personas, physical manifestations of their inner psyche, and try to right some wrongs in their lives.

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These “wrongs” take the form of “Palaces,” buildings formed by people with corrupted enough desires in the so-called “Metaverse” (not that Metaverse, mind you). The latter is some sort of supernatural realm consisting of physical manifestations of humanity’s subconscious desires.

Although Persona 5 Royal features a wide range of characters, you actually play as Joker, the leader of a vigilante group known as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, who change the hearts of malevolent people by stealing the treasure from their Palaces.

The story is told through what appear to be flashbacks and it will take some time and a massive twist to actually reach the point where everything happens “live.” Even though Persona 5 Royal’s gameplay formula might seem pretty complicated, it can be very well reduced to spend time bonding with friends, conquer Palace, visit Mementos, rinse and repeat.

Simplifying Persona 5 Royal’s gameplay loop doesn’t make it justice though. This is a game that you’ll be easily spending 100 hours, regardless of whether you plan to get all the achievements or the “true ending.”

The most appealing part of the game is by far the Personas and the way you combine them for the best results. Personas are manifestations of the main characters’ inner psyche and used mainly for special attacks. However, you’re not tied to certain Personas since you can gain new ones from battle through successful negotiations.

More importantly, you can even create completely new Personas by “fusing” Personas that you already own. The Personas used in the processes are killed, but the resulting Persona can inherit some of the powers of the ones lost. It’s a complex process that you’ll spend a lot of time with trying to find the right Persona for a specific fight.

To add even more complexity to the fusing system, all Personas are tied linked to Confidants, which are basically character relationships that the main protagonist can develop with party members and other NPCs in the game. It’s basically a more evolved version of the Social Link system from Persona 3 and Persona 4.

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How powerful Personas resulting from fusion are depends on how advanced its associated Confidant link is. Also, the more powers a Persona has, the more are passed on to the fused Persona, so there’s a lot to take into consideration before sacrificing Personas.

Persona 5 Royal features a day-night cycle and weather systems that influence social interaction, as well as allow players to perform various activities. Alongside the normal school life, Joker and his friends are adventuring into the Metaverse fighting so-called Shadows and trying to change the hearts of bad people. Although it might not look that way, the part where Joker is going to school, bonds with his friends, or even takes on part-time jobs, is just as important and the dungeon crawling part.

Running errands, solving puzzles, answering correctly to the multiple quizzes you get during class, exercising or performing other secondary activities in the game will improve not just Joker’s relationship with other characters, but also raise his attributes, which in turn will grant passive buffing effects during battle and open up social interactions with other characters.

The game is split into school semesters, each sprinkled with scripted and random events. This means that you’ll have a limited time to finish Palaces and bond with other party members during school life. It’s a balance that you’ll have to learn to adjust if you’re going for the true ending. Going into a Palace early into a semester and actually finishing it will leave you with a lot of time for socializing and increasing your attributes. On the other hand, you’ll have a harder time if your Personas and characters aren’t around the same level as the enemies in the Palace.

And then there’s Mementos, a multi-layered, randomly-generated dungeon full of Shadows, physical manifestations of suppressed psyches that take the shape of mythological and religious figures. This is where you’re going to head to fulfill various requests from NPCs received from Confidant links. It’s a great way to increase your stats and level up your Personas and characters, but you’ll also need it for the true ending, so don’t neglect this part of the game.

The swing between the daily, social life of a high school student and dungeon crawling in a fantasy world is what makes Persona 5 Royal gameplay loop so addictive. Add to that a very compelling story and you have the recipe for success.

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The Good

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Conclusion