What isn't there to say about this game that already hasn't been said? It's a masterpiece, an almost flawless piece of fiction.

Story

The story is pretty spectacular from start to finish, it starts off with one of the best arcs in the game with Kamoshida. The starting characters of Ryujji, Ann and Morgona get you immediately invested in the story. These characters feel real in their motivations and goals, and feel very distinct and unique in their personalities. The same is true for the rest of the cast, each character is really well written. Some characters dont shine as well in the main story like Haru due to lack of screentime and importance in the story besides one arc, but this is where the social links come in to flesh out the characters. So either way, each cast member gets the attention they deserve.

The villains are pretty good, most aren't the deepest characters in the world but they get the job done. I was a little dissapointed by Shido though, he felt a tad forgettable, however this is only a minor flaw. The third semester villain trumps all of the villains for me due to his complex motivations and ideology, it's great because he's not a bad person, he just has a different perspective to the thieves. This makes him very sympathetic in the game, definitely one of my favourite villains in fiction.

There is only a couple of sore spots in the story for me, like the dreaded Morgona arc where he leaves because he thinks he is useless. This felt very contrived to me and forced since it's extremely clear from start to finish he isn't useless, and his reasoning for feeling useless is frankly idiotic, and Morgona gets overly angry in a short time span too, it went from 0 to 100 way too quickly. Ryujjis treatment of him didn't help for me either. The only other sore spots in the story is Shido as the big bad and some very minor scenes that feel very off to me, like the scene where they leave Shidos palace and everyone thinks Ryuji is dead, and they play it off as a weird gag right after. These weird tone shifts are rare though and thats the only occasion where it's really a problem.

Presentation

The music... 10/10. You don't need a review on the music. It's spectacular, one of the best soundtracks in gaming. The graphics? Despite being based off a PS3 game, it's still a looker. The art style is clean, quite a lot of detail but still very "anime". The animated cutscenes can sometimes look a little "cheap"? However the in game cutscenes look amazing, like when Ann almost kills Kamoshida. Shit is excellent looking.

Gameplay

Like the previous two Persona games, the gameplay is split into dungeon crawling and daily life gameplay. Daily life gameplay involves you spending time with your friends by levelling up their social link rank, this is the most important thing. All the other social gameplay revolves around this, like social stats like "Knowledge" or "Guts". That's important since social links can have barriers to entry if lets say your "Guts" wasn't high enough. You can level up social stats by doing various activities of your choosing So the daily life gameplay involves managing your time so you can max out as many social links as possible. There is a lot of strategy in spending your time, if you are good enough (and abuse Chihaya's ability enough) you can max out everyone. The social gameplay is really well done too since doing these links effect dungeon gameplay, like making you gain more EXP when fusing Personas of the same arcana, or confidant abilities that give you more options. However, I wish these abilities were optional in some cases when you get them, I will explain why later.

Dungeon gameplay is the other half. This involves exploring palaces and Mementos with shadows dotted around the place. Palaces are awesome, unlike previous Persona games, they are properly designed areas with puzzles, exploration and layouts. All of the palaces are well designed layout wise and puzzle wise mostly, there are some annoying puzzles like the air lock puzzles but these are inoffensive. There are also will seeds which are collectables that when you gather three of them, you get a very useful accessory. Adds a bigger reason to explore palaces more so I appreciate that. They also restore your SP, I don't like this because it makes SP management a bit too easy, luckily, I collect will seeds on the day of infiltration so it's not an issue for me. Mementos is like the previous games with randomly geneated floor layouts, this was terrible in vanilla Persona 5, but thanks to the stamps collecting and new music it's way better. Battling is amazing turn based combat. Striking weaknesses is very important just like the other Persona games for a "One more", but you also have technicals and baton pass which add another layer to gameplay. However, recently I've been feeling mixed on baton passing. For boss fights, I love baton passes because they allow for a lot of strategy within the boss fights, and bosses are hard and challenging, they feel well designed around baton pass. However, for enemy encounters, I don't think I like them. Because to me, it feels a bit too easy to knock down all the enemies with baton passing, it's a bit too versatile and makes enemy encounters feel too linear? With baton passing, you can make it so enemies barely get the chance to act, especially if you ambush them. I would call this is a criticism, but I can do something called "Just dont use baton pass lol", so really, it's nice it's an option for people who do like it. So yeah, the battle system is amazing, the best turn based combat ever. However, there is one fatal flaw with this game, perhaps the biggest in this game that holds back the battling for me.

The biggest flaw of this game

Whats this big flaw? Well, you may have noticed that I have restricted myself in a lot of ways in this playthrough in an attempt to make it harder. Like not collecting will seeds, not using baton pass, and I even don't use SP items too. I don't see these as flaws since I can easily just not use them and players who want to use them can do so. However, remember the confidant abilities? Well I want to max them all out because it gives purpose to the social gameplay, most confidant abilities are well balanced. However, there is one I do not like. Mishima's. When levelled up, Mishima gives the ability to increase XP you earn by a lot. Why is this an issue though? Less grinding right? Well true, but what if you like the battle system though? Mishima's social link maxed out makes it so only a couple of battles can make enemies a joke around you. Thus this makes battling repetitive and linear since enemies are no longer a threat, you don't have to be strategic as much, this with Ryujjis insta kill ability makes it so you can automatically get XP without even battling. For some people, they love this, it makes it so they do less battling and want to finish the palace quicker and get to the story. But for me, who wants to battle more, for me who wants to manage SP management and resources more often, Mishima removes that. This is why I feel confidant abilities should be toggleable. Despite this, I still really love the gameplay, in future playthroughs I will avoid doing Mishima's social link since before I didn't know he could negatively impact the playthrough this much.

Royal additions

Since this is basically a definitive edition over the original Persona 5, would I say the new additions are worth it? Yes. 1000%. There are so many good additions, it changes palace layouts, adds will seeds, adds technicals and changes up boss fights in the gameplay department. I love these additions, it makes the gameplay so much better over vanilla, it's like an improved remix. Story wise this has added a lot too. Kasumi is an excellent addition to the game, her struggle for identity and moving on from the past really hits hard. Her social link is one of the best in the game. The villain as I said is amazing for so many reasons. And then there is Akechi... To be frank, he SUCKED in vanilla. Here, they really fleshed him out as a person both in the base game with his brand new social link and his use in the third semester. Akechi is incredible in this game, certainly one of the best characters in this game.

Conclusion

Despite the difficulty complaint and some minor complaints, this is indeed perhaps my favourite game of all time. After this, I am planning to replay Persona 4 Golden too, this is to decide which game takes hold as my top 1 game. This has already shot past Danganronpa V3 and retook it's place as my top 1, now it's up to P4G on whether it can surpass this game or not. Overall, Atlus, you have created one of the best pieces of fiction in existence, I applaud you.

10/10