I'm normally not a fan of turn-based combat but I had an absolute blast with the stylized combat in P5. There wasn't a time I didn't enjoy an enemy encounter. Even years later the combat is the best this game has to offer. As for the plot and the whole social sim thing? Well, on my first playthrough (vanilla) I was hooked from start to finish and I actually enjoyed some of the plot twists. P5 was the most fun I had with a jrpg years ago. But now on my second playthrough (royal) everything was just dragging on way too much. It felt like a chore to play through. Knowing what came next and how long it would take to get to particular scenes took the fun out of the second playthrough for me and I had to struggle through it for most of the time.

But what really bothered me this time around was the Protagonist and the illusion of choice the game offered us. Why bother giving us several choices if most of them are the same? I guess I didn't care all that much years ago but now it's just annoying. Same with the random fanservice scenes. They're just coming out of nowhere. Seriously, they're unnecessary and ruined scenes for me.

Annoying aspects aside, I have to admit that I really enjoyed the third semester. Maruki was an interesting addition to P5. I also enjoyed Akechi's role in this and liked his ruthless personality that could shine through.

P5 is still a good game and the expanded story content + quality of life improvements were great. But were they enough to warrant a second playthrough from me? Sadly not. But thanks to Royal, I now know that I have to patiently wait until the next Persona game will get its second release with expanded content until I'll play it. Because playing the same Persona game more than once is just not for me.