Persona 5 Royal was a very enjoyable experience that slightly overstayed its welcome nearing the end of the 100 hour experience.
The clear highlight of the game is the visual presentation. UI, HUD, and art style can be described as a street graffiti version of the comic book page art style that exudes confidence. While it can be distracting at times, especially during certain palace sections or during menu transitions, overall I'd say it was a worthwhile tradeoff.
Music is consistently great across the whole game, with many tracks taking a focus on jazz, trance, or melodic rock. I will say I did get sick of the beneath the mask for the 800th time by the end of the game, and it was also a shame that last surprise was not the ambush theme, considering 90% of normal encounters will be ambushes, I barely got to hear it.
Gameplay is simple party focused turn based combat with spells and attacks like any other JRPG. What sets it apart is the baton pass system which really freshened up an otherwise tired combat format. All out attacks also provided a flashy way to finish off enemies, and I enjoyed the custom finishers that each character had.
In my opinion, the story was quite consistent throughout the game, but I'd lean towards consistently average for the entirety of the base game. Royal was definitely the highlight in terms of story, but Futaba and Yusuke's storylines also stood out to me among the others.
I think what Persona 5 does the best is its gameplay loop. Essentially you do the same thing for 60 hours of the game, and they managed to keep it decently engaging for more than half of that time, which is not easy to do. The act of recruiting new members into the party through story was also done in a way that didn't feel forced or repetitive and had a uniqueness to each budding companionship story.
My biggest issue with the game is that the world just feels like Joker's world. I would have liked to see further changes on the world due to the events of the story other than text bubbles. For example, it would have been interesting to see Big Bang Burger get closed down after Haru's storyline. Another issue was the romance in the game. It seemed like a total after thought by the developers, because who you choose to romance means virtually nothing in the game. You get only a handful of short unique scenes with the character, and story scenes are unchanged. It really doesn't make sense why it is even included in the first place.
Overall, Persona 5 Royal is a sharp and polished JRPG experience that wears its heart on its sleeve and preys on your school life nostalgia.
The clear highlight of the game is the visual presentation. UI, HUD, and art style can be described as a street graffiti version of the comic book page art style that exudes confidence. While it can be distracting at times, especially during certain palace sections or during menu transitions, overall I'd say it was a worthwhile tradeoff.
Music is consistently great across the whole game, with many tracks taking a focus on jazz, trance, or melodic rock. I will say I did get sick of the beneath the mask for the 800th time by the end of the game, and it was also a shame that last surprise was not the ambush theme, considering 90% of normal encounters will be ambushes, I barely got to hear it.
Gameplay is simple party focused turn based combat with spells and attacks like any other JRPG. What sets it apart is the baton pass system which really freshened up an otherwise tired combat format. All out attacks also provided a flashy way to finish off enemies, and I enjoyed the custom finishers that each character had.
In my opinion, the story was quite consistent throughout the game, but I'd lean towards consistently average for the entirety of the base game. Royal was definitely the highlight in terms of story, but Futaba and Yusuke's storylines also stood out to me among the others.
I think what Persona 5 does the best is its gameplay loop. Essentially you do the same thing for 60 hours of the game, and they managed to keep it decently engaging for more than half of that time, which is not easy to do. The act of recruiting new members into the party through story was also done in a way that didn't feel forced or repetitive and had a uniqueness to each budding companionship story.
My biggest issue with the game is that the world just feels like Joker's world. I would have liked to see further changes on the world due to the events of the story other than text bubbles. For example, it would have been interesting to see Big Bang Burger get closed down after Haru's storyline. Another issue was the romance in the game. It seemed like a total after thought by the developers, because who you choose to romance means virtually nothing in the game. You get only a handful of short unique scenes with the character, and story scenes are unchanged. It really doesn't make sense why it is even included in the first place.
Overall, Persona 5 Royal is a sharp and polished JRPG experience that wears its heart on its sleeve and preys on your school life nostalgia.