I played this off and on for a year and loved it. It was a relaxing game and a source of comfort for me. I loved the balance of the story, the day to day life stuff, and going to the palace. I felt very drawn into the world as everything is so well integrated. The turn based combat is excellent, consistently stylish, fun, and dynamic. The palaces and personas are a great way to reveal things about the characters and villains, and allow for some pretty wild, fun and heartfelt encounters. The fourth palace in particular is superb for how everything comes together.

The characters are great. My favourites were Sojiro and Futaba, but I liked most of them - Ryuji, Ann, Makoto, and the Royal characters Kasumi and Maruki stand out. The story does sag at times, and there are perhaps one or two too many characters and storylines. Think I was dragging half the school around those palaces eventually. But the story is great overall, particularly around the first, fourth, sixth and final palace. There’s a great balance of humour, darker storylines, character growth and light social commentary. I was properly hooked at times. I’ll miss this game a lot, and I don’t think it’ll be long before I come back to it, or give one of the spin offs a try (Strikers is calling my name). Persona 3 Reload around the corner too….