This review contains spoilers
This is a super long review/breakdown I wrote for some friends shortly after release when I had 100%ed the game. There's a final verdict at the bottom as a TLDR.
Gameplay/Combat: Overall I think the action combat worked really nicely in this game. The biggest point in its favor is actually getting to see demons, and also the P5 cast, move around and attack and stuff with the sick visual style of P5. Like even when I was farming Raja Naga for 5 hours, it was cool how it actually coiled up before attacks like a snake, or Berith charged you, or Seth flew around, etc. All the human party members are really cool to look at too, and it almost adds to their characters to play as them if that makes sense. Like feeling like Ryuji charging up and swinging, or Haru with the axe, or actually getting to use Johanna as a bike/the Monabus (honestly this one kind of sucked). I think there was a pretty good mix between basic combos/finishers, using skills, swapping to other members, showtimes, AOAs, using environmental prompts, One More, and using items. No one part of those was super deep, but they were all solid enough to hold their own weight and you were generally never stuck doing only 1 of those for too long before mixing it up. Maybe basic combos/finishers got a bit stale, but not overly so (plus that was probably during Plat hunting for me and not main game, and also when I figured out that C4 seems to kind of be the best all the time). Most trash fights were a good length/difficulty (err on easy side which worked well), some minibosses felt probably a bit damage spongey, especially from Akira onwards, but it wasn't a big issue. Hacking was just OK but didn't show up too much so whatever, and was at least a mix up to the formula. Also, Master Arts were a pretty OK way to get you to at least play everyone a little, unsure how well that really works though, the trophy site says 36% of people got it so I assume it's lower on console. Also, Merciless is a pretty cool way to do NG+, but I almost wish it wasn't strictly tied to difficulty and was more of a choice of "do you want to be able to ignore combat in NG+ or actually have to play the game", like Merciless-Easy, Merciless-Normal, Merciless-Hard).
Bosses: Akira >>>>> Demi > Alice > Natsume > Hyodo > Cognitive Joker(?)
Overall bosses were decent but not amazing. Even Akira is largely that far up because of the theming of it, story/cutscenes/music, and having 2 distinct phases. Of the 3 "normal" bosses, I put Alice at the top because I thought it had just enough use of environment and liked how it had 2 phases to mix it up. Natsume was too easy because of too many environmental weapons and happening to be tailored to my party, but was a pretty OK boss aside from that. Hyodo I actively kind of disliked, chandeliers being near-mandatory at the right time sucked when combined with party members using them, the boss refusing to move around without being baited on the ground, and lack of respawns for them. The cold/lantern mechanic was also not great, I think if they want to do a punishing phase like that, then solving it should have a more explicit reward, like stunning her briefly or chunking her shield. Without that, compared to other bosses it just feels like an annoyance. Cognitive Joker was almost sick, but then also kind of sucked, so I don't really know where to put it. Should've leaned harder into QTEs if they were gonna do 1 (only 1 in the game besides prompts, like what), and the non-QTE half was just annoying, he hit super hard so you had to be careful but could only really chip away at him during safe times. Also I couldn't refight this so my judgment is based on 1 fight only vs like 3-4 of the others. Make this a fast paced Yakuza-like QTE heavy boss and a gauntlet for each member, or since that's too long: YOUR ACTIVE PARTY (with failsafe for solo joker cheese) and it'd maybe top Akira.
Demi, finally, is a weird one. (First of all, story wise: dumb, but more on that later). Phase 1 was pretty solid, a little plain but that's because it's phase 1. Spheres are a cool idea that I'm not sure how I feel about in the end. Good: Concept of splitting up your party, feeling like everyone's contributing, and I like groups of minibosses as a concept, they were mostly fun to take down and pick an order. I also like a unique mechanic for final boss as a concept. Bad: It comes out of nowhere, so if you're been sticking with exclusively 3 members, you're probably kind of screwed. Lots of menus and figuring out the gimmick takes a lot of time and acts as an awkward pacing break in the middle of the final boss. While a unique mechanic is cool, maybe it would've been worth introducing (in an altered form) earlier, but I'm not sure if I would have seen it as weirdly specific reuse then. Also, the way it tries to frame the 3 groups as happening at the same time (flashing back to P2 start for each one, sphere callouts during Joker group) is super awkward and also feels like weird pacing on final boss. The Joker phase 2 was also solid overall, though the extra platforms were a little awkward, and the boss took an eternity to move back to yours if you swapped platforms (surprise, more weird breaks on this boss). The final hit, like I said earlier, had the cool AOA scene with everyone, but Joker's final blow was pretty limp.
Jails: (Osaka > Shibuya >= Sendai = Sapporo) > (Kyoto > Abyss/Tree = Okinawa)
I don't really know how to rank these honestly, there's 4 that are real and 4 that are much much shorter. It feels weird to compare either of those categories with the other. Overall I like the "real" ones more for sure, even if they are aggressively formulaic. It's a little too in your face about the structure, but 3 mini goals (usually with a miniboss, hack, or other big encounter at the end), a big-miniboss (Warden/Lock Keeper), and then real boss was a pretty solid way to build these. The mini-jails are honestly pretty whatever. If you squished all 4 into 1 bigger jail, or maybe 2 slightly small jails, I think I'd like them more. They felt like 1 section of what usually would be a larger jail/dungeon/palace, just cut out and given its own theming like it was a big kid. To me this definitely seems like they wanted to touch on more cities/visual themes in general, but realized they would be pushing time/budget/pacing of the game if they did that, so we ended up with """"8"""" dungeons even if it's more like maybe 6 or so worth of content/dungeon crawling (Osaka is like 1.5-2). And for the last 2, copying the same format as Mementos Depths/Qliphoth: dumb. More on that later. Puzzles/nonlinearity were pretty OK here, nothing insane but good overall and basically in line with P5.
Story/Characters:
Arc Ranking: Osaka = Kyoto > Okinawa > Final Arc(?) > Alice = Hyodo > Natsume
Overall the story was nothing super standout, but pretty solid. Probably about on par with base P5 in that regard, maybe slightly better since P5 was more ambitious and stumbled more for it, though Royal's new arc is definitely better than both. This is where the praise for the first 3 jails falls. Being formulaic hurts more here than in gameplay, and I didn't feel like any of the first 3 were very memorable ("step on me" reasons don't count). If I were to compare them to P5 villains, they'd probably be generally around Madarame level, where they serve their purpose and are used for good character stuff on PT side (Yusuke twice, for some reason), but by themselves are very whatever. Even with them trying to develop them more and show their trauma and being more morally grey (decent people put in bad situations and taken advantage of), I just didn't really like any of them that much by the end. They definitely won't stick with me very much.
Alice was a pretty standard intro arc which wouldn't be a negative really, but P5's intro arc was debatably its best arc, so I guess that's a minus here. Granted, this game had 8 characters to half-introduce to P5 YouTube Playthrough fans, 1 more to fully introduce and integrate from 10 minutes in, and another to start to build up, so there was a lot of juggling to do. Honestly, I almost didn't realize this was supposed to be the Ann arc until towards the end, I thought they would just use characters for scenes when convenient. Like Ryuji was the one for the Alice intro scene, then Ann for meeting her in the studio, and I thought it'd keep going but it stayed on Ann (not like there were many more scenes in this arc). Shibuya also felt almost a little too familiar, but there wasn't much to be done about that (this is when I made a comment like "this feels like a P5 romhack").
Natsume was a... not very interesting character and way too similar to Madarame, but it was a good way to show how Yusuke has grown since then, and he had some really good moments during this arc. Even though I think this is the weakest arc overall, I think Yusuke probably got the best deal of the individual character arcs. If you aren't very familiar with the genre that this whole dungeon arc was also sort of parodying/playing with, that definitely won't help your opinion, too. Sendai was not super notable to me either, but it's also the 1 city I don't have much familiarity from this game.
Hyodo was... OK. I don't really have too much to say about her honestly, though I think her shadow form was weird (why is she gluttony???). Haru was decent here, but I think she benefitted more from just being around for group scenes and speaking up now and then, and her development in this arc was also just "fine". It was nice that she got to have an adult in her life who wasn't awful post-confession though. Sapporo was decent and the jail being winter themed was a solid way to use that even during a summer trip setting. Also, hee-ho.
Okinawa was also OK. It was super short which I didn't really like, and the villagers rushing the RV scene was weirdly terrifying, but as a "beach scene" and fun slice-of-life stuff, I think it served its purpose pretty well. The dungeon, story wise, was pretty much exactly as expected, with hints and leads towards a bigger picture after getting some formula arcs out of the way. This arc, I think. would have been way cooler in a longer game with more time to explore Madicce stuff (think Kirijo group, especially in Arena, also P1/2 stuff). The EMMA talking to Sophia stuff here was also OK but it took a while for anything else to happen in that plot.
Onto Kyoto, which makes me realize I skipped the first Kyoto day with meeting Akane, which was great. Good slice-of-life, good character intro, good starting development on Zenkichi. Now back to 2nd Kyoto with the dungeon. This is definitely another arc where brevity hurt. It felt like Kyoto1 was the short intro, and Kyoto2 should be an Alice-length full stay, but it was basically the same length as the first visit with a very short dungeon thrown in. The PT being hunted/captured here was a similarly weird fit to the brainwashed villagers, it just felt off for some reason (probably fast pacing). This arc is also home to by far the worst scene in the game: seriously Atlus/Koei-Tecmo, please never even mention hot springs again. Zenkichi stepping up to finally really be on the PT's side, deal with Akane, and get his awakening was very satisfying. Honestly basically as expected, but still good. Plus Valjean in his awakening was cool. Also, kind of lame that Kyoto wasn't actually an explorable area.
Osaka: Honestly this wasn't like the super obvious top of the list, it was just the winner by default. Akira could have used like 1-2 more scenes like the Sendai one to build him up, but still was easily the most interesting of the 4 regular Monarchs. Not being tied to a PT's development arc probably helped him get more focus here, plus Zenkichi being fully on the team. This was a better Shido arc, what more can I say. Akira calling out the PT for only helping random people who are convenient to help was very amusing, it's like he was criticizing P5's plot. Dotonbori was also cool to see in another game series.
Copying basically bullet for bullet the Mementos Depths + Qliphoth arc from P5 was a really weird choice. I honestly don't know why they did this, like a dev interview would be helpful here. EMMA being the final "villain" and Ichinose's involvement was pretty solid though, and shocker, those are the more original points here. Sophia stuff was also pretty solid and her 2nd awakening was a really cool scene. Without the buildup from regular Mementos, I really didn't think Abyss had any reason to exist and the "payoff" was nonexistent here. Then for "Metaverse merged with real world!!!" part, basically the same case. Also EMMA's goal was just a scuffed, AI generated version of Maruki, which without the background of him and his position, felt less agreeable.
More Character Stuff (PT and minor):
I think the biggest boon here was getting some PT group development and hangout time which P5 was pretty light on, especially as a full group. I definitely like them more as a group now than I did from just P5. For individual characters:
Joker: Grunts. But actually, fine, but not much to say here. Being a silent protagonist in this game was maybe slightly worse than in P5 because you had way less time just as Joker, so you didn't even get a sense of the kinds of things he would do or how he would act throughout daily life, if that makes sense. His dialogue options were still fun though which was nice.
Ryuji: Didn't get an arc of his own but didn't really need it. He was good throughout, not much actual development, but still a very likeable character. I liked how he got to be the intro guy again too, and got a few scenes dealing with Sophia which kind of reminded me of how people talk about Yosuke/Labrys (which I never felt had anything special going on).
Ann: Got her arc, though she probably got the least out of it. Mostly just solid all around, didn't have too much to do here but wasn't absent or anything.
Morgana: Didn't do a ton which was a blessing. honestly maybe slightly out of character for him to never whine/want spotlight or special attention, but I can attribute that to growth after Okumura arc, so good job I guess. Still a dumb cat.
Yusuke: I was never on the side of thinking he didn't get enough spotlight in p5, but I'll gladly take more. Like I mentioned, he was the best part of Natsume arc, and his regular lines through the rest of the game were pretty much as good as in P5. Still great.
Makoto: Kind of got nothing but the little she did (being the mom friend, speaking more equally with Zenkichi, driving) were all she needed and were good. Probably good for her to take the backburner after how prevalent she was in P5.
Futaba: I was going to joke "glad she didn't have an arc," but maybe she should've had one early on and then been less annoying after. Nothing too offensive here but still just as annoying as a navi and in random lines, which she probably had a few too many of.
Haru: I said it a few times but I think she benefitted a lot from just being present in all group scenes, and I liked her throughout. Her arc was fine as touched on above but didn't really change my opinion on her at all. She couldn't really carry it like Yusuke could with his arc, though she did get a better character to deal with at least.
Akechi and Sumi: Who? (I thought I would miss them more, but honestly it felt totally fine without them ever mentioned and there were already a ton of main characters. Not sure if it was better to literally never speak their names or getting some excuse/mention would've been good)
Sophia: Pretty good but not my favorite character or anything. I liked her personality and journey, but the scenes where she directly asks what emotions are and stuff felt pretty heavyhanded. Aigis was probably handled better, but also had 100 hours to do so instead of 40, so can't blame too much. Also I never loved her design that much besides the hood and the LED eye oval, her heart "hair" is very weird and her PT outfit could've been a bit more interesting. Better companion than Morgana for sure though, and her being here let that role spread out which was nice. Her 2nd awakening really tied together the rest of her story, like made everything before it make more sense. Liked that a lot.
Zenkichi: Very good - not amazing. not sure what he could've done to elevate to the level of my favorites, again might just be a "smaller game" thing. Also I'm being maybe a bit unfair because his Royal equivalent is Maruki and the comparison is easy as the new male adult who the PT trusts in a post-P5 new game. Even if his situation was a clone of Dojima's, he was a pretty different character, and his personality was just right as an adult to mesh with the PT. Having an adult in the main crew was great, though he could've done with a little less "You damn kids!!! xD" but that only came up a few times so whatever. Not getting to see a resolution/epilogue of him/Akane post-Kyoto arc was a big letdown though, there definitely could've been a great post-credits Kyoto scene or something (even just them 2 and not the PT).
Other Characters: Akane was good, could have used more time with her (see above). Still a fun character though. Kaburagi was actually pretty decent for a minor character in a short form spinoff, she would also be cooler in a longer version of the game. Owada barely needed to exist and maybe the plot would've been better off without him (just need to rewrite the Zenkichi's wife backstory thing). Lavenza was Lavenza, nothing to say there (cut that 1 scene though, ugh). Igor missing was stupid for no good reason since they already recast his voice anyway. And finally, Ichinose. Not sure how I feel about her, it was obvious she'd be more involved all game, and she was just "that wacky scientist!!" for a bit, but after the end I guess I thought she was OK but nothing super special. Her relationship with Sophia at the end was a nice resolution, though it felt like a breakneck turn when she goes from trying to murder us to being cool with us again.
Other notes:
-Music: Very good as expected, some sick new Lyn tracks. Reused the P5 OST a bit too much for sure though. My opinion will continue to be shaped as I relisten through the whole OST, but most of the new songs were great.
-Fusion/VR: Had some nice QoL changes while also bizarrely missing some basic features (let me fuse 2 demons I have more easily pls). Still nice that this was pretty much intact in a spinoff though. The roster was disappointingly small but understandable.
-Requests and Completion: Most of the requests were nothing too special, but I liked them overall. Asking me to use certain characters was good but minimally used for some reason; stealth missions were a neat twist, I liked the fusion unlock ones a lot, and I think that's about all there is to say on requests. Dire Shadows were also kind of cool but a bit of a weird feature, felt like they should have tied into another system too (like requests), they were just kind of there for no reason. Completion was pretty good as a goal, except of course bond level. Dumb for that to be how it is, but the grind for it wasn't as unfun as I expected, so I don't fault it too bad here. Also the Reaper was a cool reward for doing all missions, though locking NG+ behind it was weird (maybe just Merciless or the ""Merciless"" mode I described above would make more sense)
-Roaming around cities: Pretty minimal honestly, felt like they could have used the environments more since they took the time to make each city. I guess they didn't want stuff between dungeons to be too long, but it could have used a little more without feeling like too much of a break.
-Shopping/Cooking: Weird that certain items from old cities seemed to never get added to shop. Cooking was pretty comfy.
-Circle and X being swapped from P5 in overworld was weird
Final Verdict:
Very good game. Easily the best Persona spinoff and a worthy sequel. Action RPG combat fit really well and they meshed it very nicely with existing Persona structure, and P5's style specifically. The story was decent but not standout, as expected for a P5 sequel, but it was nice to get more time with the cast, and the major new characters were, on the whole, very good and generally at least involved with the high points of the plot. If you liked P5, you should be pretty much just as excited to play this game, and its lack of some core mechanics did not feel missed in this smaller package of a game.
Gameplay/Combat: Overall I think the action combat worked really nicely in this game. The biggest point in its favor is actually getting to see demons, and also the P5 cast, move around and attack and stuff with the sick visual style of P5. Like even when I was farming Raja Naga for 5 hours, it was cool how it actually coiled up before attacks like a snake, or Berith charged you, or Seth flew around, etc. All the human party members are really cool to look at too, and it almost adds to their characters to play as them if that makes sense. Like feeling like Ryuji charging up and swinging, or Haru with the axe, or actually getting to use Johanna as a bike/the Monabus (honestly this one kind of sucked). I think there was a pretty good mix between basic combos/finishers, using skills, swapping to other members, showtimes, AOAs, using environmental prompts, One More, and using items. No one part of those was super deep, but they were all solid enough to hold their own weight and you were generally never stuck doing only 1 of those for too long before mixing it up. Maybe basic combos/finishers got a bit stale, but not overly so (plus that was probably during Plat hunting for me and not main game, and also when I figured out that C4 seems to kind of be the best all the time). Most trash fights were a good length/difficulty (err on easy side which worked well), some minibosses felt probably a bit damage spongey, especially from Akira onwards, but it wasn't a big issue. Hacking was just OK but didn't show up too much so whatever, and was at least a mix up to the formula. Also, Master Arts were a pretty OK way to get you to at least play everyone a little, unsure how well that really works though, the trophy site says 36% of people got it so I assume it's lower on console. Also, Merciless is a pretty cool way to do NG+, but I almost wish it wasn't strictly tied to difficulty and was more of a choice of "do you want to be able to ignore combat in NG+ or actually have to play the game", like Merciless-Easy, Merciless-Normal, Merciless-Hard).
Bosses: Akira >>>>> Demi > Alice > Natsume > Hyodo > Cognitive Joker(?)
Overall bosses were decent but not amazing. Even Akira is largely that far up because of the theming of it, story/cutscenes/music, and having 2 distinct phases. Of the 3 "normal" bosses, I put Alice at the top because I thought it had just enough use of environment and liked how it had 2 phases to mix it up. Natsume was too easy because of too many environmental weapons and happening to be tailored to my party, but was a pretty OK boss aside from that. Hyodo I actively kind of disliked, chandeliers being near-mandatory at the right time sucked when combined with party members using them, the boss refusing to move around without being baited on the ground, and lack of respawns for them. The cold/lantern mechanic was also not great, I think if they want to do a punishing phase like that, then solving it should have a more explicit reward, like stunning her briefly or chunking her shield. Without that, compared to other bosses it just feels like an annoyance. Cognitive Joker was almost sick, but then also kind of sucked, so I don't really know where to put it. Should've leaned harder into QTEs if they were gonna do 1 (only 1 in the game besides prompts, like what), and the non-QTE half was just annoying, he hit super hard so you had to be careful but could only really chip away at him during safe times. Also I couldn't refight this so my judgment is based on 1 fight only vs like 3-4 of the others. Make this a fast paced Yakuza-like QTE heavy boss and a gauntlet for each member, or since that's too long: YOUR ACTIVE PARTY (with failsafe for solo joker cheese) and it'd maybe top Akira.
Demi, finally, is a weird one. (First of all, story wise: dumb, but more on that later). Phase 1 was pretty solid, a little plain but that's because it's phase 1. Spheres are a cool idea that I'm not sure how I feel about in the end. Good: Concept of splitting up your party, feeling like everyone's contributing, and I like groups of minibosses as a concept, they were mostly fun to take down and pick an order. I also like a unique mechanic for final boss as a concept. Bad: It comes out of nowhere, so if you're been sticking with exclusively 3 members, you're probably kind of screwed. Lots of menus and figuring out the gimmick takes a lot of time and acts as an awkward pacing break in the middle of the final boss. While a unique mechanic is cool, maybe it would've been worth introducing (in an altered form) earlier, but I'm not sure if I would have seen it as weirdly specific reuse then. Also, the way it tries to frame the 3 groups as happening at the same time (flashing back to P2 start for each one, sphere callouts during Joker group) is super awkward and also feels like weird pacing on final boss. The Joker phase 2 was also solid overall, though the extra platforms were a little awkward, and the boss took an eternity to move back to yours if you swapped platforms (surprise, more weird breaks on this boss). The final hit, like I said earlier, had the cool AOA scene with everyone, but Joker's final blow was pretty limp.
Jails: (Osaka > Shibuya >= Sendai = Sapporo) > (Kyoto > Abyss/Tree = Okinawa)
I don't really know how to rank these honestly, there's 4 that are real and 4 that are much much shorter. It feels weird to compare either of those categories with the other. Overall I like the "real" ones more for sure, even if they are aggressively formulaic. It's a little too in your face about the structure, but 3 mini goals (usually with a miniboss, hack, or other big encounter at the end), a big-miniboss (Warden/Lock Keeper), and then real boss was a pretty solid way to build these. The mini-jails are honestly pretty whatever. If you squished all 4 into 1 bigger jail, or maybe 2 slightly small jails, I think I'd like them more. They felt like 1 section of what usually would be a larger jail/dungeon/palace, just cut out and given its own theming like it was a big kid. To me this definitely seems like they wanted to touch on more cities/visual themes in general, but realized they would be pushing time/budget/pacing of the game if they did that, so we ended up with """"8"""" dungeons even if it's more like maybe 6 or so worth of content/dungeon crawling (Osaka is like 1.5-2). And for the last 2, copying the same format as Mementos Depths/Qliphoth: dumb. More on that later. Puzzles/nonlinearity were pretty OK here, nothing insane but good overall and basically in line with P5.
Story/Characters:
Arc Ranking: Osaka = Kyoto > Okinawa > Final Arc(?) > Alice = Hyodo > Natsume
Overall the story was nothing super standout, but pretty solid. Probably about on par with base P5 in that regard, maybe slightly better since P5 was more ambitious and stumbled more for it, though Royal's new arc is definitely better than both. This is where the praise for the first 3 jails falls. Being formulaic hurts more here than in gameplay, and I didn't feel like any of the first 3 were very memorable ("step on me" reasons don't count). If I were to compare them to P5 villains, they'd probably be generally around Madarame level, where they serve their purpose and are used for good character stuff on PT side (Yusuke twice, for some reason), but by themselves are very whatever. Even with them trying to develop them more and show their trauma and being more morally grey (decent people put in bad situations and taken advantage of), I just didn't really like any of them that much by the end. They definitely won't stick with me very much.
Alice was a pretty standard intro arc which wouldn't be a negative really, but P5's intro arc was debatably its best arc, so I guess that's a minus here. Granted, this game had 8 characters to half-introduce to P5 YouTube Playthrough fans, 1 more to fully introduce and integrate from 10 minutes in, and another to start to build up, so there was a lot of juggling to do. Honestly, I almost didn't realize this was supposed to be the Ann arc until towards the end, I thought they would just use characters for scenes when convenient. Like Ryuji was the one for the Alice intro scene, then Ann for meeting her in the studio, and I thought it'd keep going but it stayed on Ann (not like there were many more scenes in this arc). Shibuya also felt almost a little too familiar, but there wasn't much to be done about that (this is when I made a comment like "this feels like a P5 romhack").
Natsume was a... not very interesting character and way too similar to Madarame, but it was a good way to show how Yusuke has grown since then, and he had some really good moments during this arc. Even though I think this is the weakest arc overall, I think Yusuke probably got the best deal of the individual character arcs. If you aren't very familiar with the genre that this whole dungeon arc was also sort of parodying/playing with, that definitely won't help your opinion, too. Sendai was not super notable to me either, but it's also the 1 city I don't have much familiarity from this game.
Hyodo was... OK. I don't really have too much to say about her honestly, though I think her shadow form was weird (why is she gluttony???). Haru was decent here, but I think she benefitted more from just being around for group scenes and speaking up now and then, and her development in this arc was also just "fine". It was nice that she got to have an adult in her life who wasn't awful post-confession though. Sapporo was decent and the jail being winter themed was a solid way to use that even during a summer trip setting. Also, hee-ho.
Okinawa was also OK. It was super short which I didn't really like, and the villagers rushing the RV scene was weirdly terrifying, but as a "beach scene" and fun slice-of-life stuff, I think it served its purpose pretty well. The dungeon, story wise, was pretty much exactly as expected, with hints and leads towards a bigger picture after getting some formula arcs out of the way. This arc, I think. would have been way cooler in a longer game with more time to explore Madicce stuff (think Kirijo group, especially in Arena, also P1/2 stuff). The EMMA talking to Sophia stuff here was also OK but it took a while for anything else to happen in that plot.
Onto Kyoto, which makes me realize I skipped the first Kyoto day with meeting Akane, which was great. Good slice-of-life, good character intro, good starting development on Zenkichi. Now back to 2nd Kyoto with the dungeon. This is definitely another arc where brevity hurt. It felt like Kyoto1 was the short intro, and Kyoto2 should be an Alice-length full stay, but it was basically the same length as the first visit with a very short dungeon thrown in. The PT being hunted/captured here was a similarly weird fit to the brainwashed villagers, it just felt off for some reason (probably fast pacing). This arc is also home to by far the worst scene in the game: seriously Atlus/Koei-Tecmo, please never even mention hot springs again. Zenkichi stepping up to finally really be on the PT's side, deal with Akane, and get his awakening was very satisfying. Honestly basically as expected, but still good. Plus Valjean in his awakening was cool. Also, kind of lame that Kyoto wasn't actually an explorable area.
Osaka: Honestly this wasn't like the super obvious top of the list, it was just the winner by default. Akira could have used like 1-2 more scenes like the Sendai one to build him up, but still was easily the most interesting of the 4 regular Monarchs. Not being tied to a PT's development arc probably helped him get more focus here, plus Zenkichi being fully on the team. This was a better Shido arc, what more can I say. Akira calling out the PT for only helping random people who are convenient to help was very amusing, it's like he was criticizing P5's plot. Dotonbori was also cool to see in another game series.
Copying basically bullet for bullet the Mementos Depths + Qliphoth arc from P5 was a really weird choice. I honestly don't know why they did this, like a dev interview would be helpful here. EMMA being the final "villain" and Ichinose's involvement was pretty solid though, and shocker, those are the more original points here. Sophia stuff was also pretty solid and her 2nd awakening was a really cool scene. Without the buildup from regular Mementos, I really didn't think Abyss had any reason to exist and the "payoff" was nonexistent here. Then for "Metaverse merged with real world!!!" part, basically the same case. Also EMMA's goal was just a scuffed, AI generated version of Maruki, which without the background of him and his position, felt less agreeable.
More Character Stuff (PT and minor):
I think the biggest boon here was getting some PT group development and hangout time which P5 was pretty light on, especially as a full group. I definitely like them more as a group now than I did from just P5. For individual characters:
Joker: Grunts. But actually, fine, but not much to say here. Being a silent protagonist in this game was maybe slightly worse than in P5 because you had way less time just as Joker, so you didn't even get a sense of the kinds of things he would do or how he would act throughout daily life, if that makes sense. His dialogue options were still fun though which was nice.
Ryuji: Didn't get an arc of his own but didn't really need it. He was good throughout, not much actual development, but still a very likeable character. I liked how he got to be the intro guy again too, and got a few scenes dealing with Sophia which kind of reminded me of how people talk about Yosuke/Labrys (which I never felt had anything special going on).
Ann: Got her arc, though she probably got the least out of it. Mostly just solid all around, didn't have too much to do here but wasn't absent or anything.
Morgana: Didn't do a ton which was a blessing. honestly maybe slightly out of character for him to never whine/want spotlight or special attention, but I can attribute that to growth after Okumura arc, so good job I guess. Still a dumb cat.
Yusuke: I was never on the side of thinking he didn't get enough spotlight in p5, but I'll gladly take more. Like I mentioned, he was the best part of Natsume arc, and his regular lines through the rest of the game were pretty much as good as in P5. Still great.
Makoto: Kind of got nothing but the little she did (being the mom friend, speaking more equally with Zenkichi, driving) were all she needed and were good. Probably good for her to take the backburner after how prevalent she was in P5.
Futaba: I was going to joke "glad she didn't have an arc," but maybe she should've had one early on and then been less annoying after. Nothing too offensive here but still just as annoying as a navi and in random lines, which she probably had a few too many of.
Haru: I said it a few times but I think she benefitted a lot from just being present in all group scenes, and I liked her throughout. Her arc was fine as touched on above but didn't really change my opinion on her at all. She couldn't really carry it like Yusuke could with his arc, though she did get a better character to deal with at least.
Akechi and Sumi: Who? (I thought I would miss them more, but honestly it felt totally fine without them ever mentioned and there were already a ton of main characters. Not sure if it was better to literally never speak their names or getting some excuse/mention would've been good)
Sophia: Pretty good but not my favorite character or anything. I liked her personality and journey, but the scenes where she directly asks what emotions are and stuff felt pretty heavyhanded. Aigis was probably handled better, but also had 100 hours to do so instead of 40, so can't blame too much. Also I never loved her design that much besides the hood and the LED eye oval, her heart "hair" is very weird and her PT outfit could've been a bit more interesting. Better companion than Morgana for sure though, and her being here let that role spread out which was nice. Her 2nd awakening really tied together the rest of her story, like made everything before it make more sense. Liked that a lot.
Zenkichi: Very good - not amazing. not sure what he could've done to elevate to the level of my favorites, again might just be a "smaller game" thing. Also I'm being maybe a bit unfair because his Royal equivalent is Maruki and the comparison is easy as the new male adult who the PT trusts in a post-P5 new game. Even if his situation was a clone of Dojima's, he was a pretty different character, and his personality was just right as an adult to mesh with the PT. Having an adult in the main crew was great, though he could've done with a little less "You damn kids!!! xD" but that only came up a few times so whatever. Not getting to see a resolution/epilogue of him/Akane post-Kyoto arc was a big letdown though, there definitely could've been a great post-credits Kyoto scene or something (even just them 2 and not the PT).
Other Characters: Akane was good, could have used more time with her (see above). Still a fun character though. Kaburagi was actually pretty decent for a minor character in a short form spinoff, she would also be cooler in a longer version of the game. Owada barely needed to exist and maybe the plot would've been better off without him (just need to rewrite the Zenkichi's wife backstory thing). Lavenza was Lavenza, nothing to say there (cut that 1 scene though, ugh). Igor missing was stupid for no good reason since they already recast his voice anyway. And finally, Ichinose. Not sure how I feel about her, it was obvious she'd be more involved all game, and she was just "that wacky scientist!!" for a bit, but after the end I guess I thought she was OK but nothing super special. Her relationship with Sophia at the end was a nice resolution, though it felt like a breakneck turn when she goes from trying to murder us to being cool with us again.
Other notes:
-Music: Very good as expected, some sick new Lyn tracks. Reused the P5 OST a bit too much for sure though. My opinion will continue to be shaped as I relisten through the whole OST, but most of the new songs were great.
-Fusion/VR: Had some nice QoL changes while also bizarrely missing some basic features (let me fuse 2 demons I have more easily pls). Still nice that this was pretty much intact in a spinoff though. The roster was disappointingly small but understandable.
-Requests and Completion: Most of the requests were nothing too special, but I liked them overall. Asking me to use certain characters was good but minimally used for some reason; stealth missions were a neat twist, I liked the fusion unlock ones a lot, and I think that's about all there is to say on requests. Dire Shadows were also kind of cool but a bit of a weird feature, felt like they should have tied into another system too (like requests), they were just kind of there for no reason. Completion was pretty good as a goal, except of course bond level. Dumb for that to be how it is, but the grind for it wasn't as unfun as I expected, so I don't fault it too bad here. Also the Reaper was a cool reward for doing all missions, though locking NG+ behind it was weird (maybe just Merciless or the ""Merciless"" mode I described above would make more sense)
-Roaming around cities: Pretty minimal honestly, felt like they could have used the environments more since they took the time to make each city. I guess they didn't want stuff between dungeons to be too long, but it could have used a little more without feeling like too much of a break.
-Shopping/Cooking: Weird that certain items from old cities seemed to never get added to shop. Cooking was pretty comfy.
-Circle and X being swapped from P5 in overworld was weird
Final Verdict:
Very good game. Easily the best Persona spinoff and a worthy sequel. Action RPG combat fit really well and they meshed it very nicely with existing Persona structure, and P5's style specifically. The story was decent but not standout, as expected for a P5 sequel, but it was nice to get more time with the cast, and the major new characters were, on the whole, very good and generally at least involved with the high points of the plot. If you liked P5, you should be pretty much just as excited to play this game, and its lack of some core mechanics did not feel missed in this smaller package of a game.