Persona 5 Royal
Playtime: 105 Hours
This is by far the best Persona game in the franchise. It isn’t even close how much better this Persona is compared to the others.
The closest game to it in terms of quality would be Persona 3: Reload, but that game has it’s own issues with missing content. Persona 5 Royal is the whole package and more!
This game is a mix between a Visual Novel and a JRPG. But even then I think that’s too little to describe the game. Visual Novels tend to get a bad reputation for being ‘boring’ and ‘too long.’ The thing is, the game doesn’t play like a visual novel at all. You are told a lot of information but you don’t realize it until you have played for hours and hours on end but have only played a few ‘weeks’ of gameplay.
You see, the Persona games work on a calendar system. And you must complete certain actions before certain dates to progress. This game took me months to finish, and while I did 100% this game, it still took me over one hundred hours to finish. And I would happily do it again.
Persona 4 Golden was the first Persona game I played. And while I do believe it to have a better story, I 100% believe Persona 5 Royal to be the better game. While the story is weaker, the characters are better designed, I’d argue more memorable, better soundtrack, better gameplay and better overall experience.
The story is simple enough. You are Akira Kurusu, you tried to save a woman from being assaulted, only to find out the assaulter is a politician with a bunch of connections. He makes sure you go to jail and now you have a criminal record. You are sent to a high-end school in Tokyo as part of a reform program, only to find out that Shinjuku high school isn’t as clean as it looks. Things spiral from there, you get powers and have the ability to make criminals confess to their crimes. So you do just that, making high school teachers, celebrities to even mob bosses confess to their crimes.
The combat of this game never felt like a chore. Thanks to the amazing soundtrack, each battle feels awesome to fight in. Playing on Normal, I never felt like I was too out of my depth. The Baton system is a perfect way of getting every character into the fight no one character in this game seemed useless to have in the party. I especially like how you can check your encyclopedia on enemies for weaknesses if you have hit them with certain types of attacks before.
I love this soundtrack so much, I bought their super expensive vinyl for it. And it was still money well spent. This game is plagued with amazing music. Whether it be boss fights, story music or just roaming around Japan, all the tracks are just fantastic.
I highly recommend this game, a brilliant time throughout!
