Reviewed on: PC
Also Available on: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Developed by: Atlus
Published by: SEGA
Release Date: 31 October 2019

Persona 5 Royal (P5R) has long been imprisoned on the PlayStation, with fans of the series desperate to see it freed from the shackles of exclusivity. Now on Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PC, there has never been a better time to delve into Atlus’ much loved JRPG. Revered by many as one of the greatest games in existence, does Persona 5 Royal live up to the hype? More importantly, does this gargantuan experience respect your time? 

Persona 5 Royal follows a young man, nicknamed Joker, after he has been exiled from his home for a crime he didn’t commit and placed in special care in Shibuya, Japan. Having lost all contact with his family and friends, Joker must build relationships and fight demons in this Life Sim meets JRPG experience. Not long after making his first connection at his new school, Joker is thrust into an alternative reality, known as the Metaverse, where he must fight for his life and learn how to utilise the powers of Persona. 

Narrative

Within just a couple of hours, P5R will hook you with its charm, wit and cast, some of whom you will love, and others who will make your blood boil while you rage over their smug attitudes. With the first villain of the game, P5R holds no bars by introducing a perverted, paedophile P.E teacher who abuses his students while parents and teachers look the other way and reap the benefits of the success he brings to the school. It’s almost not enough when you eventually beat him in-game, you will hold a personal grudge over Kamoshida, the aforementioned teacher, for the rest of your life. And this is just the start. As the game progresses, you will see a range of characters from smarmy criminals to outright evildo-ers with unscrupulous goals. Some games will suffer when dealing with these character types as the writing can fall into the trap of reaching Edgelord status, yet every quirk and characteristic is fine tuned that make these enemies feel like they could be real people. 

The narrative is smart, emotional and surprising throughout. It has its moments mid-game where you wish the plot would just drive forward, but whenever this happens, the narrative soon enough drives forward with an incredible cut-scene or plot-point that will pull you back into Persona 5 Royal and never want to stop. It’s no doubt one of, if not the best narrative I’ve followed in gaming. 

At the centre of most JRPGs are a lovable cast, full of different personalities who play off each-other to help find solutions to problems and keep the game flowing. P5R is no different in that respect, but it does have some of the best relationship dynamics I have ever witnessed in a Video Game. The witty banter shared between the entire cast as they come together over the game is unmatched. I left this game feeling like I was saying goodbye to the new friends I had made over the last couple of months. I was going to miss them ripping into each other, like a genuine friend group would, or having silly little arguments together. Maybe it’s helped by the aforementioned life sim details of the game, but each and every character in the main cast really felt like a friend to each other and a real member of the team. Nobody was left behind, nobody had me questioning “why did they even add them?”. 

Despite all that is right with the narrative and how genuinely amazing I feel it is, there was one thing stressing me out whilst I played through this game. There are multiple endings. If you want to see the “True Ending” of the game, there are multiple hurdles to jump over and Confidants you must max out by certain points. I implore people not to use a guide for this game as I feel it would take away a whole lot of the experience, but I feel it’s a necessity to find a spoiler-free guide for the true ending route. Being a game which is over 100 hours long, the ability to trip up at many points and lose that route had me constantly worrying I might have missed an important opportunity, or that a decision made within the game could cause me to accidentally lock-in to a different route.

Gameplay

The gameplay loop of Persona 5 Royal consists of dungeon crawling, turn based battles and a life sim. By accident, Joker and his friend Ryuji discover that people like Kamoshida have “distorted desires” which form a “Palace” in the Metaverse. In this example, Kamoshida sees their school as his castle and he is The King, and so in the Metaverse this is the form the school takes. The main part of the dungeon crawling aspect of the game will see you traversing these palaces, fighting the Persona that inhabit them, and completing puzzles to find your way to the end. Each and every palace is finely crafted which makes for fun exploration as well as a challenging experience to reach the end. During Palaces, you can find “Safe Rooms”, which allow you to save your progress and exit the Palace before returning to the real world to go to bed. This means that another in-game day will pass, but the party can re-enter the palace at the Safe Room point fully refreshed. This, unfortunately brings me to my first grievance of the game. The Safe Rooms are consistently dotted around each palace, meaning should you need to immediately end your game, or simply feel like you’ve had enough, you will need to play on and find one to finish your session. This could be alleviated easily by introducing a quick save feature, forcing you to the home screen and wiping that save when you re-enter the game. Many other games have included this feature, and it’s a real shame that the Developers didn’t think to include this. 

There are common enemies which can be found scattered around Palaces. During these battles, you enter a traditional turn-based brawl. You will always control Joker’s movements, however the game allows you to decide whether the other party members should act of their own accord, or whether you would prefer to select their moves on their behalf. The game itself makes some pretty decent decisions, and so there is no detriment to your gameplay should you let the AI pick their own moves. Battles consist of the ability to let your Persona battle, which will mean selecting their move and targeting a foe, at the cost of your “SP”. This can be very limited and will challenge you to think about how to best balance your in-game resources. Other options include using your Gun, which has limited ammo but is refilled in every battle, or using your dagger to inflict less damage on your opponents, but without the cost of SP. 

Some Persona will also have abilities which allow you to inflict status ailments on enemies. These are useful for tougher fights, or for those who have no weaknesses. Usually they can incapacitate an enemy for a number of turns, or in-fact make it that some moves will now hit as if they had a weakness. The battle system isn’t overly complex, yet it still enforces an element of strategy, even in the most menial battles in the game. 

Each palace ends with Joker and his team (known as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts)  securing a route to the “treasure”. This treasure must be stolen in order to change the heart of the host, destroying their palace and cleansing them of their distorted desires. This forces a change of heart in the individual, which results in them confessing their sins and atoning for what they have done. Now, simply stealing the treasure would be too easy. It is guarded by a representation of the palace host, who often transforms or exploits gimmicks to fight off the Phantom Thieves and prevent them from changing their heart. The bosses are my favourite part of the game. They are the cream that holds the Oreo together. Putting you to the test with everything you have learnt so far, just as a boss should do. They forced me to consider every turn carefully, ensuring I use buffs and debuffs where necessary to raise my stats or lower the enemies. 

Super Effective attacks will not get you through these fights. This isn’t the kind of game where you can just mash the A button. While they offer a decent challenge, I must give the game credit as, not at any point did I ever feel under or over levelled. The balancing is sublime, and I would beg Atlus to share their secrets with the rest of the industry. I beat almost every boss fight on my first attempt, but I had to carefully consider and craft every move to ensure I didn’t slip up. Party members can fall and be revived, however if Joker dies in battle, you lose. Some of these fights can take a while and, believe me, your heart will break as you see Joker downed when in the final phase. You often get the choice to return to a previous day in the calendar, or to return to the start of the battle. Neither option is appealing when you’ve put your soul into the fight, but throwing yourself right back into action to overcome your own failure is always rewarding. 

Outside of the palaces is where the Life Sim elements of Persona 5 Royal come into play. As previously mentioned, there is an in-game calendar, of which certain events will crop up and each palace will need to be completed by a certain deadline. During this time, you will have the opportunity to hang out with your fellow Phantom Thieves in the real world, or build relationships with other people throughout Tokyo. These are known in-game as “Confidants”. Most Confidants will have a rank of up to 10 stars. As you progress through these rankings by hanging out, speaking with and sometimes offering advice to each individual, you will gain special abilities to help out whilst in the Metaverse. For example, some Confidants will teach you valuable life skills which, in turn, means Joker learns how to withstand attacks at 1hp in the Metaverse, or can think more tactically and switch-out allies during battles. 

At first, I didn’t “get” this system and I found the life sim elements rather dull. As the game progressed, I realised each Confidant actually had a really interesting side story attached to their rank. Getting these to 10 stars meant seeing the end of the side-stories and it was fulfilling to find out what happens. Some are as dramatic as a backstreet Doctor trying to cure a rare disease, others are as light hearted as a model struggling to find her way in the world, but each have their own unique spins and weave a very interesting dialogue that will just keep you going back for more. By the end of the game, I found myself fully invested in multiple stories, desperately needing to find out how these fictional Soap Operas were going to conclude. The narratives of each individual were incredibly easy to follow and pick back up, even if I had neglected them for in-game weeks at a time. They didn’t interfere too much with the main campaign and slotted nicely with the overall in-game universe. 

Visuals, Audio and Performance

Persona 5 Royal is the most stylish game I have ever played, and it sweats elegance. The visuals are incredible, even navigating throughout the UI or watching battles take place, the game is a masterpiece to observe. The audio introduces a genre of music known as “Acid Jazz” with some songs I can guarantee will be in your spotify library long after you beat Persona 5 Royal. The best normally come from boss-fights, but even as you explore the world you are treated with small pearls of relaxing, comforting music to keep you feeling smooth throughout. Persona 5 Royal is obviously an older title so the fact that it performs well is probably no surprise. On PC you’re guaranteed a 1080p experience with 60fps with a beautifully looking game. Although having only played on PC, my understanding is that the title looks fantastic throughout platforms, with the Nintendo Switch being the obvious outlier with some slightly washed-out graphics, but perhaps an acceptable trade-off for the convenience of portability. 

Controls

As a turn-based game, good control is usually a given. The UI is easy to navigate and the world is easy to explore, with a map available for fast-travel filled with useful information. As you explore palaces, it’s important in some cases to sneak with stealth and immediately jump and snap to locations, which is never an issue. The controls are finely tuned to feel intuitive and mistakes are usually the fault of the player if anything. 

Does it respect your time?

If it was only for the in-game mechanics, Persona 5 Royal would be a fantastic game, but it wouldn’t be the best game I have ever played. No, the overarching narrative and the cast takes everything that has already moulded the experience of P5R and sends it soaring. The game does a fantastic job of keeping you reminded about what you are fighting for as you progress through the story. It has an organic way of reminding you how the mechanics work with the metaverse, as it’s usually repeated in one way or another as a new character joins your cast, yet not in a way which feels monotonous. When exploring palaces, Persona 5 Royal does restrict the moments you can save and put the game down. You have to find a “Safe Room” to stop and either leave the palace or simply save and end your session. These can sometimes be far apart and enemies have likely blocked your path to reach these “pause” points. This could have been alleviated by allowing you a quick-save bookmark in between that other games sometimes employ. It’s not the end of the world, but if you want to quickly put the game down it can get frustrating.

Late-game also introduces some cutscenes which are in excess of thirty minutes long, meaning you are bound at that point to your gaming seat and you can not stop watching. They are often incredible and worthy of your time, but it’s not ideal if you’re thinking about packing up and going to bed, and suddenly you’re sitting watching what would be considered a full episode of something on TV. Utilising a sleep function on your console is an option, but not always possible if it’s a shared device with others such as kids or partners, so it’s something to consider. The only other complaint I had about respecting my time is the aforementioned “true ending” and the requirements to reach this. You can effectively chop off the final semester of the game, added in the “Royal” iteration of Persona 5, if you do not meet the requirements to get there. Other elements once you pass this point can even impact the ending, which for a long game feels like a bit out of touch. Sure, in Sonic, if you don’t get all of the Chaos Emeralds you don’t get the “true ending”, but you can replay it in a few hours and meet those requirements to experience it and feel comfort in beating the challenge. Persona 5 Royal could take you months to replay to obtain the coveted true ending. 

Summary

Persona 5 Royal is probably the best game I have ever played. I will be hard pressed to ever find something to dethrone it. The game oozes style, it pushes the boundaries within its own narrative of what’s morally right and wrong. Battles and exploration are incredible, with sublime Voice Acting throughout as the cherry on top. There is no doubt that if you love JRPGS, you must pick this game up and add it to your library as soon as humanly possible. 

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