Persona 5 Royal

Killing god(s) with the power of teenage angst

Why

Why Not

Impressions

There are so many great things about P5R, but its flair is likely the one that'll stick with you. Most of the songs are bangers I put in my regular listening rotation and those which don't fit there are still a great fit for where they're used. The interface is incredibly stylish, even the most obscure menu is an explosion of color and animations and the stuff you interact with regularly is so good every subsequent Altus game copied the style.

Our protagonist is the classic RPG main character blank slate, with his standard issue tragic backstory replaced by an early lesson that sometimes doing the right thing gets you a criminal record in high school. The rest of the Phantom Thieves are introduced as the story progresses, usually in connection with one of the messed up adults whose heart you need to change. Each and every one of them (except the stupid comic-relief cat) is well written and likeable, even if they start off as antagonists you'll end up deeply attached to them by the end.

Particular standouts for me were Tae Takemi; your friendly neighbourhood goth doctor, Makoto; the student-council president with the soul of a biker girl and everyone's favourite NEET Futaba. You'll get a chance to progress the individual stories of all your teammates in addition to outsider confidants, which in addition to providing gameplay benefits each have compelling stories of their own. That's not even getting into the Royale-exclusive characters or a particular existing character who gets more development as a result of the new act.

By comparison, Mona's mid-story crisis was kinda hard to swallow, given that up until that point he'd been the comic relief character whose whole thing was pretending to be competent but actually being useless. If he'd beend doing a decent job and Oracle was just better that's one thing; I'd understand getting depressed about being replaced. But he actually was completely useless. Like he provided some basic setup for how the Metaverse works, then everything after that was just 'I dunno'. We're all fighting for our lives here and he's just pretending he knows what he's doing, of course we're gonna be thrilled Futabe can actually do stuff.

The story starts off as a (relatively) grounded story for a JRPG, as the Phantom Thieves deal with a series of absolutely disgusting adults by stealing their 'hearts' from palaces that're a manifestation of the adult's distorted desires. They are... pretty comically bad at doing it without being noticed (though not as bad as Makoto trying to surrepstitiously trail the protags), which leads to a variety of complications as bigger fish manouvre them for their own purposes. Eventually the Thieves cotton on to what's happening and pull off a genuinely surprising twist in the clutch; I knew intellectually the thing which seemed to have just happened couldn't possibly be real, but the emotion and tension of the leadup to it put me in a state where I wasn't sure. Plus in a return to JRPG normality, you will at some point find yourself aura-farming as you kill God.

Are there plotholes? Absolutely. Are some characters kinda charicatures, or hilariously incompetent to allow our protagonists to not be arrested immediately after their second palace? Yep. Can the writing be kinda cheesy at times? For sure. But the characters remain compelling enough, and the overall arc of the story satisfying enough, that you'll likely find yourself caught up in the flow so strongly you don't notice any of this unless you look back on it objectively.

When it comes to combat the core is mostly standard JRPG fare, but there's a whole lot on top of it. Your special protagonist powers allow you to collect Personas like Pokemon (and combine them like Digimon), there are type weaknesses and combos with status ailments which allow you to use special 'All Out Attacks' if you down every enemy, Showtime attacks unlocked by fostering relationships between teammates and an endless array of items to spend your hard stolen cash on. It's not incredibly challenging (turning up the difficulty ironically makes it easier since damage from weaknesses is doubled), but it's engaging enough to make you think and respectful enough of your time to not make you slog through trash mobs constantly (if you get closer to Ryuji). The structure of the split between palace infiltrations and story development in the real world stops you getting sick of either, and you can always head to Mementos or take a break from infiltrating if you get sick of one or the other.

Overall, an absolutely incredible game which consumed my life for a few weeks after I got it, then kept me eagerly coming back for more for a month after. Great characters, great gameplay and its own distinctive sense of flair come together to produce something you should absolutely give a chance to pull you into its world.