Persona 5 Review

 

In stark contrast to the epic length cutscenes that greet you in previous Persona games, Persona 5 starts its long journey with a bang, introducing a complex yet approachable turn-based battle system with more depth and variety to combat. 

This is the combination of everything the JRPG series has been building to. 

With familiar elements dialed up to 11 and some welcome new surprises added into the take him mix in what's by far the series strongest story to date, Persona 5 puts you in the capable shoes of a high school student who spends his evening saving the world. 

By day you'll attend class, answer quiz questions and live the life of a typical teenager but after school, you'll invade the minds of corrupt adults who are up to no good in order to change their hearts. 

These standout hand-built dungeons take place in palaces, created within the mind of each target and developer atlas takes advantage of this to set them in diverse and outlandish places tied to the target. 

A museum for example, has very different security measures than a medieval castle and drastically different puzzle types make them feel like almost entirely different games. 

The sense of scope here is staggering compared to the dungeons Persona 3 or 4 and each palace provides some smart, unpredictable story moments and challenges. 

Battle in Persona 5 is a familiar turn-based formula, with melee attacks ranged weapons and magic attacks based on one of eight elements. 

A bit like catching Pokemon, each Persona you collect has its own unique set of skills as well as strengths and weaknesses. 

Collecting multiple personas with different abilities and combining them to create custom ones is a fun way to tailor your playstyle to the type of combat you prefer. 

Persona 5 is a solid modern turn-based JRPG first and foremost but it also quickly becomes a captivating time management simulator. 

When you're not saving the world, you're able to boost your skills by visiting hub districts within Tokyo; for activities like working a part-time job, batting practice, seeing a movie or just heading home to study, play a retro game or read one of dozens of books. 

On top of those social activities, you'll also have 20 confidants to spend time with; forging bonds with fellow students or other citizens in Tokyo. 

As you level up these bonds you'll learn relevant stat increases and gameplay advantages that are surprisingly robust. 

I found myself almost as interested in some confidant stories as I was in the main plot which offers even more incentive for dedicating time to hanging out with those people. 

By offering so many options and only a finite amount of free time, Persona 5 gives every decision a fantastic amount of weight. 

Choosing to work a part-time job might make you extra cash to buy better weapons but it comes at the cost of ranking up a confidant or increasing your stats. 

Even lamenting the opportunities you missed adds a unique layer of replayability that makes starting a new game plus all the more enticing, even after 100 hour playthrough. 

Aside from the dozens of activities available, the very act of exploring Persona 5's Tokyo is a delight. 

From city lights at night to crowded subways during your school commute, every part of this world is bursting with vibrant color and every detail feels meticulously thought out and eerily accurate to real world Tokyo. 

all of this is further enhanced by an impressive sense of style. Sharp design choices permeate even tiny details of gameplay and I can't overstate the number of times that I marveled at the gorgeous effects while ambushing an enemy or went out of my way to explore on a rainy day to appreciate small touches. 

Persona 5's dynamic acid jazz inspired soundtrack also helps to highlight everything from quiet moments to bombastic boss battles, helping to tie together an overall experience that feels truly special. 

Persona 5 is a massive, gorgeous JRPG with well over 100 hours of gameplay for completionists. 

With more to do than ever and the series strongest story to date, it stands out as an extraordinary memorable experience and easily one of the deepest JRPGs of the last decade. 

Its sprawling dungeon design and stylish fully realized world are an absolute joy to explore and even after three playthroughs in the platinum trophy, I find myself itching to go back. This is a new gold standard for Japanese RPGs and by far the best entry in the series yet.

Persona 5 Royal Review

 

Persona 5 Royal is a living masterclass and how to take an already amazing game and amp it up to the next level. It's not just a standard game of the year edition with some extra content thrown in on the side. 

Just about everything in Atlas’s 2016 JRPG Magnum Opus has been honed, polished and expanded in some meaningful and positive way.  

Across more than 130 hours of adventuring through urban Tokyo and the surreal realms of the human mind, the amount of love and attention to detail hiding around each old and new twist in the story left me in awe. 

If you're not familiar with Persona 5, you should absolutely check out my original review of it because I'm going to mostly focus on what makes Royal even better. 

There's a lot of ground to cover. So having played through the original version of Persona 5 twice, the most immediately noticeable and impactful of Royal’s changes come in the realm of combat. 

It's hard to keep old-school four-person turn-based battles interesting in this day and age but nobody in the business does it better than Atlas. 

In addition to some spot-on rebalancing of abilities and enemies across the board the role guns play in your arsenal has been totally reimagined. 

Bullets refresh after each battle instead of only at the beginning of an infiltration. With the trade-off of being able to hold less ammo overall. 

This feels almost game breakingly powerful in earlier areas but as time goes on, it allows them to settle in as a much more versatile and dependable tool, rather than something you just hoard for really tough enemies. 

Showtime attacks are another excellent addition in which two members of your party team up for a devastating tag-team super finisher. 

The animations are deliciously clever and over the top and they stylishly highlight your party members personalities. 

I'll never get tired of watching Makoto and Haru double elbow drop a harbinger of the Apocalypse and a flashy hilarious nod to Pro Wrestling. 

Show times trigger randomly but are more likely to happen when your party is in big trouble or when you're just about to finish off an enemy. 

That adds an extra layer of drama and unpredictability to especially intense battles at just the right moments. 

The fantastic story has been majorly expanded with a third semester featuring one new palace, a new area in the mementos mega dungeon and a new heart to steal. 

It's a bit longer overall in the previous palace story arcs but not by a lot and there's not a whole lot of it I can talk about without risking major spoilers but I can say that it pits our team of phantom thieves against a really fascinating new antagonist with very, very different goals and motives from anyone they've faced before. 

Personas deep thematic exploration of human society and the perils of the psyche continues to ask challenging and relevant questions about justice and suffering, that left me rethinking my own convictions and it's when a game isn't afraid to go those places that it really becomes a higher work of art. 

The third semester is only one part of the expanded story though. the main campaign has also been significantly beefed up with two new confidants joining the already rich cast; bubbly aspiring gymnast, Kasumi Yoshizawa and calming but dorky school counselor, Takuto Maruki. 

Each has a dauntingly deep tragic backstory filled with its own impactful twists and turns that were both painful and compelling to uncover and one of the returning confidants from the original Persona 5 has had their role in the story significantly tweaked and expanded but I won't spoil who. 

Aside from the new area the whole of momentos has been brilliantly fleshed out with new collectibles and unlockables courtesy of the mysterious Jose. 

He can sell you powerful items in exchange for flowers that spawn in the depths and unlock perks like increased experience points once you find enough hidden star stamps. 

Mementos often felt like a slog in the original version of Persona 5. 

It was definitely my least favorite part of the adventure the fact that Atlas has made it feel so much more alive adding new rewards for exploration and a healthy dose of personality, is a massive improvement by itself considering how much time you spend down there. 

They've also implemented a mercy kill rule where you can run straight over monsters that are several levels below you instead of having to fight out a foregone conclusion but you still get experience money and item drops. 

The amount this cuts down on the feeling of endless grinding is nothing less than a godsend and it allowed me to spend much more of the 130 hours of this playthrough doing interesting and engaging things instead. 

I could practically fill an entire documentary with the long list of other small and medium-sized improvements found in Persona 5 Royal but here are a few of my favorites. 

The Thieves Den is a new hangout area that will follow you across multiple playthroughs. 

Here you can decorate with statues of personas you've unlocked, listen to the absolutely superb new and returning music tracks and re-watch any cutscene. 

Incredibly, every single level of every single social link has been expanded with new dialogue so there's always something new to see even in familiar scenes. There's an entirely new free roaming district of Tokyo to explore. 

Kichijoji, which includes a Jazz nightclub and the ability to level up your party members powerful baton pass ability with a new skill based darts minigame. 

All of the classic palaces have been expanded with new hidden areas and new collectables to find. 

Every major boss fight has been rebalanced and had new fun and challenging mechanics added. It's almost daunting how much extra cool stuff Atlas was able to pack in here. Put together it's probably at least a full extra games worth of content. 

Persona 5 was already a strong frontrunner for being the best JRPG ever made and Royal really gets me wondering what else could even compete. 

The excellent story and it's lovable multi-dimensional characters along with the challenging tactical combat are all refined and backed for another round with new surprises and new friends in tow there are new areas to explore and new twists to leave your jaw on the floor. 

Very little has been left untouched and just about everything that has been touched is better off for it. The Phantom Thieves have stolen my heart all over again and I don't really want it.