I first played Persona 5 many years ago on PS4, enjoyed it very much and came close to finishing it, but unfortunately I had a lot of things going on at the time, so I had to put it aside. Alas, the console broke down before I could return to it, and I had moved away from PlayStation hardware in favor of PC gaming. Fortunately, the improved Persona 5 Royal version eventually went multiplatform, thus enabling me to play the very best version on the most powerful hardware available.


Being originally developed for the PlayStation 3 hardware, Persona 5 was never a game which featured cutting-edge visuals, but nevertheless the game's stylized artistic direction manages to make Persona 5 a visually interesting game. Persona 5 features colorful graphics set in the distinctive style of Japanese Anime with a combination of fully animated 3D models as well as 2D animated portraits for each of the major characters, complete with both in-game rendered 3D and 2D anime cutscenes. As a result, P5R looks like a combination of a Visual Novel and a 3D Japanese Role-playing Game, which is likewise reflected in the gameplay, but we'll get more into that later.


Persona 5 Royal features multiple musical tracks, consisting of both orchestral melodies as well as complete songs, each with English language lyrics. The music sounds good and the songs are extremely catchy, provided that you can appreciate Jazzy tunes, lounge music, and Japanese Pop. The in-game dialog is available in your choice of either Japanese or English, with all critical, plot-significant dialog and story sequences featuring full voice acting. The English Dub is best described as adequate, the performances aren't outstanding, but they suit the characters well and the lines are well spoken. I haven't sampled the Japanese Dub, but I'm unqualified to comment on it regardless because I don't speak the language.


Persona 5 Royal is a combination of a traditional Turn-based JRPG, Dungeon Crawler, and a Life Sim/Visual Novel in which you must balance a daily schedule of attending High School, spending time speaking with friends to strengthen your bonds with them, exploring dungeons and engaging in traditional turn based combat with enemies. As you would expect from the aforementioned combination of genres, the game is extremely dialog heavy, including sequences in which you must answer questions in class, engage in conversation with friends, and carefully choose your responses from a multiple choice dialog tree in order to answer questions correctly as well as get closer to your friends. You also have a variety of stats directly associated with social interaction — Knowledge, Guts, Proficiency, Kindness, Charm — which directly effect your ability to express yourself. These stats are increased by engaging in various daily activities as well as interacting with particular individuals, and are fortunately in most cases gained passively from average everyday activities, so you don't have to invest too much time into increasing them. Interacting with your friends increases the Rank of your bond with them grants various perks in combat and allows you to fuse more powerful Personas to equip yourself with.

The JRPG portion of the game is likewise exactly what you would expect from the genre. You explore dungeons, (Palaces) engage in turn-based combat with enemies (Shadows) with a variety of techniques at your disposal, earn Experience Points to Level Up along with money to buy equipment, and open treasure chests to gain loot in the form of various items. The only variation to the standard JRP formula lies in the eponymous Personas, Mythological Entities which are equipped to you similarly to weapons, granting you magical abilities. Personas level up passively along with you when equipped, but have their own separate stats. Those who have played various Monster Taming RPGs will be familiar with the basics here, but it isn't difficult for newcomers to learn through progression.

Altogether, the combination of genres compliment each other and makes for an engaging, multifaceted gameplay experience which can seem deceptively overwhelming at first but quickly becomes second nature in practice.


In Persona 5 Royal you take on the role of a teenage boy who has been moved away from his home out in the country to live with a family friend in the city after he became involved in a confrontation with a drunken man who was attempting to force a young woman into his car, with the man injuring himself in the process and the boy arrested then charged with assault. The boy arrives in the city only to find that his undeserved reputation as a juvenile delinquent has followed him there, with his new guardian addressing him as an unwelcome guest, his teachers at school likewise dismissing him as a delinquent, and his classmates avoiding him while exchanging rumors regarding the details of his arrest.

Shortly after his arrival, he discovers a mysterious App has appeared on his Phone which seems to restore itself no matter how many times he deletes it. One day on his way to school the App is inadvertently activated during a conversation with another ostracized student, transporting them into another world in which the School has been replaced by a Palace ruled by the School's abusive P.E. Instructor, with the two being locked up in the dungeon by the guards. They escape their cells with the help of a mysterious feline creature named Morgana, but are quickly caught by the guards on their way out of the palace, leading to the boy awakening to his Persona — his "other self" — granting him the power to defeat the palace guards and escape. The next day they return to the Palace where they are informed by Morgana that it exists within the mind of its ruler as a cognitive manifestation of his distorted desires, and that by stealing his treasure they can change his heart, thus putting an end to his abusive behavior. From there the trio forms a team known as The Phantom Thieves of Hearts, setting out to use their powers to reform society by changing the hearts of various corrupt authority figures, recruiting new allies along the way as they are drawn ever deeper into an insidious plot to seize control of Japan by manipulating the masses.


Being a port of a game which was originally developed for the PlayStation 3, Persona 5 Royal doesn't require a particularly powerful PC to run. I encountered no performance issues whatsoever over the course of my 171 hour long playthrough and the game ran flawlessly at Max Settings on my PC. Your experience may vary based on the specs of your PC, but I can safely say that there are no bugs, glitches, or performance issues to speak of regardless.


Persona 5 Royal is an excellent game featuring many hours of content between the deep, engrossing story and entertaining assortment of gameplay mechanics. I came just short of a 100% run, missing only a single Confidant, yet completing the story and side quests in their entirety, closing out the game by earning 100% of the Achievements. My playthrough lasted 171 hours, thus making it by far the longest of any single player game I have ever played in 35 years of gaming. I enjoyed the game thoroughly and am left with nothing bad to say about it whatsoever. I highly recommend it to anyone seeking an immersive JRPG to occupy their time.

she persona on my 5 till i royal

I've tried this out because it was recommended to me, and I have to say this was an amazing journey. Great characters, insane twists, moving moments, can be intense, can be chill... tho I think it could've wrapped up like 30 hours earlier, but it's still one of the best games I've played in the last few years.