Any good if I didn't like P5?

[Middy]

I couldn't deal with all the school life drama and excessive downtime. I found it repetitive and the writing was too weak to hold my interest. How does this compare?

[HDRcade[Tyler]]

This has none of that really. Just straight forward Jrpg gameplay with minimal NPC interaction, mostly about exploration and battles.

[DoDonPachi]

I like persona but the Shin Megami Tensei games have always been better for me

The school life stuff there is very little or none, and the games have different flow you dont have a calendar like in persona with the daily activity/social link stuff, you just travel and fight things, storytelling is more minimal with less chatter

Shin Megami Tensei is also much darker and bleak stories with better and more unique character designs

[Breeze]

I had similar complaints about Persona 5 Royal, but I loved SMTV. SMTV doesnt have repetitive dialogue. You're fighting demons almost the entire time after the first 30 minutes. There's no downtime. The characters are high school students, and there are parts of the story set in a high school, but I didn't find these sections too annoying. Unlike Persona 5 Royal, SMTV doesn't have 20 hours of anime cutscenes. The cutscenes in SMTV are mostly just a few minutes long each time

[BiskutMentega]

This is a more combat focused game. The bosses are like puzzles that you need to figure out, as they don't have a cat telling you what move to use on the boss. The story never a point of interest for me because it never make much sense.

[Middy]

Sounds like this is exactly what I wanted, thanks everyone.

[Daigoji Gai]

Persona is the psychological life sim... it has always been the "lite" version of this franchise IMHO. Great and endearing, but the "kiddie" version.
MEGATEN has always been the original hardcore experience about the world ending with you and pulls no punches (with healthy doses of humor to keep it from being a depressing slog).

[Scrumbles]

Originally posted by Middy:

I couldn't deal with all the school life drama and excessive downtime. I found it repetitive and the writing was too weak to hold my interest. How does this compare?

The mainline SMT games are less on the sim life & more on the fighting, and more brutal in terms of gameplay combat and the story. (Not saying Persona doesn't get dark, but in comparison it's the lighter of the 2)

The Persona series is a spin-off, and didn't really start going more into the whole "sim" thing until P3 and above.

[DYMAXION]

SMTV doesn't have social links or the school stuff. It's more focused on the combat.