Persona 5 is one of the best games i have ever played, and I am not even exaggerating.

Persona 5 was the first JRPG I played, and disliked it in general (with the exception of Expedition 33, if you count that). If you’ve played Expedition 33, this game has a very similar turn based system. Persona 5 Royal has one of the best stories in a game I played before. It’s very interactive, and has many impactful points. Each Persona game has it’s own theme, and this one is about being corruption. For context, I beat the game in about a month, and played around two and half hours a day (which is the most I have spent on a game in such a short time).

What I was not expecting was the fact that the story keeps you interested and invested for the entirety of it’s length (it lasts about 80-100 hours total, and none of it felt wasted). Once the story ended, I geniuenly felt sad and disappointed.

The BIGGEST piece of advice I can give to new players, is not to search anything about the game. The game is much more immersive and trust me, it will enhance the game by sooo much. Even if your not in it for the plot, it has one of the greatest plots I have ever seen, and got me into the persona fandom.

The character’s and arcs also were very interesting. Each character had their own charm to it, and one of the key aspects of the game, and to unlock it’s full potential as a game (no spoilers :)) is it’s character growth.

The game’s music is good. It’s very jazzy and the singer/vocalist Lyn does a great job. The songs are very catchy and I found myself whistling the tunes more than once. One thing that suprised me the most, was the interface design. It’s kinda hard to explain but the interface and menus all were very unique and fluid(?). It’s hard to explain in words unless you actually played it.

The reason it’s called Persona 5 Royal, is because the Royal version has more content, and a new arc. It adds probably 10-20 hours of playtime. If you get the true ending, and get the last palace (which is Royal exclusive). You get my favorite of the arcs. I won’t spoil it too much but it dives into the philosphical debate of utopia.

The game is $60 at time of review, which I would be happy to pay for a game of this quality. However, at time of review, the game frequently goes on sale down to $17.99 on Steam and Humble Bundle. So if your a little on the fence (which is totally understandable, I was too at the beginning) I would wait for that. I got ~90 hours (about 70¢/hr) from my first playthrough and I am going to rerun through the game.

If you use a Steam Deck, it runs perfectly on steam deck. No complaints, it works great out of the box. I also tried it on CrossOver (I use an M3 Pro) if you use that, it worked great, but in any of the animated scenes, the audio was broken for me. Just thought it would be nice to add.

After playing it, it made me extremely interested in both ATLUS games and JRPGs. Next I am playing Metaphor ReFantazio (which is created by basically the exact same core team that made P5R), Persona 3 Reload (same idea, different plot but still some similarities), and Persona 4 Revival (a remake of Persona 4) once it comes out. Once I rolled the credits, I genuinely felt sad, and it’s a game you get really attached to.

If your in high school, the game seems interesting (even just a little bit), or if you aren’t interesting in plot based games or any RPGs. I would recommend playing it. It might be as impactful to you, as it was to me.