If you’re a little confused about Persona 5 Royal, that’s perfectly understandable. Since the game was first released in 2016, there has been a Persona 3 rhythm game, two additional titles carrying the Persona 5 name, and a Persona Q2 dungeon crawler. However, Persona 5 Royal isn’t some quirky spinoff. It’s the definitive version of the award-winning RPG that somehow made high school fun.
If your educational years were anything like this, chances are you’d never have actually learned anything because you’d have been too busy crawling dungeons and battling strange enemies while on a quest for truth and justice.
This being a video game, and time being of absolutely no object, of course, protagonist Joker can do all that and still have a social life. And in Persona 5 Royal, his social life is your problem to manage. The game is part turn-based RPG, part social sim as you navigate high school, build relationships, and try to live a normal teen life amidst summoning the Persona within to prevent meeting a dark and ominous fate.
Balancing the Many Facets of Persona 5
If you’ve played the original version of Persona 5, then you already know what you’re getting yourself into. Persona 5 is a complex experience that earns the praise it receives. When Joker transfers to a new school and receives a strange message about his future, he sets out to rehabilitate himself to avoid meeting a grim end.
Doing so doesn’t mean just changing himself, but also saving others from their own twisted desires by wearing the Phantom Thief mask and fighting for justice. But it’s not all adventures and combat for Joker, as his personal life cannot be ignored. In between, he has to live the normal life of a teenager, and that’s surprisingly where Persona 5 shines.
Royal doesn’t change the social game too much, though Atlus sprinkled in some quality-of-life improvements to make some aspects more bearable. The day-to-day in Persona 5 follows Joker as he works part-time jobs, hits the books for exams, and engages with his closest friends.
It’s that latter part that really makes a difference as building strong relationships helps Joker when he enters the Metaverse, a strange realm infested with the monstrous manifestations of the world’s desires. It’s in the Metaverse that the combat kicks off and the more thrilling half of Persona 5 shows up.
Atlus had a very real challenge on its hands developing two very different gameplay mechanics. The mundane tasks of Joker’s every day are a stark contrast to the meticulous combat, and both work together to create an immersive experience. It would have been so easy to make one aspect too boring or make the other feel very disjointed. That’s simply not the case, and you can see how the real world directly affects Joker’s Metaverse exploits.
Taking Action to Seal Joker’s Fate
While the overworld gameplay is relatively simplistic and it’s the world-building and interactions that thrive, Royal’s combat keeps us wanting to spend more time in the Metaverse. There, turn-based bouts have Joker and three companions using melee weapons, abilities, and their hidden Personas to best an array of villains.
In classic RPG style, all actions are taken in turn, giving players the opportunity to plan their attack or defence. Things look a little chaotic, thanks to the game’s stylized aesthetic, but you get used to it fairly quickly. If you’ve played any turn-based RPG, it will be like second nature after a battle or two.
The familiarity of it all is maybe a little surprising, considering how different Persona 5 looks compared to other games. Royal’s combat segments will definitely speak to returning players, as little has changed from the original title. That’s far from a bad thing, considering just how good it was to begin with.
One thing Royal could have improved upon and didn’t is recruiting new Personas. The interaction unfolds in an awkward exchange of dialogue that can be difficult to decipher, possibly due to poor translation. A Persona’s questions may vaguely match the available answer choices and the writing is overall very disconnected from the depth and brilliance of the rest of the game.
It’s an oversight that doesn’t ruin the experience, but if you’re making improvements, why not touch on the game’s weakest moments?
What Royal Brings to the Table
Players that have tackled all of Persona 5 may play through Royal and think they’ve been shafted, but the initial changes are there. They’re just minuscule and don’t have much of an effect on the overall experience. Some added voice acting, tweaks to boss battles, auto-reloading weapons, and other scattered touches improve gameplay for new and returning players, but the real meat of Royal comes much later in the game.
Along with several dozen pieces of DLC integrated into the full game, Royal also builds on the narrative with a new semester. It’s a story created specifically for Royal that builds upon core plot points from Persona 5. While this could have been thrown together as an afterthought, it’s clear Atlus put a lot of thought into the villain’s motivation to make them apathetic and give them more purpose. It’s also nice to have more Persona 5 to play, as that’s certainly not a negative.
It’s content like this that simply elevates the experience and somehow improves upon an already award-winning game.
The Must-Have Version of Persona 5
There’s no question that if you’re just jumping into Persona 5, Royal is the way to go. None of the additions that I caught hinders the experience, and I’d even go so far as to say each one effectively improves upon Persona 5 in every way. There were a few missed opportunities, but absolutely nothing that ruins any aspect of the game. Even the dull and uninspired Persona recruitment segments are easy to overlook when you’re too busy getting sucked into the rest of the game.
Anyways, make sure to grab some Xbox Live Gift Cards from OffGamers here to purchase the game today!
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft Windows
Developers: Atlus, P Studio
Publishers: Atlus, SEGA of America, Sega
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