Persona 5 Royal Review
It feels like it was just yesterday that this all happened: society turned its back on us for trying to do the right thing, slapped us with a criminal record, and shipped us off to Tokyo for a probationary year at a new school where we ultimately form our own motley crew of misfits and attempt to reform society by stealing the hearts of corrupt individuals as the vigilantes known as the Phantom Thieves. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s only been three short years since the release of Persona 5 and yet, just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic, the remastered Persona 5 Royal is here to take your heart all over again.
This game bleeds style; style which it unabashedly throws in your face at every opportunity. The soundtrack is jazzy and infectious, compliments of singer Lyn Inaizumi and composer Shoji Meguro. Veteran character designer Shigenori Soejima takes his work to the next level by giving us characters that are striking, unique, and do a fantastic job at capturing the essence of a cast that sticks with you long after you’re done with the story. It’s a game that keeps you coming back for more, and it never gets tired of flexing. The strength of Persona 5 is truly its propensity to relentlessly be what it is: bold, in your face, and revved up to the point where it can give series like Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry a run for their money.
Style aside, the game also does not shy away from its definitive Persona identity. The dungeon crawl and the turn-based combat system all return with small updates, and of course the quintessential emphasis on social connections will make veterans to the series feel right at home. When you aren’t calling forth a myriad demons, creatures, and characters that span the mythologies of cultures and religions worldwide, you’re leaping into the fray with your comrades for an over-the-top all out attack. Even when you aren’t fighting, an evening stroll through the backstreets of Yongen-Jaya with Beneath The Mask playing as the background music still evokes a certain familiarity that returning players will surely love.
Persona 5 Royal, like every Persona title, shines brightest through its story. The overarching narrative can be easy to lose sight of, but long sections of the game are interspersed between arcs to remind players just why you’re stressing about whether to spend your Tuesday afternoon working out with Ryuji or hunting down targets in Mementos - and it’s a fantastic story, too. Seeing how one person is treated unfairly can speak to the hearts of so many in their effort to right the wrongs that they see in the world. This is something that can resonate even with the most stoic of players. It’s an underdog story, but it’s not a cheap one, that explores topics like societal expectations and suppressive societal institutions, standing up against what’s wrong, and sticking to what you believe in against all odds. These, typically, aren’t topics you’d expect to sit down to explore in a video game. Still, Persona 5 Royal pulls it off with flying colors, really hammering home the narrative largely by way of its excellent cast of characters.
Players get a sense of agency in the game by taking the role of the silent protagonist. They have full control over dialogue options when available, and build their adventure through the relationships they cultivate with friends and confidants ; each with their own unique personality and their own individual struggles. There’s Ryuji, the hotheaded former track star struggling with feeling responsible for the school track team’s fall from grace. There’s Makoto, the unequivocal best girl, and prim and proper student council president who everyone resents due to rumors of her overlooking corruption at the school. The reality is that she’s looking to find her strength to stand up to things that seem out of her control. And of course, there’s Morgana; the beloved mascot character who, in Persona 5 Royal is a lot more lax about how you spend your time at night, but still is on a personal journey to recover his memories and find out where he came from and what he is.
As you build out each of these character social links you depart alongside them on a journey of growth to get to where they want to be; essentially character development arcs that you’d expect to see in anime rather than in a video game, and throughout that journey, you gain insight to the depth of each character beyond just being a member of your ragtag group of vigilantes. It’s not just team members that you can bond with, either. A local doctor, a journalist, and even a streetside fortune teller are all included on the list of confidants, and while the game doesn’t force us to pursue these relationships, it’s highly recommended by offering advantages and benefits in other aspects of the game, and while the incentive of being able to swap party members at any point during a combat phase is great, getting to take part in the growth of the character that offers that ability does far more to make the game feel worthwhile.
As much as I enjoy this series and the game, Persona 5 Royal is not without its flaws. While Royal cleans up a few things like having Morgana ease back on his aggressively enforced curfew and makes tweaks to certain poorly localized scenes, there are still things that can’t be helped. Perhaps the game’s biggest downfall is just how involved it is; in essence, the game is long, having personally taken about 160 hours over the course of three weeks to finish. While this certainly may be enough to dissuade the more casual gamer who may only be able to manage about an hour of play at a time, the game’s length can work against itself during the playthrough process. Certain sections seem to drag on to a point where players may be tempted to fast-forward through interactive cutscenes risking them missing out on the excellent story just because they want to get back to actually playing the game. At points, it really feels like you’re playing a book, with so much of other characters talking while players just read along.
Coupled with the sheer vastness of the game, sometimes Persona 5 Royal just moves too slowly. Each major baddie has a time limit for players to defeat before the story advances (if defeated successfully) or players reach game over (if not defeated within the time limit). One thing Persona 5 Royal teaches its players very early on is that time is the most precious resource that you have, so tackling the challenge of a Palace becomes a bit of a dilemma: sure you can pull out partway through your Palace completion to rest up and come back another day to finish the job with the whole party feeling refreshed and energized, but this simultaneously wastes days that could be spent furthering your social links. Do it the other way, though, and plow through the Palace in one fell swoop and suddenly you’re left with a large chunk of time where nothing plot-related happens - every character interaction before school or in the group chat is someone worrying if the change of heart will happen and it can be mind-numbing to watch the in-game clock tick by one day at a time, even if you know exactly what you’re going to do on each of those days. The game is just long, and while that’s a simple take, gone are the days where it was more reasonable to sink every waking minute into a game. Now it’s a matter of finding the time (even during a global pandemic) and it doesn’t matter how you slice it, 160 hours of time is an investment.
Of course, we can’t talk about Persona 5 Royal without addressing the obvious elephant in the room, too. Royal is a remaster. Not only that, but it’s a remaster of a game that was released fairly recently and as such there’s a number of players that may still be working through their original version of the game or even players that just aren’t ready to take such a big game on again so soon. Of course, remasters are expected to bring more content to the table beyond just the same game all over again, and Royal certainly does: new characters, new locations, new palace exploration mechanics, new ways to spend your free time, new personas, an entire new semester after where the original game was supposed to end. Is that all enough, though? The answer totally depends on your specific situation. Are you a die-hard fan of Persona games? Has enough time passed since your last playthrough of Persona 5? Are you obsessed with good writing, great stories, and memorable characters? Hell, did you miss out on Persona 5 the first time around and want to see what all the hype is about? If so, Royal is well worth the pickup.
If you don’t fall into any of the aforementioned categories, it may seem hard to pass on what I’m sure you’ve gathered is a great game. No worries, though. If Animal Crossing has your full attention or the Final Fantasy 7 Remake gets priority since it’s been so much longer since you’ve played that, it’s all good. Persona 5 Royal takes an already good game and makes it even better. It’s a game that can be daunting. It’s a game that has a lot to offer and rewards players that are willing to commit to it, and I’m willing to bet that this game can stand the test of time and still be just as good, so don’t stress! When you’re ready for it, Persona 5 Royal will be there to steal your heart.
For the impressive task of taking an already great game and making it even better, Persona 5 Royal, burdened mainly by its length and the fact that the original was released so recently, gets an 8/10.
Definitely pick this one up. You won’t regret it.