Persona 5 Royal does it's absolute best to iterate on and improve so many aspects of the original game that it's hard to list it all. This game manages to make the best turn based JRPG battle system of all time even better, which is an accomplishment that cannot be overstated. The new story content is also some of the best writing we've seen in a Persona game to date, and it stands above the writing in the original release. The only complaints I have are pretty minor and mostly apply to the writing in that original release, which P5R does it's best to smooth out, but it isn't 100% successful in that regard.

I've got to commend P5R on the fact that it assumes all Persona 5 fans must already accept that the pacing is a lost cause and lean in even further into its absurd longevity.

But maybe when I feel a game doesnt respect my time when I play it through a fucking pandemic and am stuck in my house playing vidya more than ever before, it can actually fuck off.

There's good changes in Royal, from the minor to the more substantial, and there are things I like a lot about P5 in general. Its art style is fantastic, the soundtrack is a banger, it's very cozy. Royal makes appreciated changes to combat, bosses and dungeons, and theres a bunch of little things improved throughout the whole game.

The extra story content in this game should absolutely have been like the Answer in FES where you can just launch with it. Yes, the Answer is garbage, and there's a bunch of little changes in the main story but 90% of the game being a retread of a story that doesn't really stand up to the scruitiny of me getting increasingly frustrated at it.

And the thing is, if P5R was an edit, maybe with an extra story added at the end seperately like the answer, it could have been really great. Persona 5 is a game that could have more interesting story content added whilst also being shorter. Dungeons and characters could be consolidated, the introduction could be shortened, the calendar could be made basically half as long - but Royal does none of this.

It's a shame, really. If this game was 50 hours instead of 100+ I could probably see past more of it's issues. Until then, fuck it.

Persona 5 Royal improves on Persona 5 in every way, unfortunately this way is so disconnected storywise that it almost acts as an entirely seperate experience to the main game, being thematically an almost condemnation of the main game's storyline due to how disjointed the two narratives are. However, it is a superior storyline in almost every way, discarding many of the awful villains employed before in favour of one that had some pathos and connection to the themes of the Persona series as a whole of the exploration of the self, rather than the exploration of society the original Persona 5 opted for.

Gameplay takes a simultaneous leap in interesting ideas and a large stumble in difficulty due to said ideas, the new systems at play all make an easy experience absolutely trivial, an example being Persona traits add a lot more customisation to personalising a Persona's playstyle and ability usage but it becomes apparent this system isn't balanced at all, like giving Alice the ability to make instant death spells cost no SP, resulting in Alice killing every encounter that doesn't have an immunity to death instantly and cancelling out most late game random encounters. Ultimately, Persona 5 Royal shines in what it doesn't share with it's predecessor, and what it does share looks even worse in comparison.

Pros:
1. Great combat system
2. Parts of the story were very engrossing (the beginning and end)
3. Some great characters

Cons:
1. Hit and miss story - some sections were great, others felt lacking
2. Too much repetition - after about 15 hrs I realized that half the dialogue between the main characters on days in between dungeons was just them constantly saying some variation of "will the change of heart work? i have doubts.... did we do it? idk we'll just wait and see" over and over. this went on for almost 80 hrs...
3. Bad Pacing - Breeze through a dungeon in 1-2 in game days, and then you're forced to sit through hours and hours of dialogue with random side characters who have basically 0 impact on the main plot.

Idk overall i feel like this could have been great but it's just way too bloated with hella pacing issues. If the average playtime was cut down by like 40 hrs and some of the countless hours of dialogue with side characters was cut it would have been far more enjoyable imo.