O jogo que me fez amar jogos de turno e de MUITO diálogo foi o mesmo que me levou a experimentar Ace Attorney, Persona 3, entre outros. No entanto, apesar de ter um lugar especial no meu coração, ele tem muitos problemas narrativos que tornam a história meio chata. Comparado com o Persona 3, os personagens não têm nem metade do desenvolvimento, e o MORGANA SIMPLESMENTE CONSEGUE SER UM CHATO DO KARALHO por não te deixar sair nas primeiras três horas. No entanto, a trilha sonora desse jogo é simplesmente perfeita, o menu é maravilhoso e a arte é de tirar o fôlego. Recomendo jogar APÓS o Persona 3 Reload ou se você quiser aprender inglês.

It took years of waiting and enduring owning a Playstation but wanting to play this game at high framerates, but it's finally here, and damn was it worth the wait. The Royal Edition comes with extra content, a revision of everything, new confidants, and an expansion to the finale of the game. The game is peak JRPG with a turn-based fighting system using a "Persona", powers similar to stands from Jojo. Strongly suggested if you're looking for a long game with a vivid world and a wonderfully written story. No matter how you want to play, it will be a long game, but it's worth the time!

The Daily Life

There are a lot of JRPGs out there, and while this refines most of the genre mechanics, that is not what makes it unique. In Persona, say that the story lasts for 6 months: you'll play each and every single day. Sure, you could rush through a day by spending it at home and going to sleep early, but you still have to play it. During weekdays the character will go to school, and after school and evenings are two moments you could do any activity of your choosing. From going around in the world doing errands to going out with a friend. There is no way to skip days as things like school are mandatory and automatic, we wouldn't want you to skip school now, would we? Each day has unique events attached to it for example: meeting people at the train stop, being able to take a seat on the train to read, or moments in class where you might be asked questions about a topic that if answered correctly will level up knowledge. Afternoons and evenings can be spent with confidants available on that day, activities available to the player, or simply home watching a DVD that will level up your social stats. Going out with confidants will level them up, and the more levels you have with each confidant the more abilities they offer you. Although there are bad responses to the confidants, just going out again will compensate for that.
I want to put extra emphasis on the confidants, as they have a very good story that goes on during multiple get-togethers and gives them purpose and resolve. Honestly one of the best parts of the game for me.
Very early in the game, it's important to learn how to treasure the free time and use it smartly, because there is a counted set of days, and after that, the game won't continue.

HUD

I'm one of those players whose first few hours in a game are spent constantly going to the settings page, especially to disable UI components I don't deem necessary. I enjoy games with a great UI design, and that use their space in a smart way instead of overwhelming the player leaving little of the game on screen, good UI can do a lot with little, see games like Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild and Shadow of the Colossus.
As someone who pays a lot of attention to UX design, this game is just on another level. Not only it's somewhat minimal, greatly themed, and overall functional, but it's almost part of the 3D space. Even teleporting or loading is just beautiful to look at! It's used very smartly, and I would love to learn more about how they achieved results like at the end-of-fight screen where the UI goes behind the character, great use of it! It is genuinely nice to look at as it fits the game perfectly. It's not perfect, something like the clock and calendar could fade off after a bit during dungeons and some of the menus have settings a bit too deep in them not making it intuitive to find, but, overall, one of the best UIs I've ever seen!

Peak JRPG

While this title game is the best I've seen from JRPGs, I don't want to give the idea this game is perfect. I entered having a general idea of what to expect from the game but not knowing what I was getting into 100%. Thing is, this game improves on a lot of factors of the genre, but it also clutches to some kinks the genre always had. Know if you're going to play this game you have to be in for a lot of reading. Many hours of gameplay, outside of dungeons, could be played in minutes by skipping dialogues, and, most of the text is not dubbed, which is understandable considering the volume of it. On top of this, most of the actual gameplay happens inside "dungeons". While they are extremely well done, interesting to play through, better than they ever have been in Persona, and improved in Royal, on a gameplay level they are quite flat. The exploration is down to the bone mostly done with interactions, and it's perfectly fine, especially when the game excels in other parts of the explorations like puzzles. I would have enjoyed being able to jump on command instead of looking for where the interaction is with the special vision filter. I found myself looking around with the vision more than I would like because a ledge that would be normally reachable since it's not meant to be climbed on it's impossible to do. Most of the fighting can be summed up as looking for the weakness of the enemy and using it against them, be it a specific element or a combination of a status plus element. The game is not afraid of performing damage checks and using numbers in the most frustrating way to create a challenge, especially in two moments of the story. There are good challenges that actually require you to plan your attacks accordingly, and then there is just plain frustration. I mention this as one of the main bosses acts almost as a wall for players, and I think while the idea for the fight was good, the execution was just plain bad. I got there extremely prepared, I can't imagine what a nightmare it would be not being ready for this fight the games does nothing to prepare you for.

A Royal Update

A bit like Nier Replicant 1.2ˉ, in Royal, Atlus has revised everything. Dungeons have a different layout, there are more confidants, more days, a different ending, and the more the merrier. It also offers more days to get things done and an extensive different finale, but it requires two confidants to be maxed out, which means speeding through the game is going to take a lot away from the experience, finale included.

From PS3 to PC

The game runs relatively smoothly, but don't trust the minimum requirements. Thing is, the game runs on an engine that was meant for PS3, which is why every area is separated by a loading screen, although smartly integrated. The game suffers on an engine level, no matter the hardware. Many NPC on the screen will kill performances, although it might be using 20% of the hardware. There are mods that allow the removal of background NPCs, for example, but in general, consider having better hardware than the suggested one or modding. On my hardware, the game ran mostly at 120fps, but there were moments where simply approaching a part of a city where the camera goes further away and more is loaded in that would drop it down to 60 sometimes while my hardware was not struggling at all. I assume it's probably a draw call problem as I've seen the same on Skyrim, which is also a game with the backbone of a PS3-era title, and at the time there was less room for draw calls.
Talking of the game being PS3 era, some of the textures are so too. And it's sad to see Atlus not even passing them through some AI upscale to get a bit more resolution in them, especially when some things are used extensively throughout the dungeon.
The AA is the worst I've seen in a long time. It's not aliasing anything. Everything in the game is extra jaggy and the only solution I found is increasing the internal resolution to almost 200%. That way you're generating so many pixels the AA has more to work with and looks better, but that kills the performance, so there's a tradeoff in both cases.

Conclusion

Overall the game is worth the money and time and it's a great experience if you like the genre, but while it improves on it I think a bit more could have been done to make it even more outstanding. Strongly suggested.

8.9/10

Being the main game that got me hooked into the Persona series, this game was a masterpiece. In its entirety, it was able to revamp the classic RPG style I had grown up on and create a ravishing experience. From the story to the battle, the character arcs, and all wrapped up in the beautiful colors and music, this game is in my eyes, a top 3 game of all time for me. The replayability on it is incredible and the story is one that had shocked me with its twists and turns. Each boss felt fleshed out and did a fantastic job creating a bond between the player and the story. Overall, if you're looking for an excuse to get into Persona, or to experience this masterclass, look no further.

I played about 40 hours of Persona 5 in 2019 before circumstances led to the loss of my PS4. Waiting for 5 and later Royal to come to PC, I purchased Persona 4 Golden and played about 20 hours. That game unfortunately was a poor substitute for this one and I failed to get into it, so purchasing and ultimately playing through this behemoth of a game has been an immensely rewarding experience. To be fair to Persona 4 Golden, that game offered me a lot of what I love about this one. The gameplay loop of Persona games is something I find incredibly immersive; living out a chunk of time day-by-day (in Royal's case a year), growing social stats and developing relationships while the plot unfolds. I was drawn in by the steady but marked pace of Royal and the organic character development of my confidants that truly felt earned over time. I love the Megami Tensei shared universe lore, Persona combat systems, creature collecting, and storytelling approach of both Royal and Golden, and yet Golden was still a poor substitute.

Persona 5 Royal stands apart from other Persona games, from other JRPGs, indeed from other games in general primarily on vibe. This game offers a total aesthetic adherence unmatched by any game I’ve played. The visual design from costuming to setting right down to UI, music (of course), character writing, plot, and yes, the pacing all come together to form one message that you’re familiar with if you’ve played: Take your time. For my money this is the perfect comfy game. In 2019 my Saturday routine was to wake up, make a big breakfast with a pot of coffee, watch a couple episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and play a few hours of Persona 5, a weekend routine that I long for now that my life doesn’t accommodate it.

These last weeks have been incredibly cozy, curling up with my Steamdeck and getting lost in the game’s world. Yes, it’s long, probably the longest I’ve spent on one completion of a non-roguelike singleplayer experience, but the length only serves to compliment the experience. There’s no rushing here, no panicking, no missing side content to mainline the story. The game takes over 100 hours no matter how you play, and for that time it fully immerses players in its world that oozes coolness and comfort while leveraging raw time investment to form meaningful relationships with characters and build an impressive plot that feels epic because of how much of the player’s actual life it takes to unfold, reminiscent of art like Sátántangó and Jeanne Dielman. Though the visual novel elements offer a superficial illusion of choice while leading down only one set path, they allow players to project their personality onto Joker which goes a long way to bolster immersion, and this game single handedly seeded my interest in visual and kinetic novels. Persona 5 Royal is the comfiest game I’ve ever played and probably the best JRPG I’ve ever played from a gameplay and story perspective, and it has given me characters that I know I will remember and think of forever. I love this game a lot!! Now onto P4G (again)!