Persona 5 Royal was the first game from this beloved series that I played, and it lived up to they hype. Somehow I found myself anticipating getting out of class so that I could go home and attend school in game. P5R does everything very well but doesn't really go above and beyond at anything.
The narrative is pretty solid. Every side story is similar to your own, something happened that caused the character to get labeled a certain way and you spend time with them and help them overcome this. This mirrors how you were initially a criminal and everyone at the school thought of you that way. I think that since the game is all about peoples perceptions, going into the heart and seeing their distorted perception of the world is such a cool design. My only complaint about the story of the game is that there is a bit too much dialogue that is reiterating the same point. Also, I think that the original ending for the game felt better and having the game continue afterwards felt a little awkward. I enjoyed the new royal content, however, I think I would have preferred if the original ending was the full conclusion.
Persona is really two different games mashed together. It's an engaging social sim, that also gives benefits within a JRPG dungeon crawler. This blend fits it so well because I want to strengthen my bond with characters due to how engaging the social sim aspects are, and getting rewarded in the dungeons for doing so only makes it feel better. Near the end of the game, the combat does begin to get stale since it doesn't have the most depth. But this point didn't hit for me until I had already enjoyed it for about 85 hours.
The artistic direction of P5R is fun and simplistic. The anime style cutscenes look fantastic whenever they appear, but when cutscenes are done using the models they end up looking a little clunky and awkward. The best part of the game is it's soundtrack by far. So many songs are extremely catchy and I still listen to them months after I have beaten the game. Voice acting in the game is hit or miss. Sometimes a character says a line and you really feel the emotion, but other times it feels bland and forced.
The game offers a few different difficulty options and a new game + mode in terms of replayability. It could also be fun to replay just because you can use different personas and level up confidants in different orders which would make the gameplay experience at portions of the game vastly different. Since the game gives you a very generous amount of time to do everything you want in one playthrough, there isn't much new content to be found on future playthroughs.
P5R is an incredible game that doesn't have any areas where it is excessively weak. Its soundtrack is absolutely fantastic, but everything else about the game is just above average. I wish that there were more meaningful decisions to make throughout the story so that replaying the game had more differences from your initial playthrough.
( 90/100 )
The narrative is pretty solid. Every side story is similar to your own, something happened that caused the character to get labeled a certain way and you spend time with them and help them overcome this. This mirrors how you were initially a criminal and everyone at the school thought of you that way. I think that since the game is all about peoples perceptions, going into the heart and seeing their distorted perception of the world is such a cool design. My only complaint about the story of the game is that there is a bit too much dialogue that is reiterating the same point. Also, I think that the original ending for the game felt better and having the game continue afterwards felt a little awkward. I enjoyed the new royal content, however, I think I would have preferred if the original ending was the full conclusion.
Persona is really two different games mashed together. It's an engaging social sim, that also gives benefits within a JRPG dungeon crawler. This blend fits it so well because I want to strengthen my bond with characters due to how engaging the social sim aspects are, and getting rewarded in the dungeons for doing so only makes it feel better. Near the end of the game, the combat does begin to get stale since it doesn't have the most depth. But this point didn't hit for me until I had already enjoyed it for about 85 hours.
The artistic direction of P5R is fun and simplistic. The anime style cutscenes look fantastic whenever they appear, but when cutscenes are done using the models they end up looking a little clunky and awkward. The best part of the game is it's soundtrack by far. So many songs are extremely catchy and I still listen to them months after I have beaten the game. Voice acting in the game is hit or miss. Sometimes a character says a line and you really feel the emotion, but other times it feels bland and forced.
The game offers a few different difficulty options and a new game + mode in terms of replayability. It could also be fun to replay just because you can use different personas and level up confidants in different orders which would make the gameplay experience at portions of the game vastly different. Since the game gives you a very generous amount of time to do everything you want in one playthrough, there isn't much new content to be found on future playthroughs.
P5R is an incredible game that doesn't have any areas where it is excessively weak. Its soundtrack is absolutely fantastic, but everything else about the game is just above average. I wish that there were more meaningful decisions to make throughout the story so that replaying the game had more differences from your initial playthrough.
( 90/100 )