It's my favorite game ever. It has its flaws, such as the fact you are FORCED to romance female S.Links, which is pretty annoying for me, seeing as I do Max S.Link runs, but I can live with it. As for the Tactics Menu, I love it. It's not my favorite in the series, that goes to Royal, but wow is it fun once you get the hang of it. It's not perfect, but no system is. I enjoy it more than P4G's battle system, the only thing that P4G has over P3 in battle/the Velvet Room is being able to choose the inherited skills on fused Personas. However, this isn't that big of a deal to me. I also don't mind the lack of S.Links with the male party members because I feel they are very well realized in the main story, and their S.Links aren't most of their arc like in later games. The main story develops the members of SEES as characters and the S.Links further develop them as people. Also, all of my top 3 Social Links are from this game:

1. Akinari (Ties fantastically into the themes of the game)
2. Aigis (Same as Akinari as well as asking interesting questions about what it means to live)
3. Nozomi (I've only ever done his Link in December/January so the way I interpret the Death Cult is that he joined the cult Takaya and Jin started dedicated to the worshipping of Nyx, which I love) [I know this is an extremely hot take, but I really enjoy his Link, you're not supposed to like him, and that's executed perfectly]

There's not a single character from this game I dislike. Takaya and Jin are decent characters, and even characters like Kenji I can appreciate. Even the battle system is fun. I haven't beaten The Answer yet, but I'm planning on doing it soon as I've heard some mixed things about it, some saying it "ruined The Journey" and others saying it "was grindy, but the story was pretty good." I'll update this once I play it. Oh yeah, before I forget, Yukari is my favorite character period and the month of January in this game is peak fiction.

I love this game, while it's not my favorite Persona game, that's 3, but it still has, in my opinion, the best combat in a video game. The characters are quite good overall. It has three of my favorite Persona characters with the new Confidants, but the rest of the Phantom Thieves were a bit mixed. I loved Ryuji and Yusuke, but Ann was kinda just there after her arc and I just think Makoto is incredibly overrated, but I don't hate her, I think the name "Midkoto" perfectly describes my feelings for her, just kinda mid. Haru was, well, Haru, not enough screentime, but pleasant for what she had. Futaba is a legend. And Morgana is annoying, though not as bad as Teddie, though a worse overall character to me. Teddie was annoying but he had an alright arc, even if I didn't like how they resolved it, Morgana was less annoying but had a worse arc. Despite this, Persona 5 Royal's gameplay trumps over most of its other short comings, but I do care more about the story and characters than I do gameplay, so I have to deduct half a star. Don't get me wrong, it's fantastic, but the few iffy characters and the Okumura arc brings it down for me a bit.