I think a lot of people aren't as satisfied with this game because it doesn't advance the overall Zemuria plotline which is fine by me cause I think some of the best games in the series (Sky 3rd, Zero, Kuro 1) don't or barely do at all anyways. This game feels like more of a Kuro 1.5. Spends time fleshing out characters that needed more screen time in previous games, a little more backstory on Van and teasing about his relationship with Elaine which is pretty nice. Kuro NPCs continue to be PEAK and the sidequests were also consistently great. The gameplay has seen a couple balancing changes which made the game WAY more fun than the first to me.

It's a mess at times especially with it's awful act 3 that should honestly make it lose more points but I had such a good time with it that I don't mind.

If Backloggd had a better scoring system I'd give it like an 8.8 or so but I'm giving it 4.5 stars cause putting it next to Hajimari feels wrong.

Persona 5 is a game I played in 2017 and did not enjoy very much. The game has a strong start but the longer it goes on the more it feels like it completely goes back on everything it was trying to say in the early game. Was it just a complete disconnect between writers or is it a Persona 4 situation where they just made the decision to constantly undermine all of its themes. While the time management system is actually pretty fun a lot of the new social link rewards go towards making an already boring and repetitive combat system even easier.

One more is flawed on its own but it feels like there's very little room for things to go wrong in most of the games fights. Every random encounter is exactly the same and bosses actually just do no damage for some reason. This is likely because of how easy it is to get over leveled in this game and how important level difference is when it comes to damage. I ended up equipping armor that gave the minimum 10 defense to my whole party just so I had to think during bosses and even then a lot of them still weren't a big issue if I just payed attention to buff/debuff uptime but at least there was something I actually had to pay attention to.

All of this said I'm surprised to say that the new content added in Royal is actually really great? It all has proper buildup and is foreshadowed through the whole game. The party is personally invested in the new conflict and the events that take place all make sense. The new characters are fantastic and that new story is absolutely worth experiencing.

Is something I would be saying if you didn't need to play 90 hours of Persona 5 before getting close to the payoff. If the Royal stuff was somehow in its own game then this game would be like an 8 out of 10 but as it stands it's just not worth the time.