This review contains spoilers
Persona 5 Royal is one of my favourite games so I have a lot to say about its sequel:
I quite enjoyed the story, none of the characters felt like overexaggerated versions of themselves as I've heard has happened in other Persona spinoffs. It was nice to see characters like Yusuke and Haru get their own arcs in focus after being a bit out-of-focus in the first game, and I really liked the new additions of Sophia and Zenkichi. The road trip was really fun. I had some issues though, namely I felt like Hyodo was just a worse retread of Shido from Persona 5 and I didn't really like the revelation that the cops knew the Phantom Thieves identities, seemingly for quite a while, though with how often they talk about being Phantom Thieves in public it's not really a surprise. Other than that, though, I really liked the story. Akira Konoe's Jail was easily my favourite, between its great aesthetics, great music, and my personal favourite of the game's villains. I overall think that the Third Semester from Royal makes for a better conclusion to the Phantom Thieves storyline and personal arcs, but this was a nice little dessert following the delicious feast that is Royal. It's a Persona game, so obviously the music and presentation is great, particularly the music. My favourite songs were Konoe's Jail theme, the Sendai theme, and "Daredevil".
Unfortunately, I was a lot more mixed on the combat. I ended up turning the difficulty down to easy just to carry on with the story and skipped most of the side content. It only really clicked with me during some of the boss fights, particularly the absolutely awesome boss fight against Konoe.
One final thought: the fact that the character Joker dated doesn't carry over created the simultaneously quite funny and quite sad implication that Joker and Makoto broke up between the ending of Royal and the start of this and just never bring up their relationship.
I quite enjoyed the story, none of the characters felt like overexaggerated versions of themselves as I've heard has happened in other Persona spinoffs. It was nice to see characters like Yusuke and Haru get their own arcs in focus after being a bit out-of-focus in the first game, and I really liked the new additions of Sophia and Zenkichi. The road trip was really fun. I had some issues though, namely I felt like Hyodo was just a worse retread of Shido from Persona 5 and I didn't really like the revelation that the cops knew the Phantom Thieves identities, seemingly for quite a while, though with how often they talk about being Phantom Thieves in public it's not really a surprise. Other than that, though, I really liked the story. Akira Konoe's Jail was easily my favourite, between its great aesthetics, great music, and my personal favourite of the game's villains. I overall think that the Third Semester from Royal makes for a better conclusion to the Phantom Thieves storyline and personal arcs, but this was a nice little dessert following the delicious feast that is Royal. It's a Persona game, so obviously the music and presentation is great, particularly the music. My favourite songs were Konoe's Jail theme, the Sendai theme, and "Daredevil".
Unfortunately, I was a lot more mixed on the combat. I ended up turning the difficulty down to easy just to carry on with the story and skipped most of the side content. It only really clicked with me during some of the boss fights, particularly the absolutely awesome boss fight against Konoe.
One final thought: the fact that the character Joker dated doesn't carry over created the simultaneously quite funny and quite sad implication that Joker and Makoto broke up between the ending of Royal and the start of this and just never bring up their relationship.