5/5 ★ – Artagah's review of Persona 5 Royal.

Persona 5 Royal is a deep, beautiful, exciting, and emotional experience. At times funny, at times silly, it is always earnest and absolutely enormous. It took me close to 200 hours to see everything the game's world had to offer, and while I don't regret any of that time, it still felt borderline too long, taking multiple months of my life to complete. I feel like it could have easily been condensed while still telling the same impactful story with just as many characters, and I would have appreciated it even more! Speaking of characters, they are the soul of the experience. I legitimately felt like I spent an entire year with both the main party and all of the non-party confidants, and it felt devastating to say goodbye to them all as the credits rolled. While cliche at times, the writing did a great job bringing the characters, the game's world, and the overarching narrative to life. A massive contributing factor to making Tokyo in Persona 5 feel alive is the visuals and the game's sound design. While nothing mind-blowing as far as the tech goes, each location was very detailed and felt alive with various animations and crowds shuffling through them. The sound design also filled in the ambiance, and the mind-blowing compositions gave each space its own distinct, memorable character. The defining visual flair that's impossible to ignore is the game's incredibly stylish UI! The way it dances, zigzags, and layers across the screen is immaculate and, combined with the soundtrack, singlehandedly defines the game's signature vibe. As far as the gameplay goes, it's relatively standard SMT fare: a turn-based RPG with a Persona capturing mechanic layered on top. While simple, the system is very well done and balanced. I love the inclusion of various layers, such as the explosive enemies or the mechanic of slowly uncovering each enemy's elemental weakness, which kept battles exciting throughout every dungeon. The dungeons themselves are as basic as JRPG dungeons come in terms of design and layout, but I did appreciate their unique visual designs and the light puzzle elements. It's hard to fault the game for much, but nothing is perfect, so here are some tidbits I didn't entirely enjoy. As mentioned above, holy moly, the game is LONG! I wish they had trimmed it. I wish more of the game was voice-acted. I wish there were fewer time-wasters in the game, such as the various useless chores for raising social stats, and I'm not sure I love the idea of social stats as a mechanic just in general. All of the social stat-raising events felt like a waste of time, and social stat checks felt like massive, annoying obstacles on the road to what I really wanted to do: spend more time with the characters. I wish there were no useless character hangouts—the ones that don't raise your relationship rank—or at least I wish those hangouts were way more interesting and unique. Lastly, Mementos is sooooooo long; it's another one of those things that could have easily been cut down. The same goes for some of the dungeons; they're long with many relatively boring sections (especially the spaceport, my lort!). Overall, P5 Royal is an incredible, vast, immersive experience full of wonderful characters, catchy tunes, and very, very stylish art. Good job, Atlus!