
Is Persona 5 Royal Any Good?
Every now and then you’ll look at a game store page and see that it’s got pretty good reviews, and wonder if it’s actually any good. Well, I decided to finally play Persona 5 Royal and see if it lived up to the Overwhelmingly Positive user reviews on Steam.
What is Persona 5 Royal?
A game that needs almost no explanation (but you’re getting one anyway), Persona 5 Royal is an enhanced version of 2016’s Persona 5 released in 2019. An RPG steeped in Japanese culture, you control the player named main character (although canonically he's called Ren Amamiya) as he starts his new life in Tokyo after an incident in which he “assaulted” a powerful man. Though, the guy totally deserved a lot worse! This ends up with Ren being expelled from school and slapped with a year-long probation that sees him relocated and placed under the care of a temporary guardian, Sojiro Sakura. News travels fast about Ren, with more than a few embellishments as to his criminal past, causing the majority of the school to avoid, and even fear, him.
This is a Persona game, however, not a soap opera, so things take a turn for the weird fairly quickly, as Ren and local misfit Ryuji stumble upon a strange alternate reality of their school. What becomes known as the Metaverse houses several “Palaces”, which are directly connected to people’s views of the real world. For instance, P.E. teacher (and all-around nasty piece of work) Kamoshida sees the school as his own castle, with enslaved pupils and gaudy decorations of himself to go with it. Thus begins Ren and his ever-increasing band of Phantom Thieves’ journeys into the Palaces of criminals and other lowlifes in order to change their hearts, and hopefully make the world a better place.
It’s much more in-depth than that description, but that’s the general gist of the first few hours of the game. There’s a steady stream of new locations to visit, people to befriend, and optional missions to take on inside a mysterious place known as Mementos, so you’re never short of things to do!
What are the people saying?
If you have even the smallest miniscule amount of knowledge about this game, then you'll probably still know that people say almost universally positive things about it! In fact, ask any fan of the Persona franchise about it, and there's a good chance they'll talk your ear off for hours on end.
Not without reason, though, as the Persona series has a great track record when it comes to high-quality games. And with Royal sitting at the top of the pile in terms of its Metacritic score (a lofty 95!) it isn’t too big of a stretch to say that this one will be many gamers favourite Persona title. Even our own review gave it a perfect score!
Is it actually any good?
Well, I’m around 45 hours into the game, so it can’t be terrible, or I’d have given up, but is it living up to the hype? I’m not really sure...
The writing and characters are brilliant, and being able to pick and choose who I spend time with makes me feel genuinely connected to these well-written confidants. The presentation and soundtrack are both sublime, and it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played in terms of pure aesthetics.
I’m also rather fond of the combat, too! For a turn-based RPG, it’s still relatively fast-paced, and the variety of Personas you can acquire, as well as the sheer amount of magical and physical attacks at your disposal, means that there's always something new to experiment with. Plus, with the constant new abilities from levelling up confidant ranks, each new Palace brings with it a host of new passive skills that make fighting shadows not only slightly easier, but also more enjoyable.
So why am I not sure if it’s living up to the hype? For one thing, after putting off playing it for so many years, how could anything possibly live up to expectations? It’s a game I’ve heard a lot about, so I knew before even installing it that it would be good. But, as these things often go, I’m just not having quite as much fun as I’d imagined.
To me, it doesn’t feel well-balanced between the story-heavy sections and fighting your way through Palaces. That’s not to say the narrative isn’t paced well, because it is, but when the game becomes almost a visual novel and control is taken away from me for a decent amount of time, I find myself losing interest. On top of that, of the three Palaces I’ve finished so far (as well as several floors of Mementos), they just aren’t quite long enough and are also fairly linear.
I’ve only ever played Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 back when they were released on the PlayStation 2, and whilst I remember enjoying them greatly, I also had much more free time in which to sit and play games for hours on end. Now I’m a “responsible” adult, gaming sessions are becoming few and far between, meaning I can go days just waiting for the next Palace to become available as I sit and read line after line of dialogue. Not really a fair complaint, as the other Persona games I’ve played were much the same, and the writing is great, but I just want more game from my videogame.
I really, really like Persona 5 Royal, but I don’t love it. Not yet, at least.
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