In the past year or so, I have slowly but surely been catching up with a handful of games within the RPG genre, a genre that I am usually a little overwhelmed and intimidated by. Whether it is with the exhausting amount of information for the player or the amount of time required to really sink your teeth into the experience they provide, I admit to being a little scared off by RPGs for a while. But after playing RPGs such as “Horizon: Zero Dawn” and “Final Fantasy VII” that are very friendly to those new to the genre, I have since become motivated to make amends on this strange habit of mine.
The point I am getting across is that although I have heard mentions of the “Persona” series, I have yet to play a game from this series. But as soon as the consistent barrage of perfect review scores kept coming in for “Persona 5 Royal”, I knew I owed it to myself to see what all the praise is about. I am not going to lie though, going by the title alone, I though this was some sort of online RPG with a specific battle royale type of gameplay or something very random like that. As it turns out, this is actually an expanded definitive version of the 2017 RPG “Persona 5” with hundreds of hours of additional content.
Seeing that I have not played “Persona 5” before either, you can technically consider this a review for both games if you will. And from my experience with “Royal”, I can certainly understand why critics and gamers have been raving about “Persona 5” in general. The game’s narrative takes place in Tokyo and follows a nameless high school student, eventually nicknamed Joker, who is transferred to a different school under probation from an assault he is falsely accused of initiating. Almost everyone he comes across berates him of his “crimes” as if they knew what happened, which obviously they do not.
Throughout his school year, he and other fellow students enter an alternate reality where they inherit special powers that are only usable within this world. Together, they basically become a group of mind hijackers known as the Phantom Thieves. Their overall goal is to essentially steal the root of the human heart and mind’s faults. In doing so, this will set the humans they subconsciously hijack mentally down the right path. Going by the description and presentation, they are not quite mind controllers as much as they are stealthy psychological influencers.
The gameplay consists of a couple primary modes. The combat sections are turn-based with a multitude of different attacks and magic abilities to use as well as the ability to have an additional turn or a baton pass where another character gets their turn. There is also plenty of social simulation scenarios for our protagonist to navigate. They may be in the form of a conversation between your fellow students, answering a test question from your teacher, or other various interactions of that nature. There is also other side activities you can do throughout your day.
But through the game’s day-night mechanic, you will only be able to choose one to three things per day and work around your school schedule. You can study, perform part-time work, hand out with friends, and pick through various activities like that per day to further build your stats for when you are in the Metaverse. In answer to your question, the Metaverse is the realm where you will infiltrate the subconsciousness of various adults for society’s benefit and decrease the overwhelming corruption found within human nature. Basically, this is a psychiatrist’s spiritual haven.
Coming from someone with minimal experience in the RPG genre, even I can recognize that “Persona 5 Royal” has a lot of interesting elements that separate it from the crowd. For example, there is the customization process for your Personas, aka the egos you collaborate with in the Metaverse, and the special abilities you can choose to keep or discard depending on your play preference. There is also the ability to interrogate downed adversaries for items, money, or the power of their Personas or finish them off if they should be uncooperative.
The level design in the dungeon areas where you will spend much of your time leveling up your characters through combat changes quite frequently. I tested this out. Just when you think that you will be going to the same spot over and over, the game plays a trick on you and changes the physical layout to basically encourage more playtime. A blessing in that the opportunity to evolve your stats will never cease, but sometimes a curse if you are trying to get a hold of a character that can grant you access to purchase crucial items and stat upgrades to advance further forward.
The gameplay is consistently filled with little nice touches such as what I described that make a big difference on the enjoyment of my experience. We are strung along and engaged with Joker’s story every step of the way, and the narrative itself is equipped with profound insight into human nature’s tendency to be too comfortable with the norm. The so-called norm this reality confides itself in has fallen victim to corruption and taking things for granted that turn out to be more damaging and contradictory in the long run.
By taking place within a high school setting, the lessons Joker’s “superiors” are preaching are constantly being put into question by our playable lead characters. The highly polished anime visuals are ideal to the game’s identity as it masterfully integrates with the relevant social themes and wild hijinks within the Japanese culture. The hip and fun background soundtrack will keep you jamming through combat sections as well as the exploration and social interactions both in the Metaverse and the real high school world. You definitely get your money’s worth from this title.
My overall playtime so far has only been a fraction of what the entire package of “Royal” has to offer. Those that have played the original have gone on to admit that “Royal” improves upon its predecessor in multiple ways. Obviously, it has more content that I have yet to explore judging by the 20-40 hours I have chipped in thus far. But I am still motivated to get to explore what else “Royal” has in store for me. Even when I thought I was stuck with limited items in my possession, I was able to find a way to restock in the real world and then come back guns blazing in the Metaverse.
Critics noted that “Royal” improves upon the original story with more additional subplots and fixed story beats that were criticized in the original. And if any expansion, remaster, or remake of a game is able to make the original better, then it has clearly accomplished its goal. Upon further reflection, any nitpicks I could bring up such as a few camera hiccups or the absence of voice acting in some sections can be deemed absolutely trivial in the grand scheme of things. Because what “Persona 5 Royal” has on offer here is more than enough to justify the full price tag at release.
Between “Final Fantasy VII Remake” and now “Persona 5 Royal” this year, I can confidently say that the RPG genre has officially grown on me and aged like fine wine. Any game that can keep my spirits afloat amidst an emotionally devastating and exhausting timeframe is bound to earn extra gratitude on my end. For a game consisting of thieves stealing people’s hearts, that distinction has quite literally developed a ripple effect onto our world towards folks like myself who gave “Persona 5 Royal” a shot and were generously rewarded in tenfold. Consider this another heart taken.