Review | Persona 5 Royal

Originally published at: Review | Persona 5 Royal - XboxEra

The mainline Persona series is finally coming to Xbox. Persona 5 Royal was originally released in 2020 and it’s dropping into Game Pass on Console, PC, & Cloud on day one. I’ve never played one of these games before but after playing as much as I could and seeing the story through for this embargo I get the love.

In This Metaverse You Have Legs

I’ll do my best to give an outline of the plot without divulging any big details because the story is great and should be experienced spoiler-free if possible. Your protagonist is a young man accused of assault against a powerful man that had been forcing himself on a terrified woman. After being expelled from high school and ostracized as a juvenile delinquent you’re sent off to a new city and school to serve out your probation. Slowly over the course of more than 100 hours, you’ll unlock your latent rebellious powers in the “metaverse”. This is sounding like a Mark Zuckerberg wet dream, but unlike that horrific mental imagery, the sites on offer here are well worth seeing.

Without breaking down any more of the how or why let’s get into what you’ll be doing. Days are broken up into a linear calendar system (with some flash-forwards and backward occasionally). Every day has several cycles that can either be automatically set and driven by the plot or open for your own choosing on how to spend your time in and outside of school. The “royal” part of the name comes from this being a re-release of the original, which was only a few years old. Combat, plot, and pretty much everything has been reworked and expanded upon including a true ending that you can only experience if you’ve met a few requirements.

While the plot is worth experiencing on your own I highly suggest using a guide to make sure at the very least that you get to see the full ending of the game. It was one of my favorite parts to experience, though unfortunately, that was on YouTube. I only had three days from the time of getting this review code until I had to write this review. I put about 35 hours into the game in total in that time and saw the majority of the gameplay systems before watching the rest of the story on YouTube. It’s not ideal, but sadly the reality is that a review like this gets 99% of its viewership in the first few days of everything going up. Let’s get back into the day-to-day structure and then focus on the quality of this port.

Daily Grind

This is a giant game, though not a massive install. Through clever use of only having a few major locations, you’ll spend a lot of time in what is in general a small map for most of the game. Days can be either automatic in their content or up to your choice, as I said before, and that is where using a guide for a first-timer can be key. You have a variety of stats and relationship scores that must reach certain thresholds by a set timeframe and if you don’t you will miss out on a lot of content. The first of these is Joker’s (the codename for your character) basic stats. They range from knowledge to guts, charm, and more. Various actions such as correctly answering questions in school, solving crossword puzzles, and watching movies at a theater can raise your stats but will typically cause time to advance.  An example would be that you’re home from school, it’s now evening, and you’re allowed to go anywhere in the city. Do you want to go work part-time at a beef bowl shop or hang out with a confidant to raise your level with them?  Either action will be the last thing you do that day before time moves forward to the next morning. The balance on where to go and what to do can be tough to keep up with if you’re a first-timer like me, and I quickly found myself using a few helpful guides I found online to make sure I didn’t miss anything major.

Those confidants I mentioned are either members of your eventual crew or friends you make throughout the story. Spending time with them while having certain personas either equipped or in reserve can allow your rank with them to increase and offer up both in-game or combat upgrades or be key to progressing the story. Your personas are “shadows” you’ll meet while on a mission. I’ll keep it vague to keep spoilers down, but this is the combat side of the game where your inner rebellious desires manifest as masks from which a powerful creature is summoned. There are different types of personas each with its own type, move set, and look. You can combine them to create new ones and the system is a lot of fun overall.

It would take me thousands of words to cover all the various systems here from buying new weaponry to consumables, part-time jobs, all the various areas you can unlock fast travel to, and more. I’m mainly going to focus on the quality of this port as I reviewed the game on an Xbox Series X and it looks and runs fantastically.

Performance

Graphically the game is crisp, though cinematics are a bit fuzzy in comparison. I recently played through Soul Hackers 2, and while I liked that game and its style it doesn’t hold a candle to Persona 5 Royal. This game is a constant vibe, and that extends to every aspect.  The normal day-to-day life areas are well rendered, and the framerate never buckles. I fell in love with the various areas of the metaverse that you’ll explore, with their vibrant colors and out-there design. The effects on abilities and in the post-fight screen match the jazzy synths to create something unique and chill.

As impressive as the soundtrack is the English dub nearly matches it. Only a few characters felt a bit cheesy, with the majority of the vocal cast doing a great job of matching each character. I had originally started with the Japanese audio and subtitles but after giving the English dub a go I ended up sticking with it for the rest of my playtime. There is a lot of text that isn’t voiced and I knew I was going to be reading enough as is, so I was happy to give my eyes a break whenever possible.

Persona 5 Royal features a lot of fast travel, as whenever you have free time you can instantly travel back and forth from anywhere you’ve unlocked. Load screens were never longer than two seconds, which made hopping around the city a pleasurable experience. I used Quick Resume my entire time playing and had zero issues at all. Everything felt rock solid, though there is an online aspect of the game that may suffer a bit at launch since it’s going directly into Game Pass. I did find the opening section of the game to be too slow to get me into the action and far too many days were automated so that I had no choice in what I wanted to do. If you can get through those initial 10 or so hours though the game opens up more and more into something truly remarkable.

In Conclusion

Persona 5 Royal is a fantastic game. Excellent turn-based combat is carried further by gorgeous visuals, an incredible soundtrack, and a story filled with brilliant twists and turns. It’s available day one on Xbox Game Pass and if you’re looking for a game to put over 100 hours into (conservatively) then do yourself a favor and give this one a go.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X
Available on Xbox, Playstation, Switch, PC
Release Date October 21st, 2022
Developer ATLUS
Publisher SEGA
Rated M for Mature

16 Likes

Great review. Yeah this game is on another level compared to Souls hackers 2. Ive already played the first 3 dungeons of P5 so when i boot up the xbox version im going to try to speed run those parts. Im alien to the game past that point so cannot wait to finally finish it

Finally embargo is up so we can watch 4k60 vids for series x version maybe even see comparison vids

The cinematics were never natively rendered for the ahrdware so youre watching some ps4 cutscenes. I think they enhanced some new royal cutscnes though not sure.

4 Likes

As much as I like the visual identity and music of Persona, I can’t bring myself to play a 140 hour long JRPG. Happy for the fans to finally be able to play it especially on GP tho

2 Likes

I’ve already completed Persona 5 royal on playstation, But i will do it again on xbox to help my fellow xbox Jrpg port beggars.

3 Likes

The thing is that you only play the first 20 hours and then you put it in the backlog. That’s the power of Game Pass ! :doge:

4 Likes

Can’t believe I finally get to play this. Looking forward to diving in.

This should be a great Cloud/handheld game as well!

3 Likes

Its 100 hours but i get your point. But you can play it a semester at a time. Some people i know took a year to beat persona 5.

2 Likes

That’s my plan. It’s going to be my side game to play on my iPad when my wife or kid are using the TV. I’ll play a couple hours here and there over the next several months and slowly work my way through it.

1 Like

100 hours!!! Lordy lord.

I cannot be starting with a game like that when I still have RDR2 to continue with, Psychonauts 2 to even begin with and just so many more games.

With this hobby of ours…never a dull moment, we never run out of things to play.

1 Like

Months ago someone posted a guide/writeup on things to look out for if you’re aiming to 100% the game in a single playthrough. I can’t find it again now. Could some hero who remembers this either link or re-post it? :slight_smile:

1 Like

100 hour game… I am out, at this stage in life do not have that kind of time to invest in to a game

I’m gonna be real real honest - no one should try to 100% it on their first playthrough. I know as a completionist it might be stressful but from my experience of the series you just have to kinda accept you’re not gonna see it all in one playthrough. The only way to do it in one playthrough is literally following a step by step guide for the bulk of the 100 hour experience because it would require the most carefully planned and optimised schedule possible, I can only imagine it’s the most tedious way to experience the game possible. And ultimately there is STILL a few small things you won’t be able to do until new game+ anyway.

If you’re serious about seeing everything my advice is to do it over two playthroughs. Money, gear, your persona compendium and your social stats are carried across to new game+, so if you know you’re aiming for two runs just try to max out your social stats on the first run and then you’re free to focus on socialising for the second run.

image

:philwins:

14 Likes

Xboxera is famous

5 Likes

Yeah i agree. Trying to 100 percent it first playthrough is sort of structured in a way where it takes a lot of the fun out of the game.

Great review guys!

I’ve only played/finished Vanilla P5, so I’m pretty excited. Definitely feels like one I’ll be playing more through Game Pass on my Odin than on the Series X though.

That 100 hour investment is pretty beefy when, like me, you only have a few hours per day to play - but should carry nicely to P4G dropping.

2 Likes

Thats one of the reasons I never beat it on PS4. I bought Royal on PS4 got to around 3rd dungeon and stopped. I just didn’t have the time to sit down on my couch and play a 100 hour JRPG

But The Cloud factor will help

Also I spent 150 hours playing Persona 4 Golden on Vita…about 50% of those hours were during Train Commutes to College. I don’t think I beat that game if it was on a console.

1 Like

Counterpoint: I love doing it that way. My partner is my co-pilot and keeps track of stuff for me, so it feels like we’re playing it together. Your perspective is almost certainly applicable to more people, but I felt the need to (respectfully) push back a bit :sweat_smile:

@SheepDip

Did you mean something like this?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/260936-persona-5-royal/faqs/78212/ace-how-to-use https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/260936-persona-5-royal/faqs/78212/ace-april

Is this similar to something like AI in how characters behave? Like in one scene they can be super serious and the other scene they are quirky, funny, odd and sometimes downright…well, perverted? Or is it more like Yakuza? Although I’m not super far into Yakuza 0, so who knows what the characters also are like, lol.

Please don’t spoil that. :wink: