I am a little embarrassed at how much I’m enjoying Persona 5 Royal. I bounced off P4 like 1/2 of the way in and never looked back, but I’m finding this one much more engaging. There’s a lot more complexity and variety in both its combat system and dungeons. I gather that Royal made a lot of additions and improvements in those departments. This game’s combat is actually quite similar to what I played of Nocturne, in the best way. Bringing SMT style monster collection/fusion in was such a good idea. I’m playing on Hard mode and while it’s not quite as hard as Nocturne, it feels extremely well-balanced. It’s just the right level of difficulty to keep me engaged but not frustrated.
As expected, the writing is wildly inconsistent and frequently very dodgy. There is so much unnecessary dialogue here. Every concept and theme needs to be explained at length by 4 different characters in rapid succession. In most media, if a character needs to explain something the audience has already seen, we’ll cut away from the explanation and move on. In this game, you really just have to sit down and watch that full explanation at length. This kind of thing has to be intentional padding, right? The game’s pacing would be so much better without it.
And of course, the most sour note here is the game’s treatment of women and queer people. I’m still only at the second palace so I know I haven’t seen the worst of it, but the way this game treats Ann is so frustrating. She’s a likeable and fairly well-drawn character, but it sucks how many times she gets “comedically” creeped on, especially by protagonists. That stale anime “horny rascal” stuff really grates.
But even with all that, I can’t stop playing this thing! I can not believe how compelling I find its various systems, and despite my significant issues with its writing, I’m still getting some decent shonen anime enjoyment out of it.