Persona 5 Royal - A previously uneven masterpiece polished to a mirror sheen

Hi everyone, welcome back to Tiro Finale! It's been a long time since I have wrote about videogames here, and honestly I'm kinda surprised in retrospect i didn't talk about the original Persona 5 which I played on launched way back in 2017, despite me finding it to be a very very good game. I suspect the main gist of it is there just wasn't a lot to talk about the game. It's a damn great title that would easily slot into most people's must-play list of JRPGs, and I'm certain that more than enough people have extolled the merits of the game that I did not feel any need to add to the discussion.

Fast forward to current year 2020, and Atlus, as per tradition since the launch of Persona 3 FES, has graced us with the enhanced edition of P5 in the form of Persona 5 Royal. And pretty much as expected, it is another wondrously fantastic upgrade to a already darn good title. Saying the new versions of any Persona title is just a mere enhanced edition perhaps would be criminally underselling the insane amount of effort the studio put into improving (to a frankly ludicrous degree) what were basically already award winning games.

In Persona 5 Royal, the main draw of for players of the original to purchase the game will undoubtedly be the addition of new characters and the new semester after the end of the original game's campaign. All things considered, new characters Maruki and Kasumi were woven into the original story of P5 in an impressively seamless manner, and I suspect new players would not have found them out of place had their additions not been blatantly featured on the box and every piece of marketing out there. 

Unsurprisingly, both of them play their biggest roles in the new semester, but still get a surprising amount of screen time leading up to it, and they well up there as some the best characters P5R has to offer, with Kasumi in particular being a breath of fresh air in character development pacing for the series with its slower, more natural progression. This was something that was kinda absent in P5 and P4, mostly due to how the story and gameplay had to be structured in its episodic month-to-month format. Characters often show up right before they were relevant to the plot, and invariably get thrust front and center into the latest events, finish what I can only describe as a big bulk of all the development they ever receive as characters, before slipping in comfortably to the party for the rest of the game. I don't want to knock them too much for this, since for what it is the characters are still pretty darn likable for the most part, just somewhat lacking in the substantially more realistic and 3-dimensional character writing featured in P3.

Without touching too much into spoiler territory, the new semester is what I unreservedly say is a fantastic new addition to the game. The core new story is great, the developments to characters new and old are very nice to see, and the thematic gravitas it so unashamedly runs all of this with leads to an ending that encapsulates the actual core message of Persona 5 (and its not rebelling against injustice) a darn sight better than original, given a gloriously bittersweet send off to this wonderful and lengthy journey.

Now, the new content is great and all, but what most surprised me was the sheer amount of enhancements to base game has received. The obvious ones would be the re-balanced battle mechanics, re-balanced economy, reworked dungeons, new dungeon traversal mechanics, new areas and activities to explore in Tokyo. The combination of the above do a great deal to improve the dungeoning and combat portions of Persona 5.

In combat, the addition of Technical damage (+damage and knockdown for combo-ing certain elements onto status effects) and unique Persona traits to each Persona (ie. halve the cost of Fire spells), both do a good job at adding an additional layer of depth and flexibility to combat, party composition, and Persona creation.  Guns also play a greater role in Royal, with the replenishment of ammo after every fight instead of every dungeon visit making them far more viable tools in your arsenal. 

The above make meaningful improvements to the tried and true Persona formula by giving players more options (especially in higher difficulties), but it might not have mattered without the changes to the economy. with money being dolled out waaaaaaaay more generously than before. The lack of funding (without excessive grinding) in the original probably excessively hampered players' options in creation of more interesting Personas, and activities in the social portion of P5. The re-balanced economy now lets players focus more on the interesting decisions on what insane combination of traits and abilities to stack on Personas, and how to schedule the myriad of activities and social links, rather than the less interesting "have I grind-ed enough to pay for eveything I planned?"

With some work, you can create some absolutely monstrous persona in this game

The obvious changes aside, I also very much appreciate the smaller improvements put into P5R. A lot of textures and models are sharpened to make an undeniably stylish game even better looking, characters (even some minor ones!) received new (and better) sprites to emote a greater range of emotions, more lines receive full voice acting, and the new additions to the soundtrack are some of the best in a game famous for its OST. 

But by far the biggest improvement is to the writing and dialogue, both to the native Japanese script (I played it subbed) but more specifically to the English localization. The English subtitles is better in tune to the actual meaning of the Japanese script and less literal, making lines often less corny or out of place. Dialogue flows smoother, with less mind-reading between characters, and lot less odd artifacts like Ryuji spamming "for real!?" every other scene.

All the above additions, gameplay enhancements, and quality-of-life changes combine to make my (re-)playthrough of the main story of Persona 5 surprisingly fresh and enjoyable. I enjoyed the new content and can't help but inwardly grin as I noticed my many smaller nitpicks and qualms of the original were nicely address. If I had to say what I wasn't fully satisfied with this time around, it would be the same before, there really isn't that many social events where the character just get to hang out and have fun character interactions, soemthing Persona 4 Golden was very, very good at.

New and returning players will also be happy to know that more free time will be available in the social portion of the game to max out their social stats and social links, both in the form of a rebalanced schedule that easily fits the new additions (and Morgana forcing you to sleep less), and the few extra days in the new semester. I enjoyed my time going through Persona 5 once again, this time easily maxing out all available social links at the start of the 2nd last month in the original story without 100% min-maxing. More so than any of their previous re-releases, the enhancements made in Royal easily places it as my favorite Persona game when it comes down to gameplay.

Does it top the list of my favorite Persona title? Not quite. That honor would be still firmly held by Persona 3, and likewise the shockingly fantastic additions made in P3:FES and P3P. The newer Persona game might boast better gameplay and quality-of-life standards, but none of them have the sheer degree of craftmanship in the creation of Persona 3 with its integration of gameplay mechanics, character writing, themes, mood and pacing in such harmony while remaining impactful with genuine subtly horrifying twists, and remaining very internally consistent throughout.

THAT BEING SAID, Persona 5 Royal, on its own two legs, is an unmistakably top tier JRPGs that I will recommend to any fan of the genre. The insane amount of love and effort spent on tweaking and improving this game makes this already stylish package shine with a new level polish that makes playing through its 120+ hour story an absolute joy. They once again knocked it out of the park with the quality of this re-release, here's to hoping for greater things from the studio in the future.