Part II: Combat

Persona 5 Royal has to be one of, if not the best implementation of turn-based combat i’ve ever …

Part II: Combat

Persona 5 Royal has to be one of, if not the best implementation of turn-based combat i’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. I’ve played a few with it before such as the Pokemon and Fire Emblem games, but I’d say Persona’s is the best. You’ve got the typical things like weaknesses, crits, multiple types of multiple moves and party management, but Persona adds a ton to it which I absolutely love. You’ve got a massive variety of Personas to manage and battle with, each with their own types, moves, abilities, strengths, weaknesses and even resistants + loads of stats to consider. You’ve then got up to 3 other people to command too, each with their own load of stats as well as their own Persona and as much as it sounds, the game makes it feel easy while still allowing for some very complex combos. One of the bosses you face, Okumura, was genuinely one of the worst boss fights i’ve ever faced. Without any kind of prior warning, you’re basically forced into facing multiple rounds of increasingly stronger enemies, and they will tank every single hit of any kind unless you hit their weakness, which isn’t easy to find (unless you google this bs up like I did :D). Another thing to take into consideration is the difficulty. I played on Normal, which I generally felt was a fair experience for me as a beginner who was completely new to the Persona franchise. The “hardest” difficulty is meant to be Merciless, although it makes your “Weak” attacks do 3x normal damage to enemies and their “Weak” attacks do 2x damage to you, so it ultimately ends up being easier than Hard difficulty. Overall it’s genuinely fun combat to learn, and thanks to it being turn-based you can take as long as you want to plan out every attack you have.

Part III: Music

The music. The music!! I absolutely love this game’s soundtrack, it’s up there with one of the best I’ve ever listened to. Mainly composed as what’s referred to as “acid jazz”, it’s a beautiful concoction of funk, jazz and rock it goes very well with whatever is happening in-game, such as the slow and calming melody of “Beneath the Mask” playing as you relax in the cafe, the suspense-inducing “Interrogation Room” as Sae questions your every action, “Tokyo Daylight” as you stroll through the busy streets and browse the local areas, or just the feel-good bop that is “Last Surprise” which is Original P5’s battle theme. In Royal it’s replaced with Take Over, which I personally prefer. There’s so many different speeds and instruments throughout it all and yet they all work so seamlessly and I never once got bored of a song during my playthrough. Every Palace you go through has their own unique theme, with my favourite one being Sae’s Palace with “The Whims of Fate”. Despite the current situation being quite dire, this song is quite upbeat with lyrics making remarks in relation to the Palace’s theme of gambling like “roll the dice” and “give into temptation”. The only music I’m not a fan of is the Mementos themes, they get quite repetitive quite quickly and can be annoying when you’re on a long journey but it’s not unbearable. Otherwise this soundtrack is amazing and you should definitely give it a listen if you haven’t already.

Part IV: Story

Persona 5 Royal takes place within this fictional version of modern-day Japan. While everything may seem normal, there’s actually an entire other world hidden from view called Mementos! It’s basically a place where the evil within a person can take its own form called a Shadow, and you(Joker) need to defeat the Shadows of the most corrupt and disgusting people in all of Japan, make them come clean and let them be healed from their evil-doings! All of this is done while everyone in the real world goes about their regular day, which you also need to do by attending school, making friends and helping people out to up your social status, as well as gain money to buy things for your party. You go against progressively bigger people within society, going from a suspicious gym teacher, to the CEO of a fast food chain, all the way to a presidential candidate, bent on making Japan into his personal paradise. As you do, you gain friends who learn about Mementos with you, and join you in your adventure to take down anyone corrupt. Each new character has their own unique backstory and journey into becoming a part of your journey, like Ann who’s working to become a model, Haru with her business-obsessed and overly controlling father, or Joker himself, who’s been wrongly accused of hurting a woman and was sent to Sojiro’s as he’s the only guy who will take him in. Every character is incredibly well written, although my favourite is definitely Futaba. I heavily resonate with her, being a girl with obvious social issues and an obsession with technology. I also find Ryuji quite funny, I think Sojiro is amazing in his own right, and Morgana is… Morgana. Everyone plays a part in creating Persona 5’s story, and it’s one that will constantly keep your attention as you play.

Part V: Conclusion

Summed up, Persona 5 Royal is genuinely just one of the best games i’ve ever played. I love it’s characters, it’s gameplay, it’s story, it’s soundtrack, it’s style, pretty much everything about this game puts a smile on my face and keeps me wanting more. At some point, I will get around to playing other games in the series, specifically Persona 3 Reload and the supposed Persona 4 remake being made. With everything 5 Royal has though, it all fits together in a wonderful and stunning game that yes, is incredibly long (I think my first playthrough was around 120 hours) it’s by far the best game I played through in 2024, and so with that, thanks for reading through my first ever blog post! If you wanna talk with me about Persona or my blog or anything at all, feel free to add me on discord @jessicolonthree ^^