Persona 5 Royal

（Played on Switch with Japanese voice-over and text. 93 hours to see credits roll on Easy according to save file without that “Link’s Awakening” third semester. Look, yours truly got cocky with Persona 4 Golden on Vita. Selected Normal then got chewed out by that first proper dungeon and never went back. So cut me some slack for selecting Easy with Royal.）

Combing the playing of Tokyo Mirage Sessions (“TMS” for short) and Persona 5 (“P5” for short) with viewing of the Persona 3 Reload trailers is seeing that, horror of horrors, Atlus had figured out a working template for them and will repeat it. Those three titles can almost be seen as Atlus’ urban fantasy with high polygon coutn trilogy of role-playing games. P5, vanilla or Royal, is the dark middle chapter. Or at least P5 feels like the “bigger, badder” sequel to “Wii U’s very own” TMS. No, I do not mean “better” nor “worse”, the marketing horseshit “badder” will suffice here, if you allow me to explain.

Released in Japan about 9 months apart to each other, TMS and P5 were developed at almost the same time over at Atlus in the mid-teens. Both take place in modern day Tokyo and share some landmarks as hub areas. Both pull the camera way back to show you what big deals their final dungeons are. While TMS is green and bright, P5 is red and dark. P5 is also much longer, nearly twice as long. Being longer, like in many other cases, is both a blessing and a curse for P5 Royal. The melodramatic highs are better than most of TMS’ light-hearted hijinks, and you all had probably heard about the convoluted lows not once but twice on this very site. This review will focus on the lows earlier rather than later. But first, allow me to lead with P5’s Japanese voice cast since the lows of this game are the story casting implies.

Serious robot warriors? More like silly robot warriors.

I suspect that Tactica got greenlit because someone over at Atlus took a look at the Japanese voices behind Phantom Thieves and realized that they pretty much assembled a cast worthy of Super Robot Wars (“SRW” for short). SRW is a series of turn-based tactic games sold on being crossovers among animated mech shows. Those games usually have all-star Japanese voice cast that can make Disney and Square-Enix eat their Kingdom Hearts out. Tactica is pretty much Atlus making their own SRW with cover and melee. Of course, playing Tactica alone did not make me think about SRW since the 2023 spin-off lacks the 3 following Gundam “hall of fame” members who were “only” in P5 proper.

To start with a show stopper, there is the game’s human antagonist (Not the final boss mind you, since there is always a god to be killed before credits roll in Atlus offering.) voiced by Shuichi Iketa. Mr. Iketa was named on the wall of kanjis of Persona 5 TGS 2015 trailer and most famous for play the antagonistic Char in that first bunch of Gundam shows. He was likely cast mainly to deliver those enticing election speeches since Char were fund of giving those. His character in P5 being drawn like Evangelion’s Kendo Ikari with Lex Luther “hair” cut is no subtler than devil horn if you ask me.

Then there is Codename: Crown, top henchman of Iketa’s character and Kai Leng looking motherfucker to a Mass Effect 3 player like yours truly, voiced by Soichiro Hoshi. Mr. Hoshi’s appearance in P5 was also announced by the game’s TGS 2015 trailer. He voiced Kira Yamato in Gundam Seed, aka the dipshit of dipshits among Gundam boys. Chef’s kiss combination pairing him with Iketa as a villain duo, who unfortunately fell into that Sith trap. Yet this bloody game and its brave band of goody two shoes want to see him redeemed while my 33 years old cynical ass would never.

Finally, there is Mishima, the self-appointed Phantom Thief public relationship handler, voiced by Taisuke Sakaguchi. Mr. Sakaguchi was not mentioned by the game’s TGS 2015 trailer. He voiced the boy Uso in the rather forgotten Victory Gundam and apparently quite adored by other those over at Abnormal Mapping.

Comparing Persona 5 to more recent releases like Tale of Arise and Hi-fi Rush, I can recognize the voices of the party members in the 2016 game while the rouge galley members in the 2020s outings sound more familiar. I would go as far as to say that their seething voices were what kept me going to Royal’s rather dragged-out endgame. I shall introduce in reverse order.

First there are Haru Okumura Codename: Noir voiced by Haruka Tomatsu and Futaba Sakura Codename: Navi (Wonder why they changed it to “Oracle” in English. Avoiding Jimmy Camreon’s wrath?) voiced by Aoi Yuki. I put those 2 in this paragraph because they both voiced mech pilot in a baffling show titled Valvrave the Liberator. As far as my research goes (Just looking thing up on this wiki page actually.), the show is not featured in any SRW title, so Ms. Tomatsu and Ms. Yuki were not too recognizable among “mech heads”. But Atlus did cast Yuki well since Futaba is basically the same one she played in Valvrave, the man in P5 just takes care of her character there better. And woe to Haru who entered the latest. She did not just come to the scene late, she came when this revenge tale got cowardice so she did not get the pulling the stick out of her ass and s beating someone scene everyone else got.

Then there are Makoto Nijima Codename: Queen voiced by Rina Sato and Yusuke Kitagawa Codename: Fox voiced by Tomokazu Sugita. Ms. Sato and Mr. Sugita were both in the short-lived Buddy Complex, and yes only the man here played mech polit while the lady played a doctor. I paired those 2 in the same paragraph since I knew them through the comic book super heroes they voiced. It’s very funny to hear Makoto and Yusuke having that one conversation about comic in the Mementos.

The first 2 human party members are Ann Takamaki (Hi, honey. Sorry, but not sorry I got to say goodbye by next March.) Codename: Panther voiced by Nana Mizuki and Ryoji Sakamoto Codename: Skull voiced by Mamoru Miyano. Both Ms. Mizuki and Mr. Miyano can be seen as heavy hitter for mech-heads, the former voiced the titular female lead in Cross Ange and the latter played THE man piloting the titular war machine in Gundam Double-O. It’s worth noting that Mr. Miyano playing the impulsive Ryoji is against his performance as that Gundam boy.

And there is Morgana, “Mona” for short, voiced by Ikue Otani. Ms. Otani is the voice of Pikachu in Pokemon, adding to the “Persona is Pokemon for grown-ups” myth. Her involvement in mech shows as far as I know was in Vision of Escaflowne, a Star Wars remix. She played a cat girl that can be seen as the closest thing that show has to Chewbacca…

Finally, there is the player character Codename: Joker voiced by Jun Fukuyama, the voice behind Lelouch of the Rebellion himself! P5’s story is pretty much booked as Rebelling Lelouch versus Counter-attacking Char (This would look better in Japanese since no word needs changing in the shows’ titles just a “tai” put in between will suffice.). And the booking is quite well done in game with Mr. Fukuyama remains silent for most of the game but did say something closer to “We are coming for ya!” before the boss fight against the aforementioned Ikeda’s character. In fact, all the revenge plots in this game have good booking, then the autumn came and things got weird.

Okay, now I finally brought up Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, I can finally talk about the convoluted lows that drove Ben Pack and Alex Navarro up the wall back in 2017. Code Geass is, to put it bluntly, a dumbass show trying to look smart by being convoluted as all get out. But it did have the decency to move on from shit because there was usually not enough screen time. Well, screen time is less of a concern in video games. So P5 basically followed that show’s habit to a t and just dragged it out.

P5’s main plot is framed as the player character got arrested much later into the game and telling his interrogator about things happened since April until then. The er, dungeon masters one got to defeat were brought up by the interrogator and the player could pull a gangster style “Never heard of them” without lying. After the timeline finally caught up, there is a very long and convoluted sequence of events about how the player character broke out so the game could proceed as usual between dungeon crawling and er, dating sim. It’s about one whole hour long rather than the “half an hour” mentioned in GOTY 2017’s deliberation and it is a mess even compared to, shall we say Guns of Patriots. At least Atlus staff had the decency to allow one to save at the halfway point.

I guess they just got too long a rope to hang themselves. But then this a game where a haunted house scene goes for spoopy instead spooky, plus TMS immediately before was remembered as a comedy, so how serious can one actually take P5? Well, except for all those times when someone stands up for themselves and starts to kick ass like the most effective among revenge flicks. It’s fist-bumping kind of excitement, I just wish some other parts of the game did not drag them down.

Oh, I almost forgot. Royal’s new girl Kasumi Yoshizawa is voiced by Sora Amamiya. Yours truly knew Ms. Amamiya mainly as Princess Asylum in Aldnoah Zero, a mech show with so much wasted potential. Strangely Kasumi got a full “strip down before suit up” Sailor Moon the show style transformation scene when everyone else just got “one shot/panel plain clothes, the next fantasy costume” like Sailor Moon the book. This new girl is sweet and all, but the way her segment got sliced in can drag the pacing to a halt.

Thug’s (dream) life after long lectures

Okay, dear readers, since you indulged me this far, I am going to get to the meat of it now. Persona series is known for its installments’ slow start and P5’s slow start is deceptively so. Player would be thrown into the mid of a dungeon raid at first, learning about its cover-based stealth, turn-based combat and that wire related swashbuckling exclusive to Royal. But that’s just getting the fun stuff out of the way first so one can sit through some bullshit more easily.

The worst offender being the forced “in and out, in and out, then IN and OUT again” regarding the first Palace. By the time the game finally allowed me to raid that dungeon to my heart content, the save file said 5 hours and 43 minutes, which to my knowledge is more time than the campaign of 2011’s Modern Warfare Three takes up (Booted that campaign up ten in the evening of launch day, played in one sitting and credits rolled at three the next morning.). Holy shit, did I not have to take a 13 months long break after THAT! But the bloody game finally opened up at this point. Kill, rob and kidnap monsters, a thug’s life indeed.

There are 2 types of dungeons in P5, the hand-crafted one-offs called Palace and the random Mementos. I regard the Palaces as “one-off” because they’re all about stealing the treasure in the center and defeating the boss there, no side quest would take place there. The still tongue-in-check Requests are all about search and destroy in Mementos. In fact, Mementos’ layouts are so random, once I was stupid enough to go down level-by-level then go back up level-by-level, the layouts did not stay the same.

Dungeons aside, Persona games are also known for being half a dating sim, some daily schedule management that does impact the dungeon crawling. The dating sim stake of choose one to hang out over another is present, in opposed to TMS’ “just different order of doing things”. Of course, it will compel people to try the New Game Plus after some already long playthroughs. Yours truly took up a Request for Mementos manhunt just before the schedule locked into the endgame. So, that hunt was called off, unless I became deranged enough to start that NG+.

“Commitment” is secondary though. For one thing, the fuck boy path is paved for those willing. For another, even if player fouls up on dialogue selection or gift giving fronts, there are ways to make up and it would just take longer to reach the top Rank 10 of any relationships. The grand farewell tour of TMS’s epilogue is present, though one can only bid farewell to those one knows best there.

Of course, the dating sim element is not all about winning a girl’s heart or the homoerotic tension, it also impact the dungeon crawling on the following 2 fronts: A enhancing the Persona with each tarot card labeling and B unlocking quality of life improvement. Take that Shogi girl Alex Navarro was sweet on for example. Building relationship with her would allow player to escape battle earlier and switch party member during battles. Getting closer to those people will also unlock side quests of “character assassination”. Not the kind of dragging one’s reputation through the mud, but hunting down their worst impulse in Mementos.

As a JRPG came out in 2016, it would be fair to say that P5 was trying to add some “cool” elements from western games to spice things up. There is the point & click style cover-based stealth that allow one to get across areas in dungeons if they are not in the mood for the deadly poker games. Exploring Mementos can be described as vehicle sequences. And then there are the guns in said deadly poker games. I was informed that Royal made some change, with all party members having full magazine at the start of each battle. It’s pretty much “You better run, cause we got guns” at first. But then Atlus’ elementary consideration kicked in and fire-arm is just another element to be considered. It’s not total insignificant though, as melee shocked enemies would hurt part members, shooting them from a distance is safer.

You got to think that with TMS being a Fire Emblem crossover it’s already closer to chess than other Atlus titles. In TMS, enemies’ elemental strength and weakness are shown plainly during battle. In P5, one got to pull the left trigger and select Analyze to see all that. It would not be a problem until a later Palace end boss fight and its real time countdown of 30 minutes. Ah, turn-based fights with long cannot-be-skipped-only-fast-forwarded animation and real time countdown were not fun in days of that first Playstation, and it sure does not get any better in these day of the fifth. The sliver ling here is that multiple checkpoint one can roll back to. But if you think the fight is doomed for you half-way through, turn off the game and boot it back up is still the only way.

P5 combat is closer to poker for all those deus ex machina like aces in the holes at player’s service. Knock enemies down during their elemental weakness or make a critical hit will greet the party member another action. Knocking all enemies down will trigger the all-out attack or a chance of other crimes. I am of course talking about “robbery” and “kidnapping”, I found the former to be a nice way making extra bucks while the latter is the Pokemonish “catch them all” aspect. It takes more conning than force with the whole “high stake” dialogue selection.

Show Time attack is another ace in the player’s hole. Those usually start with party members talking to each other in the real world about some play acts they want to try in the dream world. The tongue-in-cheek or even piss-taking presentation of those made me think: why didn’t anyone sell P5 as a comedy? Why did you lot focus on its half-assed handling of serious topics? You got 1970s’ love story comic for girls but guns are hidden in the flowers. Then there is 1980s’ action comic for boys with wasteland setting, current days’ men cooking comics, Edo period erotic drawing, high-octane action cinema and pro wrestling tag team. All made me laugh and all turned tides of several fights.

Dipped in styyyyyyyle

Strangely, I took P5’s doubling down on style better than its doubling down on substance. This is a comic book like video game in presentation, word boxes are stylized as word or thought bubbles. Skippable cut scenes are like page ripped off and made into balls. When polygonal model and 2D portrait cannot handle people’s expressions, the focus on their eyes would liberally slash across the screen. Interface’ style does add to the mechanic enjoyment. Like how commands are placed around party member as if they just burst out. The placement does line up well to the face buttons, d-pad and triggers.

But style has its downsides too. Like how dungeons are designed prioritizing visual in a way one cannot tell the interactable bit from “window dressing”. Atlus simply gave up and offered a “thief vision” on the left trigger. And I guess putting the player character on menu just became the Altus houses tyle as they even added it back to the Persona 3 remake.

When I first played the game on PS4 with a disc back in 2016, the frequent pre-rendered anime cutscenes at the first hours nearly made me thought “Was OVA back with a revenge?” Well, barely. But those do signify money shots and worst impulse. By the former I mean the expensive blockbuster style destruction scene. By the latter I mean the sex comedy bits that usually take some er, details to work…

Nintendo Switch: Still the way to play anywhere apparently.

Before this roaring twenties, Atlus was the weirdest kind of developer for multiple platforms: cast a wide net across all yet oddly stubborn about each product’s platform exclusivity. By the time P5 Royal got out of its PS4 jail, its being on Gamepass was just met with a “It’s almost 3 years old, heh? Fair enough”. Still as someone who was drawn to Persona series since Gamespot’s Gameplay podcast (rip) talking about Vita’s Persona 4 Golden, yours truly would like the most portable way to play Royal. Enters the Switch. No offense meant for you, Steam Deck.

Well, anti-aliasing is bit rough at places but it is small price to pay with portability. As handheld device getting bigger, the ones before feel more portable. Switch can be played in a rather crowded train, on the Lou and, for the comfort of those winter days, in one’s warm bed. I saw through the whole bit that drove Ben and Alex up the wall in bed. Had I seen that in front of a console while freezing my ass off, I do not think I could even have made through that bullshit.

The most game yours truly ever played…

“One last job” is a heist film trope P5 had done one too many times. The first time it appears just as the timeline is about to catch up with the flashforward and one just assumes “There got to be more after”. Boy, isn’t there so much more. The second time is before taking down the game’s quite-well-booked-all-things-considered human antagonist, by which time the Atlus trope alarm went off in my head and I thought “Whose divine ass do I have to kick to see credits roll, you long game?” That divine ass duly appeared about 4 hours after that. I am actually glad that I did not get to Royal’s fabled third semester if I am being honest.

Once I thought TMS as merely an appetizer before the meal in P5. Now I see TMS as a more well-rounded product on its own while P5 Royal is bit out of balance with higher volume. Had I made through Royal before not-E3 (R.I.P to E3.) 2023, P5 Tactica would not have been on my radar, no matter how much that PC Gamer review praised it. The whole experience is bit disappointing as I hoped to add a stone-cold classic to favorites, but it felt more like moving one big item off the backlog. The game simply took a long time to open up then even took longer to wrap up. There are highlights of melodrama, hijinks and action that I thoroughly enjoyed, but the packaging could have been tighter. Oh well, hopeful the next time you put up a wall of kanjis for a product, you can tighten up the final product, Atlus.

Speak of which…

Guess with P5 still getting spin-off more than 7 years after its Japanese release while TMS only got a Switch port, “walls of kanjis announcing voice cast” just became a ritual Atlus performed to secure commercial success. Or it’s just how Hashino and his 2 frequent collaborators roll. Oh well, Metaphor: ReFantazio sure got my attention now.

That’s all, folks. Sorry for mimicking P5 Royal’s ended more than once habit. Playing a game long and it will rub something on you, usually its worst impulses.