Persona 5 Royal

Persona 5 Royal arrived on PC in October 2022 after years as a console exclusive, and the reception was immediate and overwhelming. ATLUS delivered an expanded version of what was already considered one of the best JRPGs ever made, and Steam players showed up in force. The game currently holds an Overwhelmingly Positive rating from tens of thousands of user evaluations, and the conversation around it hasn’t slowed down since launch.

Royal takes the original Persona 5 and adds a new character, a new story arc spanning a full third semester, additional social activities, and dozens of quality-of-life tweaks that smooth out rough edges from the 2017 release. The result is a massive RPG that runs somewhere between 80 and 120 hours depending on how deeply you engage with its systems. Community sentiment lands firmly in the “modern classic” category, though there are consistent criticisms that come up in nearly every discussion.

Where Persona 5 Royal Excels

Style is the first thing everyone mentions, and it’s impossible to separate from the experience. Every menu transition, every battle animation, every loading screen drips with visual personality. The art direction commits fully to a bold red-and-black aesthetic that extends to every corner of the interface, and the soundtrack matches that energy with jazz, acid jazz, and pop tracks that players end up listening to long after they’ve finished the game. Few games have ever been this confident in their presentation, and it pays off constantly.

Social simulation is where Persona 5 Royal hooks people who wouldn’t normally touch a 100-hour JRPG. Between dungeon crawls, you’re living as a high school student in Tokyo, building relationships with a wide cast of characters called Confidants. These aren’t filler side stories. Each Confidant has their own arc dealing with everything from political corruption to personal grief, and investing time in these relationships also feeds directly into combat power. The loop of balancing your calendar between social activities, studying, working part-time jobs, and exploring dungeons creates a rhythm that’s hard to put down.

Turn-based combat rewards smart play through a system where exploiting enemy weaknesses earns extra actions. Party composition matters, Persona fusion offers hundreds of possible combinations, and the all-out attack animations never get old. The themed Palaces serve as the game’s main dungeons, and each one reflects the twisted psychology of its ruler. They’re creative in both visual design and puzzle structure, giving each arc its own identity.

Royal’s additions elevate what was already strong. The third semester introduces a new Palace and an antagonist that many players consider the most compelling villain in the game. The new Confidant characters integrate naturally, and the expanded ending adds emotional weight that the original version lacked.

Persona 5 Royal’s Shortcomings

Difficulty is the most common complaint, and it’s a fair one. Royal gives the player so many tools, so many powerful Persona combinations, and so many resources that default difficulty rarely poses a real challenge. Players who want the combat to push back need to crank the difficulty up from the start, and even then, the abundance of healing items and overpowered abilities can trivialize encounters in the back half.

Mementos, the game’s procedurally generated dungeon, remains a weak point that Royal doesn’t fully fix. It’s a sprawling, repetitive underground maze that you’re required to visit regularly to complete side quests and advance certain story threads. The floors blur together, the encounters lack the creative spark of the Palace fights, and driving through identical corridors for the dozenth time tests patience. Royal added a few features to make Mementos less tedious, but the core problem is structural.

Pacing drags in certain stretches. The game front-loads tutorial content and frequently locks you into extended story sequences where you can’t freely explore or build Confidant relationships. Some of these mandatory segments run for hours without a break. For a game that’s already pushing past the 100-hour mark, those periods of lost agency feel heavier than they should.

Writing occasionally stumbles with its handling of certain characters and social themes, particularly around LGBTQ representation. A few scenes have drawn criticism for relying on stereotypes, and while these moments don’t define the game, they stand out in a story that otherwise handles its themes with care.

A Game That Demands and Rewards Your Time

The defining question with Persona 5 Royal is whether you’re willing to commit. This isn’t a game you can casually dip into for an hour here and there. It asks for weeks of your time, and it structures itself around a calendar system that creates real tension about how you spend each in-game day. Miss a Confidant deadline and that story is gone until a potential second playthrough.

That demand is also its greatest strength. Because the game asks so much of you, the payoffs hit harder. Characters you’ve spent 60 hours building relationships with deliver emotional beats that earn their weight. The third semester wouldn’t land without everything that came before it. Persona 5 Royal is a game that gets better the more you give it, and it asks for more than almost any other RPG on the market.

Should You Play Persona 5 Royal?

JRPG fans have likely already played this, but if the console exclusivity kept you away, the PC port is excellent and runs well even on modest hardware. Players who value story and characters above all else will find one of the deepest casts in the genre here. If you enjoy time management games or social sims, the daily life loop will click immediately.

Skip it if you don’t have patience for long games with slow stretches. If turn-based combat doesn’t appeal to you, the style won’t carry you through 100 hours. And if you need a game that challenges you mechanically from start to finish, you’ll need to push the difficulty settings up yourself.

The Verdict on Persona 5 Royal

Persona 5 Royal is one of those rare 100-hour games that earns nearly every one of those hours. The fusion of dungeon crawling, social simulation, and style-forward presentation creates something no other RPG has managed to replicate. Combat could use more teeth on default settings, and Mementos remains a slog no matter how many quality-of-life improvements get layered on top, but the highs here are extraordinary. Royal’s third semester adds a story arc that many consider the best stretch in the entire game. If you have the time and patience for a JRPG that demands your full attention, this one rewards it like few others.