Is there any reason to play base Persona 5 over Royal? (2024)

  • Jan 31, 2021
  • #46

You would probably still be better off playing Royal. It completely fucks the game's balance, but it has a lot of QOL improvements, makes the bulk of DLC free, and generally makes it much easier to see all the content the game has to offer. Mementos is not more grindy in Royal; it's less, but the problem is it's far too easy to get overlevelled as a result. Turning the difficulty up isn't going to fix the balance; Hard is a joke in Royal, and Challenge was never balanced in either version of the game, though it's more of a mess in Royal.

That said, with the exception of one character that had an automated co-op now receiving a proper one, its story additions are

awful

. I can't take anybody who says P5R's new content is good seriously. It's pure shlock that invokes all of Atlus's worst writing tendencies.

Big rant incoming, spoilers for Royal:
The writing has zero interest in engaging with the morals of Maruki's reality, despite them depicting it in such a way that begs discussion. I can't understand the sort of writer that would make a story about the moral dilemma of a person creating the perfect reality and the people who know said reality is artificial coming to a head and then spend all of their time writing about the tragic backstory of the person who made it, and then have the climax of said arc being that they evolve THEIR OWN persona you guys! And then it gets giant, and then like, they fuse with it, and they have a big epic showdown on a rooftop and then boom the protagonist zips up and shoots him in the face and they have a cool MGS punch-out it's really cool you guys I swear!

It's a fucking mess. It masquerades as caring about a moral dilemma before having the big answer to the questions it raises be that the Phantom Thieves tell a mental health counselor that even if life is hard you just have to be strong keep going which is the most fucking awful way to wrap up a game where the protagonists were allowed to use their magic powers to make their lives better and would be screwed on their own. We went from a game with the final act turning everything on its head and revealing that humanity doesn't want freedom, it wants to shift its responsibility onto others, which is precisely why the Phantom Thieves are harmful - they're the small drop of hope that encourages continued complacency, to this shit. The original game re-contextualized the idea of everyone as having a world within their hearts as being the only place where we're truly authentic, and that recognizing the material world and is the step towards true agency. I cannot believe anyone could think the sad anime man who just wants everyone to be happy is a better note to conclude the game on.

Let's not also forget how they parade Akechi around in the safest manner possible - never to even attempt to address the clash between the people whose loved ones he murdered. No, he's just here to be edgy like Adachi because people love that! And then we're going to end his story with the exact same ambiguity that the original game had because yes, this is entirely pointless.

And this is just talking about the main story content. Barring the second half of Sumire's co-op, which is mediocre but at least actually tries, everything in the third semester feels like Persona 5 Mad Libs. It's cookie-cutter writing; every main party member gets a brief scene where they all have the exact same realization about Maruki's reality in exactly the same way, before talking to the protagonist about it and saying exactly the same things, and having the exact same awakening - none of this is voiced by the way, because even Atlus knows it doesn't matter. This is the extent of the entire main party's presence in the new final act of the game. Modern Persona has always had a problem with formulas in its writing, but this is by far the laziest and most concentrated its been in a short-span of time, and it's disgusting for the tiny amount of new story content that they had to do, this is what they came up with.

Is there any reason to play base Persona 5 over Royal? (2024)
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