You live the double life of a high school student by day and a stylish phantom thief by night, sneaking into surreal dungeons that represent people's twisted hearts. Dungeons involve exploring, sneaking past guards, and turn-based battles with monsters that live inside your head, while your calendar outside forces you to choose between studying, hanging out with friends, or resting. It is a long game, often over eighty hours, so it suits someone ready to commit.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
The verdict
This is the version of Persona 5 to own, tightening pacing issues from the original while adding a whole new arc that actually earns its place. Few RPGs feel this complete.
The mechanics
Dungeon crawling in the palaces stays tense thanks to a stealth layer and demon-negotiation system, while the calendar-based social sim gives every day a sense of consequence. It is a long game that rarely drags.
Presentation
The UI alone deserves praise, all sharp red-and-white flourishes synced to a jazzy, endlessly catchy soundtrack. Switch handles it well, though load times are a little longer than on other platforms.
Staying power
Multiple confidant routes and new content mean returning players still find fresh things to do. An easy recommendation for anyone who has not sunk time into the original.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You play a high school student living a double life in Tokyo, and day to day you navigate a calendar where each afternoon and evening is a choice: study for exams, work a part-time job, spend time deepening a friendship with a classmate, or head into the Metaverse, a dungeon crawling dimension reached through a smartphone app. Metaverse dungeons called Palaces are hand-designed levels full of enemies you fight in turn-based battles, where exploiting an enemy's weakness earns you an extra turn, and chaining enough of those together lets your whole party pile on with a flashy team attack. This Royal edition adds a grappling hook for getting around Palaces plus an entirely new story arc after the original ending.
Your goal is to balance building up your character's social life and skills with steadily working through each Palace to complete story objectives, and demon negotiation and fusion systems let you recruit and combine creatures that fight alongside you in battle. The daily calendar structure means almost every choice has an opportunity cost, since spending an evening on one activity means not spending it on another. A full playthrough is enormous, typically well over a hundred hours.
Every menu, transition, and battle screen is styled with the same sharp visual flair, backed by a soundtrack that stays enjoyable across the whole runtime, and the cast's individual stories are genuinely well written. The sheer length does mean some sections drag, especially certain lengthy story scenes that cannot be skipped even on a repeat playthrough. It is best suited to players ready to commit real time to a long, stylish game that blends school life simulation with dungeon crawling combat.