Persona 5 Royal: Bloat Without Focus

In the leadup to the October 31st Japanese release of Persona 5 Royal, the expanded rerelease of 2016’s Persona 5, I tweeted that I intended to play it and write a piece that answers the following questions:

How problematic is it still?

Does it justify its existence/price?

How much new shit did they add?

Does it feel stagnant?

The short answers? More than before, no, about 10 hours of new gameplay content plus a few small scenes and tweaks, and yes.

Long answers? Well…

Following a trend among Atlus games, Persona 5 Royal is an expanded rerelease of Persona 5 for PlayStation 4 that adds new content and characters. The tricky thing in talking about Royal specifically is that it released for the same hardware as Persona 5 did initially (sorry PS3 owners, I see you but you’re the minority here.) Unlike when Persona 3 FES also released on the same platform as Persona 3 — a rerelease that also added an epilogue and made tweaks to the experience throughout the main campaign — this release actively does not allow you to import save data and continue forward, nor does it allow you to jump to the new content. Importing an existing save file gives you a small amount of in-game currency and a few healing items, and then the game requires you to replay the entire base release of Persona 5, a game many critics cited as being too long, in order to see the new (and uninteresting) content.

So let’s cut to the chase and talk about what’s been changed from the existing game, since the game makes you (re)play through it. You can spend more nights doing things, battles are quicker and snappier, it’s easier to know what activities will raise what parameters (guts, intelligence, etc.), and they added a new small city. The new city, Kichijoji, is clunky with many camera angles and most locations locked from access until you’re introduced to them one by one through a confidant. When it’s raining, your character constantly stops and opens and closes his umbrella every time you walk through the city depending on if there’s a roof over his head. You know, quality of life tweaks.

Akechi’s confidant has been reworked to not follow a story-driven progression and instead be based on nightly hangouts in Kichijoji. The new characters, Maruki the school counselor and Kasumi, a new transfer student who is the primary marketed draw of the game, also have their own confidants. The characters are somewhat interesting but do not compete with the most interesting existing confidants.

Existing confidant conversations are almost completely untouched. At the end of most scenes, Joker will receive a phone call from them as he returns home where they hastily add in one additional question and slight conversation to add something “new.” While neat at first, it quickly becomes clear that these are uninteresting additional flourishes on already complete arcs, with no relevance or importance — they can’t factor into anything, because the main structure of the confidant is unchanged. What it ends up amounting to is only 5–6 additional dialogue boxes per (most) scenes, and then a goodnight. That said, it’s funny to me that some of the adult characters such as the friendly politician or the owner of the curry shop you’re literally walking into are calling you to expound on their earlier conversation.

Dungeons have received small tweaks to make them just slightly different. They’ve added three hidden collectible skulls in each palace that together forge an accessory if you find all three. If you don’t, the game will give you the opportunity to get the skulls you missed later through an easier and more straightforward shopping method, which really diminishes the stated goal of creating more of a reason to explore the dungeons. You gain experience and money at a faster rate in P5R than you did in P5, which also leads to the palaces sometimes feeling much easier than they were in the base game, even on harder difficulties. Before launch the development team attributed this rebalance to the longer nature of the rerelease, but having played it, that really doesn’t factor in in a relevant way.

Mementos received the biggest overhaul, even while slight. The music has changed (thank fuck,) and there are now additional small collectibles to drive over that you can exchange with the new character Jose to buy limited and rare items. There are also stamping stations around Mementos that randomly spawn that let you adjust Mementos to further increase the rate of EXP currency drops. On the other hand, they went and made Mementos even longer, so those who weren’t a fan of it in the original game for structural or design reasons likely won’t find their concerns alleviated here.

Jose is cute and is likely my favorite new character of the game. He even appears in the optional My Palace mode, which is just a gallery where you can walk around and see concept art, cutscenes, and listen to the soundtrack. The game also has in-game Awards, which are where they’ve moved most of the difficult achievements so that they can make the Platinum Trophy extremely easy to get (like…extremely.) Jose is also the best part of My Palace. I wish they gave Jose a story function or relevance in the game besides mechanically and besides being cute because I’d love to see him return.

Then there’s the things they couldn’t help themselves with. Of course they added a new gay joke into one of the new scenes. Why not? Of course they didn’t remove any of the existing homophobia. Of course they changed the boss fights and in doing so changed the Kamoshida fight to include a fake Mishima and a fake Shiho, the latter of whom is dressed up as a sexy bunny and is weak to all damage. That Ann freaks out about. That the game presents as a target. Sure, put the suicidal sexual and physical assault victim in a bunny costume and make her weak to everything. Why not? I assume their internal reason was to give you a reason to hate Kamoshida as if…people played the original game and didn’t?

Many of the boss fight changes result in them being longer, more drawn out, and more tedious. Because fuck you I guess?

Oh also the twist that happens about 70% of the way through the original game that the game then explains after the fact? Well, apparently the developers thought players weren’t smart enough or were too confused, so not only do they keep the lengthy after-the-fact explanation, they now show you the previously omitted scenes at the time they occur, meaning the game now tells you it’s going to do something, does it, and then explains at length what it just did. Thanks.

So what do you get after slogging through all of the original game again? Well, it launches into the new content. Did you watch the trailers and think you understand the conceit of the new content? You’re correct. It’s very drawn-out in game but it’s incredibly obvious.

In fact, the new content is so irrelevant in the larger scope of the canon, and is so boring, that I was actively skimming new main story scenes in a series I like, just hoping it’d pivot into more interesting content. (It didn’t.)

So first of all, Kasumi, the new party member they led with in their marketing? Yeah you don’t really get her factoring into much of anything at all until after the point at which the main game would have its credits roll for the true ending. That is, if you get to the true ending of P5R. You can absolutely get to the end credits of P5 in P5R without seeing the new content for some reason if you answer questions incorrectly. Or don’t see the right confidants. Because fuck you. The game inserts her into a few new cutscenes spread throughout the game, but they’re incredibly inconsequential and forgettable.

The new content, outside of new story scenes and elements, gives you a few weeks of extra time to max out your confidants and talk to people and a new dungeon. The new dungeon, without spoiling anything, is one of the weakest dungeons of the game, with a genuinely uninteresting and uninspired floor layout and theme. I was actually hoping that by the time I got to the end it would reveal an interesting follow-up dungeon. It didn’t.

Also, the new characters are not only boring tropes that are one-note and predictable, they’re also all tropes that Atlus themselves have done in previous games. Recently. I was cackling as I saw them try to give their tragic backstories in earnest as if they were expecting me to be impressed or earnestly appreciate them.

Spoilers, use ROT13 if you’re curious for the tropes:

Bar punenpgre vf whfg tevrivat gur ybff bs n qrnq eryngvir naq gelvat gb pbcr ol orvat gur qrnq eryngvir. Gur ivyynva unq n gentrql vaibyivat gurve ybir vagrerfg, bapr.

Anyways, this all gives way to the funniest and most disappointing ending for a game in recent memory. I was howling in laughter and livetweeting it, in fact. The archive is here.

I’m going to detail the structure here in ROT13'd text. There are structural spoilers here but not story spoilers:

Svany obff jvgu njshy ybbcvat zhfvp gung xrrcf ercyravfuvat fuvryqf gung srryf yvxr vg’f gjb obffrf njnl sebz gur svany obff -> ybat phgfprar -> “haorngnoyr” svany obff -> phgfprar gung lbh uvg n fvatyr ohggba va -> ybat phgfprar jurer gung obff vf qrsrngrq -> gjb punenpgref jvgu ab jrncbaf jrnxyl chapuvat rnpu bgure ba n sybngvat oevqtr -> phgfprar jurer n punenpgre qbrf n arj guvat sbe gur svefg gvzr enaqbzyl -> onpx gb Inyragvar’f Qnl -> arj ynfg phgfprar jvgu n ovt shpx lbh zbzrag -> perqvgf -> cbfg-perqvgf jvgu n “guebj gur pbagebyyre” yriry bs shpx-lbh fghcvq svany zbzrag

It’s extremely bad.

So to summarize:

• They bloated the existing content
• They added more problematic content and removed none
• They don’t let you skip the existing content at all
• The new content is bad and doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things
• The new ending is awful

To answer the questions from the start:

How problematic is it still?

Somehow even more problematic.

Does it justify its existence/price?

No. It’s a full price in Japan (~$90) with no upgrade option, and is expected to be a $60 release in the US and equivalent in Europe. Even if it were $40 I’d say skip it.

How much new shit did they add?

About 10 hours of stuff at the backend, a few tweaks along the way. Even the new stuff feels like you’re still replaying P5 though, which is a compliment that it blends together and an insult that it doesn’t feel new enough.

Does it feel stagnant?

Yes. It still feels like P5, and doesn’t feel like it justifies its existence at all. The fact that it’s on the same platform as P5, which is currently an MSRP of $20 (was on sale this holiday for $9.99,) and only a few years later really adds salt to the wound.

Special thanks to the people who chipped in to help buy the game so that I could write this without spending $90 of my own US dollars.