The best JRPG in the catalog
Persona 5 Royal, a hundred hours that never drag
- Critic score
- 94
- Player rating
- 4.9/5
- Main story
- 101.3 h
- Genre
- JRPG, Adventure
The longest game in the catalog is also one of the highest rated. Persona 5 Royal asks for around a hundred hours and spends all of them making you want to give it more.
Persona 5 Royal runs two games at once. By day you are a high-school student in Tokyo: you attend class, work part-time, maintain friendships, revise for exams. At night and in the gaps, you infiltrate Palaces — mental worlds born from the distorted desires of corrupt adults — to steal the treasure that sustains them.
The two halves are not merely placed side by side, they feed each other. Bonds formed in the city unlock combat abilities; the social stats you develop open up dialogue and options elsewhere. Every day is a trade-off: time is finite, and choosing to see someone means giving up something else.
Combat rests on elemental weaknesses. Hitting an enemy's weak point grants an extra turn; knocking down a whole group triggers a collective attack. All of it is wrapped in a razor-sharp red-and-black art direction that turns every menu into a small demonstration of style — this is one of the rare games whose interface is cited as a selling point.
Royal is the expanded version of the 2016 release: an additional third term, a new central character, extra areas and mechanics. This is not a coat of paint; a substantial part of those hundred hours simply did not exist before.
It is the kind of game that fills an entire winter. If you hesitate to commit, note that its player rating on the PlayStation Store is among the highest in the whole catalog — the length has evidently discouraged nobody.