By: Persephone Pond
*Note: This article contains spoilers
‘Persona 5 Royal’ is a Japanese RPG style game that was initially released in Japan in 2019 as a newer rendition of the original game, ‘Persona 5’, in which there were small updates and included improvements. In 2020, ‘Persona 5 Royal’ was released in western countries such as the U.S., and immediately gained popularity as the 5th game in the ‘Persona’ series. Each game in the series follows its own characters and plot lines and is completely separate from each other, but the world and lore of the universe is the same. Today I’ll be writing about the newest release, ‘Persona 5 Royal’.
To summarize the lore to better understand this game, in addition to taking place in modern day Japan, there is another reality referred to as the Metaverse, in which people can form what’s referred to as a palace. A palace is a place in the Metaverse made up of a person’s distorted thoughts and values. Not just anyone has such distorted desires to create their own palace, so the general public’s distortions make up the bulk of the Metaverse. Within a person’s palace, at the core, is their treasure. Taking a person’s treasure from their palace will cause the palace owner to have a “change of heart”. As the palace is destroyed because of the treasure being stolen, this causes the person’s distortions to disappear and they become a changed person in the real world.
The Metaverse is more of just a name for this reality of palace’s made up of distorted thoughts and desires. If you walked out of a palace owned by one person, you’d find what’s referred to as Mementos.
Mementos is a palace by all literal standards, but it’s different from the palaces that are made up of one given person’s distorted desires. Mementos is the palace of the public, and it’s made up of the general public’s distorted thoughts and desires. Everyone has some variety of distorted thoughts, but no normal citizen could have these thoughts and desires to the degree where they’d have their own palace, but they still have an impact on the Metaverse, thus the creation of Mementos. The Phantom Thieves can’t only target big figures, they need to help the people directly too, so Mementos is basically the world you go to for side quests. On the Phantom Thieves official website, monitored by Shujin’s star male volleyball player Mishima—who is blissfully unaware of the Phantom Thieves being students at his same school—people will leave the names of others who are doing wrong, and that’s where you receive side quests, and when you’re able to visit Mementos.
Traveling to the Metaverse can be difficult. A navigation app is automatically downloaded on a persona wielder’s phone, and traveling to Mementos just requires a tap of a button, but it’s more complicated than that to get to a bigger person’s palace. You need the person’s full name, their location, and the form the distortion takes in the Metaverse. The form is basically the theme of the palace, whether it’s a bank, museum, or castle.
Not just anyone has the abilities to travel between the real world and the Metaverse. Specific people have the ability to awaken a persona, which is one’s true self. When in the Metaverse, these persona wielders transform into versions of themselves that reflect their inner/repressed selves, and gain great power that can be used to fight enemies and steal palace treasure.
A little more about personas; as they’re a reflection of their wielder, there’s one exception. You, the protagonist, has the incredibly rare ability to wield more than one persona at any given time. Personas give their wielder great and a wide variety of powers and damage types, including physical, gunshot, wind, fire, ice, curse, light, electric, nuke, and psychic. Each Persona has one strong damage type that typically are the abilities you get, and one weakness. This is especially helpful because as everyone in the group only has one damage type they can deal, with the exception of you, the protagonist, who can wield multiple personas, thus can switch between as you wish and can deal any damage type your personas allow.
This game is centered around a second year highschool student that you play as. As you navigate through life at Shujin Academy, you make lots of allies. Some of these allies end up finding out about the metaverse, and palace after palace, a new member is added to your team.
The first palace you gain three members to your team (each team member get’s their own code name, as to prevent any unseen circumstances where their identities would be revealed); Morgana, a cat-like creature who you discover in the first palace, and who turns into a cat when in the real world, code name Mona. Second, you meet Ryuji Sakamoto, a delinquent who formally was a track and field star, code name Skull. Third, Ann Takamaki is added to your team. Ann is an international model who’s a victim of the first palace’s owner, code name Panther. These three allies make up the core of your group of justice, the Phantom Thieves of Hearts.
Over the course of the next four palaces, you pick up four new members for your team, each bringing their own unique assets to the group.
The second palace belongs to a very famous and corrupt artist by the name of Maderame. Maderame is a huge figure to the public, but behind the scenes, he has a habit of plagiarizing his pupil’s work. In his palace, you meet Yusuke Kitawaga, one of Madarame’s star students. At first, Yusuke is oblivious to his master’s actions, but with the help of the Phantom Thieves, he awakens his own persona and gains the code name Fox.
The third palace is one of an underground mafia boss, Kaneshiro. Kaneshiro has his underlings go out and drag unsuspecting highschool students into laundering money and drugs for him, and this gets these students in huge debt and trouble. The Student Council president of Shujin Academy, Makoto Niijima, is already on the protagonist’s trail and suspects him to be a Phantom Thief, and once she finds out about the dangerous environment for students, she threatens the Phantom Thieves into finding Kaneshiro’s identity and changing his heart. Though Makoto was introduced as an obstacle, she later awakens her own persona and joins the Phantom Thieves in bringing Kaneshiro down, and earns the code name Queen.
The fourth palace introduces you to a new concept; someone asking for their heart to be changed. Futaba Sakura is a young hacking prodigy, and as she’s consumed in guilt and grief over her mother’s death, she anonymously requests for the Phantom Thieves help, as she already knows their true identities. In return, Futaba will shut down a huge network of hackers threatening to bring the Phantom Thieves down. Futaba is accidentally transported to the metaverse, and while in her own palace, she awakens a persona, joins the Phantom Thieves, and gains the code name Oracle.
The fifth palace belongs to a rich business owner, Okumura. Okumura is incredibly ambitious in his ventures, but his greed to grow his company completely blinded him, and he doesn’t realize how much his ambition is hurting his employees, and his daughter. Haru Okumura is a sheltered girl, who, in a similar manner to Yusuke, is enlightened with the truth about her role model’s actions. Haru joins the Phantom Thieves at the beginning of her father’s palace, and is given the code name Noir.
Now to actually get into the review of the game, ‘Persona 5 Royal’ is a wonderful and creative game. The aspects I’m going to be talking about in the rest of this article will cover the gameplay, storyline, and character development and relationships.
Starting off, the gameplay in this game is always an adventure. Within each palace, there are enemies called shadows, and these are the enemies you defeat to gain experience and level up. Their difficulty levels change depending on where in the palace you are, and finding any given shadow’s weakness and strong points can be surprisingly difficult. The fighting mechanics are always appropriately challenging and it’s always really rewarding to defeat a higher level shadow.
The palaces themselves are always built and disguised in such clever ways, and the overall layout and puzzles contained in the palaces are super fun to work through. The developers did a great job of making sure the puzzles are always in the right places and are never too easy, and these puzzles with the addition of shadows and mini bosses scattered throughout the palace make the appropriate difficulty level, and it really adds to the feeling of a job well done when you get through an especially difficult part.
The world building is also incredible, as the game play isn’t restricted to just the palaces. When you have free time, the game allows you to wander around the neighboring districts and cities around where you live. Going to different stores allows you to buy items that can be used to heal teammates, and you can buy items that up your stats and relationships with people. The ability to run around the city wild really adds to the illusion of choice within the game, and makes you feel like the story really is under your control.
The actual story and plot the game revolves around is also incredible. The game really has the lore and world building down, partially because this is the fifth game in the series, and they’ve had a lot of time and published games to really get that down. The complexity of the plot really elevates as time goes on, and the more you play, the more layers you find there are to everything. There is so much to learn about the game and the world you’re playing in, and at first it might sound like a lot, but the game really does an incredible job of slowly letting you learn so it’s not a huge dump at the very beginning.
As a lot of good games do, there’s so much story and plot to get to, but this is done very well. The first five palaces are mainly there to introduce you to new characters so you can gain as many confidants as possible, and to get you used to the gameplay and the flow of the game. These first few levels ease you into the overarching plot, but still drops many small hints and allow you to try and piece everything together by yourself. It’s a good way to get you hooked and invested in the game before throwing the real problems at you, and giving you a real challenge.
The characters and relationships you can build are probably my favorite part of ‘Persona 5 Royal’. In this game, making allies, or confidants, strengthens the powers of specific personas that the protagonist can wield, therefore meeting and strengthening your bond with different characters is a must.
There’s a very wide variety of characters in this game, and each has their own unique characteristics and personalities. For the sake of time, I’ll be covering the Phantom Thieves and main characters and their attributes.
The main team consists of eight members total, gaining three allies right away and then one more for each of the next four palaces, as stated above. First you meet Ryuji while starting at Shujin, and when you first get transported to the metaverse, he’s accidentally transported there with you. Ryuji is a sort of outcast. After he stood up to the abusive track and field coach, the team was disbanded and all Ryuji’s teammates blamed him. As you hang out with, and strengthen your bond with, Ryuji, you learn more about his relationship with his mother, and that there’s more to him than just a shallow delinquent. As Japanese games and shows go, Ryuji is the romantically inclined guy in the group who wants to use his status to go out with girls, but looking past this archetype, he truly is an interesting and complex character.
Morgana is the brains of the group, and the only character with background knowledge on the Metaverse. Morgana is introduced at the beginning of the game, as the protagonist and Ryuji are in the Metaverse for the first time. We don’t know what Morgana truly is, as in the real world, he takes the form of a cat, and only people who’ve awakened a persona can talk to him. His character is shrouded in mystery, and is one of the core members of the team. Despite Morgana being an incredible asset, others in the team never fail to make him feel unwanted and useless by joking about him. Morgana has an incredible character arc later in the fifth palace, while the others learn his significance to the group.
Ann joins the team a little later in the first palace, after she’s forced to face reality and confront the fact that she’s suffering abuse from one of the teacher’s at Shujin. Ann has a wonderful arc where she realizes she’s more than just an object to be sexualized by others, and continues to help others who were suffering from the same abuse. Growing your bond with Ann allows you to learn more about her life as a model and absent parents. Her story is unique and she grows so much between the first palace and just a few months later.
In the second palace you’re introduced to Yusuke, and he’s kind of the odd one out in the Phantom Thieves. Yusuke attends an art school, in contrast to everyone else in the group (with the exception of Futaba) who attends Shujin academy. Yusuke was orphaned at a young age, and he was taken in by the second palace’s owner, Maderame, and his artistic talent was honed and shaped by the master. It was hard for Yusuke to accept that Maderame wasn’t a good person, and even months after learning this life changing information, Yusuke struggles to accept that his role model wasn’t who he thought. Despite this, Yusuke strives to be a mentor to others and through his hang out events, you grow much closer.
You’re introduced to Makoto pretty early on in the game, as she’s the student council president at Shujin. At first, Makoto is introduced as an obstacle in the way of the Phantom Thieves. She managed to learn the identities of the growing group after being asked to investigate the matter by the school’s principal. Instead of ratting the Phantom Thieves out, Makoto turns her attention to a mafia boss in the local area, and blackmails the Phantom Thieves so they would change his heart. After being transported to the mafia bosses’ palace, Makoto herself has a change of heart, and she awakens a persona and joins the Phantom Thieves. Makoto’s change of sides is really natural and it really showcases a lot of her incredible character. Enemy to friend is always a really nice trope, and Makoto was definitely the correct character to do this with. There’s also quite a bit more to her character than what you get within this palace. As you hang out with her, you learn that the top honor student really doesn’t know why she works as hard as she does.
There’s quite a few levels to Makoto’s character, and she’s really a great way to showcase how to write an interesting, complex character.
Futaba breaks the trend of these palaces, as she asks for her own heart to be changed. Futaba’s mother was incredibly kind and gentle raising Futaba, but unfortunately, she was said to have committed suicide by jumping in front of a fast moving car. The men who reported this news to Futaba said that the reason her mother died was all because Futaba was a burden, and Futaba’s mother couldn’t take it anymore, but it was all a lie. Futaba lived with this guilt for years while being cared for by a man called Sojiro Sakura, and the weight of this trauma caused Futaba to figure out the identities of the Phantom Thieves and offered to help them if they could change her heart. Futaba was accidentally transported to the metaverse and awakened her persona there, and after figuring out the truth, she let go of that weight and joined the team. Futaba doesn’t know much about the world, as she had been a shut-in ever since her mother’s death, so strengthening your bond with Futaba allows you to learn more about her hacking abilities and teach her about the outside world.
Haru is a very awkward and reserved person. She has serious trust issues due to the fact that most of her friends from her childhood were only using her for her dad’s status. Haru’s father is incredibly wealthy and influential, and as an outcome, Haru has been surrounded by fakes for most of her life. Initially, Haru doesn’t want to join the Phantom Thieves once she learns about the metaverse because she’s still reluctant to oppose her father. Once the rest of the Phantom Thieves showed her her father’s true intentions and distortions, Haru’s mind was changed. Haru is very different from the rest of the group as her character is more reserved and less out there, but that isn’t a bad thing, and it brings a sense of balance to the group. Haru quickly bonds with the team, and as your bond strengthens with her, you get a better window into her modernity secluded yet interesting life.
All of the team members are so unique and interesting, and the way they all interact makes the game feel so much more real. The characters aren’t limited to these seven, but these are definitely some of the most important, and best written. One of the highlights of ‘Persona 5 Royal’ is definitely the characters and their development, and there really isn’t a character worth hating for lack of good writing reasons.
Overall, ‘Persona 5 Royal’ is very much worth the money. There are hours upon hours worth of entertaining and thought provoking characters and plot, and if you’re looking for a story driven game that you won’t finish to easily, ‘Persona 5 Royal’ is a wonderful option.
‘Persona 5 Royal’ is available on Steam, Playstation 5, Xbox, and the Nintendo Switch.
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