Persona 5 Royal
2019
Audio: English, Japanese · Subtitles: Chinese, Italian, English, German, Korean, French, Spanish, Japanese
- role-playing (rpg)
- adventure
- fantasy
- comedy
- drama
- mystery
- single player
The story
Persona 5 Royal is an enhanced version of the turn-based role-playing game Persona 5, set in modern-day Tokyo. Players control a high school student who leads a group of secret vigilantes called the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, exploring supernatural dungeons called Palaces to change the hearts of corrupt adults. The game combines dungeon crawling and turn-based combat with social simulation elements, where players manage daily activities, build relationships, and develop character statistics across a school year. Royal adds new characters, a third semester, an additional Palace, new music, and expanded story content to the original game.
What it’s like
Glossy, stylised pop-art menus slam in with bold red, black and white graphics, and the Tokyo streets around them are rendered in saturated night neon, rain-slick asphalt and warm lamplit interiors of cafés and train platforms. Its visual language borrows from comic panels: skewed frames, sudden text overlays, flashing cut-ins during battles and anime-style character cutscenes that pause on a single expressive face. The soundtrack is its most memorable element, a jazzy, funky, sometimes bossa-tinged blend of big-band brass and electric guitar that shifts with the mood of each scene, so a quiet afternoon study session can sound as breezy as a midnight heist. Sitting with it feels like being absorbed into a stylish, busy but comfortable routine: long stretches of daily life, from classes to part-time jobs and hangouts, punctuated by brisk turn-based battles with snappy timing. The vibe is cool, mischievous and warm, with an undercurrent of earnest moral unease. Violence is stylised and cartoonish, with some mild dark themes around corruption, bullying and abuse discussed but not dwelt on in graphic detail. Its characters are a lonely teenager learning to trust a found family, and the game rewards patience and curiosity. It suits players who want a long, cosy-stylish companion for evenings and weekends, and fans of character-driven RPGs who enjoy social life woven into dungeon crawling.
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