It's been a long journey
Today I finished Persona 5's NG+. I started playing Persona 5 in May of last year, and pretty much bought a PS4 for the purpose of playing that game and that game only.
It's hard to believe that I'm now finished my second playthrough of the game with 510 hours of total play time. The first playthrough took 276 hours and I focused on the story, whilst the second playthrough I spent much more time optimizing my gameplay and completing the Persona compendium, as well as building a team of strong Personas and maxing out their levels.
The Persona series has really drawn me in over the past year. Before, I had no idea what it was about and didn't really understand if it was a video game or an anime (it had both, as well as various remakes and spinoffs), and this had sort of kept me away from the franchise, but upon learning about 5 and exploring it a little, I knew it was something I had to start playing. It takes alot of time and effort for me to pick up a game, because usually I end up committing huge amounts of time into it and begin to neglect the other things in life.
I'm still not finished
Would you believe that I still have to commit to a third playthrough of the game? I got locked out of the Bookworm trophy because it's a time-sensitive trophy and one of the books becomes unavailable after a certain date, so I need to go back and play it again to finish it (I was only one book away from getting it!), but I also have to finish maxing out my Persona team to 99.
It costs alot of in-game money to level a Persona up and I want to do it for all 12 of my chosen Personas. I've done about half but I simply ran out of resources and became no longer able to rack up the money I needed. Fortunately though I haven't fully completed the game, as I still have to Merciless Solo all the boss fights (the hardest difficulty with just my main character in the party). It's supposed to be quite difficult, and I can imagine some of the end-game bosses to be truly gruelling, but time will tell and most importantly, it's given me something to aim for on my NG++.
I just need to take some time away from the game that I've put the last 7 months into and... play something else. I don't typically play games quickly anyway so something like this becomes a huge epic effort and I get quite caught up mentally and emotionally. I feel like the time is right now to take a break and pick up the next game on my list (Nier: Automata... a year late).