It's good to be back.
I played the original Persona 5 in 2017 on the PS3, this/that game was an incredible experience that I'll likely never forget.
Now Persona 5 is available on Gamepass for Xbox One, Series and PC. This is something I thought would never happen, but alas, here we are and I'm happy.
This is my first time playing Royal so I haven't noticed a lot of the differences just yet. I can definitely tell that the game looks a lot sharper at 1080p and the models are better as they have been updated.
The conversation portraits have also been revamped and now feature tons more emotion.
So far the only big difference I've seen is the new character, and she's only shown up once in the intro, which makes things look a bit different from the intro of the original and has also shown up at school once.
I'm honestly excited to see what they'll do with this character as it's clear she's a pretty big part of the "Royal" thing.
Oh yeah, and they added a cool ass grapple hook! That's always a plus in any game, and so far after playing through Kamoshida's dungeon, I can see that it has been put to good use already. I hope to see more of it in action, maybe to hide secret goodies, maybe as a gameplay component, in any case, it's nice to see some more depth to the exploration.
The first few hours never feel old to me, even though they're pretty similar to the original game, and through these crucial few hours, new mechanics and systems are introduced...
Such as the really cool baton pass, which makes your attacks stronger in a multitude of different ways depending on which character you passed it to (at least that's how I understand it so far).
It's really satisfying to get a critical hit or hit a weak spot and then do the baton pass knowing I'll be dealing tons more pain.
It really does make combat a lot more interesting and fun, and makes some encounters pretty trivial which is nice, I like quick things.
Speaking of which, some battles in Mementos are now entirely skipped and you get their rewards if you're over-leveled for them, that's a nice touch and helps with the chore of having to kill weaker enemies.
In any case, Royal has been proving to be a definite improvement over the original, even if what I've seen has been very little and most of the content is reserved for the late game (or as I call it, post original game), there's still tons here to make players of the older game who might even have multiple playthroughs (such as myself) get eased in to something new and refreshing.
I can't wait to see more of what is done, and if you've never played Persona 5, now's the best time. In fact, with 3P, 4G and 5R on PC, there's never been a better time.
