Cover artwork I generate from the game data. I do not use publisher artwork.
Game profile
Persona 5 Royal
A group of Tokyo high schoolers become Phantom Thieves at night, stealing through the surreal palaces of corrupt adults. It blends stylish turn-based combat with a deep social-simulation daily life.
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What kind of game this is
At its core this is JRPG / RPG, set in the present day. Visually it is deliberately stylised rather than photorealistic, and the overall tone stays somewhere between light and heavy. The structure is guided rather than open, so you are moved along instead of dropped into a map. It rewards long uninterrupted stretches more than quick check-ins.
The difficulty is moderate and fair, demanding attention without punishing you for it. The narrative carries the whole thing, and the mechanics serve it. It is a single player experience from start to finish. It is available broadly, on 4 platforms. It sits in the mid price bracket.
What stands out
- Iconic style and soundtrack
- Deep social link mechanics
- Over 100 hours of content
This fits you if
- you want to live through a story, not just play a system
- levelling, looting and optimising a build is your kind of loop
- you can sit down for a proper long stretch without interruptions
- the writing matters more to you than the mechanics
- you play alone and want a complete experience without other people
Look elsewhere if
- you skip cutscenes and want to get to the gameplay
- you do not have 100 hours to give a single game
- you only ever get short bursts of play time
- you specifically want an open world to roam
What it costs you in time
About 100 hours in total. At three evenings a week and two hours each, you will be busy for roughly 17 weeks, or 50 sessions.
How the rating ranks
Critics settled on 94 out of 100, which puts it above 97 percent of the 1206 games here and at rank 30 overall. That is a strong score, comfortably above what most releases manage.
For comparison, JRPG averages 86 points across the database, so this one sits 8 points above its own genre. The figure rests on 675 collected ratings.
Released in 2019, so it has 7 years behind it. Usually cheap by now and the rough edges are long fixed.
The facts
- Release year
- 2019
- Genres
- JRPG, RPG
- Playtime
- approx. 100 hrs.
- Difficulty
- Moderate, fair
- Story weight
- Carries the whole game
- Play with
- Solo
- Setting
- Present day, Fantasy
- Visual style
- Stylised
- Price bracket
- Mid price
- Platforms
- PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
- Critic rating
- 94 / 100
Direct comparison
| Genres | Release year | Playtime | Critic rating | Price bracket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Persona 5 Royal | 2019 | approx. 100 hrs. | 94 | Mid price |
| Digimon Story: Time Stranger | 2025 | approx. 40 hrs. | 83 | Full price |
| Persona 3 Reload | 2024 | approx. 75 hrs. | 89 | Full price |
| Metaphor: ReFantazio | 2024 | approx. 80 hrs. | 94 | Full price |
If you liked this, try these
- Digimon Story: Time Stranger Shared: JRPG, RPG, Present day, shorter
- Persona 3 Reload Shared: JRPG, RPG, Present day
- Metaphor: ReFantazio Shared: JRPG, RPG, Fantasy
- Final Fantasy XIV Shared: JRPG, RPG, Fantasy, longer
- Granblue Fantasy: Relink Shared: JRPG, RPG, Fantasy, shorter
- Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition Shared: JRPG, RPG, shorter