I really like the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series, but they are insanely long and challenging. These are hardcore JRPGs not meant for casual players. Most won't have the stamina needed to sit through 150+ hour games and the PlayStation trophy data shows that. Less than half of all Persona 5 players finished the game. Thankfully, for people like me, Atlus put me in an extra easy mode called Safety that let me finish my first-ever Persona game. I tried the third and fourth games several times and just couldn't do it. While I eventually did well in battles, the games were too long. The story in Persona 5 is fantastic and there are plenty of great things about this game, but a few key issues may drive most players away even more casual JRPG fans.
The story is insanely deep and detailed. There are plenty of mysteries and twists and turns that kept me trucking on because I wanted to see what happened next. The characters are compelling, well-written, and very likable, however, you still need to like anime to enjoy the characters in this game. There are some typical anime tropes that leak in, but I think people who play JRPGs are already aware of this. Your character is Joker, a teenage boy wrongfully convicted of assaulting a high-profile individual for just trying to save a woman from harassment on the street. You end up living with someone who volunteered to take in a convict and watch over you so you can get rehabilitated. This game plays just like previous Persona games with a time limit, days going by, social rankings, and acquiring personas.
The game will introduce things to you throughout the entire game, and I mean throughout. 40 hours in I was still getting tutorial messages. The game is an incredibly slow burn. I didn't get to do any battling until the fifth or sixth hour. This was all story and world-building, introducing the idea of personas, your purpose, and your back story, and showing you how to go about the day-to-day. The game is mostly dialog, to be honest. Out of the 80 hours, it took me to finish the game maybe 25 of that was actually exploring the dungeons and fighting. There is a lot of character-building and slice-of-life stuff in here. You also have a time limit to finish every palace which is the main dungeon in the game.
When you're not battling you are living your everyday life. You need to go to school and the day is broken up into sections such as early morning which is reserved for dialog you hear on the train going to school, talking to friends at the train station, etc. Morning and afternoon are reserved for things happening at school during the week or random quizzes that you can answer to increase your social stats. These stats are knowledge, proficiency, charm, kindness, and guts. These are needed to finish confidant arcs and max out that persona category so you can get stat boosts when using that type of persona. These stats can be increased by doing certain activities like watching movies, playing games, doing chores, and other everyday activities. It's important to use your downtime for increasing these stats as the game is balanced by not just level grinding, but having these extra stats for each persona type.
After school time is reserved for doing things around the city such as said activities and getting together to enter Momentos which is a secondary dungeon with a few dozen levels that you need to descend to complete requests from people. In the end, it's required to descend fully for the final dungeon, but before that it's optional. I recommend doing these late-game so you can just barrel through the levels by the end. The evening is reserved for nighttime activities and jobs even to earn more money. After the activity, the evening is done you advance to the next day and do this all over. Some days are interrupted by story elements, scripted scenes, and other events. It's important to hang out with confidants when you get texts from them to advance their persona ranking. These are where the side stories for each character are held. They can be long-cut scenes too. Usually, you get 30 odd days between each major palace to fill the time. This time period can take hours to finish.
When you do actually battle Persona is based on finding the weaknesses of enemies. This can be both good and bad. If you find the weakness you get one more turn. This can be elemental or physical. The downside is that the entire game can be over if you don't find these quickly. It's trial and error as to finding the weakness and some just don't have one. You waste precious turns trying to figure this out and it can make some boss fights grueling. You can save within these palaces and return to the real world to buy items and increase your persona rankings more, but if you don't find the treasure and beat the boss by the deadline it's game over. I've always hated this about the series and it makes the game more difficult and frustrating than it needs to be. You can capture personas by talking to them when they're weak in battle. If successful they will join your ranks. It's important to keep a good variety of personas leveled up and acquire new ones with better skills. You can fuse and itemize them in the Velvet Room as well as sacrifice weaker ones to strengthen others.
While you can use multiple personas your party members are stuck with one. Every few levels they will gain new abilities for their personas and you have a limited number of slots so it's important to keep them balanced. Inside these palaces, you can acquire items, treasures to sell, and powerful equipment that you can buy in the airsoft shop. These palaces are huge with multiple levels and can take hours to complete. I played the game on safety difficulty so I could beat each palace in a single sitting, but if you need to level grind and fuse personas you could take the entire time limit. Each palace is a different theme and they look cool, but the weak puzzles and labyrinthine halls of some of them are really annoying. Enemies walk around in real-time and because you are thieves you can get behind cover and dash around them stealthily or take them head on. Some palaces are a really confusing mess and I found some just went on for too long.
Those are your two main parts of the game. Battling in Momentos or palaces and living your everyday life to increase social stats and play mini-games. I personally don't like the trial and error of exploiting weaknesses to win each fight. The graphics are decent, while stylistically they look great with lots of flash and color, but technically it looks like a typical JRPG and borderline last generation and not too much of a step up from the PS3 version. While it seems there is a lot to do in the game there actually isn't. You're so focused on visiting confidants and maxing out social stats in the real world that it feels like a chore after a while. You have to realize there are nearly 250 in-game days you have to get through on top of the palaces and momentos. The game just feels like it never ends. 80 hours to finish safety difficulties and it can take 150-200 hours for higher difficulties. I had to dedicate every free minute I had over the last three weeks to finishing this game and not playing any other games in between. I wish there was a warning at the beginning of the game letting players know how long the game can take on average or even put it somewhere on an official source of info for the game. I have played and bought many JRPGs not realizing just how long they take to beat.
Overall, I don't want to talk too much about the story because I can easily spoil something. The Phantom Thieves and trying to change the hearts of criminals is a great story. It can be very dark at times talking bout child exploitation, abuse, murder, money laundering, and many other crimes. It's a dark game and I felt it had a very memorable story, but it takes way too long to tell it. Many will balk at the trial and error of weakness exploitation to win battles, insane amounts of grinding, and the constant need to micro-manage your personas to get a well-balanced always leveled-up arsenal might seem like too much. That doesn't include dozens upon dozens of hours of reading dialog and watching cut scenes. I recommend this only to the hardest-core of JRPG fans. This game is not to be taken lightly. While I complain about some of these things fans of this genre embrace it and that's okay, but for only around 40% of players to have finished the game says something about the length.