#I think there should be cognitive versions of all the thieves wandering around his palace too

[spooky-activity]

More shadow Joker because…. It’s the brainrot

Kinda like in Futaba’s palace, the Thieves don’t manifest their thief attire until they “confirm” to Joker’s shadow the only reason they’re here is to make him their leader again… not help him. That’s when he starts pushing them away

[biscuitreviews]

Biscuit Reviews Third Anniversary Review: Persona 5 Royal

It’s been three years since the beginning of Biscuit Reviews and what better way to celebrate the third year than to review an enhanced version of the third game I reviewed for the blog, Persona 5 Royal.

Now for this I’ll mostly be pointing out the differences between the two versions and give a review of the new content and Royal’s main selling point, a new party member, a new Palace and a third playable semester. Now that I’ll be talking more about in the “Keep Reading” cut to shield full on spoilers, because I can’t talk about that portion of the game without spoiling Persona 5’s story itself.

Like before, you are an unnamed silent-ish protagonist. Now in regards to Persona 5, the main character has two canon names, his manga name and his anime-adaptation name. To make it easier, I’m just going to refer to him as Joker from now on, which is his Phantom Thief codename.

One night, going home, Joker hears a woman screaming. He investigates it to find a man trying to have his way with her. He attempts to stop the man only to find out that he’s a powerful politician that turns the situation around to where Joker assaulted him. This false charge brands Joker a criminal to which his parents decide to have him live with their friend Sojiro Sakura

Later, a mysterious app downloads on Joker’s phone that allows him to travel to a place called the Metaverse, a place where cognitive distortions are manifested. It is here the power of Persona is discovered and Joker and friends take up the mantle of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts.

As a Phantom Thief, Joker will be attempting to steal the hearts from the Palaces of corrupted adults in positions of power to change their ways and admit the crimes which they have committed. These Palaces are all uniquely built with different paths, traps, and ambush points. Now in Royal, these Palaces have had a few changes. There are some shortcuts built to make going through the longer tedious areas less painful, there are new paths that lead to more treasure chests, and there additional areas to make use of the new grappling hook tool. 

However, the grappling hook is mostly used to access a new collectible in these Palaces known as “Will Seeds”. Collecting all three Will Seeds will make a new accessory to equip. Obtaining these Will Seeds aren’t an issue either as they are usually along the main path. The game also lets you know when a Will Seed is nearby and finding them is usually easy as the path to it is pretty obvious.

Even though the bosses are the same, all of their fights are different than in the original Persona 5. In fact, the new Okumura fight actually gave me a bit of a hard time, so much so I had to lower the difficulty of the game to have somewhat of a chance. It probably wouldn’t have been much of an issue if I had better Personas for the fight, but I was determined to push forward.

Mementos also comes back as your place to do side quests and comes with its own changes. There’s a new character called Jose who wanders Mementos looking for Flowers. You collect Flowers in exchange for powerful items. Mementos also has stamp collection stations. Collecting these stamps and giving them to Jose allows you to alter the rewards of Mementos. You can alter EXP received from fights, how much more money you can acquire, and have enemies drop better quality items within Mementos. It definitely makes going through weaker areas more bearable as you’ll still get decently rewarded no matter what level your party is.  Now remember the Will Seeds I mentioned earlier? If you have the Will Seed accessory, Jose will also upgrade it for you for no charge or special requirement.

After collecting every stamp, an extra boss fight against Jose will be unlocked. Going through this boss fight does contain what the internet has theorized as a possible tease for Persona 6, and possibly even the Shin Megami verse as a whole.

Now, the issue I had with Mementos in my previous review is still present. If you don’t keep up with Mementos, you’ll have a very long dungeon to do before you get to the “Final Main Dungeon.” So it is important that you at least go into Mementos once a month in game to keep pace.

Despite these new additions, Mementos does suffer a setback from the new additions. If you leave Mementos, you lose all the flowers you gained. You would think, “Oh that’s fine, Jose will probably be at the entrance so I have a chance to spend my flowers before leaving.” Nope, Jose will not be at the entrance, if you want to spend your flowers before leaving, you’ll have to find him within Mementos, spend your flowers and then return back to the entrance. For so many improvements to better streamline Mementos, it’s really odd that they did not streamline this part.

There’s also the addition of the Thieves’ Den. This mainly serves as an intractable gallery of events within the game where you view pictures, cutscenes, and listen to music. You can even customize it with various statues and wallpapers. Jose is also present here, but he serves more as a tour guide on what you can do in the Thieves’ Den.

There are additional improvements that have been included as well within the game. For one trying to convince a Persona to join you is easier as the game tells you that Persona’s personality type. Also Morgana and Futaba will actually tell you what kind of answers to give these specific Persona if you want them to join you. It certainly takes the guesswork out of everything and also makes Futaba feel more like an asset rather than just a character that is there because of the plot.In fact, Futaba actually does more in-game. She can sometimes takeover during the  all-out attack, and her Mementos and battle perks happen more frequently, at least, I felt it was that way.

The gun attack has also been greatly improved. In Persona 5, if you used up all of your ammo, that was it, you would have to leave the Palace and return the next day in-game to reload your ammo. Now, ammo is refilled after every encounter within the Palace. This to me, actually gave me a reason to care about buying and customizing new guns because they were now an actual effective tool.

There is also a new event that happens in the Velvet Room known as “Prison Alarm” This alarm allows you to do supercharged fusions that makes these fused Persona more powerful and also learn stronger spells. However, this is only guaranteed for the first fusion, the second fusion will have varied results. I do recommend still doing the second fusion as you’re more likely to have a normal fusion or a strong fusion than a weak fusion. Even if you do get a weak fusion, there is still a possibility that the weak fusion can know strong spells

All party members now know Baton Pass by default, you don’t have to have them learn it from their Confidant track. You can however make their Baton Pass stronger by playing darts with them, which is an actual mini-game in Persona 5 Royal. Not only will this increase the Baton Pass level, but also help deepen the bond with party members.

All Confidant events now have a phone call that occurs after the event that allows an opportunity to gain additional points towards Joker’s relationship with them. 

There are also 3 new confidants in Persona 5 Royal and maximizing their ranks are important to access the new semester and Palace. These new Confidants are Takuto Maruki, Goro Akechi, and Kasumi Yoshizawa. Even though Akechi was a Confidant in the original Persona 5, his track ranked up automatically and required no effort on the player’s part. Now, effort from the player is required.

Kasumi Yoshizawa will also act as your new “party member”. I use quotes around party member, because she’s only an active member for the new Palace, not for the overall story. She is used in a couple of battles during the main story, but that’s it outside the new Palace. I was really hoping she would be more of an active member, considering having a new party member was one of Royal’s main selling points.

As for Kasumi you’ll notice her Confidant rank is a bit different. She only has five ranks rather than the normal ten. She does have ten ranks, but to access the other five, you do have to access the new Palace as they are tied in to that Palace’s story.

Now, if you care more about the social aspect of Persona and not so much the dungeon aspect, you can still max out Maruki’s rank to access the new semester without worrying about the other two. But to get the full experience of Royal, you have to max out the three new Confidants and I encourage it to get access to everything. Also Maruki’s story and Kasumi’s story are both tied into the new Palace 

I will however state this though regarding the new semester. It’s only one additional in game month and that’s it. It’s a bit disappointing as I was hoping for two months akin to Persona 4 Golden, which opened up new events and scenes with the main cast. I am however curious about something regarding unlocking only the new semester and not the Palace. It’s something I haven’t quite found an answer for, it’s also a bit spoilery so I won’t go into details there, but I will in the cut.

Alright, I’m now going to be discussing the new Palace and its story. This will spoil the ending of the original Persona 5 as well as what happens in this new portion of the game. I’ll go ahead and give my score for the game as well as some of my overall thoughts.

If you haven’t played Persona 5 at all for any reason, definitely get Royal as it fixes a few issues that were present in the previous game and adds some new activities, cutscenes, and moments with the main cast. I highly recommend looking at this version rather than the regular Persona 5. If you played Persona 5 already and are debating on if you should get Persona 5 Royal, my suggestion would be to wait for a sale.

I will however add this as well. Persona 5 Royal is supposed to be the definitive edition. Normally when a definitive edition comes out, it includes all DLC. Now it does include all DLC from the original Persona 5, but Royal also comes with it’s own DLC. This DLC is in the form of costumes for Kasumi and additional extra boss fights with the protagonists from Persona 3 and Persona 4. Why are these not in Royal already to begin with? Royal already has a bunch of extra events and fights already, why weren’t these included?

So anyways, I’m going to give Royal two different scores as I feel that the experience will vary depending on if you’re a first time Persona 5 player, or a returning player for the new content.

If this is your first foray into Persona 5, it’s easily a 5 out of 5.

If you’re looking to go into this game for the new content, it’s easily a 4 out of 5.

So take it how you will and now I’ll be getting into the brand new content so again only click on “Keep Reading” if you have experienced the content, or just don’t much care for spoilers.

The events of the new Palace begin immediately after your fight with the God of Control. The original ending of Persona 5 is altered. Rather than Joker turning himself over for questioning during Sae’s pursuit against Shido, Akechi comes to turn himself in rather than Joker, showing that he survived the events of Shido’s Palace. The next day, you learn that Makoto’s father is alive as well as Futaba’s mother. To everyone else, this is how it always was, but Joker suspects that something has changed. This would be confirmed by Akechi and Kasumi who also seem to be aware of the changes around them. This marks Kasumi as now joining you as a permanent party member as well as Akechi, which was a surprise to me.

It is then up to Joker to convince the Phantom Thieves that what they are experiencing is not the true reality. During the investigation Maruki reveals that Kasumi herself is also living in an altered cognition and is in fact Sumire, the once thought dead sister. and not Kasumi. It turns out it was actually Kasumi that died in the accident, and it was Sumire’s grief that wanted Kasumi to come back. So to have Kasumi return, Sumire’s cognition got altered to where she was Kasumi and Kasumi was Sumire. During this conflict of identity, Maruki has Sumire channel that anger towards Joker and Akechi in an attempt to kill them.

The final battle against Maruki was slightly disappointing. His battle has three phases, but only one of them requires any actual effort, that being his first battle. His first fight took me a couple of tries to figure out the best party makeup and to figure out an attack pattern. Also, hopefully you didn’t burn any of those Full HP and SP recovery items while fighting the God of Control, because you will need them during this fight. The second fight, all you have to do is keep the attack debuff on him and your defense buff up and stay healed as you fight him. The third fight, you don’t do anything. You just have to stay healed and guard. You don’t have to buff yourself, you don’t have to manage your resources, just stay alive and guard for your life. Which is a shame because I was looking forward to a grueling fight with the third phase, something akin to old RPGs when it came to final bosses having multiple forms, you were in for the fight of your life with multiple forms that truly tested you and your knowledge of the game. Maruki had that promise, but ended up not delivering.

The new Palace also provides three different endings, with one of the endings having three different variants on how to get it. You have the indecisive ending, where Maruki puts Joker to sleep, with Joker’s room showing that no one has gone to check on him for who knows how long. The bad ending being Joker accepting Maruki’s reality and everyone being happy, yet it’s implied that Joker and Akechi are aware that it’s fake and that they both accept it as the new true reality. Now I’m not fully ingrained into the Shin Megami Tensei series, but I do know that this overarching series has spinoffs upon spinoffs based on different endings from its various titles. I can see one of these endings giving birth to a new series within the Shin Megami Tensei line because there is some potential in what has been created here with these bad endings and I hope Atlus does revisit this in the future. I have to say despite being bad endings, they were given some thought and care. 

Personally, I think the bad ending could actually serve as a true ending especially seeing every member, minus Akechi, was having doubts about what they are doing and if fixing reality is truly the best thing to do. Seeing that inner conflict with the cast also had me feel that same conflict. Do I want these characters that I spent over 100+ hours with to have their happy ending, or do I bring them back to the true reality?

Finally, there’s the good ending where the Phantom Thieves defeat Maruki and restore reality to its proper form. This means that Akechi is dead and the events of Persona 5’s original ending continue with the Phantom Thieves being the only ones that remember the events of the altered reality. 

Or is reality back in its original state? 

There are definitely some threads it left that do have me curious. Is Akechi truly alive? Does the Metaverse still exist? As far as I know, this is the first Persona game to actually have unanswered questions at the end. From what I understand with Persona 5 Scramble, the Metaverse does still exist, however, there’s no answer regarding Akechi. I’ll guess we’ll have to wait for either another Persona 5 sequel or maybe even easter eggs within Persona 6 to learn the answers to those questions.

Which is also my question for what I had earlier. If you only maximize Maruki’s Confident, does that mean the bad ending happens by default? I haven’t been able to find an answer to this online and I am a bit too worn to go back and retread through Persona 5 for a small curiosity. If anyone knows this, let me know or link me to a Youtube video where I can see this, I would like to know.

Either way, it’s a bit of a mixed bag with the new content. I did love navigating through the new Palace, and some of the new Mementos requests were on the challenging side for sure, but the buildup to a big finale fight was a bit of a let down and not being able to play the full third semester was even more disappointing.