Persona 5 Royal Is Out Now, and Review is in the Works!

Sorry I missed giving an update about this earlier this week, but I've been pretty busy with work and other things and just haven't had the time. That being said... Persona 5 Royal is finally out in the US! It's been a long wait for this game's release, but it is finally here. Really it's kinda weird thinking that this game even exists. I mean, sure, Persona 3 had FES and Persona 3 Portable, and Persona 4 eventually got Golden, but Persona 5 always felt like a "complete" game. It was a massive release that took me close to 150 hours to do a 100% run on my first play through, with an extra 10-15 hours of speed running to finish cleaning up trophies on a NG+. It's a massive game, and I never once thought they would actually go ahead and expand it -- but here it is!

So, what is Royal exactly, and why should you get it over the original? Well to put it simply... It's an updated Persona 5. It's all of the content of the original game with a large amount of extra features being added in and game balances to "improve" what was already in place. It also includes the DLC from the original release for free (although it has to be redeemed from PSN), and adds some nice throw back items and costumes from past Persona games. The biggest change of all however is the introduction of the character Kasumi, who acts sorta like how Marie did in Persona 4 Golden. She's there adding new pieces to the story throughout the adventure, but her real time to shine comes from the completely new story arc which expands the game past the old game's ending.

With that being said... I actually plan to review it this time! The original P5 released during a slow time for this blog, and when I didn't have much time to actually make updates or post reviews. As much as I loved the original I basically never even talked about it here. I regret that and wanted to make things right, but when Royal was announced I didn't have much of a reason to. If anything I'd rather cover the new version of this already excellent game, and see just how different it really is for myself. So that's what I'm going to do. Of course I can't really give a timeline on that considering THIS GAME IS AT LEAST 150 HOURS LONG, but I'll do my best to slowly work through it and write that review when I'm finished. Really I'm looking forward to going back (again I LOVED P5), but it'll be awhile before I get to the ending. Not to mention the fact that Resident Evil 3 releases tomorrow, with Final Fantasy VII soon after... Even so! I'll make time. It's a great game and well worth the time spent.