Persona 5 Royal is a living master class in how to take an already amazing game and amp it up to the next level. It’s not just a standard “game of the year” edition with some extra content thrown in on the side. Just about everything in Atlus’ 2016 (2017 in the US) JRPG magnum opus has been honed, polished, and expanded in some meaningful and positive way. Across more than 130 hours of adventuring through urban Tokyo and the surreal realms of the human mind, the amount of love and attention to detail hiding around each old and new twist in the story left me in awe.

If you’re not familiar, you should absolutely check out our original Persona 5 review because I’m going to focus mostly on what makes Royal even better. There’s a lot of ground to cover! Loading Original Persona 5 Verdict Persona 5 is a massive, gorgeous JRPG with well over 100 hours of gameplay for completionists. With more to do than ever and the series’ strongest story to date, it stands out as an extraordinary, memorable experience and easily one of the deepest JRPGs of the last decade. Its sprawling dungeon design and stylish, fully realized world are an absolute joy to explore, and even after three playthroughs and the Platinum trophy, I find myself itching to go back to try different dialogue options with Confidants or revisit particularly fun puzzles. This is a new gold standard for Japanese RPGs and by far the best entry in the series yet. – Andrew Goldfarb, March 29, 2017

“ I’ll never get tired of watching Makoto and Haru double elbow-drop a harbinger of the apocalypse.

“ The risk and reward aspect makes fusion a lot more exciting.

Every Modern IGN 10/10 and Where to Play Them 23 IMAGES

“ Taking down The Reaper is truly the toughest task available to undertake, and it felt absolutely amazing.

“ The fact that Atlus has made Mementos feel so much more alive is a massive improvement by itself.

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“ There’s always something new to see even in familiar scenes.

As someone who’s played through the original version of Persona 5 twice, the most immediately noticeable and impactful of Royal’s changes come in the realm of combat. It’s hard to keep old-school, four-person, turn-based battles interesting in this day and age, but nobody in the business does it better than Atlus. In addition to some spot-on rebalancing of abilities and enemies across the board, the role guns play in your arsenal has been totally reimagined. Bullets now refresh after each battle instead of only at the beginning of an infiltration, with the trade-off of being able to hold less ammo overall. This feels almost game-breakingly powerful in earlier areas, but as time goes on it allows guns to settle in as a much more versatile and dependable tool rather than something you hoard only for really tough enemies.The combination of all of these new battle and progression options can make certain areas feel a lot easier than they were in the original version, at least if you’re a Persona 5 veteran. But rest assured, the new and enhanced boss fights still offer a significant challenge even on Normal difficulty. And you may remember our old friend The Reaper, the semi-secret enemy who is supposed to be Joker’s ultimate challenge? In Royal, he’s immune to the Despair debuff, so you can’t kill him the cheesy way by fighting him on specific days. This means taking him down is truly the toughest task available to undertake, and it felt absolutely amazing once I finally pulled it off.The third semester is only one part of the expanded story, though. The main campaign has also been significantly beefed up with two new confidants joining the already rich cast: bubbly, aspiring gymnast Kasumi Yoshizawa and calming but dorky school counselor Takuto Maruki. Each has a dauntingly deep, tragic backstory filled with its own impactful twists and turns that were both painful and compelling to uncover. And one of the returning confidants from the original Persona 5 has had their role in the story significantly tweaked and expanded – but I won’t spoil who.To balance out the extra time it will take to max out your relationships with these new characters, Royal has quite a few new ways to spend your free time optimally, like a random chance to have a dream that gives stat or relationship points every night that you go to bed without doing anything else in the evening. And focusing on fresh faces is really rewarding in palaces, not just outside of them. Kasumi and Maruki can permanently increase your HP and SP, respectively. Kasumi can also give you a new way to use your grappling hook to ambush enemies from a distance and inflict them with harmful status effects, which is pretty game-changing against some tougher groups. One of my only disappointments is that Kasumi can’t join you as a permanent party member until the third semester, but you’ll see quite a lot of her and get to test out her skills a couple of times before then.I could practically fill a TV documentary with the long list of other small and medium-sized improvements found in Persona 5 Royal, but here are a few of my favorites: The Thieves’ Den is a new hangout area that will follow you across multiple playthroughs. Here, you can decorate with statues of personas you’ve unlocked, listen to the absolutely superb new and returning music, and rewatch any cutscene. Those new tracks are just as awesome as the classics, adding variety and fitting in perfectly with the energetic acid jazz that is such a huge and memorable part of Persona 5’s identity. If you were finally getting tired of the catchy “Last Surprise” – and let’s face it, after two playthroughs of the original version it’s hard not to be a little bit over it – there’s even a great new battle theme that plays during ambush encounters. Which is to say, you’ll be hearing it during most battles if you’re playing optimally, relegating Last Surprise to being a welcome, every-once-in-a-while nostalgic treat.