Persona 5
First things first: every single content warning for mature and adult themes that you can think of is present in this game. The first chapter deals with a high school coach who is seen to be physically abusing and implied to be sexually harassing (at least) the students he is coaching, to the point where a female athlete attempts suicide. I say all this not to shock anyone, but just to warn what you're signing up for and give you a chance to just nope out of the rest of this review.
In this 80+ hour turn based jrpg, you're a group of high school students, led by the protagonist code named Joker (you can name him whatever you want, the voice acting will play the pronoun game and refer to you by your code name a lot to work around this). You'll recruit "shadows" to fight with you as personas, eventually fusing two of them together to make one new (usually stronger) one, as is common to any SMT game. In battles, you'll try to exploit enemies' weaknesses to one of 10 different damage types, because if you can hit a weakness, you'll be able to get free turns and do bonus damage, making every fight very strategic... Hitting a weakness knocks the enemy down, once all enemies are down you can perform an all out attack dealing massive damage. Boss fights are long, requiring adapting to changing situations and trying to stay ahead of the damage they're dishing out... Most don't have a weakness or have different parts with different weaknesses requiring you to consider carefully what your options are.
All of this is still only really half or less of the game. Alongside that core is the idea that you're on a deadline, you need to have dealt with a major threat about once a month - and the game tracks time by generally giving you 2 actions per day ... Will you spend that time hanging out with your friends and unlocking hidden talents for your party, or meet new npc allies with abilities to prepare you for battle better, or advance on the 5 social skills tracks you have - you may find an character who won't even talk to you unless you have level 4 guts (bravery). All of these things take time, and not everyone is free every day, most characters have 2-4 days per week and either afternoons or evenings but not both, some days there are discounts or better earn rates on the social skills, so looking at the calendar and figuring out what you want to do each day is an interesting puzzle (though some might find it tedious or feel anxiety about not picking the right thing to do).
Alright that's enough about the gameplay, we haven't even touched on two things that take this from great to amazing: the visual style and the soundtrack.
This isn't a photorealistic game or use trillions of shaders or lighting or anything like that--what it is is "stylish." Every single thing in this game from dialog boxes to menus to special attacks is beautifully styled in a consistent, modern, edgy kind of feel that you really should see (I could probably link an official trailer but personally I only like to link my own content, you have Google for the rest). Every single thing you can do in this game looks and feels like a part of the game, right down to saving your game.
Then there's the soundtrack, which is absolutely full of bangers. In fact, I'm going to go put it on my OSTs list which only had 2 other games before now, it's that good.
Ok this is excessively long. If you read this far and nothing scared you off, give it a shot! As of August 2023, it's available with game pass on Xbox One or higher. Of note to any PS4/5 owners considering the game: there's two versions: the original (which is excellent but less forgiving) and royal (which is effectively a director's cut with extra content and some good QoL improvements). Ignore the original game and get royal. You'll be glad you did.
