I just beat Persona 5 Royal. That game was too &%*&&)% long.

[Piscian]

I honestly believe reviewers have grossly misrepresented this game and I don't really believe they played the whole thing through. It took me, I shit you not, a 144 hours. Granted I play games more on the slower, casual side, 130-140 is about average. To give you some perspective on that Persona 4 golden average play time is like 70 hours and thats how long it took me, this F'ing game is twice as long as the last one.

There were several points where I just started fast forwarding through dialog. Whoever wrote this game does not understand how real people talk. Final Fantasy VII remake is about 40 hours, the original Final fantasy VI was around 35 hours. Whats the difference? Imagine if in Final Fantasy VI all 14 or so playable characters had a quick call or text chat EVERY 5 MINUTES and every time, every single fing character had something to say, often two or three people are talking and conversations will cross on top of each other. This is Persona 5 non-stop. At least a 100 hours of my play time was in game chatter and OMG it wore on my soul. The only reason I beat this game, which took me like two months, was sunk cost.

Honestly, I didn't even like the game that much. It had it's moments, but it lacked the heart of Persona 4. It had some really interesting moments that really setup up some depth in the characters and then threw them away to keep the game happy and bouncy rather than explore the tragedies the characters were going through. I kid you not some characters go through serious, life altering, tragedy only to fight a boss and be over it and ready to go party in the next scene.

Sorry for the spam I just needed to vent. This game has seriously burned me out on Persona and JRPGs in general. I don't see putting myself through this ever again. It's a bummer because the game had a lot of things I liked. The mechanics were definitely improved over Persona 4, but it was just too damned long.

 

[meiam]

Ah! I quit about half way trough, I think I finished the chapter about the businessman guy (a terrible chapter) and I must have already racked up 50 hours but I just didn't care about the main story and characters (except Futaba but after her chapter she just sorta disappear in the background). I definitely agree about the writing, to make matter worse every time you have a pointless discussion with your team the game force you to waste your evening too because you're "tired" (although I think royal alleviated some of that).

I also think a lot of the initial positivity the game got was from just people playing the beginning, the first act is definitely the strongest, where it feel like your group is doing something with a purpose (rather than having an online poll to figure out who they should target). And at the beginning the UI is great and it got so much style... before all the hours just rob it of all its novelty.

 

[Catfood220]

Honestly, I didn't even like the game that much. It had it's moments, but it lacked the heart of Persona 4. It had some really interesting moments that really setup up some depth in the characters and then threw them away to keep the game happy and bouncy rather than explore the tragedies the characters were going through. I kid you not some characters go through serious, life altering, tragedy only to fight a boss and be over it and ready to go party in the next scene.

In fairness, the characters do deal with what has happened to them in the bonding moments with Joker and I think in Royal, they have counselling sessions with Maruki. And in these moments you see that they are struggling to deal with whats happened and by the time you max out your confident level with them, they are in a better place than they started in. I think the reason the game goes "well thats all wrapped up now, you ok? Good. On we go..." is to keep the game flowing nicely, if it was to stop and have these characters deal with their trauma, then the game would be so much longer than it is. Its not terribly realistic I will grant you, but this is a game about teenagers going into another dimension to fight demons.

 

[CriticalGaming]

144 hours seems long. Unless you leave the game on idle for long periods of time, I can't imagine a playthrough being that long. I platinumed the game in about 79 hours give or take. So to have your playthrough be nearly double that is kind of odd.

If you weren't digging the game why bother putting that much time into it? Just out of curiosity.

 

[laggyteabag]

If you weren't digging the game why bother putting that much time into it? Just out of curiosity.

In fairness, I often find myself in the same boat.

If I have already sunk a fairly significant amount of time into a game, even if im not really enjoying it, I often feel like I may as well finish it.

Obviously that is quite a destructive attitude, because I end up forcing myself to continue the game, and I end up resenting it as a result, but if I've come this far...

 

[CriticalGaming]

In fairness, I often find myself in the same boat.

If I have already sunk a fairly significant amount of time into a game, even if im not really enjoying it, I often feel like I may as well finish it.

Obviously that is quite a destructive attitude, because I end up forcing myself to continue the game, and I end up resenting it as a result, but if I've come this far...

I mean if you run all the way to the ocean, you might as well turn around and run to the other ocean.

 

[tippy2k2]

I enjoyed the game and I found it way too damn long.

The last few dungeons were just a slog (especially that stupid God damn cruise ship). The story was good enough that I did want to actually see how it would end but that game could have used a good 20 hours less or so (and I played it about 80 hours give or take EDIT: It might have been longer based on what everyone below is saying about playthrough time, I don't remember it that well so 80 was my guess but it was likely higher in retrospect). I had zero interest in getting Royal just because I didn't want to have to do all that shit again, even though it sounds like it added greatly on the stuff I DID really like (interacting with your team and those social link things or whatever they're called).

Still a good game but is in desperate need of an editor.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I enjoyed the game and I found it way too damn long.

The last few dungeons were just a slog (especially that stupid God damn cruise ship). The story was good enough that I did want to actually see how it would end but that game could have used a good 20 hours less or so (and I played it about 80 hours give or take). I had zero interest in getting Royal just because I didn't want to have to do all that shit again, even though it sounds like it added greatly on the stuff I DID really like (interacting with your team and those social link things or whatever they're called).

Still a good game but is in desperate need of an editor.

Royal did add a lot of stuff but it also streamlined things to make doing your relationships easier and it cut out some conversation dialog to speed up the game a little bit. Even with a whole extra chapter and dungeon added to it, it was faster to beat than the original game.

 

[Catfood220]

144 hours seems long. Unless you leave the game on idle for long periods of time, I can't imagine a playthrough being that long. I platinumed the game in about 79 hours give or take. So to have your playthrough be nearly double that is kind of odd.

My play through was about 140+ hours and I didn't leave the game idle. I did spent a fair bit of time in Mementos after ever boss and doing side quests. I always found your under 100 hours play through to be strange, you must have skipped a ton of stuff.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

I never finished the original cause when they announced the "new and improved!" version I decided to wait for that to do a full playthrough. But then they sold it as a completely separate game with zero option for a cheaper upgrade path and I'm still waiting for a sale cheap enough to justify buying it twice even now. What a rip off.

 

[BrawlMan]

This pretty much why I can't do long JRPGs or WRPGs any more. Especially the former.

 

[09philj]

My play through was about 140+ hours and I didn't leave the game idle. I did spent a fair bit of time in Mementos after ever boss and doing side quests. I always found your under 100 hours play through to be strange, you must have skipped a ton of stuff.

Yahtzee beat it in about 60 hours but he also ignored a lot of the side content.

 

[CriticalGaming]

My play through was about 140+ hours and I didn't leave the game idle. I did spent a fair bit of time in Mementos after ever boss and doing side quests. I always found your under 100 hours play through to be strange, you must have skipped a ton of stuff.

What did I skip if I platinumed the game?

 

[Piscian]

My play through was about 140+ hours and I didn't leave the game idle. I did spent a fair bit of time in Mementos after ever boss and doing side quests. I always found your under 100 hours play through to be strange, you must have skipped a ton of stuff.

The 79 hours is close to impossible according to the online stats you'd have to be speed running https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=66630. According to the stats the 140+ is called completionist and average play is around 120-130 hours, which is weird because I literally just played whatever they gave me. I spent very little time on things that grinding out personas, though I think I got around 85% of them just tooling around. Not debating, I'm sure it's possible.

Stewing on it last night, It just had too many characters. The problem is that in order to unlock equipment, personas and abilities that directly impact your ability to beat the game you're supposed to go through the relationship stories with every character and without looking at a guide its hard to know who you should skip. At the same time, I didn't go out of my way to skip anything. Each day I just hung out with whomever was available. I didn't really have any warning like "hey this game is long as fuck and you should avoid talking to people, use fast forward liberally.". Theres 10 main playable characters and like 5-10 NPCs you have a relationship with. One thing I recall is that I did ruijis story early in the game and ending up siding lining him and skipping his dialog because he really had nothing interesting to say for the rest of the game. A lot of characters were like that, you do their storyline and then hurry on to the next. You never come back to them, they never grow. That just seems like poor design to me. For a decent portion of the game I did soak in what people were saying, by the end of it I was fast-forwarding through anything I didn't find immediately interesting or pertineent to solving a puzzle.

I agree by the time I got to the ship I was mentally exhausted with the game it started getting incredibly redundant. When I found out the game wasnt over and I was forced directly into the expansion I just kinda resigned myself to my fate because I wanted to see how it all ends.

ugh f'me theres lots of articles online complaining about the length. I wished I'd known to ask.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I didn't finish it, I just stopped caring. It definitely has quality and I was enjoying it at the start, but as soon as Kamoshida was finished a downward slope slowly set in. Characters will have their moment in the spotlight when they get introduced, and they're very interesting in that moment, but as soon as that's over they just turn into your regular anime archetype; the bone head, the disciplined, reserved girl, the happy medium girl etc.

Kamoshida was a great hateable villain, but everyone who came after just did nothing for me. None of them felt like they had the same personal connection or felt as invasive as Kamoshida. And the castles just feel like the same damn dungeon with different wallpaper.

There's also zero consistency to when you have class and when you don't. The game will just decide at random 'Nah, we're just gonna skip to after class', eventhough class increases your stats. So why the fuck is the player left out of the loop as to when they can build up their Knowledge?

What really broke the camel's back was once the game catches up with the in medias res. I was expecting some shocking reveal as to who betrayed me, but guess what, it's the guy who was shady from the start and who only gets introduced to the team on the very mission he ends up betraying us on. On top of that, there's this big intricate plan that explains how we get out of jail, but we conveniently aren't told by the game because we were dosed with drugs during the interrogation, so I guess we just didn't remember how. Get fucked videogame. By that point you couldn't pay me to continue on.

 

[CriticalGaming]

The 79 hours is close to impossible according to the online stats you'd have to be speed running https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=66630.

Yeah but that doesn't consider that I played the game on easy, in order to best gather up all the trophies possible in a single run. So I didn't have a single moment of grinding or spending any time in momentos more than I had to for a few of the quests and events.

How-long-to-beat stats track averages. And they don't account for difficulty or player experience. For example I also played the original persona 5 in 2017, so a lot of my guess work was done because I knew exactly where to go and how to do things.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Kamoshida was a great hateable villain, but everyone who came after just did nothing for me. None of them felt like they had the same personal connection or felt as invasive as Kamoshida.

That's because Kamoshida directly fucks with you, the player. He is the most notable villain because of that. Every other villain in the game except the final one is a villain to somebody else, which removes player attachment to it.

There's also zero consistency to when you have class and when you don't. The game will just decide at random 'Nah, we're just gonna skip to after class', eventhough class encreases your stats. So why the fuck is the player left out of the loop as to when they can build up their Knowledge?

Yeah it's a problem with randomly taking away your time without warning. It's hard to be perfect in the game without a guide to tell you how to use your time.

 

[Dalisclock]

In fairness, I often find myself in the same boat.

If I have already sunk a fairly significant amount of time into a game, even if im not really enjoying it, I often feel like I may as well finish it.

Obviously that is quite a destructive attitude, because I end up forcing myself to continue the game, and I end up resenting it as a result, but if I've come this far...

I'm pretty sure there's a term for it but I think it relates to an ingrown human need to finish something once started. I want to say Sunk Cost but I don't think that quite fits the regret of not finishing a task you've sunk time and effort into, even if there's little benefit to doing so other then saying you've done it.

 

[Catfood220]

What did I skip if I platinumed the game?

I don't know, I wasn't there watching you But I don't know how you finished it in such a short amount of time if you weren't skipping stuff. It baffles me.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I don't know, I wasn't there watching you But I don't know how you finished it in such a short amount of time if you weren't skipping stuff. It baffles me.

I played the first version. So i lot of shit i didnt need to hunt for and i know everything about each Palace in terms of puzzles and objectives. Playing on easy also removes any required grind.