I've finally finished up Persona 5 Royal today.
Spoiler: All of the spoilers.
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Wow, what to say about it at this point? The original final boss, Yalabaoth, was a pretty good fight, and I think I enjoyed that climax to the game more the second time around than the first. I feel like I could see more what they were going for thematically at the end there than I did the first time, with the group now struggling against the wishes of the masses when once they'd become caught up in seeking their approval. Though that is just a touch undercut by a big moment of the ending involving Mishima abruptly getting the public on your side and the Phantom Thieves' approval meter on his website suddenly shooting up from near zero to 100%.

Then we hit the changes for Royal, and...well, let's just say I was pretty darn happy with them, right up until literally the last post-credits scene. All of the stuff with Akechi worked out fine, I felt - it gave you the chance to use him in combat for more than the brief time you got in Sae's Palace, while not changing his character and, ultimately, preserving his ending as having died in Shido's Palace. And then for some reason, they show him walking by your train as you're leaving for home. Goddamn it, that sucks. Having one of the game's worst villains, the only one who was a literal mass murderer, walking around free in the end is a terrible addition to its ending. At the least if they intended to still be alive they could've preserved the change where he turns himself in in order to testify against Shido - he hated his guts, so that actually made sense to me. If Maruki's changes to reality weren't necessary for him to survive, I don't think they'd be necessary for him to do that.

That aside, the new content was pretty darn good. Even though I saw Maruki being the owner of that new Palace coming, that was one part meta-knowledge (they added two new characters, one of whom joins the Phantom Thieves, and the two seem to be at least somewhat tied together - gee, I wonder what the other one's for?), and one part the Palace Ruler silhouette from Yoshizawa's Awakening, despite being intended to be a generic male one, somehow reminding me of Maruki. I did not at all see the twist with Kasumi - or rather, Sumire - coming, and it made for a very interesting storyline for her and companion for Maruki's story. And Maruki made for a pretty solid final opponent: someone who's completely well-intentioned and not in the slightest malicious or trying to cause any harm, but who is just taking use his power too far for you to ever accept. It even kind of touches on what I'd once hoped Akechi would, with the reveal that Maruki himself fully agrees with your actions as the Phantom Thieves. I do wish they'd had the party dwell on that a little more and consider what they think about the implications of that, but it still helps a lot, showing that there are steps too far for them in using their powers to try and improve the world. Gameplay-wise I really liked Maruki's Palace as well, and the actual boss fight with Maruki and his Persona was really good - though the additional ones after, when his Persona evolved, were much more mediocre. I wish that last one had been a real fight with some intricacies to when you could hurt the opponent and how rather than just a few rounds you need to survive for until Futaba finishes analyzing his weakness.

So, yeah, if I head-canon out that final tease of Akechi, great addition to the game. Persona 5 will never quite have the same place in my heart as Persona 3 and 4, but it's still among the best damn games I've ever played on the whole.

And that's that. It's almost a shame I just spent so long playing P5R, actually, as we just got the surprise announcement that Persona 4 Golden has finally been released from it's Vita prison and been put on something I could actually play it on, Steam. Given its age I don't think I'd even need to worry about my PC being able to handle it. But after just finishing another Persona game, I definitely need to play something else instead, so that's going on the back-burner for later in the year, the next time I feel like playing another big RPG.