If you played Persona 4 before there's not really a drastic change to the formula; you're still dungeon hoping while trying to balance your social life, but the changes made makes this the best and easiest Persona game to jump into. -Story You're a high school student moving to a new town trying to change the hearts of corrupt adults thus making society a better place The game is split into days where you try to balance your life in the real world and meta-verse In the meta-verse or the dungeon aspect of the game, you face shadows or enemies made by corrupt adults which guard their evil heart in palaces (or evil manifestations of a person) Once you enter a palace you have a set number of in-game days to complete it before the corrupt adult does something to ruin society Once you defeat the boss in the palace you'll change their hearts forcing them to turn themselves in to the authorities in the real world In the real world, you spend time with friends getting to know their darkest secrets and may romance them if you further the relationship far enough. Along the way you build stat upgrades which you can use during your dungeon crawling The story, dialogue, voices and character interactions are very good, making it an addictive game where you want to level up and progress to further the story. The story also involve real world topics that deals with mature themes such as abuse, crime, rape, blackmail -Graphics Very stylish with its anime art design/cutscenes, jagged comic book speech bubbles, very colorful backdrops and varied characters personalities . Even the UI has a stylistic flare to it. All transitional screens and menus are well animated. Very nice presentation overall as it looks very slick, edgy and modern. -Gameplay: In the metaverse, you sneak through palaces and stealth hit/ambush wandering enemies for a leg up in battle Once battle is initiated it's your typical jrpg turn based system but with a twist If you hit an enemy with move that's super effective against them, you'll get an extra turn to attack until your combo gets large enough where you get an optional all-out-attack An enemy can sometimes do an 'Hold Up!' prompt where you can spare their life for money, item or have them join you as a Persona summon. For the latter you get a multiple choice question answer segment where you have to convince them to join you with a successful choice dependent on the enemies personality. You can then fuse personas and make stronger ones Once a palace is conquered you are not able to return, but you can get mementos or side quests from random NPCs to further level up if you want to In the real world there's a lot of micro time management. You may be overwhelmed with activities that you cannot do all in a single day and some activities are only open on particular days . Thus you have to pick and choose what to do to build up your stats (like eating burgers, reading on the train station, studying, watching movies, etc) or build relationships with a friend. For the latter, building relationship further increase their persona in battle and similar persona types that you capture/make join your team All activities level up 1 of 5 stats: Knowledge, Charm, Guts, Kindness, or Proficiency. These stats once leveled up open new activities and opportunities to level up in the meta-verse and improve social links furthering the story. They're a lot of interlocking game mechanics in play that the tutorial may last you a couple of hours depending on how familiar you are with the series. Even though the game handholds you for a couple of hours, it's very natural and you don't feel lectured most of the time. After those few hours, you get invested very easily as the world opens up to you, and you can easily sink in 100+ hours into this game. Overall best Persona Game I've ever played and for those who like a narrative driven story where a lot of your own choices predicts an outcome, this game is a must buy.