10 Best No.5's In Gaming History
2. Persona 5 Royal
120 hours.
That's how long it took this writer to complete Persona 5 Royal, yet when the credits rolled, it felt like it was over too soon.
An expanded version of the original Persona 5, Royal turned the 2016 JRPG into a contender for the best RPG of all time - and yes, we are deliberately excluding the J. Every facet of the original game was improved upon - dungeons and boss battles received welcome redesigns, the translation got a much-needed upgrade, and your cat actually let you have a social life (that sentence makes sense in context).
But it was Royal's new content that transformed the already-excellent base game into a generation-defining masterpiece. Newcomers Kasumi and Dr. Maruki made a great story even better, the new social links added much-needed depth to existing characters (looking at you, Akechi), and the 20+ hours of post-game content treated players to one of the most emotionally-charged finales in video game history.
There's so much more we could gush about - Shoji Meguro's incredible soundtrack, the impossibly stylish graphics, the staggeringly addictive Mementos - but we'd need another 10 list entries to discuss it all.
Persona 5 Royal is can't-miss gaming, and given that it has now been released on every modern format under the sun, there's no excuse not to play it. Give it a go, and we can breathlessly compare notes 120 hours later.