Broken Base / Persona 5

• The identity of the traitor: Goro Akechi, which many have slammed as a blatant Captain Obvious Reveal, while others like it for serving as The Un-Twist. Others point out Akechi serves as a Red Herring to divert attention from events like the whole party having already come up with a plan to outsmart him, to an even bigger betrayal by "Igor", who turns out to have been the Big Bad posing the series' usual Big Good the whole time.
• While the game has received acclaim for taking socially progressive stances on a number of hot-button topics, the lack of a Gay Option and/or LGBT representation is divisive, mostly amongst the Western fanbase. Just like the preceding two game's male protagonists, Joker can't enter a same-sex relationship with another guy, and there are two gag characters in the form of a campy older couple who pop up briefly twice and sexually harass Ryuji both times, leading to discussions about whether the jokes regarding the gay couple are offensively funny or just plain offensive, and even whether or not the gay jokes undermine the game's progressive themes. It got to the point where Atlus USA chose to change the lines for the western release of Persona 5 Royal to downplay their stereotypical beheaviour (they were instead changed to drag queens who mistake Ryuji for being interested in their show), which caused an even bigger outcry due to cries of censorship. On the other hand, the tasteful handling of Gay Bar matron Lala Escargot and her customers has been widely praised as she is presented as a Reasonable Authority Figure among other reasons. Part of why the first part of this discussion comes up is that you could pursue a romantic interest of your same gender in Persona 2, a game released over 15 years before Persona 5.
• The final arc of the game, especially when it is compared to the two previous games. There are those who think the final arc ends the game on a strong note. A lot of praise is given to the final three bosses, the Character Development given to the Phantom Thieves, and several endgame moments such as the Phantom Thieves resolving to defeat Yaldabaoth after he nearly erases them from existence, the summoning of Satanael, and the game ending on a very positive note. Others are a lot more critical of the game's final arc. Common criticisms include the last two dungeons being some of the weakest in the game, the game's themes of rebellion having very little payoff in the end, Goro Akechi's "role" representing Yaldabaoth's need to destroy and remake the world under his order (feeling that it was either tacked on, or the complete lack of reaction from the party regarding the fact), and Shido being a weak villain in spite of all the build up he was given. Fans of Persona 3 have been especially more critical due to how much payoff the final hours of that game had (hours which to this day are widely considered some of the greatest storytelling in any of Atlus' games), while fans of Persona 4 have taken issue with how the ending is very similar to that game's ending.
  • Tied with the above is the payoff of the In Medias Res portion of the narrative. The end of Sae's dungeon reveals that Joker's arrest was all part of an elaborate Batman Gambit meant to out Akechi as a member of The Conspiracy, get the name of its leader, and get Sae to relent and join the thieves' side. Some find it brilliant and satisfying, and compared to prior games the setup is pulled off fairly well (I.E Akechi getting spotted for listening to Morgana all the way back in June, despite his claims to the contrary). Others find it to be too contrived that shouldn't have worked at all, either due to the mechanics involved or the fact that the main crux of the plan involved the protagonist emotionally appealing to Sae (which he manages to do while drugged, to boot). In both cases, though, the aftermath in general is considered to be as weak as the rest of the final arc.
  • The Golden Ending in Royal is also divisive among people who enjoyed the original game's ending. ^{Ending Description (Spoilers)}In the original ending, the Phantom Thieves take a road trip driving Joker back to his hometown. However, Royal's new ending, in contrast, is more of a Bittersweet Ending, as the events of the third semester pushes the Phantom Thieves to think about their future more seriously and, as a result, go their separate ways — Haru and Makoto both move out for college, Ann decides to enter a short-term study abroad program, and Ryuji decides to move to a different town to get treatment for his knee so he could pursue track again. On Joker's final day in Yongenjaya, Maruki ends up driving Joker to the train station while the Phantom Thieves act as decoys for the police, which cut their goodbyes short. Moreover, Sumire has to pretend she doesn't know Joker very well to avoid suspicion from the police too. Some people find the new ending to be realistic and reasonable given the context of the third semester and the fact that the group was going to split anyway due to Joker moving home and Haru and Makoto graduating. Others feel that the new ending is unnecessarily somber and reverses a few character points from the main game.^{Examples (Spoilers)} They feel that Ryuji and Ann's decisions for the future completely go against the resolves they came to at the end of their Confidants, that the new ending played down the Phantom Thieves' camaraderie, that it cheapens Joker's journey throughout the year as he leaves Tokyo as alone and dismissed as when he first arrived, and that Joker going home alone is a cheap ploy to give Maruki and Sumire special attention. Some have also interrupted it as rendering the game's Central Theme as a Broken Aesop. ^Examples In the original game, before it was revealed that Morgana sabotaged the cop car trailing them, the gang barely saw them as an inconvenience and decided that it didn't matter if they were being followed. This is not the case in Royal as the rest of the Phantom Thieves act as a decoy, cutting their goodbyes with Joker short. Many have read this as going from the Phantom Thieves no longer letting society have power over them, to giving in to society's expectations.
  • Speaking of endings, in both the base game and Royal, Joker returning home has garnered some debate amongst fans. Some find it a natural conclusion, that was always going to happen. Others find it a forced and unnecessary ending. Not helped by the fact that Joker's parents are mentioned even less than Makoto's (who are dead) and Yu's, save for Sojiro half-jokingly saying they "got rid of (Joker) for being a pain in the ass" at the start of the game. This has caused fans to write them off as uncaring for tossing their son out and sending him to live with a stranger when he wasn't guilty of anything, and never contacting him while he was on probation since they have even less of an excuse than Yu's parents. These fans think Joker would be far better off cutting ties with his parents and just staying with the Sakuras and people who actually care about him. On the other hand, some will point out the Values Dissonance, explaining that on the surface level, Joker getting arrested shamed the family and they're just doing what is expected of them for the situation, and they were given little choice but to send him to live with a stranger, especially since Shujin was apparently the only school willing to take him in.
• Going beyond the endings, whether the original finale or Royal's third semester was the better final act is a source of heated debate. Fans of Royal cite all the issues with the original final arc mentioned above, and feel that its antagonist was much more interesting and personal than the original game's final villains Shido and Yaldabaoth, who many considered Generic Doomsday Villains. Fans of the original feel that Royal's new content strays too far from the original's themes of rebellion against society, and that the original final battle was so dramatic that a second Final Boss battle feels awkward. In many circles, how much one likes Royal's new storyline is inversely proportional to how much they liked the original game's story.
• Equally as divisive as his character is Goro Akechi's lack of presence in merchandise and artwork despite being a Phantom Thief himself, as he is notably absent from both a number of official art works and merchandise especially for the original game. He also didn't receive official artwork of his Crow outfit or his Persona Robin Hood until a few years after the game came out, whereas the other Phantom Thieves had their artworks revealed in the run up to Persona 5's 2016 release. This is more notable in Japan due to him (and his seiyuu, for that matter) being extremely popular over there. Tying to this is whether or not he should appear in any of these things as a Phantom Thief, since he only shows up for one Palace in the original game. While fans want more official pieces featuring him alongside the Phantom Thieves; his detractors claim his Guest-Star Party Member status in the original game makes him not an "official" Phantom Thief, despite Atlus saying otherwise, and want him away from the rest.^NoteIronically, Akechi's lack of presence in promotional materials/merchandise was meant to hide that he joins the Phantom Thieves despite his public disapproval of their methods.
• Mementos. Many people, especially newcomers to the series, regard it as one of the worst parts of the original game, being a randomly generated dungeon with a repetitive soundtrack that's rather boring compared to the Palaces' more interesting design (both visually and in terms of layout) and better background music. Others, however, including long-time fans, argue that it's an improvement over Tartarus from Persona 3 in some regards, particularly since you're no longer spending the majority of your dungeon-crawling time in there. Most agree that Royal significantly improved the Mementos experience, though.
• The updated Okumura boss fight in Royal is extremely contentious. The fight has been given a Difficulty Spike to That One Boss and heavily relies on tactical use of Baton Pass, enemy elemental weaknesses, your party members' skillsets and enemy buff cancelling to win, all under both a turn limit for each wave and a real-time limit for the whole fight. Persona 5 is a massively popular game with many demographics, and those who play more to enjoy the story and characters tend to loathe this fight as a cheap roadblock, while more hardcore JRPG fans who find the rest of Royal too effortless tend to consider it a Best Boss Ever. While most consider the fight mechanically well-designed in vacuum, there's heavy debate over whether it belongs in Persona 5 Royal, as while the player is given all the tools they need to solve it as a Puzzle Boss, the lax difficulty curve until this point has never required those skills, meaning a new player will likely not understand what the fight expects of them. (Contrast this to a game like Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, which prepares the player to face challenging bosses from the beginning.) There's also another debate over which version of the boss fight fits better with the game's narrative, with one camp arguing the brutal Difficulty Spike is justified by the story, as it comes as the Phantom Thieves are riding the high of their popularity and feel invincible, with the defeat of Okumura marking their fall and Darkest Hour. The other camp feels the fight being mind-numbingly easy worked better, as it fit with the thieves being railroaded into a trap. In short, whether this fight is good or bad game design depends on which sub-sector of Persona 5's fandom you fall into.
• The penultimate dungeon, Shido’s Palace is divisive. Many people see it as a blatant case of Disappointing Last Level due to its draining length, tedious mouse puzzles, having 6 minibosses, having the longest boss fight in the game at the end, and Shido himself being seen as a rather weak and flat villain. Others see it as one of the best palaces in the game due to its awesome music and atmosphere, having multiple cutscenes that let each of the Thieves shine, challenging difficulty, and seeing the boss fight as one of the best in the game.
• The game having fewer Slice of Life scenes than Persona 4. Detractors argue that it makes the Phantom Thieves seem less like True Companions than the Investigation Team had been (although they're definitely closer than S.E.E.S. was), and the lack of these scenes results in Haru and Kasumi having fewer opportunities to interact with the other Phantom Thieves. Fans, however, argue that these events have more significance to the plot than the ones in the previous game did, that the Phantom Thieves may not have much time to hang out between October and the end of the original game (when their situation is the most precarious), and that reducing the number of those events gives the player more free time. Royal added more of these scenes, but the revelation of cut content in which the Phantom Thieves hang out with each other has resulted in many people wishing those scenes could actually be in the game.
• The amount of screentime given to Kasumi or rather, Sumire. One camp finds that she has disappointingly little presence for a prominently promoted character, but another camp finds that it's a good course correction after Marie became a Spotlight-Stealing Squad in Persona 4 Golden, in which Kasumi is relevant to the plot without overstaying her welcome. It doesn't help that she only becomes playable in one segment of Sae's Palace ^note albeit as a Guest-Star Party Member, meaning you don't control her and the second half of Maruki's Palace which amounts to a few hours at most, as well as the second half of her Confidant only opening up during the Third Semester, with many romantic events such as the Hawaii trip and the Christmas date being inaccessible for her.
  • There's also the fact that after Kasumi explains why she was in Sae's Palace in the first place, she offers to help defeat Shido, but the player is forced to turn her down with a bunch of excuses as to why she can't help, which caused the fanbase to be further split. Some were upset at how a perfect opportunity for her to be involved in the original story has been wasted all for the sake of keeping everything about the original game the same, along with finding all the plot-related reasons as to why the Phantom Thieves can't let her join pretty stupid, unbelievable and out-of-character for the Phantom Thieves. Others are glad about it, saying that it saves Atlus from facing the extra development time for the changes that would need to be involved, and that they felt that having a character who wasn't there in the original actually being involved in would ruin the arc while also making the argument that it's not supposed to be her fight.
• Royal's depictions of mental health has been hotly debated. There's one camp that thinks it's perfectly fine and groundbreaking that a Japanese gaming company even tackled the subject. And then there's another camp that find it's heavily romanticized and proves that even the West still has a long way to go about mental health representation.
• Take Over, the new ambush theme added in Royal. While most people agree it’s a good song, some dislike how it replaces Last Surprise (one of the most acclaimed and iconic tracks in the series) for most battles since you practically need to go out of your way to avoid ambushing enemies (which also risks raising the security meter) while others don’t mind, especially those who have Hype Backlash towards Last Surprise.
• Makoto's aspirations of becoming a police commissioner at the end of her confidant, a goal that lasts into Persona 5 Strikers, long after she witnessed the police brutalize the protagonist and her sister quits prosecution to become a defense attorney instead. Some argue that this goes against everything the Phantom Thieves learned and stand for, especially when the other Phantom Thieves almost unanimously despise the police. Others argue that she is aware of this and is willing to work as hard as it takes to reform the police system. Still others argue that the events of Strikers and Royal imply that she's abandoned this goal, instead deciding to just see where life takes her.
• Whether the original game or Royal is the canon timeline for Persona 5 as a whole is brought to debate since Persona 5 Strikers had little to no mention of any of Royal's plot threads or characters such as Kasumi, Maruki and Akechi, if he lives. A group argued that the original Persona 5 is the canon route to how things had gone in Persona 5 since Strikers made no mention about Royal ^ExplanationBoth Strikers and Royal were developed at roughly the same time and the team that made Strikers only had the original game as the baseline story before Royal was released in 2019 and even the small allusion to Maruki’s palace in the Japanese dub is too miniscule for Royal to be considered as part of the spinoff's timeline. While others argued that Royal is the canon route and can still apply for Strikers due to how Persona 3 and Persona 4 both use the timeline and plot threads from FES and Golden in spinoffs set in the future (Such as the Persona 4: Arena duology) and how Royal should also be the canon route to Persona 5's story when its predecessors used the new elements only mentioned in the remade version of their games in spinoffs set after their main games' ending, and how just because there is little mention of Royal plot threads, doesn't automatically mean that Royal is not canon.
  • Persona 5 Tactica being revealed to be set after the thieves defeated the main game (due to Lavenza showing up as Joker's velvet room attendant instead of Caroline and Justine if it's set before the main game was finished), and how Akechi and Kasumi are both relegated to DLC-exclusive only muddied it further with the former group saying that Akechi and Kasumi being DLC means that the original game is the canon timeline since DLC usually means optional content, while those who believe that Royal can also be the canonical timeline retort that the game has yet to come out in full at the time the argument was made and that just because Akechi and Kasumi are DLC only for Tactica, doesn't mean that the rest of the game would strictly follow the original game's timeline. With Tactica fully released, the story more or less confirmed that Royal is the canon version of Persona 5's story and this includes Strikers as well. Several players in the "Royal is canon" group rejoiced at the confirmation in Tactica while a handful in the "Vanilla P5 is canon" group are left irritated as a result.