voidrender1mo ago
★★★★★★★★★★
RecommendedA stylish, generous RPG that makes you fall for its people first and its dungeons second. An all-timer.
The characters are the heart of it. The Phantom Thieves start as archetypes and slowly become people I actually, legitimately missed when the credits started to roll. The Confidant links give each of them room to breathe outside the main plot. By the end I cared less about beating the next Palace than about what my friends were going to say on the way there.
The story earns that attachment. It takes its themes of rebellion and complicity seriously, and Royal's added content deepens the back half rather than just padding it.
It's all carried by that soundtrack. The music is inseparable from how the game feels: the battle themes make random encounters something you look forward to, and I still catch myself humming them, and then putting it on for background music while I work.
The combat is the part I underrate until I'm back in it. Exploiting weaknesses to chain One More turns and set up all-out attacks is fast, readable, and satisfying in a way turn-based systems don't often manage.
But the thing that pushes it over the top is the life sim. Managing your calendar, your stats, your relationships, the small daily choices about who to spend an evening with, all of it makes the dungeon crawling mean something. Time is scarce, so every choice has weight, and that structure is what turns a good RPG into one I'd hand to almost anyone.
If you have any patience for turn-based combat and a long runtime (over 160h for my first run, w/ platinum), play it. If you don't, well, this might be the game to convert you.