This week a number of JRPG fans will be engrossed in Atlus long-awaited Nintendo Switch version of Persona 5 Royal which is set for release alongside PC, Xbox Games Pass on Xbox Series X|S, and Steam Deck. The Nintendo Switch version of Persona 5 Royal has already been reviewed by 14 publications and currently has an average review score of 94 (at the time of writing) on the popular online review aggregation site, Metacritic. Here’s a few highlights from some of the reviews of Persona 5 Royal which launches Friday, 21st October.
“The Nintendo Switch version of Royal, which I played for this review, looks fantastic and runs very well. Performance-wise, the game runs at a solid 30 FPS and the loading times are next to none, you’ll never be waiting for more than a few seconds in-between areas. Textures do feel slightly muddier and less refined than the previous PlayStation 4 release due to the Switch’s limited capabilities but the game is still a visual treat whether you’ve got it docked on the big screen or at your fingertips in handheld mode.”
“Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the Switch’s fidelity is somewhere between a PS3 and a PS4, but my entire experience felt buttery smooth. I didn’t notice a single dropped frame, not even in hectic battles. While I’m not a pixel counter, I do feel like the resolution is a bit lower than it would have been on the PS4, but the character models and environments still look crisp and robust. I would not hesitate for a second to recommend the Switch version over others if portability is important to you. The game is obviously not running at 4k 60fps, but it does run amazingly well, and grinding is always more palatable to me when I’m lying horizontally with some background noise on the TV.”
“As for the Switch-specific details, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that it looks and runs great. That’s not surprising because, not only is this fundamentally a game that ran on the PS3 just fine, but because the Persona engine has been on Switch before, in Catherine: Full Body, and variants of it have been used in other Switch games too, such as Tokyo Mirage Sessions. In handheld mode, the visuals can be quite soft overall, it’s clearly not hitting the full 720p, but the cartoony, hyper-stylistic fashion of the visuals do a good job of hiding any resolution issues the game might have. The Switch version (along with the Xbox and PC versions) also comes with all of the DLC from both Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal, all available from the get-go — this includes a bunch of very cute, cool, and dumb costumes, a few essential items to get you started, and some ridiculously powerful Personas to claim if you get stuck… or are just sick of it.”
