Buy Persona 5 Royal if this is your first game of the two. PlayStation describes Royal as "an extended edition of the original game" with two new confidants and an end-game chapter that "completes the school semester from the original game" — which means the cheap box you are looking at is the complete, final version of the game, with nothing held back for a later edition. Buy Metaphor: ReFantazio instead if you want the newer of the two, if you would rather have a fantasy world than a Tokyo high school, or if the content rating matters: PlayStation lists Metaphor as ESRB Teen and Persona 5 Royal as ESRB Mature.
These two get compared constantly and for a good reason. PlayStation's own description of Metaphor opens with "From the creative minds behind Persona 3, 4, and 5 comes Metaphor: ReFantazio", and the family resemblance is not subtle: a calendar you are always spending, a party of characters whose relationships you build between dungeons, and turn-based combat that rewards hitting a weakness. If you liked one, the odds are extremely high that you will like the other. The question is which to spend a hundred hours on first.
The spec sheet, from the two store listings
| | Persona 5 Royal | Metaphor: ReFantazio |
|---|
| Released (PlayStation listing) | 3/31/2020 | 10/11/2024 |
| Publisher list price | $59.99 | $69.99 |
| ESRB rating | Mature | Teen |
| Content descriptors | Blood, Drug Reference, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence | Blood, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence |
| Players | 1 player, online play optional | 1 player, online play optional |
| Setting | Modern Tokyo, a school year | Original fantasy kingdom, an election |
| Is the cheap box the complete version? | Yes — Royal is the extended edition, and the extra semester is in it | The standard edition is the full game; a $99.99 Digital Anniversary Edition and a $79.99 Guidebook Edition are listed separately |
| Listed add-ons | Several, listed as free on the PlayStation page | $4.99 costume and battle-music packs |
Two rows there do most of the work. The ESRB row is the one that decides the purchase for a lot of households, and the "complete version" row is the one that decides it on value: with Royal, the budget disc is the definitive edition, full stop. With Metaphor the standard edition is also the full game — the pricier editions are an artbook, a soundtrack and cosmetics — but you have to know that to avoid paying thirty dollars more for it. That pattern is common enough that we wrote what does definitive edition mean about it.
Which one should you actually buy?
Buy Persona 5 Royal if you want the best value per hour
It is the older game, so it is the cheaper game, and it is cheaper by more than the difference in list prices — a 2020 release has been through six years of sale cycles and a 2024 release has not. On top of that, Royal is already the complete version. There is no better edition waiting to be announced, nothing significant sold separately, and PlayStation lists its add-ons as free. For a budget buyer that is the cleanest possible purchase: one price, one box, the whole game.
The caveat is tone. Persona 5 is a game about Japanese high-school students, delivered with enormous style and an eighty-hour school calendar. If that premise actively puts you off, nothing in the next hundred hours will change your mind, and you should buy Metaphor.
Buy Metaphor: ReFantazio if the setting or the rating matters
Metaphor swaps the school for an original fantasy kingdom and an election campaign, and it swaps the Mature rating for a Teen one. PlayStation lists Metaphor's descriptors as Blood, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol and Violence, against Royal's Blood, Drug Reference, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language and Violence. If you are buying for a younger teenager, or sharing a living room, that is a real difference and not a marketing one. What do ESRB ratings mean explains how far those labels go.
It is also the newer game, and it shows in the quality-of-life details: menus, loading and the speed at which you can get through a day are all faster. If you are the kind of player who bounces off older interfaces, the newer game is worth the extra money.
The thing they have in common that nobody warns you about
Both games run on a calendar, and in both of them the calendar is the real difficulty. You have a limited number of days and more things to do than days to do them in, so every evening is a small decision with a cost. Some players find that the most compelling structure in any RPG. Others find it a low-grade stress they are paying for. It is the same mechanism in both games, so if you dislike it in one, you will dislike it in the other — this is not a case where buying the other one fixes it.
They are also both genuinely long. Neither is a game you finish on a weekend, and the value case for both depends entirely on whether you will still be playing in week five. That is the same argument we make about every hundred-hour game on this site, most directly in is Assassin's Creed Odyssey worth it: a long game abandoned at hour fifteen has worse value per dollar than a short game you finished.
If you want to buy both
Buy Royal first anyway. It is cheaper, it is the one whose cheap edition is already the final edition, and Metaphor will keep falling in price while you play it. The reverse order costs you more for no benefit. If you want the wider shelf first, the ranked version of this decision across the whole genre is best cheap JRPGs, and the series-entry question is which Persona game to play first.
