Play Persona 3 Reload first. It is the cheapest of the two Persona games currently in the budget bracket, it is the shortest, and it is a complete story that needs nothing else — which makes it the right first purchase for anyone who is not yet sure they like this kind of game. If you already know you want the biggest, most stylish version of the formula, start with Persona 5 Royal instead and expect to be busy for a hundred hours.
The reason this question gets asked at all is that the numbers mislead. Persona 3, 4 and 5 do not continue one another — different cast, different city, different year, no shared plot. You can start anywhere, and the series order is a matter of taste rather than comprehension. What the numbers do predict, roughly, is length and complexity: the newer the entry, the more systems, the more calendar, the more hours.
That matters for a budget buyer more than it does for anyone else, because the real cost of one of these games is not the disc price. It is the hundred hours. Buying the hundred-hour one first and bouncing off it in week two is how people conclude they dislike a genre they would have loved at fifty hours. So this page ranks on value-per-dollar and on where to start, and those two things happen to agree here.
One clarification on the third pick, because the branding does not make it obvious. Metaphor: ReFantazio is nota Persona game. It is a separate fantasy role-playing game from the same team, with its own Archetype job system in place of Personas, and PlayStation lists it as its own title. It is on this page because people who finish a Persona game immediately ask what to play next, and this is the answer — not because it belongs to the series. We would rather say that plainly than pad a list.
How to choose your first Persona game
Start with the shorter one, not the better-reviewed one
Persona 3 Reload is a 2024 remake of a 2006 game, and the remake is what makes it the recommendation: modern controls, modern presentation, and a structure that is leaner than its successors because the original was. Our registry entry records it as turn-based, 1 player, a remake of a 2006 role-playing game.
Persona 5 Royal is the bigger, more celebrated game, and it is a better game by most measures. It is also a much larger commitment, and it is the more expensive disc. If the hundred hours is the appeal, start there and ignore everything above. If you are testing whether this genre is for you, the cheaper and shorter disc is the better test, and you will still have the bigger one waiting.
Buy Royal rather than the original Persona 5 when the prices are close
PlayStation describes Persona 5 Royal as the expanded version of Persona 5, with new characters and confidants, new locations and an extra end-game chapter. Our product entry for this disc records the same: new characters, two new confidants, new locations and an extra end-game chapter that completes the school semester, plus a Thieves Den.
The practical consequence is in the skip pick below. Both versions remain on sale, they are hard to tell apart at a glance, and the gap between them is usually small. When it is small, Royal wins on content-per-dollar. When it is large, the base game is still a complete game. The general principle, applied across every suffix this industry uses, is in what does definitive edition mean.
Check the rating before you buy one of these for a teenager
These games are set in high schools, which misleads people about who they are for. Our product entry for Persona 5 Royal records an ESRB M rating (17+) with blood, drug reference, partial nudity, sexual themes and strong language. The ESRB's series listing carries the full descriptors for each entry.
That is not a warning about quality, it is a warning about gift-buying. A game about teenagers is not the same thing as a game for teenagers. If you are shopping for a younger player, start from cheap games for kids; if you are shopping for an adult who likes role-playing games, this page and best cheap JRPGs are the right lists.
What to buy after your first one
Two routes, and they cost differently. The first is the other Persona on this page, which is the safe bet — same loop, different story, no learning curve. The second is Metaphor: ReFantazio, which takes the calendar-and-combat structure into an original fantasy setting with the Archetype job system standing in for Personas.
Metaphor is the most expensive disc here, and we are explicit about that on best cheap PS5 games, where it is the skip pick on price grounds against a 2024 shelf-mate that fell much further. Buy it third, when it has finished falling — the windows are in when do games go on sale.
These discs are PS4 releases on purpose
Two of the three picks are PS4 discs, which play on a PS5 with a disc drive and cost less than their current-gen equivalents because last-gen plastic always does. Turn-based role-playing games are also the genre that loses least from running on older hardware — there is no frame-rate-dependent skill expression in a menu-driven battle.
The caveats are hardware ones, and they are documented in do PS4 games work on PS5: a PS5 Digital Edition has no drive, so no disc here works on it, and PlayStation notes that some PS4 features may behave differently on a PS5. For the digital route instead, see how to buy PS5 games cheap.
