Persona 5 Royal thoughts

Pros:
+ Overall, it's everything I could have wanted out of a remake or "definitive edition" of P5
+ The Grappling Hook is really nice and added a lot of cool puzzles in the Palaces. In general I liked the changes they made to the Palaces.
+ The overworld as well as Mementos is much better in terms of movement because you can sprint in both those places. Fast travelling to your room being removed is mildly annoying though.
+ The third semester content was really good. There were plenty of moments, especially in the first 12 in-game days of that section, where I was confused, but confused in a good way such that I was curious what was next. The stories they added with Kasumi and Maruki was good, and gave an antagonist I felt for more than the God of Control from vanilla. The voice acting for those characters from Laura Post and Billy Kametz, respectively, were good, especially Laura Post as Kasumi.
+ Showtime Attacks was a really nice mechanic, and it was fun seeing the different animations for each one. Two in particular I liked where Ryuji and Yusuke's showtime and Joker and Kasumi's showtime.
+ Jose was a really nice addition to Mementos and makes grinding much better. The addition of stamps and flowers as collectibles was fun and gave an incentive to search each floor for every last one to get as many as you could.

Cons:
- They did not fix any of the story beats that people (including myself) had problems with in vanilla P5, such as the Okumura arc and Ryuji getting beat up after the end of Shido's Palace