I Finished PERSONA 5 ROYAL and it Changed My Heart

JC finishes "Persona 5 Royal for the first time" and experiences the ending of the game. This game was a masterpiece.

LIVE always on Twitch! :O

VOD Channel @JCbackfireStreams

Channel Editor: Satchel

Chapters:
0:00 Persona 5 Royal Finale TIME!
2:17 The good ending? I'm SUS.
6:20 A changed timeline? WHAT.
13:58 THE ROYAL TRIO?
19:09 New Palace, New Team!
26:15 The Truth About Kasumi
34:08 Joker & Akechi Fight Back!
39:20 Breaking our friends free!
47:45 SUMI BOSS BATTLE REACTION
57:50 The emotional fallout
1:01:05 JC'S AKECHI RANT
1:03:45 LAVENZA Meeting & Morgana Upgrade?
1:13:35 SUMIRE joins the team!
1:16:18 SUMIRE AWAKENING REACTION
1:21:43 Evolving the Personas! Final Hangouts!
1:33:29 SUMI'S LOVE CONFESSION
1:36:49 A NEW Mementos
1:39:45 MARUKI'S LORE. Big Revelations.
1:51:00 JC gets Questioned! BIG DEBATE.
2:00:50 Maruki's final truth.
2:08:05 SUMI SHOWTIME REACTION
2:13:30 The Final Akechi Twist Reaction
2:26:12 MARUKI BOSS FIGHT REACTION
2:37:50 ADAM KADMON BOSS FIGHT
2:45:44 WE BELIEVE!
2:50:23 ONE LAST EMOTIONAL FIGHT
2:58:29 THE REALITY WE CHOSE.
3:04:35 JC STARTS CRYING
3:13:29 One Final Date!
3:17:12 Saying Goodbye to Everyone
3:27:50 ENDING REACTION
3:45:34 Editor's Message!
3:47:08 JC's Final Thank You

[JCbackfire]

IT'S FINALLY HERE!!!

Oh man, where do I even start with this one? This game. This playthrough. All of it. It meant so very much to me, it's hard to even put into words. BUT THANK YOU! I just can't fathom the amount of support we've had for all 10+ episodes of this series. It's genuinely awe inspiring and I'm going to look back on this one years from now and get all emotional and nostalgic. :')

My goal from the very beginning was to let you guys experience something for the first time again if you loved this game in the past, and so many people have said we've actually delivered on that experience and I couldn't be more happy! As a dev myself, all I want to do is celebrate gaming. Show the world video games are art, you know?! And this game is a near perfect example of that!

In general, I think this is the most support I've ever had on a variety game on my channel and again, I owe that to you! Your support on these videos, the streams, the VODS... All the fan-art made by y'all even!! Wow. Just incredible. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this such a fun moment on the channel. Again, never going to forget this one.

PS: An absolute special thanks to all the mods, chatters, fanart, clip makers and to the Persona community for being so welcoming to me!! And one last MASSIVE THANK YOU to @SatchelStreams for asking to edit this series over a year ago and completely crushing it. These wouldn't have been possible for me in the first place without his help.

THANK YOU ALL for making me play this. I love you. :')
Hope to see you on more games soon! And who knows, maybe one day you might see my dumb face on a Reload thumbnail... Only if you want that though! HAHA.

♥ - JC

A couple of final important links:

[Jojojasper]

I love that Maruki becomes a taxi driver in the end, it symbolizes how he now guides people to their destinations rather than deciding for them.

[awakarikatase]

"Your eyes are as bright and honest as ever" will forever be my favorite persona line, I think. It's so beautiful.

[siemingly]

I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to Erica Lindbeck (Futaba, widow wife of Billy Kametz, who plays Maruki) and share how much her and Billy's performances resonated with me. She is a gem of a human and we both cried, haha. Such a special story, and every story within it has stuck with me so much.

[CozmicKoala]

Interesting detail:
All of the third awakenings for the other party members take place in their homes, in their own rooms. All but Akechi. Akechi's happens in Leblanc.

Akechi thought of Leblanc as his home.

[Immortal_Ninja]

I love the metaphor of Joker's glasses being his mask since he initally wore those glasses to conceal his identity since at the time he was being labelled a "criminal". But now Joker is a free man and is no longer restrained by his past. He's able to take his mask off (glasses) confidently since his journey as a Trickster has concluded therefore there is no need for him to keep the mask on. Joker recalls his time as a Phantom Thief, he accepts that it's over and it's now time to move on and look forward to the future.

Side note: I love character-driven stories and these characters felt so real to me, it broke my heart when I had to accept that the game was over and I couldn't see them again. It's the same as the feeling you get when your friends you've grown up with eventually part ways and go on their own seperate journeys. In a way, the game is telling you "it's been a long ride, now it's time for you to move on, just as these characters you've become attached to have". GOD I LOVE THIS GAME SO DAMN MUCH

[alainbcdefghijk]

Madman Akechi Navigator goes hard. Wish we had an option to choose our navigator because of him. Futaba is fine but Akechi is just something else. He has voicelines for things you don't expect they'll put the effort to put in. Like he has specific voicelines if a party member or himself gets afflicted with a status ailment in battle. My favorite will always be whenever Akechi himself gets afflicted with brainwash, he basically goes "I'm not the one who was brainwashed! You two are brainwashed!"

[edscarlet]

Can we talk about the fact that every party member's third awakening happened at the place they feel most "at home"? (for the main party literally in their homes). But Akechi's is right in front of Joker.

[cpMetis]

2:50:55 I love that, at least in this moment, you see Akechi's face. Honestly, earnestly, distressed and sad. He's not holding back Sumi because he just wants Maruki to not get help, he's genuinely just protecting her. You rarely get to see Akechi genuinely care for someone else, and this is one of the few moments he does so for someone other than Joker.

[thmm]

Man what a journey this has been, from being "forced" to play persona from chat to having this be one of the best experiences for JC. This playthrough really brought back the memories for me when i first played this game. All I can say now is thank you JC. And well done Satchel for the great edits.

[marshallburlew-pgnw]

Azathoth, is said to be the All-Father of the Lovecraftian Lore and the true creator of the Universe. It's actually very frightening and ties perfectly into Marukis power of being able to alternate realities and cognitions.

It is said, that Azathoth, who is nicknamed; The Blind-Idiot God, is asleep, but because he is so powerful. He can project his dreams into physical matter, literally. However, he has no idea that his dreams have taken on physical form, hence his nickname, and it is said, that if he ever awoke from his dream. Everything that became matter from his dreams would all vanish in an instant.

It's brilliant writing and just shows how both, frightening and powerful, Maruki really is.

[alainbcdefghijk]

Always loved how Royal changed up Akechi's character. In the original, Akechi was actually one of the more weaker confidants and one of the main reason is that it ranks up automatically on certain dates. In a game where your time and choice matters, being robbed of both kind of cheapens whatever impact the relationship would have had. Then they mostly redid Akechi's whole confidant links in Royal, leaning in to the fact that he's a rat bastard out to stab you in the back and you know that he's a rat bastard out to stab you in your back. Despite that, the two of you found genuine respect for each other and the bond you have with him is proof of how strong it is. To put it into perspectove, Akechi's 1v1 with you and his salty runback challenge by throwing the glove at Joker was NOT in the original P5.

[tchukkelz]

One thing I don't hear a lot of people talk about is how messed up it is that Maruki would use information given to him during the counseling sessions with the Phantom Thieves against them. That is a HUGE breach of counseling ethics. When you go to counseling or therapy, you go with the understanding that the therapist won't impact your outside life in any way you don't explicitly consent to.

[DJTachanka]

easily my favourite playthrough of all time, and really happy to find a great streamer and content creator because of it. was great being there at all 100 “final stream for real this time”!!!

[nsampone]

Maruki and his boss fight are one of the best in gaming. Not because of some crazy story twist or mechanic, just that you have a genuine bond with him, you KNOW he has YOUR best intentions in mind, but his methods for getting there are wrong. Your enemy genuinely cares about you. You summed it up perfectly. You feel bad for winning. The story is making part of you go against your own instincts + best interests as a player (ie. drive to win). When he talks to you mid fight, he's trying to get you to join him, sure, but he's practically giving one last therapy session. The feeling of regret everyone has when the calling card is given. Nobody WANTS this fight that HAS to happen.

Billy's voice work add so much to it. Dude died young and its really tragic. This was one of his last roles

[ellahusk]

Haven’t watched the vid yet obviously, but crying at the end is a universal experience. I cried after vanilla p5 and royal lol. I had so much fun re-experiencing persona through you and I’m so happy to see you finally reach the 3rd semester! I’m so glad you stuck with the game! :)

Edit: Watching you react to Mona and Wakaba in the beginning was SO fucking funny. I’m dying of laughter 15 mins in and reminiscing on my own reactions to this part😭😭 I also love Robbie Daymond’s (Akechi) 3rd semester voice lines. You can tell he really had fun recording them.

[kisukoev]

Interesting thing about Yusuke's ideal reality: he didn't really care about his mom coming back to life, since he never really met her, and yet he wanted for his "father" to be a good one, just like Haru

(You could argue that they didn't want to create a design and model for his mother, but shh)

[Chubby_Bub]

Also I've got to say, as someone who was there for the streams, I highly advise checking out the VODs. This already-excellent video had to, for time purposes, omit iconic events like:
- JC yapping to Akechi at the jazz club about men's shampoo scents for 20 minutes
- the amount of time he spent debating whether to date Sumire
- an entire mini-arc where uninformed chatters tried to convince him to evolve Sumi's Persona before completing the Palace, something that wasn't possible with the remaining schedule, and resulting in him having to reload and reject Sumi AGAIN
- JC thinking that the Will Seeds could potentially mean another Palace, and then getting into an argument with chat about how many people actually play New Game+

[brythkaltaris]

Maruki is the perfect antagonist. Everything about what he does, how he does it, and why he does it is brilliantly perfect, it makes me tear up when I played it the first time. Ideal and the Real End Version is a heartbreaking song, playing only if you take the "good" ending, and hits harder on its own with the context of Maruki's character. It makes me cry. This game is practically perfect in every way

[herojdb-]

3:37:09 "I dont even know what story would hit me as much"

*Cries in P3*