As the title stated, this is a standalone game of the Persona series with not much story tied into the previous games. I am currently on the third playthrough of the game and I am still loving it. The music are on point to keep you motivated to continue and the visuals are fantastic even without the use of high tech CG like FF series.
Gameplay was just like any traditional turn based RPG with some tweaks and improvements. The hot key to different actions were a really nice improvement to move the gameplay towards a faster pace and no more long winded battles like many JRPG tends to have. Dungeon crawling was not bad and each one had it's own personality. Although the stealth mechanic was very stylish but sometimes it was a hassle to perform and not reliable to say the least especially when you were trying to hide behind a door way.
Story progress was slow as a JRPG would be but some parts of it seemed very slow like a sloth. The introduction to the last teammate was the example. Unnecessarily created a rift between teammates and forced events to make time advance is a major trope for me at that moment. The explanation of the nav app was also overdone, it appeared every time a new teammate joined which can be annoying. The story was well written at the end but that's only if the player survived the slog fest in the middle of the game.
Some flaws in the game mechanics would be within the S link system. I would even described this as game breaking flaw, the maxed strength arcana allowed the player to pay to obtain higher level of persona. The player can easily created a lv 90 persona towards the end game providing the player had enough money and it will wreck the final boss like nothing with some strategic planning for the battle, even on hard mode. Another broken mechanic or simply an oversight was the ability for the reaper to get depressed during flu season. This meant that the player can get major leveling done in a short period of time which again made the end game not as challenging which contradicted the official review of this site.
Despite the flaws in this game, the replay value is pretty high since this game had so many different scenarios with some character's romance route. If the player wants to see those different scenes, the player can play again in NG+. NG+ should be faster and easier for the player because all the stat and equipment carried over from NG. However, I would say NG+ would be enough for most players. I amon my third playthrough but I have been really slow in progress. Overall, this game had stylish visuals without heavy use of CGI, killer music tracks, stream-lined turn based battle, unique design of each dungeons and bosses and a great overall story which made this game a must play for fans of JRPG.