Which JRPG should I play? XBC:DE or P5R?

[CharlesAznable]

I've played and beaten the base versions of both games before and I loved them both (both were in my top 10 games of the decade), so I know I'll enjoy revisiting either one, and I'll definitely play them both eventually. Some more information on why I'd lean towards either game.

Xenoblade:

1. I played XC in 2015, whereas I played P5 in 2017, so XC is less fresh to me.
2. I played the 3DS version which was terribly low res, whereas with DE I can play on my nice 1080p monitor.

Persona 5:

1. Of the 2 games, I think i enjoyed Persona 5 a bit more.
2. If I'm not mistaken Royal adds a lot more new content than DE does.
3. I'm probably going to get Strikers, so this would serve as a nice refresher for me.

 

[sosainas]

Persona 5 Royal. I think it adds more to the original than XC:DE does.

 

[DNAbro]

Persona 5 Royal is a way better game.

 

[KOfLegend]

Both are incredible games.

 

[Daebo]

P5R is the infinitely better game.

 

[StarPhlox]

I played through both in 2020 and I think P5R is the better game and the better use of your time. Which, by the way....take your time

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Xenoblade is the better game. P5R has more new content, but I can't imagine adding 20 more hours to a game that was already way too long would be that good a use of your time.

 

[Dyle]

Xenoblade: DE is a very ok at best remaster, Royal is probably a better bet.

 

[TheMoon]

Xenoblade if you want to really be feeling it.

feel free to hang in the OT

Xenoblade: Definitive Edition |OT| It's Reyn Time, again!

DO NOT DISCUSS FUTURE CONNECTED SPOILERS OR CONTENT IN THIS THREAD FUTURE CONNECTED HAS A SEPARATE OT Composers: Yoko Shimomura, ACE, Kenji Hiramatsu, Manami Kyiota, Yasunori Mitsuda Multiplayer: You'll be a hermit for a hundred plus hours. Motion Controls: You will not move. Potato Mode...

www.resetera.com

 

[Hogger]

Xenoblade DE is still a 10 yr old game and it shows. It is heralded because of the game it was then, not the game it is now. There's a difference to me. I tried to play it over the Christmas break again and it didn't hook me in the least. Bland characters, bland story. Great OST though. And a battle system that was better 10 yrs ago then now.

Persona 5 Royal is the best JRPG since FFXII was re-released. You want to play this unless you despise anime culture.

Edit: Clarity that I'm talking about XC:DE and P5R

 

[dancingphlower]

Persona 5 Royal is probably my favorite game of all time, or is at least in my top three of all time. The Royal content generally improves the flow of the game and the ending stuff is absolutely incredible and re-contextualizes everything that came before.

 

[Massicot]

I think XBC:DE is wonderful, and I actually like the more subdued nature of Future Connected. But base on your OP I would think P5R is the better pick.

 

[Bradford]

Definitely P5R over Xenoblade.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

Xenoblade is a 10 yr old game and it shows. It is heralded because of the game it was then, not the game it is now. There's a difference to me. I tried to play it over the Christmas break again and it didn't hook me in the least. Bland characters, bland story. Great OST though. And a battle system that was better 10 yrs ago then now.

Persona 5 is the best JRPG since FFXII was re-released. You want to play this unless you despise anime culture.

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OP is specifically talking about Xenoblade DE and P5 Royal. They already played the OG versions.

 

[Etrian Darkness]

Both probably.

But if you're going for the extra content aspect, Xenoblade is easier to access. But Persona 5 Royal probably is the better game to revisit because there are way more changes than there are in Xenoblade (mostly visuals in that).

 

[Richietto]

They are both worth playing. I will say I played Xenobldw for the first time last year and it quickly became my game of the year and on of my top 3 RPGs of all time. Royal adds a lot more to it's already massive game and Xenoblade is just kinda the same from what I know.

 

[Wander_]

both. and also xc2.

 

[diakyu]

I would go with XB considering you played the 3DS version, and you can skip straight to the new stuff if you want.

 

[Firestorm]

I never played the original P5 but P5R's bonus arc is my favourite in the game. If you've played the original of both, P5R sounds like the better bet.

 

[NLCPRESIDENT]

XBC:DE was a trash remaster. If you haven't tried it, try Tokyo Mirage Sessions.. that's like the best of both worlds if you ask me

 

[Cactuar]

 

[bunikerrim]

Persona 5 Royal makes a great game one of the best experiences I've ever had in videogames, Xenoblade DE turns a great RPG with terrible art direction into a great RPG that looks great (haven't played Futures Connected yet), so I would go for P5R

 

[HiLife]

P5R is the highest rated game this year. Great music, fun combat loop and that style is 🔥

 

[lightning16]

I don't think you could go wrong with either based on your OP. If you played the 3DS version of Xenoblade I think that may be worth it. I was going to come into the thread to say Xenoblade since I think Persona 5 is a bad game, but again based on the OP I don't think you're going to dislike your time with either so I wouldn't stress it too much.

 

[Branson]

XBC:DE was a trash remaster. If you haven't tried it, try Tokyo Mirage Sessions.. that's like the best of both worlds if you ask me

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I haven't read this much. What makes it bad? I haven't played XC but am very interested in it from the great word of mouth for the game. I loved X and I know they are different beasts.

 

[Korigama]

As someone who has both and has played both of the originals (Wii version of XB in my case), while the enhancements are nice in XB:DE, P5R adds much more to the experience and makes it that much better to play. Go with P5R first.

 

[Jawmuncher]

XBC:DE in casual mode is going to be a lot quicker than P5R if that matters. So long as you're skipping side quests (really only doing the ones right in front of you). You can beat Xeno 1 in like 35-4 hours.

Granted this doesn't count the new chapter

 

[Deleted member 56266]

The one that's better, Xenoblade but if you've played it already then p5.

 

[Moogle]

I have both of those unplayed and I'm going through XBC:DE first for sure. Only one of those 2 has Shimomura on the soundtrack, easiest choice.

 

[Sumio Mondo]

Got P5: Royal and started it last weekend. Despite remembering the game pretty well, I'm having a blast all over again with it and the new additions are really cool so far.

Can't speak to Xenoblade: DE since I've not bought it (yet, want to though since I loved the original back in the day on Wii). They're both winners, tbh.

 

[NLCPRESIDENT]

I haven't read this much. What makes it bad? I haven't played XC but am very interested in it from the great word of mouth for the game. I loved X and I know they are different beasts.

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The combat is loose and a step back from XBC2 (which I loved!!). The game is just too old and there's better options out there. The visuals were cleaned up but it could've used a full remake, imo.

 

[werezompire]

I've only played P5R, but I think the general opinion is that P5R has by far the better new content of the two games, whereas Xenoblade DE is mostly just for fans who want to replay the game with better graphics/QoL/portable. I thought the new content in P5R was generally good, but I did disliked how it totally wrecked the game's difficulty balance (it's way easier to break the game in the player's favor in P5R than it is in base P5 and unlike P4G, they didn't add any new harder difficulty options). Makes it so that I don't really want to ever replay P5R, whereas I've played through P4G several times.

 

[His Majesty]

I don't think either game is very good but I at least had some fun with Persona 5.

 

[CQC]

Pigging back off of this, as someone that already played P5, is P5R worth returning to? My run was 120+ hours, not sure if I can stomach it again.

 

[Zeal543]

if you've played the base game of both already royal adds more than DE. You also seem to enjoy P5 more than XC so the answer's obvious

 

[ghibli99]

Pretty much did what you did OP... although I only finished Xenoblade for the first time about 15 months ago. I'd finished P5 about a year before. Late last year I played XCDE along with Future Connected, and I loved it even more the second time through. I'm sure the same will be true for P5R when I go back to it. For what it's worth, XCDE is probably my favorite JRPG of the generation right now.

 

[Synohan]

Personally, Xenoblade Chronicles is an infinitely better game, but going off your OP, you enjoyed P5 much more. So the answer is an obvious one. Pick up P5R

 

[StereoVSN]

Either one is going to be good. Just pick the one where you enjoyed the original more.

 

[RockmanBN]

P5R is the highest rated game this year. Great music, fun combat loop and that style is 🔥

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But it came out last year?

 

[Cactuar]

But it came out last year?

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And it's still the highest rated game this year. Until Kena comes out, that is.

 

[Sabretooth]

You can't go wrong with either one tbh, I would say this comes down to whether you want a more fantasy flavour or a modern-day flavour.

Since it's been longer since you played Xenoblade, I'm leaning towards that.

 

[Korigama]

Pigging back off of this, as someone that already played P5, is P5R worth returning to? My run was 120+ hours, not sure if I can stomach it again.

Click to shrink...

The story additions, dungeon reworks, mechanical tweaks (ammo being restored after every battle in particular), and greater freedom with the daily schedule (up to and including being able to actually do things at night after returning from the Metaverse) have all been things that should've been there in the original I'd say. I had originally been going through vanilla P5 a second time on NG+, but I'm finding it difficult to picture going back to that at this point.

 

[Aaronrules380]

I'm kind of flabbergasted by people saying Xenoblade:DE is a bad remake. The QoL improvements alone make it by far the best way to play the game, without considering the new content or updated graphics.

That said for a returning player I do think P5R adds a bit more content

 

[AnansiThePersona]

Pigging back off of this, as someone that already played P5, is P5R worth returning to? My run was 120+ hours, not sure if I can stomach it again.

Click to shrink...

I was this way too but so I waited until the game was $20 and just finally got to the new content and yeah it was a blast. I bought P5 launch day so it's been long enough for me to revisit.

 

[demondance]

Future Connected is really good, for the type of content it is. It has better pacing than much of the base game. It's cool seeing Monolith apply the lessons they learned in the time in between, while still sticking to the same combat system as before (with some minor tweaks).

I found revisiting the base game to be much more tedious this time around, as I wasn't intending to play every ounce of content. Turns out, the game kind of expects you to towards the end! It's *not* balanced for a critical path run. And the weird gap at the end, where you get a bunch of quests for later levels without anything to do except grind enemies in the 70s, is wholly intact in the Definitive Edition. This game really could've used more changes than the artstyle.

 

[HiLife]

But it came out last year?

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Goddamn 2021.

 

[SkyOdin]

Xenoblade 1 is one of the five best RPGs of all time, while Persona 5 is the lesser sibling of the superior Persona 3 and 4. Though if you have already played the original versions of both games, I don't really have much advise to give. I do think that Xenoblade's greater character customization and team-building options give it an advantage in replayability over Persona 5 though.

 

[CQC]

The story additions, dungeon reworks, mechanical tweaks (ammo being restored after every battle in particular), and greater freedom with the daily schedule (up to and including being able to actually do things at night after returning from the Metaverse) have all been things that should've been there in the original I'd say. I had originally been going through vanilla P5 a second time on NG+, but I'm finding it difficult to picture going back to that at this point.

Click to shrink...

Wow that's a lot of good QoL changes. Reconsidering it now potentially.

I was this way too but so I waited until the game was $20 and just finally got to the new content and yeah it was a blast. I bought P5 launch day so it's been long enough for me to revisit.

Click to shrink...

got it on launch too. Might jump back in.

 

[Johannes]

Haven't played XB:DE, but I can't express how much I enjoyed Royale. For me, Persona 5 was top 3 games of last generation, but after beating Royale this easily took the #1 spot when thinking about most memorable and enjoyable games of last gen. To keep it spoiler free, I found the additional story content being the best part of the whole package. The only negative thing to say is that even in Merciless mode the battles (including boss encounters) were unfortunately easy, because of the additions Royale made to the gameplay. I would have hoped that this would have countered more heavily by creating more powerful enemies etc. to keep the tension up. But still, it's a sublime game that I somewhat regret of buying just half price.

 

[Tibarn]

I played the 3DS version which was terribly low res, whereas with DE I can play on my nice 1080p monitor.

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For this reason alone I would recommend XC:DE. The original XC and the remake/remaster are better games than P5 (don't know about P5R though), but both are amazing JRPG games of course. XC is a game about exploring gorgeous and big environments, XC DE has not the best image quality, but the 3DS port is a really really compromised version that loses the main selling point of the game due to the small screen and low res.

So I think that even if P5R has more gameplay changes and added content (XC DE has by far the biggest visual overhaul of course), plating XC on a big screen is a gigantic improvement over playing it on the 3DS and a far better experience overall.