Haru Is Persona 5 Royal's Most Underrated Romance

thegamer.com:

Persona 5 Royal is coming to Xbox, PC, and Switch on October 21, and I'm itching to write about it again. The more distance I get from the game, the more I enjoy it - the game is endlessly long to a fault, despite Royal making your time feel more worthwhile than the shorter base game. When I'm not being turned into a rat while trying to escape a palace I'm already growing a little frustrated with though, Persona 5 makes it easy to fall in love with its cast - literally, in many cases, and Joker isn't short of romance options. One choice, however, is often overlooked, and ahead of a new wave of players joining the Phantom Thieves for the first time, I want to make the case for Haru.

Persona 5's attitude to romance is difficult to come to terms with. Individually, they have some of the most grounded and engaging love stories in video games, showing a realistic evolution from friends to lovers with all the cute awkwardness of teenage limerence. Once you dig down into them, some of them can be a little icky. Futaba, for example, is presented as your step-sister. This isn't technically true - she was adopted by the man who has been placed as your ward due to your delinquent past, and you don't meet her until midway through the game when you're both teenagers. But the dynamic built between them is one of a protective older brother and his younger sister. That's nothing compared to the fact that Joker, a teenage schoolboy, can romance several adults during the game, including his own teacher. Despite the game's first villain being a male teacher who molests his female students, Persona 5 is content to joke about a male student having romantic power over his female teacher.

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