Imagine a cafe with Japanese jazz music playing, and a guarded but kind guardian figure observes, “ah, you’re back.” This is the backdrop– the homebase to Persona 5 Royal. It is a game that my sister obsessed about and ended up gifting me for my birthday, insisting I would love the experience. Over a year and 150 gameplay hours later, I did, in fact, love many parts of my gaming experience.

We have a lot of games these days that focus on in-game decisions influencing outcomes of the characters and stats as the story progresses, but Persona 5 Royal does this a little differently. What I found was that the grandiosity of gameplay would burn me out, and all I’d desire was to wrap up the dungeon-crawling to return to Joker’s daily routine of school, work, and hanging out with friends.

The game follows a band of misfit teenagers who work together to change the hearts of corrupt adults through something called the Metaverse. It is a whirlwind of a game that leans into the cringe and performs the most ridiculous of situations with complete and total authenticity.

However, time and again, when I hear other people talk about this game, it is not about the premise of changing hearts that stays with consumers– it’s the opportunity to explore cities of Japan and deepen the relationships with other characters. Persona 5 is not a dating sim (although you can absolutely romance several characters), but it is a story about togetherness, time, and opportunities to budget that time accordingly.

There are only a limited number of days between each level, and you are expected to be a good student– you’re on parole for a crime you may or may not have committed– and your current guardian needs help at his coffee and curry shop. But also there are countless activities that you could participate in to build your stats as a Metaverse Thief. How do you budget your time between work, pleasure, school, and community? I suppose very carefully.

I thought it would be fun to wrap up 2025 talking about this game because January 1st always brings the topic of New Years Resolutions– what do I want to change this year about me to be better than I was last year? While I don’t personally buy into resolutions (you can look back on previous reflections to see that I believe you start to change when you see that now is as good as ever), the reflections of another year past can feel equally as contemplative. 

How did I budget my time?

Am I proud of who I am today, and are there quantifiable status buffs since 2024? 

What direction am I heading, and was that my intention? 

Who in my life have I made time for, and has our relationship deepened?

As silly as it might sound, Persona 5 Royal has reminded me that moments of grandiosity are just a small part of living, and oftentimes, I cannot wait for the high-stakes part of the adventure to be over. When I think of moments where I felt 100% happy or entirely at peace, it is normally when I am engaging in the exact same thing I always engage in. If I ever jumped out of an airplane, I could say that I did it, and that I had a good time. But honestly, I’m thinking more about when I get home to tell my friends about the experience.

This budget also reminds me of how we might look at Internal Family Systems (IFS). This won’t be the post for me to deep-dive on IFS, but in a barebones explanation, it is a theory that says throughout our lives, parts of our selves can develop and navigate the world from the perspective of time when that part was developed. It can help explain why we behave childish in triggering moments, when otherwise our lives typically seem put together. If you’d like further reading before I dedicate a reflection on a better understanding, No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz (2021) is a great starting point.

What I love about parts work, especially in the scope of Persona 5 Royal’s topic of budgeting time, is that what we need to thrive can vary greatly depending on which part we’re working with. Is present-day Alyshia a huge book nerd and trying to deep-dive into classical philosophy for fun? You betcha. But a part of me from high school feels insecure about difficult reads, and she needs to make sure I recover with jigsaw puzzles or a sweet treat. Another part of me is conditioned to care a lot about the cleanliness of my home, and I need to honor her and vacuum after writing this post. Because an extremely present part of me made sure to prioritize litter boxes last night so my cats are happy, then that part was burnt out, and I needed to watch Good Hang with Amy Poehler the rest of the night instead of power-cleaning.

There are no inherent parts of ourselves that are bad. Like children, these parts communicate their needs the only way they know how. If we look at these parts from a Persona 5 angle, each time we play baseball or water our plants, while in the game we are building attributes, in the real world we are fulfilling those needs for our internal family system. 

So, as we wrap up 2025, without any resolutions or forced changes in our habits, I want to toss in another option: prioritizing our full self without shame of productivity metrics. If we want to have more fun, let’s honor that inner child. If we want to stop throwing Monopoly boards across the room: it starts with playing Monopoly more. There are not enough hours in the day to do everything, so let’s begin thinking about which choices truly are the most fulfilling, even if it means skipping a vacuum for a day or two. In the game of life, there’s no perfect run. But if we’re lucky, we’ll spend our days building bonds, showing up for side quests, and learning to level up with care.

ReferencesSchwartz, R. C. (2021). No bad parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness With the Internal Family Systems Model. Sounds True.