I'm playing Apollo Justice on my N3DS after playing Phoenix Wright 2 and 3. So far I find it less interesting, I played it for a bit way back in the DS days but can't remember much. Strangely enough, Maya Fei is my favourite character of the franchise, with her half a brain cell and all.

I'm also trying to get through Persona 5 Royal, I've tried 4 times between the original on PS3 and this one. I can't get engaged enough and it's so frustrating. I loved Persona 3 and 4 and have played them a few times since I discovered them in 2011 or so and was really hyped for 5 for years. But 5 feels like a worse Persona 4, despite all the enhancements. I just finished the third palace (the farthest I ever got was the fourth palace a few years ago) and I haven't touched it in a couple of days because I can't find the will to go on. Maybe it's me who has changed, although I still find 3 and 4 very enjoyable.

P5R was my first introduction to the series, but I’ve heard the characters in P4 are much more fleshed out. Is that your issue, or would you say it’s the game mechanics that are bugging you?

I'd say it's a bit of both. I have the impression that they wanted to do a better Persona 4 but for me the characters feel more artificial and the game feels bloated in comparison. By wanting to expand on everything that made P4 so good, they expanded everything a bit too much for me. And reading the game lasts some 100-120 hours reinforces this feeling and makes me uncomfortable, which shouldn't be the case with such a beloved franchise.

I can’t really compare too much to P4G, since I never got very far in it (I missed the QoL improvements).

I think being able to save in safe rooms let them expand the Palaces/Dungeons, which I could see making the game drag for some. Personally, I enjoyed the safe room mechanic since it meant that I could play for short times if necessary, which let me “pick up and play” much easier.

I'm playing it on Steam Deck, the sleep function is a godsend.

The sleep function is pretty nice, but I like to swap games relatively frequently; so being able to save frequently is still critical for me. Plus at the time, I was just playing on my personal computer, so I couldn’t leave it running, even if I wanted to.

For P5R, I suggest only playing for an hour or a two at a time; I think it helps keep the game from dragging. For me, it helped keep the exploration aspect fun since I didn’t have to rush to the end since I was probably not getting there in this sitting anyways.

If I understand correctly, you own a Steam Deck. I haven't tried it, but this plugin could be useful for your use case.

That’s pretty cool. Does it let you pause games indefinitely while playing other games, or does it just initiate a pause while you’re on the home screen, etc?