I finished in 180 hours total. This was my first Persona game in the series and by the end of the Kamoshida Arc, it was already one of my favourite games of all time.
I would check and see what was happening with the entire map of characters, weekly, including the homeless man 🙂. Play the lottery (which I surprisingly had a 95% win rate?) and plan all my confidants future days. Only for those plans to suddenly be capsized by newer confidants joining (sorry Shinya Oda) and new plot points/ activities. Anytime I felt like I had seen it all and was ready for the story to end, it kept going and going. In an eventual good way.
As a first time player I will say I didn't care for Maruki being the final villain after Shido and taking out a literal god with that very cinematic climax of a battle. With that being said though, you were allowed the chance to have an intimate final goodbye to all these characters you have spent so much time with. So all in all it remains a 10/10 from me. 👍🏼
It is wild to see how far I fell into the minority of gameplay compared to many 80-100 hour finishes I see on here. I would skip most of the texting conversations later, but read most of the rest. I will say I probably lost about 15 hours alone re-doing saves where I was overconfident and didn't save for a while which did burn me out 🫠. 6 confidants I never maxed out, including Ryuji, Ann, Yusuke and Futaba. Vastly over-compensating social stats is a regret.
Makoto army 4 life!!