This game is NOT as good as everyone says, it falls apart once you look at it.
The story and themes are the first contention, the main cast only receives development in the dungeons they are introduced in, after that, they are relegated to be a colorful piece of cardboard as they spit their lines of dialogue out in service of only the ongoing story - in contrast to Persona 3, which had some amazing character moments - moments where they are the focus after being introduced, characters that fight with each other, characters that are jealous of your status. It's really uneasy and serves the plot well as they realistically don't trust you right away. Compare that back to Persona 5 where every character (i.e party members) is a yes man and doesn't challenge your judgement at all.
The story beats are horrible, while the first palace was serviceable and set up relatively well, the rest are basically the same thing but 7 more times, which goes right into the real issue with these palaces. Taking someone's heart and making them confess their crimes is one of the most plot convenient garbage I've ever seen in a game and it directly trashes the main themes of the game, every single issue is taken care of by using magic... Oh a predatory teacher who is going to expel the main characters, ohhh well change their heart, Madarame abuses his students, lets Yusuke's mom die of a seizure, a guy is cheating at a video game - erm, change his heart, I guess? Changing someone's heart just seems like a cop out, beat the shadow, make them confess in the real world, the way the person acts in the real world after the fact is as if the were swapped out with a different person, which doesn't make sense why they would willingly confess their sins that would put them away for years - or sometimes life in prison.
A couple of ways that I have thought about could make this better would be to use the metaverse to gather evidence that would be so damning and catastrophic that it would back them into a corner AND it will be known to the public, which makes more sense for rebel to do, posting scandalous images or relevant evidence all over town, opposed to magically changing the way they think and forcing them to confess, which is closer to a therapist I'd say. Or maybe instead of that, what if the target's sins suddenly weigh upon them and cripple them, keeping their personality, but making them go to their own conclusion, which is at least marginally better than what we got.
There are moments in the story where characters will ignore incredibly important information despite the fact that it would be incredibly out of character for them to do so, take the Akechi pancake situation, you're lead to believe that Ryuji interjecting, "uhhh what are you talking about?" to a comment that would surely scream to anyone else that Akechi has knowledge of the Metaverse, was him genuinely reacting in confusion, which doesn't make sense for him to do in this position. It isn't made clear if he reacted instinctively to this or noticed and never talked or said anything about it until October, each of them are equally bad I think, it doesn't matter because memory juice wipes Joker's brain away conveniently so he forgets that detail while talking to Sae in the interrogation room. The other time that something is ignored is when the knowledge of a strange palace Joker and Morgana stumble upon which is just brushed off almost immediately after, I don't expect them to act immediately, but I do ask for justification for their decision other than, we busy with Sae palace.
That amounts most of the problems with the story and characters, besides some smaller moments like Morgana's whole contrived 3rd act falling out moment, Ryuji seemingly dying for the sake of the team, only to reappear seconds later and for the team to beat him up, Morgana appearing back after there being no explainable reason in lore for him to be back. The rest of the issues lie in the fact that every characters 'confidant' usually revolves around a completely different person and not the person you're talking to, it gets worse since more times than not you're going to need to go to Mementos to solve their issues for them, none of the previous games had this, but P5 does and it messes up any kind of development that the confidant was having up til that point, and it's really annoying and not interesting because most of these confidants are in a position where they can overcome it with your support as a person, and it happens for most normal confidant in the game.
So in short, this game has plenty of moments that break the entire story and themes of the game, as well as the characters, leaving the game flawed in nearly every way.
The story and themes are the first contention, the main cast only receives development in the dungeons they are introduced in, after that, they are relegated to be a colorful piece of cardboard as they spit their lines of dialogue out in service of only the ongoing story - in contrast to Persona 3, which had some amazing character moments - moments where they are the focus after being introduced, characters that fight with each other, characters that are jealous of your status. It's really uneasy and serves the plot well as they realistically don't trust you right away. Compare that back to Persona 5 where every character (i.e party members) is a yes man and doesn't challenge your judgement at all.
The story beats are horrible, while the first palace was serviceable and set up relatively well, the rest are basically the same thing but 7 more times, which goes right into the real issue with these palaces. Taking someone's heart and making them confess their crimes is one of the most plot convenient garbage I've ever seen in a game and it directly trashes the main themes of the game, every single issue is taken care of by using magic... Oh a predatory teacher who is going to expel the main characters, ohhh well change their heart, Madarame abuses his students, lets Yusuke's mom die of a seizure, a guy is cheating at a video game - erm, change his heart, I guess? Changing someone's heart just seems like a cop out, beat the shadow, make them confess in the real world, the way the person acts in the real world after the fact is as if the were swapped out with a different person, which doesn't make sense why they would willingly confess their sins that would put them away for years - or sometimes life in prison.
A couple of ways that I have thought about could make this better would be to use the metaverse to gather evidence that would be so damning and catastrophic that it would back them into a corner AND it will be known to the public, which makes more sense for rebel to do, posting scandalous images or relevant evidence all over town, opposed to magically changing the way they think and forcing them to confess, which is closer to a therapist I'd say. Or maybe instead of that, what if the target's sins suddenly weigh upon them and cripple them, keeping their personality, but making them go to their own conclusion, which is at least marginally better than what we got.
There are moments in the story where characters will ignore incredibly important information despite the fact that it would be incredibly out of character for them to do so, take the Akechi pancake situation, you're lead to believe that Ryuji interjecting, "uhhh what are you talking about?" to a comment that would surely scream to anyone else that Akechi has knowledge of the Metaverse, was him genuinely reacting in confusion, which doesn't make sense for him to do in this position. It isn't made clear if he reacted instinctively to this or noticed and never talked or said anything about it until October, each of them are equally bad I think, it doesn't matter because memory juice wipes Joker's brain away conveniently so he forgets that detail while talking to Sae in the interrogation room. The other time that something is ignored is when the knowledge of a strange palace Joker and Morgana stumble upon which is just brushed off almost immediately after, I don't expect them to act immediately, but I do ask for justification for their decision other than, we busy with Sae palace.
That amounts most of the problems with the story and characters, besides some smaller moments like Morgana's whole contrived 3rd act falling out moment, Ryuji seemingly dying for the sake of the team, only to reappear seconds later and for the team to beat him up, Morgana appearing back after there being no explainable reason in lore for him to be back. The rest of the issues lie in the fact that every characters 'confidant' usually revolves around a completely different person and not the person you're talking to, it gets worse since more times than not you're going to need to go to Mementos to solve their issues for them, none of the previous games had this, but P5 does and it messes up any kind of development that the confidant was having up til that point, and it's really annoying and not interesting because most of these confidants are in a position where they can overcome it with your support as a person, and it happens for most normal confidant in the game.
So in short, this game has plenty of moments that break the entire story and themes of the game, as well as the characters, leaving the game flawed in nearly every way.