If you like the Persona series, here are 5 independent games to try.
The Persona series is known for putting together a lot of different game elements into one big JRPG story, and some indie games do the same thing.

Characters in Persona 5.
The Persona series is a JRPG with a lot of different parts, like school life, palace dungeons, relationships, calendar days, and a story about mementos and personas that are connected to people's hearts. The series is unique because it has so many things going on at once, but games like Tokyo Xanadu and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore are similar.

But there aren't many indie games like Persona, and the ones that are similar tend to focus on one or two parts of the game rather than trying to do everything at once. There are many ways to describe independent games. They can be made by a small team, with a small budget, by a single person, by an independent publisher, by a studio that isn't influenced by a publisher, or with "indie logic" that is different from the standards for AAA games. The following names use a lot of these definitions.

CrossCode screen shot.
CrossCode is an action RPG that was first released on Windows in 2018 and most recently on the PS5 in 2021. It takes place in a made-up MMORPG and has a main character who has lost his memory and can't talk. It was made by Radical Fish Games, and it was funded by the public. People have said that the game is like Chrono Trigger or Secret of Mana.

It has faster-paced combat than Persona and is in the sci-fi genre. Like the Persona games, it has a lot of different kinds of enemies, a story-driven plot, and interesting characters. Reviews on Steam say that it's easy to care about the characters and that the story is as dense as Persona. In other words, it has a lot of different things to do and places to check out.

Way Up There
Two people under the lighthouse.
This psychological drama was made by Freebird Games and designed by Kan Gao with RPG Maker XP. It's about two doctors who try to make a dying man's wish come true. They try to do this in a way that is a lot like Persona, by making him remember things that never happened.

Like the characters in Persona, the ones in To The Moon use "mementos" to get a look into someone's heart. The stories are very similar, but the game is very different from Persona in other ways, since there is no fighting or school life.

Legrand Legacy
A picture from Legrand Legacy of Azzam talking.
Legrand Legacy is a JRPG made by Semisoft and released by Another Indie. It can be played on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It's basically a love letter to JRPGs from the past, and like Persona, it has battles that happen one at a time. NPCs can be hired, and they can help in ways that are similar to Persona's social features.

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