I am sorry if this is not the right place to post this.

I am an avid player of the SMT series and it's games. I have played everything from the original SMT to digital devil saga, to nocturne and further.

Playing all these games, I have found all of the SMT games to have a serious concept that goes into the human mind and ego and Id of ones self. To very serious issues as acceptance and our roles and why humans do what they do. Then also adding a heavy bound source of demons and religion into it.

Playing and finishing persona 5 royal (I have also beaten the original) it has brought me to a very serious question about persona 5 and previous persona games as well as the rest of the SMT series as a whole. Coming from playing more (what i feel) are serious topics and more severe. I wanted to ask an opinion about my question.

"Is persona 5's plot dumbed down so it could be more accessible by the masses and gain more traction in sales?"

I came to that question because previous persona games held more weight to the story instead of "society bad, adults bad, believe in yourself" like in Persona 5. But while those games are acclaimed and extremely good games, none of them have gained traction with the general masses as persona 5. Is that because SMT and persona as a whole abandoned the heavier thought provoking stories to just become popular.

I come here with that question and hopefully can get inspired by some answers. If that's the case, then that is rather sad to me that popularity should come at the price of a much less thought provoking story that makes me analyze why we do things and the human mind as a whole.

Edit: please don't come here to defend the persona 5 story as my question is not that if it is good or not. It's that is the story weaker than the other SMT games. Please try to have some knowledge of SMT games. I'm not saying persona 5 story is bad because that is subjective. I'm saying is the thesis of said story weaker and has less layers to appeal to a wider market unlike previous Megaten games have because they sold vastly less. (To defend this point persona 3-5 has removed the moniker of SMT on the title unlike the other games)