https://personacentral.com/p5x-interview/

1 - Atlus wrote and designed the game, not Perfect World. The new guy is just a new Atlus writer (and former detective) who hated the old writer for shitting on the police
2 - Sega helps with phone game mechanics and writing dialogue following Atlus's guidelines and notes for filler stuff since Atlus isnt used to gacha pacing
3 - Perfect World just does gruntwork and SOME character designs because its a gacha and they need a shitton

This is a real Persona game with the only caveats being that some sections are designed around being able to play it in small doses and making retards buy tons of gacha pulls