Persona 5 Royal is Coming

The game Persona 5 tells the story of high school students who have suffered some kind of injustice, and became set on rebelling against corrupt adults. They are normal students during the day, but after classes, they are the "Phantom Thieves of Hearts," who enter the cognitive world and infiltrate the minds of corrupt adults to "uncorrupt" them. This mental world is filled with monsters known as "Shadows," and to fight them, the protagonists must summon their other inner selves that are based on literary or mythological figures, the "Personas." Each dungeon (twisted world in a target's mind) takes the shape of a facility where thieves are likely to raid (a museum, a bank etc.), and the distorted desires that originated the corruption in the target's heart appear as valuable treasures. Once the treasures are stolen, the targets realize what they have done wrong, have a "change of heart" and confess all their crimes. Like I always say, if it were here in Brazil, the Phantom Thieves would have a lot of work!

Persona 5 was literally the game that made me buy a PS4, something I hadn't thought I'd do for a long time because the most popular games for the console (football, shooting etc.) aren't my cup of tea. RPGs with involving plots and characters plus mystic elements are my thing, though, and this is exactly what the Persona series is all about. The promotional trailers for Persona 5 came out right as I had finished playing Personas 3 and 4 on my good old PS2, and I got very excited for the next game right away.

I was so excited about Persona 5 that I even began writing fan fictions way before the game came out in Japan and there was nearly no information about the plot. I usually wait for months after release until the games' price drop, but Persona 5 was one of the only two games that I preordered (the other one was Pokemon Crystal, back in 2001). I even sold some old GBA cartridges that I had lying around to get some money to use towards buying the game. And I must say, I don't regret anything.

**Image source: the cover of my copy of the Persona 5 game that I scanned. The cover has some text in Brazilian Portuguese because it's the Brazilian version. The ingame text is in English, though.

As a visually impaired gamer, I need a sighted person nearby to help me play most games. My mother played Persona 5 with me, and both of us really enjoyed it!

Persona 5 was responsible for many of my entertainment hours of 2017. It's a game that takes around 100 hours to beat (if not skipping dialogue or side events), and I, or rather we, beat it three times (twice with the audio in Japanese, and once with the audio in English to check how the dub came out). And at every playthrough, we notice details we had failed to notice before (or forgot :P ). Even now, almost three years after release, some people are still finding small easter eggs.

Even Masahiro Sakurai (the creator of Kirby and the Super Smash Bros. series) liked Persona 5 so much that he collaborated with Atlus (the Persona developer company) to have the protagonist (code name Joker) as a DLC fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for Nintendo Switch. Here is the announcement trailer of Joker in Smash Bros. revealed on The Game Awards 2018 (and to those who like the Japanese voices, here is the same trailer in Japanese).

Despite all the compliments I've written here, it should be noted that the game isn't for everyone. People who don't like RPGs or don't like reading (the game has a lot of written dialogue) may not like Persona 5. But those who enjoy turn-based RPGs, deep plots with lots of character development, anime-esque humor, and things like mythology, psychology and Tarot, will have a field day with this game. Of course, Persona 5 also has its flaws, such as the slowness of the beginning where there are a lot of tutorials and little freedom, but once the tutorials phase is over (after the first main dungeon), the pace picks up, and we are free to explore and do whatever we want. There are plot points that I think could have been expanded more, and some other things that could have been done beter, but overall, it's a great game for those who like it's style.

Those who don't know Persona 5 and want to get a feel for it may watch this video by user SphericAlpha showing the game's beginning (and those who prefer Japanese voices may watch this video by user RISING that uses the Japanese audio option).

Enter Persona 5 Royal

And then, on April 24th, 2019, at the end of a live Persona music concert in Japan, Persona 5 Royal was announced. Persona 5 Royal (or Persona 5 the Royal in Japan) will be an overhauled and improved version of Persona 5, and will have:

• Some new characters to bond with, and that bring other perspectives to the story.
• New places with more opportunities to grow the bonds between characters so that they can use combination attacks in battles.
• New mechanics in dungeons and in battles.
• New challenges and special items.
• New dungeon puzzles to catch old players by surprise :P .
• New ultimate Personas for the main characters.
• Around 20 new songs in the soundtrack.
• Possibility of using the PS4's share function to take screenshots and record gameplay videos. In the original Persona 5, this functionality was blocked. In Royal, it will be unblocked until some point in the month of December of the ingame calendar.
• Lots of new content, including a third semester that wasn't in the original game. Atlus has stated that Persona 5 Royal will have more new content than Persona 4 Golden (the improved version of Persona 4 released for the PS Vita).

Also, it looks like Atlus has listened to the fans and will expand on the plot points that could have been better explored, and fix things about the game mechanics that fans had complained about (I thought those were mostly nitpicks, but if they'll fix them, I won't complain :D ).

Below is a promotional video for Persona 5 Royal showing off new scenes and elements. It's the Japanese video (subtitled by a fan, Harry Type-C) as an equivalent English video wasn't released yet:

The original Persona 5 was released both for PS3 and PS4 (it began development as a PS3 game and was ported later), but Persona 5 Royal will be optimized for the PlayStation 4 and as such will be released for PS4 only. It will be released in Japan on 31 October, 2019 (Halloween :D ), and at some point in 2020 in the West (as I write this, the exact date wasn't announced yet).

Both the Japanese and the English version of Persona 5 Royal may be preordered already. There's also a Japanese limited edition that may also be preordered (at the moment of this writing, no sign of the English one yet). The Japanese limited edition will include:

• The game disc (obviously).
• A 48 pages hardcover artbook with illustrations and information about the game's setting.
• The soundtrack CD with the around 20 new songs.
• A Persona 5 size L t-shirt.
• A few DLC costumes for the characters.

Before the game was announced, I (as well as many others) had been expecting that some expansion to P5 would be released as DLC rather than another game. But as it seems, the game will be the same, but also very different at the same time, with new events and elements incorporated throughout the game from the beginning, and it wouldn't be viable to release so many changes as DLC. As much as I'd like not to need to buy the whole game for the full price again, I'm sure that I won't regret it if I do. Even as someone that have beaten P5 three times, I'm still excited about experiencing what the improved version has to offer, and believe it will provide many enjoyable hours of entertainment both for old players and new ones.

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