As part of a rather anticipated livestream earlier today, Atlus revealed a ton of new details about Persona 5 Royal, the new expansion of content coming soon for Persona 5. We’ve seen some of this before in other trailers, but this marks the biggest dose of new content we have for the game so far. The game is actually very close to release, and is currently in the debug stage according to Atlus, so fans don’t have that long to wait.
The livestream took viewers on quite the journey, we got to see a lot about new story elements, and most importantly, new Personas. In terms of new gameplay elements, there’s quite a lot to unpack. The core elements are all still there, with the exploration of memories and mementos being a core component. As players journey through the game world and interact with various characters, and there’s a ton of them. There are so many different characters, each with their own story and abilities, that it’s hard to keep track of them all.
Tracking through these Mementos is a challenge unto itself as well. Powerful enemies inhabit these areas, and they also can present problems beyond combat encounters. Players may have to sometimes resort to social interactions to try and convince a powerful enemy to let them pass or even fight alongside the player. This won’t be easy, and will often rely on gamers being able to use context clues and other signals to intuit the right answers.
Persona 5 Royal introduces even more characters to the mix though, which is sure to shake up the way players compose their parties and play the game. Goro Akechi is once such new addition, see him in action in the trailer down below.
A big part of the Persona franchise is centered around interpersonal conflict and themes dealing with the passage of time and how social relations shape the world around us. The most common way this manifest in game is that everything is based around dates. As time passes, new story threads open up and old ones close off. The player has to make careful decisions about how to approach a given encounter while also considering how it will impact the characters involved, and the added time crunch makes things that much more challenging.
And with the PS4 release, Atlus has been very clear that features like PS Share will be a part of the gameplay experience as well.
Persona 5 Royal is releasing in Japan on October 31, 2019, exclusively for PS4, and in the west in 2020. We’ve included a variety of trailers and other footage from the stream down below, take a look at your leisure.
