After its announcement back in December of 2018, “Persona 5: Royal” has officially been given further information regarding what it is.
The game itself is an enhanced version of the smash-hit “Persona 5” from 2017 and features new characters, a new Palace for the Phantom Thieves to explore, new social links and other changes.
Narrative-wise, it will be taking place in the third semester of school following the storyline of the original game. The game is slated to be released on October 31, 2019 in Japan while North America and Europe will receive the game in 2020.
A new area entirely is opened within this remake of “Persona 5” called Kichijoji which boasts plenty of walking room, new scenes and dialogue, an aquarium and a space where the team can play darts and pool together.
Additional attack animations have been made regarding all-out attacks and partner attacks. Futaba appears to have an all-out attack CG while Morgana and Haru along with Makoto and Ryuji have been given duo attacks.
However, the part fans have held speculation towards since the original announcement is the arrival of a specific new character.
Introduced finally, her name is Kasumi Yoshizawa and she’s a transfer student to Shujin Academy who is a gymnast. Her presence is going to majorly change up the storyline and play a key role in how the story advances.
Another character who was just revealed is Takuto Maruki, who is the counselor at Shujin along with being a brand new Confidant.
This isn’t the first time ATLUS has done this with the Persona series: “Persona 3” had a remake called “Persona 3: FES” included 30 more hours of gameplay that come mostly from the new epilogue included along with plenty of updates.
There was also “Persona 3: Portable” that was put out on the PS Vita that included a female protagonist if the player wanted to play as her as opposed to the default male protagonist from the original rendition.
Furthermore, “Persona 4” got an upgrade through “Persona 4: Golden.” The update gave two new characters with Social Links that give new dungeons and additional scenes in the endings.
Several more features were added, similarly to what is being done for “Persona 5: Royal” like new areas, updated visuals, new music, etc.
“Persona 5” itself was a game stuck in development hell for a couple of years. While it was known that it would be released, there were delays that made the game come out three years after its original announcement for the PS3.
While it was announced in 2013 with a teaser trailer, the other games that were also revealed with it (“Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth,” “Persona 4: Dancing All Night,” and the PS3 port of “Persona 4: Arena Ultimax”) were all released on-time.
“Persona 5” was originally going to be exclusively for the PS3 and featured as a late 2014 release. However, September of 2014 brought about the news that the game would also be released for the PS4 and that it would be delayed for another year into 2015.
This ended up being false as, during a special livestream for the game on the Tokyo Game Show, it was told it would be in late 2016 when “Persona 5” would be available.
This remained the truth and the game officially dropped on Sept. 15, 2016 in Japan before hitting the rest of the world on April 4, 2017.
The game was met with critical acclaim and is boasted as one of the greatest role-playing games of all time by critics. It has been given near-perfect scores across the board, scoring within the 90s from most magazines.
For “Persona 5: Royal” to release with new content to follow in the wake of a legendary game, the hype is absolutely real.
Erika Brandenburg
Arts and Entertainment Editor