Persona 5 Royal| Releases 2020

[Sega DogTagz]

Craaaaap. There goes another 120 hours of my life. Looks like they weren't joking with the truckton of new content. There was so much in that trailer that I didn't recognize from the base game. Moves, locations, plot points, characters, activities - Looks like people who cleared the original PS5 won't be hurt by going back for a double dip.

I didn't really have much to go on expectation wise. I played PS4 Golden without having played PS4, so I wasn't 100% if Atlus put in enough to really justify a purchase of both (I know there was an extra dungeon and character/confidant).

[Ryannumber1gamer]

On 3/23/2019 at 5:35 PM, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I don’t think it’ll be a female protagonist, but I think they’ll do what they did with P4G where they introduced a new character with a huge new side quest line that would end with gaining a new playable party character.

Called it.

I'm interested to see how this goes, given the fact it's clear they're adding a hell of a lot more into the game this time around. Not only with the grappling mechanic to explore palaces, but having new palaces. Futaba looks playable this time around too, judging by the new gameplay. It would be neat to have her as a party member, given her Persona is rideable, like Makoto's. I don't really see why Futaba's UFO couldn't still function as the RNG buff mechanic, while still being playable, the same way Makoto's persona is always used as a bike, but she's still playable.

I'm somewhat worried about how the new character will be handled, as I feel like it might be a bit too little too late. The Phantom Thieves, especially with Smash, The Animation, and DAN are already kind of established as the main tight knit group. I'm not sure how to feel since with P4G - the anime and the spinoffs came later, where the new characters could be introduced but maybe that's down to me being more experienced with the P5 cast than P4, so I can't notice the irregularities. 

I suppose I'm worried about how it'll go pacing wise. We can assume that given she's a thief, this means a fully brand new palace which will be set around her, the same way it was done for Ann, Futaba, Yusuke, and Haru. It's a worrying undertaking because they'll likely need to rewrite a sizable chunk of the game to include the new character, which if done badly, could end up coming off a bit "self-inserty" I suppose. 

That and my bigger worry about it is the pacing of P5 already feels damn well tight. Each palace compiles on each other nicely already, and tells a fairly rise and fall story where the Thieves are manipulated, and it's difficult to figure out where would be good placing for it. Like, you could argue it could be placed between the month skipped over, but that causes plot issues, as well as takes away from the finale. It could be placed before the fifth, or sixth palace, but I'd argue that the last 3 or so palaces are absolutely vital to each other and shoving the new character in there would cause major pacing issues.

I'm cautiously optimistic at least. What I hope for most is that the updated battle mechanics are designed to let the player avoid a lot of the RNG bullshit that P5 and previous games had. It got especially bad as you went into the final palace and couldn't get back to the open world to get money for items, or refill your special attacks or what have you.

[tailsBOOM!]

New footage of Kasumi