Atlus USA announces that Persona 5 has been delayed further into 2017 and will now launch on April 4, but will also now include both Japanese and English audio.

"Let us start the game," is looking like a poorer and poorer tagline for highly anticipated JRPG Persona 5. Today Atlus announced that Persona 5 was unfortunately receiving another delay, though not quite as severe a delay as those previous. April 4 is now the planned launch date for a western release of Persona 5, just a couple months later than previously planned. To help make the medicine go down a little easier, Atlus also had something exciting to announce.

Rather than release Persona 5 solely with English voice-over, followed by the release of premium DLC for the Japanese audio files later, Atlus will make the game dual-audio at launch. All players will be able to download the Japanese audio files as free DLC after setting up their game. It will not be included on the disc, which may be frustrating to some who don't have a reliable internet connection, but having the option available and free should appease many patiently waiting Persona fans.

Why exactly was Persona 5 delayed then? Remember that P5 has already launched in Japan, meaning it's in a complete state. That means that the remaining work is left with Atlus USA's localization team. Considering the size of the game, it's understandable that Atlus has plenty of work to do to prepare the game for English-speaking audiences, and apparently the workload was beyond initial estimates. Thankfully some added dev time will allow the technical side of localization to implement dual-audio in time for launch.

One last drop of honey in this sour news is that Atlus is unlocking a premium PlayStation 4 theme for free, as well as an exclusive Ryuji Sakamoto avatar set. It's only available in the Americas for the next 24 hours, while Europe will have to wait until November 24 to get their 24 hours of opportunity. It may not be much, but anything to help make the delay news a little easier to swallow helps.

While everyone waits, Japan has been playing Persona 5 since September 15. Dodging spoilers is becoming increasingly difficult, but from all accounts it's excellent. In fact, three weeks after the Persona 5 launched, it became Atlus' best selling game ever in Japan - nearing half a million in sales that should please parent company Sega. Obviously that's not too impressive compared to 3DS giants like Yokai Watch and Pokemon, but for a console-based game in Japan's harsh console climate it's very good news.

Persona 5 releases April 4, 2017 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3.