Persona 5 Royal is fascinating to examine. Not many franchises launch an expanded edition so soon after the original version of the game, but Atlus felt that Persona 5 Royal was important after Persona 5's unprecedented success. At its core, Persona 5 Royal is still mostly the same as the original game. The plot is unchanged, as are most of the core mechanics, like turn-based combat and Persona fusion. The point of Persona 5 Royal was not to rewrite the script of the first game, but to make it even bigger and more content-stuffed than ever before. For a game that already took around 100 hours to complete, that's a big task.

Even so, Atlus pulled it off. Persona 5 Royal is filled to the brim with significant changes and additions that tweak the story and gameplay without completely replacing them. All of these changes come together to make a really exciting new look at Persona 5. Even though it's even longer than its predecessor, Persona 5 Royal has even more replay value than Persona 5, considering everything that Atlus found time to add. While there's all kinds of little changes to find in Persona 5 Royal, top to bottom, here are some of the most important changes that Atlus made in Persona 5 Royal. Warning: Persona 5/Persona 5 Royal spoilers ahead!

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A Major Combat Overhaul

Persona 5

Atlus made a ton of important changes to combat in Persona 5. Tons of the Shadows that players fight in Palaces in Mementos have completely different statistics in Persona 5 Royal than their Persona 5 counterparts. That means even fans who went through the original game many times over have to be on their toes for their first P5 Royal playthrough. Atlus didn't just rework basic enemies, though. Each boss battle waiting at the end of a Palace is different. Atlus added new phases and different mechanics to nearly every boss fight in the game. These changes were much to Royal's benefit, making many of the boss fights more challenging and thematically appropriate to each of the Phantom Thieves' enemies.

Royal didn't just give new tools to the Shadows, though. Atlus made two crucial changes to combat for the Phantom Thieves that make them much more capable in Royal than the original game. For one thing, each Phantom Thief gets a full clip of ammo for their guns every fight instead of only a couple clips for each Metaverse visit. That makes guns way more powerful and puts much less onus on Joker to carry a Persona with a Gun skill. Additionally, Atlus made it so that the Phantom Thieves can Baton Pass to each other innately. Originally, Baton Pass was a Confidant ability for each Phantom Thief, which made it hard to access sometimes, especially for Haru. With Baton Pass on tap, the Phantom Thieves can act much more tactically, and players reap the benefits. On top of that, Persona 5 Royal's new Showtimes offer a delightful way to finish off fights.

Lounging in the Thieves' Den

One totally new feature that Atlus created exclusively for Persona 5 Royal was the Thieves' Den, an interesting combination of an achievement hub and an interactive gallery. Thanks to the Thieves' Den, Persona 5 Royal had a new list of in-game achievements that would reward the player with a special currency. By visiting the Thieves' Den, Joker could spend that currency on concept art, music, cutscenes, and other media from the game so that players could view them at their leisure. The Thieves' Den could also be decorated with all sorts of memorabilia from the game's plot and Confidants, which would prompt cognitions of Persona 5's characters to appear and comment on the Phantom Thieves' activities, relationships between characters, or just life in Tokyo in general. On top of all that, The Thieves' Den offered a fun new minigame in the form of Tycoon that could be played with all the other Phantom Thieves.

Confidants New and Old

Persona 5 Akechi

Royal made some big changes to Joker's life outside of the Metaverse too. For one thing, Atlus added two new Confidants to the game: Kasumi Yoshizawa, a first-year gymnast at Shujin Academy, and Takuto Maruki, a therapist working at Shujin. Both of these characters offer Joker some great Confidant perks, and the characters themselves play a crucial role in Persona 5 Royal's adjusted story, too. They appear throughout the game in new cutscenes and even interact with the Phantom Thieves on the regular. Although it's possible to get Persona 5's original ending and never learn Yoshizawa and Maruki's secrets, all these appearances are designed to lead toward the true end of the game.

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Similarly, one Confidant from Persona 5 works completely differently in Persona 5 Royal, largely for the sake of the game's new ending. That Confidant is the detective prince Goro Akechi. As Joker's rival and a complicated figure in the Phantom Thieves' lives, Akechi served an important role in Persona 5 as an automatic Confidant, progressing with the plot like Morgana and Sae Niijima. However, in Persona 5 Royal, it's up to the player to hang out with Akechi like most other Confidants. Akechi's new Confidant arc offers Joker a chance to get to know his rival better than ever before and pick up some nice perks to boot. It's also largely designed to play into the new Palace at the end of Persona 5 Royal.

The Third Semester and the True Ending

Maruki's Palace in Persona 5

If the player makes out Maruki as a Confidant, then they get the chance to explore his Palace in a whole new story arc that takes place after Yaldabaoth's defeat. Maruki serves as a surprising and highly empathetic antagonist for his arc, and with this event come some significant deviations from Persona 5's story. While in the original game it's implied that Akechi dies saving the Phantom Thieves in Shido's Palace, Akechi mysteriously returns after Yaldabaoth's defeat. He joins up with the Phantom Thieves to take Maruki's heart and undo Maruki's desperate plan to rewrite reality.

Maruki's arc also comes with a completely different ending to Persona 5 Royal. Although Persona 5 leaves Akechi's fate up to player interpretation, Persona 5 Royal makes it seem that Akechi is very much alive, and that he'll willfully pay for the crimes he's committed. The new ending also incorporates Yoshizawa and Maruki; tying up their relationships with Joker serves to highlight the way the Phantom Thieves have helped people in a way that the original ending doesn't.

There's certainly many more changes in Persona 5 Royal than those listed here. Atlus came up with all kinds of other mechanics and features to add, from the Fusion Alarm to stealth improvements to the wholly new shopping district of Kichijoji. While most of Persona 5 Royal's changes are flashy and obvious, part of the fun of playing Persona 5 Royal is discovering all the much smaller details that Atlus found the time to put into the game. Royal is an excellent example of how to do an expanded edition of a game right, building on the strengths of the original game without drowning it in new content. After Persona 5 Royal made such a big splash, the next big question for Atlus is what that means for Persona 6.

Persona 5 Royal is available now on PS4.

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