While Persona 6 shouldn't imitate Persona 5 wholesale, there are a lot of great lessons that the next big Persona game can take from its predecessor. For instance, Persona 5 found a lot of untapped potential in the Social Links explored in Persona 3 and 4. Upgrading Social Links into Confidants that all offered unique perks was a great idea, and hopefully Atlus' next game explores the Confidant space in more detail, creating even bolder perks that the new Persona protagonist can earn by making friends. The principles of Persona 5's dungeon design also deserve to be passed on into the next game.
The Persona series has always offered players dungeons to crawl through, but Persona 5 did so in style. Palaces revolutionized the Persona dungeon blueprint by implementing lots of clear structure while adding vastly more personality to the dungeons. The result is that Persona 5's Palaces are all extremely memorable, even if not every Palace is equally beloved. Persona 6 has the chance to perfect the Palace structure by coming up with similarly creative dungeons that make the most out of Persona's overarching narrative. In order to be as popular as Persona 5, Persona 6 has to learn from the success story of Palaces.
Why Persona 5's Palaces are Great
Before Persona 5 came around, Persona dungeons were pretty simple. Players spent a lot of Persona 3 and 4 running through hallways and battling Shadows, and while sometimes players had a puzzle to solve, the vast majority of the dungeon experience added up to surviving the onslaught of semi-random encounters. While this made the likes of Persona 4 a great RPG for grinding, it also made these dungeons awfully repetitive. Persona 4 may have offered players some unique dungeon themes, like a sauna or an underground laboratory, the dungeon's aesthetic usually had little to do with the combat or puzzles, meaning it was ultimately just set dressing.
Persona 5's approach to dungeon design couldn't be further than that. Each dungeon had a ton of extraordinarily detailed personality. Not only did each Palace have a very specific theme, but they were actually shaped after that theme. Rather than just running down hallways with laboratory decor, Persona 5 players found themselves walking around the catacombs of a pyramid, the game rooms in a casino, and much more. Between the broad range of themes, highly distinct floor plans, and the colorful Palace Rulers behind each dungeon, Palaces all have a ton of personality and charisma.
The mechanics of Persona 5's Palaces benefitted from these unique structures as well. Each Palace had significantly more puzzles than previous dungeons, and they all intricately wove in the Palace's theme. Players got to travel through paintings in Madarame's Palace, navigate deadly conveyer belts in Okumura's Palace, and so on. Each Palace also had a unique roster of enemies, rather than constantly reusing enemy appearances and mechanics like Persona 4 did. Between these mechanical upgrades and the dazzling personalities of each Palace, the dungeons of Persona 5 were absolutely one of the game's strongest features.
How Persona 6 Can Imitate Palaces
Unless Persona 6 turns out to be a direct Persona 5 sequel after all, it probably won't feature Palaces again. However, Atlus can easily conjure up highly similar dungeons that fit the game's theme. No matter who its protagonists are, Persona 6 will almost certainly still be about teenagers investigating worlds created by the human mind, so they'll still end up in dungeons formed by the fears, fantasies, and repressed truths of people they know. In other words, Persona 6 has all the narrative justification that it needs to make highly Palace-like dungeons.
In terms of storytelling, Persona 6's dungeons need to be highly specific to the character that inspires the dungeon, and the themes need to matter. A dungeon's theme can't just result in decorations like in Persona 4; the dungeon's layout, decorations, obstacles, and amenities all need to take inspiration from the dungeon's core concept. Whatever type of location Atlus converts into a dungeon, the location's unique qualities need to inspire character interactions that break down the dungeon denizen's thoughts in great detail. Persona 5's Palaces had all kinds of unique locations and encounters that shed light on the Palace rulers, and Persona 6's dungeons need to explore characters and deliver themes as painstakingly in order to be memorable.
Dungeon mechanics need to imitate Persona 5's concept too. All of Persona 6's enemies need to be recognizable cultural figures with unique abilities that ideally reflect the dungeon's themes, meaning no two dungeons have the same combat experience. Similarly, Persona 6's dungeon puzzles should draw as much inspiration from the theme as possible. Thematically appropriate puzzles like the murals in Futaba's Palace helped Persona 5 players understand the Palace rulers better, and so Persona 6 should use puzzles to characterize friends and enemies alike in the same way.
The Evolution of Persona Dungeons
There are certainly a few downsides to Persona 5's approach to dungeons. Palaces are arguably less replayable thanks to their heavy narrative focus and detailed puzzles, and the narrative elements might make Palaces feel a little slow to play through for some fans. Ultimately, though, these are fairly small downsides. The benefits of Palaces' lovingly crafted themes and mechanics heavily outweigh the partial loss of replayability, and the rich storytelling within dungeons makes Persona 5 far more immersive. Persona 6 would lose a lot if it went back to the far more simplistic model of Persona dungeons.
Rather than returning to the past model, Persona 6 should build on the innovations from Persona 5. The Palace dungeon model still has plenty of room to grow. For instance, if Persona 6 is about a road trip in the way that Persona 5 was originally going to be, Persona 6's dungeons could include large outdoor sections that are fantastical versions of the real biomes and landmarks that the protagonists visit. Persona 5 Strikers already reimagined urban outdoor areas in excellent ways, so building nature into Persona 6's dungeons doesn't sound too farfetched. The Phantom Thieves' adventures will likely come to an end once Persona 6 rolls around, but the experiences they had could shape the dangers faced by the Persona 6 party in a big way.
Persona 6 is in development.