It's no secret that the Persona series has exploded in popularity in recent years. Thanks to Persona 5, the franchise has seen some major mainstream success, and with the prospect of Persona 6 being somewhere on the horizon, the series has the potential to grow even more. There have been plenty of follow-ups to the wildly popular Persona 5, with games like Persona 5 Royal, Persona 5 Scramble, and Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight all expanding on the original game's success. With development reportedly in full swing for Persona 6, it's clear that Atlus needs to do something big for the game to surpass its extremely popular predecessor.
Atlus has spoken about the pressure the studio is facing while making Persona 6, and while Persona 5 is widely agreed to be a fantastic entry in the series, hopefully the studio will fix some of the issues that were present in the game to make P6 even better. The issues in question definitely don't ruin P5, but they are glaring enough to the point where many fans of the game are hoping that they're fixed in the next numbered Persona entry. It's also worth pointing out that Persona 5 Royal fixed plenty of issues that fans had with the first game, so it's clear that Atlus is willing to listen and learn from its past mistakes for the betterment of its titles.
Improving the Confidants' Role in the Story
One of Persona 5's strongest elements is the excellent roster of confidants that Joker can befriend. Each of their individual stories does a lot to reinforce many of the themes that the game is trying to impart, and most of the characters are just plain fun to get to know. Unfortunately, while the individual character arcs that each confidant goes through are usually pretty great, they don't ever really tie into the main story of the game. Some of the Phantom Thieves' confidant stories happen as a result of the main plot, but they never actually impact what happens within it. Sometimes, the story even contradicts the character growth seen in their arcs.
Hopefully, Persona 6 can make good on the confidant system and take it even further by making the social links a more integral part of the gameplay. Sure, P5 rewarded players with more abilities for going out with their confidants, but nothing really changed narratively once each person was done growing. The impacts each person could have wouldn't need to be huge, but changing some dialogue around to make it so that the story matches the side quests could go a long way to make things more cohesive. For example, after completing their arc, Persona 6's timid character might be more confident in the main story because they've done plenty of growing on the side with the protagonist.
Removing the Mementos Grind
Although many RPGs feature long sections of grinding, they're very rarely the highlight of the game. It makes sense that players should be training to get stronger, but lengthy grind sections have been slowly removed from plenty of classic series to the point where when a game does include grinding, it sticks out. While perhaps not as big of an obstacle as the mid-story grind that players needed to do in last year's Yakuza: Like a Dragon, there are definitely a handful of mandatory grind sections in Persona 5 when exploring the depths of Mementos.
Mementos as a whole had some work done to it in Persona 5 Royal to make it more enjoyable and less of a grind, but the damage had been done since it's still an integral part of the game that players needed to return to after completing each palace. There's very little to exploring Mementos, as it essentially is just a constant train of enemies for the Phantom Thieves to fight. In the later sections of the game, grinding becomes something of a necessity, and mementos is really the only place to do it. When Persona 6 releases, hopefully it will omit any grinding that puts a halt on the story in favor of better level scaling from the enemies.
Allowing for More Choices in Persona 6
Although Persona 5 is full of player choices, when it comes down to it, the player has very little agency in the actual story. Sure, they can choose who to hang out with and what activities to do after school, but the many dialogue options provided to the player never really impact how the story goes. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as this means that Persona 5 tells the singular story that Atlus wanted to tell. However, it does make some of the other choices that the player needs to make feel a little futile. As an example, raising Joker's proficiency stat makes little sense if it doesn't actually change a whole lot at the end of the day. The simple solution is to allow the player a little bit more choice when it comes to the story.
That isn't to say that the game's narrative should be choice-driven, but maybe having a few scenarios that can play out in a handful of different ways depending on the player's actions could make the player feel personally involved with the story. This sort of idea could tie nicely into the proposed changes to Persona's confidant system as detailed above, meaning that some characters might provide alternate routes to situations depending on their development and relationship to the protagonist.
Another simple choice that's missing from Persona 5 feels like a no-brainer for its anticipated sequel: allowing players to choose the gender of the main character at the start and allowing them to date who they please. By having male, female, and non-binary options for the protagonist of Persona 6, a lot more people will be able to get more deeply invested, as most want to play RPGs as themselves. However, recent entries in the Persona series do not allow the player to choose the gender of their protagonist. Additionally, the Persona series doesn't allow same-sex relationships. Adding the option for men to date men and women to date women would be a step in the right direction in terms of inclusivity, as the series which has not done a great job at that sort of thing thus far.
Persona 6 is currently in development.