A Starter’s Guide to Persona 5 Royal

A Starter’s Guide to Persona 5 Royal

 

Persona 5 Royal is a great game with many gamers seeing it as the most “complete” version of any Persona title. Well, these claims do hold some truth as Persona 5 Royal has almost everything a Persona fan can ask for—brilliant aesthetics, an immersive story and extremely likeable characters.

However, there is one problem. Like most Persona games, Persona 5 Royal can only be played on either the PS4 or the PS5. If you don’t have one or the other, you are probably just stuck with watching gameplay videos on YouTube and watching others have all the fun in being a Phantom Thief.

Well, that disappointment is coming to an end because during the Xbox Bethesda Showcase (will backlink the showcase article), it has been confirmed that Persona 5 Royal will be making its way to the Xbox consoles and the PC. We are positive that this port will surely attract countless new players since the game is made so accessible on various platforms.

That said, Persona games aren’t cakewalks and despite Persona 5 Royal being labelled by fans as the easiest title, a newcomer to the franchise will still need a helping hand in understanding many aspects of the game.

No worries though, we’re here to help. If this is your first Persona journey, here are a couple of things you might want to take note of.

 

 

Picking Your Difficulty

 

Before you start the game, you will be given multiple difficulty settings. Although you can change your difficulty level during your playthrough, we still recommend that you pick a difficulty level that you are comfortable with.

First, let us breakdown the difficulty options:

 

Safety Mode

Easiest mode and you can start over even when you are wiped out. Once you’ve picked this mode, you cannot change your difficulty level during your playthrough.

 

Easy Mode

Slightly more difficult than Safety Mode as you cannot resume the current battle when you die.

 

Normal Mode

The standard mode and enemies hit slightly harder than both the Easy and Safety modes.

 

Hard Mode

Enemies hit really hard and can easily destroy your party if you are not careful.

 

Merciless Mode

Not only do enemies hit hard in Merciless mode, the player only gains half the amount of experience and gold from battles.

 

Honestly, there is no shame in picking Safety Mode if this is your first ever Persona game or if you are not familiar with the JRPG genre because a large part of Persona 5 Royal’s popularity comes from its amazing plot and characters, which you will enjoy in any mode.

But if you are new but also looking for a challenge, opting for Normal Mode might be best for you as it provides the best balance of difficulty and comfort.

And since the difficulty doesn’t affect the story, you can just go right ahead and pick whichever mode that you are most comfortable with!

 

 

The Importance of Confidants

 

Ever since social links were added in Persona 3, the social link mechanic has been one of the highlights of the modern Persona titles. It is how the characters show development and how the protagonist plays a role in each of these social links in making them change for the better.

That said, social links—or Confidants for Persona 5 Royal—aren’t just here for story content, working on your Confidants’ level can help you out significantly during battles or even provide major conveniences outside Palaces. In short, Confidants are super important and you will be losing out on a lot if you choose to neglect them.

With so many different types and each of them having its own unique perks, we’ll try not to reveal the juicy details of the links, but generally, these are the Confidants you would want to pay attention to:

 

– the Death arcana; gives you access to amazing healing items

– the Temperance arcana; allows you to do extra activities during class and many other time management conveniences

– the Fortune arcana; allows you to boost your desired stats before entering a Palace

– the Hierophant arcana; allows you to make special dishes that restore SP

 

Also, note that this is not to say that other Confidants are not important, but when it comes to returns, the aforementioned Confidants will surely yield you the best results, especially if you are new to the franchise.

 

 

Register your Personas and Use the Compendium

 

The growth of your character isn’t enough, your Personas have to grow alongside your character or you will see yourself struggling in a lot of battles and the way to boost your Personas prowess is to create new ones through Fusion.

Many new players like to think that after using a Persona for a good amount of time, they tend to get clingy and are apprehensive about fusing them with other Personas. This is actually an unnecessary worry because the Compendium allows you to recall your destroyed Persona back.

The important thing to remember is to register the Persona you are fusing so that the Persona you want to summon back retains its level and skills. Registering Personas is a good habit to pick up as it is very easy to be careless and accidentally fuse a high-levelled Persona before registering them to the Compendium.

Once you’ve got the hang of fusing and registering your Personas, you can expect your Persona roster to grow significantly and you will have every answer to almost any Shadows you face.

 

 

Try to Complete Palaces Within a Few Days

 

Generally, the rule of thumb is to complete a Palace in a single day, but for beginners, this task is almost impossible. Either way, it is definitely better if you could complete a Palace within a short span of time.

The reason behind this is that Persona 5 Royal is a time-sensitive game. Almost everything you do takes up a portion of in-game time. Spending unnecessary time inside the Palace almost gives you nothing as it is much more efficient if you can use that time working on your Confidants’ level or social stats.

Don’t get us wrong. We’re not trying to rush you into completing a Palace as it is still good to work on it at your own pace. Just be sure to not spend too much time venturing around the Palace where you forgo other departments of the game as they will eventually hurt you in the long run.

 

 

Don’t Neglect Your Social Stats

 

In Persona 5 Royal, there is a total of 5 social stats that the protagonist can raise—Knowledge, Charm, Kindness, Proficiency and Guts. These stats can be raised by doing certain activities and by raising these stats, you will gain access to different conversation choices or even form a relationship with a Confidant.

Raising your social stats is arduous and it will take a lot of activities to get these stats to a higher level. In most cases, you won’t be able to max out all your social stats in your first playthrough, so don’t get too beat up about it if is a stat or two you couldn’t max.

Even so, we would still want to give you some advice on which social stat to prioritise during your first playthrough. Foremost, you would want to maximise your Guts as many Confidants’ relationships require high-ranked Guts.

 

After Guts, the Knowledge stat is perhaps the most useful stat as it helps you score well for tests which will consequently boost your school Confidants’ relationship. Hence, remember to always have a book that you can read in your inventory as there are times when you can gain some Knowledge points by reading a book on random occasions.

Like we’ve said, aiming to max out all of your social stats on your first playthrough is super difficult, even for veterans. Take it easy, and make sure to focus on the social stats that give you the best benefits. For your first run, it’s surely both Guts and Knowledge.

 

Excited for the Xbox and PC release of Persona 5 Royal? We are too! If you cannot wait and want to get into the action immediately, Persona 5 Royal is available for the PS4 and PS5 which you can purchase using our PSN Cards here!