The year 2017 saw the release of some top games such as Assassin’s Creed Origins and StarCraft Remastered, but it’s clear that one PS4 exclusive stood out that year.
This is none other than Persona 5, a Japanese role-playing game set in modern Tokyo. This combined a colourful cast of characters with dungeon crawling gameplay and Final Fantasy-style combat.
The protagonists were a group of teenagers known as the Phantom Thieves, whose main goal was to deal with a series of evil characters who were making other folk suffer in Tokyo… They do this by infiltrating the character’s “Palace”.
Palaces did not actually exist in physical form, but are a manifestation of the person’s twisted desires, existing in an alternate reality known as the “Metaverse”. Playing through them and stealing a treasure hidden within would make the Phantom Thieves’ adversaries have a “change of heart”. The group’s first enemy is an evil sports teacher at Shunjin Academy, the school the Thieves attended in real life.
Suffice to say that Persona 5 was one of the most original and downright best games to see a release in 2017, so some people will be happy to hear that a new, expanded edition of the game will be hitting shelves next year. Titled “Persona 5: Royal”, the game will be released at a yet to be announced date in 2020 in the West (the Japanese edition releases this fall).
Announced during the Persona Super Live concert in Tokyo, this new edition of Persona 5 for the PS4 will include several new characters, new areas to explore in the game’s Tokyo map, new confidants to form relationships with, plus the game’s original dungeons have been tweaked and new enemies have been added to them.
There will likely also be plenty of new dialogue and new cutscenes to enjoy in Persona 5 Royal, as this new edition promises to delve more deeply into the personal lives and “trials and tribulations” of the Phantom Thieves. There’s even an entire new semester at Shunjin Academy for you to play through.
One of the new characters which will feature in this updated and expanded edition of Persona 5 is the red-haired lady seen in the Japanese trailer below, a character whom as Eurogamer points out is named Kazumi Yoshizawa.
So, will Persona 5 Royal turn out to be great when it launches in 2020?
Given that the original Persona 5 was Game of the Year material, those who missed out on the game and have the slightest interest in Japanese RPGs definitely have something to look forward to. Those who’ve already played through 2017’s Persona 5 will likely be less inclined to make the purchase though – after all, Persona 5 is a game which can easily consume more than 100 hours of your life, and even with all the new editions it’s hard to see many people wanting to play through the same story again.
Nonetheless, this is still an exciting announcement, and it’s always a good thing that new, enhanced version of one of 2017’s best games is coming out in the future.