P. Studio and Atlus sign the best installment in the Persona saga, with more content and translated into Spanish.
Save this date: March 31, 2020. That day will mark the starting gun for one of the most amazing trips of your lives. Destiny; Japan. You will not need suitcases, nor a passport, nor even change your coins for yen, the only thing you need is a PlayStation 4 console.
This trip will take you to the depths of the human mind, it will show you how the society in which we live works, it will reveal the injustices that plague us every day and, in addition, you will know first-hand heartbreaking stories that will make your hair stand on end. From that day on March 31, nothing will ever be as before.
On the last day of this month, as if it were the great advent, Persona 5 Royal, the extended edition of what is perhaps the best JRPG of the last decade, will arrive in your homes. Or one of the best in video game history, with permission from Chrono Trigger. Everything is ready, texts in Spanish included. It is in your hands to live, or not, this wonderful experience that Atlus and SEGA have created for you. U.S. Everybody.
Thief of Hearts
There are many hours that we have dedicated to reliving the adventure, now improved, of Joker, Ryuji, Ann or Morgana and we can tell you that yes, it has stolen our hearts again. The video game is a powerful interactive documentary that narrates the current state of Japanese society —also valid for the western one—, the abuse of young workers, bullying, their iron vision of honor, mistreatment, their politics or meaning. of friendship. None of this is new, these themes were already played by the original, what continues to surprise is that, after the changes introduced in Persona 5 Royal, the video game continues to surprise as much or more as it already did in 2017 – 2016 in Japan.
And is that Atlus has not added the Royal label to the title just because. Contrary to what it may seem at first glance, this tagline means much more. Behind it hides a carrycot of news that leaves Persona 5 Royal as if it were a new video game. Yes, the plot is the same, we agree there, but there are many possibilities that the new content introduced in this edition opens up for us. In fact there are so many to mention that, surely and unconsciously, we leave some in the sea of oblivion.
We want to make this clear before going into details; Persona 5 Royal is neither a DLC nor an expansion. And, in the event that Atlus hypothetically decided to add it in the future to the original version, you could expect a large update for your old copy. Royal improves the entire core of the PS3 and PS4 video game, they have not settled for adding one more semester and several new characters. There is much more behind the five additional letters added to the title.
News
Among the multitude of news that Persona 5 Royal receives perhaps the one that all readers expect to know are those that affect the main plot. The arrival of Kasumi Yoshizawa or Takuto Maruki to the video game integrates perfectly with the existing story until reaching a point that right now we cannot conceive of the game without them. The first one arrives at the Shujin Academy being a promising gymnast who ends up being friends with the protagonist. The second, Maruki, is a psychologist who helps students after the incidents with Kamoshida, the institute's volleyball coach, who in turn is the protagonist of the game's first dungeon. Both add a lot of new lines of text that helps us understand a little more about the events that occur in the adventure.
There is a third new character in Persona 5 Royal, Jose, a boy dressed as a sort of eggshell as a hat – like Calimero – who appears in Mementos, the common metaverse for those with a slightly rotten heart. It is responsible for rewarding us with items and statistics for our characters such as more experience, money or items in Mementos in exchange for some flowers that are scattered throughout this randomly generated dungeon. In turn, he will give us a unique object in exchange for the three Seeds of Desire that we can find in each palace, another novelty from Royal.
Each one of them adds modifications to the already known history but it will be in the third semester, unpublished until now, when things radically change. It is an additional six months where the adventure expands with a generous amount of hours. About 25% -30% more new content. Unfortunately we can not gut beyond the events after December so you must discover for yourself what will happen from that date.
More alterations to history occur with the arrival of a new neighborhood, Kichijoji. In it we can relate to Akechi, the young detective, whenever available as well as Kasumi. This scenario adds new stores, including one dedicated to selling the dirty clothes we get from the dungeons and, at the same time, getting points to exchange for items in it. Also a temple where to meditate and upload social statistics of the character, a jazz room where you can get new skills or an increase in statistics and a game room. In it, we have billiards mini-games —only in video sequences— and darts, fully playable only if we have a motion sensor controller like the original DualShock 4. In the first we can increase our Courage and other statistics as well as improve the technical damage of the group. In the second, we made the Relay combat option much more powerful at different levels.
Finally there are the modifications received in the palaces and Mementos. The former have undergone important changes both in their structure, history, and in the battles against their rulers to such an extent that some are quite different from the originals. For example, and without going into too many spoilers, in the confrontation with Kamoshida new vital enemies are added in the history of this villain with lines dedicated to a greater understanding of it. And the same with the rest of the bosses.
In addition to this and taking advantage of the mention of the palaces, the internal structure of the palaces has been slightly altered in mechanics, puzzles, enemy disposition and the addition of the Joker Hook tool. With it we will reach places unreachable in another way and it will also allow us to obtain the Seeds of Desire. This hook is used, at a more advanced moment in history, to ambush enemies remotely.
Mementos also brings news to the story, albeit in the form of side quests. Thanks to the Kichijoji neighborhood and other factors, new secondary missions and zones to complete in this metaverse are added to Mementos. There are also flowers that we must collect and deliver to Jose in exchange for bonuses and a new area that appears randomly where the light does not reach her nor is there a map to guide us. In it, higher-level enemies can appear, but also better rewards.
Leaving aside the changes that affect the main plot, we have a lot of new features that completely affect the gameplay. From a better balance in the abilities of our confidants, more time available to get affinity with them —Morgana will no longer force us to sleep when it is night—, through thirteen new Person or additions to the Velvet Room —Velvet Room in English— .
In this last point, new options have been added to get new Persona, including an alarm that can jump in the room under certain conditions. When Joker sounds you will receive a warning and thanks to it the fusion of People will be more powerful, offering improved skills to the results obtained. However, its use is very limited and exceeding this limit can be catastrophic.
The Velvet Room receives another novelty, the Combat Challenges, a kind of wave combat with seven different challenges and ten levels of difficulty each. To overcome these challenges, you must meet certain conditions imposed by the video game and we can obtain three juicy rewards according to our score. Of course, only the first is available for your enjoyment, the remaining six must be purchased from the PlayStation Store.
Combat has not only been enhanced in the relays – with much more damage and bonuses – thanks to mini darts or pool games, it has been improved in many aspects. For example, in technical blows, which now, on the ground, execute more intense blows. Everything is now more tactical than before and therefore some Persona have been balanced to have similar power to others. Ranged weapons take on more prominence as their bullets reload at the end of combat and, for example, some altered states also work differently from the original. But there is something else…
In Persona 5 Royal, powerful special moves or Showtimes are added for the available characters when taking a relay to the Joker —randomly—, if a companion is low on life or if the enemy is knocked out. A huge warning appears when they are available and they are executed with the touch of the DualShock 4 controller. When pressing the button, an impressive scene will appear, made with the very original game engine that, at the end, strikes a powerful mamporro at the enemy / s.
And much more. New side missions for Caroline and Justine, the wardens, parallel to their levels of confidant, visual improvements in the interface and portraits of the protagonists, lip sync for the audio – Japanese and English -, a Calendar with more information, new weather conditions that also affect Mementos, give gifts to male characters, new skins for the characters available in Harajuku, an Aquarium that we can visit with confidants, a new type of enemy that when defeated gives a valuable object, a lot of experience and money, different clothes depending on the season we are in, two new endings – one good and one bad – and two more characteristics among other surprises that we cannot count that you will love; A new trophy list different from the original Persona 5 and the Thieves' Den, a must-see setting for fans of the title.
In the Thieves' Lair the player will be able to personalize it with statues, thematic skins of each palace, play a board game or use the coins obtained with the achievements obtained in the adventure, not PS4 trophies, to virtually buy the soundtrack, conceptual images, promotional images or videos of the game's own history, as well as trailers or video clips of concerts dedicated to the Persona saga, among other elements. The perfect "room" for any die-hard Persona 5 fan and a truly grateful addition to us.
As we have already said, for reasons beyond our control, these are the news that we can tell you but there are really many more. Some you may be able to guess from your own conclusions but others will be a surprise to find them. We have mentioned it to you at the beginning of the text; Persona 5 Royal is neither an expansion nor a DLC, it is a new game.
The definitive edition
At this stage of the Reviews we have no doubt that your attention to Persona 5 Royal has increased but there are still very remarkable things to tell. The most important, most desired by the Spanish community and the one that we hope will give a sales push to the saga in our country is the complete translation into Spanish of texts and graphics. Except for some cases of this last point, everything, absolutely everything, is found with texts in Spanish in Persona 5 Royal. And also the location is fantastic.
In it, the translators have included our typical Spanish slang —up to the odious and fashionable coletilla “en plan ..” —and zero filters to the language with which some characters express themselves, especially Ryuji. There are swear words, many, and extremely horny conversations that will make you drop more than a tear of happiness. Of course, two notes that make the final result a little ugly. The first is programming: some words are put together to form one. The second is the literal translation of some selectable responses in conversations, which may leave us somewhat misplaced. There are not too many of these, but we must warn you about it. It has a worse solution than the first point but it is not impossible either, so hopefully they will solve both in a future patch. And, incidentally, that they fix a phrase that we have found where, directly, it started in the middle and the beginning of it was lost in limbo. However, the end result is very good and you shouldn't be affected by these little mistakes.
In the sound you have already read it, audio in Japanese and English as in the original but with changes in the voice of two characters due to the death of the original voice actors and new voices not previously included for secondary characters. The English voices are not bad at all but we recommend, as always in this type of Japanese-style video games, the indigenous ones. The music on the other hand is complemented by about thirty new musical themes of different styles; one for the new introductory scene and main menu, new characters and other events. If the soundtrack was masterful before Royal, now it raises its excellence even further. As we have commented in the video Reviews, the new tracks are very good although we have found that some of them are somewhat lower in quality when compared to the original compositions.
To end the Reviews, with Persona 5 for PlayStation 4 it happened that it was basically a direct port of the version for PlayStation 3 with the odd arrangement. With Royal this is not the case, it is only available on PlayStation 4 and it shows, go if it shows. Not only because PlayStation 4 Pro users can play it at 4K resolution but also because improvements in lighting, shadow, particle and ambient effects have been added, aliasing has been improved, much higher quality textures have been added , a notorious fluency in animation and everything at 30fps more stable than the Rock of Gibraltar. A true visual spectacle that together with the wonderful artistic design used in the game makes us not want to detach ourselves from the screen. For the latter, do not miss the article written by our colleague Sergio Melero where he talks about the artistic creation of the powerful interface of Persona 5.
CONCLUSION
Persona 5 Royal is not only one of the best JRPG that we can find in the history of video games, it is currently unrivaled. Absolutely all the features of the original have been improved and expanded. Likewise, everything has been perfectly balanced to make it more accessible for any player and the most difficult serial mode has been included – we recommend selecting Normal from now on. There is so much change with respect to the original that it practically seems like a new game, which together with its phenomenal translation into Spanish, make us necessarily want to play it again. We are, therefore, fortunate not only to receive once again a great role-playing game, but also to add tens of hours of new content and in an understandable language. Whether your worm bit you in the past or caused you doubts, now is the time. Perhaps – as it has happened to many – you will be pleasantly surprised.
THE BEST
- Very good translation of texts into Spanish.
- Virtually the entire game has been changed and / or improved.
- Almost 40 hours of new content between Mementos, high schools, new characters and the new semester.
- The Thieves' Den, fantastic bonus content.
- More accessible to any player in all its features.
- The expanded history will surprise you …
- Almost thirty pretty good new songs.
WORST
- Some programming errors in the display of the texts, although nothing scandalous.
Masterpiece
A masterpiece that has mastered its genre to place itself on top of it. A colossus of his generation that will continue to be discussed and remembered in the future. The maximum note does not imply perfection, but is used to point to an absolute referent in which others can and should look at each other.
