Persona 5 Royal is an expanded version of Atlus’ critically acclaimed Persona 5, packing lots of new content into what’s reportedly a definitive package. Despite this, during an interview conducted in the most recent issue of Dengeki PlayStation, a member of the Persona 5 Royal development team stated that the revised JRPG should take around the same length of time to complete as the original. This is due to a combination of technical improvements and reworked design decisions that should help to cut out a lot of playtime padding.
The upcoming Persona 5 upgrade adds compatibility for the PlayStation 4 Pro and implements new battle mechanics, which are both potential time savers. It’ll also introduce an all-new Phantom Thief, new Personas, a new Palace, new narrative and social elements, plus an entire additional semester. Those latter additions should theoretically add a number of hours to the game, so the boasted technical optimizations must be significant.
In order to trim the fat, so to speak, the added time it would take to interact with this impressive amount of extra content has been counterbalanced by a focus on reducing overall load times, the length of battles, and also the duration of Palaces. Through Royal, players are said to be able to experience Persona 5 to its fullest without needing to devote many, if any, more of their precious gaming hours.
Considering that achieving the original Persona 5’s platinum trophy can take anywhere in the region of a whopping 150 to 200 hours, many will be thankful for the courtesy on Atlus’ part in maximizing their in-game level of productivity. By extension, this should also make for a more enjoyable experience, which is no mean feat when the original already stands as “proof that few titles can compare to a truly great role-playing game.”
Persona 5 Royal is due out on October 31, 2019 in Japan. It’s scheduled to follow in early 2020 (potentially during March) elsewhere on PS4.
[Source: Resetera]
