In the modern era of open-world RPGs, with games as different as Fallout and Octopath Traveler competing for attention, creating a fulfilling and unique exploration experience for players can be a Herculean task. Persona 5 Royal didn't have the vast open landscapes of Horizon Forbidden West or the near-limitless content of a Ubisoft title, but instead presented players a different kind of experience. Atlus gave players a curated and refined open-world with details around every corner and a wealth of secrets to discover.
The relative scale of Persona 5 Royal's world is incomparable to more traditional AAA open-world games. Instead of a wide landscape of terrain meant mostly to be quickly sprinted through, Persona 5 Royal gives players a much smaller world to explore, but fills it with the same amount of content found in worlds twice its size. The achievement of Persona 5 Royal was this approach, bringing the joys of exploring a massive open world to tight city streets and high rise buildings. The player is encouraged to take their time and enjoy the world with a greater attention to smaller details. For the players that do, the rewards are incredibly satisfying.
How Confidants Make Persona 5 Royal's City Feel Alive
The confidant system is so fundamental to optimizing gameplay in Persona 5 Royal that to some players it may feel strange to think of them as secret content. Yet Persona 5 Royal, like the Persona games before it, leaves it entirely possible for less curious players to miss certain confidants altogether. These confidants can be unlocked at any time, but unlocking them requires a consistent curiosity from the player and a desire to experiment.
With the Sun confidant for example, the player initially discovers Toranosuke Yoshida during the standard events of the story, but that is not enough to unlock his confidant. If the player was paying attention though, Yoshida often goes to the same beef bowl place where the protagonist can work part-time. Working at the beef bowl shop will eventually result in a cutscene where Yoshida appears, and his confidant is officially unlocked.
While using a guide could give a player this answer directly, the subtext of Yoshida's introduction reflects the way that many social interactions occur: coincidence. The player's choice to work at the beef bowl shop may be due to Yoshida, but it could also be for an entirely separate reason, and yet Yoshida will still appear. Giving players multiple ways to experience side stories is wonderful on its own, but its integration into the part-time job mechanic pushes players to engage with all the systems the designers have created. In order to truly experience Persona 5 Royal, the game requires the player be a part of every element of its meticulously-tailored metropolis. It's these design choices that make in-game exploration feel player-directed even while the experience itself is very carefully curated.
Other confidants similar to Yoshida like Chihaya's Fortune and Shinya's Tower are similarly easy to miss. With Fortune, while the player only needs to visit Chihaya three times to begin her storyline, finding Chihaya is not a clear-cut task. Her fortune-telling stand is only up on certain days at certain times of day, and it can be easy to miss her especially before knowing that she is important. Players that take the effort to find her or stumble upon her are in for both a compelling confidant and all the mechanical benefits that come from that system.
The Tower storyline starts as a Mementos quest that goes awry, with the player lacking the skills to even hit the enemy shadow. It's then that the player has to follow hearsay and rumors to find the legendary arcade player who could potentially be of help. When the player arrives and talks to Shinya in the arcade, the confidant is then unlocked. Combining a Mementos side quest with the circumstances of a real location within the world, the Arcade plagued by a cheater, uses multiple in-game systems to reward the player for making the effort and leaves them a fulfilling confidant to bond with.
How Environmental Secrets In Persona 5 Royal Make Exploration Compelling
There are so many lesser known environmental secrets in Persona 5 Royal like the lottery booth, the smoothie stand, the Kichijoji couch, the post box, and several others, but a lesser appreciated highlight of the game has to be its vending machine system. Much like in real life, while there are a wide variety of vending machines around the city, each one has a unique set of drinks for sale. These machines can offer players incredibly good deals on valuable healing items, but only if the player takes the time to remember what each vending machine sells.
The decision to put a distinct set of items in each vending machine is very simple one, but its inclusion gives the player a subtle push to explore the world and keep their surroundings in mind. When the player sees a vending machine, suddenly it's a chance at discounted rare items rather than a simple item shop.
With areas like the smoothie stand, Kichijoji couch, and postbox, the player can gain a massive advantage in the early game, but these areas are easily missed by players. Each of them gives stat bonuses either to confidant bonding or the player's personality stats, and making consistent use of them can save massive amounts of time. Since the early game is full of grinding activities to build up personality stats and the late game has confidants bonding far more slowly than before, these systems give players reasons to explore the world by continuously assisting the player throughout their play time. Whether the player discovers them early on or near the end, they are sure to value the discovery and search for more.
How Persona 5 Royal Delivers The Ideal City Life
When playing Persona 5 Royal, the game's version of Tokyo often feels as real or lived as any city, but with a streamlined design to give players a city more dynamic than any found in the real world. With Persona 5 Royal, Atlus depicts a version of city life that has been refined down to only its most exciting elements. Chance encounters with interesting people, tight bustling alleys and hidden side streets, seasonal impacts on stores and travel locations, and so much more. Persona 5 Royal is a vertical slice of the ideal city life and delivers on the experience of urban exploration to the fullest.
One of the most amazing things about exploration in video games is that with the right attention to detail, a world can feel so much larger than it truly is. Persona 5 Royal creates this feeling of scale through its careful use of labyrinthian map design and the meticulous placement of a huge variety of secrets. So many side streets and interactables can be entirely missed, even on multiple playthroughs. It's those moments, when a player finds something new in familiar locations, that Persona 5 Royal's world shines like few others.
Persona 5 Royal is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
