Dungeon crawling is a staple of the Persona series with each entry pitting players against Shadows as they make their way through Tartarus in Persona 3 Portable, the TV world in Persona 4 Golden, or Mementos and Palaces within the Metaverse in Persona 5 Royal. While most of these dungeons feature some puzzle-solving mechanics, Persona 5 Royal ups the ante by introducing more robust environmental puzzles within its Palaces. However, Persona 6 could take this mechanic even further by taking a page out of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's book.
One of the most highly-praised aspects of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the way it allows players to manipulate the environment to solve puzzles using a variety of unique abilities including Fuse, Ultrahand, Recall, and Ascend. These abilities turn Hyrule into sandbox for players to get creative with the ways in which they approach the puzzles found within the game's shrines and temples. While the next Persona game doesn't need to go all-in on sandbox-like features, giving its characters unique abilities to use outside of battle could help freshen up the series' dungeon exploration gameplay.
How Persona 6 Could Include Environmental Manipulation Like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Puzzles within Persona series dungeons are usually limited to navigating their maze-like levels trying to find the stairs that will take the party to the next floor. However, Persona 5 changed things up by adding more complex challenges players need to complete in order to progress through a Palace, such as finding the bank vault codes to reach the depths of Kaneshiro's Palace or navigating past the timer puzzles in Okumura's Palace. Most of these puzzles still only require players to push an in-game button in order to solve them and future dungeons could stand to benefit from unique player abilities only available outside of battle.
For the most part, the only party members that can utilize special abilities outside of battle are Persona's navigators, such as Persona 3's Fuuka, Persona 4's Rise, and Persona 5's Futaba, who are able to provide intel on the dungeon such as its layout and locations of treasure. Persona 5 Royal added the use of the grappling hook for dungeon traversal outside of battle, but this ability's use was limited to specific locations within dungeons. As the Persona series continues to iterate upon these dungeon traversal mechanics, drawing inspiration from Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the logical next step.
A great way Persona 6 could raise the bar for dungeon crawling is by giving each party member a unique skill that can only be used outside of battle that can affect the environment to help with level traversal akin to Link's abilities in Tears of the Kingdom. Perhaps one character can allow the party to pass through certain types of walls, or another might be able to create blocks that allow the party to reach otherwise inaccessible places. Not only would a mechanic like this add to the creativity in level design, but it would give players a reason to swap out their active party members often.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is likely going to be an influential title for a lot of future games, but short of going fully open-world, there some crucial aspects Persona 6 could pull from the game. While the majority of the Persona series' gameplay is split between JRPG combat and life sim elements, its dungeon crawling plays an important role that can't be overlooked. As Atlus continues to push the envelope for the Persona series, revamping dungeon crawling with unique abilities for use outside of battle should be a major point of focus for Persona 6.
Persona 5 Royal is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.