Earlier this week Atlus USA held a stream showcasing gameplay from Persona 5. This Persona 5 November preview was exciting for me for a number of reasons – it was English-language gameplay being presented by English-speaking hosts, and it was being broadcast at a reasonable hour. It was a Persona 5 November preview that began with slightly disappointing news: after some introductions from the Atlus US Staff, the Atlus CEO Naoto Hiraoka appeared for a recorded message, thanking people for JP sales and promising a quality release for the west, but also announcing a delay to April 4. However, it was also revealed that that the western release will have Japanese voices as DLC, and that PlayStation Experience in December will have a demo. The former point was well received by numerous fans, although personally I enjoy the English voices in the Persona games I’ve played.

Persona 5 November preview – content and scene-setting

More DLC news emerged from the Persona 5 November preview when the hosts mentioned that a Persona 5 PS4 theme would be coming to people in Europe later this month, and that it would be free for 24 hours. (Disposable Media isn’t holding its breath, but should the theme appear on the store we’ll prepare some news on it.) After talking about some of the merchandise that was coming out to complement the game’s release, the hosts of the Persona 5 November preview cut to live gameplay – viewers saw scenes outside, in and around the high school, and they came complete with the usual classroom pop quiz moments you get in the earlier games. Introductory story beats were shown when clips of dialogue highlighted discussion between Ryuji and the protagonist. The two characters talked about the castle that forms the main dungeon of the game, and after unsuccessfully searching for the castle on foot, they try using a phone’s navigation app to find it. However, it’s revealed that the app has an effect on the real world that makes the castle materialise in front of Ryuji and the protagonist. There, they meet Morgana and she explains how the castle came into being and how school-goers have been held captive in the castle.

Persona 5 November preview – triggers and security

Inside the castle (well, it’s referred to more as a “Palace”, which seems to be the standard name for dungeon exploration areas), the player is given pointers on what to do in the upper-right corner of the screen (“investigate this”, “go here”, “follow Morgana”) and it isn’t long before they encounter the kind of battles already seen in plenty of previous streams and videos. The Persona 5 November preview showed that activating certain triggers around the map will open up more paths in the Palace as you’d expect, and scripted moments guide the team into one of the first safe rooms, where Morgana explains the Palace’s relationship with reality and the thoughts that created the Palace. The protagonist later gets their basic weapon in the first safe room and the party assess the situation outside and overhear talk of their next location. However, this is where the security level mechanic comes in – get spotted when going in to attack and the security level is raised, beat enemies with surprise attacks and there’s less of a negative effect. If the security level is too high you’re forced to leave the dungeon.

Persona 5 November preview – guns and weaknesses

Another tutorial revealed in the Persona 5 November preview explains that in each battle every character in the party has a gun – you can either fire this gun until you run out of ammunition, or back out if the shots aren’t effective against an enemy. Additionally, you can switch targets in-between shots so it may be useful for quickly picking out weaknesses to gunfire. A later tutorial explains elemental weaknesses and all-out attacks (which work as you expect if you’ve played Persona – expose weaknesses and you have the option to deal bonus damage to all enemies), and after some more exploration the party discover people imprisoned in the palace and resolve to remember the faces they see and try to make their way out. However, they ultimately run into the first scripted miniboss encounter – Morgana and the protagonist fall to the enemies in this battle, but this transitions into another dialogue scene; in other words, an intended failure. Of course, this is the cue for a persona awakening (for Ryuji) and a second round against the enemies. After some more scenes, the dungeon sequence ends and the hosts of the Persona 5 November preview call for an intermission.

Persona 5 November preview – safe rooms, Third Eye and more

When they resume, we see a different area of the game where the hosts explain how the player can warp to the safe room. Here, they can talk to other characters to refresh their memory on what they should be doing, talk to one another or heal up. This segment was only shown briefly before the hosts hurried on to the Velvet Room, where players can fuse and register personas as expected, and then the hosts returned to dungeon exploration and battling. One ability they highlighted was “Third Eye” which highlights areas of interest and shows enemy strength (kind of like the glowing “strong” enemies of earlier games?), but using this ability went awry for the hosts as they got spotted and saw the security level increase. Later, they showcased the preset cover spots that allow for ambushes that give the characters an advantage in combat, and find a locked area that they open up using Third Eye to find switches.

The locked area secretes an area map, and further exploration leads to more hidden paths. In a way, Third Eye is also like an advanced version of the Persona 3 Portable ability to highlight interactive spots in the daytime (sort of.) It certainly looks like it will be crucial in finding the right triggers to solve the key/door puzzles in the dungeons – I was initially worried when I heard news that dungeons may be more complex and labyrinthine than in previous games, but hopefully Third Eye will make things a little more straightforward. Another intermission by the hosts explains that the top-right of the HUD shows “days until expulsion” and that this is like Persona 4’s fog deadline except a lot more explicit – in my mind, this is A Good Thing. Whilst I never missed a deadline in Persona 4, the amount of time always seemed a bit ambiguous, and having a countdown visible will help make planning much more straightforward. Later on in the Persona 5 November preview the hosts also showed what happens if the enemy gets the advantage in battle – more enemies appear on the field, security is raised, and the enemies get an opening turn. Happily, it seems that winning battles will reduce the security level slightly.

There were numerous other bits and pieces covered in the Persona 5 November preview, but one other gameplay element that caught my interest was the fact that negotiations still utilise enemy personality types à la Revelations Persona. If you’ve been following Persona 5 news, you’ll know that if you strike an enemy effectively you can either go in for a large attack or negotiate with them, and here it seems like you probably won’t have 20 different interactions to choose from like in Revelations: Persona, but at the same time it might mean that certain responses are recommended against certain opponents.

Persona 5 November preview – will it be worth the wait?

Persona 5 has been delayed so much that it almost seems like a cruel joke – the opening trailer ended with the words “Winter 2014 for Japan”, and Japan didn’t get the game until September 15th of this year. Meanwhile, fans in the west will have to wait a few weeks beyond the last estimate of February 14th before they can get their hands on the game. Of course I’d rather have a delayed game which is good than a hurried game, but we’ll have to wait and see if this new estimated release date sticks. Will it be better than previous games in the series? All signs point to a more polished game with more intricate dungeons and new gameplay gimmicks; however, even though Persona 4 now seems slightly small-scale in comparison, that game was still immaculately designed. Hopefully Persona 5 doesn’t confuse expansion with padding.