Well, well. It’s been an eventful week for fans of Persona 5. The Persona Super Live 2019 concert finally managed to answer a few questions that people have been holding on to for a while. What’s next for Persona 5? What’s Persona 5: The Royal all about? And why is there a mysterious placeholder website for “P5S”? One of the most widely-circulated rumours –
a rumour perpetuated through Best Buy listings and Twitter comments – was that something Persona 5-shaped would be heading over to the Nintendo Switch. (Needless to say, we didn’t want to report on this until we knew exactly what was going on.) Meanwhile, fans were fairly certain that Persona 5: The Royal was a PS4 game, if only because of the PS4 logo at the beginning of the debut trailer. However, this week was when everyone would get answers, as the Persona Super Live 2019 concert delivered trailers for two new and very different games in the Persona 5 universe.
Persona Super Live 2019 – the Royal reveal
Let’s start with Persona 5: The Royal. During Persona Super Live 2019, the new project for PS4 received a brand new trailer that ran for just over three minutes – teasing new faces, new events and an October 31st release date for Japan (it will come to the west next year.) Although the dialogue in the trailer was in Japanese, the teases of new content confirmed what many were thinking; this is Persona 5’s equivalent of P3: FES or P4: Golden – a new game in the same universe, but with a whole load of new content. This could be particularly exciting if it means that the framework of the original game gets some fine-tuning; I personally felt a bit disappointed by the pacing of certain dungeons, and I know others were quick to criticise the quality of the writing. We’ll have to wait and see if this is the game that finally does everything right.
Persona Super Live 2019 – the Scramble surprise
As for P5S? Many speculated that the S in the name stood for Switch (which is kind of weird when none of the other ports have the console’s name in them, but still) and my mood turned from sceptical to more open-minded as more teases and rumours began to float around. Happily, answers arrived pretty quickly in the aftermath of Persona Super Live 2019; P5S is a Switch (and PS4) game, but rather than being a port of the RPG, “Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers” is a Musou/Warriors game in the Persona 5 universe. In the trailer (just over a minute this time) we see Joker descending upon dozens of demons – series favourites such as Pyro Jack and Pixie can be seen – and sending them flying with spectacular attacks, as well as summoning Arsene to blast the demons with an explosion. It’s certainly an unexpected direction for both P5 and the Persona franchise as a whole… but as you can see from the trailer, it certainly looks the part.
Persona Super Live announcements – wrapping up
It’s hard to know what to make of the Persona Super Live 2019 announcements right now; obviously Persona 5: The Royal could be great if it ends up trimming the bloat from the original game, and I welcome more P5, but there’s still quite a wait before its release. Meanwhile, it’s fair to say that Scramble isn’t the Persona 5 game Switch owners were expecting, but it is a brand new direction for the series and it could provide a means of introducing Musou/Warriors fans to Persona, and vice versa. There’s a lot more speculation to be done in the meantime, so let us know what you think of the reveals in the comments.
