When Persona 3 first launched in 2007, it was a radical departure from its predecessors. While Revelations: Persona and Persona 2 were more typical JRPGs, Persona 3 stood out immediately from others in the genre. It ditched the demon negotiation mechanic but added a new feature that would go on to define the Persona series forever: Social Links.
The game was part JRPG, part life simulation, and part visual novel. By day, they were maintaining their life as a high school student and forming bonds with NPCs. At night, they were battling Shadows inside the game’s ever-evolving labyrinth dungeon. Social Links functioned as mini-arcs within the story and helped give the cast more depth. This feature has been continued since, though it was rebranded as Confidants in Persona 5.
Many fans consider Persona 5 to be a high point of the series. It’s stylish, delves into complicated themes, and is a huge hit commercially. That’s exactly why Persona 5 should be a swan song for the current formula, as Persona 6 needs to take risks and make significant changes in order for the series to stay fresh. There are plenty of ways this can be accomplished, and these are just a few ideas.
Every Persona game has always had the same core premise: high school students get caught up in the paranormal. After five mainline titles using this basis (technically six, given that Persona 2 is split into two games), it’s time to graduate from it. A huge appeal of Persona is that they’re coming-of-age stories, but there’s actually an easy way to move past high school without losing the relatable hook of overcoming growing pains.
Instead of taking place in a high school, Persona 6 should shift focus towards university students, preferably first-years. It’s a period of time where everyone is trapped in limbo – not a teenager, but not yet an adult. There’s a ton of thematic potential that can be tapped into with this setup. The characters feeling lost as they enter a new part of life is perfect for mirroring how they suddenly stumble upon another realm of reality, for example. It would allow for more adult relationships to be explored, while managing the pressure of day-to-day life of a university student would have a greater sense of pressure than managing a high school student, too.
There’s a ton of inappropriate content in both Persona 4 and 5, content the franchise can do without while managing its own identity. Many characters are presented as predatory in both entries, and it’s played for laughs. The female characters are sexualized for fan service, and Persona 5 has an entire subplot where it’s discovered one of the protagonist’s teachers is moonlighting as a maid. To ensure her secret, she then agrees to work for him. She becomes a romance option if her Confidant level is progressed enough, and she’s not the only grown woman in Persona 5 who can be romanced by a teenager.
With this in mind, Persona needs to grow up. This is something any game should avoid and many would be absolutely panned for, and that’s to say nothing of the franchise’s treatment of non-heteronormative characters and fans: queer characters deserve to be represented with respect. After all, fans have been begging for Atlus to incorporate romances with male party members, but it’s gone ignored. This is another thing that has to change.
Romance has become as synonymous with Persona as Social Links/Confidants, and it’s likely to return. The series handles romances better than most games, as it requires the player to invest a ton of time into building up the friendship with the character first. Personal backstories, motivations, and insecurities are revealed at a slow, natural pace. The relationship evolves in a way that feels organic, and the relationship themselves need to feel the same way. Regardless if the next game stars a male or female protagonist, the player should be able to romance the characters they choose. It’s fine if certain characters can only be romanced by a specific gender, but it would be great if Persona 6 took a cue from western RPGs like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and didn’t limit romance options.
Persona games have excellent turn-based combat, but it would be refreshing to see an attempt at something else. Final Fantasy 15 and the Final Fantasy 7 Remake are great examples of a turn-based JRPG series switching to action-oriented combat. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake actually melded the two combat systems, which is something that Persona 6 could do as well.
In fact, the series has already done this. The upcoming Persona 5 Scramble is a crossover with the Dynasty Warrior series, in the vein of the Legend of Zelda spin-offs, Hyrule Warriors. While its combat is mainly hack-and-slash, using persona skills pauses the action to let the player position the attack. The layer of strategy that Persona games require doesn’t have to be lost by switching from turn-based battles.
Dungeons are a very tricky thing for RPGs to handle. On one hand, they have to be long enough to allow them to feel important and need to implement puzzles to engage the player; on the other, they can’t feel like a tedious slog that overstay their welcome. Persona 5 tried to do new things with its dungeons in the form of Palaces, with each having a radically different aesthetic and theme, along with a true third-person perspective. Unfortunately, many of the Palaces didn’t quite land this so well, but a good compromise could be found by turning to previous entries.
Persona 3 and 4 had randomly generated dungeons as opposed to the structured layout of 5‘s. This made adventuring through them exciting, though it also prevented the dungeons from having any true sense of personality. Combining 5‘s camera perspective and unique dungeon aesthetics with the randomly generated layouts might be the solution. Dungeons wouldn’t be quite as cohesive as Palaces but they’d capture that thrill of traversing through the unknown. Persona 5 toys with this in its Mementos dungeon, which is also randomly generated, so Persona 6 taking this approach isn’t out of the question.
Persona 6 is not known to be in development.
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