Persona 5
is a 2016 role-playing video game developed by P-Studio and published by Atlus. The game is the sixth installment in the Persona series, itself a part of the larger Megami Tensei franchise. It was released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in Japan in September 2016 and worldwide in April 2017. It was published by Atlus in Japan and North America, and by Deep Silver in PAL territories. An enhanced version featuring new content, was released for PlayStation 4 in Japan in October 2019 and worldwide in March 2020. It was published by Atlus in Japan and worldwide by its parent company Sega. Persona 5 Royal was later released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in October 2022.
Taking place in modern-day Tokyo, the story follows a high school student known by the codename Joker who transfers to a new school after he is framed for assault and put on probation. Over the course of a school year, he and other students awaken to a special power, becoming a group of secret vigilantes known as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. They explore the Metaverse, a supernatural realm born from humanity's subconscious desires, to steal malevolent intent from the hearts of adults and change their hearts. As with previous games in the series, the party battles enemies known as Shadows using physical manifestations of their psyche known as Personas. The game incorporates role-playing and dungeon crawling elements alongside social simulation scenarios.
Persona 5 was developed by P-Studio, an internal development division within Atlus led at the time by game director and producer Katsura Hashino. Along with Hashino, returning staff from earlier Persona games included character designer Shigenori Soejima and music composer Shoji Meguro. Preparatory work began during the development of Persona 4, with full development beginning after the release of Catherine in 2011. First announced in 2013, Persona 5 was delayed from its original late 2014 release date due to being unfinished. Its themes revolve around attaining freedom from the limitations of modern society: the story was strongly inspired by picaresque fiction, and the party's Personas were based on literary outlaws and rebels.
Persona 5 has been cited as one of the greatest video games of all time, with praise for its visual presentation, gameplay, story, and music. Including Royal, Persona 5 sold over copies by March 2025, making it the best-selling title in the Megami Tensei franchise. Several pieces of related media have also been produced, including four spin-off games—Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, Persona 5 Strikers, Persona 5 Tactica, and Persona 5: The Phantom X—as well as manga and anime adaptations. The game's cast has also appeared in other games, with Joker appearing as a playable character in the 2018 crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Gameplay
Persona 5 is a role-playing video game where the player takes on the role of a male high school student, codenamed Joker, who lives out a single year while attending school in modern-day Tokyo. The game is governed by a day-night cycle and weather systems that determine general behavior, similar to a social simulation game. The year is punctuated by scripted and random events as Joker attends school, and outside of school he can have part-time jobs, pursue leisure activities, or create items for use in dungeons or in battle. Joker's activities in the real world affect his social statistics; increasing these values grants additional activities and options. When in the real world, Joker can develop character relationships known as "Confidants"; an evolution of the "Social Link" system from Persona 3 and Persona 4. With this system, he can converse with and improve his relationship with other characters he meets, with some leading to possible romances. Improving Confidant ranks with party members unlocks various abilities for use in combat. Improving ranks with non-party Confidants grants other bonuses, such as access to new equipment or boosting experience point gains.Alongside the normal school life is dungeon crawling gameplay of two different types within a realm called the Metaverse: story-specific dungeons called Palaces and a randomly generated dungeon called Mementos. Both are populated by Shadows, physical manifestations of suppressed psyches modeled after mythological and religious figures. Within the dungeons of Mementos, the party can fulfill quests received from Confidants and other non-player characters. While navigating, the party can use stealth to avoid enemy Shadows, and some areas hold puzzles that can be solved using Joker's "Third Eye" ability, which highlights interactable objects and enemy strength. Throughout Palaces are locations known as "Safe Rooms", where the player can save their game and fast travel to other safe rooms within the Palace.
As with previous entries in the series, the game uses a turn-based combat system. Battles can be initiated when the party runs into an enemy, or they can launch an ambush and gain an advantage in battle. In battle, the party has weapons and can summon Personas: manifestations of the main characters' inner psyche that are used mainly for special attacks. If a character strikes an enemy's weakness, they knock the enemy down and are awarded an additional turn. If all enemies are knocked down, a "Hold Up" is triggered, during which the party can launch a devastating "All-Out Attack", demand money or items, or convince a selected Shadow to become one of Joker's Personas. Party members are knocked out when they lose all of their health points, and the game ends if Joker is knocked out.
New Personas can be gained from battle through successful negotiation, and different Persona types are represented through different arcana linked to Confidant links. Personas can be combined, or "fused" within the Velvet Room, a realm Joker visits throughout the story. In the Velvet Room, Personas can be fused through the "Guillotine" fusion process, with the resultant Persona inheriting skills and stats from its parents. More skills are passed on depending on how many skills a Persona has, and the strength of the resulting Persona depends on how advanced its associated Confidant link is. Personas can be sacrificed by "Hanging" to grant experience points to another Persona or by being sent to the "Electric Chair" to create a high-end item. A Persona can also be sent into "Solitary Confinement" for multiple days to undergo intensive training and gain additional skills quicker than normal.
Minor online social elements are incorporated through the "Thieves Guild" feature, where players can see what activities other players did during any given day or aid other players in the Metaverse.
Synopsis
Setting and characters
Persona 5 takes place within the Persona universe, revolving around a group of high school students who harness Personas, physical manifestations of their inner psyche. The story begins in April "20XX " and spans roughly a year. It is set in modern-day Tokyo and features several real-world locations, including Akihabara, Shinjuku, and Shibuya. A major setting throughout the game is Shujin Academy, a high school that the protagonist attends. The second major location is the "Metaverse", a supernatural realm consisting of the physical manifestations of humanity's subconscious desires. In the Metaverse, people with corrupted desires form their own unique "Palace," which is modeled after their distorted perception of a place in the real world, along with a Shadow version of themselves possessing a "Treasure" symbolic of their desires. Returning from earlier entries is the Velvet Room, a place that exists for the growth of Persona users and shifts appearance depending on the current guest; in Persona 5, it takes the form of a prison.The player character is a silent protagonist, a commonplace feature in the Persona series, codenamed Joker. He becomes the leader of a vigilante group known as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, who change the hearts of criminals and other malevolent people through the Metaverse. He is joined by school delinquent Ryuji Sakamoto, fashion model Ann Takamaki, and Morgana, a mysterious cat-like creature. As the game progresses, the group recruits more members, including art prodigy Yusuke Kitagawa, student council president Makoto Niijima, hikikomori computer hacker Futaba Sakura, and cultured corporate heiress Haru Okumura. Also interacting with Joker are high school detective Goro Akechi, public prosecutor and Makoto's older sister Sae Niijima, and Igor and his two assistants Caroline and Justine, who are residents of the Velvet Room.
Plot
Much of the story is told through flashbacks while Sae Niijima interrogates the protagonist. After preventing an assault, he is framed for assaulting the man responsible and put on probation for a year, resulting in expulsion from his school. He is sent to Tokyo to stay with family friend Sojiro Sakura and attend Shujin Academy during his year-long probation. After his arrival, he is drawn into the Velvet Room, where Igor, alongside his assistants, Caroline and Justine, warns him that he must be rehabilitated to avoid future ruin and grants him access to a supernatural mobile app. This leads him into the Metaverse, and the Palace of the school's abusive and lustful gym teacher and volleyball coach Suguru Kamoshida, along with a fellow student, Ryuji Sakamoto, who had been labeled as a troublemaker due to having been provoked by Kamoshida into assaulting him.After the protagonist and Ryuji are captured by the corrupt manifestation of Kamoshida, also known as his Shadow Self, he awakens to his Persona, Arsène, to save Ryuji from being executed. The two escape to the lower levels of the Palace, where they meet Morgana, a mysterious, small cat-like creature who knows much about the Palaces. Morgana informs the protagonist of the ability to change wicked people's hearts by stealing their "Treasure," the emotional root of their behavior and desires, from the Palaces ruled by their Shadow selves. Not long after, upon discovering the truth about Kamoshida's abuse towards other students in the Palace dungeons, Ryuji awakens to his Persona and resolves to stop Kamoshida. The protagonist later confronts other fellow student Ann Takamaki, who was forced into a relationship with Kamoshida in exchange for her friend Shiho Suzui being on the volleyball team. When Ann doesn't come to Kamoshida's house one afternoon, he takes it out on Shiho in an implied sexual assault, causing her to attempt suicide. After which, the group finally decides to steal Kamoshida's heart and force him to confess his crimes, with Ann awakening to her Persona after accidentally stumbling into the Metaverse.
The protagonist assumes the codename Joker, and after changing Kamoshida's heart, he along with Morgana, Ryuji, and Ann form the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, to steal corruption from the hearts of adults to reform the city, and slowly learns of a broader conspiracy to influence the hearts of Tokyo. They are joined along the way by Yusuke Kitagawa, an art student whom they help to reform his corrupt teacher, Ichiryusai Madarame; Sae's sister Makoto, the president of the school's student council who is assigned to spy on them but joins after being blackmailed by a mob boss, Junya Kaneshiro, who they also reform; Sojiro's adopted daughter Futaba Sakura, an expert hacker who became a depressed hikikomori after the conspiracy murdered her mother and framed her using a forged suicide note; and Haru Okumura, a corporate heiress who rebels against her rich father, Kunikazu Okumura, and his attempts to control her life and mistreatment of his employees. Over time, the Phantom Thieves attract the attention of the public and the police, including Sae and celebrity junior detective Goro Akechi.
However, the Phantom Thieves' popularity plummets after a masked assassin frames them for the death of Haru's father. While pursuing the conspiracy, Akechi joins the group and convinces them to change Sae's heart in order to prove their innocence. After infiltrating Sae's Palace, Joker is captured by the police, and Sae interrogates him despite being removed from the case, at which point the story comes full-circle. Joker convinces Sae of the truth. Akechi is revealed to be the assassin and attempts to kill Joker but the Phantom Thieves pull Akechi back into Sae's palace, where he kills Sae's cognition of Joker instead. It's also revealed that the Phantom Thieves knew Akechi's true nature all along and only agreed to infilitrate Sae's palace so that this deception could work. Aided by Sae and Sojiro, the Phantom Thieves go undercover and learn the conspiracy's leader is politician Masayoshi Shido, who was the one who framed and pressed charges against Joker, resulting in his probation. He has been using Akechi's Metaverse ability to remove obstacles in his path toward becoming prime minister and imposing his twisted reforms on Japan. When the Phantom Thieves infiltrate Shido's Palace, they face Akechi, who reveals himself as Shido's illegitimate son and that his collusion with him was part of a plan to get revenge on Shido for abandoning him and his late mother. Once defeated, Akechi sacrifices himself to protect the Phantom Thieves from a group of enemies and allow them to defeat Shido. Despite Shido's arrest and confession, the public's opinion of him remains unchanged, and Shido may be released due to the manipulation of the public by his allies.
The Phantom Thieves infiltrate the depths of Mementos, the public’s Palace, to steal the Treasure at its core, believing that changing the general public's hearts will cause them to realize and accept the truth. Inside, they discover that the public is in chaos and has given up their free will, believing that it’d free them. The Phantom Thieves are ejected from Mementos by the Treasure itself, manifested as the Holy Grail, and vanish after the Metaverse merges with reality. Upon awakening in the Velvet Room, Igor proclaims Joker has failed to prevent the ruin and orders Caroline and Justine to execute him. Realizing that they’re not killers, Caroline and Justine regain their memories and integrate into Lavenza, their proper form. Lavenza reveals that the Igor in the Velvet Room until this point is actually Yaldabaoth, the God of Control, who imprisoned the actual Igor. Yaldabaoth, the Holy Grail made sentient, was created from humanity's wish to be ruled and not act for themselves. Through a wager made with Igor over humanity's goals, Yaldabaoth had given Joker and Akechi their abilities but ensured that Joker would fail to prove that living with ambition is useless.
Yaldabaoth offers Joker to return the world to its previous state at the cost of the world's freedom. If Joker accepts the offer, an alternate ending happens where the Phantom Thieves return to fame at the cost of humanity's free will. If Joker rejects the offer, he reunites with the rest of the Phantom Thieves in the Velvet Room, including Morgana, who was revealed to have been created by the real Igor to lead Joker to the depths of Mementos. The Phantom Thieves attempt to fight Yaldabaoth again, and as Joker's confidants rally the support of the people, they rebel against Yaldabaoth's control and allow Joker to awaken his ultimate Persona, Satanael, to destroy Yaldabaoth and the Metaverse. After Yaldabaoth's defeat, Joker turns himself in to the police for Shido to be prosecuted. While Joker is incarcerated, the rest of the Phantom Thieves and his confidants help secure evidence of his innocence in the assault charge, leading to his conviction being overturned. By spring, Joker's friends drive him back to his hometown.