This essay contains spoilers for Persona 5 Royal, specifically the new story elements added to Royal. If you’ve played Persona 5 but haven’t played Royal, and you don’t care about spoilers, there’s a healthy amount of plot summary in here. So you should be able to follow along.
In my previous essay on Persona 5, I identified a lot of problems I had with the overall flow of the narrative, the way that the game was too messy to hone in on the themes I felt had a lot of potential. It made its morals too easy while also contradicting them anyway without even trying, coming to a head in a final act that didn’t have much to do with the rest of the game. The game derived a lot of power from its sprawl, and I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to call it a great game; but there’s issues.
The deluxe rerelease of the game, Persona 5 Royal, comes with new characters and a new story arc (on top of several very welcome quality of life improvements). These changes, to me, show an awareness of the rough edges around the base game’s narrative. It doesn’t fix those problems — the original game is largely intact, and after all, I wrote that first essay based on my playthrough of Royal — but the game’s new content, largely confined to a new arc that functions more or less as a separate story from the rest of the game, functions as a self-contained unit that nevertheless extends and sometimes works in opposition to what the base game was doing. What results is, in my opinion, the best section in the entire game.
The core of Royal’s new content is centred around a new character, Dr. Takuto Maruki. For much of the game, he’s an unassuming new figure; he’s brought into Shujin Academy after Shiho’s suicide attempt as a councilor to help students talk about any of their problems. He’s young, cute, and eager to provide snacks. He makes every attempt to make students comfortable talking to him, especially the ones like Ryuji who are actively resistant towards him. His attempts at being casual — bribing people with snacks, silly thought exercises — are actually rather awkward, which actually helps disarm the tension. Each member of the Phantom Thieves has a scene alone with Maruki, which usually isn’t all that interesting (especially since the voice acting budget didn’t extend to those scenes), but does at least show that he’s not bluffing; he has the skills to help the people he talks to, and the Phantom Thieves usually walk away from their conversations feeling a little bit better about everything that’s happened.
Eventually, as Joker’s relationship with Maruki develops through confidant conversations, you learn that Maruki has done research into cognitive psience, which of course raises some concern among the Phantom Thieves. But the dude has such a goofy presence that it’s hard to be too worried — certainly not when you’ve got guys like Shido to deal with, who Maruki clearly has no involvement with — and he also seems to really care about the people he’s involved with. He talks often about wanting to be able to treat peoples’ minds in the same way that we can treat their physical bodies, to find ways to be able to fix them and make the pain go away. It’s not hard to predict where this is going, but he also starts talking about this stuff really, really early in the game; far beyond when he actually becomes a major player.
In Royal’s new arc, right at the start of the new year, you discover that something’s off. Shortly after defeating Yaldabaoth, Joker comes downstairs to the bar to a real shock: Morgana’s a human, and Futaba’s mother is alive. Their two biggest wishes have come true, and they’re acting as if everything is totally normal while Joker’s wondering what the fuck is happening. He very quickly finds out that everyone else has had wishes granted: Ryuji’s still on the track team; Shiho never tried to kill herself; Yusuke is living with a competent, benevolent Madarame; both Makoto’s and Haru’s fathers are alive. They’re living their best lives, and the Phantom Thieves seem to still more or less be friends, although their memories seem foggy in order to make this reality work. But nothing seems to have changed for Joker, and he’s freaked out by the whole situation; so he sets out to figure out what the hell is going on.
Eventually, Joker discovers that this is Maruki’s doing, who has his own palace and even his own Persona that is able to grant peoples’ wishes. Using information he learned from his private sessions with the Phantom Thieves, he was able to change reality to create their own ideal world. (“Ideal and the Real” is actually the name of his musical theme.) Maruki’s plan is to use the information from Mementos to eventually change the reality of the entire world to one where everyone’s wishes can come true and pain is eliminated entirely. Which raises the question: is this something that Joker wants to stop?
After all, this seems like the mirror funhouse version of what Yalbadaoth was trying to do only weeks earlier. The God of Control was trying to take away peoples’ agency and desires because, in his view, they were only causing people pain; Maruki is changing reality for that very same removal of pain. It’s a more articulate version of the themes of the Yalbadaoth arc. Maruki’s arc is so much better largely because we’ve actually spent the entire game learning about Maruki in small doses and truly gotten to know him as a character. We know his backstory, we know the world he believes in, and we’ve seen him try to bring that about. He was never telling the full truth, much like Yalbadaoth, but unlike him, Maruki was being emotionally honest; the person that Maruki was presenting was the person he really is. It’s through this that we can see how a kindhearted person can view this incredible distortion of reality. Even when you meet him in his palace and approach him as an antagonist, the game never tries to pull the rug from under you; this is the same guy you met before, and that kindheartedness was never an act. He really wants to help people.
Through his entire arc, Maruki never wavers in his convictions. He asks Joker his opinion, but regardless of Joker’s answer, Maruki remains firm. He doesn’t want to fight Joker, but repeatedly stands his ground even when faced with confrontation. If Joker disagrees with him, wants to return to the real world, Maruki understands. He’s not disappointed or angry, and in a way I almost feel as though he thinks there’s a chance that Joker may be right; but if that’s so, it’s up to fate, and whoever emerges the victor is the one whose reality deserves to stand tall.
This talk of ‘final fight’ implies a clear choice: Joker is supposed to fight for peoples’ agency, their right not to be deceived. But Royal also comes with another ending that’s valid in its own way, complete with a credits roll, where Joker accepts Maruki’s reality and the Phantom Thieves live happily ever after. In comparison to the teary drawn-out goodbyes of the regular ending, there’s a definite appeal to this ending. But it also ensures that a piece of the Phantom Thieves is gone forever, and their fates are entirely drawn by one man who’s essentially figured himself a god. It’s not a clear decision, which is something that the main game sorely lacked. Even though Royal presents a ‘right’ decision, it’s not the act of making said decision that feels good; it’s the undercurrent of doubt that lingers through that choice, a thought that never goes away, wondering if you really did the right thing.
This decision is guided largely on two fronts, by two people who are not Phantom Thieves. The first of them is Akechi, a character that I had problems with in the main game that received an overhaul in Royal. Akechi was an ill-defined character whose, to me, half-baked philosophies were never properly reconciled with the person he truly was, hidden behind a really stupid twist and many layers of deceipt. To my understanding, I wasn’t the only person who had problems with Akechi — aside from the people who love him as their little pancake boy, which I honestly get (something about Robbie Daymond’s voice can be very soothing) — and so Royal set out to try and fix the character a bit. The big difference in the main game is that he has a whole new set of confidant conversations that are in line with how regular confidants work in the game, not based on predefined moments like in the original game.
These conversations don’t fix the problems with Akechi — nothing can fix how fucking awful that twist is on a basic plot level alone. But they do provide some more context for Akechi as a person, and his confidant is one of the few that really feels like he’s developing a relationship with Joker. As a literal mirror image of sorts, Akechi is continually fascinated by all the ways in which Joker and Akechi — true to their own justice, shunned by the world — are the same, while also being so completely different. Akechi surely feels some guilt over being an assassin full of vengeance, but he’s always rationalized it based on the way the world treated him. But when he sees someone like Joker, who hasn’t had an easy go of it himself, twist those to more evidently virtuous ends, it twists something inside him. Eventually, before the big plot twist, Akechi takes Joker into Mementos and has a real ‘mask off’ (ha!) moment, emotionally, where he admits he sees Joker as a bitter rival, that he actually hates Joker. It doesn’t change the badness of the upcoming twist, but we at least see some context for how he sees Joker and how he views the world.
Which brings us to Maruki’s arc. In Maruki’s reality, Akechi never died; he lived to take Joker’s place in jail after the fallout with Yalbadaoth, and Maruki brought him back as fulfilment of Joker’s wish. (Though Joker doesn’t know this; Akechi only has a slight inkling.) Akechi, suddenly released from prison without explanation, is also very wary of this new reality, and teams up with Joker to see what’s going on. With nothing left to hide from Joker, this is the first time you get to see Akechi’s true self, who turned out to be a character I found really fascinating.
I mean, yes, when he puts on his black mask and starts ranting and raving about how much he wants to tear Shadows from limb to limb, uh, the edgelord stuff is pretty goofy. But how he reconciles his rage and his detective identity in real life is really interesting. By now, Akechi’s been through a lot of shit, and technically he’s not even supposed to exist. Even before the events of the game he had a lot of unresolved shit that festered into every fibre of his being, and his grand scheme resulting in a death that got undone has to fuck you up. What’s left sometimes barely feels human, and he’s at a point where it seems like he doesn’t see the point in resolving loose ends. He doesn’t ever really address the events prior to his resurrection, and I don’t think he really wants to. And I’m sure that once he his existence was contingent on Maruki’s world, he only saw his existence as temporary anyway; why bother?
Unless, of course, he were to remain in Maruki’s world. But he has no interest in that, because more than anything else, he hates being controlled. He hated how he and his mom were powerless after being discarded by Shido, and he masterminded a whole scheme to enact revenge on his father that was actually working extremely well until he started talking about fucking pancakes. His detective identity — which, as it turns out, isn’t a crock of shit, and he actually does have some skills — is based entirely around being able to find the truth, to see the reality behind the facade. To have his entire existence controlled by someone else once again is something he could never stand. Maruki intends on blending the facade and the reality until they’re one and the same, without the explicit consent of the people it impacts, and Akechi can’t stand for that.
So we know Akechi’s perspective. The opposing viewpoint is one we get through a great new character, Kasumi Yoshizawa. She is introduced early in the game as an honors student and a talented gymnast who receives special treatment from the school based on her good performances. She befriends Joker after he shoos away a creepy dude, and stays largely outside the Phantom Thieves’ circle (a necessary consequence of being a new character in an existing story) while occasionally hanging out with Joker. This relationship is one of the most purely social in the game for a long time, as she doesn’t join as a party member and she doesn’t have any problems to solve, at least not in Mementos. She gets a lot of story beats largely separated from everything else, and because of that it felt to me like the relationship she and Joker share is very different from any other. Which I think is okay, because she’s a very likeable character! Kasumi is very earnest and friendly, and her commitment to gymnastics seems entirely like a personal goal despite many external pressures to succeed. But she does have trouble navigating those internal and external motivations, which is where Joker’s — the player’s — guidance comes into play; so much so that she feels the need to call him senpai. (It’s not really a weird thing, though, and she shows an abundance of respect to just about everyone.) This relationship comes to a head shortly before Sae’s palace, when there’s a school dance and she insists on dancing with Joker in a full anime FMV; in that moment, the game seems like it’s really pushing for the player to think about a romance with Kasumi. (Which means it’s too bad you can’t lock in a relationship with her until well after the chance for many romantic scenes.)
Eventually, Kasumi stumbles into an unknown palace — which we later find out is Maruki’s palace — and Joker chases after her right as she awakens to her Persona, fueled by frustration at the school’s treatment of her middling gymnastics performances. Joker and Morgana offer her a place with the Phantom Thieves (who, in an earlier conversation with Joker and Akechi, she was concerned people would rely on too much, which seems like a very teenager-y thing to say); she declines, saying she wanted to focus on her gymnastics for the time being. She does, however, sneak into Sae’s palace and save Joker’s ass, and offers to join the Phantom Thieves; only to be turned down, because with Shido and Yaldabaoth, shit was getting real and she didn’t have the same personal stakes in it that the rest of the gang did. The timing is never right — largely, of course, because the game needs Kasumi to be sidelined until Maruki’s arc, but it works to develop her as a character that doesn’t quite fit in with this band of misfits, even though they all like her very much.
In the new year, after Yalbadaoth is defeated, she joins Joker for an excursion to a shrine and runs into the rest of the Phantom Thieves in their new reality. Even Kasumi, who doesn’t know them as well as Joker does, realizes that something is off. She joins Akechi and Joker in Maruki’s palace, where she learns a terrible truth about herself. Kasumi had mentioned to Joker before that she had a sister that died, but didn’t elaborate on it much. In Maruki’s palace, we see the moments of her sister’s death; only, we discover that the sister is Kasumi. The person we know as Kasumi is actually her twin sister Sumire. Sumire is very different from the eager, joyous Kasumi we know; Sumire was actually very quiet and reserved, and though she was every bit as committed to gymnastics as Kasumi, she could never quite achieve the same results. Though Kasumi (and, I think, their parents) were always supportive of Sumire, this didn’t stop jealousy and a lack of self-confidence from developing. Upset at these feelings while talking to Kasumi, Sumire ran out into the middle of the road, and as Kasumi chased her, she was hit by a car and died. Mixed with her existing feelings, Sumire fell into a borderline catatonic state. Eventually she talked to Maruki in a counselling session, and wished that she could be more like her sister. So Maruki granted her wish, made her become Kasumi, and suddenly all the pain was gone, and she was the superstar she always dreamed of being — not just the gymnast who could get results, but also the sister she admired and envied.
When Sumire is reminded of this truth, all the pain she felt comes back to her. She can’t take it. Maruki says he can make her forget the pain once again, and she has no doubts about what she wants to do: she wants to remain Kasumi instead of suffering as Sumire. Akechi, of course, protests, but it’s up to Joker; if you stand against Maruki, then Sumire actually summons her Persona to fight you. The pain in her heart grows even deeper as she does this, unable to understand why Joker, her senpai, would betray her wishes like this, would let her pain survive. It’s heartbreaking, and for a second it seems that Maruki and Sumire’s combined powers might be too much for Joker and Akechi. This when the rest of the Phantom Thieves come to save the day. Joker had spent the past week nudging each of them in the direction of realizing that the reality they live in isn’t a real one, and collectively they suddenly break out of it; confused, but resolute that they wanted to choose their own fates. They chase after Joker and save the day, bringing Sumire back to safety.
At this point, Sumire is out of options; she’s forced to be Sumire, to remember Kasumi’s death. And she struggles through this, but once again relies on Joker to help her. She remembers all the things that Kasumi was great at, but she also remembers the things that Sumire was great at. She eventually not only forgives Joker for forcing her from Maruki’s reality, but thanks him. By the end of their confidant, she out-and-out tells Joker she loves him, the only confidant who has the guts not to beat around the bush about their feelings. (At this point, how could you say no? I’d already hooked up with Makoto, but then she had to go and say she was gonna be a fuckin’ cop. So I was ready to dump her for Sumire.) By the end, Sumire learns to be the best of her old self and Kasumi, being a better person than either of them ever were. It will forever be tragic that Kasumi could never grow like that herself, and you get the sense that Sumire’s ideal version of Kasumi may never truly go away. But Sumire is able to move on, be herself, have grown and learned on her own terms.
So although Joker gets pulled in two directions, suggests that Maruki’s world is a viable alternative, the one where people get to choose themselves is shown to be the best. Even the rest of the Phantom Thieves, ripped from their ideal worlds, each get a scene with Joker where they kick themselves for having betrayed Joker. They said they would always be there for Joker, and they weren’t; they let themselves be whisked away into a fantasyland, leaving Joker in the dust. And they’re grateful for letting Joker bring them back, let them be themselves once again. You also get some of the game’s darkest Phan-Site requests during this period from people that Maruki presumably hasn’t yet reached with his powers. One kid asks for the Phantom Thieves to kill him, because he’s afraid that his festering hatred for his sister will end in him hurting her; another is from a child whose mother is so deep in depression that she’s not even providing meals for herself or her child. Maruki changed a lot, alarmingly fast, and it’s possible that his reach simply didn’t extend to them yet; it’s also possible that his changes caused these problems, or that they’re simply outside of his grasp. We simply don’t know, and depending on your perspective, this may cast some doubts on his methods.
Yet ultimately, there’s never a single moment where you’re left to conclude that, without a doubt, Maruki’s actions are wrong. Even after you’ve made it to the end of the Palace, with a day before the deadline to steal his heart, Maruki still offers the player one more chance to turn around and let Maruki realize his world, to remove everyone’s pain. Even as deep in as you are, in that moment it still feels like a valid option. Of course, as a player, there’s no point turning back now, and if you weren’t confident about where the rest of the story lies, you surely are by this point. But those doubts linger even as you give Maruki his calling card and head for one final confrontation.
That confrontation is a tough one. Every time you think you’ve defeated Maruki, that you think he’s finally accepted that fate has decreed the Phantom Thieves the winners, he keeps coming back even stronger. The first fight, against a Persona that’s a literal god from the Lovecraft mythos, is a long fight that takes away different abilities each turn, and requires proper planning every turn to take out a new set of tentacles so the scales don’t tip away from you. You defeat that, and he fuses with his Persona to become something incredibly powerful, seemingly invincible. But Futaba pinpoints his weakness, which becomes exposed as every Phantom Thief staves off his attack to allow for Joker to jump up for the final blow. (The game leaves that gunshot for the player to press, letting you be the one to finally end your journey.) Yet even then, as the cognitive world collapses, Maruki doesn’t give up. He goes for one final battle with Joker as the cognitive world collapses and both of them have lost their Personas, both of them weary and beaten, fighting each other only with their fists. Joker wins, of course, and Maruki almost falls into the abyss. Yet Joker saves him, and Morgana (who pays off an earlier joke by turning into a helicopter) escorts them all safely out.
This ending is startling, because even though I knew Maruki’s convictions were strong, I didn’t expect they were that strong. Maruki’s calm demeanour even while fighting the Phantom Thieves suggested to me that he would eventually be willing to accept defeat. But he drives things to the bitter end, to nearly being wiped from all of existence, before he’s willing to let his dream die, and it’s a conviction that’s almost a little scary. He really believed in his vision to a degree that no other character in the game did. The Phantom Thieves often had asinine doubts creep in, the villains never had any true beliefs, and even Yaldabaoth seemed more concerned with exerting his power than executing a unified vision for the world. Maruki really cared, and as we went through his palace learning about his history — the girlfriend that he saved with his powers at the cost of his relationship with her, the way he pulled Sumire out of her darkest hour — it reinforced everything positive we’d ever known about him. No twist, no sense that he lost his path like a comic book villain. This was the path he always wanted to go down. And it feels terrible to stop him.
But you do, and life goes on. The original ending of Persona 5 carries on, Joker gets to go on dates, and eventually everyone moves on with their lives, giving each other tearful goodbyes along the way. Unfortunately, we don’t get much from the three characters at the centre of Royal. Sumire doesn’t actually show up in the section where you say goodbye to everyone, and she only gets a passing comment about “keeping your head up” as if they were only casual acquaintances. (Very weird, given how hard it felt like they were pushing the relationship before that. At least Joker’s dates with her are cute.) Maruki becomes a taxi driver who helps Joker escape the feds on his way home, doling out some advice about being willing to start over, like he’s doing now; yet I’d like to know more. And Akechi disappears from existence, just as Maruki said he would, though the game does give a brief (meaningless) tease at the end where we see someone in Akechi’s outfit pass by as Joker looks out the window, simultaneously seeing his Phantom Thief outfit in his reflection. I wish we’d gotten a proper epilogue for those three characters, to see how their experiences changed them the way we got to see it for the rest of the Phantom Thieves, and it stings even more knowing that they don’t even show up in Persona 5 Strikers, which picks up from the original game’s continuity. Not that I expect much narratively from Strikers, being developed largely by a separate team. But the underwhelming goodbye would hurt a little less if I knew that I could still hang out with them a bit longer! (Though at the same time, I hope they don’t try to milk Persona 5 any further; unless we get a full-fledged sequel, Atlus is coming real close to the point of over-saturation between all their spinoffs and crossovers.)
Still; I acknowledge that this is ultimately an expansion of a longer game that they needed to wrap up, and the goodbyes you get to say to everyone else count for quite a bit. I love what P-Studio did with Royal, and I appreciate that it was no small undertaking to rework a massive, popular, acclaimed game and have it come out the other side a significantly better experience. Admittedly, I probably wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re already hankering to replay the original game; it’s just too mammoth to make anything new worth it. But for my first experience with the game, I found Royal to be immensely rewarding.
