History Persona5 / TropesAToF

** Shadow Kaneshiro's order involves distracting him from using his [[RollingAttack March of the Piggy]] attack by throwing an item at him. While giving him an item renders him defenseless, you can also just attack Kaneshiro himself while he's on top of Piggytron to knock him over. And given that Kaneshiro only tends to get distracted by valuable items that your party really cannot do without (such as [[DeflectorShield physical/magic ointments]] and ''somas''), the order, despite Morgana's [[StopHelpingMe insistence otherwise]], comes off as a rather bone-headed idea.

* AlmightyJanitor: The ultimate BonusBoss and toughest enemy in the game, the Twins, are two prison guards in a run down gulag inside your head. One of whom is an admin with nothing but a clipboard on her. Since they're directly related to [[VideoGame/Persona3 Elizabeth, Theodore]], and [[VideoGame/Persona4 Margaret]], this is to be expected, as each of them were the most powerful bosses in their respective games as well. Their comments, should you win, include a hint at this.

* BonusBoss:
** In NewGamePlus, you can optionally fight Caroline and Justine, who serve as the toughest boss fight in the game. ''Royal'' adds [[spoiler: Lavenza]] as an even tougher challenge.
** If you stay still for a few minutes on a floor in Mementos, you can fight the Reaper, an insanely powerful Shadow meant for end game parties.
** In ''Royal'', [[spoiler: collecting all of Jose's stamps unlocks a boss fight against him.]]
** ''Royal'' has the ''VideoGame/Persona3'' and ''VideoGame/Persona4'' protagonists as optional DLC boss fights.

** As per series tradition, the Omnipotent Orb, an accessory which blocks ''all'' damage other than almighty.[[note]]In ''Royal'', it was nerfed to block only magical attacks and their associated status effects.[[/note]] However, you have to have already finished the story once and won the toughest fight in the game against BonusBoss Justine and Caroline to even get it.
** Also as per series tradition, the protagonist's ultimate Persona, [[spoiler:Satanael]], can actually be fused - if you've reached NewGamePlus and can manage a Level ''95'' fusion. If you're at that point, most of the game's difficulty is already moot unless you're fighting the aforementioned BonusBoss, which it ironically seems tailor-made for. [[spoiler:Think of it as fusing [[VideoGame/Persona3 Orpheus Telos to fight Elizabeth with]].]]

** ''Royal'' goes out of its way to ensure you use Kasumi during the Third Semester. A lot of enemies in [[spoiler:Maruki's]] Palace are weak to her signature element, Bless, which none of the other party members (aside from Joker) have access to. Kasumi's third-tier Ultimate Persona is both immune to Bless and resists Psychic, which the FinalBoss loves to throw around with impunity. The BonusBoss on NewGamePlus, [[spoiler:Lavenza]], has a phase that requires the party land a critical hit every turn, making Kasumi - a CriticalHitClass who can boost the party's critical hit rate with Brave Step - a must-have against them.

** ''Royal'' adds some new DLC, including some new Personas (like [[VideoGame/Persona3 Orpheus F, Athena]], [[VideoGame/Persona4 Izanagi-no-Okami]], and Joker's evolved ultimate Persona Raoul), new cosmetics (including a set of Velvet Room outfits, Featherman outfits, and outfits from ''VideoGame/Persona5DancingInStarlight'', ''VideoGame/PersonaQ2NewCinemaLabyrinth'', and ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiStrangeJourney''), and a set of Challenge Mode battles, which feature the protagonists of the past [[VideoGame/Persona3 two]] [[VideoGame/Persona4 games]] as [[BonusBoss bosses]] to fight.

* DownloadableContent: The game has lots of digital content that can be bought from the PSN store.

** The US version includes the Japanese language track as DLC.

* {{Antepiece}}: In Madarame's Palace, there are two sections where you must traverse through paintings to advance. The first one is very straight forward, with just two paintings connected in a linear fashion, which prepares you for the second one which is a more complex navigational puzzle.

* ArtCourse: Madarame's Palace, as befitting of the MentalWorld of a famous artist. There's even a section where you have to traverse through various paintings in order to advance.

** If you try to express dissatisfaction to Igor about waking up inside a prison cell when visiting the Velvet Room early in the game, you'll be told you lack the Courage to do so and be forced to go along with him. This serves to introduce you to social stat checks in dialogue by giving you one that is impossbible to pass on a first game. It's only on a NG+ that you can actually take this dialogue option [[spoiler:which also means you know the twist about Igor at this point.]]

** At one point in ''Royal'', Kasumi offers to join the Phantom Thieves on their excursion through [[spoiler:Shido's Palace]]. Even if the player wants to recruit her, Morgana declines due to her being "inexperienced" and the player's dialogue options actively {{railroad|ing}}s Joker into turning her down.

** At one point in ''Royal'', Kasumi offers to join the Phantom Thieves on their excursion through [[spoiler:Shido's Palace]]. Even if the player wants to recruit her, Morgana declines due to her being "inexperienced" and the player's dialogue options actively [[{{Railroading}} railroad]] Joker into turning her down.

* ChuckingChalk: One of the protagonist's teachers hits him in the head with a piece of chalk from straight across the room in two scenes in the vanilla version of the game, and on a regular basis in ''Royal.''It's possible to get a stat gain to Charm by dodging it, if you have enough Proficiency.

** You are regularly cheated out of free time to socialize and build stats, often without warning. Sure, you can't predict ''everything'' that will happen in the future (like Sojiro suddenly hijacking you to work in the cafe), but in a game about time management it is frustratingly common for Morgana to ''refuse'' to let you go out at night because "you must be tired". Finally, as with ''VideoGame/Persona3'' and ''VideoGame/Persona4'', [[spoiler:the story ends after nine months instead of the promised year]]. As a result, similar to the rest of the series, it is ''very'' difficult to max all stats and clear all Confidants without either a guide or NewGamePlus, even if you're familiar with the series[[note]]However, unlike the previous two games, there's never a point where you lose ''significant'' time. In fact, you play through every single day from April 3rd through [[spoiler:December 25th]], unlike Persona 3, which removes (via incapacitation) a full four weeks from the calendar, and Persona 4, which removes several days[[/note]]. Unlike in ''VideoGame/Persona3'' and ''VideoGame/Persona4'', where social links were always available on the same days each week unless there was a plot- or weather- related reason for them to be absent, confidants in ''Persona 5'' don't have consistent, predictable schedules, with a couple of exceptions. While more realistic, it makes things significantly harder on players who are actively trying to plan ahead and budget their time accordingly.

** In ''Royal'', the improvised Okumura fight acts as this; none of the enemies are any stronger than their Vanilla variants (and in fact have weaker affinities), but Okumura will fully restore his entire wave after two turns and he will cast Rakukaja on one robot and Hunger or Dekaja on you to make sure they become incredibly difficult to kill, so he can infinitely loop this animation and cause you to time out. What seems to be the defining factor however, is that ''one'' Rakukaja he sneaks on a robot, which doesn't seem much. In reality, if this defense buff is not lifted, it will almost always result in the buffed robot barely surviving after the 2-turn limit, resulting in the choke-locking scenario stated above.

** Kamoshida has a harem of topless female volleyball students in his Palace, all writhing and moaning in ecstasy over their "king". Even Ryuji is disturbed. He's also accompanied by a scantily-clad ValleyGirl clone of Ann. His boss form, Asmodeus, is a fat, misshapen demon in nothing but a crown, cape and pink speedo. In '''Royal''', he has a cognitive ''Shiho'' in erotic bunny outfit that you can kill in a few physical attacks just to stop his SignatureMove, tank the move and let her go, or attack Kamoshida himself and he automatically drives her away.

* FramingDevice: The protagonist's interrogation is an interesting variation of one. All but one of the in-game months that make up the protagonist's probation are recounted to Sae during his interrogation, which starts at the beginning of the game. Whenever you advance the story by taking out a big target, and every time you initiate a Confidant link except for two[[note]]Specifically, the Fool and Judgment[[/note]], the game skips forward to the interrogation, where Sae asks the protagonist to give her the details. While it's made clear that the protagonist mentions how the targets are taken out and all of the supernatural elements that entail, he leaves out names (both party members and Confidants) for everyone involved, even when Sae specifically figures out who the Phantom Thieves all are through logical deduction (like figuring out that her sister Makoto MUST be a Phantom Thief if Joker is telling the truth) - in fact, if you decide to sell out your friends and confidants at the very end of the interrogation, you get a [[MultipleEndings bad ending]]. Eventually you get to the point where you infiltrate the same casino Palace seen at the very beginning of the game and get captured, and it's revealed that the thieves deliberately let the protagonist get captured in order to get [[spoiler:Sae on their side and out detective Goro Akechi as a member of TheConspiracy. Should you successfully answer Sae's questions correctly, the protagonist (who had been addled with drugs up until this point) remembers his plan and initiates it, successfully escaping with Sae and going into hiding. Once the final arc begins, the framing device is no longer used[[note]]Which means that if you start a social link after the final arc, [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration you will not see Sae's comments on it]]]][[/note]].
* FreezeFrameBonus: Pay close attention to the rapidly-shifting calendar in the [[FramingDevice interrogation]] flashforward cutscenes, and it's possible to notice that [[spoiler:the date of the interrogation is November 20th, long before this point in the game is reached.]]

* BreakingOldTrends: Previous ''Persona'' games took place in fictional locales (Mikage-cho, Sumaru City, Iwatodai, Yasoinaba). This is the first game to be set in a real-world city, Tokyo.

*** Ranking up Confidants has been made slightly easier to compensate for the three additional Confidants and other time-consuming content added in ''Royal'' -- most Confidant scenes now have an extra dialogue choice that adds a chance to gain more rank-up points, Joker can now give gifts to his male friends instead of just the ladies, and playing darts or billiards will give points to all of the Phantom Thieves who show up. Chihaya's Affinity Reading bonus to deepen Joker's bond with any one Confidant is now unlocked at only rank 5 instead of 7, and her new rank 10 bonus will show which responses grant the most rank-up points.

** In ''3'' and ''4'', the actor who voices the protagonist also voices another major character [[spoiler:who initially seems to be a friend but is ultimately a major antagonist.]] Joker does not share his VA with anyone else in the game.

** This also extends to stores themselves, with popular Japanese convenience store chain "Don Quixote" being renamed "Rocinante" after Quixote's horse, or The Body Shop being renamed "The Body Chop."

** Valentine's Day Chocolate restores all SP to 1 ally, but to get it you have to defeat the FinalBoss. Even on NewGamePlus there's never a real reason to use it, considering you most likely have better management of your time or SP restoring equipment from the last playthrough to use. At best, these items then are really only useful as a means to track the romantic relationships you've taken over the course of repeated playthroughs until you have one chocolate from every possible option, provided you didn't use them.

** InUniverse regarding the experimental vegetables being developed by Okumura Foods. Sojiro deems them very unsuitable for commercial use like being sold at a market due to their flavour and unappealing appearance, but comments that they seem somewhat refreshing after eating one, beng a facet of their healing abilities.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: At the end of the interrogation, Sae warns the protagonist that he's facing the death penalty. The protagonist is 17 years old during the events of the game, and Japan is a party to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child Convention on the Rights of the Child]] which forbids capital punishment for offenders under the age of 18.

*** Haru's Confidant starts really late, only after completing the spaceport Palace. To make up for this, her Confidant is fairly easy to rank up, as a lot of the answers the player chooses will give the most amount of notes.

** The skills that your teammates learn [[spoiler:upon their second persona awakening in the third semester]] in ''Royal''. They are largely very powerful abilities, but they also have a very steep cost to them, making them much less useful than they could be. For example, Yusuke's skill "Hyakka Ryouran" is a party-wide Heat Riser (aka, it raises everybody's strength, defense, and accuracy/dodge). However, it costs 90 SP to use (when Yusuke will likely have roughly 260, meaning it costs over 1/3rd of his SP). And to make matters worse, Joker can get an equivalent skill, Thermopylae, that costs only 30 SP. And while normally Thermopylae would fall under AwesomeButImpractical due to it normally being only usable when ambushed, Attis, the persona it comes from has a passive that allows it to be used whenever, and the passive can be passed to anything it fuses into.

* FailedASpotCheck: This apparently occurred in one of the Palaces when the Shadows running the place [[spoiler:didn't find it suspicious that Akechi was using a coin card under the name of "Taro Tanaka" (the Japanese equivalent of "John Doe").]]

* CosmeticAward: By taking certain confidants on a date to the right place, the player may receive a gift from the confidant. Some of these confidant/location combinations can be difficult to figure out, only occurring between certain confidant levels, on certain days of the week, or after the player has already taken that confidant on a certain nuber of dates before. However, these gifts can only be used to decorate Joker's room -- there isn't even an acheivement associated with them. And to make it even worse, the shelf where most of the decorations are kept is on the wall to the camera's right in Joker's room, making them hard to see if you're not in the decorating menu.
* TheCracker: Medjed, a global organization of "hacktivists" who claim to be just by targeting corrupt businesses by stealing and destroying data. The original Medjed, Futaba, was accurately this, but her "successors" are impostors using the name and reputation for personal gain; Futaba isn't thrilled about this, and it's one reason she opts to help the Phantom Thieves take them down.

* BalanceBuff: In Royal, guns were rebalanced. Though they have lower max ammo and are generally weaker than they were in the original release, to compensate, ammo is now a per battle resource rather than a per dungeon resource, encouraging the player to use them much more often than they might have before, particularly on enemies weak to bullets.

* BattleCouple: If you romance Ann, Makoto, Haru, or Kasumi[[note]]''Royal'' only[[/note]], Joker and his lover can participate in battles together, and gain all the LevelUpAtIntimacy5 bonuses pursuing a romance nets you. In a bit of GameplayAndStoryIntegration, the four of them learn [[TakingTheBullet "Protect"]] at the same time their Confidant turns romantic, which is a passive skill where they shield Joker and withstand an otherwise fatal attack in his place.

** The new character Kasumi Yoshizawa in ''Royal'' is not, in fact, [[spoiler:Kasumi at all, but instead ''Sumire'' Yoshizawa, Kasumi's depressed and SurvivorGuilt-ridden twin sister. In fact, Sumire is only going around calling herself Kasumi because she told Maruki to turn her into Kasumi and it pushed his button of using his cognition-warping powers, so that she wouldn't have to face the fact the real Kasumi died saving Sumire from a jealousy-induced fit that almost got her run over by traffic.]]

*** Taken from the manga adaption of the first game, twins played a role in the story as well. [[spoiler:Notably, one twin was killed in a car accident and the surviving twin took over their dead sibling's identity]].

** As expected by their DownloadableContent status, the Legacy Personas (Orpheus, Izanagi, Thanatos, Kaguya, Magatsu Izanagi, Messiah, Ariadne, Tsukiyomi, and Asterius), as well as the DLC Personas added to ''Royal'' (Izanagi-no-Okami, Athena, and Orpheus F) are overpowered for how early you get them in the game -- you absolutely destroy the level <10 enemies with the level 20-'''90''' Personas, even on Hard or [[HarderThanHard Merciless]] difficulty. What really drives them into this territory however isn't just their strength, it's that the ''first'' summoning of any of them (even the level 90 Personas) is entirely ''FREE'' of charge. Any summons after this should you use them in a fusion must be paid for of course, but still a free courtesy summon is too insane to ignore. Once item fusions are unlocked, each of them can also be fused into exceedingly powerful weapons, armor, or accessories, too.