This is a list of somewhat annoying mechanics in Persona 5. See here for mechanics that apply to the Shin Megami Tensei franchise as a whole, as well as the Persona subseries.
Free Time and Social Links
- Free time matters in Persona games and Persona 5 is no exception. Just like previous Persona games, however, there are still moments—mostly evenings after days with plot-related events—when Joker is sent straight to bed by Morgana because he's "probably sleepy". Or worse, only because Morgana himself is sleepy. Apparently, he needs to follow Joker everywhere he goes. The most glaring cases of this is during mid-May and early July, two points at which the player spends almost all day doing story related content, then heading home and having to go to bed. Worse yet is that these two examples are not just one day, but include multiple days straight, with early July having the player go almost three weeks straight being unable to do anything after classnote . People have expressed their frustration at not even being allowed to quickly return rented DVDsnote or read a book at home, hell you can't even rearrange your room decor because Morgana is tired and he needs to be there to comment on everything you do! A number of players have noted that this could have been mitigated to a certain degree with a simple change of delivery; if it was the protagonist claiming he was exhausted and calling it a night it could at least be seen as personal decision and not one pushed on you by Morgana.
- Their dependency works both ways even. When Morgana leaves the team for a few days, Joker refuses to do anything but sleep. Trying to leave his room or even try to perform any activity inside his room other than sleeping or watering the plant will get you a message from Joker about how he usually did that activity with Morgana or how he couldn't possibly do that activity without him. The confirmation message options of "Sleep" or "I still have stuff to do" seems to almost mock you at that point.
- Royal addresses this by merely confining the player to Leblanc on most of those evenings. The number of activities one can do is rather limited, but at least it isn't a complete waste of the player's time.
- Reading books is considered one of the poorest, if not the poorest, ways to spend free time in the game, and should generally only be done on days you can sit down on subway (when reading is the only thing you can do). The problem arises from the fact that, like in previous games, nearly every social stat-boosting book requires multiple chapters to be read before completion but unfortunately, books only grant their stat boost after the book has been completed, and even then usually a measly three "notes" for what took up to three days to complete. Contrast this with other stat boosting activities such as DVDs, old video games, movies, or even spending time in the library or hot baths which grant their bonus every time they are done, and stat books become a waste of time by comparison. There are certain books that unlock potential hangout spots or make certain mini-games easier/more beneficial, but these are usually only one chapter long and can be read in special instances on the train or in the classroom. Royal fixes the issue slightly, in that while books still take multiple chapters to read, changes to the Speed Reading book, which is now available for free from the school library before the summer break and now only takes one chapter to read, books can now be read in only one sitting more efficiently.
- The high social stat requirements are a particularly annoying aspect of the game for some players. Unlike in Persona 3 and 4 where this was only bad when it came time to talking to certain characters just to initiate certain S.Links such as MAX knowledge/academics for Naoto/Mitsuru respectively; in Persona 5, almost all of the confidants require a maxed or very high attribute stat at some point in the game to finish (or even to just start in some cases), and some seem ridiculously high for the point at which the Confidant appears in the game. If you're playing blind, there's no way to know which stats you should work on first, and many of the Confidants that the stats are tied to are somewhat unintuitive (for example, Nice Girl Haru seems as though she'd be tied to Kindness or Charm, but she needs Proficiencynote ). Some Confidants really rub the player's nose in it too, what with continuing to reward players with points in Stats that, by necessity, would already be maxed.
- Makoto appears in the middle of the game, but not only do you need Rank 3 Knowledge just to get started with her, you'll require Max Charm stat to get past Rank 5.
- In Royal, Akechi requires Rank 3 Knowledge and Rank 3 Charm to progress to his Rank 3 Confidant, since the Justice Arcana's confidant is no longer automatic.
- You need Rank 3 Charm just to start talking to Hifumi, since she's a bit wary of you. And she's easily one of the most useful Confidants in the game, so you'll be going to the bath house every night to grind your Charm until it reaches the rank. She also requires maxed out Intelligence to progress past Rank 7 alongside undertaking a Mementos Request. Even then, you're still rewarded with Intelligence after the fact.
- Even more irritating than the high social stat requirements is that the in-game reasons for these requirements are so arbitrary that Gameplay and Story Segregation kicks in hard. The in-game reasons why you cannot help these people progress in their personal quests just seem unfair, and many feel like a Hand Wave as to why you can't go further.
- You need to be Rank 2 and Rank 4 Kindness to hang out with Ann and Futaba because you need to lend a sympathetic and sensitive ear to their problems, despite having helped them through much more challenging emotional crises during their main story arcs. The Gameplay and Story Segregation is especially egregious with Ann, as one of the first interactions Joker and Ann have with each other is Joker lending a sympathetic and sensitive ear to her problems, at a point in the game when all of his social stats are at Rank 1. Yet in Ann's Confidant, there's an arbitrary roadblock from doing the exact same thing a second time.
- You need to have Max Charm to get to Rank 5 of Makoto's confidant because Eiko apparently has very high standards for her friend's boyfriends, despite dating the greasiest-looking man to ever exist.
- You need to have Rank 4 Proficiency in order to finish Yusuke's confidant because the door to Madarame's shack is jammed, and Max Rank Proficiency just to get past Rank 1 with Haru because Haru might need Joker to move around bags of compost (despite how most of Haru's Confidant takes place in locations besides her garden). Royal slightly addresses the latter issue by moving the Proficiency gate to later in the Confidant and explaining that Joker needs to be proficient in order to accompany Haru to have expensive coffee at the Wilton (while Joker went there with Ann, Ryuji and Morgana early in the game, they obviously didn't fit in).
- When you secure a route to the Treasure and get the ability to send the calling card, you can't hang out with any of your party members until you've sent the card and beaten the boss. In a game that requires so much time management, this can be a pain. However, this can be worked around: if you go to your hideout and trigger the one-time meeting discussing said calling card, then when available, exit the hideout without sending it, everything will go back to normal (if not that day, then either that evening or tomorrow at the latest).
- Kasumi's Confidant can easily screw over first time players if they aren't prioritizing it. It is the only confidant in the game where you can only participate through invitations. The problem is Kasumi is only free during a single day of the week. Wednesdays or Saturdays after school depending on the month. However if a story event happens on said day you are screwed over for the week so you could potentially be unable to rank her up to 5 if you've been putting it off, which is especially annoying considering not getting her Confidant up to rank 5 before the December deadline prevents access to the second half of her Confidant, and therefore her party member abilities. Fortunately she more or less keeps sending invitations throughout the year.
Combat
- During the early game, Morgana serves as your Navigator, much like Mitsuru and Teddie before him. Unlike Mitsuru and Teddie, however, Morgana actually is a controllable party member during this time, and provides valuable support as a healer. However, since he's the Navigator, he can't just die if he's knocked out during a battle, and has go through a short but nonetheless annoying animation of him retreating to the sidelines until the player can resume control of the battle. And since Morgana is a VERY Squishy Wizard, expect this to happen often during the first palace.
- If you manage to ambush a Shadow that is faster than you, the Shadow will get two turns in a row after each member of your party has acted. This isn't a problem if you can end the battle before then, but if you can't, the monster will likely wipe you out.
Persona Creation and Customization
- The total stat cap makes it much more tedious to customize the Persona you want. Unlike previous games where you can max Personas through items, this game imposes a stat limit based on the Persona's level (a total of 304 stat points to work with). While this adds more balance to the game, it can also potentially make higher-leveled Personas worse than lower-leveled Personas due to having less room to level them up with the stats you want and possibly having more weaknesses than lower-leveled Personas. Royal fixes this problem by the addition of incense items and Gallows Accidents which can boost a Persona's stats without giving any EXP.
Other
- The inability to turn Confidant skills off. There are several skills, such as Ryuji's Insta-kill and several of Yoshida's later skills, that could potentially hurt more than they help, thus meaning you can't ever proceed with their Confidants if you feel the negatives outweigh the positives, something that would be easily negated by allowing every ability to be toggled on and off. Royal fixes the former skill issue slightly by removing Insta-kill from ambushes and instead requiring the player to go out of their way to trigger it by dashing into the enemy while also awarding you the full XP, money, and items that you'd normally get from the battle. Yoshida's later skills were also tuned so that you no longer miss out on re-threatening/still using All Out Attack by picking the boosted conversation option his later levels give you.
- The scene right before The Very Definitely Final Dungeon on December 24th, where Yaldabaoth offers a "We Can Rule Together" deal to Joker, but Joker refuses, with Yaldabaoth leaving him trapped in the Velvet Room. You have to go around the area and talk to six of your teammates to snap them out of their Heroic BSoD apathy and re-ignite their will of rebellion. Not only is the area where you have to do this fairly large, but there's also a long dialogue with each of the Phantom Thieves with "Regret" and "Swear to My Bones" being played in order while talking with them, causing the BGM to loop through the same tracks over and over. There's also no enemies or battles to break this up. It takes at least thirty minutes to finish this event if you want to see everything, and while each of the Thieves can give a nice Rousing Speech, it gets repetitive quickly.
- The week where you have to investigate your friends in Maruki's ideal world is not any better than the event above. You literally have to walk around looking for your party members, talk to them and snap them out of the dream world, then return home right after checking a party member. It's so repetitive and long that you might actually get annoyed, especially when the music loops at the exact same order every day. Sure, it gives you a nice peek into the Phantom Thieves' ideal reality, you could see several easter eggs if you take your time walking around Shibuya and Yongen-Jaya and Joker can give out nice dialogue options, but it's still an incredibly repetitive event.
- For some, Take Over replacing Last Surprise in most battles in Royal. Since ambushing enemies is extremely easy and encouraged due to the security meter, Last Surprise plays significantly less often with no way to turn it off.
- For some players, the bonus content handling in the 2022 port of Royal. There is no option to opt out certain bonus content, so there is no legitimate way of getting the outfits without also getting all the Game Breakers and other bonuses. And even though you don't have to use all the DLC Personas (which all tend to have rather OP skills, even at earlier levels), they'll clog up your register of Personas since there's 10 unique DLC personas (including both versions of Orpheus) and a Picaro alternate Persona for each one, for a total of 20 Personas. Not to mention, those that would rather not use them at all will find that they will change the fusion recipes in one fell swoop and can get in the way should a fusion accident happens, which has a chance of resulting in these Personas.
- When you want to enter Mementos, you're forced to check the "Review Requests" option to talk about the new set of targets. While this is meant to be so all of the team members agree to change the person's heart, it results in a bunch of dialogue explaining what you already know about the target, the other members inevitably agreeing without a fuss. For every single target, along with playing the same character voice sound bites over and over.
- The screenshot/streaming block on the later spoilerific parts of the game, even long after the game has been released, and it is still imposed on the ports, which frustrates players that just want to share their favorite moments from a particular arc without resorting to taking photos of their monitor and can hide them behind their own spoiler warning. PC and emulation players can get around this, but not so for consoles without specific setups/modifications.
- While some room decorations are harder to get than others, most of them don't care too much about the player's choices. That is with one exception, which is locked behind a romance route, so anyone wanting to get all the decorations but not do this romance is SOL. Making matters worse is the fact that said romance route is the controversy magnet that is Kawakami's.
