The game's overworld is also affected by a constant day-night cycle and various weather conditions that can determine which activities and jobs are available at any given day. The levelling of these social stats will also influence the protagonist's performance in battle, as certain stats will grant passive buffing effects while in combat. Like its predecessors Persona 3 and Persona 4, the game is a hybridization of traditional role-playing and elements of life simulation games, where student life is populated with leisurely activities to partake in or part time jobs to pursue in order to increase the protagonist's various attributes: Knowledge, Guts, Proficiency, Kindness and Charm.

Persona 5 Royal is a role-playing game where the player assumes control of the main protagonist, a high-school student living in Tokyo for the whole year while attending school at Shujin Academy. With this new power, they form the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, becoming a group of masked vigilantes that infiltrate an alternate realm known as the Metaverse in order to confront those with distorted desires, forcing redemption onto them through a 'change of heart'. Disgusted by these revelations and wishing to exact justice on them, he and his friends awaken to their Personas, physical manifestations of their subconscious spirit.

However, upon making friends with a group of misfit teens who are similarly outcast, he is quickly faced with the depth of corruption plaguing the city, spearheaded by various adults abusing their position of power. During this time, he enrolls in and begins attending the local Shujin Academy, where his prominent criminal record causes him to be shunned by faculty and students alike. The protagonist, wrongfully convicted as a result of an unintended altercation between himself and a corrupt politician, is forced to move away from his hometown to the city of Tokyo, moving in with a family friend and coffee shop owner Sojiro Sakura for a year while on probation. 3.5 Nintendo Switch port additions and differences.

Persona 5 switch