13 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Persona 5

Persona 5 has finally hit on shelves, with rave-reviews and more, this JRPG is chock full of complex systems that can be pretty hard to wrap your head around. What even is a Persona Fusion anyway? Well, we've assembled a handy Persona 5 Tips Guide right here that will run you through every single question you might have, if you're new to the franchise. Even veterans of the series will find something brand-new to find in this tips guide, we've also added tips on how to get access to those pesky Social Link & Confindant Skills.

Visit The Doctor In Yongen-Jaya

One of the most useful Social Links to level up is in the clinic in Yongen-Jaya. There you'll meet a Tae Takemi, a rogue doctor who you can form the Death Social Link with. Once you've established the Social Link, it's best to take a visit to the Velvet Room to also create a Persona of the same Arcana. This'll help with increasing the speed at which you can level up the Social Link. By progressing through the Social Link, you'll also get points in Guts, which is a big gatekeeper for a few Social Links in the game. Additionally, by levelling up Tae's link, you'll also unlock more powerful medicines to take into battle.

Start working at the Beef Bowl Store

Once you unlock the ability to go out at night, make sure that you take the job at the Beef Bowl store, which is a little more hands-on than the other jobs you can get in the game. What you'll need to do to get this job is go to Shibuya Underground shopping centre, then read the magazine at the jobs stand, then you'll need to call up the Beef Bowl store. After working there a few times, you'll find that there's a little mini-game that you can play, and if you remember everyone's specific orders, you'll eventually notice an NPC that you can spot outside Shibuya station. The next night, he'll ask you to swing by at one of his talks, then go to one of them, and talk to him on the night after, too.

Then, you'll be able to initiate the Sun Arcana Social link, which can aid you in helping along Demon Negotiations and helps you get a whole wad of money.

Finish Dungeons In 3 Days Or Less

When tackling a Palace with the Phantom Thieves, you might be tempted to take your time, and leave it until a few days before the deadline. However, this isn't exactly the best idea. Instead, we'd recommend that you attempt to finish the Palace as quickly as possible. This means optimising the time that you take to go into the Palace and making sure that you're using every single day to its fullest potential. During the week, we'd recommend timing your infiltration of the Palace towards Monday-Wednesday. This way, you'll structure the infiltration with the start to an obstacle you need to solve in real life, solving that the next day, then diving back into the palace until you get to the treasure, then send the calling card on a Wednesday, ready to finish off the dungeon.

This also means that you will need to stock up on curatives and properly prepare to dive into the dungeon beforehand. Try making Leblanc Coffee before heading in to make sure that you have a healthy SP boost inside a dungeon, and set yourself up with curatives at the clinic if you've not already. This isn't an easy thing to do, but freeing up the rest of the days will come in handy, and will help you develop your Social Links, visit Mementos and more.

Improve Your Stats To Unlock New Social Links

Persona isn't all about defeating baddies in dungeons, but it's also about improving yourself as a character. You'll need to level yourself up in order to unlock more conversation options to use in everyday life. This isn't an easy thing to do. With so many categories for improvement, you'll want to use your free time in the best way to make sure you can max out these stats, as they can also be the gatekeepers to proceeding in Social Links. This can be done with little things like watching a movie, going to study on a rainy day, doing the huge burger challenge, watering your plant and reading books all give you points. Just don't simply focus on one aspect of self-improvement, as you could possibly bottleneck yourself from jobs or social links.

Plan Out Your Weeks In A Calendar

It might be incredibly easy to simply go day-by-day in Persona 5 without putting too much thought into your routine. However, we've found that mapping out your week into a structure is the best way to make sure that you're leveling up social links, diving into the Mementos and making room for self-improvement all at the same time. If you don't do this, you might find yourself wandering around, or just not utilising your time in the best way possible. Additionally, some Social Links and activities are only available at certain times of day so it might be useful to further break down that calendar to make sure that you're hitting every activity at the right time. This will help you with ensuring that you're seeing as much and doing as much as possible.

Frequently Fuse Your Personas

Persona 5's fusion system let you see both an arcana in addition to the outcome of the fusion. Initially, you're just able to fuse 2 Personas together, but once you progress through the game, you'll be able to put more Personas into the spread to create more powerful concoctions. We'd recommend that you register every Persona in your possession before fusion. Additionally, we'd say to make sure that your current Persona deck covers as many elements as possible. This can be done by fusing a Persona that's inherited abilities of different elements from other Personas, this ensures that you're covered for all type advantages when infiltrating a Palace, and also helps you to knock down foes in a single turn, then hit them up for a quick demon negotiation.

Collect Every New Persona You Find

To help in completing the Persona Compendium, in addition to just having bragging rights, you'll also be able to fuse every single Persona in the game, but you will also be able to get ahead of the game and fuse more powerful Personas pretty early on in the game. The real trick is to ensure that when you infiltrate a Palace, make sure that you grab every single Persona. Then from there, ensure that they're registered into the compendium, and then you'll be able to fuse these newfound Personas into brand-new ones, all the while inheriting their best abilities and also getting additional power from the respective arcana, should you have unlocked the appropriate Social Link.

Sell Treasure To Buy New Equipment

When exploring Palaces, it's important to use your senses by holding L1 or L2 to see what treasures you can steal. In addition to being able to find new areas and ledges within a Palace to gain access to hidden areas, you're also able to find treasure, to sell at the replica gun shop in Shibuya. This is a great way of earning money outside of Battle or a job, and it can get you a huge amount of money that you can use to equip your characters with new weapons, armour, and accessories. Make sure to keep selling it off, or else you'll find yourself with incredibly underleveled gear.

Pick Your Party Carefully

While Persona 5 might open up with 4 characters, this will soon expand to a bigger roster of characters that you can use in battle. However, you'll need to pick which ones to bring in to infiltrate a palace. But don't worry, your out of action characters will still be able to earn EXP out of battle, which leaves no character left behind. What you'll need to do in every Palace is assess the average elemental advantages and weaknesses that the enemy has, then pick your team accordingly. It's no use bringing in a Persona user that's weak against lightning in a lightning-based dungeon, for example.

Read Books To Unlock New Areas Of The Map

Reading is not only a great away to increase your personal stats, but it can also lead to opening up more parts of the map. After you reach a certain point in the game, you'll also be able to invite your friends to hang out in a certain spot. If you pay attention to their dialogue, you might be able to pick up on hints where as to what kind of spot to pick. If Ann wants to hang out at a place with a lot of people, pick Harajuku etc. Using a little bit of common sense will go a long way, and help you get to that elusive ultimate Persona when you hit rank 10 with their Social Link.

Call The Thieves Guild If You Need Help

If you're confused as to what kind of thing you should level up or what to do at a certain point in time, hitting the touchpad will give you access to the thieves guild, which are stats of examples of what other people did that day. Additionally, this can be especially useful when a teacher springs a question on you at school. You can also use this in a dungeon, where they'll be able to swoop in and save one of your knocked down characters. This is a great online feature that will be able to save you and get you out in a real pinch!

Don't Try To do Everything At Once

Persona 5's ever present loading screen flashed the same message. Take your time. Persona 5 is a hugely long game. Don't expect to be able to finish the game in a week, due to the sheer breadth of content and things to do, it can take months to get through everything the game has to offer. There might be characters & social links you might not see, or personas that cannot be fused on a single run. This makes Persona 5 prime bait for a NG+ run, where your stats crossover. This enables you to max out more confidants, allowing you to fuse even better Personas later on.

Read On The Train

During the mornings on your way to school, it's recommended that you should pick up a book or two on the train. If you head to the bookshop in Shibuya, you'll be able to pick up books, which let you gain stat boosts without having to spend a chunk of your day on reading. This is perfect for wanting to upgrade your stats to unlock new dialogue options or mainline your way to unlocking the next level of a Social Link. Early on, you'll want to target your Guts and Knowledge. These two are the main gatekeepers in the game and allow you to gain access to some incredible Social Link boosts that will help you out, especially in the long run