How Long is Persona 5 Royal

Persona 5 Royal is approximately 130 hours long, adding 30 hours of content to the original Persona 5. This time will fluctuate depending on how you engage with the game and your reading speed.

It could take as little as 80 hours to finish or as many as 200. As always, completionists can expect to extend that runtime, in this case, by at least 20 hours, probably more.

What takes up all this time? Here, we’ll see how long is Persona 5 Royal I’ll now run through a couple of the places you might be wasting a few extra hours without intending to, so you can know where to save your time.

Reading Speed

Persona 5 Royal is a J-RPG with an extensive story. You might compare it to reading a particularly long book. As such, your personal reading speed — and whether you read through the story at all — will impact how long your playthrough takes. You’ll shave off hours by the dozens if you skip through all the cutscenes and animations.

I assume you don’t want to skip the story, though. In this case, if you’re a particularly slow reader, let the game’s voice acting take you through the dialogue at a standard pace. This is particularly useful for younger players or those with reading and comprehension disabilities.

Velvet Room

This is where I sunk most of my additional hours into Royal. I would spend hours trying to craft the perfect persona roster with the fusion calculator up on my PC. I wanted to have the best party — aesthetically and practically — and spent arguably too long filling up my compendium. Of the 132 hours of gameplay in my latest playthrough, I would bet that at least 10 of them alone were spent in the velvet room.

This might help you run through the next boss a little easier (or, in my case, accidentally find a way to one-shot the reaper). But it will also artificially extend your playtime. Just pick up whatever personas you like with whatever skills you want and get back into the game. You don’t need to perfect your team composition. There is never any shame in lowering the difficulty for enhanced enjoyment.

Dungeon Completion

One of the best improvements Persona 5 made to the franchise was that the dungeons were solidified into themed, static areas that could be combed through. Every nook and cranny can be searched for chests and Will Seeds, which can add significant time to your playthrough.

Engaging in every fight, looking for every last piece of loot, isn’t always worth it. Finding the Will Seeds is good, but you don’t need to return for every chest.

Mementos

This is an easy way to waste time. And it doesn’t even feel like a waste, as Mementos will make your wallet a little bit fatter each time you leave it. However, while you do need to reach the bottom, you don’t have to spend hours more getting every sidequest and stamp. Some sidequests are important, such as the ones relating to social links, but you shouldn’t feel pressured to do all of them.

A great time saver in Mementos comes from Ryuji’s Confidant Rank, the Chariot Arcana. At rank 7 with him, you unlock the ‘insta-kill’ skill, allowing you to defeat shadows weaker than you without fighting them. Scan an enemy with ‘third eye,’ and if they show up green, you can sprint into them and instantly reap your rewards.

Side Content

Royal added new content to engage with both inside and outside of the metaverse. Additional dialogue to events, a new location, three new social links, and a bunch of mini-games like darts, baseball, and fishing. It goes without saying that these activities add extra hours to the base game. You can spend a lot of time at the batting cages perfecting your swing or trying to fish up the guardian, and it doesn’t significantly impact the game as a whole. You can skip this if you are trying to get through the game quickly.

Also, Royal removed Morgana, forcing you to bed on nights you aren’t allowed out of Leblanc, enabling you to get things done on previously occupied nights. This allows for more time studying, training, watching tv, or making coffee until Sojiro accepts you as his son. And that more time also adds up. You can skip all of this by going to bed.

New Game Plus and Completion

Aiming for completion will likely add at least half the time of one playthrough onto your total, thanks to a little thing called New Game Plus. This is a common feature of J-RPGs where you start a new game while maintaining elements of your previous save. In Persona 5 Royal, this means carrying over your stats, compendium, money and items, and any special items you received from Confidants at the end of the game.

With this, the extensive achievement list in the Thieves’ Den (and the much shorter list of official trophies) is easier to finish. The major hurdle is getting every confidant to max rank. This is possible in a single playthrough; I almost did it myself, with only Fortune stuck at rank 9 (and it was my own fault that happened). But this is unlikely to happen to an unseasoned player, and I wouldn’t recommend it anyway.

Enjoy your first playthrough, but don’t feel like you have to get all the achievements. Completion isn’t for everyone (especially if Maid Cafes make you uncomfortable, like me). You shouldn’t feel like you’re missing out because you didn’t go through everything the game had to offer.

FAQs

It Doesn’t Have to be That Long

The amount of time you spend playing Persona 5 Royal will, for the most part, come down to how long it takes you to get through the cutscenes and how quickly you work through the meat and bones gameplay. If you can read faster than the actors read their lines, you’ll get through it in far fewer hours. This is part of why replays come out so much shorter; you don’t read everything because you already know it all.

But if that playtime daunts you, it’s possible that J-RPGs just aren’t the games for you, which is fine! Persona 5 Royal is a popular game for good reason, but if it doesn’t jive with you, don’t feel pressured to engage. But if you’re here to find ways to get to the good bits faster, you can use the above tips to help shave off some hours.

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Alex Scowen

Starting with Persona 4 Golden, buying a PSVita for the express purpose, Persona has been a series held forever close to Alex’s heart. She only wishes more people paid attention to Persona Q games, they aren’t perfect, but they are a lot of fun.

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• How Long is Persona 5 Royal - February 5, 2023