

The internet is your friend when the latter happens, as correct answers can boost your stats. You might chat with a fellow student and field a question from a teacher. Once you arrive, there's typically a slice-of-life cutscene where something happens during class. On a lucky day, you'll nab a subway seat - this happens randomly and automatically - which gives you some extra time to read.

When it's a school day, there's a scripted routine of leaving your home - the upstairs room of a local cafe - and taking the subway to Shujin Academy. Sometimes, certain phases won't even come up. You don't always have control over what you can or can't do at a given time of day. A typical dayĮach day in Persona 5 consists of multiple phases: Morning, Lunchtime, Afternoon, After School, and Evening. Doing so erases the IRL Palace owner's questionable impulses and forces them to face the reality of any hideous acts they've committed. They have the ability to visit Palaces - which are physical manifestations of a person's darkest inner desires - and steal the treasure contained within. In the story, your unnamed protagonist and his ever-growing circle of friends are Phantom Thieves. If you spend an afternoon exploring a Palace - Persona 5-speak for dungeons - then you can't go out on the town or visit the cute doctor in your neighborhood. Time matters in this game, meaning whenever you choose to do a particular thing, you are also simultaneously choosing not to do any number of other things. Progress through Persona 5's story is tracked according to dates on a calendar, and that calendar spans multiple months of the school year. This is where the time management comes into play. By day, you're a Tokyo high school student - where joining the right clubs, making friends, dating, and socializing all count for something - and by night, you're a dungeon explorer. At the most basic level, Persona 5 combines elements of dungeon exploration and turn-based combat versus monsters with the time management and relationship-building of a social sim.
