Although it wasn’t part of the franchise’s original concept, social simulation has become central to thePersonafranchise. Although it might change a little, much like howPersona 5upgraded Social Links into Confidants,Persona 6will undoubtedly feature a social life for the protagonist that involves careful time management and a balance of different activities. Given how useful Confidants already are,Persona 6could consider focusing on upgrading the protagonist’s schedule rather than changing the Confidants themselves. Atlus could use this game to give the protagonist – and therefore the player – far more free time to make friends.
Persona 3first introduced the social life cycle, and since then, the mainline games have generally kept the same schedule: most days offer the player an afternoon time slot and an evening time slot which they can spend on all kinds of activities. This is true of all days, even when it’s the weekend, a holiday, or summer vacation. While that still leavesPersonaprotagonists likeP5’s Jokerplenty of time to hone their skills and socialize,Persona 6could open up mornings on days without school to vastly boost the player’s scheduling freedom and make it easier to see as much of the game as possible on a given playthrough.
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Persona 6 Could Upgrade Weekends and Holidays for Confidants and More
It seems a little strange to think thatPersonaprotagonists never seem to have free time in the mornings, regardless of the day of the week. During summer vacation, one would think that players would get an extra chunk of free time to meet withPersonaConfidants or Social Links, work part-time, explore dungeons, and so on. It makes sense that Atlus would like to stick to a reliable day-to-day schedule, but this potential free time is sorely missed when games likePersona 5are bursting at the seams with activities, all competing for the player’s attention.
Letting players step out into the world on the mornings on weekends, holidays, and vacation days inPersona 6would vastly raise the number of things that players can experience overall. For instance, inPersona 5 Royal, it’s unlikely that players can manage to max out every Confidant, master every minigame, and complete every quest in one campaign playthrough. Players have to prioritize certain content, which helps them sculpt a certain experience, but also means some activities get neglected overall. Free time in the morning would give players more opportunity to at least try everything the game has on offer, which in turn leads to more diverse and rich playthroughs.
Admittedly, completing everyPersonaactivity in every playthrough could mean that the games lose replay value. to compensate for that, Atlus could capitalize on the extra time slot by greatly expanding the variety of things players can do.Persona 5already set the bar on side content pretty high, butPersona 6could find all kinds of new part-time jobs, minigames, and quest types for players to try. Ideally it shouldn’t go entirely overboard with its scale so that the benefit of extra time slots isn’t canceled out, but afterPersona 5impressed new playersso much,Persona 6ought to go big to keep the expanded community engaged.
Balancing morning time slots would definitely be tricky for Atlus, given how irregularly they’d be available.Persona 6might need to limit certain activities to summer vacation, for instance, given how many morning slots players will have need to fill. Regardless, morning time slots seem like a straightforward but invaluable change waiting to be made to the social life cycle ofPersona. WhateverPersona 6’s settingis or what kind of people form its playable team of Persona-users, they could really use a little extra free time.
