Persona 5 New Game Plus Puts You In A Good Place For Greater Challenges

As expected from a Persona game, the end doesn’t have to be the end with Persona 5. Rather, it’s setting you up for a whole other run. Once you complete the game, you’ll have a clear file ready to send you off on another year where you’re in a much better place to take part in Phantom Thief escapades.

First, getting the save data for a new game plus file in Persona 5 is easy. All you need to do is beat the game. After the credits, you can save a Clear Data file. You can then select this when choosing to continue, say you want to carry over progress, and go ahead and launch into a new game with various things carried over.

This is a huge time saver for many reasons. You won’t need to spend as much time building up your daily life stats, as these carry over. If you maxed out your Charm, Guts, Kindness, Knowledge, and Proficiency, it stays maxed out. Your Persona Compendium will be intact, which will hopefully make maxing out the Strength Confidant relationship a breeze. The Confidant gifts you get at the end of the game will still be there, as well your melee weapons, guns, armor, accessories, Skill Cards, and cash.

There are still plenty of items and things to do, so your days and nights will remain busy in a Persona 5 new game plus run. You’ll need to go through all the Confidant relationships again to max them out. Though, with the special items you get from maxing out relationships in your first run, you wouldn’t necessarily have to max out the bonds again. For example, Tae’s Dog Tag will let you have access to the entire Clinic shop supply after starting her relationship in the new game, all without the regular rank up increases. Your character will start at level one again. Any kind of consumable item or non-equipment item will need to be bought again, so shopping trips will be a must.

Why would you want to go through a Persona 5 new game plus adventure? Well, aside from getting to enjoy a great game again, there are things that unlock the second time around. One of them is Satanael, an ultimate Persona only available after your first run. To make this level 95 summon, you need to unlock the Group Guillotine option in the Velvet Room, then combine Arsene, Anzu, Ishtar, Satan, Lucifer, and Michael. Now, Arsene is easy. He’s the avatar’s first Persona. Anzu can be found in Futaba’s palace. The others are a little trickier. Michael can only be fused after getting the Caroline and Justine bond up to rank 5, then fusing Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel with Group Guillotine. Ishtar, Lucifer, and Satan are Personas you can only fuse after maxing out Confidant relationships with Ann, Hifumi, and Sae.

Persona 5 also has an additional boss fight in Mementos when you begin a new game plus file. To avoid spoilers, I won’t reveal the identity. If you’re familiar with the Persona series, you should have some idea who you’ll be up against. This fight is multipart, with the opponent using standard attacks and gun skills, then use traditional elemental spells, before moving on to a phase with the Dark, Light, Nuclear, and Psy skills. In the fourth phase, anything goes in terms of elements. Keep an eye on your party, as your characters’ weaknesses will be exploited. Also, make sure to hit each target equally, otherwise a one hit knock-out will be triggered on your whole party. It’s also important to take out the targets either at the same time or before one gets a chance to attack again, as the fallen character will be revived otherwise. It is a difficult fight, but definitely doable.

There’s always plenty to do in Persona 5. Especially if you’re going through for a second run. Whether you’re doing so to have a perfect playthrough where you acquire absolutely everything and befriend everyone or trying to challenge yourself on a higher difficulty level, new game plus will be a perfect way to meet any of your goals.

Persona 5 is available for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.