With still no news of Persona 6. Here is my Persona 6 wishlist of things I hope to see in the next instalment of the Persona series. If you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments to start a discussion.
1. Main Character with a Personality
The main complaint I have with the Persona series is that the main character (MC) is a blank slate. Through the animation scenes, he does usually appear to have a personality. But during the game, the player decides how the MC acts during the various dialogue options. Considering that all the other characters have whacky personalities, the MC would feed off of this intense energy. He (or she) needs to have a personality and this can add a new gameplay element.
When making dialogue decisions not only do you need to take into account how the other party will react to your words. You also need to look at how your character would actually act depending on their personality. Keeping to the MC’s personality may reward you with stronger Personas. But at the risk of not securing social links.
You also need to look at how your character would actually act depending on their personality.
By purely focusing on the social links, your character will be weaker in battle. His spirit, which governs magic, would be damaged by not making decisions that the character would on their own.
Rather than making the decisions based on your memory of the personality of the main character. There would be some type of GUI effect that would highlight the choice that the MC would make on his own.
To further extend this feature. If there are certain dialogue choices you continue to make. The main character’s personality will shift gradually to meet the decisions you want to make on future occasions. This would be my highest requested feature in my Persona 6 wishlist.
2. Allow Personas to Change
Personas can only change in specific situations:
- Combined with other Personas
- Social links for party members max out
So in my Persona 6 wishlist, it would make the game more interesting if there were more chances to evolve the Personas. One could be when you level up a Persona a specific number of times. Which will then transform the Persona into a stronger version of themselves.
Without turning this into a Pokémon clone, it would be limited to one Persona per type. Then once you’ve maxed out the evolutions of each type. Combining them all results in one of the strongest Personas. Though this would take multiple playthroughs to get there.
Another way they can change is through choices you make when interacting with the rest of the World. With certain evolutions requiring the player to be a complete jerk. With another Persona wanting you to be an angel and delight to be around. The Lover’s Persona would evolve as soon as you have a romantic partner. With the option of either chasing multiple romantic partners or just one to get the Lover’s final form.
Personas could also change depending on how many times they are hit with the same status ailment. If the player chooses not to heal the Persona, it will gradually morph into a Persona that has adapted to its status ailment. Continuingly being confused results in a Persona that will be constantly confused but only attacking the enemy, with the attack type also being random. Which could result in one-shotting the most difficult battles.
3. Shift Away from School
Persona’s main unique selling point is that the majority of the gameplay centres around school life. In my Persona 6 Wishlist, it would be nice to move on from school and head to college, University or work life. Maybe even being a stay-at-home parent. Trying to balance chores with battling Personas. As well as keeping up your appearance with the rest of the neighbourhood. Though that last idea may not be that interesting at all.
Another idea could be that your character is convicted of a crime that was committed in the Persona world. And your only way of going free is if you bring the main suspect to justice. The social links would be limited to same-sex prisoners, however with a chance of making contact with the opposite sex via telephone, letters, and email. Then once your social link gets to a certain level they meet you during visiting hours.
Finally, we could play the character of someone who went through High School battling Personas. And is now trying to hold down a 9 to 5. While secretly wishing to be back using Personas. Events such as missing people or killings start to occur again. With you and the other Persona users realise that the real big baddie was never caught.
4. Smaller Party
One thing that I really need on my Persona 6 wishlist, is a smaller party. I hate leaving out other party members when there is a maximum of 4 that you can take into battle. What are the other party members doing while you battle? It also means you have to then spend time levelling up if you need their skills to bypass the next level. This is something all JRPGs force on us and it makes me feel guilty about leaving them out.
By having a smaller party, the characters behind the social links can have more time invested in them. With fewer group-based social links. It also means you can bond with them all in a much more meaningful way.
The only downside is that the weaknesses and strengths of your party will remain static. Unless they too can have more than one Persona each. Maybe if they are adults they have the ability to contain more than one. The second Persona covers the weaknesses of their first Persona. Because Personas are linked to one person, they will level up at the same rate as their wielder.
Final Fantasy X-2 and Final Fantasy XIII-2 managed to pull off having only a few party members and both were very successful. The player only needs to focus on choosing how the party levels up. Rather than devoting time to levelling up the whole party.
5. Parody Anime Clichés
Disney’s Frozen made a quirk that it parodied all of the Disney films that came before it. So there is no reason Atlus couldn’t try this with Persona 6. Make the characters be overly dramatic during cutscenes, and have others call them out on it.
Make the strongest attacks have the shortest animation. While one of the weakest attacks has a minute-long animation cycle. But please let us choose to skip the animations after we have seen them once. It’s painful to watch the same animations time and time again.
In battle, have the characters call out their turns like Deadpool would if he had his own RPG. Especially when they are low on health. Have them ask if they can skip the order just this once so they can heal. (Maybe even have this as a gameplay feature).
If a battle takes ages, have the game itself ask the player if they are bored yet. Comment on other players who have managed to get through this battle and that you are not playing very well.
That’s My Persona 6 Wishlist
My Persona 6 wishlist may not be for everyone. You may completely love all of the series’ quirks. Or you may think of others that you may hate. If you can think of any please leave a comment below so we can discuss it. But regardless of your feelings on the series as a whole. We can all agree that the announcement for the next game is taking far too long.
For the history of the Persona series click here.
