‘Persona 5’ Nintendo Switch? ‘Person 5 R’ domain name sparks rumors of a possible remake

Unless you parceled out a good chunk of time when Persona 5 was first released, chances are good you haven’t finished the ultra-stylish Atlus roleplaying game. Maybe you decided it wasn’t worth the time to finish. Regardless, rumors have surfaced that Atlus may be seeking to do, well, something with its property.

Like all good rumors, this one is based on some pretty weird ground — specifically, a newly accessible domain name that looks a lot like a remake.

Persona 5 R: New domain sparks rumors of a remake

The domain name “P5R.jp” has recently become accessible. The news made its way to the gaming-focused NeoGAF forums, where posters almost immediately started speculating about what the “R” could stand for. Some of the suggestions are as follows:

• Persona 5 Rouge

This isn’t all wild speculation, however. When players raised the point that there’s no way Atlus would remake the game so quickly, a poster named LordKano pointed out that “Persona 3 FES released only a year later after the original so it wouldn’t be too early.”

However, if our choices are either a remake or a racing game, we’ll certainly take the latter.

Persona 5 R: What we’d like to see from a rerelease of Persona 5

Although early buzz for the latest Persona game was incredibly glowing, many players found it difficult to slog through 80 to 100 hours of content. With that in mind, here are some things we hope to see from the game’s rerelease.

Less exposition, more free time

One of the biggest complaints about Persona 5 is that it just refuses to trust that you’ve “got” the concept of the Metaverse, the subconscious realm of desire where the game’s dungeons exist. Long after your main character has fused with his Persona Arsene and started messing up shadows in your evil gym teacher’s palace, your damn cat Morgana is still explaining how things in the Metaverse work. There should really be an option to just say, “Cool, got it. Metaverse stuff and all that.”

It’d be bad enough if that happened once, but basically every time you get a new party member you have to go back through the explanation of what the Metaverse is for their benefit. Granted, by the time you recruit Makoto she’s like, “Cool, this all makes sense,” but it’s still annoying that the game never gives your character the same benefit.

For a game that demands you use your free time as effectively as possible, Persona 5 has a nasty habit of snatching entire weeks out from under you for the sake of plot exposition. It got to the point where I was taking palaces as quickly as possible so I didn’t have to waste time wandering through them and wasting time I could’ve spent leveling up my precious social links.

A more balanced gameplay experience

Combat in Persona 5 is incredibly stylish and fast-paced assuming you know an enemy’s weakness, which in turn assume the shadow you were fighting even had one. The easiest way to preserve your precious SP is to take out large swathes of enemies at once by knocking them down and using All-out Attacks to kill them instantly. However, this got a lot trickier as the game went on or if you were unfortunate enough to run into enemies without elemental weaknesses.

Bosses in the game also tend to hide behind confusing trial-and-error mechanics that make it hard — if not downright impossible — to suss out how to beat them without losing at least once. The game’s second boss wiped the floor with me so many times even after I’d figured out his gimmick that I ended up having to switch the game down to Easy mode to even have a chance to beat him. It’s nice that Persona 5 gives you that option, but up to that point I’d had zero issues with the dungeon. So it felt like an abrupt punishment on the game’s part.

A Nintendo Switch port, pretty please

In spite of pretty conclusive evidence that we aren’t getting a Switch port of Persona 5, it would be absolutely amazing for the game. I get anxious spending time hunkered down in front of my television for much shorter games. So being able to play something as long as Persona 5 on a whim in any setting would be extremely liberating.

The Nintendo 3DS remake of Dragon Quest VIII already showed how much of a quality-of-life improvement being able to put a Japanese roleplaying game in sleep mode can be. Hopefully, Atlus will wise up and give us a Switch port sooner or later later. It’d almost be worth replaying the 40-odd hours I’ve sunk into Persona 5 already to be able to go, “Okay, done for the night” and put my Switch in sleep move rather than having to scramble back to a Safe Room to save. Almost.

More Persona 5 news, updates, tips and tricks

For more on the latest entry in the Persona series, check out the rest of what Mic has to offer. Here’s a guide on how to capture Personas, and here’s one on building relationships with the game’s Confidant system. Here are some tips on beating the first boss and the second boss. Finally, here are the answers on some of the crossword puzzles.