Persona 5 Royal, the enhanced version of Atlas' critically acclaimed JRPG, was finally released stateside last week. Fans of the original game finally get the chance to relive the adventures of Joker and the Phantom Thieves as they awaken their personas and change the hearts of corrupted adults throughout Japan with new characters, plot elements, and game mechanics.
Even without Royal's new additions, Persona 5 is a massive game filled with hundreds of hours of content. It's this large amount of content that makes the game perfect for a New Game Plus.
New Game Plus is a reward that only comes after you complete a game's campaign that encourages you to play again. It allows players to start out with rewards unlocked throughout the previous play-through, so they don't have to start from scratch. For some games, this means powerful upgrades can be used from the beginning. A New Game Plus also gives players the chance to go back and find what things that they may have missed earlier or experience the game in an entirely new way.
In Persona 5 Royal, there's a lot that carries over in New Game Plus. For starters, the Personas that you acquire throughout the game will carry over, so you'll have lots of powerful tools in your compendium to call on when you need them. Shadow analysis (the list of weaknesses and strengths of enemy Personas that aren't in your compendium) also carry over, meaning you won't have to go into a battle blind and having to guess a Shadow's weakness.
Having a nearly full Persona compendium at the beginning of the game allows you to level up the Strength Confidant as quickly as possible. As long as you have the money to summon the high-level Personas you want, you can start the game with the strongest arsenal possible.
Speaking of money, the funds in your wallet will still be there for you in the New Game Plus. Other items that you acquired throughout your first playthrough will be there as well, such as Skill Cards, infiltration tools, holiday-themed gifts, Mementos stamps, and weapons, along with any weapon customization that you did through the Hanged Man confidant.
Confidant rankings do not carry over into New Game Plus since most of them are tied to story progress, so you'll still need to spend time with your many confidants to get their rankings up. In your first play-through, certain confidants take longer to rank up than others, as you'll need to first rank up Joker's social stats: Knowledge, Kindness, Charm, Proficiency, and Guts. But New Game Plus makes this easier by giving you all the social stats you unlocked from your first game. No longer will you have to grind through part-time jobs of the Big Bang Burger challenge in order to get your stats up. Other stats that you upgraded the first time like HP and SP boosts will also carry over.