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Megaten Speedruns Resources

Persona 5 Royal

Persona 5 Royal is the fifth mainline entry in the persona series. Its expansion, Royal, added new content. Persona 5 Royal Cover
Leaderboards See all the submitted runs on Speedrun.com

About

Section titled “About”

Persona 5 Royal speedruns initially began with early runners Liv and DarkKefka, playing the Japanese version; as Royal had originally launched in Japan approximately 5 months before the Western release. Over the span of these 5 months the route would change and be optimised constantly. In part, due to the high level of competition between these two runners.

The first routes for Royal were relatively unoptimized and utilised a lot of the newer, more time-consuming mechanics of Royal because of the annoying nature of the final boss, Maruki.

Over the course of 2019-2020, many large time saves were implemented. A significant one being a change to Futaba’s scan ability from the original version. The change being that a scan could activate on any floor regardless of whether or not it had been visited prior. Despite this making Mementos much quicker it also introduced a high luck element into the speedrun, as quick traversal through Mementos now heavily relied on scans activating.

In February 2020, perhaps the biggest route change in Royal’s speedrun history was discovered, which was the ability to easily defeat Maruki’s boss fight using a very specific setup that repelled both physical and bless attacks, whilst utilising Endure and Enduring Soul for his two scripted Almighty attacks. Whilst the exact setup took some time to pin down, this single change allowed for enormous route changes to occur as upto this point the final boss fight had been the biggest hindrance in the speedrun.

The next significant route change started to take shape in May 2020, when runner Liv discovered the ability to go Out of Bounds whilst experimenting in Maruki’s Palace. Initially believed to be impossible before this point, as the previous method possible in the original version of Persona 5 was fixed. No functional use of it could be made until a few months later, however.

In July 2020, Persona 5 speedrunner, Shady, put together the first practical use of Out of Bounds in Royal. This allowed for several further Out of Bounds ideas to form around this discovery, they were however still much smaller in scale than the skips used in the original Persona 5 at this point.

Shortly after, another large discovery was made again by Shady. Which was the ability to gain height with Joker Out of Bounds. Whilst still not understood at this point exactly how it was done, it was another discovery that led to more ideas on how to exploit this to sequence break the game. In January 2021, so almost 6 months later, the exploit was still largely misunderstood, with runner Liv having experimented with Out of Bounds for a considerable amount of time and successfully replicating it, but being unable to pinpoint exactly what was causing it.

On the 16th of February 2021, annother enormous discovery would be made by runner LasigMonke, which allowed runners to clip Out of Bounds using the collision of Enemy Shadows and nearby walls/objects. Previously impossible in the original Persona 5, this new discovery allowed for massive sequence breaks to occur in several palaces. The most notable being a skip to sequence break and bypass two thirds of Shido’s Palace, also discovered by LasigMonke.

In July 2021, runner Liv would finally pinpoint down exactly what caused Joker’s height gain whilst Out of Bounds, and this allowed for even more sequence breaks to occur, such as a consistent sequence break in Okumura’s Palace and a consistent sequence break in Maruki’s Palace.

As of 2021, the route for Persona 5 Royal hasn’t really changed much outside of minor alterations, and no significant route change or discovery has occurred since then.

Speedrun History

Section titled “Speedrun History”
  1. Persona 5 Royal was released in Japan on October 31, 2019.
  2. The first recorded run was done by Liv with a time of 19:42:24.
  3. 18 days later, Darkkefka achieved a better time with a [17:51:39]. The VOD is no longer available.
  4. On 2020/01/15, Liv beat the previous record with a time of 17:16:34.
  5. On 2020/2/11, an unintentional race would begin between Liv and DarkKefka, who had both somehow managed to begin a streamed run attempt miraculously at the same time with no communication. This race came down to the wire when both runners reached the final boss with only 2 minutes between them. Kefka had started the final boss ahead of Liv but, using a slightly updated final boss strategy, Liv was able to close that gap and almost pass Kefka before tragedy struck. A basic attack input was accidentally entered at an extremely inopportune time resulting in a death. Kefka went ahead to secure the record with a 16:42:32
  6. On 2020/3/6, Liv set a new record time of 16:22:06
  7. On 2020/04/14, Darkkefka set a new record with a time of 16:10:53
  8. On 2020/05/03, Liv beat the world record with a time of 15:53:24
  9. 1 day later, Darkkefka reclaimed the record with a 15:38:38
  10. May was a very eventful much for P5R speedrunning as Liv continued the back and forth 14 days later and claimed the record to a time of 15:35:36
  11. 8 days later, HeroMystic entered the May month of P5R by claiming the record with a time of 15:33:34
  12. 11 days later, HeroMystic would improve this time to a 15:24:44
  13. On 2020/07/01, Darkkefka reclaimed the record with a time of 15:09:45
  14. 4 months later, Liv grabbed the world record back again with her 15:09:33. She’d improve it with the first sub 15h run, 14:53:29
  15. On 2020/12/23, Darkkefka was the second runner to achieved a sub 15h run and claimed world record with a time of 14:45:13, and so the year of P5R came to a close.
  16. But Liv began 2021 shocking everyone with a new grasp at the record with her 14:39:51
  17. Liv improved the record close to 6 months later in the first run to utilise out of bounds glitches, with a 14:23:50
  18. The current world record holder is Liv with a time of 14:09:58

Categories

Section titled “Categories”

Hard, True Ending

There is a subcategory for the Legacy, Remaster and PC versions.

Glitches and Tricks

Section titled “Glitches and Tricks”
Final Boss (Maruki) Cheese

The Maruki cheese involves using a persona with both repel physical and repel light. This renders you completely invulnerable to all but 2 of Maruki’s attacks, one of which he’ll only be able to use a single time in his 1st phase and the other he will only use twice in his 2nd phase. The second half of the cheese involves getting a persona with Endure (or using Boss Undies), and another with Enduring Soul, which allows you to survive his Tyrant Chaos attack for free both times. This cheese is significant as up until this point Maruki was requiring runners perform significant prep work throughout their route, as well as generally being a nuisance to fight.

The initial setup of this cheese was found by Liv, in early February of 2020.

Out of Bounds

Out of Bounds involves going outside of the intended boundaries of the game world, and can be used to sequence break a game. In Persona 5 Royal, this largely involves skipping over boss fights. For the most part Out of Bounds in Royal works very similarly to the original Persona 5. Namely, we utilize the collision of shadows to force us out of bounds.

This involves having a shadow push us into the ground via its collision, enabling us to lose height, clip underneath the map and move to areas we normally shouldn’t be able to access at that point.

Usually, this is done by climbing up a ledge at the right moment, sliding underneath an object at the right movement or, most typically, running between a shadow and another object it is very close to, such as a wall or pillar and pause buffering a throwable item at the right moment. Other ways can involve abusing systems in the game that will automatically take control of Joker after positioning a shadow correctly, such as banging on a door, opening a door or pressing a button.

Once you’re out of bounds you can access other areas by using two differing methods to both lose height and gain height again. To lose height after clipping out of bounds you want to run in triangular motions very rapidly, and to gain height you want to pivot Joker in a specific way and at a specific angle.

There were many people involved in both the discovery and full utilisation of out of bounds in Persona 5 Royal and they all deserve a mention, here are some of the accomplishments below and the people involved. This will only be including skips currently involved in the run (or can be) and/or skips that involve making the run faster.

  1. Initial Out of Bounds discovery on 2020/5/12 by Liv
  2. First Practical Use on 2020/7/13 by Shady
  3. Gaining Height Out of Bounds on 2020/7/16 by Shady
  4. Mementos Depths Final Puzzle Skip on 2021/1/21 by Liv
  5. Method of using the Collision of Shadows to achieve Out of Bounds on 2021/2/16 by LasigMonke/Vivi
  6. Rat Maze 1 Skip on 2021/2/16 by Liv
  7. Rat Maze 2 Skip on 2021/2/16 by Liv
  8. Shido’s Palace Skip on 2021/2/16 by LasigMonke/Vivi
  9. Director Mini-Bosses Skip (Okumura’s Palace) on 2021/5/24 by LasigMonke/Vivi
  10. Viable/Consistent Surt Skip Method on 2020/8/XX by Liv
  11. Tape 1 Skip by LasigMonke/Vivi and RoseXorn (Exact timeline on this is unknown)
  12. Kaneshiro’s Palace Basement Skip on 2021/12/5 by RoseXorn

Notes

Section titled “Notes”