Persona 5 Scramble, the upcoming Dynasty Warriors-style spin-off (but also basically a full-blown sequel) is a little over a month away from its launch in Japan. While there’s no western release date for the PlayStation 4 and Switch game, Atlus has released the animated intro for everyone to see, which is always a highlight for Persona games and their various spin-offs.
The intro features the Phantom Thieves (apparently sans the newest member, Kasumi Yoshizawa, who will be joining the group in the upcoming remake Persona 5 Royal) up to their usual shadow-fighting antics, but there’s also a fair bit of time spent on them in their normal lives. This includes a horrific scene of protagonist Joker showing his phone to Ryuji, who then instigates a game of hot potato with his phone. Keeping in mind that one of the members of the Phantom Thieves is a cat who has no opposable thumbs, the entire thing ends exactly as you’d expect it would.
Look at these monsters. Do they not know that phones cost a lot of money? Joker has like eight different jobs at any given moment and they just out here draining his bank account in the span of a few seconds.
Check out the full intro here:
Along with the main cast of Persona 5, two new characters that are debuting in Scramble make an appearance as well: Sophia, an AI that lives in Joker’s phone (yes, the whole throwing the phone around the train thing seemed like it wasn’t fun for her) and Zenkichi Hasegawa, a detective investigating the Phantom Thieves after the supernatural events happening this time around puts the group under suspicion again.
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All of this is set to a new song by Japanese vocalist Lyn, who has been providing music for the Persona 5 series since the original game, with new songs being added with each subsequent spin-off. Including the rhythm game Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, the dungeon-crawling Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth and even original songs for the animated adaptation that aired from 2018 to 2019.
Persona 5 Scramble has no western release date yet, but will come to PlayStation 4 and Switch in Japan on February 20. In the meantime, western fans will be getting Persona 5 Royal on March 31. The PS4 remake of the original game will bring a new party member in Kasumi Yoshizawa, additional social links and abilities, and an entire extra semester of content. This will make an already 100-hour game probably around 120-130 hours, presumably. So if your biggest issue with Persona 5 was that it was extremely long then Royal probably isn’t going to be your jam. But if you’re interested in more time with the Phantom Thieves, it sounds like it might scratch that itch until Scramble ultimately comes to the west.
Will Royal or Scramble make good on some of Persona 5’s less than desirable traits surrounding its portraying issues of injustice and the powerful punching down only to join them in the punching down? Probably not.
