Persona 5 Royal (Hard, True Ending) FAQ

Q: What are the requirements for getting the True Ending?
A: Play the game until you beat Yaldabaoth, getting Akechi and Maruki's confidants to Rank 10 in the process, and beating the bonus third semester after that

Q: Why Hard Mode instead of any of the other difficulties?
A: It's tradition in SMT and Persona speedrunning to run the game on the 2nd hardest difficulty setting, and that's Hard in this game's case. Merciless is by and large not very different from Hard, so it's not commonly run. Normal, Easy, and Safety trivialize the game's difficulty, so it wouldn't be as fun to run.

Q: Why not run with the DLCs? In fact, why are DLCs not allowed for use in runs at all?
A: The DLC Personas make most fights extremely easy, so the run wouldn't be as fun to do due to the challenge aspect of the run being removed. Having the DLC Personas in the compendium also messes with a few fusions we do in the route.

Q: What Persona(s) do you end the game with?
A: Titania and Kushinada

Titania because she has really powerful Nuke skills and learns the passive skill Enduring Soul, effectively giving us a 1-up if we die during a boss fight
Kushinada because she can reflect most attacks and learns Makarakarn and Tetrakarn, which gives other characters mirrors and allows for setups on lategame bosses where we reflect back most of their attacks

Q: Why is this run so long?
A: Because Atlus put a lot of cutscenes in the game and there's a lot of content overall to play through.

Q: How is this run so much shorter than it was before?
A: The PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S versions have faster loading times, as they're more powerful than the PS4 console the game originally released on. Those three versions also have the capability of running at 60 FPS (120 FPS on PC), which makes text scrolling and animations play a lot faster as well.

Q: Which confidants do you interact with?
A:
1. Maruki (Councillor) to Rank 10 to unlock the third semester
2. Akechi (Justice) to Rank 10 to unlock the True Ending cutscene at the end of the game
3. Ryuji (Chariot) to Rank 4 to unlock Stealth Dash, which makes palace movement a lot easier
4. Futaba (Hermit) to Rank 2 to unlock Mementos Scan, which allows for skipping floors in Mementos.
5. Sumire (Faith) to Rank 2 to unlock Tumble, which makes getting ambushed less of a problem.

Q: Any difference in language versions or loading times between consoles?
A: Yes.

As for loading times, the PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S versions are faster by a large margin compared to PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. Additionally, the higher framerates accessible on PC, PS5 and Series X/S makes animations and text scrolling save even more time on top of that. The absolute fastest version is the PC version at 120 FPS, which is what I play on.

As for text, there's no difference between languages given that it goes so fast as is since we fast-forward through it 90% of the time, and even if there is a difference, it's very miniscule in the scale of such a long run.

Q: Why do you keep looting treasure spots? Isn't getting those a time waste?
A: I loot treasure spots to get money for crafting materials and equipment early on, as you're tight on money otherwise.

Q: Eventual goal time for this game?
A: sub 12:30:00 on PC