DeathChaos Announces P5 (PS3) EX Mod

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Notice: The following video and article contains Persona 5 (Royal) spoilers. You’ve been warned!

A set of patches for P5 PS3 aims to backport several features from Persona 5 Royal, along with some brand new quality of life improvements for modders and players alike.

Groundbreaking New Methodology

For the past two months, DeathChaos has been field testing TGE’s new method of modding P5– custom SPRX loading. While similar to the current patch.yml method of injecting custom code into the EBOOT, SPRX files are more like DLLS– external, precompiled libraries.

The method of creating SPRX mods comes from TGE’s open-source PS3 C Kit. it’s currently usable enough that DC has managed to fit an incredible number of features into his new mod.

According to the video description, DC estimates that “Persona 5 EX” will be released in the coming 2-3 weeks, should no problems arise. You will be able to use the custom SPRX despite TGE’s tools remaining private for the time being.

What “Persona 5 EX” Offers

There will be many more features than we see in DC’s video, but a full list is pending until release. Here’s what he’s unveiled thus far.

Challenge Battles

Returning from Persona 5 Royal are battles with the Persona 3 and 4 protagonists, as well as Lavenza. These battles have been painstakingly backported, including models, cutins, and movesets.

Rather than fighting the protags in the Velvet Room, this time around it’s much flashier. These encounters take place at the top of Tartarus and Yomotsu Hirasaka respectively, thanks to DC porting the fields from the Dancing games.

The fights also make use of a new feature that should prove exciting for modders…

Enemy Using Personas

Previously, only one enemy is programmed to summon a single Persona: Akechi. Of course, this is hardcoded to be Loki and only happen during his specific encounter. Since this was programmed into the game’s executable, there was never a way to grant this ability to other enemies… Until now.

With Persona 5 EX, modders can select a Persona per enemy, making it easy to create new Persona-user bossfights without replacing Akechi’s encounter or Loki’s model. Thanks, DC!

You know what else was embedded in the EBOOT? Navigator dialog. One guess as to what DC also unhardcoded for us in order to make these battles use the new P5R dialog for the full experience. 😉

Ambush Battle Theme

Also a Royal mainstay is the new battle theme, Take Over, which you get to hear when ambushing enemies. Without this patch, you’d be stuck listening to Last Surprise or your modded equivalent for every single normal battle on the PS3 version. That is no longer the case!

This doesn’t override DLC outfit music though, which by the way, has been expanded to include the new P5R outfits and their respective BGM! Even some brand new ones, like the Persona 5 Strikers casual outfits. Hats off to DC for that one!

Futaba Outfit in Battle

This one we wish we would’ve seen in Royal. Alas, Futaba’s DLC outfits are normally useless since you only see her wear it outside dungeons and in safe rooms. In battle, she’d always don her regular Thief outfit regardless of what you equip her with.

You can thank the developers for embedding the model that shows up during support sequences inside an EPL (a particle effect container of sorts). These are incredibly inconvenient to mod, and apparently Atlus couldn’t be bothered to keep the character model separate.

But thanks to DC, the proper model is finally used in these situations. Here come the buffs in style!

Outfits During Cutscenes

Here’s another one we haven’t seen in P5R– outfit selection affecting cutscenes. In any scenario where the protagonists wear their Phantom Thief attire, the model that gets loaded is overridden by whatever they have equipped for dungeon/battle use.

This insanely improves the value of DLC outfits, as you’ll be seeing them in action more often. It makes a lot more sense, too. Why would they change in and out of them when an event is happening? Missed opportunity, Atlus. But that’s okay, we’ve got your back.

P5R Darkechi

Last but certainly not least, the version of Akechi that joins your party in the final stretch of P5R is available for use in the PS3 version. Complete with his new Persona, Loki, his new lines, animations, UI elements, and even his new All-Out-Attack! This is all done without replacing regular Akechi, which was previously more or less impossible.

Final Thoughts

Look forward to DeathChaos’s full feature list (hopefully) by the end of next month, as well as an eventual release of the SPRX toolset by TGE. Keep in mind that knowledge of decompiling and reverse engineering assembly is as necessary as ever, so these new tools aren’t necessarily going to make mods like these easier to create. Regardless, as DC has shown us, an experienced modder with enough persistence can take the game to new heights.

Let’s congratulate them both on their hard work, and look forward to replaying Persona 5 (PS3) with these essential upgrades! 🎉

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