Our good friend DC has once again blessed us with a massive overhaul mod for Persona 5 Royal’s PC port. This comes pretty soon after his last major release in August, the 2.0 update of Persona 5 EX for PS3. This time, it’s called “Custom Bonus Tweaks,” not to be confused with the other kind of “CBT” — if you know, you know. (Yes, the naming was an intentional meta-joke about the mod’s development.)
Features Overview
Like last time, the changelog is quite lengthy and technical. Many features return from Persona 5 EX, but there’s plenty of new ones that benefit both mod creators and players.
Here are some of the highlights in my opinion, but you can read the full run-down on the mod’s download page.
Returning P5EX Enhancements
- Costumes you equip in the metaverse will be worn by party members during metaverse cutscenes
- Futaba’s All-Out-Attack and other in-battle appearances will feature her equipped costume too
- Pre-rendered cutscenes are replaced with in-engine remakes from the ground up to take into account the equipped costume (or your other mods!)
- Randomized and expanded DLC BGM, including extra ambush/advantage tracks
- Additional outfit slots were added for each character, including ones that went unused before
- Unused Joker and party member voice lines in battle were re-implemented
- New challenge battles with their own custom stage models
- New (and returning) random title screen variations
- Navigator dialog is now separated into its own external file for easy modding (rather than embedded in the executable)
- Modders can use any Persona slot from 0 – 999 without worrying about crashes
New Features
- The red outline color in battle is replaced with each party member’s color (colors are configurable by the user)
- The late game cutscene with Ryuji on the cruise ship has been altered to be a little bit nicer to him
- A leftover debug script from the PS4 is usable on field 000_100 (which you can access via other mods such as the mod menu or zmenu). Going to that field also grants you all the new outfits on an existing save
- Modders can now create and add their own challenge battles using new flowscript commands (using the included flowscript library)
- Modders can use any BGM as battle music rather than the previously restrictive list of combat BGM, and add new voice lines for battle events
- Challenge battle bosses can summon their own Personas using new flowscript commands (as well as their own cut-in textures)
- Modders can now store and get values from an extended range of count variables thanks to new flowscript commands
The Takeaway
Of course, seeing the main characters wear the costumes you’ve chosen for them more often may help with immersion and freshen up the experience replaying P5R. Additional costumes, music, and voicelines help too. But aside from that, the new battles, and a few things being more colorful, shiny, and new, the average player might not immediately notice the benefit of most of these changes.
P5RCBT, just like EX before it, is an excellent mod to use as a dependency for future projects. It opens a ton of doors, like being able to craft new boss battles against Persona users with more options for clever AI, being able to add new Personas to the game, or having more room to add or replace content thanks to additional slots being opened up.
A Heads Up for Mod Developers
Modders do need to keep in mind that to support P5RCBT compatibility, some changes are required. For instance, basing your .TBL edits off of P5RCBT’s since they are required to prevent the game from crashing (thanks to new EXIST TBL entries, new costume slots etc etc).
Joker’s voicelines have also been slightly rearranged and expanded, and tracks were added to both the main BGM and DLC awb packs. To make sure your voice clips and music aren’t played back incorrectly, you simply have to compare and adjust them accordingly.
Finally, many of the different features in P5RCBT are labelled in their own CPK folders, which you can delete if they are unneeded or conflict. For instance, there’s a whole CPK dedicated to the Ryuji scene that you may or may not want, or a fix for Yusuke’s eyes (which you obviously need to remove if you replace Yusuke in your own mod).
I plan to support both users with and without P5RCBT with my upcoming Vinesauce mod, for instance, by including a separate ReloadedII mod specifically for P5RCBT compatibility. It contains the outfit replacements for new models, compatible TBLs, and updated DLC/BGM and Joker awbs. That way, it can simply be toggled depending on if it’s needed.
I already took the liberty of checking– in Joker’s battle voices, “Persona change!” is inserted at clip #141, between “This one!” and “Hmm.” thus offsetting all the following clips by 1. Then, at clip #182, which is normally “Hmph!” the next 5 clips are removed, so it’s as if it skips to clip #188. The rest are in the same order, but this omission can definitely offset the Persona callouts in existing voice mods.
This is presumably to make room for some of the extra lines added after the final one, #409 — “Pazuzu!”. Here are the following added to P5RCBT:
| 410 | Thanks. |
| 411 | Thank you. |
| 412 | Sorry. |
| 413 | Let’s go! |
| 414 | Ravage them! |
| 415 | It’s over! |
| 416 | We’ll take their hearts. |
| 417 | And that’s that! |
| 418 | The show is over! |
| 419 | Damn, it’s still alive? |
| 420 | Not yet. |
| 421 | I’m not done! |
As for the BGM.AWB, #127 – #145 are brand new tracks appended to the end. Thankfully this means existing BGM mods aren’t offset by this, but if you want to use your own tracks for the expanded ambush/advantage BGM, the IDs are as follows:
| 140 | P5S Battle Theme |
| 141 | P5S Battle Theme 2 |
| 142 | P5S Midboss Theme (Last Surprise) |
Cheers to DeathChaos!
Even though he had a lot of help with the mod, most of his herculean effort was spent reverse engineering and testing the game on his own time, all completely for free. As such, he rightly deserves some recognition and perhaps compensation. Anyone who feels they appreciate and benefit from this mod are encouraged to donate to his PayPal or commission him on Checkpoint for further mod creations. Both of which are listed on his Gamebanana page.