A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the announcement of an extensive mod for Persona 5 PS3. DeathChaos’s preview video showed off a handful of features, which you can see and read more about in the earlier article.

Previously Covered

• Challenge Battles (from P5R)
• Enemy Using Personas
• Ambush Battle Theme (from P5R)
• Futaba Outfit in Battle
• Outfits During Cutscenes
• Darkechi (from P5R)

I also discussed how the mod is a first-of-its-kind release for this scene, relying on custom SPRX loading rather than EBOOT patching thanks to TGE’s PS3 C Kit.

Newly Unveiled Features

A full list of features has been posted on DeathChaos’s official mod release page. There, you can check it out for all the details and instructions, and download the mod yourself.

• The mod is only available for Aemulus Package Manager.
• It will NOT work with the Mod Compendium.
• You can read my guide here about switching to Aemulus if you haven’t already.

DOWNLOAD: Persona 5 EX

Multiple Mod CPKs

Building large mods over and over can be time-consuming, and adds unwanted wear to your device’s hard drive. Examples of this include BGM packs and 4K upscale mods.

Thanks to P5EX, you can rename your mod.cpk in the game’s USRDIR folder to one of the following. They will be loaded in the following priority (highest to lowest):

• mod.cpk
• mod_01.cpk
• mod_02.cpk
  …
• mod_05.cpk
  …
• ps3.cpk
• data.cpk

Previously, if you wanted to do this, you would have had to extract the contents of both ps3.cpk and data.cpk (totaling around to 25 GB uncompressed) into a single data.cpk, and use the ps3.cpk for your large, lower-priority mods. Yikes!

Now you can easily reserve mod.cpk for all your smaller, higher priority or frequently changing mod combinations. All custom cpk support is also now provided by the SPRX, rendering the old mod support patch.yml code obsolete.

Pressing L3 Toggles Auto Advance

Another feature inspired by Royal. Normally, you’d have to go into the game’s settings to turn Auto Advance on and off in the PS3 version. Now, simply clicking in the left stick will make it smoother to coast through events without skipping them outright.

Mementos BGM from P5R

Whether you didn’t mind the original Mementos BGM or not, many prefer the variety introduced by Royal. These atmospheric tracks change the more you progress, similar to the Tartarus BGM in Persona 3.

Modding Quality of Life Tweaks

Several annoying things about creating mods for the game have been tweaked as well. Due to this, you may see mods pop up using P5 EX as a dependency in the future. For example…

• Navigator text now loads externally from BMD files found in battle/message/ rather than embedded in the EBOOT.
• Better File Access Logging that covers more stuff without spamming your TTY Log.
• You can store up to 512 COUNT values (temporary variables while the game is running). This is twice as much as vanilla provides.
• Enemies with Unit ID > 350 can now use Personas (if Encounter ID > 830)
• New AtlusScriptCompiler Library with 7 brand new useful functions for BF Scripting. Change Joker’s level, print float values, get the currently equipped Persona ID, current encounter ID, second Persona evolution, set enemy Persona, and get current sequence ID.
• Optional Enhanced Debug Log that prints when bit flags are enabled and disabled etc.
• Enemies above Unit ID 350 also load a combat Cutin when one is available, as well as motionse .acb and .dat files which allow for custom SFX per animation.
• Unhardcoded weapon model tables allow custom weapons to be added.
• Personas with ID > 220 will always use the model with the _ps filename, no more _psz.
• New enemy units can be added, theoretically up to ID 999.
• Commands can be typed into the RPCS3 TTY tab, for a list you can check the tab when you start the game.
• A BF script that runs every frame (script/test.bf)

Proper Crediting and Usage

Phew… That’s a LOT. And naturally it begs the question of how much of this you can use for your own mods. DeathChaos addresses this at the end of the release post:

 Any files containing text (such as bmd files) are freely reusable in other mods (i.e Navigator text file, weapon descriptions, etc).

Any files containing 2D UI elements are also free to be used (such as spd or dds files) (i.e. party panel spd file, combat cutins, etc).

Any other game files contained within this mod are NOT to be used in other mods, if you need functionality or core game files, list P5EX as a dependency for your mod.

DeathChaos

Showing Appreciation

Even if you’re reusing assets allowed by DC in your own mods, or just intending for P5 EX to be used as a dependency, it doesn’t hurt to credit him in your Gamebanana submissions and link back to the mod page.

You can also donate to DeathChaos via PayPal or Ko-Fi to tangibly give something back in return for the 2 years spent researching and reverse engineering for this project. He describes P5 EX as 75% finished, with the following features pending completion:

• All non Joker 3rd Tier Personas available
• Challenge the other Phantom Thieves to a friendly 1 on 1 battle
• …more?