Persona 5

Confidants

All party member Confidants will eventually acquire the following as their rank increases:

• Baton Pass: Allows party members to pass their "1 More" chance to another party member with the same ability, increasing their attack power as well.
• Follow-up Attack: Chance to take a free shot at the enemy if Joker cannot down them.
• Occasional second-chance at negotiation if answer enrages the Persona
• Harisen Recovery: Chance to wake up another party member from any non-death ailment.
• Endure: Ability to survive an otherwise lethal attack with 1 HP, once per battle.
• Chance to protect Joker from an otherwise lethal attack by taking the hit themselves (single-target attacks only).
• Unlock an evolved version of their Persona at max rank, with better stats.

Story

Prologue

The game opens with the Protagonist in the middle of a heist at a casino, trying to create a distraction so his friends can escape. When he tries to rejoin them, a battalion of riot police are waiting to capture him, with a man claiming that one of the Protagonist's friends sold him out before knocking him cold.

The Protagonist later wakes up in prison, being beaten and forced to sign a confession by a detective. Public Prosecutor Sae Niijima arrives at the prison to interrogate the Protagonist, where the story begins.

Another World

The Protagonist flashes back to April, when he was unofficially exiled to Tokyo. He attempted to save a woman who was being assaulted by a drunk man. After accidentally throwing the man on the ground, the man used his political connections to have the Protagonist arrested for assault and put on probation.

In Tokyo, he is reluctantly taken in by Cafe Le Blanc owner Sojiro Sakura, and grudgingly accepted as a transfer to Shujin High School, where rumors about his arrest are spreading rapidly. Even so, he attempts to live normally, but on his first day, he follows his new friend Ryuji to school and stumbles upon a great castle where the school is supposed to be. The two boys are quickly captured and thrown into a prison cell, where the King, who bares a strong resemblance to the volleyball coach Kamoshida, threatens to execute them.

The Protagonist then awakens to his power, breaks out of the cell with Ryuji and escapes. On their way out, they rescue Morgana, a strange talking cat who helps them leave the dungeon, and offers to help them grow into skilled thieves.

Kamoshida

The Protagonist and Ryuji later return to the castle with Morgana, where they find Kamoshida torturing images of volleyball players as a reflection of what the real Kamoshida is doing. Ryuji plans to ask the real-life players about this, but they are captured by Kamoshida again. As Morgana and the Protagonist are beaten and about to be executed, Ryuji awakens to his own Persona, and fights off the guards long enough for the party to escape.

In the real world, Ryuji and the Protagonist try to get someone to talk about Kamoshida's abuse, but no one will confess to anything. The Protagonist's classmate, Ann, seems to be suffering in particular as she tries to help her friend. It reaches a head when Ann's friend throws herself off the school's roof to escape the abuse. Ann then tries to join the Protagonist's party, but initially they try to keep her out of it. However, she comes back alone and is quickly captured by Kamoshida's guards at the castle.

Meanwhile, the Protagonist's party continues trying to find the treasure, when they find a captured Ann hanging from a cross. Ann then awakens to her Persona's power, and destroys her captors. With newfound resolve, she joins the Protagonist as they later revisit the castle to find Kamoshida's treasure. When they reach it, Morgana says that the crew must deliver a "calling card" to make the treasure materialize so it can be stolen.

Ryuji offers to make a hand-made calling card and quietly plasters copies of it across the school the next day, making Kamoshida furious in both the real world and the castle. As the party heads back to the castle to steal the treasure, a giant crown, Kamoshida suddenly ambushes them. However, the Protagonist's party defeats him and takes his crown, while Ann convinces Kamoshida's Shadow to give up willingly.

Kamoshida suddenly disappears from school for multiple days, only to turn up during a school assembly, tearfully confessing his crimes and turning himself in to the police. The crew celebrate with a fancy buffet lunch and solidify their crew name as the "Phantom Thieves of Hearts," when the Protagonist almost runs into the man who got him arrested a month ago.

Madarame

Over the next month, a master painter named Madarame arrives in Shinjuku to display his art to the public. His pupil, Yusuke Kitagawa, begs Ann to model for him. Ryuji and the Protagonist follow her to a large wooden house in a Tokyo suburb, only for them all to be rebuffed by Yusuke. However, the party discovers that Madarame has a darker side, as they stumble into his museum-themed Palace and find that Madarame had been plagarizing his students' work and claiming them as his own.

Needing to get past a secure door in the Palace, Ann decides to try modeling for him while Morgana tries to pick a heavy lock on the real Madarame's storage room. Upon breaking in, they discover multiple copies of "Sayuri," the original painting that inspired Yusuke. After Madarame's excuses fall flat, he threatens to call the police. Ann runs away with Yusuke and Morgana, and end up back in the Palace.

While the Phantom Thieves try to escort Yusuke out, they run into Shadow Madarame, who tells them that he only cares about art for the money it can bring, regardless of who he hurt. Yusuke then awakens to his Persona and helps the Thieves escape.

Soon after, Yusuke officially joins the Phantom Thieves as they take down Shadow Madarame and steal his Treasure, but not before learning that Madarame let Yusuke's mother die of a seizure, and even edited her last original painting, the "Sayuri," so he could claim it as his own. As Madarame's Palace crumbles, he lets slip that a black-masked thief had also tried to rob him.

At the end of his exhibit, the real Madarame tearfully confesses to his crimes, while Yusuke leaves the original Sayuri in Cafe Le Blanc.

Junya Kaneshiro

Some time later, Shujin's Student Council President, Makoto Niijima, pulls the Protagonist aside and threatens to expose him and all the Phantom Thieves unless he can find and steal the heart of a notorious scammer who has been terrorizing several students at school. Reluctantly, the Phantom Thieves decide to accept the job. Their efforts lead them to Shinjuku crime boss Junya Kaneshiro.

Angered at nearly everyone seeing her as an annoyance or useless, Makoto decides to use herself as bait to find Kaneshiro's location. She gets escorted to Kaneshiro's office with the Phantom Thieves right behind. Kaneshiro threatens to send compromising pictures of them all to the police unless they give him three million yen in a few weeks.

The Phantom Thieves decide to visit Kaneshiro's bank-themed Palace with Makoto in tow, but soon find themselves entrapped by the guards. Makoto finally decides to let her emotions out, unleashing her Persona, Johanna, as the group escapes. Afterwards, Makoto decides to drop her deadline and join the Phantom Thieves, but Kaneshiro's threat still remains.

With Makoto's help, the Phantom Thieves make their way into the deepest part of Kaneshiro's bank vault and defeat Kaneshiro's Shadow in a final showdown. Before he fades, Kaneshiro warns them that someone else has been hopping through multiple Palaces for their own selfish ends, but won't say who that is.

Futaba Sakura

The Phantom Thieves celebration is short-lived when the anonymous hacktivist group "Medjed" sends out a public challenge, threatening to destroy anyone who supports the Phantom Thieves unless they surrender and expose their identities. The Phantom Thieves try to dig up info on Medjed's identity but come up empty.

Suddenly, The Protagonist receives a message from someone nicknamed "Alibaba," asking for the Thieves to steal someone's heart in exchange for help against Medjed. After several cryptic text messages, Alibaba reveals the target is Futaba Sakura, but suddenly disappears when told that they'll need to directly meet with her to find her Palace. However, using her last name, Makoto deduces that the girl is related to The Protagonist's guardian, Sojiro.

After being rebuffed several times by Sojiro, the Thieves break into his home to find Futaba themselves, but are stopped by Sojiro's sudden return. Sojiro finally decides to tell them that Futaba was his adopted daughter, formerly raised by a single mother who committed suicide one day. After seeing her mother die, Futaba shut herself in her room and refused to leave except for basic needs.

When Medjed reiterates their public challenge to the Phantom Thieves, the group decide to take on Alibaba's original request in order to get her help against Medjed. They speak with Futaba outside her door to get the keyword to visit her Palace and travel to a large desert pyramid, where Shadow Futaba blames herself for her mother's death, suddenly kicking the Thieves out of her Palace.

The Thieves later return and work their way through the pyramid, following Shadow Futaba as they uncover hints about her past. When they reach the top, a giant Sphinx-like monster with the head of Futaba's mother tries to crush them. However, Futaba herself enters the Metaverse and comes to terms with her past, realizing that her mother's suicide was not her fault. She then helps the Thieves destroy the monster, and accepts her Persona as the Palace crumbles.

The countdown clock from Medjed continues ticking down with no word from Futaba. On the final day, Futaba herself appears in Cafe Le Blanc and sips coffee with the Protagonist, who reminds her about Medjed. She then quickly exposes the local hacker behind Medjed, using the Phantom Thieves logo to send a message to the public, before dozing off again.

The team then spends the summer trying to help Futaba out of her shell, including a trip to the beach and a test to walk around in public.

Kunikazu Okumura

The Phantom Thieves rise in popularity with the public while they mull over who should be their next target. At the top of the rankings emerges the head of Okumura Foods, who has supposedly been mistreating his employees. Meanwhile, with Futaba on the team, Morgana starts to feel jealous and runs away from Cafe Le Blanc. He manages to locate the CEO's Palace, but is quickly defeated by the Shadows within.

The Phantom Thieves find their own way into the sci-fi themed Palace, but are stymied by a biometric lock. Suddenly, they spot Morgana with a girl calling herself the "Beauty Thief." The Thieves later make up with Morgana and discover that the Beauty Thief is Haru Okumura, the daughter of the CEO who was able to bypass the Palace's biometric locks. As she is about to be sold off to an arrogant man in a political marriage, the Thieves decide to steal the CEO's Treasure before then.

In the Palace, Haru finally awakens to her Persona, Milady, as she discovers that her father only saw her as another tool for his ascension into politics. The Thieves fight their way through the Palace and defeat the Shadow Okumura. However, after the Thieves take the Treasure and flee the Palace, a mysterious assailant shoots Shadow Okumura dead.

As the deadline passes, Okumura begins to confess to his crimes when he suddenly goes braindead before naming his co-conspirators. The deaths are blamed on the Phantom Thieves as the police and the SIU in Tokyo begin a large-scale manhunt for the group, with Sae as the point person. The group comes to terms with the fact that they were baited by an unknown actor at least since the Medjed case to pin the blame for all the mental shutdowns on them at the height of their popularity.

Sae Niijima

Back in the present, Sae tries to keep the Protagonist awake as she demands to know why she was sent a Calling Card from the Phantom Thieves as well. The Protagonist continues his story.

Sojiro stumbles upon Futaba's calling card and demands to know the truth. Futaba and The Protagonist decide to let him in on their secret. Sojiro decides not to turn them in, even with news of a 30 Million Yen bounty for information leading to the Phantom Thieves.

With their backs against the wall and school exams done, Makoto decides to ask Goro Akechi for help, despite his public opposition to the group. The Phantom Thieves' rapid decline in popularity leads to Goro being the most-requested guest at Shujin's school festival. Goro accepts the offer from Makoto and gives a speech to the school, but stops short just as he plans to name his suspects at Shujin, instead inviting the Thieves to a back room where he reveals he has photo and video evidence of their activities. He threatens to expose them unless he's made part of the team to find the true culprit causing sudden mental shutdowns, stating that the black-masked assailant almost killed him until he awakened to his own Persona. Reluctantly, the team agrees to let Akechi join.

Akechi warns the Phantom Thieves that Sae will soon lead a team into Shujin to arrest innocent students, or even themselves, using falsified confessions to ensure convictions unless she is stopped. The team travels to the courthouse to enter Sae's Palace, where they discover her Shadow is the owner of a casino, as she secretly views the local judicial system as a rigged game to be won. The team fight their way through the casino, switching the house's rigged gambling systems in their favor, and defeat Shadow Sae on a giant roulette wheel.

However, the Palace does not fade as before. Instead, multiple Shadows and security guards flood the casino, forcing the Thieves to flee, leading to the events in the prologue.

Sae demands the Protagonist divulge his co-conspirators, but he refuses to name anyone, instead telling Sae that the phone is a hint to the identity of the true culprit behind the scenes. Sae finally leaves the room and passes Goro, showing him the phone before walking off. Goro walks into the interrogation room with a guard, then takes the guard's silenced pistol before shooting both him and The Protagonist in the head. The national news networks report on the Protagonist's death as a suicide.

Masayoshi Shido

However, it later turns out that the Protagonist was able to fake his own death to uncover Goro's treachery, as both The Protagonist and Morgana suspected he had a plan to take the Thieves out within Sae's Palace. So the two quietly arranged with Futaba to tap Goro's phone both to gain evidence on the true culprit and to provide a way for The Protagonist to escape certain death in the interrogation room.

At the Cafe, Futaba mentions that she heard Goro mention "Shido-san" as his backer, to which Sojiro and Sae realize Goro meant Masayoshi Shido, the only man who could have the power to stage the widespread mental shutdowns while boosting his run for Prime Minister in the upcoming elections. The Protagonist recognizes him as the drunken man who got him arrested in the first place, and Sojiro adds that he was likely responsible for stealing the research and arranging the suicide of Futaba's mother.

The Thieves decide to steal Shido's heart, uncovering his Palace as a luxury cruise ship at the Diet Building. They fight their way through the ship, gathering "Letters of Recommendation" from Shadows who resemble powerful people in Japan. However, after getting the last one, they are suddenly stopped by Goro, who tells the Thieves that they are ruining his own plan for revenge against Shido. Shido is the father who dumped both him and his mother shortly after he was born, and he planned to help make Shido the Prime Minister so he could backstab him at the height of his popularity, but the Thieves are taking that chance away from him.

Goro then attacks the Thieves, first with the power he used to cause the various psychotic breakdowns, then with Robin Hood. When he is defeated again, Goro unleashes his final power, the Persona Loki, revealing himself as the "Black Mask" that previous Shadows hinted at. With his rage at the Protagonist having the friends and confidants he never had, he tries to destroy the Thieves. However, he is defeated one more time, and the Thieves consider letting him join with them again, to change Shido's heart.

However, a Shadow version of Goro appears behind them, telling the real one that Shido planned to have him killed after pinning the blame on him for the mental shutdowns once the election was over. With several Shadows surrounding him, the real Goro fires a few gunshots and locks himself in the engine room, sacrificing himself to help the Thieves escape.

With their path to the treasure secured, Futaba hacks into every news station across Japan to send a digital Calling Card to Shido. The Thieves then head back into the Palace and confront the Shadow version of Shido, beating him after a tough battle. In the real world, Shido is partially aware of the coming change, and quickly swallows an experimental drug to collapse his own cognitive Palace, hoping to take the Thieves down with it.

The Thieves manage to escape after Ryuji rushes to get them a lifeboat, but disappears after the cruise ship explodes. However, he shortly reappears in the real world, no worse for wear. Meanwhile, Shido regains consciousness, crying as he plans to atone for his crimes.

On the night of the elections, Shido confesses his crimes on national TV. However, very little appears to have changed, as Shido's colleagues decide to sequester him away from Sae and the public, lest they lose their own positions in power.

Holy Grail

With no other options left and authorities closing in to silence them, the Phantom Thieves decide to head into the farthest reaches of Mementos to change the hearts of the entire public. As they head down, they find themselves in a giant prison where the Shadow prisoners have willingly locked themselves behind bars, including images of the people whose hearts the Thieves had changed previously. Meanwhile, Morgana begins to regain some of his lost memories.

Eventually, the team finds the Treasure in a giant cellblock, a "Holy Grail" that mocks them for wanting to destroy it. The Thieves attack, but can't defeat it, as any damage they deal is quickly healed by the willing captives around it. The Holy Grail then proceeds to merge Mementos into the real world. However, no one except the Thieves and their closest confidants seem to notice any changes. With the rules of Mementos affecting the real world, the Thieves disappear one-by-one, as the public has largely forgotten about them.

The Protagonist later reawakens in the Velvet Room, where Igor claims he has failed and demands his assistants execute him. However, the Protagonist refuses to quit, and the assistants regain their memories, asking the Protagonist to fuse them into one being again. The fused assistant, Lavenza, points out that Igor was actually a malevolent entity this whole time, using the Protagonist as a player in a rigged game. The fake Igor offers to remake the Phantom Thieves in his new world with no more free will, but the Protagonist refuses. The fake Igor then leaves the Velvet Room, when the real Igor appears.

After regaining his teammates, the Protagonist learns that Morgana was actually a sentient Shadow helper sent out to find him before the fake Igor took over the Velvet Room. With the team reassembled, the Thieves return to the Shibuya fused with Mementos to defeat the malevolent entity.

The team ascends the tower, defeating Shadows in the form of great angels to face the Holy Grail. Meanwhile, the people of Shibuya are slowly seeing the new world that has been created. At the top, the Phantom Thieves finally beat it by cutting off its healing supply. However, the grail transforms into the angel Yaldabaoth, who seeks to take away the free will of humanity, and attacks them with the seven sins of humanity.

With the support of the public and their closest confidants on their side, the Thieves fight back. Finally, the Protagonist sacrifices his original Persona, Arsene, to summon Satanael, a fallen angel Persona that has the power to destroy Yaldabaoth by shooting it in the head.

Epilogue

With Yaldabaoth and the threat of Mementos gone, Shibuya returns to normal and Morgana disappears with the Metaverse. Sae tells the Protagonist that he'll have to give witness testimony to pin Shido down for his crimes, and offer himself up to save his friends from being arrested with him. The Protagonist accepts, heading to juvenile detention.

Some time later, Sae returns to tell the Protagonist that Shido's been convicted on several charges, and the woman from the original assault charge Shido leveled against him recanted her testimony, thus clearing the Protagonist of the crime. The Protagonist returns to the cafe to meet up with the team, when Morgana appears in his cat form.

One week later, the Protagonist says his goodbyes and prepares to head back to his home with Morgana, but the Phantom Thieves decide to take them both on one last adventure together.

Bad Endings

There are multiple ways to trigger a Bad End in the game:

• Failing to complete a Palace by the deadline will result in the Protagonist being arrested, with Sae in the present unconvinced that she's heard the entire story but out of time to talk further. A mysterious masked person then shoots the Protagonist dead with a silenced pistol.
• Failing to complete Shido's Palace in time results in Goro Akechi leading the police to arrest the Protagonist.
• Selling out your friends or Confidants to Sae after completing her Palace results in Goro shooting the Protagonist dead before he can reveal any names.
• Taking the deal offered by the false Igor transports the Protagonist to a world where the Phantom Thieves are exonerated and celebrated by the public, but humanity loses its free will. The fates of the Protagonist's missing friends are unknown.