Persona 5 Lets You Get Help From Other Players Online

Persona 5 is a strictly single-player game, but it does feature some online functionality that allows you to receive help from other players.

As detailed in the newest issue of Famitsu (translated by Siliconera), Persona 5's primary online component is the Phantom Thieves Alliance. This doesn't affect the game's story, but provides assistance in a few different ways.

During combat, party members can be taken hostage when they are knocked out. You then have the opportunity to save them by negotiating or offering an item. If you don't manage to succeed, a fellow player connected to the Phantom Thieves Alliance can do so on your behalf. Similarly, being online and connected to the Alliance can help to stop enemies from running away during combat; this is important because when they flee, they increase a caution meter, which makes exploration more difficult.

The other way in which connecting online can help you involves free time. As in past games, when you're not venturing through dungeons, you have time after school to do different things. It can be a challenge to decide what to do--or to find all all of the possible choices on any given day--so Persona 5 allows you to see what other players chose to do with their time. (That's pictured below.) You can also see what answers others chose when you're asked a question during class, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire-style.

If all of this sounds familiar, that's because the Vita version of Persona 4, Persona 4: Golden, introduced some similar networking features. That game allowed you to see what other players did with their spare time and had a system where you could request (or offer) assistance during dungeons, providing players with a health and mana boost during the following battle.

Persona 5 launches in Japan quite soon, releasing on September 15 for PS4 and PS3. In North America and Europe, it's coming on February 14, 2017.