Persona 5 Royal is a textbook example of how to an expanded edition of a game right. Atlus didn't go into Persona 5 Royal trying to turn the whole game on its head. Rather, it wanted to add new kinds of content still similar to what fans loved about the original game, and it worked. The new social elements and activities around Tokyo offered Joker a whole new world of options on how to spend his free time. The combat was also sharpened and enhanced in lots of ways. Atlus even found a way to deepen and expand the story thanks to new characters and a whole new Palace for fans to explore.
Royal isn't just setting the bar in the general case, though. It's also defining the specific question of what Persona 6 will look like. Fans are optimistic that Atlus will have something to say about Persona 6 this year, considering it's the franchise's anniversary. No matter what Persona 6 is, a continuation of the Phantom Thieves' story or another chapter in the world of Personas, Persona 5 Royal will probably be the game it's compared to, not the vanilla version of Persona 5. Atlus has proven already that it can make a sprawling game with tons of engaging content and unbelievable replay value. Persona 6 should be like Persona 5 Royal from the start, rather than Persona 6 needing an expanded edition to get so big.
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The power of Persona 5 Royal's tide of new content is twofold. For one thing, everything that Atlus added was meant to enhance features that were already in Persona 5 in one way or another. New activities like darts and billiards at Penguin Sniper cleverly combine the opportunity to work on Joker's relationships with the Phantom Thieves while also making his party stronger in combat. The partial opening of many new evening slots cleared up time to develop Social Skills, streamlining Confidant progression. Yoshizawa and Dr. Maruki, Persona 5 Royal's new Confidants, offered both valuable new abilities and a different way of looking at Persona 5's original story. The list goes on.
The other reason Royal's many expansions worked is that, on the whole, they're optional. Persona 5 Royal is definitely longer than Persona 5 thanks to Palace adjustments and new cutscenes, but the vast majority of the expansions or additions are optional. Royal never pressures fans into focusing on its new content; fans can play the game exactly the same way that they played the original game if they want. Because there's always room for another playthrough, Royal's content is also timeless and always new, no matter when fans make the time to engage with it. Royal's combination of side content building off of and playing into the core content with the lack of pressure on the player to do all the side content at once is a great blueprint for Persona 6.
There's a few good reasons that Persona 6 should follow in Royal's footsteps, whatever it's about. For one thing, fans will be expecting a game about the size and caliber of Persona 5 Royal anyway. It's the freshest mainline installment in the minds of fans, and so it's the most logical comparison. Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal also served as gateways to the Persona franchise for a lot of new fans. These fans in particular want something that they can compare to the game that got them into the franchise. If a megalithic 100-hour game with more side content than one playthrough can muster is what fans are looking for, then it's probably what Atlus should provide.
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Another reason to follow in Royal's wake is the litany of storytelling opportunities that Royal presented. Persona generally likes its central narrative, and Persona 6 doesn't need to deviate from that to have a complicated story. Instead, it can stick to having a clear narrative with a few twists and turns in the same way as Royal. While players can beat Royal by defeating Yaldabaoth and wrapping things up as usual, they also have the option to progress to the new Palace and confront a more tragic and relatable antagonist who offers a completely perspective on life in Tokyo and the power of Mementos. Persona 6 can tell its story in a similar way, focusing on a traditional central story but offering a couple specific endings that frame the game's central conflict in a new light.
Persona 6 should also be close to Persona 5 Royal in one more crucial regard. Royal did an excellent job of putting power in the hands of the player by making Joker's schedule flexible, giving him more efficient ways of being social, and adding more tools for fighting tactically. Persona 6 shouldn't just give players all these avenues for flexible storytelling and broad options for free time. It should also give players plenty of choice on when and how to play through all the extra content.
A lot is riding on the success of Persona 6. It'll be the ultimate test of whether or not Atlus can hang onto all the fans that Persona 5 and its enhanced edition generated. It'd be a shame to see Persona dwindle in the public eye if the newly expanded fanbase doesn't like the new game as much. That's part of why it'd be wise for Atlus to take as many of the tools and strategies from the latest games as possible. The more features that Atlus converts into something familiar but new for Persona 6, the more reasons fans have to come back for the next game.
The bar for the amount of things to do in Persona 6 has been set. Atlus can't exactly scale Persona down from here, or else Persona 6 might feel bare-bones compared to all the growth that the franchise has done up until now. It's best that Atlus either stabilizes and uses Persona 5 Royal as the new benchmark for the franchise, or that it finds a way to go even further. Stacking activities on top of activities is one good way to make a game long-lived. If Persona 6 is anything like the game that came before it, then fans will be finding little details and extra features for years and years after the game releases.
Persona 6 is rumored to be in development.