Persona 5 doesn’t have any gay romances. Despite protagonist Joker’s relationships with his male friends and rival having what feels like some romantic tension in the eyes of its players, Persona 5 and its definitive Royal edition never let the player take that next step. Persona 5 Tactica let players express romantic interest in other men, but still, the series hasn’t had a gay romance since Persona 2. However, a fan has been working on a mod that puts full romances, dates, and other scenes for Joker and party members Ryuji, Yusuke, Akechi, and even supporting character Mishima into the PC version of Persona 5 Royal.
The Gay Joker mod by Alive_Neptuna is available on GameBanana and has finally been updated to include Akechi, whose relationship begins in Royal’s added third semester. To access that romance, you’ll have to unlock the additional semester by completing therapist Maruki’s social route before November 17. Ryuji, Yusuke, and Mishima’s, however, can be accessed throughout the game after you complete their route.
As of the latest update, Alive_Neptuna has expressed they will be slower to update the mod moving forward due to school and work commitments and is looking for people in the community who can help with further updates. But what’s here now is still pretty substantial. Much of the new romance scenes lack voice acting, but that’s better than a mod that uses AI to recreate voices without compensating the actors. I played Persona 5 and Royal on PlayStation, but when the Persona games came to PC, I was most excited about the prospect of a mod to let me romance Ryuji after headcanoning my version of Joker as in love with him. I don’t know that I have time for another 100+ hour trip to the Metaverse, but if I do ever replay Royal down the line, I may just download it on PC to install this mod.
Persona’s relationship with queerness has been fraught, but recent games have turned things around a bit. Persona 3 Reload takes out an infamous transphobic scene in the remake, and it also retools other scenes to be explicitly queer. So maybe Atlus will go all the way when Persona 6 shows up.
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