Persona 5 Royal – How to Unlock Third Semester and New Palace

Persona 5 is already a pretty long game, but the newly released Persona 5 Royal adds an entire third semester and tons of other content to the 100 hour RPG. Unlike most of the main content in Persona 5, however, you can get locked out of the third semester if you don’t complete certain requirements beforehand. Thankfully, you have a fairly large window of opportunity to take care of these prerequisites, but if you ignore them, you won’t be able to see any of the new stuff. The things you need to do involve hanging out with Royal’s new set of characters, though, so at least you’ll get to see a few new things before getting to the meatier additions of Persona 5 Royal.

This is how to unlock the third semester and new palace in Persona 5 Royal. There won’t be any spoilers in this guide.

How to Unlock the Third Semester and New Palace in Persona 5 Royal

Unlocking the third semester in Persona 5 Royal requires you to spend time with one of the game’s new characters and advance their Confidant rank to a certain level. In order to get to the third semester, you’ll need to advance the Councillor arcana to Rank 9 before November 18. You can do this by spending time with Takuto Maruki, one of the new characters added in Persona 5 Royal. Maruki comes into the story early on and is unmissable, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to find him. The first 5 Ranks are available as soon as you meet him, but you won’t be able to reach Ranks 6-9 until September 20. After that point, you’ll have until November 18 to reach Rank 9 with him. If you manage to do so, Rank 10 will unlock automatically on November 18. If you don’t, then you’ll be locked out of Rank 10 and the third semester of the game, meaning you’ll be stuck with the standard ending of Persona 5.