🎩Persona 5 Royal (PS4) Mod Support
How to load modded files in P5(R) (PS4 HEN)
Background
Persona 5 Royal has recently been ported to PC & Switch in 2022. You may notice a community effort to shift focus to that version, especially considering PS4 modding relies on not updating your console to the latest firmware, effectively locking you out of PSN and the latest games. It only stands to reason that this would be the least popular edition of Persona 5 to mod, so expect very little community support.
Persona 5 Royal is a re-release of Persona 5, originally launched on PS3 and PS4 in 2019 (2020 in the west). Just like its predecessor, it's a JRPG with life-sim and dungeon crawling elements that involves summoning and fusing a party of Personas.
It features many quality of life improvements and a longer campaign, and has just recently been ported to PC and Switch in 2022.
HEN on PS4 Console
There is currently no decent way to emulate Persona 5 Royal on PC. Spine, a PS4 compatibility layer for Linux, is in the works but the game isn't currently considered "playable."
We need to perform a one-time modification to the game itself in order to load modded files from an external mod.cpk archive.
The only way to play modified Playstation 4 titles on console is to create and install a Fakesigned .PKG File (known as a "FPKG") of Persona 5 Royal obtained from the internet, along with a modded Update FPKG-- more on that later.
The ability to install .PKG files is locked away in the System Settings's Debug menu, which is only accessible on developer units.
To get around this, you can temporarily escalate user permissions on certain firmwares. This is accomplished via a combination of kernel exploit and webkit exploit released by talented hackers.
Unfortunately, you cannot update to the latest firmware without losing your access to modded games. Also, the FPKG must be generated from the exact .PKG the base game was installed from, meaning even if you have a legit copy of the game installed you must uninstall it and use an illegitimate one. This poses a potential console or account ban risk if you ever go online with the console in the future.
Exploitable Firmwares
5.05
6.72
7.02, 7.50 - 7.55
9.00 (with USB dongle)
Navigate to https://cthugha.exploit.menu/ on your PS4's browser and choose your firmware.
Then, choose GoldHEN.
Follow the instructions onscreen and if you're lucky a system message will appear letting you know HEN is running. If the payload fails, restart the console. You may have to hold the power button down for a few seconds if the console freezes.
Adding Mod Support
The following steps only need to be completed once. Afterwards, each time you launch the game you can enjoy your patches and modded files.
Keep in mind: After doing this, the game will only be launchable while HEN is active. Each time the console reboots you will have to go to the PS4 browser and repeat the above steps to exploit the firmware again.
Installing the Base Game FPKG
Put the .PKG of the full base Persona 5 Royal game on a USB drive.
Insert the drive and go to System Settings > Debug > Game > Install PKG.
Select the .PKG file and install. It will overwrite the existing P5R copy already installed on the system.
Installing the Patched Update FPKG
On PC, go to ShrineFox.com's Get Started Page.
Choose the region matching your installed Base Game FPKG.
Enable any desired optional patches.
Download the Update FPKG, or just the EBOOT.BIN if you want to manually create your own FPKG.
Install it the same way as the Base Game FPKG and launch the game.
If all the steps above were done correctly, the game should open like normal with no errors, but the opening logos should be skipped immediately.
Installing Mods
To use community-made mods, or to eventually create your own, you'll need a mod manager.
Download the latest release of Aemulus Package Manager.
Extract it somewhere on your PC using 7-zip.
Choose Persona 5 Royal in the games dropdown, and click the Settings button.
Click on Extract Original Files in order to improve mod merging.
You can switch to the GameBanana tab to download community-submitted mods directly from the website. Enable them with the checkboxes and re-order their priority as desired.
Missing info:
Including 1.0.2 Update Files in mod.cpk to prevent crashes
Fill out the settings in Aemulus and click Build to generate the mod.cpk wherever you pointed the output to.
Now you're ready to transfer it to PS4:
Start a FTP connection between PS4 and PC via the same webpage where you enable GoldHEN.
Transfer the mod.cpk to /data/p5r and create the folder if it doesn't already exist.
Repeat the above steps every time you build a new mod.cpk with Aemulus to update your mods on PS4!
Extracting Files
If you are looking to create your own mods for this game, you will want a full dump of all the game's original, unedited files.
Persona 5 Royal utilizes CriWare's .CPK archive format to store its individual files. You can think of it somewhat like a .zip file that contains the directory structure, but offers compression.
Missing info:
Extracting files from Base Game FPKG
Dumping files from PS4 via payload
Use CriPakGUI to open and extract the contents of each .CPK file to a folder.
For simplicity, you can extract them all to the same folder (or merge folders later) if you'd like. It's not important which .CPK the files came from, because they all share the same directory structure when loaded by the game.
Creating Mods
To begin exploring the files and learning how to edit them, see the Persona 5 Royal on the Amicitia Wiki. Once you have an idea for a mod, open Aemulus Package Manager and click on the New button. Fill out the form and it will create a mod folder for you.
Inside the mod folder, match the structure of the extracted .CPK contents. For instance, if you're editing a file in the /init/ folder, copy the unedited one from your .CPK dump to your mod folder and place it in a /init/ folder.
Troubleshooting
Missing Info:
Errors launching game
Success rate on certain firmwares
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