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Persona 5 Royal (Switch) Mod Support

How to load modded files in P5R (Switch CFW, RyujiNX, Yuzu) - Updated 10/29/22

Background

The Switch/PC ports of Persona 5 Royal have very recently released in October 2022. You may notice a community effort to shift focus to these versions, especially considering the restrictive complexity of PS4 modding. It only stands to reason that this would be the most popular edition of Persona 5 to mod, so expect very little community support for prior editions going forward.
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.

Supported Platforms

Click one of the below links to read how to set up mod loading on your target platform.
Once you have followed the relevant instructions, continue on below.

Merging Downloaded Mods

To use community-made mods, or to eventually create your own, you'll need a mod manager called Aemulus. This allows you to merge multiple mods together for simultaneous use.
Aemulus was made to "deep merge" modded files wherever possible by comparing them to the originals extracted from the game, greatly increasing compatibility between mods.
  1. 1.
    Download the latest release of Aemulus Package Manager. Extract it somewhere on your PC using 7-zip.
  2. 2.
    Choose Persona 5 Royal (Switch) in the games dropdown.
  3. 3.
    Click the Settings button.
  4. 4.
    Click on Extract Original Files in order to improve mod merging. Click on Extract Original Files in order to improve mod merging. You'll have to select the folder containing your ALL_USEU.CPK and PATCH1.CPK files. This can take a very long time due to the very efficient compression (35GB of files crammed into 15GB) so please be patient! This only has to be done once.
  5. 5.
    You can switch to the GameBanana tab to download community-submitted mods directly from the website. You could also drop manually downloaded archives in the Packages folder and refresh Aemulus to load them. Just be aware that mods not made/updated specifically for use with the Switch version will probably not work.
  6. 6.
    Enable the mods you want to use via the checkboxes, and re-order their priority as desired.
  7. 7.
    Click the Build button to output a new PATCH1.CPK that you can transfer to the following location, depending on your target platform:
    1. 1.
      Switch: sdmc:/atmosphere/contents/01005CA01580E000/romfs/CPK/PATCH1.CPK
    2. 2.
      Yuzu: yuzu/load/01005CA01580E000/ModName/romfs/CPK/PATCH1.CPK
    3. 3.
      RyujiNX: Ryujinx/mods/contents/01005CA01580E000/romfs/CPK/PATCH1.CPK

Enabling 60FPS

At this time, the 60 FPS cheat only seems to work on actual Switch hardware due to how emulators handles the heap. See the next section for a method that works on all platforms.
Use the following cheat by DeathChaos to run the game at 60FPS. So far, there doesn't seem to be any game-breaking bugs or major drawbacks. Performance is mostly the same.
  1. 1.
    Download P5R_60_FPS_SWITCH.7z and extract with 7-zip.
  2. 2.
    Place the cheats folder in the sdmc:/atmosphere/contents/01005CA01580E000/ folder.

Using Loose Files (Experimental)

Using Raytwo's p5rcbt skyline plugin, you have the option to load modified files directly, without packing them into a .CPK. It also has 60 FPS patch built in-- which works for both consoles and emulators. Plus, it even features a way to log files as they're loaded.
  1. 1.
    Extract the contents of release.zip to your SD card.
  2. 2.
    Place modded files in either sdmc:/p5r/ or sdmc:/atmosphere/contents/01005CA01580E000/romfs/CPK/BIND
  3. 3.
    Start the game and enjoy!
Aemulus has not been updated yet to support unpacked files at this time. However, most mods for the PC version should be directly compatible (provided you place the files in the right location!) The /p5r/ and /BIND/ folders are treated as the root. You do not need to place the files in a folder named after the .CPK.

Porting Existing Mods

While a lot of things are the same between the PS4 version of P5R and the new ports, there are some major differences you need to take into account.
  • The contents of .PAC files are now loosely distributed.
  • File paths are in uppercase now, but the game will still load lowercase files/folders.
  • .GNF textures (used for Thieves Den images, bustups, and field textures) are now .DDS.
    • Texture .BIN files no longer use headerless .DDS.
  • The audio format is changed to .HCA (Switch only), and .ACB/.AWB/.USM encryption keys have changed.
  • There are additional flowscript functions.
There are also dozens of other, tinier differences too specific to list here.
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Manually Installing PC Mods
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P5R Mods on Switch Console (CFW)
Last modified 10mo ago