You can finally be a woman in Persona 5 Royal, thanks to a massive mod project

Image of Persona 5 Royal modded so that protagonist Joker is Female

(Image credit: chlorophylls and Atlus)

Every once in a while a mod comes along that's so ambitious, extensive, and impressive that it just runs you over like a truck. That's how I feel about the simply-named "P5R Female Protagonist" mod that just released, transforming Persona 5 Royal's Joker into Joker, but a lady.

PERSONA 5 ROYAL: PLAYABLE FEMALE JOKER/PROTAGONIST IS HEREThis mod has been in development for a long time, and at it's playable to the public!Thank you chlorophylls for casting me in my first leading lady role. Being Joker's VA is a dream come true.https://t.co/IYCgvqxDRN pic.twitter.com/50j5kwKkdxApril 29, 2023

But it's not just some model swap, no, it's an extensive visual and story overhaul. It includes "new costumes/models, animations, textures, voice lines, field dialogue, and more," according to mod creator chlorophylls. Female Joker is voiced by Alexa Farron in English, in her voice lead debut, and the actually-quite-famous Maaya Sakamoto in Japanese (The Vision of Escaflowne, Fate/Apocrypha, Re:Zero).

Yes, you read that right, the mod includes both Japanese and English VO clips for both battle, system, and overworld segments.

Perhaps the most impressive bit is all the new animation and model changes. There are new models for all the everyday outfits, from winter and summer to school uniforms, and even changes for the special event and flashback outfits. There are of course models for all the battle costumes—and, shockingly, for all the DLC costumes as well. The modder even changed the functionality of Protector armor so that Joker can equip female-only and unisex ones, but not male-only ones.

The new VO and appearances go along with dialogue changes in some pretty extensive places. Those are basically tweaks all over the place to make sure that dialogue works, change item descriptions, and enable new romances for the new protagonist.

In addition, there's more on the way: there are updates for some of the UI, like the party panel, status screen, and dialogue choice portraits, for the social sim side of things—they're all in the works and coming in an update.

Some things, says chlorophyll, won't get changed . The Anime cutscenes obviously won't be modded "unless you happen to have an animation studio in your back pocket" and the title screen will remain unmodded because "title screen models are cursed beyond belief." There also won't be more romance options beyond those chosen for the mod due to internal hardcoding on the number of those you can even have.

You can find the Persona 5 Royal Female Protagonist mod on gamebanana. Shout out to the creator and contributors to this mod for their stellar work—go check it out.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.