12 Best Games Like Persona 5: Top JRPGs and Social Sims to Play Next
Let’s be real: Few games land that perfect punch of turn-based combat, stylish modern aesthetics, and deep, calendar-based social simulation quite like Persona 5. Finishing that epic journey can leave a massive, Mementos-sized hole in your heart (and your gaming schedule).
You’re suddenly faced with the challenging task of finding a title that can match its genre-blending brilliance—a game where managing relationships is just as crucial as managing your skill points.
The good news? The unique formula Persona 5 perfected has inspired a wave of incredible titles that scratch similar itches. Whether you’re craving high-school drama, time management pressure, intricate team-building, or just that signature JRPG flair, there are fantastic games like Persona 5 out there waiting for you. Get ready to dive back into a world where school life is anything but ordinary.
1. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
If you’re looking for the closest possible analogue to the Persona structure outside of the Atlus universe, look no further. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (specifically the first installment) takes place almost entirely within the walls of Thors Military Academy. Like in Persona 5, your life revolves around a school calendar, split into academic studies, field trips, and, most importantly, “Free Days.”
This is where the magic happens: you get a limited number of “Bonding Points” on Free Days, forcing you to choose which of your eccentric Class VII classmates you want to spend time with. These bonding events are the engine of both character growth and combat power, much like the Confidant system.
Deepening these ties doesn’t just unlock personal story moments; it also upgrades your Link Attacks in the game’s excellent turn-based battle system, which features tactical positioning and break mechanics.
The vibe here is a sprawling political fantasy epic wrapped in the cozy, dramatic comfort of a school slice-of-life story, making it one of the best choices among current JRPGs for players seeking that specific Persona rhythm.
2. Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Switching out high school students for a lovable, down-on-his-luck ex-Yakuza named Ichiban Kasuga, Yakuza: Like a Dragon fully embraces the turn-based RPG style that modern fans crave. What makes it a top pick for finding games like Persona 5 is how deeply it integrates character relationships into its combat systems. While it lacks a strict calendar schedule, it makes up for it with its own version of Confidants.
Why it’s like Persona: You raise your bond with party members through activities, eating together, and special “Drink Link” conversations at your hideout bar, Survive. These conversations are where the deep, emotional backstory of each ally unfolds—and crucially, they unlock new, powerful jobs (like Chef, Musician, or Idol) and improve the chance of character follow-up attacks in battle.
The Vibe: It’s a hilarious, heartfelt modern-day hero’s journey where street thugs become medieval knights, and your party’s power comes entirely from the trust and friendship you build outside of combat. It’s got all the fun of managing social stats, only instead of “Charm” and “Guts,” you’re leveling up Ichiban’s “Passion” and “Kindness.”
3. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
If the daily time-management and student mentorship aspects of the Persona series are what truly hooked you, then you have to try Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This entry surprised the long-running strategy series by adopting an elaborate school-life phase that dominates the first half of the game, setting the stage for a massive continental war.
Why it’s like Persona: You play as Byleth, a professor at the Garreg Mach Monastery, managing a 12-month calendar. Every in-game week requires you to make tough decisions about how to spend your limited action points: Should you explore the monastery, teach specific skills, or take your students into battle for extra experience? Your social time is spent building “Support” ranks through activities like sharing meals, fishing, choir practice, and tea parties.
These bonds are non-negotiable; they unlock crucial combat bonuses like joint attacks and defensive saves on the battlefield, directly tying your personal relationships to your tactical success.
The Vibe: This is a complex, tactical RPG with a social heart. It replaces high-speed turn-based menus with grid-based strategy, but the emotional investment in your students’ growth—both academic and personal—is absolutely palpable.
4. Tokyo Xanadu eX+
Tokyo Xanadu eX+ often gets called Falcom’s direct response to the Persona formula, and for good reason—it hits nearly all the same notes, only swapping out turn-based combat for fast, action-packed dungeon crawling. You step into the shoes of high school student Kou Tokisaka, who discovers the existence of the Eclipse, an alternate dimension housing monsters called Greed.
Why it’s like Persona: The game beautifully blends its everyday life and supernatural crisis. On school days, you manage Kou’s real-world social stats (Wisdom, Courage, and Virtue), which unlock new dialogue options and questlines. Crucially, you spend “Affinity Shards” on free days to hang out with party members and classmates, deepening your relationships.
While not as strict as Persona‘s daily clock, the progression is chapter-based, forcing you to balance school life and monster hunting, making it an excellent game for anyone seeking titles that feel like games like Persona 5.
The Vibe: Think modern urban fantasy meets high-speed action RPG. It features all the best high school tropes—school festivals, slice-of-life scenes, and a close-knit group of friends fighting to protect their city.
5. Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Complete Edition
When you need a game with the sleek, urban setting and complex monster fusion mechanics, but want to swap high school for high-tech hacker investigations, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is your answer. This package includes both the original Cyber Sleuth and its sequel, Hacker’s Memory.
Why it’s like Persona: This game features an overlapping aesthetic and mechanical approach. You navigate modern Tokyo and a parallel digital world (Kowloon/EDEN, their version of the Metaverse). The turn-based combat system emphasizes exploiting elemental weaknesses, much like the “1-More” system.
Moreover, the deep process of Digivolving and De-Digivolving monsters in the DigiLab (which functions exactly like the Velvet Room) is a robust and addictive system that mirrors the complex Persona fusion and skill inheritance process. The structure is case-based, feeling like a mature evolution of the side-quest loop you see in the Phantom Thieves’ exploits, making it a stellar option for games like Persona 5.
The Vibe: Detective noir meets cyberpunk monster collecting. It’s got a great jazzy/electronic soundtrack and a distinct anime aesthetic, focusing on darker themes of data, memory, and identity theft.
6. The Caligula Effect: Overdose
The Caligula Effect: Overdose takes the modern high school setting and psychological warfare themes to an extreme, delivering a story that feels intensely personal and unsettling, which will definitely resonate if you appreciate Persona 5‘s darker moments. The game traps you in Mobius, a virtual world created by an AI named µ (Mu) to spare people from the pain of reality, and your job is to escape.
Why it’s like Persona: The entire cast is composed of high school students who are struggling with deep-seated psychological trauma that manifests as their “enemy” form (like Shadow Selves). Rather than a strict calendar, the relationship system is massive: you can build relationships with all 500+ student NPCs in the school, although only a core group joins your battle-ready Go-Home Club.
The combat is a unique twist on turn-based battles called the Imaginary Chain, where you plot out a chain of actions and can preview exactly what will happen a few seconds into the future, rewarding tactical planning and enemy weakness exploitation.
The Vibe: Psychological thriller meets J-pop nightmare. It’s a compelling, often meta-narrative experience that swaps the stylish confidence of the Phantom Thieves for the anxiety-ridden urgency of a group desperate to face—and escape—their painful truths.
7. Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance
If you want the core of Persona‘s battle system—the demon collecting, the fusion, the weaknesses—stripped of the social simulation layers, then look to the flagship franchise that started it all. Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance is the definitive version of Atlus’ epic JRPG, boasting two full storylines (the new Canon of Vengeance and the original Canon of Creation) and an improved, open-area world to explore.
Why it’s like Persona: Mechanically, this is the most similar entry in terms of combat. It uses the legendary Press Turn System, which rewards exploiting elemental weaknesses with extra actions, just like Persona‘s “1-More.”
The core gameplay loop revolves around recruiting demons through negotiation, fusing them in the Velvet Room-like World of Shadows, and strategically building a powerful party of mythological and biblical figures.
The Vibe: Unlike the high school setting, SMT V plunges you into a post-apocalyptic, demon-infested Tokyo wasteland known as Da’at. It is a much darker, more philosophical, and significantly more challenging experience.
It ditches the calendar system entirely, focusing almost exclusively on strategic exploration, demon management, and high-stakes turn-based combat. If you crave intense, punishing JRPG mechanics over dating sim elements, this is your next obsession.
8. Metaphor: ReFantazio
Straight from the creative team behind Persona 3, 4, and 5, this is the game designed to blend that signature time management formula with a sprawling high-fantasy epic. Metaphor: ReFantazio sees you navigating the Kingdom of Euchronia, where the social and political structure revolves around “Archetypes”—the game’s take on the Persona system.
Why it’s like Persona: The time-based calendar system is back, but with a twist. Instead of managing high school life, you’re on a world-spanning journey to rally support to decide the next King. You spend your travel days developing your “Royal Virtues” (social stats like Courage and Eloquence) or deepening bonds with your “Followers” (the equivalent of Confidants).
These bonds unlock new and powerful Archetypes (classes) for your party, which is crucial for maximizing your potential in the hybrid turn-based/real-time combat system.
The Vibe: It’s an Atlus JRPG through and through, complete with the hyper-stylish UI, Shoji Meguro’s iconic score, and deep psychological themes, but transplanted into a fully realized fantasy world of knights and magic. If you love the blend of daily routine and world-shattering stakes, this is the one to jump into next.
9. Blue Reflection: Second Light
Blue Reflection: Second Light feels like a core JRPG adventure that takes the social simulation and relationship-building elements to heart, wrapping them in a distinctly magical girl package. The story centers on a group of high school girls who find themselves trapped in an ethereal, isolated school setting, surrounded by a serene sea—the perfect backdrop for deep character exploration.
Why it’s like Persona: Your daily life in the school environment is paramount. You spend your limited downtime crafting, dating, building facilities, and simply hanging out to nurture “Bonds” with your companions. These relationships are the absolute engine of the game’s power curve, directly translating into new skills and abilities for combat, which occurs in the emotion-fueled dungeons known as Heartscapes.
While the battle system itself is a unique, real-time command system rather than traditional turn-based, the focus on relationship-driven power growth makes it essential for anyone seeking games like Persona 5.
The Vibe: Emotional depth meets pastel fantasy. It’s a gentler, slice-of-life take compared to the high-stakes socio-political commentary of the Phantom Thieves, focused more on healing emotional wounds and celebrating feminine strength.
10. Rune Factory 4 Special
If you’re looking for a softer, more fantastical take on the life-sim/dungeon-crawler hybrid, Rune Factory 4 Special is an absolute must-play. You start the game as an amnesiac prince or princess (whose royal duties mostly involve managing a humble farm and hosting town festivals), balancing your daily life with exploring action-RPG dungeons outside of town.
Why it’s like Persona: It’s the ultimate “cozy” take on the time management loop. You must tend your crops, craft equipment, and choose how to spend time with the memorable townsfolk. The deep relationship system allows you to build friendships, go on dates, and eventually marry the villagers.
These bonds—your Confidants, essentially—directly influence your effectiveness in combat, as you can take party members (including monsters you’ve tamed!) into the dangerous wilderness. This seamless integration of daily life into your adventuring prowess is precisely why players enjoy titles like this among other great games like Persona 5.
The Vibe: Wholesome medieval fantasy meets intensive farming and monster hunting. It has a warm, humorous tone and is less concerned with modern angst than it is with community, making it a delightfully low-stakes counterpart to Atlus’s darker narratives.
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