Persona 5 hold up guide: tips and tricks

Persona 5 has a handful of features that makes this role-playing game unique. One of Persona 5’s most fun aspects is the fighting system. While it has traditional features like attacking with weapons, using items and casting spells, there’s a little more to it than just attacking enemies. This guide will help you make the most of one its most unique systems, the Hold Up.

As we discussed in our Persona 5 guide: 10 tips for your first 20 hours post, enemies have elemental weaknesses. Learning how to strike those will lead to massive success in battle. Outside of putting a big hurt on enemies, hitting demons with their elemental weakness have an added benefit: It knocks them down and makes them immobile for a few turns. If you manage to do this to all of the enemies (or you end up killing enemies, and the last one is left knocked down), then you’ll initiate a Hold Up. From there, you’ll have a few options.

WHAT CAN YOU DO DURING A HOLD UP?

When you initiate a Hold Up, your entire party surrounds your knocked down enemies with guns drawn. From there, you are given a series of options: You can perform an All-Out Attack, Talk to the demons or cancel the Hold Up and attack the enemy again as normal.

An All-Out Attack is a team attack that deals a huge amount of damage to the enemy, enough to instantly end most fights. If you get an instant kill against your enemies, whoever initiated the All-Out Attack will receive a fancy splash screen specific to that character.

If you choose Talk, you get a series of new options. When you talk to the downed demons, you then get to either ask the demon to lend you their power, ask for money or ask for an item. Asking for money and items is straightforward. Of course, not all demons have money or items to give, so be forewarned.

Asking a demon to lend you their power well then cause a demon negotiation to occur. These negotiations, if done successfully, will allow you to add a new Persona to your arsenal. We have a full page dedicated to Persona 5’s demon negotiations, but let’s recap what you need to do to be successful.

PERFORMING SUCCESSFUL DEMON NEGOTIATIONS

The key to performing a successful demon negotiation requires understanding two things: demon personalities and what answers each personality likes.

Demons can be one of four personalities: Upbeat, Timid, Irritable or Gloomy. During your negotiation, demons will ask you questions. If you use the right answers, they will lend you their power. To make things easier on you, use the guide below or check out our full Persona 5’s demon negotiations guide for advice.