It’s been a while since I’ve installed a new gacha game on my phone. Back in high school, I used to have a lot of interest in the genre, but it has waned quite a bit over the last couple years. By the time I got into one, it would soon shut its doors, which is a sad reality that they all eventually have to face. Despite that, I try to tackle gacha games with a more positive outlook and don’t let fact that it’s a live service game cloud my enjoyment. As such, I waited for the global release of Persona5: The Phantom X, and after launch, I’ve played for several days to see if the game can really stand out. Thanks to ATLUS and Perfect World Games, I also had the chance to get a head start before launch to get our impressions of Persona5: The Phantom X.
Break Free From Apathy in Persona5: The Phantom X
In Persona5: The Phantom X, P5X in short, the story follows takes place in a completely different universe. Players will follow through the point of view of Nagisa Kamishiro, a second-year student at Kokatsu Academy. Recently, there’s been an increase in Menaces, people who are prone to causing trouble in a way that the authorities are unable to do much of anything.
This has resulted in a wave of apathy, where people start to feel empty inside, and some, unable to take it any further, end up taking their own lives. It’s at that point, however, that players meet Lufel, a mysterious owl who says that Kamishiro must resist the force that’s stealing away at everyone’s desires, and Nagisa gains the power to enter the Metaverse.
It doesn’t take long until he awakens to his Persona, the manifestation of his desires. Lufel then tells him that the surefire way to stop the Menaces, is to infiltrate the person’s distorted cognitive manifestation called a Palace, and steal their Treasure within. So far, so good right? But this is where the story begins to take some artistic liberties. Instead of a certain place being denoted as the target’s Palace, they are instead located inside of Mementos, the “Palace of the cognitive mass”.
Furthermore, P5X doesn’t feature the traditional calendar system from Persona 5, so there’s no time limit to complete the Palaces. This makes total sense to me, as it would be nigh impossible to implement such a system due to the game’s nature, although there are some weather changes and the in-game profile menu keeps track of how many “days” have elapsed since you started your adventure.
I personally thought that the story has its highs and lows, with some of the parts having interesting developments. This might upset some people, but I absolutely loved Lufel’s personality compared to Morgana. What really surprised me is just how absolutely MASSIVE these Palaces are. It took me an entire afternoon to go through what felt multiple sections, and even after you’ve finished them, there’s still a lot you can explore.
Though, it wasn’t exactly my definition of fun. For the majority of the time, you’re basically just following the exclamation point to your next destination. Even if a puzzle appears, you’re basically handed over the solution to it by following that mark, which is very boring, to put it mildly.
Familiar, Yet Different Systems
Compared to the Persona series’ usual combat system, P5X introduces a few notable changes, likely to fit within the mobile game specifications. Firstly, there are a lot more skill effects that characters can utilize, which can feel very confusing at first. However, as someone who’s used to reading humongous walls of text, this is practically nothing in comparison. Later in the story, you can unlock an Auto Mode and a toggle to speed up the battle animations.
Speeding up the battle animations does come with its fair share of problems though, as it feels like they weren’t designed to be sped-up, at all. In fact, the tutorial even warns people with photosensitivity issues to avoid that toggle, likely because of the unnatural visuals that may occur as a result. There are multiple ways to get around this by tweaking it in the game settings, but it does feel like this wasn’t really the intention of the developers.
Even familiar systems, such as the Fusion System, have some changes made to them. Instead of grabbing two Personas from your inventory, you’ll instead use a coin-like currency known as Seals. You’re also unable to spend money to summon from the Compendium, but in its place, the more Personas you register, the more Schema Points you’ll earn, which can then be used to strengthen the protagonist’s stats.
Diversify Your Bonds
One of the most different systems that I’ve seen in P5X has to be the Synergy System. Unlike the original Persona series’ Confidants, Synergies aren’t tied to a specific Arcana. As you level them up, you’ll unlock Synergy Stories, which will give you a glance on that character’s particular backstory. As of Version 1.0, we only have seven characters, with more being added in future patches.
Furthermore, the protagonist can do a plethora of activities, such as cooking, planting flowers, working a part-time job, and studying. The sheer amount of things you can do feels overwhelming at first. However, it is worth noting that each activity costs points, denoted by an hourglass icon. To replenish your points, you have to wait until the “server reset”, which occurs at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, or use an item that will replenish them.
Doing these activities will increase your stats such as Knowledge, Charm, and others, and some Synergies do require you to be at a certain level, and you can also earn some money to buy things with. It does require a large amount of days to unlock the side stories that open up once you reach a certain Synergy level with someone, though, since you can burn up through that initial 20 Energy alarmingly quickly.
Please Sign Here
The gacha system, and the overall monetization present in the game, lies with the Velvet Room and in-game shops. Merope, the Velvet Room assistant, is able to sign contracts that will summon a cognitive entity called a Phantom Idol, or Kaidol, in Japanese. Currently, the gacha can be divided into three types of banners: You have the always-permanent Standard banner, the Limited Character banner, the latter of which cycles every so often, and finally a Weapon banner, where it will feature weapons that can only be exclusively used by certain characters.
You’ll quickly realize on how this can evolve into a weird situation where you can have the weapon for the character in question, but not the character that uses it, leaving it basically just rotting away in your inventory. Now thankfully, this is offset by the fact the gacha banner lets you pick one “Most Wanted” weapon and two others, altering the banner however you see fit, which I actually prefer compared to waiting until a weapon I want is featured.
In P5X, there’s a $5 monthly pass to get the premium currency, a $11 premium tier battle pass, and lots and lots of paid crystal packs. When I got my first 5-star, the game immediately tried to sell me a discount set to awaken the character and increase their stats. Then, when I woke up one morning, I got a full-screen pop-up about a Welcome Pack for $24,99, followed by another pop-up once I cleared Chapter 1. As you can tell, monetization is aggressive here, and it keeps piling up.
From the moment you get the upsell for that specific pack, a 72-hour timer begins, and once that expires, the pack vanishes from the store. As someone who has played a lot of gacha games, I can’t say I remember the last time a game was this aggressive in trying to make you spend money. This might seem like typical behavior for a gacha game, but I think it is something that should not be overlooked, as FOMO is never a good thing in my book.
The Achilles’ Heel That is Mobile
For the purposes of this review, I tested the game both on my PC and my mobile device, a Galaxy S23 Ultra. Upon first starting up the game, it will run a sort of check to see which settings it deems appropriate for your specific device. In my case, it deemed my PC to run it at the Semi-High preset, whereas my phone got the High preset. The game is clearly optimized differently, as I’ve noticed some particular stuttering in my phone and on PC, even after tweaking the settings.
A common issue that I’ve found involves how the game loads the enemies. There’s always a bit of a delay when the game loads the enemy assets, and that does take away from the snappy feeling that the original Persona 5 had. Still, a lot of times, I just simply forgot that I was playing a mobile game, because it’s clear that a ton of optimization was made for this game, and every time you need to go through its menus, it did not feel that much of a slog as you might think.
One issue I had on mobile is that movement can be quite awkward. Unlike some of its contemporaries, where you can just slide your thumb in any place, P5X’s pad seems to be strictly tied to a single place, which does make navigation a bit annoying at times. The PC version handles this slightly better, but not by a whole lot, even with a controller plugged in.
Persona5: The Phantom X Takes My Heart
It’s undeniable that a lot of love and effort was poured into Persona5: The Phantom X. The developers over at Black Wings Studio definitely did their homework, providing an experience that gets shockingly close to the Persona series. It isn’t a game without its faults. though. While the Palaces may feel a tad linear at first, and the grinding may veer off some players, the story more than makes up for it.
This is definitely a game I’ll keep on following, especially as new story quests and areas get added. Even in its current state, I would definitely recommend playing Persona5: The Phantom X, both as a gacha game enthusiast, and a Persona 5 fan at heart. However, do spend responsibly, and do not give in to its temptation.
Disclaimer: ATLUS and Perfect World Games provided a PC (Steam) copy of Persona5: The Phantom X for review purposes.
